Half the doctors in Sweden are now immigrants. The medical “brain drain” is causing a shortage of qualified physicians in the Third World countries that send their med school graduates to Sweden.In other news, former Prime Minister Olmert of Israel has been indicted on three charges of corruption.
Thanks to A Greek Friend, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, Sean O’Brian, Steen, TB, VH, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Could Obama Rule the Web?
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft, which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
CNet news link to pdf
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Doctor Admits Euthanizing Patients During Katrina
A doctor who was working the rounds at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina has admitted euthanizing patients during a crucial shortage of energy and supplies at the hospital.
Despite the revelations, the state prosecution service in Louisiana says it will not re-open an investigation into the matter, the Associated Press reports.
The doctor’s admission comes on the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast, an event that would lead to the death of more than 1,000 people and the displacement of a city of one million.
It also comes at a time when the US is busy debating fundamental reforms to the country’s health system. The specter of “rationed health care” has been raised during the debate.
But in the panic and chaos of Katrina, the notion of “rationed care” was taken to a brutal new level.
Dr. Ewing Cook told ProPublica’s Sheri Fink that he gave the order to give an elderly patient a dose of morphine he knew would kill her.
“Do you mind just increasing the morphine and giving her enough until she goes?” Cook says he asked the patient’s nurse.
In a sign of his certainty the patient would die under the morphine overdose, Cook penciled in “Pronounced dead at” on the patient’s chart and left it blank to be filled in later.
“To me, it was a no-brainer, and to this day I don’t feel bad about what I did,” Cook told ProPublica. “I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor.”
He added, “There’s no question I hastened her demise.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How a Detainee Became an Asset
Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding
After enduring the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency’s secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called “terrorist tutorials.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How Safe Are Your Drinking & Agriculture Water Supplies?
Drinking water quality is of primary importance to every citizen in the United States. The story below is just one of many being played out across the United States today. We all need to know what is in our drinking water and how it relates to public health. Everyone has the right to know what is in their drinking water not only at the drinking water tap, but what is in the water that irrigates our food crops and that our animals drink. We need to know just how safe bottled water is, if plastic baby bottles are safe, and if plastic water containers (and tin can linings), are leaching contaminants into the water we drinking.
Recently the Agriculture Defense Coalition obtained information regarding water quality in the City of West Sacramento, California, from the California State Department of Health, Drinking Water Division, in Sacramento, California. The State of California is the repository of all drinking water tests for every public water supply facility or public well in California. (The data is on CD and is free of charge to anyone who requests this information under the California Public Records Act.)
Stunned by the results of this inquiry it became very important that the public using this water for drinking and irrigation be informed of the startling results of this ongoing investigation. Clearly, even from the data in the 2008 West Sacramento “Consumer Confidence Report,” it is imperative that everyone who receives this water be informed of the alleged dangers in using this water for drinking, cooking, bathing, crop irrigation, and yard watering.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Kennedy ‘Joked About Chappaquiddick’
Biographer reveals deadly incident was a ‘favorite topic of humor’
One of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s favorite topics of humor was the incident at Chappaquiddick Island, Mass., in 1969 in which he drove off a bridge and left behind a 28-year-old woman who drowned, according to a biographer who reminisced about the iconic Democrat on a Washington, D.C., talk show this morning.
Edward Klein, speaking to WAMU guest host Katty Kay, said one of Kennedy’s “favorite topics of humor was, indeed, Chappaquiddick.”
“He would ask people, ‘Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?’“ said Klein, a former Newsweek foreign editor and former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lyme/Autism Group Blasts GM Foods as Dangerous
The five main GM foods are soy, corn, cotton, canola, and sugar beets. Their derivatives are found in more than 70% of the foods in the supermarket. The primary reason the plants are engineered is to allow them to drink poison. They’re inserted with bacterial genes that allow them to survive otherwise deadly doses of poisonous herbicide. Biotech companies sell the seed and herbicide as a package deal. Roundup Ready crops survive sprays of Roundup. Liberty Link crops survive Liberty. US farmers use hundreds of millions of pounds more herbicide because of these herbicide-tolerant crops, and the higher toxic residues end up inside of us. The LIA position paper acknowledges that “Individuals with infections that compromise immunity… and/or high toxin loads may also be especially susceptible to adverse effects from pesticides.”
Some GM corn and cotton varieties are also designed to produce poison. Inserted genes from a soil bacterium produce an insect-killing poison called Bt-toxin in every cell of the plant. Bt is associated with allergic and toxic reactions in humans and animals, and may create havoc in our digestive system (see below).
All GM crops, in fact, should be considered high-risk. Irrespective of which gene you insert, the process of genetic engineering itself results in massive collateral damage within the plants’ natural DNA. This can result in new or higher levels of toxins, carcinogens, allergens, or nutrient-blocking compounds in our food.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Administration Announces Not Enforcing Union Reporting Laws
Are you a union member trying to find out information of the criminal actions and shady financial dealings of your union? Well don’t expect Obama and his toady in the Labor Secretary’s office, Hilda Solis, to help you uncover any illegalities perpetrated by your union bosses.
Solis’ department has just announced that it is suspending the stringent reporting requirements that labor unions must by law satisfy to assure that their financial dealings are legal and above-board. That’s right, unions have just been given a free pass for criminal actions by this president.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Rally at the Capitol Sparks Talks of Secession
Members and citizens supporting the Republican Party rallied against the Obama administration outside the Texas Capitol Saturday afternoon.
The Texas State Sovereignty or Secessions movement is backed by those who think the federal government is getting too involved in state and local government affairs.
One of the options they’re considering is seceding from the United States.
“They’re coming together to talk about the option of sovereignty, to rally support for state sovereignty, to encourage our state leadership, to exercise the sovereignty that Texas ought to be standing on,” Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Debra Medina, said.
Medina said another way to allow state leaders to get around federal laws is to nullify and interpose laws coming from Washington.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Rapper Snoop Dogg Embraced Islam and Says His First Salam Alaykum
[video]
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
‘Take That Thing Off Your Head’
ROTC student suspended for telling Muslim to respect flag, remove hijab
Lawrence’s troubles with administrators at Springstead High School in Hernando Beach, Fla., began last Wednesday when she noticed a female Muslim student refusing to participate in the Pledge. The student was wearing a hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf.
Later in the day, Lawrence encountered the student between periods and told her she should stand for the pledge, reported Hernando Today.
“Take that thing off your head and act like you’re proud to be an American,” Lawrence told her.
Although the student walked away and filed no complaint, a teacher overheard Lawrence’s comment and reported her to school administrators. On Friday, Lawrence was called to Assistant Principal Steve Crognale’s office and her father was called and informed she would be suspended for five days.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Town-Hall Clash! Arrest Threat Over Obama ‘Joker’ Poster
Officer to protester: This ain’t America no more
“This used to be America,” argued a protester outside a health-care town hall meeting in Reston, Va., after a security officer threatened him with arrest for holding up a sign with a picture critical of Barack Obama.
The officer’s response?
“It ain’t no more, OK?”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Van Jones and His Stormtroopers Denounced America the Night After 9/11
Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), the revolutionary group formed by self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist” Van Jones, held a vigil in Oakland, California, “mourning the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world” on the night after Sept. 11, 2001.
The reason this is important is because Van Jones is now President Obama’s green jobs czar. He does not appear to have distanced himself from his past communist activities and is now part of the Obama administration’s push to turn Sept. 11 into a National Day of Service focused on the promotion of the radical environmentalist agenda.
The vigil was reported by World Net Daily which excerpted parts of a history of the now-disbanded group.
Apparently, after the WND article was posted online, the website on which the original document was posted was overwhelmed by visitors and unavailable. I found the article in the “Way Back Machine” website (web.archive.org), an archival resource. The 2004 document, called “Reclaiming Revolution: history, summation & lessons from the work of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM),” may be found on the archival site here. (In case that becomes unavailable, the document “Reclaiming Revolution” is available at the link embedded in this sentence.)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Every Other Doctor in Sweden From Abroad
Sweden is attracting an increasing number of physicians from abroad. Almost every other new medical license is granted to someone who was educated abroad.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the brain drain of doctors to rich countries is threatening to cause the collapse of healthcare systems in poor countries.
“It is immoral that a rich country like Sweden is profiting from these poor countries,” Martin Stjernquist, programme director of the medical school at Lund University, told Sydsvenskan newspaper.
In 2007, 1,400 foreign physicians received medical licenses in Sweden — the equivalent of 60 percent of all new licenses granted that year, Sydsvenskan reports.
At the same time that there is a major shortage of doctors in poor countries, many countries such as France and the UK are recruiting healthcare workers from their former colonies.
“It’s a form of neo-colonialism,” Eva Nilsson Bågenholm, head of the Swedish Medical Association (Sveriges läkarförbund), said.
Many Swedes also choose to study medicine abroad. Every third Swedish medical student studies abroad, Yosef Tyson, head of the Swedish Medical Students Union (Medicine studerandes förbund), told Sydsvenskan.
Many Swedes attend medical school in Denmark, which has led Helge Sander, Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, to petition Sweden to increase its number of study places.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
French Farmers Survive But Multinationals Cash in on EU Subsidies
Stepping off his huge Renault tractor, Nicolas Galpin squinted in the August sun past his metal grain silos and towards the fields ploughed by his father and his father’s father before him.
Almost 550 acres of wheat, barley, peas and sugar beet stretch out behind the small stone farmhouse where he lives with his wife Claudine and their two children, Armand and Charlotte.
Mr Galpin, 32, is preparing to plant rape seed — the yellow flowered plant with a heady scent used to make rape oil — before the arduous October harvest begins; this is a month of seven day weeks and, for one exhausting week, 22-hour days to collect all the grain and beet ahead of winter.
Minimum tillage means maximum outputLooking at the crops on the edge of Auvernaux, population 317, it is hard to believe the farm is just a few miles south of the Paris metropolis and 15 minutes’ drive from the last overground suburban train stop.
But this is France, Europe’s agricultural powerhouse, where farms start at the gates of the capital and stretch around a country more than twice the size of Britain. These range from small, Jean de Florette-style farmlets to huge, highly efficient and mechanised operations.
Such agricultural might comes at a huge price, however, in the shape of European Union subsidies via the Common Agricultural Policy. At €55 billion (£48.5 billion), the CAP accounts for 42 percent of the EU budget, making it the largest agricultural aid programme in the world.
This is a price that many in Britain and other less farm-rich nations find too high to stomach, and one that developing countries and aid agencies say is wrecking world trade.
Anger in Britain over the billions forked out for the CAP has risen since The Sunday Telegraph revealed last weekend that the UK’s net contribution to the EU will rise by 60 per cent, from £4.1 billion this year to around £6.9 billion in April 2011.
The EU was supposed to beging reducing CAP subsidies to farmers at the same time. But the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has fought a rearguard action to preserve the budget intact — and now EU officials are also about to abandon a promised wider review of all EU spending.
Surveying his farm, Mr Galpin picked what looked like an oversized parsnip but was in fact sugar beet. He sliced off a chunk with a small scythe, munched the earthy vegetable and smiled. “It’s a good year: the sugar level is high. With luck we’ll get 800 tons of sugar from our 60 hectares (150 acres) of beet.”
Like almost all French farmers, he receives direct EU aid, on average around €70,000 (£61,700) per year. Last year, more than half a million French farmers received a total of €10.39 billion (£9.15 billion) in EU subsidies — their sheer numbers meaning they receive about a fifth of the EU’s total kitty. On average, each farmer received just over €20,000 (£17,000), though one in 10 received more than €50,000 (£44,000).
“It’s a good life,” said Mr Galpin, “but don’t get the wrong idea, we’re far from rolling in it. People are under the illusion we earn a lot of money because they look at turnover, not what we get at the end of the day.”
His farm’s turnover was €350,000 (£308,000) last year, but Mr Galpin must pay the wages and national insurance of his one farm labourer, as well as insurance, pesticides, machinery, and rent for the use of the land — only a fraction belongs to him.
After all this, he is left with around €60,000 (£53,000) a year, half of which goes to his parents, who still help out. The profit is almost exactly what he receives in EU aid.
“Quite frankly, we would rather receive no subsidies and live entirely off our own produce. But given the price of wheat right now, we could not survive without this money,” he said.
Some 150 miles southeast, in Vigorny in the Haute Marne, Thierry Lahaye runs a 2,100-acre cereal farm with his two brothers. His farm received €220,000 (£194,000) in subsidies last year but he says he only took home €2,000 (£1,700) a month.
“We want to live off the fruit of our labour without help, but now that the flood gates of free exchange have opened without concern for how to keep us alive, they are vital. So I’m not ashamed to receive them,” he said.
It is easy to sympathise with Mr Galpin and Thierry, but far less so with France’s largest single beneficiaries — not struggling farmers, but individuals or companies with little connection to traditional farming. They include multinational companies like food conglomerates, sugar producers and spirit distillers.
Their identity was revealed for the first time this year when all 27 EU nations were forced to disclose how they distribute farm subsidies.
In France, not a single ordinary farmer is to be found among the top 24 beneficiaries. Top of the list is the chicken processor Groupe Doux, at €62.8 million (£55.3 million). The company, the largest poultry firm in Europe, had a turnover last year of €1.7 billion (£1.5 billion) — but does not raise a single chicken itself. Instead it outsources the job to thousands of contract breeders.
But, like other such companies across the EU, it qualified for agricultural export refunds under the CAP — designed to boost the sale of EU farm produce abroad, where prices are lower than in Europe.
Others include sugar manufacturers, some operating in France’s overseas “departments” such as Guadeloupe in the Caribbean and Réunion in the Indian Ocean.
Another top beneficiary is the cognac arm of LVMH, the huge luxury group owned by Bernard Arnault — the world’s seventh richest man, according to Forbes, whose myriad brands include Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon and Krug champagne.
Jack Thurston, whose website farmsubsidy.org first published the list of beneficiaries, said the purpose of aid has been warped.
“In the EU treaty and subsequent laws defining the CAP, it’s defined as an income support policy. The question is: why does it work in such a way that the bigger you are, the more income support you get?”
One possible reform would be to means test potential beneficiaries, but this idea has been staunchly opposed by France and Italy, among others.
The EU has made some changes to the CAP, shifting funds away from direct payments for straightforward farming towards “rural development” — spending €8.5 billion (£7.5 billion) last year on such activities as organic farming, tourism, infrastructure and renewable energy.
It has stopped simply handing out money to those who produce the most food — which led to vast surpluses in the 1980s — and to those with the most land. Now, grants are handed out even if no food is grown, on condition that owners “maintain the land in good agricultural or environmental condition”.
France stands to receive a lesser share of the total CAP kitty in future, as new EU member states in eastern Europe claim more. But the system is almost impossible to overhaul properly because of the vested interests involved.
French farmers have never been shy of taking of militant action to get their way, and politicians live in fear of modern day peasant revolts — with angry farmers dumping piles of manure outside government offices, or blockading towns with their tractors.
In the notoriously hot-headed southwest, wine growers regularly hijack tankers of foreign wine and empty the contents into the street.
Most are afraid to try to change the way CAP money is distributed. “To do so is to take money away from people who have become very used to having it, and have built up a lobby that’s very powerful and effective in defending what they’ve had in the past,” said Mr Thurston.
Mr Lahaye in Virogny agreed. “When we farmers go to see our politicians with a problem, we are listened to. I don’t get the impression the same can be said for the UK. We know how to make ourselves heard.”
And as he set off on his tractor in Auvernaux, Mr Galpin offered a final thought. “You British might protest, but these subsidies give France its wonderful landscapes. I don’t hear you complaining about them.”
| [Return to headlines] |
Geert Wilders: Prophet Mohammed Acted Like a Pig
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
[Arutz Sheva, Israel news] Dutch legislator Geert Wilders compared the prophet Mohammed with a pig after a report was published that Saudi Arabian authorities returned a runaway10-year-old bride to her 80-year-old husband..
Wilders asked Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen if he agrees that “this man is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married” a six-year-old girl. Wilders wants the Foreign Minister to summon the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the Netherlands to express his disgust at the act.
Wilders has enjoyed growing support throughout Europe, as well as in his own country, for his outspoken statements against Muslim terror. He sparked furious protests two years ago when he disseminated his 15-minute film called Fitna, which exposes links between the Muslim religion and terror..
The Saudi Arabian Arab News reported the incident of the 10-year-old bride. It said the man denied he is 80-years old, as claimed by the girl’s family, which he accused of meddling in his affairs.
“My marriage is not against Shariah [Muslim law],” he told Arab News. “It included the elements of acceptance and response by the father of the bride.” The unidentified man explained that he had been engaged to his wife’s elder sister, who broke off the engagement. In return, her father offered his younger daughter. “I was allowed to have a look at her according to Shariah and found her acceptable,” said the elderly man.
| — Hat tip: VH | [Return to headlines] |
Palestinians on Hunger Strike in Rome, One in Hospital
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 26 — Ibrahim Salem Ubayyat, one of the three Palestinians who have been seeking refuge in Italy since 2002, was admitted to hospital in Rome yesterday. The three began a hunger strike eight days ago after the Italian government stopped giving them financial assistance and security as part of a programme of protection guaranteed by the European Union. “He could neither manage to walk or to speak”, Mohammad Said Salem, one of the other two asylum-seekers, told ANSA, pointing out that before they called for an ambulance, they had searched in vain for an Arab doctor. This afternoon the other two former militants are to receive a doctor’s visit: they have touched no food, drinking only water, and are sticking to their planned hunger strike. The three Palestinians, who are wanted by Israel on terrorism charges, have been in Rome since 2002 when an accord was signed between Italy, the EU, Syria and the PNA, putting an end to Israel’s siege of the Basilica of Christ’s Nativity in Bethlehem. Around thirty people had locked themselves inside the basilica in order to offer 12 militants protection and assistance in several EU countries. Since then, the three have been living incognito under a humanitarian residence permit, with a flat supplied to them and a monthly cheque of 1,300 euros from the Italian government. These were all reasons why the three felt welcome in Italy — but now they cannot understand the Interior Ministry’s cancellation of their benefits, which came in April this year. They apparently asked for assurances from the government on July 5, but as they haven’t had any further communication the three started their hunger strike eight days ago, locking themselves in the offices of the Palestinian delegation in Rome. They are asking for the accord to be renewed or, alternatively, to be allowed to return to their homeland without having to face trial. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Slovenia: Government Facing Crisis, Falling Public Consent
(ANSAmed) — LJUBLJANA, AUGUST 24 — Fifty-three percent of Slovenian citizens have a negative opinion on the centre-left government led by Social Democrat Borut Pahor, which almost reached the end of the first year of mandate. The data emerged from a monthly survey carried out by Ljubljana newspaper ‘Dnevnik’ and by POP-TV. Pahor’s government first obtained a majority of negative results last month, when 53% of those interviewed said they were disappointed by the government’s actions. During the last month, the number of those in favour of the Ljubljana government has fallen by 2%, reaching a mere 37% of public consent. In the event of an election, the opposition, led by former premier Janez Jansa, would gain the victory but 44% of those interviewed said they were not convinced that a centre-right government would better manage the economy, the aspect on which Pahor obtained the highest percentage of negative votes. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Legislate Right to Full-Time Employment: Left Party
The Swedish Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) wants to abolish several reforms adopted by the governing Alliance parties, according to a new report.
The Left Party wants to abolish the childcare allowance (vårdnadsbidrag), the equality bonus (jämställdhetsbonus), and tax deductions for household services. The childcare allowance is currently paid to parents who remain out of the labour market to care for their children, while the equality bonus is paid to couples who equally split parental leave between both the mother and father.
The Left Party would also consider legislation to ensure the right to full-time employment.
More women than men work part-time, as well as take up fixed-term employment. The Left Party therefore believes that women would benefit if more people had the right to work full-time as well as had access to permanent employment.
The Left Party would achieve this by making employers fees for fixed-term (visstidsanställning) employment higher than those for permanent employment (tillsvidareanställning).
The party is also prepared to enact legislation to ensure the right to full-time employment if the social partners are unable to reach agreement, according to Left Party members Ulla Andersson and Josefin Brink in a report outlining the party’s gender equality policies.
There are too few men who take advantage of paternity leave, Andersson and Brink said. Parental leave should therefore be individual, so that each parent may take half, which may not be transferred to the other parent.
The Left Party would also seek to re-establish the position of a dedicated gender equality minister, as well as abolish the childcare allowance, which is described as a “direct anti-feminist reform that encourages women to stay at home and be supported by their husbands.”
In addition, the party would abolish tax deductions for home services, the so-called “maid deduction” (pigavdraget).
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
The Days Are Getting Shorter. Time for Another World War II Memorial?
Why European leaders can’t resist celebrating the Sept. 1 anniversary—again.
Seventy years ago next week—at 4:45 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1939, to be precise—the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began to shell the Polish military base at Westerplatte. For the Germans, for the Poles, and for the British and French, who immediately declared war on Germany, this was the beginning of World War II. The Soviet Union, having signed a secret agreement with Nazi Germany, did not declare war but was itself preparing to invade Poland and the Baltic States. Which it did, two and a half weeks later, on Sept. 17.
None of these basic facts is in dispute. Nor can they be rightly described as “current events”: Two generations have passed, yet those signature events nevertheless continue to be remembered, contested, and commemorated in every anniversary year ending with five or zero. I remember joking with a friend on May 8, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Nazi capitulation, that now, finally, we had reached the end of the anniversaries. But we had not. Next week, on Sept. 1, 2009, the prime ministers of Russia, Poland, and France; the foreign minister of Britain; the chancellor of Germany; and more than a dozen other European leaders will meet at Westerplatte to launch the cycle of 70th anniversaries—barely on the heels of the 65th. Why?
The answer cannot lie in the personal experiences of any of the statesmen involved, since none was alive at the time. It lies, rather, in the way that memories of the war have come to be central to the national memory, and therefore to the contemporary politics, of so many of the countries that fought in it.
Everything about modern Germany, for instance, is the way it is because of the war, from its pacifism and its devotion to the European Union to the architecture of its capital city. War guilt is built into the political system and becomes controversial only when it seems some Germans want to abandon it: The new wave of interest in the fate of Germans who fled or were expelled from Central Europe after the war, or the popularity of books about Allied bombings of German cities, worries many in the region. Hence Angela Merkel’s presence at Westerplatte. (She was the first to confirm she would attend.) No German chancellor wants any of Germany’s neighbors to doubt that Germany is still very sorry about 1939 (even if some are rather indifferent). And none wants Germany’s neighbors to fear German aggression today.
For the Poles, this 70th anniversary has a different significance: It’s the first time this particular event has been commemorated by a Polish government that is firmly a member of both the European Union and NATO. The British and the French will be there for the same reason—Central Europe in general and Poland in particular now have a large number of votes in European institutions and generally have to be taken more seriously than they used to be. Top-level U.S. politicians will presumably be absent because they, by contrast, have no special reason to take Central Europeans seriously. Generally speaking, the former Allies prefer to remember the bits of the war—D-Day, for example—that contribute to their memory of the 1945 Triumph of Democracy, preferring to forget that the war’s initial raison d’être, the independence of Poland and the freedom of Central Europe, was not really achieved until 1989.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend for slightly different reasons, or so it would seem. Last weekend, Russian state television ran a long documentary essentially arguing that Stalin was justified in ordering the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Baltic states—and in doing a secret deal with Hitler—on the grounds that Poland itself was in a secret alliance with the Nazis. Putin himself probably will not defend this startling and ahistorical thesis, although—judging from an article he has written for the Polish media—he may well try to “contextualize” the Hitler-Stalin pact by comparing it with other diplomatic decisions. Lately, other Russians have lately expressed similarly positive views of 1939 in a well-coordinated attempt to justify the Hitler-Stalin pact. (If they have any views: The majority of Russians, a recent poll shows, do not know that the USSR invaded Poland in 1939.)
But from the point of view of the Russian ruling elite, such interpretations make sense: By praising Stalin’s aggression toward the USSR’s neighbors 70 years ago, the current leaders help justify Russia’s aggression toward its neighbors today, at least in the eyes of the Russian public. Certainly, they serve to make Russia’s Central European neighbors anxious—precisely the opposite effect of that which Merkel hopes to achieve. Thus can the same event have multiple meanings, thus do the Germans and the Russians express their radically different feelings about their places in Europe—and thus do the anniversary celebrations carry on, every five years, without fail.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Lockerbie Bomber ‘Set Free for Oil’
by Jason Allardyce
The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.
Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.
The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.
The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.
Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “This is the strongest evidence yet that the British government has been involved for a long time in talks over al-Megrahi in which commercial considerations have been central to their thinking.”
Two letters dated five months apart show that Straw initially intended to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, under which British and Libyan prisoners could serve out their sentences in their home country.
In a letter dated July 26, 2007, Straw said he favoured an option to leave out Megrahi by stipulating that any prisoners convicted before a specified date would not be considered for transfer.
Downing Street had also said Megrahi would not be included under the agreement.
Straw then switched his position as Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to insist the Lockerbie bomber was included.
The exploration deal for oil and gas, potentially worth up to £15 billion, was announced in May 2007. Six months later the agreement was still waiting to be ratified.
On December 19, 2007, Straw wrote to MacAskill announcing that the UK government was abandoning its attempt to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement, citing the national interest.
In a letter leaked by a Whitehall source, he wrote: “I had previously accepted the importance of the al-Megrahi issue to Scotland and said I would try to get an exclusion for him on the face of the agreement. I have not been able to secure an explicit exclusion.
“The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage and, in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom, I have agreed that in this instance the [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual.”
Within six weeks of the government climbdown, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalised in May this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
Saif Gadaffi, the colonel’s son, has insisted that negotiation over the release of Megrahi was linked with the BP oil deal: “The fight to get the [transfer] agreement lasted a long time and was very political, but I want to make clear that we didn’t mention Mr Megrahi.
“At all times we talked about the [prisoner transfer agreement]. It was obvious we were talking about him. We all knew that was what we were talking about.
“People should not get angry because we were talking about commerce or oil. We signed an oil deal at the same time. The commerce and oil deals were all with the [prisoner transfer agreement].”
His account is confirmed by other sources. Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Libya and a board member of the Libyan British Business Council, said: “Nobody doubted Libya wanted BP and BP was confident its commitment would go through. But the timing of the final authority to spend real money was dependent on politics.”
Bob Monetti of New Jersey, whose son Rick was among the victims of the 1988 bombing, said: “It’s always been about business.”
BP denied that political factors were involved in the deal’s ratification or that it had stalled during negotiations over the prisoner transfer talks.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman denied there had been a U-turn, but said trade considerations had been a factor in negotiating the prisoner exchange deal. He said Straw had unsuccessfully tried to accommodate the wish of the Scottish government to exclude Megrahi from agreement.
The spokesman claimed the deal was ultimately “academic” because Megrahi had been released on compassionate grounds: “The negotiations on the [transfer agreement] were part of wider negotiations aimed at the normalisation of relations with Libya, which included a range of areas, including trade.
“The exclusion or inclusion of Megrahi would not serve any practical purpose because the Scottish executive always had a veto on whether to transfer him.”
A spokesman for Lord Mandelson said he had not changed his position that the release of Megrahi was not linked to trade deals.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
UK: NM Rothschild Pitches Motorway Privatisation Plan
A radical plan to raise £100 billion by privatising the motorway network has been presented to the three main political parties by NM Rothschild, the influential investment bank.
Rothschild, an architect of several privatisations, made its pitch in the weeks running up to the summer recess on July 21, Whitehall sources said. Bankers told leading politicians that the sale of the roads overseen by the Highways Agency — all motorways and most big trunk roads — could help revive battered public finances.
Toll-road companies and infrastructure funds would compete to operate and maintain stretches of the network.
In one version of the scheme, the government would pay for upkeep through a system of “shadow” tolls. A more radical, and less politically palatable, option would be for companies to charge motorists directly through toll booths or electronic card readers. The RAC Foundation, a motorists’ group, advocated privatisation in a report last week.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Offered ‘Millions’ To Keep Bomber in UK
Revealed: Britain and America’s major disagreement over where Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi should end his days
Scottish ministers went ahead with the controversial decision to send the Lockerbie bomber back to Libya despite an American offer to bankroll his “house arrest” in the UK, it emerged yesterday.
US officials had “very reluctantly” backed a proposal to move Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi from Greenock Prison into some kind of high-security accommodation elsewhere in Scotland, senior government sources on both sides of the Atlantic confirmed. But the Americans had only consented to the option in a desperate attempt to deter the Scottish Executive from releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds — due to his terminal prostate cancer — and sending him home to die.
They also made it clear that the US would be willing to contribute millions of dollars to a complicated house arrest operation that would have demanded round-the-clock security to keep the prisoner under guard and protect him from attack.
But the Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh eventually chose the option of compassionate release, claiming police chiefs had ruled that the security implications of house arrest would be “severe”. However, Strathclyde Police denied last week that they had made any judgement on the proposal, and claimed they had only told the Scottish government how many officers would be needed.
“Our position has consistently been that we wanted to see Megrahi serve out his sentence in Scotland,” an official within the US administration said yesterday. “It got to the stage [during talks over the release] where we would have agreed to anything that would have kept him under Scottish jurisdiction.”
Details of the transatlantic diplomatic efforts that followed the revelation that Megrahi could be freed early came as the convicted bomber called for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
In an interview with The Herald, a Glasgow newspaper, he said he was determined to clear his name — and that an inquiry would help families of the victims know the truth.
“It [an inquiry] would help them to know the truth. The truth never dies. If the UK guaranteed it, I would be very supportive.”
The Americans indicated their willingness to see Megrahi released into “secure custody” in Scotland during preliminary discussions of the case with politicians in Westminster and Scotland over the past two months. The remarkable concession is believed to have been referred to in letters between Washington and Kenny MacAskill, which could be published this week.
A BBC poll published on Friday suggested that releasing the prisoner into “community custody” would have been a hugely unpopular move in Scotland itself.
The survey revealed that more than half of Scots believed that Megrahi should never have been released. However, while just 29 per cent of Scots supported the decision to release Megrahi and send him home, only 15 per cent believed that he should have been moved into house arrest.
Megrahi ultimately served eight years of a minimum 27-year sentence for murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over the town of Lockerbie, southern Scotland, in December 1988.
After Megrahi returned to a hero’s welcome in Tripoli, President Barack Obama said he should at least be subjected to house arrest in Libya during his final days.
A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said yesterday it was up to the US to comment on their own position.
The far-reaching implications of the Megrahi affair were underlined last night, when the Sunday Times claimed letters from the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, to Mr MacAskill prove the British Government had decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make the bomber eligible for return to Libya. The leaked letters reportedly revealed that Mr Straw made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.
| [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Libya: Historian Del Boca, Censored by Those I Defended
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 26 — “I confirm that I no longer want to think about Libya” was the bitter statement by historian Angelo Del Boca — one of the fiercest critics of Italy’s colonial policy — who today condemned Libya’s “censorship” of his latest book ‘One step away from the gallows’ (published by Baldini Castoldi Dalai), about the acts of Mohamed Fekini, one of the heroes of the anti-Italian resistance in Tripoli. And although he was contacted today without success by the Libyan ambassador in Italy, after his article in the Manifesto, he will not give up his protest. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the document sent to me by the Fekini family, in which the Main Press office of the Libyan General Popular Committee for Culture and Information justified the confiscation of the book and the circulation of the text. They are banal and unjustified reasons, like the one which says I praised the Senussi and their role in independence: I would like to point out that Omar Al Muktar, whose image was pinned to Gadaffi’s chest during his visit to Rome, was the Chief of the Senussia and future king of Libya, Mohamed Idris’s deputy at the time of his arrest”. “They are pulling my leg: on one hand Libya is offering me a decoration and on the other hand they have banned my book. Maybe Ambassador Ghadur wanted to apologise, or tell me he didn’t know anything about it. The fact is that there seems to be some confusion among the heads of the Jamahiriya, “ says Del Boca. He points out that the censorship of his books is an old story: “for example, they removed the chapter in my book published by Laterza on the history of the country from fascism to Gaddafi, whom I interviewed at length, in which there were unpleasant things written about the Colonel. I defended Libya at length, as it was right and proper to do. But now I am extremely angry about this censorship”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Preacher’s Moses Story Controversial in Egypt
In the program Min Qasas al-Quran (Stories of the Quran), which has aired on several satellite channels since Ramadan began, Khaled discussed how the Pharaohs slayed male Jews during the time of Moses.The famous preacher prepared the story earlier this year and posted it on his website in May with questions that he asked visitors to respond to.
“Think about these questions,” he wrote on the website. “You will not find their answers in any book. They just need brains and imagination.”
Among the questions posted were those asking: Why did the Pharaoh order male Jews to be killed? What do you think was Moses’ political goal? Was it saving the Israelites or talking the Pharaoh into believing in God? Why didn’t Moses call upon Egyptians to join his faith?
The responses were remarkable because the majority linked the story of Moses to the current political situation in Egypt and viewed it as an incentive to rebel against repressive leaders.
The website discussion was not welcome by state officials, unnamed security sources told Al Arabiya.
A report by a state security officer about Khaled alleged the story was a means of arousing sympathy for Jews as well as attacking the Egyptian government.
Report 314 also referred to Khaled’s other program al-Insan (The Human Being), which tackles difficult issues in poor villages and launches campaigns to assist residents by building them new houses.
The initiative was regarded as a rival to the Alf Qaria (A thousand villages) project, sponsored by Gamal Mubarak, the Egyptian president’s son. The report was then submitted to the Minister of Interior and Khaled was asked to tone down his activities. When he did not, he left for London.
Dr. Mohamed Fathi, a journalist and one of Khaled’s closest friends, denied allegations that the Ministry of Interior was involved in Khaled’s departure and stressed that he intended to return to Egypt during Ramadan.
“He is currently in Saudi Arabia performing the Lesser Pilgrimage,” he told Al Arabiya. “He will also fly to the UAE to take part in the international Quran competition then come to Egypt.”
Not a Jew sympathizerFathi denied that Khaled sympathized with the Jews.
“The program lashes out at Israeli policies, and this will be made clear in the next episodes. There is one episode about al-Aqsa Mosque and how Israelis do not have the right to claim it and another about the way Jews started sneaking into Arab land.”
As for political connotations, Fathi stressed that Khaled’s program has nothing to do with the current political situation in Egypt.
“This is a religious program and the story was mentioned in the Quran. It is just that Moses was sent by God to resist oppression,” he explained.
Fathi pointed out that Khaled uses the latest technology in his program and has thus initiated a significant change on religious shows and stated that the program has received some of the highest viewer rates.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
The NS Profile: Muammar Al-Gaddafi
Shortly before he died in 1970, the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser said: “I rather like Gaddafi. He reminds me of myself when I was that age.” As a teenager growing up in the desert outside Sirte, Gaddafi had been an avid listener to Nasser’s inflammatory Arab nationalist broadcasts on Radio Cairo. His school had even expelled him for organising a student strike in support of the Egyptian leader. Here was the “leader of the Arabs”, who had humiliated the old colonial powers during Suez and brought the promise of unity to the region, giving his blessing. To the young colonel, still not 30, there could have been no greater compliment.
Gaddafi seemed worthy of the older man’s mantle when he came to power in Libya on 1 September 1969, deposing the weak, pro-western king Idris while the monarch was receiving medical treatment abroad. By the end of 1970, he had expelled between 15,000 and 25,000 of the despised Italians who had occupied Libya from 1911-41, removed the US and British military bases, and turned Tripoli’s Catholic cathedral into the Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque.
Forty years on, Gaddafi is the object of international vilification once again. Yet America’s fury at the Lockerbie bomber’s triumphant repatriation does not change the fact that the Libyan leader is now a friend of the west. He has held meetings with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and Silvio Berlusconi greeted him with a warm embrace when his plane touched down at Ciampino Airport in Rome in June. [Note: Gaddafi also shook hands with Barack Obama at the G8 summit in Italy. — Sean] The former “mad dog of the Middle East”, as Ronald Reagan called him, is even due to address the UN General Assembly in New York on 23 September. He has stopped offering sanctuary to and sponsoring terrorists, and traded his WMD programme for the normalisation of relations with the west.
None of this would have been conceivable during Gaddafi’s early years in power. By the late 1960s, oil revenues were rapidly increasing — Libya overtook Kuwait as the world’s fifth-largest exporter in 1969 — and Gaddafi played an important role in the 1973-74 oil crisis in which Opec cut production and raised prices, by leading the embargo on shipments to the US. At the same time as making good on his promises to provide free education and health care (as well as subsidised housing) for Libya’s small population, he could back his ambition for regional hegemony with money, providing subsidies to Egypt and to others he saw as allies in the fight against Israel.
But Gaddafi did not limit his aid to Israel’s enemies. Over time, it seemed any group that styled itself as a freedom movement could call on the Libyan state purse, from the IRA to the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines. Although his dreams of a pan-Arab merger with Tunisia, Egypt and Syria failed, Gaddafi’s influence was felt far and wide. This frequently alarmed his neighbours, as did his erratic behaviour. In 1973, for instance, the QEII set sail from Southampton to Haifa full of Jewish passengers celebrating the 25th anniversary of the State of Israel. According to Nasser’s successor Anwar al-Sadat, Gaddafi ordered an Egyptian submarine temporarily under his command to torpedo the liner: a directive countermanded only when Sadat ordered the sub to return to base in Alexandria.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Arafat Arms Smuggler Imprisoned
An Israeli military court has sentenced a former aide of the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to 20 years in prison for weapons trafficking.
Fuad Shubaki organised and financed an arms shipment on the Karine-A cargo ship that was intercepted by Israeli forces in 2002, the court ruled.
Shubaki, who was head of finance for the Palestinian security services, denied the charges.
He said his job only involved carrying out orders from Mr Arafat.
The Karine-A was stopped by Israeli commandos 500km (300 miles) off the Israeli coast in the Red Sea on 3 January, 2002.
Israel said at the time that the ship was carrying 50 tonnes of Iranian-made weapons, including Katyusha rockets, ammunition and explosives.
The incident threatened attempts by the US to implement a ceasefire between the two sides.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Barry Rubin: Why Recognition of Israel as a Jewish State is a Prime Requirement for Israel-Palestinian Peace
One of Israel’s highest priorities in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA) is recognition by the PA and Arab states as a “Jewish state.” The purpose of this demand is to ensure a lasting peace with Israel as it exists rather than some formal declaration which would thereafter be subverted in every possible way.
[For Israel’s peace plan go here; for a summary of the two sides’ negotiating positions, go here]
Remember, after all, that the Middle East is full of countries which, when you recognize them, you accept their self-definition. Here are some of the names of countries which you accept when you recognize them: The Arab Republic of Egypt, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or even—as in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or Saudi Arabia—designating them as being under the rule of a single family.
The Palestinian Authority’s constitution for a Palestinian state—which will probably have the word “Arab” and possibly “Islamic” in its name—states that country is Arab in nationality and that the official religion is Islam.
But the most important reason is to counter various tricks like that of the “Right of Return,” which is based on a false reading of a single non-binding UN document that the Palestinians and Arabs rejected more than fifty years ago. Note that this demand—that all Palestinians who ever lived in what is now Israel or are descendants of such people—can come and live in Israel. Naturally, there first goal would be to destroy that country and the result would be horrible violence, bloodshed, and instability…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Former Israeli PM Olmert Charged
The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been indicted in three corruption cases, the attorney general’s office says.
Mr Olmert has been embroiled in a number of corruption scandals but denies any wrongdoing in all the cases.
The former head of the Kadima party was replaced as prime minister by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu following general elections in February.
The series of probes was a key factor in Mr Olmert’s resignation last year.
The charges relate to the periods when Mr Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a cabinet minister, but before he became prime minister in 2006.
On Sunday he issued a statement through a spokesman that said: “Olmert is convinced that in the court he will be able to prove his innocence once and for all.”
Talansky case
The office of Attorney General Menahem Mazuz confirmed in a statement he had decided to press charges and that the charge sheet had been presented on Sunday in Jerusalem district court.
The 61-page charge sheet lays out accusations of “fraud, breach of trust, registering false corporate documents and concealing fraudulent earnings”.
Mr Olmert is the first former prime minister in Israeli history to face criminal charges, the office said.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Talks With BG Resumed for Natural Gas
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 17 — Despite the huge offshore natural gas finds near Israel’s Mediterranean coast, and the increased purchases of gas from Egypt, Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) is keeping all its options open. IEC representatives are due to fly to London to continue negotiations with BG Group plc for the purchase of natural gas, Globes online reports. IEC said in response, “The company does not disclose information about its business proceedings.” On the instructions of the government, IEC renewed negotiations with BG Group in early 2009 to buy natural gas from the company’s reserves offshore from Gaza. The talks were renewed before the discoveries at the Tamar and Dalit natural gas fields. BG’s opening position was to double its asking price for natural gas from its previous offer of $4-5 per million British Thermal Units. However energy market sources believe that BG has since softened its position. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Qaida Claims Responsibility for Saudi Prince Assassination Attempt
Al-Qaida on Sunday claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that lightly wounded a senior Saudi prince largely credited with the kingdom’s aggressive anti-terrorism program.
The terrorist organization’s branch in the Arabian Peninsula said Sunday the attacker traveled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia on a plane sent by Saudi’s assistant interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, because the militant said he wanted to surrender.
Prince Mohammed, who sustained minor injuries to his hand when the bomber detonated his explosives, has said he ordered his guards not to search the militant when he arrived at his home in Jiddah for a gathering celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Yemen’s foreign minister said Saturday that the militant came from the Yemeni province of Marib.
| — Hat tip: A Greek Friend | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan: No Water for Inmates on Hunger Strike, HRW Report
(by Mohammad Ben Hussein) (ANSAmed) — AMMAN, AUGUST 26 — The New-York based Human Rights Watch today accused Jordanian police authorities of turning water off from cells of political prisoners to force them break a hunger strike over arduous incarceration conditions in a run down prison near Amman. The group decried police for giving what it said was false promises to improve their human rights record, pointing out to the a recent example of “denying water to 10 Islamist prisoners in Juwaida prison,” said the group in a report posted on its Website. “The authorities have turned off the hunger strikers’ water taps, placed them in solitary confinement, and prevented visits from their families, Human Rights Watch said. A group of political prisoners started a hunger strike a five days ago in an old prison in Amman demanding better conditions and an end to abuse by prison authorities. They were later joined by other political prisoners in Swaqa prison, the largest in the Kingdom. “Denying drinking water to prisoners can amount to cruel and degrading punishment, and can even lead to death, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities also practice other types of maltreatment to prisoners, according to the report, including the use of castor oil to flush out drugs and weapons arriving with new inmates. Prisoners are forced to swallow up to eight castor oil pills and sit naked on buckets to await the rapid onset of violent diarrhea, leaving some of them extremely weak for days,” said the group in a previous report. Prisoners say the practice is still ongoing, but officials in the public security department, the body overlooking prisons deny such accusations. Prisoners in the strike complain of small size of their cells, which hold three or four prisoners and are uncomfortably hot in the summer, as well as unpalatable food, short visiting times, seizure of their books and personal belongings, and the absence of a mosque and an exercise area. “Islamist prisoners in Juwaida are kept in a separate wing and are not allowed to exercise with others, even fellow Islamist prisoners, and spend all of their time, including exercise time, with their two or three cellmates in small-group isolation,” said the group. Prisoners who are isolated are fund to be suffering depression, anxiety, and deteriorating eyesight, physical and psychological symptoms as an effect of small-group isolation, according to HRW. “Jordan has broken its promises on prison reform even on easy-to-fix issues like providing drinking water, stopping the castor oil treatment, and ending isolation,” said Stork. “The treatment appears as inhumane as ever.” Ten of the hunger-striking prisoners were transferred from Swaqa prison to Juwaida but were severely beaten before the transfer, according to family members. It was promised that there would be an investigation. The investigation, conducted by police officials, absolved prison guards of all wrongdoing, saying forensic exams conducted later did not show definite signs of beatings, according to the group. There has been rising calls that police should stop supervising prisons, giving this authority to the judicial powers, following ongoing claims that police often pay little attention to human rights, in prisons and on the streets of the kingdom. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan: Prisoners in Hunger Strike to Protest Abuse
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, AUGUST 25 — Dozens of political prisoners are staging a hunger strike at two prisons to protest against abuse by security guards and improper incarceration conditions, activists and officials said today. The first strike began at a notorious prison inside the capital, Jweideh, where thousands are held behind bars awaiting trial. Islamist activists say police abuse them and deprive them from basic rights. Inmates in Swaqa prison, the largest, also started a strike in support of other prisoners, according to activists and police officials. Human rights activists said they have been denied access to the prisons, despite repeated requests to meet the inmates in order to convey their message to concerned authorities. “Prisoners have sent a letter to their families saying they are being kept in difficult conditions, not allowed to mix with other inmates and refused to pray in the mosque,” said Abdul Kareem Shreideh, an activists from the Arab organization for human rights. According to police spokesman Muhanad Khatib, the strike started three days ago. Jordanian authorities have been criticised by international human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for abusing prisoners, physically and mentally. Last year, hundreds of prisoners in a facility near Amman rioted to protest abuse, leading to the death of many inmates. Most prisoners are Islamist activists, held behind bars following trials at the military run state security court. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Jordan: Regulations to Protect Foreign Domestic Helpers
(ANSAmed) AMMAN, AUGUST 27 — The Jordanian government has moved to curb growing violence and abuse to foreign domestic helpers by endorsing regulations that grants them more rights when working for a local employer, an official said today. In a cabinet meeting, the government set a number of rules to apply to foreign workers including allowing them religious freedom, healthcare, and a one day weekend, according to the official news agency Petra. Domestic helpers will not be required to work more than 10 hours a day, contrary to current practices where most workers end up working between 15 and up to 20 hours a day. Labour Minister Ghazi Shbeikat said the new instruction “will help address several problems that used to appear in the past and will also protect workers’ rights in accordance with international human rights standards. The measures come after an increased number of complaint by foreign expatriates of persistent abuse by local employers, particularly Asians working as domestic helpers. Many countries, including the Philippine, Sri Lanka and Indonesia lodged official complaints to authorities over lack of support by authorities to expatriates and ongoing physical and psychological abuse. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Qaeda Attack on Prince Part of Wider Plot
By Abdullah Al-Orefij
The suicide bomber was recruited by Yemeni Nasser Al-Wohaishi, known also by the nom de guerre Abu Baseer, the sources said.
The suicide bomber was recruited by Yemeni Nasser Al-Wohaishi, known also by the nom de guerre Abu Baseer, the sources said.
Al-Wohaishi is the head of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which had announced in an Internet posting last January the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al-Qaeda.
The merger was seen by analysts as an attempt to consolidate after the Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda was practically wiped out following a vigorous counter-terrorism campaign led by Prince Muhammad.
According to Okaz sources, the bomber who detonated himself only a meter away from the Prince was part of a terrorist cell formed to target oil installations and public figures.
The sources said the bomber stayed in an apartment on Sari Street, northwest of Jeddah, Thursday.
The sources said the bomber stayed in an apartment on Sari Street, northwest of Jeddah, Thursday.
He had slipped into the Kingdom from Mareb, east of Sana’a, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr Al-Qirbi told The Associated Press.
“He was in Yemen,” said Al-Qirbi. “He claimed that he was going to hand himself over to Saudi authorities and make a statement to his followers to abandon Al-Qaeda principles.”
Okaz sources said the bomb was implanted in the attacker’s rectum, which could explain why he refused to drink coffee at the Prince’s Court.
The bomber had sent word he wanted to surrender personally to the Prince who had ordered that he not be searched to encourage others to come forward.
At the Prince’s home in Jeddah’s north Obhur beach area Thursday night around 11.30 P.M., the attacker was in line to enter a gathering of well-wishers for Ramadan when he blew himself up. The Prince was lightly injured in the attack. The bomber died.
Saudi authorities have so far not announced the identity of the attacker who along with his brother was on the Interior Ministry’s list of 85 most wanted militants.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has made several unsuccessful attempts to strike inside the Kingdom.
In April, Saudi authorities discovered a cave in the remote Saudi mountains near the Yemeni border that was a way station for the militants. Saudi police seized 11 suspected Saudi militants planning armed robberies, kidnappings and other attacks. Earlier this month Saudi authorities announced the arrest of 44 militants and the seizure of explosives, detonators and guns.
Thursday’s bombing was the first assassination attempt against a member of the royal family in decades and was also the first significant attack by militants in the Kingdom since 2006.
Saudi Arabia has waged a fierce crackdown on Al-Qaeda militants in the country. It has killed or captured most of their leaders after a string of attacks that started in 2003.
However, Thursday attack raises concerns that Yemen’s instability could allow Al-Qaeda to carry out cross-border attacks. The Yemeni army is on a near three-week-long offensive on strongholds of Zaidi rebels, also known as Huthis, in lawless swathes around Saada city in the Mareb region. The security forces are stretched by the tribal revolt in the north and separatist unrest in the south. — Okaz/ SG/ Agencies Qaeda attack on Prince part of wider plot
By Abdullah Al-Orefij
The suicide bomber was recruited by Yemeni Nasser Al-Wohaishi, known also by the nom de guerre Abu Baseer, the sources said.
The suicide bomber was recruited by Yemeni Nasser Al-Wohaishi, known also by the nom de guerre Abu Baseer, the sources said.
Al-Wohaishi is the head of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which had announced in an Internet posting last January the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al-Qaeda.
The merger was seen by analysts as an attempt to consolidate after the Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda was practically wiped out following a vigorous counter-terrorism campaign led by Prince Muhammad.
According to Okaz sources, the bomber who detonated himself only a meter away from the Prince was part of a terrorist cell formed to target oil installations and public figures.
The sources said the bomber stayed in an apartment on Sari Street, northwest of Jeddah, Thursday.
The sources said the bomber stayed in an apartment on Sari Street, northwest of Jeddah, Thursday.
He had slipped into the Kingdom from Mareb, east of Sana’a, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr Al-Qirbi told The Associated Press.
“He was in Yemen,” said Al-Qirbi. “He claimed that he was going to hand himself over to Saudi authorities and make a statement to his followers to abandon Al-Qaeda principles.”
Okaz sources said the bomb was implanted in the attacker’s rectum, which could explain why he refused to drink coffee at the Prince’s Court.
The bomber had sent word he wanted to surrender personally to the Prince who had ordered that he not be searched to encourage others to come forward.
At the Prince’s home in Jeddah’s north Obhur beach area Thursday night around 11.30 P.M., the attacker was in line to enter a gathering of well-wishers for Ramadan when he blew himself up. The Prince was lightly injured in the attack. The bomber died.
Saudi authorities have so far not announced the identity of the attacker who along with his brother was on the Interior Ministry’s list of 85 most wanted militants.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has made several unsuccessful attempts to strike inside the Kingdom.
In April, Saudi authorities discovered a cave in the remote Saudi mountains near the Yemeni border that was a way station for the militants. Saudi police seized 11 suspected Saudi militants planning armed robberies, kidnappings and other attacks. Earlier this month Saudi authorities announced the arrest of 44 militants and the seizure of explosives, detonators and guns.
Thursday’s bombing was the first assassination attempt against a member of the royal family in decades and was also the first significant attack by militants in the Kingdom since 2006.
Saudi Arabia has waged a fierce crackdown on Al-Qaeda militants in the country. It has killed or captured most of their leaders after a string of attacks that started in 2003.
However, Thursday attack raises concerns that Yemen’s instability could allow Al-Qaeda to carry out cross-border attacks. The Yemeni army is on a near three-week-long offensive on strongholds of Zaidi rebels, also known as Huthis, in lawless swathes around Saada city in the Mareb region. The security forces are stretched by the tribal revolt in the north and separatist unrest in the south.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
The Saudi Plan is Really the US Plan
The Saudi Plan was introduced prior to the Gulf War. After the war began, the Roadmap was unveiled which included the Saudi Plan and now we are stuck with it.
In the article which follows written just after the Roadmap was introduced, I reasoned that the Saudi Plan was really the State Department Plan negotiated for the Saudi support for the US invasion.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
India: In Wake of Election Defeat, The BJP is Crumbling
The party is losing popularity among the young and the urban middle class, where before it was strong and which represent India in the 21st century. In order to regain popularity among these social strata and devise a winning strategy the party should concentrate on the future and not look back. The crux of its relationship with RSS.
Mumbai (AsiaNews) — After the defeat in the general election in India, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) kept postponing a discussion on the causes of the defeat till the chintan baithak (introspection session) of last week in Simla, but the result had been a series of expulsions and resignation of the critics.
On the eve of the meeting in Simla a senior member, Jaswant Singh, was expelled for writing a book praising Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. During the meeting, Sudheendra Kulkarni, (former political aide to senior BJP leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani) resigned from the party for ideological differences. After the meeting, former minister Arun Shourie launched a furious attack on the entire top brass of the party and called for the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) to “bombard the party headquarters” and replace the brass by 10-15 nominees of its choice. While Shourie hopes for a takeover by the RSS, Jaswant Singh says that the party should cut the umbilical cord with RSS.
After the defeat of the party in Rajasthan the central leadership had asked the former chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, to resign as leader of the opposition in the local parliament, but she refused and called a meeting of all her supporters raising the chance of a separation. Encouraged by this opposition also BC Khandhuri, who was asked to resign as chief minister of Uttarkhand after the defeat in the election, accused the leadership of acting in haste and making him a scapegoat. For his part, the leader of RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, said that there is “too much factionalism in BJP and it should be stopped”.
When Jaswant Singh was asked to comment on the different measures, for him, “expulsion”, and for Shourie, “a simple clarification”, he said: “I have never been a member of RSS. I would like the BJP to be a party of the 21st century. But there are obviously double standards” and he also dared to compare the BJP to the Ku Klux Klan. “The BJP increasingly resembles a ship without a compass. The captain seems to have lost control and the crew is restless”
The BJP has a history of ambitious state leaders taking on the central leadership and splitting the party. Stalwarts like Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharati couldn’t make a mark as independent leaders but their rebellion hurt the party in their stronghold.
Internal criticism within the BJP have brought out that it is loosing popularity among youth as well as among urban middle classes, two segments where it had been strong earlier and which represent the emergent India of the 21st century. To reconnect with these segments and devise a winning strategy, it needs to focus on the future rather than obsess with the past.
After two consecutive defeats which also signal the end of the Vajpayee-Advani era, the BJP has to take decisions of policy and of leadership. Confronted with adversity, ideological parties, like the BJP, are often inclined to retreat in their political ghettos. The assumption is that the fall in electoral support is linked to a loss of ideological purity. But India is changing. There is a sense of self-confidence among the youth and a belief that their country can face the world on its own term.
A political observer, Swapan Dasgupta, gives these suggestions: “The BJP must candidly recognize that assertive Hindutva marked by hate speeches and moral policing is seen as ugly mirror images of the Taliban. Today, Hindutva has become an etymological obstacle in the BJP’s path, diverting attention from the party’s impressive record in governance. The party should consider freezing it in the way Jawaharlal Nehru quietly shelved Gandhism after independence. Enlightened nationalism, good governance and modernity must become the party’s priorities”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Jibril: “Mastermind” Of the Massacres Hotels in Jakarta, Is Linked to Al Qaeda
Confirmation from the head of the Indonesian police that the man may soon be indicted as a “suspected terrorist”. Jibril, trained in Pakistan, dealt with terrorist recruitment and fundraising. International Crisis Group report: the terror network in Jakarta “widespread and complex.”
Jakarta (AsiaNews) — The Indonesian terrorist Mohamad Jibril Abdurrahman, August 26 arrested on suspicion of being the “brains” behind the massacres in Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotel in Jakarta on 17 July, is linked to al Qaeda. It was revealed today, by the Indonesian police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri, who explained that the man — also known as Muhamad Ricky Ardhan — is an “ex-member of the international terror network” of Osama Bin Laden.
“ Yes, it is right,” admitted the chief of police, after Friday prayers, spurred by questions from journalists. “ However, — continued general Danuri — all these alleged statement should be based on legal evidence”. Asked to what is, at present, the legal status of Jibril, he annotated: “Inshallah (God willing, ed), he may soon be declared a terrorist suspect.”
Investigators also believe that Jibril — with time spent in Pakistan, where he received training — is an agent of the wealthy Saudi smuggler Ali Al Khalil. He apparently received a large sum of money to finance attacks on the hotels from Saudi tycoon, which cost the lives of nine people, in addition to 50 wounded. Earlier this week the security forces arrested Ali, who is under the investigation of the anti-terrorism special units.
Jibril Ali and thanks to huge amounts of money, also dealt with the recruitment of suicide bombers. Terrorists targets included Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Anonymous sources reveal that Jibril, in the years spent in Pakistan, joined a local terrorist group called Al Ghurab, known to be a mediator between al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia.
The charges against Jibril have sparked harsh reactions from family and colleagues at Arrahmah.com, a web portal committed to the propaganda of radical Islam of which he is director. Fackhry Mohammad, chief editor of the online journal, called the allegation “ridiculous” and stressed that “it must be attested by evidence and not based on suspicion”.
In a document released today the International Crisis Group (ICG) reports that the terror network in Jakarta is more diffused and complex “than first thought”. Experts say that it is very easy for the Malaysian terrorist Noordin Moh Top, one most wanted by the police, to recruit “potential suicide bombers in every corner of the country.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: No Military Campaign Against the Taliban
Despite strenuous entreaties by top U.S. officials, Pakistan has abandoned plans to mount a military offensive against the terrorist group responsible for a two-year campaign of suicide bombings across the country. Although the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been in disarray since an Aug. 5 missile strike from a CIA-operated drone killed its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani military has concluded that a ground attack on its strongholds in South Waziristan would be too difficult.
The Pakistani military has choked off main roads leading out of South Waziristan, and the country’s fighter jets have been pounding targets from the air (an operation Islamabad insists it will continue). But that falls short of the military campaign the U.S. desires. Instead, Pakistani authorities are hoping to exploit divisions within the TTP to prize away some factions, while counting on the CIA’s drones to take out Baitullah’s successors. (See pictures of refugees fleeing the fighting in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.)
U.S. counterterrorism officials worry that a failure to capitalize on the post-Baitullah confusion within the TTP will allow its new leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, to consolidate his position and reorganize the group. Officials in Washington say special envoy Richard Holbrooke and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal have pressed the Pakistanis to strike while the iron is hot. But after initial promises to launch a ground offensive in South Waziristan, the Pakistanis have backed off.
A top Pakistani general, Nadeem Ahmed, recently said preparation for such an operation could take up to two months. Now there will be no ground assault at all, according to a senior Pakistani politician known to have strong military ties. Instead, the politician tells TIME, the military will try to buy off some TTP factions through peace deals.
This alarms U.S. officials, who point out that terrorist leaders have previously used peace deals to expand their influence. Such deals have been “abject failures that at the end of the day have made the security situation in parts of Pakistan worse,” says a U.S. counterterrorism official. “Why the Pakistani government keeps returning to this strategy is a mystery.” (See pictures of Pakistan beneath the surface.)
A senior Pakistani military official tells TIME a ground operation in the mountainous wilds of South Waziristan would be too difficult and would risk triggering a “tribal uprising” in a region over which Islamabad has little control.
That assessment is shared by some Pakistan experts in Washington, who say the country’s military, despite some success against militants in the Swat Valley, simply doesn’t have the ability to confront the TTP head-on. A ground operation would leave the Pakistani army “with its nose bloodied,” says Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations. Having “come out of Swat looking reasonably good,” Pakistan’s generals don’t want to risk “taking a morale hit.” (Read “Are Pakistan’s Taliban Leaders Fighting Among Themselves?”)
But the experts — like some U.S. officials — suspect the Pakistani military lacks the desire to eliminate the TTP entirely. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, who conducted the Obama Administration’s review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, says the military may simply want “to get the TTP back to where it was two years ago — a malleable force that doesn’t attack the Pakistani state, and particularly not the army.” A somewhat tame TTP is a useful bogeyman “to keep civilians appreciative of the need for the army to be getting resources and priority attention,” Riedel adds.
For the Obama Administration, the Pakistani military’s reluctance to take on the TTP doesn’t bode well for the pursuit of U.S. interests. Washington would like Islamabad to confront the groups that pose a direct threat to NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan — the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. But “it’s not clear that the Pakistanis are prepared to pay more than lip service to that,” says Riedel.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Says Pakistan Made Changes to Missiles Sold for Defense
The United States has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, according to senior administration and Congressional officials.
[…]
While American officials say that the weapon in the latest dispute is a conventional one — based on the Harpoon antiship missiles that were sold to Pakistan by the Reagan administration as a defensive weapon in the cold war — the subtext of the argument is growing concern about the speed with which Pakistan is developing new generations of both conventional and nuclear weapons.
“There’s a concerted effort to get these guys to slow down,” one senior administration official said. “Their energies are misdirected.”
[…]
American military and intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistan has modified the Harpoon antiship missiles that the United States sold the country in the 1980s, a move that would be a violation of the Arms Control Export Act. Pakistan has denied the charge, saying it developed the missile itself. The United States has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions, another violation of United States law that the Obama administration has protested.
Whatever their origin, the missiles would be a significant new entry into Pakistan’s arsenal against India. They would enable Pakistan’s small navy to strike targets on land, complementing the sizable land-based missile arsenal that Pakistan has developed. That, in turn, would be likely to spur another round of an arms race with India that the United States has been trying, unsuccessfully, to halt. “The focus of our concern is that this is a potential unauthorized modification of a maritime antiship defensive capability to an offensive land-attack missile,” said another senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter involves classified information.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Costa Rican President Calls for New Constitution
President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica has joined the trend in Latin America of calling for a new constitution that would expand executive powers and get rid of “unnecessary checks” on the president’s authority. Although Arias has less than 9 months left in office and can’t run for reelection, his brother and current minister of the presidency — a primer minister of sorts — has openly said he’s interested in running for president in 2014. A new constitution with expanded executive powers would fit him just fine.
Arias’ call has been received with broad skepticism. La Nación, Costa Rica’s leading newspaper, said that trying to make the government more efficient through a constitutional convention was like “killing a mouse with cannon fire.” The newspaper also said that the idea of dismantling the checks and balances on executive power sounds like an effort to create an “imperial presidency.” Maybe we should send our colleague Gene Healy to study the case.
However, the most disturbing aspect of Arias’ call was his harsh criticism of the media. Borrowing from the script of Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Arias described news outlets as “corporations interested in making a profit” that don’t necessarily pursue the “public good.” He asked the media to “tone down” its criticism of government officials, and said that journalists “should understand their role within a higher framework.” He complained that news outlets claim to represent the public interest, without any control or accountability.
That a politician with a thin skin complains about media criticism is hardly news. However, the fact that Arias did it while calling for a new constitution that would change the institutional and legal framework of Costa Rica (including the role of the media) should be interpreted as a threat to freedom of the press.
Most people outside Costa Rica see Arias as an accomplished democrat who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace to Central America during the 1980s. Most recently he attempted to mediate the conflict in Honduras after Manuel Zelaya was (legally) removed from office. However, many people in Costa Rica fret about what they perceive as an increasingly controlling style of governing by Arias and his brother, intimidating the media, bullying the opposition, crowding key government posts with allies and cronies, and now hoping for a dynastical succession in 2014.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Noam Chomsky in Venezuela: ‘A Better World is Being Created’
U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally televised forum on Monday.
Chomsky is well known in Venezuela for his critiques of U.S. imperialism and support for the progressive political changes underway in Venezuela and other Latin American countries in recent years. President Chavez regularly references Chomsky in speeches and makes widely publicized recommendations of Chomsky’s 2003 book, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.
“Hegemony or survival; we opt for survival,” said Chavez in a press conference to welcome Chomsky. He compared Chomsky’s thesis to that of German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in the early 1900s, “Socialism or Barbarism,” and referred to Chomsky as “one of the greatest defenders of peace, one of the greatest pioneers of a better world.”
Through an interpreter, Chomsky responded, “I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that’s easy. What’s harder is to create a better world… and what’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created.”
During Monday’s forum, which was broadcast on the state television station VTV, Chomsky pointed out that the ongoing coup in Honduras, which began on June 28th, is the third coup the United States has supported in Latin America so far this century, following the coup against Chavez in 2002 and Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004…
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Frattini: ‘Saving Lives an Italian Priority’
(ANSAmed) — ROME, AUGUST 24 — Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has made use of Rimini ‘Comunione e Liberazione’ meeting to reiterate the government’s line on emigration, responding to journalists’ questions after the tragedy off Lampedusa in which 73 migrants are thought to have died, saying that the Italian government “profoundly believes that human life is worth more than anything else and that, when it is in danger, one must do all one can to save it — since rescue operations cannot be renounced nor put in question”. Frattini underscored that in Europe “Italy is the country which is most involved in saving lives at sea”, with “thousands being saved only last year. Immigration policy is not the same as the rescue of human beings. The latter is an absolute duty. Immigration policy is much more complex and means ensuring countries from which immigrants come, especially those of Sub-Saharan Africa, an alternative to immigration due to desperation”. A true policy on immigration, said the foreign minister, must ensure those fleeing from wars and desperation a future of development, including “collaboration with countries of origin and transit, and that there be regulation of the immigration flows.” The alternative, is “to leave desperate people at the mercy of human trafficking, slavery of the XXI century.” Frattini also spoke on contact between Italy and Malta as concerns immigration. Italy continues to believe that the talks “with Malta for the past ten year” to restrict the Maltese-controlled area of the sea are “indispensable for the entire international community”. Despite the “no” in no uncertain terms sent in a letter by Malta’s foreign minister, Tonio Borg, Frattini said that this belief has been held by the Italian government for over a decade, even though “to negotiate both sides need to be involved”. The minister said that “our patrol boats are already monitoring the part of the sea between Libya, Malta and Italy, and Italians are by far the ones who have saved the most lives at sea. However, it is clear that beyond immediate rescue operations there are international obligations to be met. It is a Maltese zone — called, appropriately, a ‘search and rescue’ one — which must be covered by Valletta and which is the size of almost the entire Italian territory, 250,000 square kilometres of sea.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Since May Irregulars Down by 92%, Minister
(ANSAmed) — CORTINA D’AMPEZZO (BELLUNO, ITALY), AUGUST 26 — Since May 5, when the first repulsion of migrants took place, 1,345 irregular immigrants have arrived in Italy, said Italy’s Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni, “In the same period of last year, there were 14,220. This is a reduction of 92%”. “Of these,” Maroni went on, citing 2008 figures “14 thousand had made their way from Libya. This year, around 1,300 have come via Libya. This means that our accord with Libya is working excellently: it works, and the results are there to be seen”. “Repulsion,” the Interior Minister noted, “is the same as saying taking the irregular migrants back to their place of departure. Repatriation means sending them back to their countries of origin, with all the bureaucracy that involves. And at our own cost”. In Maroni’s view: “it is necessary to give the European Union an alarm call so that it does what it has not done. Frattini is an excellent minister. Yes, and he has made himself heard. Together wéll work as a team when we go to the countries to get an immigration agreement signed”. Maroni concluded: “The EU has to make common regulations to prevent countries warring with those who repulse the most migrants. And furthermore, the principle of solidarity between countries should be applied”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: 1st Immigrant Sentenced, Fined But Not Deported
(ANSAmed) — FLORENCE, AUGUST 25 — The first sentencing (reported) for the new crime of illegal immigration has been issued by a justice of the peace in Florence against a Jordanian citizen, who has been fined 5,000 euros. The judge upheld the public prosecutor’s request and inflicted a monetary punishment on the non-European immigrant instead of opting to deport him. At the moment the immigrant is being held in the Sollicciano jail after being arrested on August 15 by Italian semi-militarised police (Carabinieri) for having stolen a bicycle — a crime for which, in different judicial proceedings, he plea bargained over the past few days for three-months in jail. Yesterday the Jordanian was escorted to the hearing by penitentiary police with his court-assigned lawyer. He told the judge that he had been in Italy for four years and that he worked in a leather goods shop owned by his cousin. In light of this sentencing to pecuniary damages, doubts remain as to possible deportation proceedings which may be set in motion after he serves his sentence in jail for theft. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: A Resource to be Managed, Bankitalia Governor
(ANSAmed) — RIMINI, AUGUST 26 — Italy has a resource at its disposal of “potentially major significance for our economy: the availability of foreign labour”. The Governor of the Bank of Italy, Mario Draghi, was addressing the Meeting dell’Amicizia di Rimini. He continued with the warning: “we will be able to use it only if the serious problems it poses in terms of social and cultural integration are managed”. With “4.3 million” foreigners, that is estimating those who are not officially registered and are here without permits of abode, Draghi noted that “the foreign nationals in Italy are younger on average and less skilled than are Italians, but they play a greater role on the job market and often do work that is important both for Italian society and for the country’s economy, even though it is low-paid”. Furthermore, said Draghi, they do not pose a threat to Italians’ jobs: “There are no appreciable negative consequences for the job prospects of Italians: this result emerges from the overwhelming majority of studies undertaken in countries with high rates of immigration”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Why U.S. Is Flying Immigrants Back to Mexico
Illegal immigrants are being flown deep into Mexico to discourage dangerous desert crossings in the heat as well as to cut down on re-entry, federal officials say.
Twice-daily flights from Tucson to Mexico City are intended to keep immigrants away from border towns where they would likely run into smugglers who want to sneak them back into the U.S.
“This is where the probability of losing their lives can really increase. We offer that opportunity for them to get out of that cycle,” said John Torres, a special adviser to the assistant secretary of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security flights began last week for the sixth consecutive summer and will end Sept. 28.
Tucson is the only spot in this country where the flights depart. Arizona is the busiest illegal entry point into the United States.
Since 2004, more than 82,000 Mexicans have been returned as part of the repatriation program. The number, however, represents just a small portion of illegal immigrants in this country.
Hundreds of illegal immigrants die crossing the border each year from heat exposure, vehicle and train accidents, fatigue, banditry and other causes.
Smugglers, who can earn an average of $1,500 for each customer, use remote and dangerous migration routes where enforcement is weaker, a tactic that contributes to the deaths.
The Mexican government picks up some costs of the program, while the U.S. pays $6 million under a contract with carrier Miami Air.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Patriotism or Prejudice? Teen Suspended for Criticizing Muslim Student
SPRING HILL, FL — While showing off her JROTC uniform, 16-year-old Heather Lawrence told us joining the army is her next big goal, to follow in the footsteps of her father and grandfather.
“Our flag represents everything that our country is,” she said.
The teen says an issue over the American flag is why she was written up and handed a five-day suspension from Springstead High School this week for criticizing a Muslim student. Heather says the other girl was sitting down during the Pledge of Allegiance.
“You know, I made a not-so-kind remark, and I do sincerely apologize for referring to the thing on her head because that had nothing to do with it.” Heather told us, “But I told her, ‘Why don’t she act like she’s proud to be an American?’“
Despite the open apology to the girl who wears a hijab, Ahmed Bedier, President of the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human Rights Council, says Heather’s actions were harmful and the school was right for taking action.
“But whether standing up or not, this issue’s not about the pledge of allegiance or anything else.” Bedier said. “This is about bullying and it’s about discrimination.”
Bedier says the Muslim student’s family contacted him and claims she did stand up for the pledge.
Meanwhile, Hernando school board member Pat Fagan says he doesn’t want to comment about the school’s decision to suspend Heather, but told us people, in general, should think before they speak.
The Muslim student walked away from Heather’s confrontation. A school staff member then reported the incident.
Heather’s dad, Mark, told us his family is not racist nor prejudice and hopes school officials will reduce his daughter’s punishment.
“Respect one’s rights is the most important thing today for us as Americans to be appreciative of our nation,” Fagan said.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Mandela Backs Lockerbie Decision
Nelson Mandela has backed the Scottish Government’s controversial decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
The former South African president has expressed appreciation for the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
US President Barack Obama is among those who have criticised the decision to free Megrahi, who is terminally ill.
But Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said there was huge support internationally for the move.
Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, was released eight years into his 27-year sentence for the murder of 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103.
Hundreds of people were waiting in Libya to welcome Megrahi home as his plane landed in Tripoli, some of them waving Saltire flags.
Mr Mandela’s support came in a letter to the Scottish Government from Prof Jake Gerwel, chairman of the Mandela Foundation.
“Mr Mandela sincerely appreciates the decision to release Mr al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds,” it stated.
‘Humanitarian concern’
The letter went on: “Mr Mandela played a central role in facilitating the handover of Mr al-Megrahi and his fellow accused to the United Nations in order for them to stand trial under Scottish law in the Netherlands.
“His interest and involvement continued after the trial after visiting Mr al-Megrahi in prison.
“The decision to release him now, and allow him to return to Libya, is one which is therefore in line with his wishes.”
Responding to the letter, Mr Salmond told the BBC News Channel: “We have seen today that Nelson Mandela has come out firmly in support, not just as the towering figure of humanitarian concern across the world in the last generation, but of course somebody who brokered the agreement that led to the Lockerbie trial in the first place.
“Many people believe that you will achieve more in this world through acts of mercy than you will through acts of retribution.”
Mr Mandela visited Megrahi in Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison in 2002.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
2 comments:
Great news feed. I will link to your Sweden gender equality in my afternoon post tomorrow. I found you through They Say/We Say's blog. I can see you work hard to put this all together.
Pakistan: No Military Campaign Against the Taliban
Now there will be no ground assault at all, according to a senior Pakistani politician known to have strong military ties. Instead, the politician tells TIME, the military will try to buy off some TTP factions through peace deals.
This alarms U.S. officials, who point out that terrorist leaders have previously used peace deals to expand their influence. Such deals have been “abject failures that at the end of the day have made the security situation in parts of Pakistan worse,” says a U.S. counterterrorism official. “Why the Pakistani government keeps returning to this strategy is a mystery.”.
It's a "mystery" only if you actually believe that Pakistan really wants to end terrorism. As the Ivy League cluster of this world's Islamic terrorist training facilities, Pakistan's only concern is over how many of their military brass and politicians end up taking the hit.
The rest of our world and Pakistan's own population are all fair game and the sooner this Islamic cesspit is dismantled and divided between its neighbors, the better off all of us will be.
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