Two parallel memes continue to unfold in the news: the condemnations of the release of the Lockerbie bomber, and the condemnations of the “blood libel” article that appeared in a Swedish newspaper.The former travesty was motivated by a desire to obtain good oil deals. The latter was a result of… what? Why did a Swedish newspaper see fit to print such an absurd and disgusting article? And why does the Swedish government refuse to condemn it to the same extent it condemned the Danish Motoons?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Thanks to A Greek Friend, Andy Bostom, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CB, CSP, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, Sean O’Brian, TB, Tuan Jim, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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The FDIC is Broke
The two hallmarks of the Great Depression were unemployment and bank failures. While the same economists who denied there was a recession for the first nine months of the economic contraction are now insisting that it is over and the recovery has begun, I am extremely dubious. Since the crisis became apparent, I believed that 2009 would be the equivalent of 1930, that being the year that everyone expected recovery to be waiting around the corner. But while there are some statistical green shoots, there are also numerous signs that the perceived recovery is illusory, and in fact, the economic situation is more dire now than it was 79 years ago.
In the first year of the Great Depression, unemployment reached 8.7 percent. The present unemployment rate is 9.4 percent. As I have shown previously in this column, bank failures in 2008 and 2009 are also worse than they were in 1930 and 1931 when measured in terms of bank deposits rather than the number of banks. Since that July column was published five weeks ago, 28 more banks have failed and driven the percentage of failed bank deposits up to one percent, which is more than I’d projected for all of 2009. At the current rate, bank failures over the last two years will equal 4.65 percent of total bank deposits, which is more than twice the two percent of failed deposits in 1930 and 1931.
Despite these widespread banking collapses, the American public has remained relatively quiescent, mostly because they believe their deposits are safely insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The problem is that the FDIC has now run out of money; the losses caused by the 81 bank failures this year has completely exhausted the Deposit Insurance Fund. At the beginning of 2008, the DIF had a balance of $52.8 billion. At the end of the year, during which 25 banks failed and caused $17.9 billion in FDIC-estimated losses, the fund was down to $17.3 billion.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Andrew Bostom: Killing Rifqa
Rifqa Bary faces death for her apostasy from Islam, while the media ignores the solid religious and institutional grounding for the practice. Today. In America.
Magdi Allam, is an intrepid Egyptian-born writer and vociferous critic of jihadism who was publicly converted to Christianity from Islam by Pope Benedict XVI during an Easter eve service in St Peter’s Basilica broadcast worldwide, Saturday March 22, 2008. Writing at the time of his public apostasy, Allam highlighted the West’s weakness and flaccidity, foremost, its stifling multiculturalism.
Allam decried the multicultural ethos for blandly asserting the “equality” of cultural and religious mores, even abjuring rational criticism of Islamic religious bigotry — such as authoritative Islam’s living, consensus jurisprudence that those who apostasize from Islam must be killed — lest the tender sensibilities of Muslims be offended. He noted how in his adopted homeland of Italy, every Muslim can go to a mosque, but in the Muslim world there is ongoing and long-standing discrimination against religious minorities — notably Christians — entirely ignored by Western multiculturalists, of all ilks. Allam observed, moreover, the perverse phenomenon that in Western countries,
“When a Westerner decides to convert to Islam, that’s fine, but when a Muslim converts to Christianity, it is suddenly the end of the world. Everyone condemns him, as though he has done something of which he should be ashamed.”
And Allam concluded with this appropriately stern warning…
| — Hat tip: Andy Bostom | [Return to headlines] |
Congressman Eyes Lawsuit Over President’s Eligibility
Republican finds birth certificate sizzling topic at Arizona town hall
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Arizona, told a townhall meeting in Kingman yesterday he is considering a lawsuit to establish Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency.
Franks said there is conflicting evidence on the question of Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.”
His allusion to the possibility of a lawsuit forcing release of Obama’s original, long-form birth certificate is as far as any member of Congress has gone on this issue.
The eligibility issue was one of the hottest topics at the town hall meeting that included concerns about national defense, stimulus spending, health-care bills and the “cash-for-clunkers” program.
Franks said it would take 34,000 years to pay off the indebtedness incurred by the Obama administration.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Death Threats Against Bush at Protests Ignored for Years
On Wednesday, August 12, a man holding a sign that said “Death to Obama” at a town hall meeting in Maryland was detained and turned over to the Secret Service for questioning, which is pursuing an investigation into charging him with threatening the president.
As well they should. I fully and absolutely agree with the Secret Service pursuing this case, since anyone who threatens the president is breaking the law and should be prosecuted. It doesn’t matter that Obama was not at the meeting nor that the man was unarmed: the threat all on its own is a federal crime, according to the United States Code.
I support the arrest and prosecution of any person who threatens Obama or any president of the United States.
Bush was threatened frequently — but no arrests
But the story of this arrest got me to thinking: Why was no one ever arrested for threatening President Bush at protests, when they displayed signs in public that called for his death?
Many readers may naively think, “The answer is obvious: no protester was ever arrested for threatening Bush at a protest because no one ever threatened him at a protest. Who would be that stupid? I certainly never heard of any such threats.”
Alas, if only it were that simple. Because the bald fact is that people threatened Bush at protests all the time by displaying menacing signs and messages — exactly as the anti-Obama protester just did in Maryland. Yet for reasons that are not entirely clear, none of those Bush-threateners at protests was ever arrested, questioned, or investigated (at least as far as I could tell).
Don’t believe me? Then keep reading. Because this essay exists for one reason only: To prove beyond any doubt that explicit and implicit threats to Bush’s life were commonly displayed at public protests throughout his term as president. Below this introduction you will find dozens of examples of such threats — unaltered photographs from a wide variety of sources, along with links verifying their authenticity…
| — Hat tip: Tuan Jim | [Return to headlines] |
Fed-Up Marine Has Guns Blazing to Oust Democrats
Regarding his “tough guy” theme, Kelly said, “People are sick of politicians from all parties. They’re lying to them. People want someone to fight for them in Washington and that’s the message I want to convey.”
After being honorably discharged in 2004 and taken off inactive reserve last year, Kelly now works in the private sector as a project manager for a construction company that handles commercial water and sewer projects.
While he says he always loved politics, he never had a desire to be a politician.
But that all changed with the election of Barack Obama — whom Kelly calls a “radical president” — and the signing of the stimulus bill “monstrosity.”
“They’re spending us off the cliff!” he exclaimed. “They’re destroying this nation, and while I’m still breathing, I will not let it happen. It’s time to be ‘in your face.’“
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: Stay of Execution
The image of a man convicted of killing 270 Americans and other innocent civilians receiving a hero’s welcome last week at an airport in Libya was at once appalling and infuriating. Unless something permanent is done in the near future, however, the culture that promotes such behavior may soon be exulting over the “honor killing” of a young woman in America.
The young woman in question is Rifqa Bary, a seventeen-year-old from a family of Sri Lankan expatriates who are part of a Muslim community near Columbus, Ohio that is dominated by the Noor Islamic Cultural Center. This mosque is renowned for its adherence to the brutally intolerant and repressive theo-political-religious program authoritative Islam calls Shariah. In fact, counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole has described the Noor Center as “the premier source of Islamic extremism” in Central Ohio…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
‘Mad Pride’ Activists Say They’re Unique, Not Sick
For Some, Psychiatric Conditions Are ‘Mad Gifts’ to Be Cherished, Not Medicated
Imagine if Vincent Van Gogh — an artist who was famously afflicted with mental health issues — had been forcibly injected with an antipsychotic drug like Thorazine. Or if Leonardo Da Vinci’s genius had been affected by antidepressants such as Wellbutrin.
That’s what San Francisco-based music artist Madigan Shive wondered.
“I think often that if DaVinci were alive during our time, would we just dope him up? What would we do?” she asked.
It’s a question being asked by a growing grass roots movement about 8,000 members strong — many of whom are rejecting pharmaceutical solutions for psychiatric conditions and fighting the stigmatization and shame of mental illness.
You’ve heard of Black Pride and Gay Pride. Now make room for Mad Pride.
Watch “Primetime Outsiders” this TUESDAY at 10 pm ET.
Mad pride supporters — many dealing with serious mental disorders — are now boldly coming out of the closet. Actor Joe Pantoliano of “The Sopranos” fame views his depression as a gift.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Millions Face Shrinking Social Security Payments
Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise. The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
No Ignoring Protests
President Obama will return from his island idyll to a political landscape completely remade. He still will be greeted by swooning crowds and enthusiastic cheers. But his signature domestic policy is weakened, the result of a resurgent Republican Party that only months ago was on life support.
The irony here is that the Republicans played little role in their recovery, and are instead the innocent and passive beneficiaries of a grassroots (and radio-inspired) insurgency that, if they examine it carefully, may yet bite them as fiercely as it has bitten the president and his congressional allies.
But the conservative backlash against Republicans who supported big-government bailouts of the financial-services, insurance and automobile industries may not be evident for another eight or nine months, when primary challenges to GOP lawmakers may provoke political bloodshed. The damage to the Democrats will be evident before school starts.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Brick Wall: The American People
Since assuming office, Obama has been on a mission to fundamentally alter the social compact between the government and a once powerfully sovereign people.
The litany of his shocks to the system is too voluminous to detail in full, but just consider his calculated takeover of GM, his fraudulently marketed trillion-dollar spending schemes, his cap-and-trade boondoggle, his unilateral declaration of an end to the war on terror, his policy to Mirandize terrorists on the battlefield, his cavorting with terrorist dictators, his soft betrayal of Israel, his ceaseless foreign-soil apologies for America, and his crusade to subsume the health care industry.
These are not tweaks to a glorious constitutional republic, but a frantic effort to undo this republic brick by brick. And the American people have finally gotten wise to what’s going on and are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Adviser: Let’s Engage Terrorists
Approach suggests split between White House, State Department
The self-proclaimed principal adviser to President Obama on counter-terrorism is proposing engagement with Hezbollah, which the U.S. officially regards as a terrorist organization, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
John O. Brennan, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in the Middle East and State Department official, said that such engagement, in effect, will be part of strengthening U.S. national security and “safeguarding the American people from violent extremism and terrorist attacks.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Participated in Socialist Party
Activist recalls president’s time with radical Chicago political group
President Obama participated in a controversial 1990s political party with a socialist agenda, recalls a major member of the organization known as the New Party.
WND previously reported on newspaper evidence showing Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
Now a former top member of the New Party recounted in a WND e-mail interview Obama’s participation with his organization.
“A subcommittee met with (Obama) to interview him to see if his stand on the living wage and similar reforms was the same as ours,” recalled Marxist activist Carl Davidson.
“We determined that our views on these overlapped, and we could endorse his campaign in the Democratic Party,” Davidson said.
[…]
Asked by WND whether he thinks Obama has socialist leanings, Davidson stated, “The truth is that Obama was and is a liberal Democrat and an Alinskyist community organizer — which if you know much about Alinsky, is just militant liberalism.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Psychiatry Goes Back to the Future
First to receive what is essentially psychological training will be “active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard,” then it will be “made available to family members and to civilian employees.” The term “made available” implies that something is voluntary, but when government uses it, the word “mandatory” soon follows.
Ah, how quickly people forget the lessons of the past!
First off, this would not be “the first [training] of its kind in the military.”
In 1943, psychiatrist and British military officer, John Rawlings Rees, head of England’s famous Tavistock Clinic, an outgrowth of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, provided such “training” to American and British soldiers, ostensibly to prepare them for combat and capture or interrogation. What he wanted to ascertain, however, was whether, under conditions of induced or controlled stress, groups of normal individuals could be made to behave erratically. In particular, he wanted to find out whether they would “let go” of firmly held beliefs under pressure, including peer pressure, in order to conform to a predetermined set of “popular” beliefs. Like political organizer and activist Saul Alinsky later on, Rees believed that one of man’s worst fears was ridicule and ostracism, so his experiments centered on what we now know as “encounter”-style strategies — high-stress, spirit-breaking, psychological “conditioning.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Travel Writer Suggests Skipping Arizona Due to Its Gun Carry Laws
This week, the travel writer Arthur Frommer found himself in the middle of an unusually heated debate on his blog at Frommers.com after he published a post headlined “Do Guns at Political Events Disturb You? Then Consider Skipping Arizona for Now.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
United States: ‘Too Big to Fail’?
History is full of nations and empires that were “too big to fail.” The Roman Empire is gone; the Holy Roman Empire is gone; the Byzantine Empire is gone. The great British Empire on which “the sun never set” is now a tiny Island in near bankruptcy.
But don’t worry: The United States is “too big to fail.”
The United States no longer has a real manufacturing base, and almost 90 percent of the economy is based on consumption, mostly of imported goods. But don’t worry, our leaders say that the American consumer society is so big it can’t fail. The leadership believes that the Chinese and the Saudi royals will continue to loan us money to consume because our nation and our economy are just “too big to fail.” Congress and the president believe that the leaders of rich nations understand they must bail out America from time to time, sort of the way American taxpayers had to bail out AIG, GM, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank and others.
Denial is not a river in Egypt. Denial is the state in which the American people and the American leadership live. The trillions of dollars the Bush and Obama administrations have spent to “stimulate” the economy have to be paid back from the future income of taxpayers. Translation: Our children and grandchildren are yoked to a huge debt they cannot possibly repay. Far from being too big to fail, the United States has become too big to survive.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
USA Appeases Islam Under President Obama
By Lee Jay Walker, Tokyo Correspondent
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is set to begin and already President Obama of America is in “manipulation mode” in order to draw America closer to the so-called Muslim world. However, it is clear that Obama’s words are based on Islamic propaganda, however, like so often, coming from the words of a non-Muslim liberal.
Therefore, is it good to have a world leader who speaks on the behalf of another religion and at the same time, repackages it out of all proportion?
In the world of Obama he states that the rituals of Ramadan “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” Therefore, what “justice” and “tolerance” is Obama talking about?
After all, Mohammed himself did not believe in the dignity of all human beings, on the contrary, Jews and Pagans were killed and enslaved, and within a short time all faiths would be banned from the lands of Mecca and Medina. The multi-religious nature of Arabia would be shattered and destroyed by both Mohammed and the early Muslim leaders who would then eradicate Christianity from Arabia.
If Muslims want to follow Mohammed and to uphold traditions like the superiority of Muslims in Islamic Sharia codified law; then this is on their conscience. However, unlike Islamic Sharia law which deems non-Muslims to be inferior, or indeed subhuman if you do not belong to the people of the book; modern Western law believes in the equality of law for all citizens, irrespective of race, religion, or gender.
In recent weeks we have seen the usual Islamic tolerance of non-Muslims by radical Sunni Islamists. This applies to burning Christians alive in Pakistan, beheading Christian converts from Islam in Somalia, killing innocent Shia Muslims in Iraq, killing Buddhists in Southern Thailand, beheading Christian pastors in Nigeria, persecuting Coptic Christians in Egypt, and so forth.
Instead of the world confronting this menace, we have so many Western leaders in appeasement mode and even moderate Muslims are overwhelmingly silent on the reality of Islam and any nation which is ruled by Islamic Sharia law. Given this, what “tolerance” and “dignity” of all human beings is based on the Koran and the Hadiths. Also, when did Islamic Sharia law believe in the “dignity” of all human beings and eqaulity?
Of course Obama understands the reality of what Islamic Sharia law means and sometimes it is much better to say nothing, rather than trying to fool people by making grand statements based on myths.
After all, the testimony of Christians and Jews in Islamic Sharia law is half that of a Muslim. Therefore, it is clear that Christians and Jews are deemed to be inferior in Islamic Sharia law and for other faiths, like Buddhists or Hindus, then their testimony is even less or according to some radical Islamists, all Buddhists and Hindus should be killed and not even the traces of Buddhist or Hindu monuments must be allowed (this happened in Afghanistan).
Obama is not alone in supporting institutions which clash with his own thinking, after all Obama claims to support the equality of homosexuals, religious freedom, democracy, gender equality, and so forth. The former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, embraced Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, this Muslim cleric, like many others, supports the execution of homosexuals and he justifies terrorism according to an article which was published in the New York Times.
However, in modern day Saudi Arabia homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment or death. The Sunni Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan also kill homosexuals and of course this is sanctioned in Islamic Sharia law and by Islamic clerics. Recently, it was also reported that Muslims are killing homosexuals in modern day Iraq and homosexuals reside in fear in many mainly Muslim parts of the world, for example Palestinian controlled areas, Iran, Somalia, and a host of other nations.
Meanwhile in 2009 in the modern era we have several faiths that face annihilation or the imposition of jizya tax in order to survive under their Islamic masters. Therefore, the Baha’is reside in fear in Iran because of massive persecution; the Shabaks, Christians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans face death and persecution on a daily basis in Iraq; Buddhists in Southern Thailand are being beheaded and killed; Sikhs have been forced to pay jizya in Pakistan and recently Christians were burnt alive in this nation; the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim community also suffers massive inequality and persecution in Pakistan and they are not allowed to visit Saudi Arabia; and Hindus also fear radical Sunni Islamists in both Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Like I stated in a past article about the Mandaeans in Iraq, it is worth repeating because the Islam of Obama is very different to the reality of Islam and what is happening in the modern world.
Therefore, in 2007 the BBC covered a story about the Mandaeans via the headline “Iraq’s Mandaeans face extinction” which was written by Angus Crawford. During the article Angus Crawford states that “The Mandaeans are pacifists, followers of Adam, Noah and John the Baptist.” He highlights that by 2007 more than 80% had already fled their homeland because of the fear of death and daily persecution.
The article also highlights the plight of a 9 year old boy called Selwan. However, for this 9 year old boy he witnessed the hatred of radical Islam because he was forced to jump into a burning bonfire. The consequences of this, yes, the persecution of such a young boy, is around 20% burns and this only happened to him because he is a Mandaean.
The same article also highlights the forced conversion to Islam of Luay who is too petrified to give his full name. For Luay, a Mandaean, he was forced to convert to Islam and “forcibly circumcised.” Also, like Angus Crawford mentions, because “he was forcibly converted. That means in the eyes of those same extremists, if he now declares himself Mandaean he is (an) apostate.” Therefore, if he re-converts back to the Mandaean faith he may be killed by radical Islamists.
Given this, just where does President Obama think that these people want to reside after fleeing persecution? Does Obama think that all these minorities want to flee to Sharia Islamic law nations, like Saudi Arabia or do they want to flee to the West? Of course he knows the answer and he fully knows that in modern day Saudi Arabia that all converts from Islam face the death penalty.
Also, Ahmadiyya Muslims are forbidden from entering Saudi Arabia and the minority Shia Muslim community suffers enormous persecution. Meanwhile Muslim females can not even drive a car in Saudi Arabia and when a young girl’s school was burning they were left to die because the fire brigade was too worried about mixing with the opposite sex.
Mohammed also married a child when he was an old man and the child was only 6 years old and like Sahih Bukhari (respected Islamic scholar) states “Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.” Therefore, because of this many young girls are married to old men in modern day Saudi Arabia and other Islamic Sharia law based nations and one must add is this the “dignity” that Obama is talking about?
Also, Mohammed stated that (Koran 9:29) “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.”
Mohammed also stated (Koran 5:38) “As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise.” Therefore, radical Sunni Islamists in Somalia are enacting this because of the Koran and the same applies to killing apostates because this is also sanctioned in Islam.
Therefore, why is Obama making false statements and why is he ignoring reality? Remember, the same Obama who talks about the dignity of humanity visited the lands of Mecca and Medina. Of course, during his visit to Saudi Arabia he would not have seen one Christian church or Buddhist temple, and if he wanted to read his Christian Bible openly, then under Saudi law he would have faced prison.
The Saudi Arabia he visited is a land which continues to support the killing of apostates from Islam and which denies equality to any other faith, and even persecutes minority Muslim sects. The same Saudi Arabia supports the persecution of all religions and homosexuals; and Islamic clerics in this nation are open about their clear understanding of Islam.
Therefore, why does Obama close his eyes when it pleases him and why does he make false statements which can be ridiculed or openly contradicted at the drop of a hat? If the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist leader, wanted to visit and openly preach in Saudi Arabia he would be killed; therefore, where is the justice and equality in Islamic Sharia law and the Koran for non-Muslims?
| — Hat tip: CB | [Return to headlines] |
Deportations Under EU Warrants Likely to Treble
Fair Trials International keeps an ever-growing dossier of cases where the deportation system seems to make a mockery of all our traditional ideas of justice, says Christopher Booker.
Last week the Home Office confirmed that, under a new agreement, the number of people facing automatic extradition each year from Britain to other EU countries under the European Arrest Warrant is likely to treble, from 500 to as many as 1,700. Meanwhile, Fair Trials International keeps an ever-growing dossier of cases — such as those of Andrew Symeou and Deborah Dark — where this system seems to make a mockery of all our traditional ideas of justice.
Five years ago Garry Mann (above), a Kent fireman, went to Portugal for the 2004 UEFA football championships. While he was sitting in a bar with friends, a small riot took place in a street nearby. The police rounded up and arrested various people seemingly at random, Mr Mann among them. Less than 24 hours later, Mr Mann faced a perfunctory trial, with no proper defence or translation facilities, and was given a two-year prison sentence. But shortly afterwards, he was released, on condition that he did not return to Portugal for a year.
Back in England, the Metropolitan Police applied for a worldwide football banning order against him. When Mr Mann appealed, a British court refused to uphold the order on the grounds that he had clearly not had a fair trial in Portugal. He was astonished, therefore, to be arrested again, earlier this year, on a European Arrest Warrant ordering his deportation to Portugal to serve out his two-year sentence. Last Tuesday, Westminster magistrates meekly upheld the order.
What makes this system doubly offensive is the craven servitude to which it reduces British courts, which are required automatically to comply with it. Yet this is what Tony Blair signed up to in 2001 in the name of Europe’s ever more glorious integration. As Jago Russell of Fair Trials International put it last week, a threefold increase in the number of European arrest Warrants threatens merely to lead to “three times as many cases of injustice”.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
In Sweden, Silence is Golden — Just Ask FM Carl Bildt
Silence is golden according to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the government official who insists his country’s ambassador to Israel must refrain from expressing an opinion on virulent anti-Semitic accusations in the Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet. Accusations intended as a blood-libel against all Jews and Israelis everywhere.
The article’s author Donald Boström freely admits that he has no evidence of any of his allegations but says it is up to Jews and Israelis to prove themselves innocent. An interesting if not entirely original twist — Jews are guilty until they prove themselves innocent. The basic tenets of democracy do not appear to be familiar to either Boström or Aftonbladet…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland: Protest at Commission’s Role in Debate
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been accused of acting ultra vires and of “behaving like a political party by engaging directly in the Irish referendum campaign”.
An anti-Lisbon group, the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, issued a response yesterday to a statement from the commission on Friday in which it set out its view of a number of issues pertinent to the Lisbon debate.
These relate to trade agreements, Ireland’s voting weight in the council, Turkish EU membership and bureaucracy in the Common Agricultural Policy.
Director of the National Platform Anthony Coughlan said a move by the commission to counter a claim by Farmers for a No Vote that the treaty would affect inheritance rights here was “the Brussels commission behaving as a political party and engaging directly in the Irish referendum campaign”.
“The commission is using the EU taxpayers’ money, partly financed by Irish taxpayers, through the medium of its website to help support the Yes campaign.
“The Commission is acting ultra vires here. It has absolutely no legal function in relation to the ratification of new European treaties. It only acquires functions in relation to these treaties once they have been ratified and become part of the European law.”
Separately, Munster MEP Brian Crowley also responded to the claims by the Farmers for a No Vote that inheritance rights would be affected by the treaty.
This was a “baseless allegation”, he said “The bottom line is that the EU institutions only have the powers to bring forward new laws in policy areas given to it under the EU treaties. This principle is known as the doctrine of conferral.
“Irish inheritance laws are governed by the Succession Act 1965, by amending legislation and by subsequent Irish case law.”
The Fine Gael Lisbon campaign director Billy Timmins yesterday said his party’s focus would be on the economic dividends of EU membership. “The EU is the economic handrail we need now more than ever,” he said.
Another group, Voteno.ie, said it was vital voters be clear on the fact the referendum was not one on EU membership or influence, but on a specific treaty.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland: Yes to Lisbon Groups Will Outspend No Side
Supporters of the Lisbon treaty are set to out-spend the No side by 10 to 1 in the referendum campaign. An estimate of the budgets for the Yes side indicates it will spend at least €2.4m, compared with the No campaigners’ €270,000.
The spending by the Yes groups does not include the budget for We Belong, a civic group, whose supporters include the businessman Bill Cullen, which refuses to say how much it will spend.
Fine Gael will be one of the biggest spenders on the Yes side, with an estimated budget of €700,000. Billy Timmins, the party’s director of elections, said this amount includes €350,000-€400,000 from party headquarters, and €300,000 of spending at constituency level.
“The vast majority of that will go on billboards, canvassing materials and posters,” he said. “The cost of advertising is huge, but we are determined to run a concerted and vigorous campaign.”
Intel, an American multinational and one of the country’s biggest private-sector employers, joined the Yes side last week and promised to spend “hundreds of thousands” of euros. Sources suggest the amount will be about €300,000.
Ibec, the employers’ group, has set aside €150,000 for its Yes campaign.
A spokesman for Ireland for Europe, a civic group, said: “We have spent €120,000 so far. We’re hoping to spend significantly more and fundraising is ongoing.” Its patrons include Seamus Heaney, Edge of U2 and Paul McGuinness, the group’s manager; Harry Crosbie, the owner of the O2 and Peter Sutherland, the BP chairman.
Labour plans to spend €100,000. Fianna Fail refused to release details of its campaign budget. Last year it spent more than €700,000.
The withdrawal of the Libertas founder Declan Ganley from the No side has left the treaty’s opponents in a poor financial situation. Libertas spent up to €1.1m on its last No campaign.
Sinn Fein and Coir, a lobby group, will be the biggest spenders on the No side. A spokesman for Sinn Fein said its budget had not yet been fixed, but last year it spent €100,000.
Coir said it hopes to spend at least €100,000. Scott Schittl, a co-ordinator for the group, said: “Whatever it is, it won’t even compare to the resources the Yes side have.”
Joe Higgins, the Socialist MEP, said: “We’re talking about tens of thousands, but I wouldn’t say we’ll get to €40,000, to be honest.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Lockerbie Bomber: Libya Broke Promise Over Hero’s Welcome, Says Scottish Justice Minister
Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, accused Libya of breaking a promise not to give a hero’s welcome to the freed Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi.
He told an emergency session of the Scottish Parliament: “It is a matter of great regret that Mr Megrahi was received in such an inappropriate manner.
“It showed no compassion or sensitivity to the families of the 270 victims of Lockerbie.”
He went on: “Assurances had been given by the Libyan Government that any return would be dealt with in a low-key and sensitive fashion.”
Mr MacAskill was speaking at a special session of the Scottish Parliament, recalled from its summer recess to allow MSPs to question him on his decision to free terminally-ill Megrahi.
The Justice Secretary defended his actions in freeing Megrahi on compassionate early release grounds, while turning down a request for him to be transferred to jail in Libya.
Earlier, Gordon Brown faced fresh criticism for commenting on England’s Ashes cricket victory, but remaining silent about what he thinks about the release of Abdulbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the Prime Minister’s continued refusal to comment on last week’s controversial release of Britain’s biggest mass murderer “absurd and damaging”.
Downing Street maintained that the matter of Megrahi’s freedom was one for the Scottish administration, despite condemnation of the release by Barack Obama and the director of the FBI.
A spokesman for Downing Street, in response to repeated questions about the Prime Minister’s silence, repeatedly stated: “It was and it remains a decision for the Scottish Justice Secretary.”
However, Mr Brown has been more forthcoming about England’s Ashes victory — inviting criticism that he is happy to comment on frivolous matters, but not the release of a man who killed 270.
Downing Street said the Prime Minister would be writing to the victorious England team.
A spokesman added: “Of course the Prime Minister was delighted by the win.”
When asked why Mr Brown was not commenting on the Megrahi decision by the SNP-led Scottish parliament, despite routinely attacking its policies, the spokesman said the release was “a uniquely sensitive and difficult decision”.
He did admit that Mr Brown agreed with comments by David Miliband and Alistair Darling last week about the nature of Megrahi’s homecoming in Tripoli where he was greeted as a hero.
A spokesman said: “He found the scenes at Tripoli airport thoroughly distasteful and fully supports what the Foreign Secretary and Alistair Darling have said, and will continue to work with the Libyans to ensure that those things are not repeated.”
Asked whether the release gave succour to terrorists, he said: “I don’t think it does. This was a decision taken by the Scottish Justice Secretary in accordance with the laws of Scotland. I don’t see that anyone can argue that this gives succour.”
Mr Clegg said: “Although the decision to release Megrahi was a Scottish one for which Gordon Brown was not personally responsible the fallout puts the UK at the centre of an international storm.
“In these circumstances, it is absurd and damaging that the British Prime Minister simply remains silent in the hope that someone else will take the flak.”
The Prime Minister, who was in Scotland when Megrahi was released last week, was also urged to clarify whether he used the opportunity to talk with members of the Scottish administration over the matter.
Opposition spokesmen have accused Mr Brown of a “complete failure of leadership” as he maintained his refusal to speak about the early release from prison of the only man convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.
The Prime Minister refused to make any statement despite disclosures that he had more detailed discussions with Colonel Gaddafi about the issue than previously known, and that a Foreign Office minister seemingly endorsed the decision three weeks ago.
Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats demanded that Mr Brown, who is still in Scotland on his summer break, disclose whether he met Scottish ministers over the release.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said his refusal to do so “adds disgrace to the shame of the initial decision.”
He said: “We know what David Cameron thinks about it, we know what the former and current first ministers of Scotland think, we know what everyone thinks except Gordon Brown.
“When the going gets tough, Gordon Brown disappears, it’s the story of his political career, it’s anything but leadership.”
Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism subcommittee, said there was a risk of “long term damage to our intelligence relationship” with the US. He said unless Mr Brown made his stance clear, “there is a real danger of payback time from the U.S. on several fronts”.
As the transatlantic row over the issue intensified, Labour figures continued to heap blame on to the devolved Scottish administration — despite Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, having thanked his “friend.”
In a statement that was along similar lines to the one he made when announcing the decision last week, Mr MacAskill told the Scottish Parliament said: “It was my responsibility to decide upon these two applications.
“They were my decisions and my decisions alone.”
But Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray told Parliament: “The Cabinet Secretary has mishandled this whole affair from start to finish.
“Between the scenes of triumph in Tripoli and the pain and anger at home and abroad, is there anything Mr MacAskill now regrets about his decision and the way it was reached?”
The Tories called the decision “flawed.”
In his 20-minute statement to MSPs, Mr MacAskill set out in detail his rationale on deciding Megrahi’s fate.
The convicted Libyan, serving life for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, is said to be terminally ill with prostate cancer.
Mr MacAskill said he had already published “key material” on the applications for compassionate early release and for a prisoner transfer.
“I will now look to publish other relevant material,” he told MSPs.
“Some of this can only be done with the permission of others, which we are seeking.”
He said Megrahi’s decision to withdraw his second appeal against conviction was “a matter for him and the courts”.
“My decisions were predicated on the fact that he was properly investigated, a lawful conviction passed and a life sentence imposed,” he said.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: ‘Aftonbladet’ Editor Admits: No Evidence
The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, which caused a media stir in recent days with an article claiming IDF soldiers were harvesting organs from Palestinians, published an editorial on Monday denying Israeli claims.
“I’m not a Nazi,” Aftonbladet editor Jan Helin wrote. “I’m not anti-Semitic.”
Instead, he described himself as “a responsible editor who gave the green light to an article because it raises a few questions.” He did note, however, that the paper had no evidence that such horrific practices were being carried out.
On Sunday, Aftonbladet published a follow-up article, defending the offending report written by freelance journalist Donald Bostrom. The second article maintained that the organ-harvesting matter “should be investigated, either to stop the relentless Palestinian rumors, or, if the rumors prove to be true, stop the trade in body parts.”
The article also called Swedish Ambassador in Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier’s condemnation of the article a “disgrace.”
Helin’s editorial came amid an avalanche of Israeli condemnations of Stockholm’s refusal to condemn the article. However, though Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday intimated that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt may not be welcome in Israel for a meeting planned for early next month, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said there were no plans whatsoever to scuttle the visit.
Meanwhile, in an article published Friday, Arab media site Menassat interviewed Donald Bostrom, the Swedish journalist who wrote the original Aftonbladet story. Bostrom emphasized that there was “no conclusive evidence” that organ hartvesting was a systematic IDF practice, but rather a “collection of allegations and suspicious circumstances.”
“The point is that we know there is organ trafficking in Israel. And we also know that there are families claiming that their children’s organs have been harvested. These two facts together point to the need for further investigation,” Bostrom was quoted as saying.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Reinfeldt Rejects Israeli Calls to Condemn Paper
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt rejected demands from Israel on Monday to condemn claims put forward in an article in a Swedish tabloid about alleged organ harvesting from the bodies of dead Palestinians.
The high circulation Aftonbladet daily made the allegations in a story last week,
sparking public outrage in Israel and prompting senior figures in the government to demand that Sweden distance itself from the report.
But Reinfeldt said it was not for the government to comment on the content of every newspaper, stressing that a free press is an integral part of Swedish democracy.
“It’s important for me to say that you cannot turn to the Swedish government and ask it to violate the Swedish constitution,” he was quoted as saying by the TT news agency.
Reinfeldt also rejected the suggestion that the row could undermine his country’s work in the Middle East peace process as the current holders of the EU presidency.
“Political ambitions always risk being used as an excuse to break off contacts or efforts, but I have no reason to believe that (is what is happening) at this point in time and I hope it won’t go down that route,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Swedish prime minister later confirmed the comments.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is expected to visit Israel in two weeks time and Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has said that the incident “will cast a worrying shadow over meetings if it is not resolved”.
Bildt himself was however keen to downplay talk of a diplomatic row when questioned by reporters on Friday.
“We have a very strong state relationship between Israel and our government. We are both open and democratic societies,” Bildt said.
Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, the Swedish ambassador to Israel, had initially expressed outrage at the article, but Stockholm distanced itself from her remarks several days later, drawing a stinging response from the Israelis.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
UK: 1,000 Cameras ‘Solve One Crime’
Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed.
The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.
In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.
David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.”
He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.
“It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.
“The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV.”
Nationwide, the government has spent £500m on CCTV cameras.
But Det Sup Michael Michael McNally, who commissioned the report, conceded more needed to be done to make the most of the investment.
He said: “CCTV, we recognise, is a really important part of investigation and prevention of crime, so how we retrieve that from the individual CCTV pods is really quite important.
“There are some concerns, and that’s why we have a number of projects on-going at the moment.”
Among those projects is a pilot scheme by the Met to improve the way CCTV images are used.
A spokesman for the Met said: “We estimate more than 70% of murder investigations have been solved with the help of CCTV retrievals and most serious crime investigations have a CCTV investigation strategy.”
Officers from 11 boroughs have formed a new unit which collects and labels footage centrally before distributing them across the force and media.
It has led to more than 1,000 identifications out of 5,260 images processed so far.
A Home Office spokeswoman said CCTVs “help communities feel safer”.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Author Sebastian Faulks Risks Muslim Fury by Describing the Koran as the ‘Depressing Rantings of a Schizophrenic’
Best-selling novelist Sebastian Faulks has risked incurring the wrath of Muslims by dismissing the Koran as just ‘the depressive rantings of a schizophrenic’ with ‘no ethical dimension’.
The author of Birdsong and Engleby also claimed that, compared to the Bible, the Islamic holy scripture is ‘barren’.
Faulks, who turned to the Koran while researching his latest novel, said: ‘It’s a depressing book. It really is. It’s just the rantings of a schizophrenic. It’s very one-dimensional, and people talk about the beauty of the Arabic and so on, but the English translation I read was, from a literary point of view, very disappointing.
‘There is also the barrenness of the message,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘I mean, there are some bits about diet, you know, the equivalent of the Old Testament, which is also crazy.
‘But the great thing about the Old Testament is that it does have these incredible stories. Of the 100 greatest stories ever told, 99 are probably in the Old Testament and the other is in Homer.
‘With the Koran there are no stories. And it has no ethical dimension like the New Testament, no new plan for life. It says ‘the Jews and the Christians were along the right tracks, but actually, they were wrong and I’m right, and if you don’t believe me, tough — you’ll burn for ever’. That’s basically the message of the book.’
Faulks read the Koran to help him write A Week in December, which will be published next month.
The novel, which is set in present-day London, has a cast of characters including the wife of Britain’s youngest MP, a female Tube train driver, a hedge fund manager and a Glasgow-born Islamic terrorist recruit.
Ajmal Masroor, an imam and spokesman for the Islamic Society of Britain said Faulk’s statements ran the risk of stirring religious hatred against Muslims.
‘Attacks on Islam are nothing new, but the danger is this will have a ‘drip, drip’ effect.
‘People don’t seem to understand the consequences of saying things like this could be quite severe. History tells us it can encourage hatred.’
In 1989, a fatwa was issued for the author Salman Rushdie, after the publication of his book The Satanic Verses the previous year. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, said the book was ‘blasphemous against Islam, and called for Rushdie to be executed.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Legal Action Over BNP Membership
The UK’s equalities watchdog has begun legal action against the British National Party over concerns about ethnic restrictions on its membership.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said limiting membership to those of an “ethnic origin” described as “indigenous Caucasian” was illegal.
It has issued proceedings against BNP leader Nick Griffin and two officials.
The party called this a “pathetic attempt” by the commission to divert attention from its own problems.
But equality minister Harriet Harman said: “No party should be allowed to have an apartheid constitution in 21st Century Britain. I welcome the action.”
The commission has issued county court proceedings against the BNP after voicing concerns in June.
‘Not willing’
In a statement it said: “The BNP’s membership criteria appear to restrict membership to those within what the BNP regards as particular ‘ethnic groups’ and those whose skin colour is white. This exclusion is contrary to the Race Relations Act.
“The commission believes the BNP’s constitution and membership criteria are discriminatory and, further, that the continued publication of them on the BNP website is unlawful.
“It has therefore issued county court proceedings against party leader Nick Griffin and two other officials.”
John Wadham, director of legal affairs at the commission, said: “The BNP has said that it is not willing to amend its membership criteria which we believe are discriminatory and unlawful.
“The commission has a statutory duty to use our regulatory powers to enforce compliance with the law, so we have today issued county court proceedings against the BNP.
“However, the party still has an opportunity to resolve this quickly by giving the undertaking on its membership criteria that the commission requires.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Eulex Defends Police Accord With Serbia
(ANSAmed) — PRISTINA, AUGUST 18 — EULEX, the EU civilian mission in Kosovo, has defended the validity of its collaboration accord with Serbian police expected to be signed over the coming days. “If a murder occurs in Kosovo and the suspected assassin flees to Serbia, the two parties involved must be able to share information. This is what we want to happen. All of the information will also be provided to Kosovo police,” said EULEX in a statement released today in Pristina. Yesterday the president and government of Kosovo expressed opposition to the accord, saying that it was up to Kosovo’s government and official institutions to finalise accords and regulate relations with other countries. Showing support for the accord today was, instead, Serbian Minister for Internal Affairs Ivica Dacic, who said that the document is important for peace, stability and security not only in Kosovo but also in the rest of Serbia (Belgrade does not recognise Kosovo as an independent country). “Organised crime, smuggling, illegal crossing of borders, and human trafficking are all regional issues which do not stop at the border, and in order to struggle against them with any success it is necessary to share information,” added EULEX, stressing that similar agreements between police forces already exist with Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania. In the statement EULEX also noted that the EU mission in Kosovo has executive power, as declared in the February 2008 mission acceptance letter sent by Kosovo president Fatmir Sejdiu to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Eulex Commander, Deal With Serbia Not in Kosovo’s Name
(ANSAmed) — PRISTINA, AUGUST 19 — The Head Commander of the EU civil mission in Kosovo (EULEX) Yves de Kermabon stressed that the expected collaboration agreement with Serbia on the fight against organised crime will not be signed in any way in the name of Kosovo’s government, but only in the name of the EULEX mission. “EULEX has not signed, and cannot sign any agreement in Kosovo’s name. As a technical mission active to establish the rule of law, EULEX can sign agreements only under the name EULEX and on topics regarding the rule of law, as agreed upon by the EU,” said Kermabon in a statement to the media today in Pristina. The EULEX Head Commander spoke after growing controversy has been mounting on the expected signing of an agreement between the European civil mission and Serbia’s Interior Minister. The authorities in Pristina said that they are against the agreement, stating that only the legitimate government in Kosovo can have relations and sign agreements with other states. In Kermabon’s opinion, there has been a misunderstanding, and the authorities in Pristina incorrectly interpreted the agreement that will be signed in Belgrade. The EULEX head commander asked to meet tomorrow with Kosovo’s President Fatmir Sejdiu and Premier Hashim Thaci. “Organised crime and human trafficking, as well as drug and weapons trafficking can be fought efficiently only if there is regional cooperation and an efficient exchange of data and information,” observed Kermabon, who pointed out that they have already signed similar EULEX agreements with Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Police Detain Family of Abducted Christian Girl
By Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — On August 21, 2009 the family of 14-year-old missing Coptic girl Nagafa Mahrous went to Al-Marg police station to identify their daughter but was detained by the police “on orders from the State Security.”
Nagafa, whose family reported her missing on on 6/14/2009, arrived at the police station dressed in a Burqa and told her parents she has converted to Islam and is now married. She was accompanied by 33-year old plumber Ramadan Ibrahim, whom she said was her husband. She had gone to the police to establish the fact that she was married and filed a complaint against her family demanding an official pledge from them for non-harassment.
Nagafa used the identity of her 19-year-old sister, Awatef, who went missing 15 years ago. Using her sister’s data she had a national identity card issued with the name of Awatef and was therefore able to change her religion and get married. “Of course she has not thought of that alone, she is still a child,” said Nabil Ghobrial, Coptic activist and attorney of the Mahrous family, in an audio interview with Wagih Yacoub of the Middle East Christian Association (MECA).
According to Ghobrial, the Al-Marg Police Captain, Walid Abdel-Aziz, refused to issue a police report at first, under the pretext that the family has to prove that Nagafa is a minor, and then refused to give them the police report number.
Ghobrial accused Nagafa Mahrous and Ramadam Ibrahim of falsification of official documents, Ramadan with abduction and rape of a minor (which Captain Abdel Aziz refused to document in the report) and the Islamic marriage clerk (ma’azoun) with issuing a marriage certificate to a minor.
When the abducted girl’s family came to leave the police station, Captain Walid Abdel-Aziz detained them “on orders from the State Security.”
“The abducted girl’s mother, her 13-year-old brother Hany and her grandfather were detained, which is a flagrant violation of the Mahrous family’s civil rights,” Ghobrial said. All concerned would be presented to the Public Prosecution on the following day.
All parties were presented to the prosecution on 22nd August. Commenting on the session, Attorney Ghobrial said that all those held in custody were released without any charges, including the 14-year-old Nagafa and her so-called Muslim husband Ramadan Ibrahim. “Although the Prosecutor admitted that the official document were falsified no charges were brought against any one.” he told Yacoub of MECA. “It was also found out that the Islamic marriage clerk knew that the minor girl was still Christian, he documented that she was Muslim with the name of Mariam.” He also added that the police pressured the family to pledge not to harass their 14-year-old daughter.
“I am informing the President of the Republic and the Interior Minister that a family comes to the police station reporting the abduction of their minor daughter and they get detained unlawfully ‘on orders from the State Security,’“ said Ghorbrial. “Besides, how can a child be detained? Where are the laws protecting the rights of the child?”
Ghorbrial criticized Al-Azhar for converting a 14-year-old girl in the absence of the Advice and Guidance Committee, as specified by the Registry Office. A law regulating the Advice and Guidance committees was passed in 1863 by Isma’il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, according to which a Copt only converts to Islam after attending sittings with these committees, which were attended by a priest, to ensure a sincere desire on his part to convert without being subjected to any pressure.
With the advent of the 1952 Revolution, this law was abolished, to be replaced by various laws in the same vain, until 1997 when The Interior Ministry agreed with Alazhar that the Fatwa Council would send the documents of those wishing to convert to Islam to the State Security. Matters went on as usual, giving the right to the concerned families to be present, which in many cases led to the would-be converts revising their decision and remaining Christian. In 2004 the Ministry of Interior unilaterally stopped the use of the Advice and Guidance Committees without acquiring a ministerial decree canceling the law regulating the procedures for conversion into Islam.
It is widely believed that the Interior Ministry cancelled the Advice and Guidance Committees as a result of the exposure of its complicity in forced Islamization of Coptic minor girls (AINA 7-18-2009, 7-30-2009, 8-11-2009).
Ghobrial said “There is nothing in the law which gives powers to the Fatwa Council.”
According to the renowned Coptic political analyst Magdy Khalil, not one case of minor abduction and rape was ever presented by the Ministry of the Interior to the judiciary, making it an accomplice in these terrible crimes.
“In many cases of forced Islamization Coptic minor girls, the State Security conspires to facilitate the criminal act, misleads the bereaved families of the victims and turns them from victim to accused,” he said.
Ghobrial believes there is a strong Islamic cell operating in the Al-Marg district of Cairo north, which is working on the Islamization of Christian minors and falsifying their papers.
“My collegues and I have been working for quite some time on the Coptic issue and there are many cases of girls being abducted and who go missing in Al Marg,” he said. “We found out that the State Security participates in the abduction of Coptic minor girls. They are then kept away until they reach the age of 18 years, after which the police closes the case file relevant to that girl and she becomes a de facto Muslim.”
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Italy-Tunisia: Berlusconi Visits Friend Ben Ali’ in Tunis
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 18 — A meeting between old friends, not a state visit. Silvio Berlusconi will today fly to Tunis to spend a few hours with the president of the Tunisian Republic, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. It is not the first time that Berlusconi has interrupted his holidays to visit Ben Alì: in fact it’s almost become a habit. In 2007 when he was in opposition, he visited Tunis to spend the day with Ben Alì in August, leaving his Sardinian home, Villa La Certosa, for several hours. Berlusconi and Ben Alì have been friends for some time. In the five-year period when the former was prime minister from 2001 to 2006, there were four meetings between the two men: May 14, 2001 in Tunis to talk about cooperation and the fight against terrorism; December 6, 2003 again in Tunis on the occasion of the summit between the heads of state and government of European and Maghreb countries. The third meeting on November 22, 2005 in Tunis was a bilateral meeting on economic issues. On May 11, 2004, Berlusconi hosted the Tunisian leader in Rome, in the institutional residency of Villa Pamphili, to talk about Iraq and the process of Maghrebi integration. Ben Alì was a great friend of Bettino Craxi, even before the former socialist leader took up residency in Hammamet. This time however the visit is “private” as the Italian cabinet office has underlined. The proof is in the fact that the diplomatic office has not been activated. It is possible that Tarak Ben Hammar, an internationally well-known financier and friend of both men, will take part as happened in 2007. According to the few rumours circulating, the meeting is set to take place at Ben Ali”s summer residence. Berlusconi is expected to return to Italy this evening.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Lockerbie: Gheddafi Defiant, Berlusconi in Tripoli 30th
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 24 — The scheduled visit by Italy’s prime minister to Libya on August 30 is “most opportune” and will go ahead. Any rumours of second thoughts on the part of Silvio Berlusconi were thoroughly quashed yesterday by Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, and his visit to Tripoli, scheduled for the end of this month to celebrate the first anniversary of the signing of the Cooperation and Friendship Treaty alongside Muammar Gaddafi. There is no change of plan, then, despite the international controversy following the hero’s reception laid on by the Libyan leader for the return to Tripoli of Abdelbaset al Megrahi, the Libyan terrorist found guilty of the Lockerbie massacre and then released by the Scots authorities on humanitarian grounds. The Colonel himself showed no signs of contrition yesterday. Gaddafi, indeed, made it known through press agency Jana, that the West still has “a policy of double measures resulting from its arrogance and disdain it has for other nations and their public opinion”. It is a policy “that generates the terrorism which they now suffer (referring to those countries protesting over al Megrahi’s reception). Terrorism is a phenomenon with a double cause and it finds its justification in these policies”. These stone-hard words were justified by Gaddafi by recollections of the case of the Bulgarian nurses who were found guilty in Libya of having inoculated 400 babies with the HIV virus before being handed over to Bulgaria and welcomed in their home country as well as at the European Parliament with “a standing ovation, as if they were heros”. But Italo-Libyan relations are now so close and full that any change of plan would be difficult. An indirect confirmation of this came directly from the lips of the head of Italy’s Foreign Ministry, who explained that there are “at least three reasons” for going to Tripoli on August 30: “First of all because Gaddafi is the Chair of the African Union; in the second place, we have shown both Libya and the rest of the world that we have made a break with our colonial past. No other country has done so and we deserve praise for this. In the third place because we now have a consolidated relationship with Libya which goes beyond economic ties, but it is a rapport of Mediterranean collaboration” the Foreign Minister concluded. From the Prime Minister’s office comes the news that this visit will last only a few hours, coming in the middle of Ramadan, and that the Italian premier should share a supper with Gaddafi. He will also lay the foundation stone for the majestic coastal motorway the Libyan leader is so keen on and which has become the symbol of mending the scar of Italian colonialism in the then Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Ramadan: Korean LG Launches New ‘Islamic Phone’ In Tunisia
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, AUGUST 21 — It will certainly have a solid religious base, but also with its release on the market for Ramadan, the Islamic Phone is also a commercial move. The Islamic Phone, an idea born in Tunisia, is being manufactured by Korean electronics group LG. The local press reports that the product will be officially presented in Tunisia. LG GD335 is the name of the new GSM. It is equipped with a series of applications intended to “encourage daily religious practices”. The mobile phone offers the Koran, with music and text images and translations into various languages as well as ‘ahadith’ (oral tradition relating to the words and deeds of the Prophet), announcements for prayer, and calls to prayer (adhân). With the aid of an electronic compass it can also point worshipers in the direction of Mecca (Qibla) and more. The idea of a phone equipped with ‘Islam-related’ functions, developed in just a few months, obtained the approval of the Superior Islamic Council, which verified the various texts and provided religious authorisation and certifications, for example regarding the verses of the Koran. LG, after presenting the phone in Tunisia, will market the phone in other countries. The new phone, which will cost 270 dinars in Tunisia (about 140 euros) has all the normal functions of a GSM. Owners of another LG phone model can download the new Islamic applications. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Moral Decline? Return of Polygamy Proposed
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, AUGUST 18 — “An increase in the number of unmarried women and in a state of moral degeneration and excessive freedom favouring extra-marital relations,” makes it necessary to “authorise polygamy”, which is “permitted by Islam” and on which the prophet Mohammed “provided us a good example”. An unexpected proposal was launched by Dalanda Sahbi, who attended a conference in Tunis for Women’s Day organised by the pro-government Social Liberal Party. The focus of the encounter was progress achieved by Tunisian women after the adoption of laws that since 1957 have banned polygamy, which became a crime punishable with up to 6 years in prison. It should be stated that, reports the Magharebia.com website, “Sabhi’s idea was not well-accepted by those at the conference,” but some were in support of it. One of the supporters was Samira Laouati, a married woman according to whom the regulations adopted by former President Habib Bourguiba go against the will of Tunisian women. And she believes that the current law encourages moral decline and divorce. In Tunisia last year a record number of 9,127 divorces were recorded compared to 16,000 marriages. Among the main causes of divorce is domestic violence, followed by cultural and social differences. Among the least frequent causes are sterility, handicaps, loss of virginity before marriage, deceit, lack of trust, and jealousy. Abolishing the law that prohibits polygamy, in Laouati’s opinion, would contribute to “fighting against growing trends of arrogant women with too much freedom, who don’t respect marriage or any other rules”. Polygamy would put them “on the right path”. Mokhtar Tlili, a journalist present at the event, made an interesting observation, pointing out that in the context of a more emphasised religious sentiment in Tunisia, the issue of polygamy seems like it could make a comeback. “Women, as usual,” he said, “are transformed into a tool of conflict, which apparently has a religious aspect, but in reality is political.” Finally a question was posed by a single women, Ahlam Bouchaouel: “has polygamy in the countries of the Gulf region put an end to moral corruption or people being single?”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Battered Men Given Shelter in Tunis
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, AUGUST 18 — Domestic violence is not only directed against wives, but many times also husbands suffer from it, as born witness to by the fact that in Kran (Tunis) there is a shelter called “Le Refuge”, with ten men who have been victims of violence. The shelter provides not only a roof to sleep under and food, but also psychological assistance. Also being set up is the “Association Tunisienne des Hommes Battus”. According to its promoters, it will bring solidarity and help to male victims of marital violence. Today’s Le Quotidien reports on the issue, providing recent data which say that 10% of men fall victim to physical violence and that 30% suffer severe verbal aggression. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Barry Rubin: a Short Guide to Israel-Palestinian Negotiating Positions
This is a quick, brief guide to the negotiating positions of Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Israeli Negotiating Position
Two-State Solution: Israel accepts a two-state solution—including an independent Palestinian state—only under conditions it believes would lead to real and lasting peace.
It is a myth that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only recently accepted this goal or did so only under U.S. pressure. In fact, he agreed to this as an outcome of negotiations in 1996.
Israel has put forward five conditions…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza ‘Islamization’ Continues as Schoolgirls Told to Cover Up
(IsraelNN.com) Gaza took another step towards strict Islamic law this week with the imposition of new dress codes on schoolgirls. Girls and young women returning to school on Sunday were told that they must wear jilbab, traditional Islamic sleeved robes, and cover their hair, or they would not be allowed to return to class.
Posters hung in Gaza City schools announced that all girls would be required to wear navy blue jilbab, a white headscarf, and white or black shoes. Dozens of students reported being sent home after appearing in school in jeans.
In addition, public high school classes have been separated, with boys and girls learning in different buildings.
According to some Gaza residents, the new rules are being enforced on members the region’s small Christian minority as well, despite the fact that Christians are generally considered exempt from following Islamic law. However, the laws have not been enforced within private Christian schools.
Hamas officials denied Monday that they were connected to the new school dress codes. The decision to enforce strict standards of dress was made at the local level, by individual principals, Hamas claimed.
Most girls and their families were in favor of the new dress codes, they added.
Reports of a new school dress code caused anger in Judea and Samaria, where Palestinian Authority loyalists accused Hamas of violating the PA charter, which forbids the enforcement of a public dress code.
Earlier this month, a Gaza judge ordered that all female lawyers cover their hair in court. The decision caused a wave of protest from lawyers and human rights groups in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Hamas distanced itself from that decision as well, saying the matter was a private issue for the courts to deal with.
Several weeks ago, Hamas was accused of enforcing an informal dress code on women living in Gaza, and of allowing local militias to enforce strict standards of modest dress and behavior.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Haaretz: Shin Bet Protects PNA Leaders
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, 20 AUG — The Palestinian National Authority President Abu Mazen (Mahmud Abbas) and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are protected by guards from Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic secret service, when they have to cross the West Bank’s area “C” where security is entirely an Israeli responsibility, the dovish newspaper Haaretz reports today. The security measures were agreed with the PNA so as to prevent assassination attempts against the two leaders by Palestinian or Israeli extremists, the newspaper added.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Interview With Israeli Intelligence Chief Dan Meridor: ‘We All See the Clock Ticking’
In an interview with SPIEGEL, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor, 62, speaks about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to Berlin, the chances for a new peace process in the Middle East and why the world can’t let Iran get its hands on nuclear weapons.
[…]
SPIEGEL: John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, recently claimed that Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear sites by the end of the year. Although the well-informed Israeli newspaper Haaretz did not give an exact timetable for such an attack, it did report that Netanyahu has made the decision to bomb Iran. Is this true?
Meridor: I don’t think the prime minister has made up his mind in the way it has been described. But I don’t want to get into details …
SPIEGEL: …which is a pity. And that’s because you — as the minister of intelligence and atomic energy and a member of Netanyahu’s inner circle — should know.
Meridor: Let me say this much: I think Iran shouldn’t be allowed to become a nuclear power. This is not only an issue for Israel but for the whole world. It would be a victory for the extremists over the moderates in the Arab world. This worries the moderate Arab countries more than anything else. It would change the equilibrium in the Middle East; it would mean the end of the (Nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty; it would be a serious threat for us. One shouldn’t forget that Iranian President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad has repeatedly spoken about the illegitimacy of Israel and its destruction. But we should concentrate now on harsher sanctions against Teheran, with America leading the way. And we are counting on the Europeans to follow with serious actions. This includes Germany, which is one of Iran’s very important trading partners.
SPIEGEL: But what if the sanctions fail to divert Iran from its present course? Will Israel attack alone? Or only with the consent of the US?
Meridor: I don’t want to go into this. But we all see the clock ticking — and Netanyahu knows what he’s doing.
SPIEGEL: At the moment, he is much more popular in Israel than he is abroad. Are you worried that Netanyahu might get a somewhat cool reception in Berlin?
Meridor: No. Germany is one of Israel’s best friends. And, all in all, I am quite optimistic that things in the Middle East will develop in a positive way. There’s something in the air.
SPIEGEL: Really? Could Marwan Barghouti, the intifada leader who is currently serving five life sentences for murder in an Israeli jail, be released and become a respected Palestinian leader and partner for peace? Many think that he has become a moderate, and the Fatah Party’s congress held in early August voted him into its Central Committee with the third-best results of any candidate.
Meridor: I’ve heard similar ideas.
SPIEGEL: Many people think that both the Palestinians and the Israelis have made peace with the status quo and are not prepared for any more painful compromises. Are they right?
Meridor: For us, the status quo is a bad option. We need to change it — and take risks. But we must take into account the lessons we’ve learned from the past.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Israel: ‘Swedish Officials May be Unwelcome’
Israeli officials were active on all fronts Sunday in denouncing an article in a Swedish newspaper that accused IDF soldiers of harvesting the organs of Palestinians, and the Swedish government’s reluctance to condemn the claims.
Ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting expressed outrage at the article and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz went so far as to say that those who refuse to condemn such libel “may not be welcome in the state of Israel.”
While Steinitz did not specify his meaning, his comments were possibly a reference to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who is set to visit Israel in early September but has rejected calls to condemn the story.
“We have a crisis until the Swedish government responds differently,” Steinitz said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “We demand and expect a formal condemnation by the Swedish government, and not an apology for the claims.” He was responding to Sweden’s indignation at what it perceives as a request to limit freedom of speech.
Netanyahu noted that during the term of Ehud Olmert as prime minister, an Israeli TV show offended Christians, “and Olmert condemned this, without harming freedom of speech.”
The prime minister said that Israel has always known how to deal with blood libels and “we expect the Swedish government to deal with it as well.”
Joining in the chorus, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that he would act to prevent reporters for the paper from receiving work permits in Israel, and Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog said that Israel should take legal steps against the paper in order to combat the claims.
Later in the day Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the government’s position would not have been as sharp had Sweden not reprimanded its own envoy for condemning the inflammatory article. The foreign minister said there was a degree of hypocrisy in the Swedish position — claiming they don’t interfere in freedom of the press — when in 2006 the Swedish foreign minister sent a letter to a Yemenite leader apologizing for offensive caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
In related news, two visiting journalists for the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet which ran the story arrived at the Government Press Office (GPO) in Jerusalem Sunday to request press accreditation, Israel Radio reported. GPO Director Danny Seaman told the radio station that he had instructed his employees to take as much time as is needed and allowed by regulations — up to three months — to review the request.
Seaman said that the two journalists, a reporter and a cameraman, had responded angrily and even “rudely” to the news that the review process may take time. Seaman asked his employees to explain to the two that the process may take some time due to checks that must be made, including — he said jokingly — blood tests to check the reporters’ blood types and eligibility for organ transplant.
On a more serious note, Seaman said that Aftonbladet’s conduct would be taken into account in considering the new requests. He added that reporter Donald Bostrom, who wrote the offending article, had entered the West Bank under false pretense years ago, claiming to be writing for the paper but actually using the material for a book.
Ambassador to Sweden Benny Dagan lashed out at a Swedish reporter Sunday who asked him whether Israel should investigate the claims.
“You know what, I have a suggestion for you,” Dagan retorted. “Why won’t you investigate why the Mossad and the Jews were behind the bombing of the twin towers? Why won’t we investigate why Jews are spreading AIDS in the Arab countries? Why won’t we investigate why Jews killed [Christian children to bake Matzot on Pessah]?”
Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported Sunday that Bostrom’s 2001 book Inshallah, which deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reportedly included the allegations of organ harvesting, was financed — among other bodies — by the Swedish Foreign Ministry. There has been no response to the claim so far.
The Jewish community in Sweden, meanwhile, was critical of Israel’s role in the media storm. Community leader Lena Posner-Korosi told Army Radio on Sunday that the Israeli reaction and media outrage had provided the claims with much more exposure than they would have had otherwise, and blown the story out of proportion.
The article in question implied links between Palestinian claims that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians and harvested their organs, and the recent arrest in New Jersey of an American Jew suspected of illicit organ trafficking.
Israel has demanded that the Swedish government distance itself from the claims, which officials have called a new blood libel against the Jews. But both the Swedish prime minister and the foreign minister have refused to do so, saying that freedom of the press must be respected at all costs.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
New Guard Protects Galilee Farms From Pilferers
Tired of police ineptitude and concerned about the receding Jewish character of the region, a group of farmers and volunteers from the Galilee have formed an organization called the New Guard (Hashomer Hahadash).
The group held its first public conference last Thursday, under the slogan, “Who will save my home?” and called for a reevaluation of Israel’s national priorities.
Modeled after the original guardsmen, led by Alexander Zaid, who protected the Jewish communities of the region in pre-state Israel at the beginning of the 20th century, the group’s volunteers are primarily dedicated to upholding Jewish farming and pasture rights in response to nightly violations by local Beduin herdsmen.
Roughly 200 people attended the event that took place at Kiryat Amal, next to the statue of Alexander Zaid. Surrounded by bales of hay and standing on a farm wagon, speeches were given by Kadima MK Israel Hasson, retired general Ram Shmueli and Nazareth Illit Mayor Shimon Gabso.
Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon was supposed to attend, but canceled at the last minute after being summoned for a dressing down by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu following statements he had made earlier in the week…
| — Hat tip: A Greek Friend | [Return to headlines] |
Palestinian Authority Frees 200 Hamas Militants for Ramadan
Gesture of distension from the government of Abu Mazen, despite ongoing confrontation between Al-Fatah and the rival Islamist group. Meanwhile, Egypt continues mediation work towards a new round of talks between the two Palestinian sides, scheduled for September.
Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies) — At the beginning of Ramadan, the Palestinian Authority has decided to release 200 Hamas militants held in West Bank prisons, in a sign of rapprochement towards the Islamist formation. The release of prisoners in the Muslim month of fasting is a habitual gesture, but the constant exchange accusations between Fatah and Hamas had led observers to believe that the tradition would not be observed this year.
The two formations are in open conflict since 2007 when Hamas attacked Fatah winning the Gaza Strip by force. Small and large scale controversies have further disrupted the already fragile relations between the two movements. The most recent was during the Al-Fatah Congress, in early August, when Hamas banned 400 delegates from leaving the Gaza Strip to take part in the meeting.
Despite the obstruction of the Islamic Resistance Movement, the government headed by Abu Mazen, one of the historic leaders of Fatah, has decided to release 200 militants from the rival party. “So far we have already released 90 inmates — said a government official — and we hope to complete the release [of the rest] within the next two days.”
The PA’s gesture of detente gives a little breathing space to Egypt’s mediation work . Cairo has long sought to reach an agreement between the two movements. Al-Fatah and Hamas were to meet August 25 in Cairo for a new round of dialogue, however, it was postponed by a month because of irreconcilable differences between the two factions. Egyptian mediators will use the month of Ramadan, from 21 August to 19 September, to try to resolve outstanding quarrels and bring the leaders of two groups negotiating table.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Settlements: Netanyahu Denies Construction Freeze
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, AUGUST 18 — The office of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu today denied media reports regarding a decision taken to freeze all Jewish construction projects in West Bank settlements. “No decision has been taken by the premier, or the ministries of defence and construction regarding the issue of freezing building projects in West Bank settlements,” the premier’s office confirmed. The press release was a response to news reported in the local press according to which Israel had quietly ceased to approve new construction projects in the settlements, while officially continuing its opposition to the United States’ demand for a complete stop to all new Israeli construction projects in the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem, including those already underway. Construction Minister Ariel Atias, interviewed on state radio, did however say that “since the government came into office, five months ago, no calls for tender for new buildings have been issued in Judea or Samaria (West Bank).” “The fact that these constructions are on hold,” he said, “Is, I think, an attempt by us to arrive at an agreement with the US administration and at a peace deal.” The Israeli pacifist movement, Peace Now, which is against the settlements, has confirmed that no new calls for tender have been issued by the authorities in the West Bank, but claim that the building of over a thousand apartments, which was already underway, is continuing however. Moreover, according to Peace Now, government calls for tender comprise just 40% of Israeli construction in the West Bank. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Stockholm’s Rabbi: Large Muslim Population Intimidates Local Jews
The strong Muslim presence in Stockholm makes the Jewish community there apprehensive about taking a public stand against the recent article in the Aftonbladet tabloid reporting Palestinian claims that IDF soldiers stole body organs from Palestinians, Rabbi Isak Nachman, the spiritual leader of two Orthodox synagogues in the Swedish capital, said on Sunday.
“We want to combat this type of thing, but some Jews here are afraid — there are between 400,000 and 500,000 Muslims out of a population of about nine million,” said Nachman, a member of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe.
“There is definitely anxiety and tension, especially at times when Israel is involved in a military operation, like Cast Lead,” he said.
Nachman added, however, that there was not a threatening feeling on the streets of Stockholm as a result of the article in Aftonbladet. “I walk around with a kippa and the Chabad rabbi here wears his hat. Muslims don’t live in the large Jewish neighborhoods.”
Most anti-Semitic statements were being made by local bloggers, he said. The latest subject being discussed by these bloggers was the alleged Jewish connection of Sweden’s ambassador to Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier.
Bonnier, who called the Aftonbladet article “shocking and appalling,” was sharply criticized by Sweden’s Green Movement and by the country’s main opposition party. The Swedish government also distanced itself from her statement.
Now, said Nachman, Bonnier’s marriage to a man who apparently has Jewish roots is being singled out for censure.
“This is a very troubling development,” he said.
Stockholm’s rabbi said that he was particularly disappointed with Sweden’s intelligentsia. “There are plenty of educated people who know about the history of blood libels and have remained quiet,” he said, adding that this non-action was in line with Sweden’s neutral stance during World War II.
Nachman echoed criticism voiced last week by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Nevertheless, Nachman said that the Jewish community still had not decided whether it would demonstrate against the article and against the Sweden government’s unwillingness to condemn the accusations voiced in it.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Partner Paid Salary to Al-Qaida Ally
American funds supported leader of group accused of killing Christians
JERUSALEM — The American-funded Palestinian Authority provided financial support and, in at least one case, an official salary to al-Qaida allies in the Gaza Strip, according to information obtained by WND.
U.S. policy considers the PA to be moderate. America arms, trains and funds PA militias and provides hundreds of millions of dollars per year in financial support to the Palestinian group. President Obama, furthermore, backs the creation of a PA-led Palestinian state.
But WND has learned that Abdel-Latif Moussa, leader of a Palestinian Islamist splinter group allied with al-Qaida, has been on the official PA payroll for at least the last year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UN: US Gives $1.2 Million to Palestinian Refugees
The UN relief agency said that the United States has allocated $1.2 million in financial aid to Palestinian refugees coming from Iraq to Syria.
According to the UN Relief and Work Agency — or UNRWA — $957,000 will be paid in cash to refugees and the rest would go for rebuilding a social development center in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.
UNRWA said in a statement Monday that the center caters to 135,700 Palestinian refugees.
Palestinians in Iraq became a target for persecution after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in 2003. Hundreds were forced to flee to Syria.
Syria is home to some 1.2 million Iraqi refugees and says their influx has strained its education, health and housing systems. The government has called for international assistance.
| — Hat tip: A Greek Friend | [Return to headlines] |
Drop in Pilgrim Numbers to Challenge Saudi Tourism
(ANSAmed) — RIYADH, AUGUST 11 — The number of pilgrims to Mecca is expected to drop this year because of swine flu fears, leaving Saudi airlines and hotels bracing for a sharp fall in revenues, The National online reports. The kingdom’s airlines are expecting a 25 per cent decrease in travel for Umrah, a pilgrimage that can be taken at any time of the year, and the Haj. Health officials from the UAE and other Arab countries have agreed to ban vulnerable groups from undertaking the Haj and Umrah because of the H1N1 virus. Saudi Arabia’s health ministry has advised people to postpone their pilgrimages if they suffer from health problems, while Iran and Tunisia have banned pilgrims from travelling to Mecca for Umrah. And Haj visas are being issued to pilgrims only between the ages of 12 and 65. “Timing could not be worse,” said Chiheb Ben Mahmoud, a senior vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “It’s a very interesting case of tourism crisis management for destination marketing authorities. “There will be losses for hotels as well as other travel services and retail. Currently, international Umrah travel is down.” Travel from several countries to Saudi Arabia is expected to slow dramatically. Airlines are already expected to lose US$9 billion (Dh33.05bn) worldwide from the global economic downturn, and some feel swine flu could even further depress demand. “Swine flu is a bigger threat than the economy,” said Adel Ali, the chief executive of the Sharjah-based budget airline Air Arabia in an interview on Sunday. “A lot of people are not travelling because of [it].” Others say they have not felt any effects yet. Walter Prenzler, the chief executive of nas air, a budget airline in Riyadh that does not cater for Umrah, said the carrier had been insulated from the global epidemic and was not seeing any fall in demand. “We are alerted, of course, and are in close contact with the health ministry,” Prenzler said. The number of people infected with the H1N1 virus in the Middle East reached 1,111 as of last month, according to the World Health Organisation. Caroline Bremner, the global travel and tourism manager at Euromonitor International, said: “The increasing number of infected people in the Middle East with the virus A [H1N1] is undeniably going to influence the inflow of pilgrimages visiting Saudi Arabia during the holy month of Ramadan.” Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector is heavily dependent on pilgrims, with Haj and Umrah pilgrims making up more than 50 per cent of the total visitors to the kingdom. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Drugs: Saudi Arabia, Seizures and 113 Arrests
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 13 — Over the past two months Saudi police have seized over three tonnes of hashish and three million tabs of methamphetamine. Police also seized 10.6 kg of pure heroin. According to Interior Ministry sources quoted by Arab media, in the anti-drug operations 113 were arrested, including 57 Saudis. A large part of the hashish was found on boats involved in smuggling in the Gulf or overland across the border with Yemen. The methamphetamine, called captagon in the region and used widely especially among students and manual workers, was hidden in vehicles or imported products. The death penalty is foreseen in Saudi Arabia for the crimes of drug selling and trafficking. The government, which last year stepped up its anti-drug activities, over the past few days announced that it will bring in measures to help drug addicts and their families. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar: Bahrain Eyed Stake in Virgin Galactic
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, AUGUST 13 — Both the Qatari and Bahraini governments were interested in buying a stake in Richard Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic, industry sources have revealede. A Saudi Arabian party and another private group from Abu Dhabi were also in talks with Branson, Arabian Business has learnt. “There was a very competitive process going, where, at one point, there were four different groups bidding to be his [Branson’s] partner,” said one well-placed industry source. Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic said: “We had discussions with lots of people, but we are not commenting on who we had discussions with.” Last month Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments bought a 32 percent stake in Virgin Galactic for $280m, valuing the company at $900m. Aabar also said it would provide an additional $100m for the development of a satellite launching vehicle. But news that Qatar and Bahrain threw their hat into the ring for a stake in the space travel group shows how keen the Gulf region is to invest in space technology. In addition to its one third equity stake, the deal gives Aabar exclusive regional rights to operate Virgin Galactic space flights. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Ramadan During Hard Times, Prices Rises Feared
(by Laura De Santi) (ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, AUGUST 18 — The whole of the Moslem world is aquiver with preparations for the holy month of Ramadan, due to start between August 21 and 22, and which this year will be under the sign of the global economic downturn, with many households being forced to cut back on spending during festivities, even if none of them are planning to go without altogether. And the threatening spread of the swine flu virus A/H1N1 has limited the Omra, or small pilgrimage traditionally carried out during the closing days of Ramadan, with bans already in place in Iran, Iraq and Tunisia. From Qatar to Morocco, across the Middle East, Algeria and Tunisia, governments are struggling to ensure a month of festivities for one and all despite shrinking levels of purchasing power due to an economic slump that has spared nobody. So charitable campaigns have been launched by the Red Crescent to help stricken consumers with imports of meat and vegetables, attempting to apply the brakes to the usual hikes in the prices of foodstuffs which often double over this festive period. For although Ramadan is a period during which Moslems fast from dawn to sunset, night time is a time for partying and making up for the privations endured during a hot and tiring day and perhaps indulging in one or two culinary delights not normally available during the rest of the year. “Do not raid the shops. There aren’t going to be any shortages. All types of food, vegetables and meat are available in plentiful supply”, promises Algeria’s ministry of agriculture and similar appeals have been launched — in vain — across the area. But the race to get stocks in has already begun, with consumers keen to beat the price rises. “Over the past two weeks prices of everything have already risen”, says Amina Khalti as she quite literally battles to buy potatoes at a discount in Algiers’ Bab El Oued market. “I’ve already stocked up on everything I can, but there’s nothing I can do about finding meat, fruit or vegetables”, the girl adds. She has two children and earns 15 thousand dinars a month (around 150 euros). “I’ll find a way to manage and I’m sure theré be a little less meat than usual in the chorba (a typical soup of the Maghreb area, ed.)!”. Despite announcements of the importation to Algeria of an extra 40 thousand tonnes of frozen red meat over the past month, with the minimum professional wage of 12 thousand dinars (120 euros) and the price of beef and lamb having risen from 600 to 900 dinars per kilo (9 euros). There have been similar rises in the price of chicken, from 250 to 350 dinars, as with vegetables, sugar and cereals. And while in Algiers they fall back on their ability to make do, in Jordan a consumers’ association, the CPS, has launched a campaign to boycott purchases of meat, which is now at a price of 15 euros per kilo, trying to put pressure on cutting prices, while in Qatar the authorities have issued a list of controlled prices for certain foodstuffs. But as tradition requires during the sacred month of fasting — one of the five pillars of Islam alongside the profession of the faith, prayer, Zakat (giving alms) and the pilgrimage to Mecca — all of these countries will see “acts of solidarity”. Around 600 Rahma restaurants (Rahma is the Arab word for solidarity) will be giving out free meals across Algeria while around two million ‘baskets’ will be given to poor families (last year’s total was 1.5 million). These contain semolina, oil, flour and sugar to the value of 5 thousand dinars (50 euros). The starting date for Ramadan is a matter of controversy this year too, as it is tied to the appearance of the new moon, coinciding with the first day of the ninth month of the Moslem calendar, which is based on the phases of the moon. It was on this day that the Archangel Gabriel, during the “night of destiny”, revealed the opening verses of the Koran to the Prophet Mohammed. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Ramadan: Kuwait Sets Up Tent Safety Checks After Incident
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 18 — The headquarters of Kuwaiti fire fighters has issued a circular to all of its stations throughout the country ordering that Ramadan tents be checked for compliance with safety regulations. The intensification of inspections, according to Arabian Business, is an effect of a case of arson in a wedding reception tent in which 43 died. Fire fighters say that the tent caught fire because it had not been made of material in line with safety regulations, and that there had only been one emergency exit. Therefore, in every tent it will be “absolutely necessary” to check the safety of electrical equipment, and fire extinguishers and emergency exits will be compulsory, as stated by Brigade General Yousif Al Ansari, vice director of Human Resources Development. Inspections and certifications on the safety of tents for the Islamic holy month will also be seen in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The city council’s planning department has brought in new rules as concerns gathering places, which can only be set up on the approval of the city council. The tents will have to be at least 4 metres from each other and air conditioners have to be 1.5 metres from the tents, each with its own automatic safety circuit breaker. Light bulbs will have to be at least 40 centimetres from the canvas and all objects have to be sprayed with a fireproof liquid. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Models Desert Show for Fear of Families
(ANSAmed) — ROME, 20 AUG. — A group of 15 Arab women who agreed to take part in a rare fashion show presenting new models of abaya, the long black robe traditionally worn in the Arab world, pulled out of participating just hours before they were due to parade their bodies on the catwalk. The drama happened in the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah where the models dropped out over anxiety at the reaction of their families, Arabian Business magazine reported. The organiser, Amal Anqawi, explained that cameras would have been forbidden, that the shows would be for women only and that the norms and social traditions of the Saudi reign would be respected. The incident, Arabian Business writes, demonstrates the “abyss” between reformers and conservatives in Saudi society. The first such fashion show in the Kingdom was held at Jeddah in April at the end of a competition between stylists. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorism: Saudi Arabia, 44 Al Qaida ‘Masterminds’ Arrested
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, AUGUST 20 — Saudi security forces have arrested 44 alleged Al Qaida “masterminds” including university graduates, telecommunication technicians and Doctors of Philosophy as part of a year long crackdown on the terrorist organisation, the panArab newspaper Asharq al Awsat reported. All but one of the arrested people were citizens of the Saudi kingdom except for one, the newspaper said, adding that the presumed terrorists “made up a connecting ring between Al Qaida leaders abroad and attackers, suicide or otherwise, operating on the ground.” Six serious terrorist attacks by different Islamic groups authorities linked to Osama bin Laden’s group have rocked the traditional American ally of Saudi Arabia since 2003. The sweep codenamed “operation uproot the roots” brought to light profiles of the alleged Al Qaida masterminds with many of them holding diplomas of university study including Ph. Ds, while others are computer and telecommunication technicians as well as having been trained in using different types of firearms as well as explosives.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen: Govt: 100 Shia Rebels Killed in Northern Conflict
(ANSAmed) — SANAA, AUGUST 24 — Yemeni governmental forces announced yesterday the killing of 100 Shia rebels, including two leaders, in the fighting underway in the northern part of the country. “We have found the bodies of 100 rebels along the roads of Haraf Sufyian,” said the statement, in which it was specified that the bodies “seem to belong to militants who were trying to flee Sufyan City, theatre of harsh battles over the past few hours.” The government offensive resumed Friday after the rebels rejected the latest proposal for a ceasefire made by President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The army has provided planes, tanks and artillery to “deal with the sedition in a decisive manner”. The Sanaa government has put the blame on Iran, which is thought to be financing the rebels and supplying them with weapons produced in Iran. The militants instead accuse Saudi Arabia of supporting the government offensive. Since the resumption of fighting a few months ago, over 100,000 people — especially children — have fled from the war zones, as UNICEF announced a few days ago. The Zaidi insurrection is led by Abdul Malik Al Houti, who took the command after his brother Hussein (head of the movement) was killed by the army in September 2004. The group of “young believers” does not recognise the legitimacy of the government under Saleh, who took power from a Zaidi government through a military coup in 1978. The Zaidi (a branch of the Shia religion) are a minority in Yemen, a country with a Sunni majority, though in the Saada zone it is the majority. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Yemeni Troops ‘Kill 100 Rebels’
Yemeni troops carrying out an offensive against Shia rebels in the north of the country claim to have killed more than 100 fighters, including two leaders.
The operation, involving air strikes, artillery and tanks, began two weeks ago, aimed at crushing the rebels and recapturing the town of Harf Sufyan.
The rebels deny their leaders, Mohsen Saleh Gawd and Salah Jorman, have been killed and say civilians have died.
There has been no independent confirmation of the numbers killed.
A government statement said: “The bodies of more than 100 rebels have been recovered from the roadside outside the town of Harf Sufyan.
“It seems that the bodies were those of rebels trying to flee the town during a mopping-up operation over the past two days.”
The statement added that security forces had succeeded in “totally purging the town of rebel elements in the past two days, forcing the rebels to surrender or flee”.
The rebels, from the Zaidi Shia sect, want the restoration of Shia rule in the north of Yemen, which is mainly Sunni.
Yemen’s president has accused the rebels of trying to overthrow the government.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Dam Tragedy Shows Russia Lags Behind
ULAN UDE, Russia (AFP) — The tragedy at a Russian power plant shows Russia lags far behind in technology, its president said Monday, in a rare high-level acknowledgement of the country’s post-Soviet weaknesses.
President Dmitry Medvedev said the deadly catastrophe last week at Russia’s biggest hydroelectric power plant showed that ageing infrastructure which was once the pride of the Soviet Union was in urgent need of modernization.
“It is clear that a technological catastrophe of unprecedented scale and consequences has taken place,” a stern-faced Medvedev told a meeting with officials in Ulan Ude, the capital of the Siberian region of Buryatia.
Investigators have said that a technical fault caused the August 17 flooding tragedy at the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam, which killed at least 69 people with six more still missing and presumed dead.
“The only truth here is this. Our country is technologically very far behind,” said Medvedev.
“We really are very far behind and if we don’t overcome this challenge then all those threats that everyone is talking about will truly become a reality.”
Russia’s leaders are usually at pains to trumpet the country’s technological prowess and Medvedev’s comments marked a rare acknowledgement of the difficulties that have followed the Soviet collapse.
Work on the dam — an awesome monolith spanning the Yenisei River — began in the 1960s and it had been hailed as a triumph of Soviet engineering.
But the facility has now been completely shut down since the disaster and officials have admitted it will take three years to complete repairs.
Medvedev pinpointed a lack of expertise as a major problem, after many of Russia’s best minds left for the West in the latter part of the 20th century.
“The protective stock that had been created in Soviet times has been depleted. We should openly admit this. The question of qualified personnel is at the forefront.”
He said Russia’s infrastructure required urgent attention and in many cases “this infrastructure is inefficient and in need of immediate modernization”.
Medvedev said private and state-owned enterprises had to work together and “then we’ll have the result that everyone’s counting on, that is, to create a modern country”.
But Medvedev also adopted tough rhetoric reminiscent of his mentor Vladimir Putin as he lashed out at Russia’s enemies for predicting “apocalyptic” scenarios for the country after the tragedy.
“Those who don’t like Russia within its existing borders and don’t like its role in the world started rubbing their hands,” he said.
He said that in some quarters the disaster was being seen as the “Chernobyl of the 21st century”, referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster that severely embarrassed the Soviet Union.
Despite the problems, such notions of a Russian collapse were “nonsense”, Medvedev said.
On Friday a radical Islamist group, Riyadus Salikhiin, claimed that it had triggered the disaster by detonating an anti-tank grenade in the plant’s turbine hall as part of a campaign of “economic war” against Russia.
But the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors on Monday said this had been refuted as a possible cause: “It has been established that the accident was of a technical nature,” it said.
“The concrete causes of the accident will be determined in the course of the investigation. The investigation has fully examined the theory of a terrorist attack and refuted it.”
However the authorities have still not given a conclusive explanation of what happened, saying several theories remain under consideration.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
New Anti-Cheating Exam Leads to Cheating
Even as university hopefuls sat down this summer for the Single State Exam, designed to fight corruption and cheating in education, a number of them had managed to buy the exam’s questions and answers in advance.
A high school graduate from the Siberian city of Omsk bought questions for the Single State Exam for 1,800 rubles ($55), splitting the cost with several friends.
“Me and my five buddies chipped in 300 rubles apiece,” Vasily boasted on an Internet forum for high school graduates, Forum.postupim.ru, where he is registered as vaso26.
Vasily also posted scanned questions for the mathematics section of the exam together with his own answers, marked in pen beside the printed questions.
This summer, the Single State Exam, known as EGE under its Russian acronym, replaced oral and written exams for the first time nationwide. The exam, comprised of a series of multiple-choice questions, welds high school final exams and university entrance exams together into a single test.
The Single State Exam can make it more difficult to get a secondary education diploma on the first try because a graduate who fails sections of the exam is barred from retaking the exam the same year, a right they had before the Single State Exam was introduced.
President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier this month that a presidential commission would be created to “analyze the pluses and minuses” of the Single State Exam, which had been tested in several regions over the previous eight years.
“The results of the Single State Exam are dubious,” Medvedev said at a meeting with the leaders of State Duma factions on Aug. 10, RIA-Novosti reported. “In my mind, there are some positive points and some negative ones.”
Many educators fear that the new exam is damaging the quality of secondary education, and 3,000 sent a letter of protest to Medvedev late last week.
“Pursuing the Single State Exam … is producing graduates whose heads are devoid of any real knowledge,” said the letter, which is posted on a web site for educators, Zavuch.info.
Written requests for comment to the Kremlin, the government and the Education and Science Ministry went unanswered Friday and Monday.
While the government has touted the exam as a way to fight corruption and level the field for university hopefuls, the exam appears to be nourishing corruption among educators, creating a new business opportunity for crooks and leading to cheating among high school graduates.
Corruption in the university entry process has accounted for a major part of all crime in the field of education this year, a senior Interior Ministry official, Alexei Shishko, said last week.
The total number of crimes detected in the field of education has grown by 38 percent, or by some 2,200 crimes, Shishko said at a news conference last Tuesday, according to a transcript obtained by The Moscow Times.
The head of the Federal Inspection Service for Education and Science, Lyubov Glebova, acknowledged at a news conference in late June that “there have been reports about officials using their positions to secure high results for the Single State Exam.” She did not elaborate.
She also said students cheated while taking the exam, using their cell phones to go online and search for answers.
A student and high school teacher interviewed for this article expressed mixed feelings about the new exam.
“The main plus of the Single State Exam is that a student has one exam instead of two,” Svetlana Zhyoltova, a history teacher at School No. 18 in the town of Nizhny Tagil in the Sverdlovsk region, said by telephone.
Yelena Alexandrova, who will start her first year as a journalism student at Moscow State University this fall, said she liked having “the whole summer free” because she did not have to prepare for entrance exams.
Zhyoltova also said the Single State Exam had allowed more Nizhny Tagil students to enter universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg this year because their parents did not have to pay for them to travel to those cities and stay there for entrance exams.
At the same time, Zhyoltova said, teachers had lacked sufficient time to prepare students for the exam, and students were forced to hire tutors, which not all could afford.
Alexandrova complained that the exam provided ambiguous answers to some questions. “I was irritated by the fact that questions were formulated in a biased way,” she said.
Zhyoltova said passing the exam involved a certain degree of luck because students who were nervous might have accidentally marked a wrong answer — a mistake that she said would not happen with the former oral and written exams, which required detailed answers.
Another drawback to the new exam is that it has led to a surge in prospective students that universities could not cope with, news reports said. Some university admission committees did not have time to process all the applications even though they worked overtime.
Nationalist sentiments have also surfaced with the introduction of the exam, with speculation swirling that students from the North Caucasus faked good marks on their Russian-language skills section of the exam to gain entry into prestigious universities but arrived on campus this month barely able to speak Russian.
State education officials have denied the rumors.
In a recent example of corruption among educators, authorities in Tatarstan detained the deputy head of the Tatar State University of Humanities and Education on suspicion of extorting a bribe of 90,000 rubles ($2,850) from a prospective student, Shishko said.
In another example, also in Tatarstan, the director of a local center where the new exam was being administered provided answers to students for 5,000 rubles, another senior Interior Ministry official, Yury Shalakov, said earlier this year.
The director and his aide admitted students who paid the bribe into the basement of the center several hours before the exam, sealed the basement door and slipped the answers under the door, Shalakov said.
In another scheme, web sites are offering questions and answers for sale, although buyers have no way to check their authenticity. A search request on Yandex for “buy SSE 2009 questions” returned 356,000 links to web sites.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: Italian Soldiers Hit Roadside Bomb
Kabul, 24 August (AKI) — An Italian military vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the western Afghan province of Farah late Sunday but no-one was injured in the attack. Major Marco Amoriello, spokesman for the Italian contingent in neighbouring Herat province, said that the bomb exploded while Italian soldiers were on patrol with the Afghan military.
The Italian soldiers included paratroopers of the 187th regiment Folgore and members of the Italian armed forces 1st regiment.
Amoriello said that the armoured transportation vehicle “showed, like in many other occasions, that it is an efficient military vehicle in the field”.
Italy is the lead nation in NATO’s so-called Regional Command West area, located in western Afghanistan, extending from the city of Herat, where the main Italian detachment is based, to the southern city of Farah.
Italy has 3,250 troops in Afghanistan, the sixth largest deployment after the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany.
It recently deployed 500 troops ahead of the Afghan election held 20 August.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
India Maoists Blow Up Rail Track
Suspected Maoist rebels have blown up a rail track and bombed a mobile phone tower in India’s Jharkhand state.
About 20 rebels blew up the track between Kumundi and Hehegarha stations in Latehar district. Train services were disrupted after the incident.
In Palamu district, nearly 50 rebels blew up a mobile tower with explosives.
The rebels have called a two-day strike from Monday in five states, including Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal.
Senior Maoist leader Koteshwar Rao told the BBC the shutdown was called to protest against the arrest of two senior activists last week.
He said the two were held on 19 August while travelling from Ranchi, Jharkhand’s capital, to Patna, capital of neighbouring Bihar state.
A senior police officer in Ranchi denied the arrests had been made.
The BBC’s Salman Ravi in Ranchi says the strike has affected road traffic with buses, trucks, cars and taxis remaining off the road in Jharkhand.
More than 6,000 people have died during the Maoists’ 20-year fight for a communist state in parts of India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as the “single biggest threat” to India’s security.
The rebels operate in 182 districts in India, mainly in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and landless workers.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Journalist Shot Dead in Pakistan
Unidentified gunmen have shot dead an Afghan journalist in north-west Pakistan, officials say.
Janullah Hashimzada, 40, was the bureau chief in Peshawar for Afghanistan’s Shamshad television channel.
He was returning from Afghanistan when his bus was ambushed near Jamrud, the main town in Khyber tribal district.
No one has admitted carrying out the attack. The area is a stronghold of the Taliban. Mr Hashimzada was an outspoken critic of the militants.
“The attackers in a Toyota Corolla car intercepted the bus and made it stop and then they went inside and shot him dead,” Reuters news agency quoted Rehan Khattak, a government official in Jamrud, as saying.
One passenger was wounded, he said.
Mr Hashimzada was a well-known face on Shamshad TV.
He also worked as a freelance, supplying video footage to international media organisations around the world, including the BBC.
The Shamshad channel is popular in insurgency-hit provinces in Afghanistan and also broadcasts to Pakistan, including some parts of the tribal areas which border Afghanistan.
At least three other journalists have been killed in north-west Pakistan this year.
Media freedom groups say the region, which is beset with Islamist militancy and tribal violence, is one of the world’s most dangerous for journalists.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia: Caning of Women Suspended as Act of “Mercy” For Ramadan
The woman had been sentenced to six lashes for having drunk beer in a nightclub. The sentence will be carried out at the end of the holy month of fasting and prayer. Malaysian majority and opposition keep silent on the matter so as not to lose the support of fundamentalist wing.
Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews / Agencies) — Malaysian authorities have suspended the flogging of 32 year-old part-time model Shukarno Kartika Sari Dewi, indicted for violating Islamic law that prohibits alcohol. The suspension was decided as an act of “mercy” by judges, reluctant to impose the sentence during the holy month of Ramadan which began over the weekend.
In December 2007 the mother of two children, drank a beer in a public place in the eastern state of Pahang. Arrested by police officers, she was indicted for breaking the rules of Shariah. Islamic law provides a penalty of three years imprisonment and flogging for Muslims caught consuming alcohol, however in most cases the accused is usually charged an administrative fine.
“The sentence has not been lifted” Sahfri Mohamad Abdul Aziz, State Parliamentarian for Religious Affairs told Associated Press. He explains that the office of the Attorney General has postponed the sentence to the end of the Muslimholy month of fasting and prayer, out of “mercy” toward the woman.
Last July the Islamic courts sentenced Kartika to one week in prison and six lashes. The authorities added that the stick used to beat the woman will be lighter than that used for men, because the goal is to educate rather than punish. The woman did not opposed the decision and had requested that she be punished “in public”.
The ruling against Kartka has received wide coverage in international media and has generated feelings of unanimous condemnation. The ruling majority and opposition parties in Malaysia have instead remained silent on the matter. The support of the Islamic movement Pas is essential to those wanting to govern: a formal statement would have provoked the reaction of the fundamentalist wing of the country and compromised future election alliances.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Fury at Plan to Power EU Homes From Congo Dam
Plans to link Europe to what would be the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam project in the volatile Democratic Republic of Congo have sparked fierce controversy.
The Grand Inga dam, which has received initial support from the World Bank, would cost $80bn (£48bn). At 40,000MW, it has more than twice the generation capacity of the giant Three Gorges dam in China and would be equivalent to the entire generation capacity of South Africa.
Grand Inga will involve transmission cables linking South Africa and countries in west Africa including Nigeria. A cable would also run through the Sahara to Egypt.
But controversially, it is understood that part of the feasibility study for the Grand Inga project would see the scheme extended to supply power to southern Europe, at a time when less than 30% of Africans have access to electricity — a figure that can fall to less than 10% in many countries.
Extending the scheme to Europe is part of a recent trend that includes the ambitious €400bn (£345bn) Desertec plan to take solar power from the Sahara to southern Europe. And last month Nigeria, Niger and Algeria, with the backing of the European Union, signed a $12bn agreement to transport Nigerian gas through a pipeline to Europe.
“Under the guise of bringing power to poor Africans, development banks are looking to put tens of billions of public money into a flight of fantasy that would only benefit huge Western multinationals and quite possibly feed African energy into European households,” said Anders Lustgarten of the Bretton Woods Project, which scrutinises the World Bank and IMF.
The scheme on the Congo river won support from World Bank president Robert Zoellick on a tour of the facility two weeks ago. Its progress is being keenly watched by a host of international power companies and infrastructure banks.
World Bank officials concede there is concern that a project that has the potential to bring electricity to 500 million African homes might have some of its power diverted to Europe. But the Grand Inga project may hinge on the capacity to export energy to richer markets to ensure it receives financing from banks. “We need creditworthy anchor customers to subscribe so investment can go ahead,” said Vijay Iyer, sector manager of the Africa energy group at the World Bank.
Grand Inga would be the final part of a three-phase project, the first of which is under way. That involves refurbishing a hydroelectric plant dating to 1972 that has fallen into disrepair due to the instability caused by Congo’s civil war. The first phase will involve restoring power supply to South Africa and a host of neighbouring countries.
The second 4,300MW phase is to power the Katanga mining region of the DRC, with a substantial amount of electricity distributed via cable to other African nations. FTSE 100 mining giant BHP Billiton is in negotiations about funding a feasibility study with the DRC government.
The more ambitious Grand Inga phase requires a new dam and a reservoir. The African Development Bank and the World Bank are working up plans for the scheme along with the World Energy Council. Plans will take five years to finalise, with construction taking another 10 years at least after that.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Anchor Babies: The Irish Got it Right
A member of Fianna Fail, Ireland’s Republican Party, appearing on television stating that “60% of all female asylum-seekers over the age of 16 arrive here pregnant.”
Ireland is experiencing the same abuse of their immigration laws as the U.S. The difference is they choose to do something about it. In January 2003 the Irish Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision by a 5-2 verdict that immigrant parents of an Irish born child could be deported. This was the first reversal of Ireland’s liberal policy of granting residency and possibly citizenship to anyone who had a baby on the island, including illegal aliens. Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney was encouraged by the courts decision, saying, “It will prevent others from coming to Ireland to abuse our asylum process on the basis that they are pregnant.”
It was common practice for non EU member nationals, mostly from Nigeria, to come to Ireland claiming political asylum. Many came pregnant. AP writer Shawn Pogatchnik writes, “While asylum applications frequently take years to complete, until now the birth of a child has resolved matters conclusively—with Irish citizenship for the infant and residency rights for the mother, usually followed by arrivals of more relatives.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bildt’s First Moves on October Good, Frattini
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 24 — During a meeting in of EU foreign ministers in Rimini yesterday, Italy’s Franco Frattini expressed his appreciation for the committment publicly made by the current European Union president, Carl Bildt, to commit the Council of Ministers to begin examining by October the issue of sharing between EU member states the burden and responsibility for irregular migrant flows requiring political assistance. The news comes in a note issued by Italy’s Foreign Ministry. The country’s foreign minister stressed how this would be “a first, but an important turning-point” on the part of the EU, with a view to jointly managing a common European problem, as had been hoped for by Italy and repeatedly urged by Frattini. Also at yesterday’s Rimini meeting, there was an exchange of crosstalk between Rome and Brussels on the sensitive immigration dossier. Europe talks but doesn’t act, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, attacked. We are talking about it but it will take time, replied the holder of the EU’s revolving presidency, Carl Bildt. Up to now, only weak words have come from Brussels on this issue, Frattini continued, and countries like Italy and Malta have been left alone to cope with “a problem which in fact affects the whole of Europe”. Frattini invoked a “proportional criteria for distributing the migratory flows across all of the EU’s 27 countries”. The EU cannot continue to close its eyes and take it for granted that the thousands of desperate people who reach our Mediterranean shores, coming mainly from the African side, will find accomodation and sustenance in the first country in which they land. Sicily is paying far too high a price just for being the doorway to Europe. Bildt’s reply was swift in coming, but it was perhaps not the “reasonable” one that Frattini was hoping for: it would be necessary to wait until the beginning of October to have an initial reply from the European Union, as the current president of the 27 nations told ANSA yesterday. This would be a “first step”, even though, Bildt admitted,”a problem of these dimensions is not to be solved at one meeting alone”. While awaiting light to be shed on what occured during this latest harvest of death in the Strait of Sicily, Frattini does not see too many obstacles to the prospect of granting political asylum to the five Eritreans concerned. “Each case will be looked at on its merits”, he said. But sure, it has been granted to the overwhelming majority of those coming from Eritrea. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Eritreans in Libya, Ramadan Helps Flight
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 21 — Each Friday, in Tripoli’s Dahara church, a clandestine mass is celebrated for the community of Eritreans living under cover in Libya. Emanuel P., who interprets for Father Daniele, who celebrates the mass, and is one of the few to speak English, is not in the least surprised by the news of the death at sea of 73 of his co-nationals over recent days, and the reports of the 5 survivors who are being cared for on Italy’s isle of Lampedusa. “This is a good season for embarking,” some Eritrean youths told ANSA, “because during Ramadan the security forces drop their guard a little. Not even news of this umpteenth tragedy blunts their readiness to run such a risk. A return to their homeland would mean facing a life behind bars or execution. The alternative, Emanuel explains, is “to remain in Eritrea and serve in the armed forces for at least ten years without pay”, without any chance of starting a family or looking after your family of origin. For this reason, following two years in prison in Misurata in a cell measuring 4 metres square in which he was kept 24 hours a day, Emanuel, having been released on August 14, attempted to leave the country via the Janzur coast, an area bordering Tripoli, but without success. His failed journey was organised by the so-called ‘brokers’, in this case of Libyan and Eritrean nationalities. For the price of 1,300 dollars they had kept him, alongside another 46 compatriots, in a shed not far from the beach for four days, waiting for “the weather and the police force” to be favourable, Emanuel said. But in this case the repulsion by Libyan motor launches came a score of metres from the coas. Now Emanuel wants to try again, although — like many other Eriteans in Libya — he has a document in his pocket issued by the UNHCR which recognises his status as an asylum seeker. This, however, as the other Eritreans avow, is a document that the Libyan police do not recognise. If they find it on you they will merely confiscate it or tear it to shreds in front of you. But the last word has yet to be spoken, as far as Emanuel is concerned. His 1,300 dollars are worth a further attempt, even though, as he himself admits, “of the many boats that have left Libya, only three have arrived in Europe with Eritreans on board: one in Sicily, in July, with around 120 compatriots on board, one in Lampedusa, with at least 350 Eritreans and one in Malta. “There are ever more Africans and many Eritraens,”- said the Bishop of Tripoli, Msg. Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli — “who arrive here each morning seeking help and comfort”. The Bishop also warned: Rome should not unload this problem onto Libya. Nearly a year on from the Italo-Libyan Frienship Treaty “the flow of migrants has more than doubled”, Msg. Martinelli points out, and Tripoli, despite the commitments it has made, “is not alone capable of managing a phenomenon which calls for greater involvement by Europe and by Italy”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
EU Commission: We Are Very Active
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, 24 AGO — The EU and the European Commission are doing much in the area of immigration, said an EU spokesperson in reply to question over the position taken by Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, who denounced the absence of Europe in tackling the problem of irregular migrants. The spokesperson stressed how the Commission is working with EU member states and neighbouring countries and that its Deputy President, Jacques Barrot, has over the past months visited Lampedusa, Malta, the Canary Isles and Greece and is about to pay visits to Turkey and Libya. The question, the spokesperson noted, is one of setting up finance-political and diplomatic instruments “to put an end to the kind of tragedies we saw last week”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Hails Migrant Pledge
‘Already doing a lot, ‘ says EC
(ANSA) — Rome, August 24 — Italy on Monday welcomed a European Union pledge on sharing the burden of immigration in the Mediterranean.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini voiced appreciation that the EU’s duty president, Swedish Premier Carl Bildt, promised that spreading the load would come up for discussion by EU ministers at the end of October.
This could be “a first but important turning point,” said the foreign ministry in Rome.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, the European Commission said it was already doing a lot on the issue.
European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot has recently visited Italy, Greece and the Canary Islands and is set to travel to Turkey and Libya, spokesman Dennis Abbott said.
Barrot, who recently discussed the topic with Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, has stressed that ways must be found to “better share the burden at a European level,” Abbott said.
It is a question of setting up political, financial and diplomatic instruments to “stop tragedies such as the one we saw last week,” he said, referring to the reported deaths of 73 Eritrean refugees whose five surviving companions arrived in Sicily Thursday.
Abbott stressed the importance of acting on the conclusions of a June EU summit which “clearly” stated that “firmness, solidarity and shared responsibility are essential in a global approach” towards immigration.
Italy has long been pushing for greater EU help with immigration and Frattini on Sunday accused the EU of not backing up talk with action.
At the EU summit in June leaders agreed to consider an emergency plan on immigration in the southern Mediterranean.
At the time, Frattini said he expected the plan to be drafted “in a matter of months”, reiterating that Italy expects cost-sharing as well as joint EU patrols.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has said other EU countries should take on a share of immigrants while EU border agency Frontex should be given a larger role to carry out repatriation flights and “deal with the holding and identification of illegal immigrants via a European structure”.
Last month Commissioner Barrot voiced the hope that a system could eventually be put in place whereby asylum requests are made from the country of origin. Bildt, in Italy Sunday for a meeting of a Catholic political movement, said the end-of-October meeting would discuss a plan being put together by the EC.
Earlier on Sunday, Frattini said he expected a “proportional criterion” from the EU to share the burden of the thousands of migrants who cross the Mediterranean each year.
Italy has seen a sharp drop in arrivals since introducing a new ‘push-back’ policy in May in which migrants rescued in international waters are taken to Libya, their main stepping-off point for Europe.
The policy, which has been criticised by the United Nations, aid groups and the Catholic Church, came under renewed scrutiny last week after the five Eritreans arrived in Sicily and said they had seen 73 companions die from hunger or thirst over three weeks.
Observers have raised concern that the push-back policy might be discouraging sea captains from offering aid at sea.
Sicilian prosecutors completed a preliminary report into the incident on Monday and said they were weighing the conduct of a Maltese navy vessel which reportedly gave the boat fuel to complete its voyage.
The prosecutors said the Maltese, who said the boat was in Libyan waters and its occupants well when they found it, could potentially be prosecuted under international sea law.
Frattini on Sunday said Sicily was “paying too high a price just for being the gateway to Europe”.
The situation might be helped, he said, if Malta agreed to reduce its search-and-rescue area which currently spans 250 square kilometres or about the surface area of Italy.
“That is perhaps a little big for a small nation,” he said, adding that the result of ten-year-long negotiations on the issue would be “indispensable for the whole international community”.
In the past, Italy and Malta have sometimes disagreed over migrant rescues but the push-back policy to Libya appears to have largely defused the issue.
Agrigento Chief Prosecutor Renato Di Natale on Monday said the probe would not address claims that the push-backs might be illegal because they do not discriminate between nationalities and therefore allegedly deprive asylum seekers of their rights.
“That is a purely political issue,” he said.
In the past, Maroni has noted that the EU has had nothing to object about the policy and he has stressed that any asylum requests are being dealt with in Libya.
The UN’s refugee body UNHCR has complained that Libya has does not recognise the agency and it does not allow its representatives to visit all the migrant holding centres in the country.
Two of the five Eritreans who arrived on Thursday have yet to be questioned because of their poor health.
Frattini has expressed confidence the five will be granted asylum.
“We’ll look at each case on its merits,” he said Sunday, “but the overwhelming majority of those who come from Eritrea have obtained asylum”.
Pending the results of their claims, the five have been placed under investigation for entering Italy illegally.
Should their claims be upheld the probe would be shelved.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Gangs Import Children for Benefit Fraud
Foreign criminals are trafficking children as young as three months old into Britain and using them to defraud the benefits system of millions of pounds, a Sunday Times investigation has found.
Children are taken from their families, brought to Britain and used for fraudulent benefit claims involving forged immigration documents and employment records.
In many cases the children are trafficked with the complicity of their parents. They are trained in street crime and placed with unrelated adults to enable fake benefit claims to be paid into accounts controlled by the trafficker.
In a police operation earlier this month in northeast London, four suspected child victims of trafficking from Romania were placed in foster care.
Officers found evidence of suspected benefit crime in excess of £100,000, including one backdated payment to a family for £24,000. In another case using trafficked children, one gang is believed to have forged documents for at least 500 claims worth £4.5m.
It is the first detailed evidence of systematic child trafficking being used to defraud the British benefits system. The money is believed to have paid for the foreign criminals’ mansions and luxury cars in their home towns.
Tandarei, a small town in eastern Romania, is one of the bases of the suspected traffickers. About 100 imposing new homes conservatively valued at £20m have been built over the past five years. British police believe they have been partly funded by benefit fraud.
Operation Golf, the Metropolitan police operation targeting the Romanian gang, has found evidence of a trafficking ring linked to Tandarei.
Unemployed Romanians arriving in the UK are not typically entitled to benefits, but the gangs forge documents providing false work histories and obtain National Insurance numbers. The children are used to claim additional housing benefit, tax credits and child benefit. They can also be presented to council officials or benefit investigators conducting checks.
The claims supplement revenue from other criminal activities such as cashpoint fraud, pickpocketing and shoplifting.
Anthony Steen MP, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on trafficking of women and children, said: “This is an appalling scandal of desperately poor people being trafficked here to siphon off money from the benefits system. The current checks are totally inadequate and there needs to be an EU-wide response. HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) need to get a grip.”
HM Revenue & Customs and the DWP said they conducted thorough checks on fraud.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Dismanteling Our Christian Heritage
Andrew Jackson wrote his wife Rachel: “I trust that the God of Isaac and of Jacob will protect you and give you health in my absence…” Jackson apparently knew that there were some people that worshipped foreign gods, and wanted to make the point he worshipped the God of the Holy Bible. In referring to God, our early politicians used other descriptive terms, such as: “The unerring hand of Providence” — “All-merciful Creator” — “Supreme Author of All Good” — “Supreme Ruler of the Universe”.
Apparently President Barack Obama has not studied American History, because he recently said while in Turkey: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” Whether Obama understands the early writings of those great men who founded this nation, or not, perhaps he is correct, because America has become a “post” Christian nation. Once was — not now! Liberalism and political correctness have successfully dismantled our Christian heritage. Our moral and spiritual foundation is practically gone. America no longer acknowledges the one true God of the Bible, the God of Isaac and Jacob.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Social Utility: How Much Are Grandpa and Grandma Worth?
In a previous essay, I discussed a concept that is always on the mind of the socialist planner and that is “social utility”. To fully understand this concept one has to understand the socialist philosophy, if it can indeed be called a philosophy — in general, philosophies are analytical. In their world view, which is basically a gnostic one, the world is occupied by two basic forms of human life — those who are wise and chosen and those who make up the common rabble — the masses.
[…]
The Hastings Center, as some will remember, was involved in much controversy many years ago as the group promoting the idea of negative euthanasia to establish more equity in health care distribution. They were not as openly radical as the Hemlock Society, which felt it their duty to eliminate those considered unfit for life and for promoting the idea of having panels of experts decide to decide who shall live and who shall die in nursing homes.
One of the fellows of the Hastings Center is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, President Obama’s health care czar and a source of constant input on health care “reform”. His scholarly paper is included in a package of articles expressing the Hastings Centers position on health care reform and life in general.
[…]
From a series of statements by Doctor Emanuel it is apparent that he, and many others in positions of power, conclude that the elderly have lived their lives and it is time for them to move on, especially if they are costing the state money. This is not a new theme among the elitists of society, as we went through this with Social Security as well.
One must then ask-Who are the elderly and why do they deserve to live? This question poised by the socialists, assumes that one must give a justification to the federal government for existing in this society. This is the social utility argument. If you serve no useful purpose in the society, as far as some social usefulness, then you have no social utility and are no longer welcome. This is not really that far away from the German National Socialist Party’s thinking, which referred to those with no social utility as “useless eaters” and the disabled, chronically ill and incurables as “life unworthy of life”.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Interview With Epidemiologist Tom Jefferson
‘A Whole Industry Is Waiting For A Pandemic’
The world has been gripped with fears of swine flu in recent weeks. In an interview with SPIEGEL, epidemiologist Tom Jefferson speaks about dangerous fear-mongering, misguided, money-driven research and why we should all be washing our hands a lot more often.
[…]
Jefferson : It’s true that influenza viruses are unpredictable, so it does call for a certain degree of caution. But one of the extraordinary features of this influenza — and the whole influenza saga — is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn’t stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.
SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?
Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.
[…]
SPIEGEL: Do you think the WHO declared a pandemic prematurely?
Jefferson: Don’t you think there’s something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn’t have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped, and that’s how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Worldwide Battle Rages for Control of the Internet
WHEN thousands of protestors took to the streets in Iran following this year’s disputed presidential election, Twitter messages sent by activists let the world know about the brutal policing that followed. A few months earlier, campaigners in Moldova used Facebook to organise protests against the country’s communist government, and elsewhere too the internet is playing an increasing role in political dissent.
Now governments are trying to regain control. By reinforcing their efforts to monitor activity online, they hope to deprive dissenters of information and the ability to communicate.
The latest evidence of these clampdowns comes in a report on the Middle East and north Africa by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaboration of researchers based in the UK and North America. Among the restrictions it reports are clampdowns on Facebook in Syria and the use of hidden cameras in Saudi Arabia’s internet cafes.
Most of these actions are aimed at stifling political debate. “Political filtering is the common denominator,” says Helmi Noman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society in Boston, who compiled the report. “It’s the main target.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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Dam Tragedy Shows Russia Lags Behind
But the facility has now been completely shut down since the disaster and officials have admitted it will take three years to complete repairs.
Medvedev pinpointed a lack of expertise as a major problem, after many of Russia’s best minds left for the West in the latter part of the 20th century.
Yet one more hammer blow among the rain of misfortunes currently befalling and yet to befall Russia.
On Friday a radical Islamist group, Riyadus Salikhiin, claimed that it had triggered the disaster by detonating an anti-tank grenade in the plant’s turbine hall as part of a campaign of “economic war” against Russia.
But the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors on Monday said this had been refuted as a possible cause: “It has been established that the accident was of a technical nature,” it said.
“The concrete causes of the accident will be determined in the course of the investigation. The investigation has fully examined the theory of a terrorist attack and refuted it.”
However the authorities have still not given a conclusive explanation of what happened, saying several theories remain under consideration. [emphasis added]
As the glasnost window slowly slides shut, one can only speculate as to just how badly Russia has overplayed its hand with Islam. There is no more ungrateful beast than the Islamic bully boy and Muslims invariably bite the hand that feeds them.
Putin's attempt to play both sides of the Islamic street is one of the most reckless and misguided political blunders imaginable. Russia stands to pay a very dear price for courting this menace with such mixed signals.
That group has claimed responsibility in the past for other events that they had no connection to whatsoever - just a ploy for attention. All indications from all the Russian articles I've read say this was purely a breakdown (overdue in some cases).
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