A representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA) says that women in the Philippines are being driven into prostitution by climate change. Women in coastal areas are particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change.In other news, Gibson’s guitar plant in Nashville, Tennessee was raided by federal agents on the suspicion that the company might be using wood from endangered species of trees to make guitars. At the same time, sheriff’s deputies in Delaware County, Oklahoma seized 36 pounds of opium that were sent to the post office by drug smugglers.
Thanks to AP, Archonix, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, JP, LN, Lurker from Tulsa, Paul Green, Steen, TV, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Société Générale Tells Clients How to Prepare for Potential ‘Global Collapse’
Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible “global economic collapse” over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction.
In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.
Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.
‘Debt levels risk another crisis’ “As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse,” said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.
Under the French bank’s “Bear Case” scenario (the gloomiest of three possible outcomes), the dollar would slide further and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would tumble again. Oil would fall back to $50 in 2010.
Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade.
(UK figures look low because debt started from a low base. Mr Ferman said the UK would converge with Europe at 130pc of GDP by 2015 under the bear case).
The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. “High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt,” it said.
Inflating debt away might be seen by some governments as a lesser of evils.
If so, gold would go “up, and up, and up” as the only safe haven from fiat paper money. Private debt is also crippling. Even if the US savings rate stabilises at 7pc, and all of it is used to pay down debt, it will still take nine years for households to reduce debt/income ratios to the safe levels of the 1980s.
The bank said the current crisis displays “compelling similarities” with Japan during its Lost Decade (or two), with a big difference: Japan was able to stay afloat by exporting into a robust global economy and by letting the yen fall. It is not possible for half the world to pursue this strategy at the same time.
SocGen advises bears to sell the dollar and to “short” cyclical equities such as technology, auto, and travel to avoid being caught in the “inherent deflationary spiral”. Emerging markets would not be spared. Paradoxically, they are more leveraged to the US growth than Wall Street itself. Farm commodities would hold up well, led by sugar.
Mr Fermon said junk bonds would lose 31pc of their value in 2010 alone. However, sovereign bonds would “generate turbo-charged returns” mimicking the secular slide in yields seen in Japan as the slump ground on. At one point Japan’s 10-year yield dropped to 0.40pc. The Fed would hold down yields by purchasing more bonds. The European Central Bank would do less, for political reasons.
SocGen’s case for buying sovereign bonds is controversial. A number of funds doubt whether the Japan scenario will be repeated, not least because Tokyo itself may be on the cusp of a debt compound crisis.
Mr Fermon said his report had electrified clients on both sides of the Atlantic. “Everybody wants to know what the impact will be. A lot of hedge funds and bankers are worried,” he said.
| — Hat tip: AP | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Awlaki and New McCarthyism
Witch-Hunt Against UK Muslim Organizations
In the wake of the tragic killing of 13 US soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, a number of Britain-based think tanks, newspapers, and websites have sought to capitalize on reports saying that the suspected gunman, Nidal Malik Hasan, was allegedly in contact with a well-known Yemeni imam called Anwar Al-Awlaki. The purpose of such focus is to engage in a modern version of a McCarthyite witch-hunt against leading UK Islamic organizations and Muslim individuals.
History of McCarthyism
During a period in US history known as the Second Red Scare, which lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, US Senator Joseph McCarthy achieved notoriety for his aggressive anti-Communist pursuits. Thousands of Americans were hauled before investigatory panels and accused of being Communists or Communist sympathizers, despite the often very questionable or inconclusive evidence. Many innocent people’s careers were destroyed as a result.
The term McCarthyism has come to describe the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty or subversion against others without proper regard for evidence.
Al-Awlaki and Fort Hood Suspect
Following the Fort Hood shootings, Al-Awlaki used his website to post a message praising the suspected killer as follows:
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
‘Anti-Gunner’ OSHA Nominee Advances Without Questions
‘By fiat could outlaw firearms in workplaces, parking lots across America’
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today approved without question and without comment the nomination of David Michaels, the chief of a George-Soros-funded Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, as the next head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
[…]
Obama’s nomination of Michaels, a George Washington University professor, drew reaction from Walter Olson at Overlawyered.com.
Olson said Michaels’ strong views on firearms are “by no means irrelevant to the agenda of an agency like OSHA, because once you start viewing private gun ownership as a public health menace, it begins to seem logical to use the powers of government to urge or even require employers to forbid workers from possessing guns on company premises, up to and including parking lots, ostensibly for the protection of co-workers.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
CAIR Asks McDonnell for More on Robertson, As Connolly Weighs in
Washington Post (blog) — Washington,DC,USA
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for CAIR, said the national group is working with Muslims in Virginia to decide how to proceed on the issue. …
Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell continues to face calls for him to publicly repudiate donor and ally Pat Robertson today, even after a statement issued Tuesday evening in which his spokesman commented generally about the importance of the Muslim community to Virginia.
A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday that McDonnell’s comment “a good statement as far as it went,” but said he did not believe it went far enough in directly disavowing Robertson’s remarks.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for CAIR, said the national group is working with Muslims in Virginia to decide how to proceed on the issue. But he said he continues to believe McDonnell needs to make a clear statement indicating he does not agree with Robertson’s stand on Islam.
Robertson said last week that Islam is “not a religion” but a “violent political system” and called for Muslims to be treated like communists or members of a fascist party.
“[McDonnell’s] sending the message that he wants it both ways—he wants the support of a Muslim-basher. And he wants to work with Virginia Muslims. I think those two things are incompatible,” Hooper said.
Meanwhile, the political implications of the Robertson remarks are growing. U.S. Rep Gerry Connolly (D) has put out a statement Wednesday calling on Robertson to apologize for his comments. Connolly said he has heard from hundreds of constituents, both Muslims and others, offended by Robertson’s comments, which came in response to the Fort Hood shootings on an episode of the 700 Club last week.
“My feeling is that if public officials don’t speak out about this, our silence might be misconstrued,” Connolly said. “I, for one, am not going to be silent in the face of that kind of unbridled intolerance.”
And does Connolly believe that McDonnell needs to speak out as well?
“I feel as a public official, I have a duty. I have acted on my duty. Other public officials have to take their own counsel,” he said.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Dangerous Times
Obviously, there is blind party allegiance aplenty on both sides of the political divide in our nation. However, it is apparent that the upsurge in popular concern for the sharp turn our government has taken toward the left (courtesy of the current administration) is occurring among the majority of non-dogmatists in between.
Efforts to characterize all those who are troubled as members of the radical right, while disingenuous, are not entirely surprising. The success the Obama administration (as well as the left in general) has had, in concert with an ideologically kindred establishment press, in promulgating the most outrageous and dangerous fabrications and falsehoods cannot be underestimated. This is demonstrated by the fact that a great many intelligent and conscientious Americans remain quite oblivious, even regarding the administration’s more overt machinations.
The reason for this upsurge in popular concern is that a considerable number of Americans realize the magnitude of the change that is taking place (no Obama marketing pun intended) and its potential for detrimental, life-changing outcomes. As such, the rebellion against it has been the sort of phenomenon unseen since the Civil Rights Movement. More importantly, these citizens are quickly identifying and openly discussing the administration’s maneuvers, which flies in the face of the left’s appraisal of the American people as vapid and dull. More than one might surmise are seeing clearly through to the ugly endgame.
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I could go on, but you get the idea. The Obama administration has made comprehensive and treacherous moves in practically every area of domestic and foreign policy, despite the apparent dangers associated with riling such a large segment of Americans. This is their day; they realize that if they fail to employ as many of their oppressive, destructive schemes as possible before the midterm elections next year, they might never get the chance.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Gibson Guitar Plant in Nashville Raided by Feds
Guitar maker cooperates in exotic wood probe
An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world’s rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar ‘s manufacturing plant, but no arrests.
Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson’s Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.
Gibson issued a statement saying it is “fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood.” The company said it did nothing wrong.
Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson’s plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law…
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
Hasan’s Supervisor Warned Army in ‘07
Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan’s incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan’s file.
Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.
Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army’s most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.
The Damning Memo
On May 17, 2007, Hasan’s supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, “Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan.” More than a page long, the document warns that: “The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. … He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.” It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.
When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan’s career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.
“Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview,” says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt’s psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.
Sharfstein says it’s a little hard to read the evaluation now and pretend that he doesn’t know that Hasan is accused of shooting dozens of people. But he says if he had seen a memo like this about an applicant, Sharfstein would have avoided him like the plague.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ibn Warraq: Going Honest
Islam, terrorism and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
Maj. Nidal Malik HasanJudging from the way his critics have been going on, I would say that Tunku Varadarajan was on to something in his Forbes column “Going Muslim.”
The reaction to his important and well-reasoned article ironically confirms and further underlines his central point; namely, that out of political correctness we refuse to see and act on the obvious—the implication of Islamist ideology in violent acts such as the murders perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
Instead of addressing the substance of Mr. Varadarajan’s arguments, the self-appointed spokespersons for Islam turn the whole discussion around and present Muslims as the victims of “hate-speech” or “Islamophobia.” This now-familiar rhetorical tactic deflects public attention away from an entirely legitimate and necessary question: Would this crime make any sense apart from Islamist ideology?
While posing as victims, some Muslims absolve themselves from considering Islam as in any way responsible for acts such as those of Maj. Hasan. Certain groups of Muslims are adept at nursing and flaunting their grievances, and, as Theodore Dalrymple once put it, there is nothing like grievance to prevent people from examining their own responsibility for their situation.
Mr. Varadarajan uses the phrase “Going Muslim” reluctantly since it is disconcerting, and he is careful to distinguish between those Muslims who are radicalized and the many more who are not. The problem, he reminds us, is the privileging of religion in general, not just Islam. Again, in his very sensible list of what practical steps we can take to prevent such acts as Maj. Hasan’s from recurring, Mr. Varadarajan makes it clear that he is talking of “radical Islamism,” and he recognizes that there may well be other problems such as “sympathy with white supremacism” or “simple mental unfitness.” Such a nuanced analysis cannot be characterized as “crude hate-mongering.”
Not all Muslims are terrorists. My family is Muslim, of Indian origin. My brother is a practicing Muslim, a gentle soul who is not capable of hurting anyone. But we have seen a great many terrorist acts committed by Muslims since 9/11. According to a poll conducted in 2006, a quarter of British Muslims believe that the terrorist bombs in the London subway in 2005—which killed 56 people—were a legitimate response to the “war on terror.”
Even the politically correct F.B.I. estimates that of 2,000 mosques in the U.S., 10% preach jihad. There are said to have been at least 14,396 acts of Islamic terrorism…
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
It’s Hard to Lead From a Bowing Position
President Obama, trying to escape the turmoil he has created in the USA with an overaggressive legislative agenda, is spending time overseas — but obviously, he is way over his head abroad, too.
Obama sets the record for countries visited during a president’s first year. In 10 months’ time, he has visited 20 countries. Even with all his globetrotting, Obama returns from his multitude of trips with no real accomplishments or agreements. His most recent expedition to Asia was an abject failure for America.
[…]
Obama’s Asian trip soured rapidly after he bowed before the emperor of Japan. Obama has shown a penchant for prostrating himself before foreign leaders, giving visual representation to how he is seeking to submit America to the desires of foreign powers. Obama bent so low it approached the level of groveling to the diminutive son of the man who ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Next, when attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Obama shook hands with Gen. Thein Sein, the prime minister appointed by a vicious and brutal military junta in Myanmar. By shaking hands and meeting with this unelected dictator, Obama sends a message to all those fighting for freedom across the world: America is no longer standing with you, but with your oppressors.
In China, Obama was pushed around by those from whom he is borrowing more and more money. Obama failed to gain any commitments from the Chinese regarding their repression of human rights. His creditors also greatly restricted his ability to speak to the Chinese people. Obama was allowed one highly scripted town hall meeting that was not broadcast on state-run television, as he had expected. While he was in China, the Chinese verbally attacked American economic policy. To top it off, the Chinese signaled they would block American-led efforts to sanction Iran for its nuclear program.
Other world leaders know weakness when they see it.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
KSM Trial: Creative Treason
The Constitution is quite specific about what constitutes treason:
“Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
“The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.”
Treason is an emotional charge. If it were not spelled out in the Constitution, most of us who have been politically active or opposed the government’s actions at some point during our lives would perhaps be in jail for treason. It’s always easy for those in power to equate treason with opposition to their personal power.
That being said, the political left in America has been engaged in covert, under-the-radar treason against the United States, to expand their own personal power, since at least the days of Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss and FDR.
When America developed the bomb, some of the physicists working on the project couldn’t wait to share it with our enemies. The Rosenbergs were quite rightly executed for their part in handing over plans for the bomb to the Soviet Union. While the legal charge was espionage, the actual result was treason.
[…]
Barack Obama has now elected to carry on in the Hate America First leftist tradition of treason. As John Yoo points out in the Wall Street Journal, the trial will force the U.S. government to hand over the methods and sources of intelligence to the self-proclaimed enemy military commander who organized and carried out the 9/11 attacks.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Prissy America
Why does Obama’s tolerant, apologetic America seem so very self-centered?
But things have not quite worked out as planned. Barack Obama to all appearances is certainly more relaxed than Bush. And he resonates abroad as a nontraditional American. Indeed, Obama is now the paradigm of America’s ongoing metamorphosis into something more like the rest of the planet.
[…]
The point is this: When Obama takes it upon himself to adjudicate, in quite ahistorical fashion, who is culpable and who not, the resulting verdicts are consistent only in terms of the president’s own Chicago-style race/class/gender politics.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Princeton, Columbia Cancel Free Speech: Darwish Silenced
In our time, a speaker must face a gauntlet of hostility and a menacing crowd if she wishes to speak in favor of Israel or to tell the truth about Islam.
That’s if she’s lucky. Most such speakers never get invited or when they do, their invitations are canceled.
Nonie Darwish, the author of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law and Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, has faced on-campus hostility and disruption before. Over the years, I have interviewed her about this a number of times. Like many of us, she has also sometimes been forced to have security guards with her when she speaks.
This time, Nonie, who is the founder of Arabs for Israel, was invited to speak at both Columbia and Princeton. The official invitation at Columbia came from the very distinguished CAMERA, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), and from a new student organization there: Campus Media Watch, a group which is not yet quite up and running. Darwish flew from the West Coast, and was already all dressed up and ready to travel to Columbia when she got word that she’d been canceled…
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Proof That Fort Hood Shooting Was Muslim Terrorism
While the U.S. debate continues as to whether Maj. Nidal Hassan’s murder of 13 soldiers in Texas this month was a terrorist attack, researcher Barry Rubin says the murderer himself provided the affirmative answer.
Maj. Hasan, who is now facing charges of having murdered 13 and wounded 29 in the Fort Hood shooting attack of Nov. 5, delivered a lecture in June 2007. His topic was: Islam, the complete subservience demanded by Allah and Muhammed, and threats that the American military might encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Muslim countries.
Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, has analyzed the slide show Hassan presented, concluding that it clearly explained his religious Muslim motives for the attack. “Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people — including the president of the United States — to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack,” Rubin laments.
[…]
The Slides Tell the Story Rubin analyzed Hassan’s slide show, entitled, “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military,” and summed up, “All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they tell you everything you need to know.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Senators Press Obama on Fort Hood Probes
White House wants lawmakers to slow their investigations
A bipartisan group of senators began a concerted push Wednesday to get more cooperation from the Obama administration in its reviews of the Fort Hood shootings, which left 13 dead and a raft of questions about information-sharing among intelligence agencies.
In addition to the public hearings that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) is set to begin Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) demanded Wednesday that his panel receive the results of a White House review of agency investigations of suspect Nidal M. Hasan’s communications with a radical Muslim cleric who has ties to al-Qaeda.
Congressional Democrats have not been nearly as aggressive in their oversight of the Obama administration as they were during the Bush administration. The actions on Capitol Hill this week, however, demonstrate a growing impatience, particularly among senators, with the White House’s preference that lawmakers slow down their inquiries.
Lieberman’s hearing Thursday, the first on Capitol Hill regarding the Texas shootings, will start what potentially could be a more assertive approach to administration oversight, at least on matters of national security.
“We are not interested in political theater,” Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday. “We are interested in getting the facts and correcting the system so that our government can provide the best homeland security possible for the American people.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Silence on Islam Kills, From Hassan to Honor Killings
Not only did Hassan put a Jihadist abbreviation on his business cards, he delivered repeated lectures justifying Jihad, accused the soldiers he was supposed to treat of War Crimes As the story of Nidal Hassan unfolds, it becomes painfully clear that the Jihadi Shrink who opened fire on US troops at Fort Hood did everything but spray paint, “I Am Going To Kill You All” on the wall, before he actually carried out his attack. Not only did Hassan put a Jihadist abbreviation on his business cards, he delivered repeated lectures justifying Jihad, accused the soldiers he was supposed to treat of War Crimes and was already being investigated for contacts with Al Queda and for defending suicide bombing online.
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Two Arrested and 36 Pounds of Opium Seized in Delaware Co., Oklahoma
DELAWARE COUNTY — Delaware County Sheriff’s deputies make a monumental drug bust, one they believe is the biggest in state history.
Deputies intercepted 36 pounds of pure opium on its way to Colcord.
U.S. Postal inspectors spotted the drugs and tipped off the DEA. They were waiting for Jay residents Wang Khang, 25, and Xue Yang, 32, who showed up to pick up the shipment at a local post office.
Khang and Yang are in the Delaware County jail on a million dollars bond each.
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy Called Clown by Sister Christine
THE Belgian politician poised to become president of Europe was last night dismissed as a clown. Herman Van Rompuy faced a massive surge of opposition as other leaders began the task of rubber-stamping his elevation to the powerful new job of leading the entire European Union. But the 62-year-old poetry-writing prime minister of Belgium suffered fresh embarrassment when it emerged that even his own sister had ridiculed him.
Christine Van Rompuy — a member of a rival political party — helped to produce a poster showing her brother posing as a clown during a recent election. The image showed Mr Van Rompuy sporting a red nose and a clown’s hat. Ms Van Rompuy, who admitted the picture had caused some tension between them, added: “We have not spoken since.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Berlusconi Fun at Food Summit
Italian PM ribs Gaddafi, tells Karl Marx joke
(ANSA) — Rome, November 16 — Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was in fine form as he chaired Monday’s world hunger summit in Rome, ribbing Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi about his famously long speeches and telling a joke about Kark Marx.
“Five minutes from Colonel Gaddafi would be too much to hope for but I appeal to his good nature,” Berlusconi said in calling the Libyan leader to the rostrum.
After Gaddafi spoke for only ten minutes, the premier told the assembled leaders: “We’ve set a record of brevity for the colonel that will go down in the history of his appearances at international summits”.
He also told a joke about Karl Marx in which he returns to Earth, goes before the Supreme Soviet assembly and says: “Workers of the world, sorry”.
Many leaders smiled and he even got a laugh out of Jacques Diouf, head of the World Food Organisation.
Earlier, the Italian premier had jokingly asked the assembly to sack Diouf because one of the names on the summit’s panels was missing.
The flamboyant Italian premier is known for taking the stuffiness out of formal occasions with jokes and quips.
Last Friday he showed his playful side again when he moved a tall Serbian minister away from him in a photo op.
Berlusconi, who is among the world’s shorter leaders, looked in a tight spot when he realised Serbia’s towering Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovic was looming over him.
Amid general amusement, he quickly moved the giant minister to the end of the row and replaced him with a shorter official, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic.
The irrepressible Berlusconi has always taken pride in expressing his fun-loving nature at international meets.
And he recently dubbed the approach ‘peekaboo diplomacy’ after an impromptu gag at an Italian-German summit last year.
Spotting German Chancellor Angela Merkel walking up to the entrance, he ducked behind a lamp-post and popped out as she passed by, saying ‘peekaboo’.
The chancellor spread her arms wide in amusement, saying “Oh, Silvio,”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Britain’s Awol Ally
Cameron just made a very good point in his speech — namely, that Brown claimed just days ago that Obama would make an Afghanistan announcement in the “next few days”. Now, we have no idea when the announcement will come. But this isn’t Gordon Brown’s fault — it’s Obama’s. The way Washington is treating Britain is deplorable and the subject of an excellent cover piece tomorrow by Con Coghlin (cover image above). As Con says in his piece:
‘The Afghan issue has made clear the astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain . As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan — a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission — Britain is reduced to taking a guess. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair-Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.’
Obama is simply not there. And in this respect he is, as we say on the cover, the worst kind of ally.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Britain: Bin-Laden’s Son Wants to Work for the UN
New York, 19 Nov. (AKI) — The son of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Omar, has told a British magazine that he would like to promote peace and work for the United Nations. His comments were published on Thursday in New Statesman magazine.
“I do not believe that I would be a good politician — I have a habit of speaking the truth, even when it does not serve me well. But I would like to be in a position to promote peace. I believe that the United Nations would be ideal for me,” said Omar Bin-Laden.
Last year in November, Omar (photo) requested asylum in Spain, but his application was refused.
He was travelling on a Saudi Arabian passport and was detained at Madrid’s Barajas Airport after arriving on a flight from Egypt.
In the interview, Omar told New Statesman that he would seek God’s advice in whether to report his father if he knew where he was hiding.
“If such a time comes, God will guide me to the correct path. But any child on earth would have difficulty with such a situation.”
Omar was also asked about his life as a child in the Bin Laden household and said he remembers most of it as being “sad”.
“There were lots of kids…But when my father was around, we were quiet and obedient,” he said.
“My childhood was mainly sad and lonely because of my father’s passion for supporting the Afghan people against the Russians. I rarely had time with him and he was afraid for our safety, so we had to play indoors,” Bin Laden said.
“When we left Saudi Arabia for Sudan, we lived more normally, but then we moved to Afghanistan and life became more than tough.”
The Bin Laden family is one of the wealthiest in the Kingdom, where they possess an impressive conglomerate including one of the largest construction firms and are involved in equity management.
Omar, 28, is one of 19 children of the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who tops America’s most wanted list.
Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts remain unknown. He is accused of being behind a number of atrocities, including the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in East Africa and the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 2001.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
EU President: Herman Van Rompuy Opposes Turkey Joining
The poetry-loving favourite to become the first president of Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, is also a hard-line opponent of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union because it is an Islamic country.
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s Prime Minister, has in the past spoken out against Turkish EU membership because, he warned, it would dilute Europe’s Christian heritage.
His position on the issue is so strong that he has won the support of Vlaams Belang, the controversial far-right Flemishh anti-immigrant party in Belgium.
Speaking five years ago, as an opposition politician, Mr Rompuy, a Christian Democrat, argued that Muslim Turkey could not be considered a candidate for EU membership.
“Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe. An expansion of the EU to include Turkey cannot be considered as just another expansion as in the past,” he said.
“The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are fundamental values of Christianity, will loose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey.”
Filip Dewinter, a Vlaams Belang leader, said: “We are entirely in agreement with Van Rompuy over this question and are convinced he will defend this point of view as President of the EU. It is for this reason we openly support him.”
Mr Van Rompuy’s opposition to Turkey is set to cement British and East European opposition to him during Thursday’s summit dinner to appoint a President and Eu foreign minister.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
EU: Nominations; El Pais, Zapatero Sees Moratinos for Solana
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 18 — The socialist Spanish Premier José Luis Zapatero is reportedly in favour of the candidacy of Madrid’s foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, as the high European representative, replacing Javier Solana, El Pais wrote today. The newspaper with socialist ties affirmed: “Zapatero with Moratinos in the battle for EU positions”. The Spanish Premier confirmed yesterday that the name of Moratinos was circulating among those of Solana’s possible successors, but specified the hope that he remains in the Spanish government. This among other things just before the Spanish term of presidency for the EU which will begin next January. Moratinos specified today on radio Cadena Ser that he is “very content” with his current role and that he “was not a candidate, even”, he said, “if it is being talked about”. Moratinos, indicating that Zapatero expressed hope that he would remain with the Spanish government, he added “I don’t know why these interpretations are made”. “But”, he went on, “I am available and will accept his decision”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
EU: We Don’t Even Know Who They Are
A new survey of MPs, senior journalists and other political insiders suggests that there is widespread disapproval of the opaque process for choosing the new EU president, with almost half the political community confessing they have ‘little or no knowledge’ about the candidates.
On the day that European leaders are meeting to decide who will become president of the European council, the latest PoliticsHome insider research lays bare the extent to which the UK political community remains in the dark about candidates for the job.
In addition, the survey revealed widespread disapproval within Westminster for the process by which the new president will be chosen. The Phi100 panel of political experts and insiders — which comprises MPs and peers from across the political spectrum alongside political editors and commentators, broadcasters, party strategists and think tank directors — were asked the extent of their knowledge of candidates for the new president and their views on the process of filling the role.
In a striking result, not a single insider claimed to be well informed about the range of candidates for the position.
Almost half the panel (forty seven per cent) admitted that though they were aware of the names of a few candidates, they knew ‘little or nothing about what any of them were like’. Twenty four per cent knew ‘a little about some of them’. Roughly the same proportion (twenty six per cent) had ‘detailed knowledge of some’ while knowing ‘little about others’. This pattern was replicated across the political spectrum.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Europeans Meet (Soviet-Style) To Choose First-Ever EU President
by Soeren Kern
Leaders of the 27 member states of the European Union are meeting in Brussels on November 19 to choose the first-ever European president and European foreign minister. European political elites say these two new jobs are needed so that the notoriously divided EU can begin speak with one voice on the global stage. Once that happens, they contend, the EU will assume its rightful role as a world superpower and act as a counter-balance to the United States.
Geo-strategists are debating whether Europe’s superpower moment is or is not just around the corner. But if the nomination process for the individual who will represent 500 million Europeans has demonstrated anything at all, it is that Europe is inexorably moving in a direction that has far more in common with Soviet totalitarianism than with Western liberal democracy.
In what has been described as a “slow-moving coup d’état,” Europe over the past several decades has experienced a gradual but significant shift in political power away from individual nation states towards an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy based in Brussels.
Today, these so-called Eurocrats oversee more than 100,000 pages of EU legislation, much of which has primacy over national legislation and parliaments. Indeed, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels now exercise so much power that they dictate what elected leaders can or cannot do in more than 30 policy areas.
In 2004, European federalists moved to consolidate their power by means of the “European Constitution,” which, among many other things, called for abolishing the national veto in more than 50 additional policy areas. But the ratification process ran into a roadblock in May and June 2005, when French and Dutch voters rejected the document.
Predictably, the authors of the European Constitution were unwilling to let democracy get in the way of their federal ambitions…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Explosive Days in Athens
Menace and discontent hang in the air as the anniversary approaches of the shooting of a 15-year-old in Greece’s capital
Greeks mark their anniversaries with a gravitas rarely seen elsewhere. Celebrations commemorating the 17 November 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising against the Colonels regime — an event that would spark the collapse of seven years of military rule — are held over three days and never without the solemnity and panache of a major military victory.
With rare consensus, Hellenes agree that had it not been for the revolt — and the unknown number of students who laid down their lives in the name of democracy — Greece might not have been freed of tyranny so easily.
This year’s anniversary was unlike most others, and not only because the country is in the grip of unprecedented social malaise. Barely three weeks before Athenians mark another anniversary — the shooting last year of a teenage boy by a policeman patrolling the febrile neighbourhood around Athens Polytechnic — the rage that erupted in the wake of the killing, snowballing into riots nationwide, has far from disappeared.
Anti-authoritarian violence, resurgent terrorism and a surge in militant extremism by youngsters who have come to see themselves as the “defenders” of the polytechnic spirit, have made Athens an increasingly explosive place. For some, the anniversary was a dry run for what lies ahead.
With this in mind, the commemorations, including the traditional march from the polytechnic to the US embassy — to protest at Washington’s shameful support for the junta — were seen as a crucial public order test for the newly installed socialist government. With military precision, 6,000 police were dispatched on to the streets, many in riot gear. In the event, the march went off without much incident even if the rally drew more Greeks (an estimated 12,000 showed up for the protest), and more teenagers, than in recent years.
But like the unmistakable whiff of discontent that still prevails among Greek youth, an air of menace hangs in the air. The boulevards and side streets surrounding the polytechnic are rife with graffiti, the sort that warns that “Athens will burn”, “banks will go up in flames” and “cops, pigs, murderers, we don’t forgive”.
Walking the grimy streets of Exarchia, the bohemian district behind the polytechnic that has come to be associated with leftwing radicalism, I stumbled across a well-spoken, well-shod 25-year-old who, describing himself as an anarchist, gave an eloquent explication as to why young Greeks had to resort to violence to defend their rights. “Beware, that we will burn what hasn’t burned so far,” he said as two young men in jeans and leather jackets, loitering with him, smiled in agreement. “Violence in our society is systemic, it is everywhere, in the police, in exploitative labour, in our attitude to migrants, in our banks. As the uprising showed last year, there are many of us who think like this, and the beautiful thing is we don’t have demands. Put simply, we just want to say ‘we don’t like you, we will fight you, we will destroy you, we will defend our right to violence’. We don’t need an anniversary. It could happen anytime, anywhere, there is no rendezvous with the police.”
Tellingly, many of the youngsters who have emerged as members of the “guerilla” groups that have attacked government and political targets in the past year, come from privileged backgrounds, often attending private schools in Athens’ well-heeled northern suburbs.
The spectre of violence has been exacerbated by the disproportionately high rate of joblessness among the younger generation and worsening corruption — Greece slipped to last place within the 27-member EU this year in the league table of “perceived” corrupt states released by Transparency International.
Though in government for less than two months, George Papandreou’s centre-left Pasok party has also been accused of furthering disillusionment by forging ahead with unpopular (if much needed) economic reforms. Among the far left, the sense is growing that the socialists are bent on pursuing the same policies as their conservative predecessors. What is sure is that with many clearly girding for battle, the government is taking no chances and has announced that security will be stepped up in the coming weeks.
“Remember, remember the 6th of December,” read one banner, referring to the day the privately educated 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead last year. The banner was held aloft by a group of self-styled “anti-establishment nihilists” chanting “cops, pigs murderers, we will burn you” as they marched through Athens.
The threat of violence has been met with thinly disguised disdain by those who fought to overturn a hated regime when they participated in the polytechnic uprising. “These people undermine democracy, with their actions they give police every reason to take harsh measures against the little man in the street,” said Evangelos Kouris, one of the veterans heading the rally to the US embassy. “What we did was heroic and legitimate. What they are doing is cowardly and criminal and has no relation whatsoever with the struggle for a better tomorrow.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Irish Child Misdiagnosed With Swine Flu Dies
A little girl, Ruby Ayoub, who would have been six this week, was buried in Dublin on Monday following her death from meningitis which doctors wrongly diagnosed as swine flu.
Now her parents have pledged to work to make sure no other family needlessly suffers the same heartache.
Ruby, who lived in Sandyford, County Dublin, fell ill, complaining of a headache, on the evening of Friday, November 6, and was taken to a local surgery by her parents but she was sent home by a doctor who said she had swine flu.
When, clearly in agony, her condition deteriorated, Ruby was taken to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, where meningitis was diagnosed but crucial hours had been lost and she lapsed into a coma on Sunday.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Islam: Aid El Adha November 27 for French Muslims
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, NOVEMBER 18 — The Muslim holiday to remember the sacrifice of Abraham, Aid El Adha, will be celebrated by French Muslims on November 27, the French council of the Muslim faith announced, indicating that “animal sacrifices must take place in authorised slaughterhouses, in close respect of religious norms and principles”. The authorised facilities are not easy to find, the throat cutting of the animals will be able to take place for 3 days beginning with the prayer set to take place at 9 am on the 27th. The Festival of the Ram, as Aid El Adha is commonly called, or Aid El Kebir, remembers the sacrifice made by Abraham when God asked him to sacrifice his son (Isaac, son of the barren Sara, according to Genesis, the first son of Ishmael according to the Koran) to demonstrate his devotion. Abraham with sadness in his heart on the point of committing the act when God (or Allah) satisfied by this obedient reaction, stopped his hand, allowing him to sacrifice a ram in the place of his son. During the celebration, which focuses on generosity with the poor, every Muslim who has the means has almost the duty of purchasing a ram, the prices of which rise astronomically in Islamic countries, and give a part of it to a poor family. The festivities are held after the pilgrimage to Mecca, pthe tenth month of Dhou Al Hijja, the last month of the Muslim calendar, which varies geographically based on when the full moon is observed, as in other holidays like Ramadan. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Dalai Lama Enters Crucifix Debate
Rome, 18 Nov. (AKI) — Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Wednesday rejected a recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights opposing the display of the crucifix in school classrooms in officially secular Italy saying it is important to maintain traditions.
“It is of fundamental importance to maintain your own traditions, and Italy has a Christian and Catholic background. Therefore, to keep the tradition of the crucifix in the schools is extremely important,” the Dalai Lama told a media conference at Italy’s chamber of deputies.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 3 November that placing the crucifix in classrooms infringed parents’ right to educate their children “in conformity with their convictions”.
The court ruling has sparked fierce debate in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy where the Vatican earlier this month strongly rejected the ruling, saying it was “wrong and myopic” to exclude a symbol of charity from education.
The case was launched by an Italian woman, Soile Lautsi, who opposed the display of a Catholic crucifix at her children’s state school in Abano Terme, a small town outside the northern city of Padua.
Lautsi was also awarded 5,000 euros in damages by the court.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Pope Trumps Berlusconi Among World’s Most Powerful Men
New York, 12 Nov. (AKI) — Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is the 12th most powerful man in the world, trailing Pope Benedict XVI who is ranked 11th, according to a ranking by US-based financial magazine, Forbes. The list included 67 heads of state, criminals, financiers and philanthropists.
The Forbes list placed Italy’s “colourful prime minister…who is a politician, a media monopolist and owner of soccer powerhouse A.C. Milan,” at number 12.
To calculate the rankings, five Forbes senior editors ranked all of the candidates according to their influence, financial resources, power in a number of different spheres and their use of power.
“Pope Benedict XVI, ranked 11th on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion souls, or about one-sixth of the world’s population,” Forbes noted.
This year, the list was topped by US president Barack Obama followed by Chinese president Hu Jintao, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, Ben Bernanke, the US chairman of the federal reserve and the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page among others.
Last week, Forbes ranked Berlusconi as the 72nd wealthiest individual in the world with net assets of 6.5 billion dollars.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi’s Govt Continues Freefall in the Polls
Rome, 17 Nov. (AKI) — The popularity of the government headed by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi declined over the past two months while his personal approval rating remains at its lowest level since he was re-elected for the third time in April last year, according to a survey published on Tuesday.
The government’s popularity dropped two percentage points since October and decreased by 14 points since October last year, according to the survey.
Berlusconi’s approval rate as the premier remained at 45 percent and it is still at its lowest point since he was re-elected for the third time in April, the survey said.
The survey was conducted by Naples-based market research company, IPR, and published in left-leaning Italian daily, La Repubblica.
La Repubblica is one of the newspapers Berlusconi is suing for libel and intrusion of privacy. The daily has been at the forefront in reporting Berlusconi’s colourful private life allegedly involving prostitutes.
Meanwhile, Italy’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, registered a four percent increase in its popularity, reaching a 41 percent approval rate, according to the survey.
Earlier in November, former economy minister Pierluigi Bersani was elected as the new party leader.
The survey was published in the wake of recent scandals surrounding Berlusconi and members of his party. These include support for the candidacy of a politician suspected of mafia links in upcoming elections for president of the southern region of Campania.
Prosecutors have requested the arrest of junior government minister and parliamentarian, Nicola Cosentino, who is suspected of longstanding collusion with the mafia.
According to Cosentino, the premier did not ask him to resign. Berlusconi’s lawyer and People of Freedom MP Niccolo Ghedini defended Cosentino, who is reportedly a favourite of the premier.
Berlusconi’s popularity was also unaffected by a bill tabled by his conservative ruling coalition to shorten the length of criminal trials, which the opposition claims has been drafted to help Berlusconi solve his legal problems.
Two of Berlusconi’s trials would be “timed out” if the bill becomes law, according to financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore and other reports.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Colonel Who Captured Red Brigade Terrorists Now Branded a Criminal
Colonel Seno found guilty of Abu Omar abduction. “I’m not ashamed to say I wept”
MILAN — The glint in his eye is the same as it was 35 years ago, when as a Carabiniere captain serving with General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa he leapt out of his white Fiat 124 and grabbed Alberto Franceschini by the neck before the Red Brigade terrorist could get his loaded pistol out of his belt. Renato Curcio was also in the car he rammed at Orbassano, near Pinerolo, on 8 September 1974. Luciano Seno had more hair back then, and it was darker. Today, his well-groomed locks are white but his expression is still the same. The former captain, now a colonel, explains: “At the time, I was running on adrenalin. Now my eyes reflect only anger and deep disappointment. I served my country for 45 years, 20 in the uniform of the Carabinieri and 25 in the intelligence service. Protecting people. But I never imagined I would be retiring with a shameful three-year sentence for personal complicity in abduction. Never. I wept, I’m not ashamed to say so. It’s appalling and unparalleled that this should happen. But I am a child of the state and believe in the rule of law. I’ve worked side by side with outstanding magistrates and judges so I respect the verdict in the inner certainty that I can overturn it on appeal. But it’s not easy to accept. Believe me. I’ve dedicated my life to the law”.
The Carabiniere who served with Dalla Chiesa can at last draw breath. The verdict that convicted him was handed down last Wednesday and the trial was the one involving top brass from SISMI military intelligence and the CIA over the abduction in Milan of the former imam, Abu Omar. State secrecy was controversially invoked to protect SISMI boss Nicolò Pollari and Seno’s direct superior, Marco Mancini, but not Seno himself. The colonel’s actual involvement in the case was limited to giving his service mobile phone, at the request of Marco Mancini, to another SISMI colleague, General Gustavo Pignaro, who was seriously ill and has since died. Seno was at the back of the court as the judge, Oscar Magi, read the verdict. He was alone, keeping away from photographers, and had a briefcase. The colonel insists: “I obeyed a legitimate order. I never knew anything about the Abu Omar abduction, except what I read in the papers, and this is the result. It’s an anomaly of the system. Anyone who ascribes a job as wrong-headed and poorly executed as the Abu Omar business to military intelligence is terribly mistaken. None of us would have acted like that”.
Luciano Seno lives in Rome. He has no children. His roots lie in Piedmont, something he reveals with a certain pride, because the Carabinieri also have Piedmontese origins. Seno arrested Curcio and Franceschini, he smashed the XXII Ottobre gang and apprehended Sergio Gadolla’s kidnappers. He was the man who put the cuffs on the killer of Milena Sutter, the 13-year-old floor wax magnate’s daughter who vanished in the afternoon of 6 May 1971 outside a Swiss school to reappear, washed up on a Genoa beach, two weeks later. Seno tells us: “Some books say that the police got him but the truth is that it was us, the Carabinieri, who collared Lorenzo Bozano, the ‘fair-haired kid in the red sports car’. Me and my lads”. Dalla Chiesa had noticed the young officer at the Lamarmora barracks of the Carabinieri battalion in Milan, behind the courthouse. When he met Seno again in Genoa almost by chance, in the early 1970s, Dalla Chiesa took him back to Turin to set up the first special anti-terrorism squad. “Days and nights ceased to exist for us and our families. There was only the job. The Red Brigades had to be beaten. And the general was always with us”. Seno remembers one urgent report that had to be sent to an examining magistrate. “We wrote it during the night and at four in the morning Dalla Chiesa began to drift off. We waited in silence. Three minutes later, Dalla Chiesa woke up and stared at us one by one. He said ‘Come on lads, even a general can nod off. Let’s get this finished’“.
The photo of Franceschini’s arrest went all round the world. “Not many people know that it was taken by a Carabiniere officer that Dalla Chiesa had assigned to protect us. It was an incredible afternoon. I was in my own white 124 with a colleague, who was driving. We couldn’t communicate because the radio wasn’t working. I was cut off behind Curcio and Franceschini. We followed them to a level crossing. I was worried we would be separated by the barrier and lose them so I ordered the driver to run into them. We got out to inspect the damage but Franceschini sensed it was a trap and tried to get away. Curcio stayed behind the wheel. I had to act quickly and jumped out, then I saw a camera lens poking through a bush. I handcuffed Curcio as well and shouted to the driver to arrest the man behind the bush. I thought it might be a BR terrorist who could have shot us. My driver raced over, rugby-tackled the hapless photographer and punched him in the mouth. The man started shouting ‘Stop! What are you doing? I’m a Carabiniere officer, too!’ For Dalla Chiesa, we were all his children and had to be protected”. The general took Seno to Rome. Seno continues: “Andreotti summoned Dalla Chiesa to Rome. The general wanted me and the other lads, about ten of us, but we pulled off another miracle. One officer managed to penetrate the Via Volsci terrorist lair and get hold of the membership list of Potrop, the Workers’ Party. We found out who they all were”. If you ask him whether he was a good Carabiniere, the colonel smiles again. “My investigations do the talking for me. I don’t have to say anything”. The colonel rubs his chin and straightens his jacket. Before he takes his leave, he whispers: “It hurts to be treated like a criminal”.
English translation by Giles Watson
www.watson.it
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Kercher Murder Account ‘Not Credible’
30-year-term should be upheld, prosecutor says
(ANSA) — Perugia, November 18 — An Italian prosecutor on Wednesday asked an appeals court to uphold the 30-year conviction of an Ivory Coast man for the rape and murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in 2007 in Perugia.
Prosecutor Pietro Catalani argued Rudy Guede, 22, had taken part in the crime and had raped the victim.
Catalani said Guede’s earlier account of the night of the murder had not been credible.
Guede claimed he had been listening to his I-pod in the bathroom when he heard Meredith scream and saw a male assailant flee with Amanda Knox, a US student in the dock in a separate trial with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
“He is not credible,” said Catalani, arguing that the “progressive” wounds on Kercher’s body could not have been inflicted in a single attack of the kind described by Guede.
Guede’s trial was adjourned until December 21.
Knox, 22, and Sollecito, 25, are expected to get their verdicts early next month.
Prosecutors in the Knox trial say she, Sollecito and Guede killed Kercher after a sex game went wrong.
Knox is accused of holding a knife to Kercher’s throat while Sollecito pinned her arms down and Guede tried to have sex with her.
According to prosecutors, the Seattle-born Knox dealt the blow that slit Kercher’s throat.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Medfilm: Moroccan Actress Emerges as Top New Talent
Rome, 16 Nov. (AKI) — Moroccan actress Sanaa Alaoui has won the New Talents Award at the 15th annual Mediterranean Film Festival held in the Italian capital Rome. She spoke to Adnkronos International (AKI) in an exclusive interview.
“I feel very proud of being Moroccan and I am very proud of Moroccan directors who are now discussing issues of women’s emancipation and modernism. It is a beautiful evolution,” Alaoui told AKI after receiving the award in Rome on Saturday.
Alaoui has starred in Moroccan, French, Mexican and Spanish films and several television series but did not appear in any of the films screened at this year’s MedFilm Festival.
The 32-year-old said that Moroccan cinema was growing and there was more creative freedom than there had been in the past in the north African country.
“Before, we couldn’t speak about issues such as sex. Now we can do that. We have a new eye for cinema,” she said, adding that the main problem for Moroccan cinema was a lack of funding.
Alaoui was born in the Moroccan city of Casablanca and now lives in the French capital Paris.
She offered advice for aspiring Moroccan actresses saying they had a chance to make it in the world of cinema if they persevered.
“Believe in your dream. It is possible, but you need to have passion, you need to be strong in order to succeed,” she said.
In 2008 Alaoui won the Best Actress Award at the Tangier Film Festival, while a film in which she starred, A Fiance for Yasmina, won the Audience Award at the Mediterranean Film Festival of Montpellier and Best Movie at Nantes Film Festival.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pope’s Art History Lecture
Benedict explains importance of Medieval cathedrals
(ANSA) — Vatican City, November 18 — Pope Benedict XVI turned into an impromptu art history professor on Wednesday, lecturing faithful on the importance of Europe’s Medieval Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals.
Addressing the crowd at his weekly general audience, the German pontiff likened the cathedrals to “stone Bibles” which through sculptures and paintings illustrating episodes from the Gospel offer Christians a “privileged route” to draw closer to God.
“Christianity gave life not only to masterpieces of theological literature. It also inspired some of the most exalted artistic creations of all civilisation: the cathedrals, which are the real glories of Medieval Christianity,” Benedict said.
Benedict recalled that from the 9th to the 14th century, European nations, particularly France and Italy, vied with each other to create artistic and architectural masterpieces.
The cathedrals, he said, were titanic endeavours which were built thanks to the contributions of the faithful, technical advancements in architecture and the know-how of brilliant architects.
Favourable historical conditions, including greater political stability which led people to move to cities, created a need for the construction of churches big enough to hold large congregations.
Romanesque churches introduced the use of sculptures which, as well as seeking technical perfection, had an educational aim, he said.
Statues, paintings and magnificent portals — whose recurring theme was the representation of Christ as Judge, surrounded by the figures of the Apocalypse — struck the viewer and helped him understand that Jesus is “the door that leads to heaven”,said the pope.
Gothic cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were characterised by “their vertical thrust and luminosity” which aimed to translate in architectural lines “the longing of the soul for God”.
They are a synthesis of faith and art “harmoniously expressed through the universal and captivating language of beauty,” Benedict told the 8,000 faithful gathered at the general audience.
Their stained-glass windows heaped “a cascade of light upon the faithful, recounting the story of salvation”.
“The force of the Romanesque and the splendour of Gothic cathedrals remind us that the way of beauty, is a privileged and fascinating way to approach the Mystery of God”, Benedict said.
photo: Leon Cathedral, Spain.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tony Blair Dumped as Baroness Ashton of Upholland Gets Key EU Role
The EU appointed Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister, and the British Trade Commissioner, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, to the two newly created posts of President and High Representative tonight, hours after Downing Street confirmed it had abandoned its support for Tony Blair.
Gordon Brown joined the seven other European socialist group leaders in backing Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Upholland after accepting that there was too little support for Mr Blair to be president. A Downing Street spokesman said: “When it became clear that, because of the various political considerations and varying views among the rest of the members on Blair [he would not get the post], then the Prime Minister made the forceful step of proposing Catherine Ashton for the high representative’s position,” the spokesman said.
“We feel that it is in Britain’s interests to play a major role in the new EU and don’t forget this is a very important job — not just for its political role but also for its defence role. We are very pleased that our socialist partners agreed to put [Ashton] forward as our candidate.”
Downing Street’s U-turn was a humiliating snub to Mr Blair, Mr Brown’s predecessor, who had hoped to take the plum role, but was opposed by key EU leaders who feared he would be too presidential. The choice of Mr Van Rompuy signalled that the leaders were not eager to have a high-profile personality represent the EU abroad. The two new posts are meant to bolster the EU’s influence overseas.
Lady Upholland, 52, a former leader of the Lords, took over as British Commissioner in Brussels when Lord Mandelson was brought back to the UK Cabinet by Mr Brown. News of her promotion will astound British diplomats, who would not have regarded her senior enough for the job. Lady Upholland’s appointment marks the latest in a line of jobs since she was given a life peerage in 1999.
Mr Brown promoted her to the role of Leader of the House of Lords in his first reshuffle. She took up briefs as the Government’s spokeswoman for equality and the Cabinet Office in the Lords. In 2001 she was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills, taking charge of Sure Start in 2002. In 2004 she took up a similar role at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, before her promotion last year. She also became a Privy Councillor in 2006.
Lady Upholland, who studied economics at London University, spent six years as director of Business in the Community in the 1980s and later chaired Hertfordshire’s health authority. Married to the journalist and pollster Peter Kellner since 1988, she has two children and three stepchildren.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: [Fox-Hunting] Anti-Matters
I was a hunt-follower over the weekend. Or rather I stood in the wind and rain watching friends in hunting coats, galloping about on horses. Horses, riders and hounds were following a quad-bike-laid trail, not foxes; but with or without a fox I can’t claim that personally I see the point of it.
No witness could deny, though, the thrill for many of the whole thing. I find the ritual, and the very British defiance of the hunting community, rather wonderful.
To my confusion, however, I find the defiance, idealism and anger of the anti-hunting brigade rather wonderful (and very British) too, and was disappointed there were no antis in evidence on Saturday, although apparently they often do turn up, on the alert for fox-chasing. I salute both sides.
Couldn’t we ritualise the anti-hunt as well as the hunt? Couldn’t they too have special coats, little glasses of port to drink and, maybe, whistles to blow? Hunt servants get paid; if we paid anti-hunt servants too (apparently students do sometimes take a fee) we’d double the employment opportunities for local people, and add further to the gaiety of rural life.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: A Special Form of Disrespect
Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con Coughlin
It says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even if we reached the Oval Office, there would be no one willing to take Britain’s call.
For weeks now, President Obama has been deliberating over what the Afghan strategy should be — and how many troops to send. If there is confusion in Washington, then Britain’s strategy is not much clearer. Gordon Brown has staged a recent flurry of activity on the subject, from writing misspelt letters to grieving mothers to demanding that an exit strategy be established for the withdrawal of British forces. Yet among our top brass, the general perception is that the Prime Minister has little interest in the war.
It is often as if Brown regards the Afghan campaign as a dead fish that Tony Blair has left in the top drawer of his Downing Street desk. It has infected his premiership with a foul odour, and he wants to be rid of it as soon as possible. This explains his promise, on Monday, to set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops at the earliest available opportunity. The signal is sent that an exit is not just in sight, but being approached.
Brown’s approach hardly squares with his Foreign Secretary’s assertion, made the next day in his address to Nato’s Parliamentary Assembly, that British forces should remain until the Afghans are strong enough to take care of their own affairs. Miliband might have his faults, such as his obsessive enthusiasm for Europe. But he is sound on Afghanistan where — unlike the prime minister — he has been an articulate and well-informed advocate of the Nato cause. One has the feeling that, if Mr Obama were able to talk about Afghanistan, Mr Miliband could have a decent conversation with him.
But the very fact that these policy divisions are now starting to appear in London is symptomatic of a far deeper malaise that lies at the heart of Afghan policy-making; it is a malaise that now threatens to jeopardise the success of the entire mission. And this malaise is the absence of meaningful dialogue between the White House and its hitherto most stalwart and reliable ally, particularly when it comes to the messy business of confronting Islamist militants through force of arms.
We all had a good giggle when Brown was reduced to chasing the Leader of the Free World through the subterranean kitchen complex at the UN’s New York headquarters in September. One can understand why Obama can think of a million better ways to spend his time than talking to our obsessive, nail-chewing and electorally doomed prime minister. But given that Britain and America are currently fighting a war together, one would hope that the true statesman would overcome any personal reservations — and deal with Mr Brown because of the country he represents.
What really troubles British policymakers is that the collapse in the relationship is institutional, not personal, and that the president has little interest in listening to what Britain has to say on many world issues, even at a time when British servicemen and women are sacrificing their lives in what is supposed to be a common cause.
The astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain has been made clear by his deliberations over the Afghan issue. As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan — a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission — Britain is reduced to guesswork. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair—Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy
British media and society are gripped by lies about a “secret” Israel lobby controlling foreign policy.
Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain since the end of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.
The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.” The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.
In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper’s flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group’s virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a “Protocols of Zion”-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.
Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain.
Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark documentary, “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby,” on Channel 4—the same outlet that offered Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year.
The makers of the documentary—top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist James Jones—have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories. But the mindset we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors’ own explanation on how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the corridors of British power.
It all transpired, they told readers ominously, during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel. “The dominant event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza,” they wrote. “We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of his way to praise Israel because it ‘strives to protect innocent life.’ This remark was not intended satirically.”
Since it is inconceivable, the authors obviously believe, that anyone could honestly credit Israel with anything other than the most damnable motives it must therefore follow that those who do in fact praise the Jewish state must be being paid or bullied into doing so. If you think this all sounds familiar, you’d be right. Messrs. Oborne and Jones produced an extensive pamphlet accompanying the documentary, which openly claimed inspiration from none other than John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”—another conspiracy theory alleging malign Zionist influence in the United States.
But if Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt at least felt the need to dress up their polemic in pseudo-academic wrapping paper, the sheer amateurishness of the British documentary they inspired is breathtaking. There was the endless superimposition of the Israeli Star of David on to the British flag, which, along with some absurdly melancholic background music, was presumably designed to prepare viewers for an astonishing series of revelations. But of course such revelations actually never materialized.
It turns out from the documentary itself that the allegedly secretive Jewish donors have been quite open in declaring their interests in accordance with the law. One of them, Poju Zabludowicz, the billionaire funder of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) is good friends with Madonna—not exactly the kind of company you’d choose if you were trying to hide behind a veil of obscurity.
Much is also made of the influence of Friends of Israel groupings in the British Parliament. Such allegations are, of course, rendered ridiculous with a moment’s reflection on the countervailing influence of vast amounts of Arab oil money, not to mention the fact that membership in such groups for many parliamentarians is either purely formal or outright meaningless. Michael Ancram, for example, a former Northern Ireland minister and a member of Conservative Friends of Israel for more than 30 years, is famous for calling for talks with Hamas.
Given the paucity of the arguments, it would be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as unimportant. Would that we could. The documentary has already provoked a torrent of abuse against British Jews, not least on Channel 4’s widely read Web site, whose moderators have seen fit to approve dozens of postings about the Zionist lobby’s “seditious behavior,” its “disgusting attack on British democracy,” “the hand of global Zionism at work,” and several along the lines of the following, which said flatly: “We want our country back. The agents of a foreign power embedded at all levels of our government and politics need flushing out.”
If this sort of language takes hold, a bad situation in Britain may be about to get a whole lot worse.
Jewish leadership organizations have long feared accusations of divided loyalty between Britain and Israel and, ironically given the charges now being made against them, are frequently criticized in their own communities for failing to be sufficiently robust in Israel’s defense. The risk is that some may now be panicked into silence. Non-Jews who call for a more reasoned discussion of Israel—already a small and diminishing group in Britain—will likely face additional slanders against their integrity: Since there is supposedly no reasonable case to be made in favor of the Jewish state, we must have sold out to the “Lobby.”
Such calumnies cannot be allowed to stand. Now more than ever, the forces of reason and decency must continue the fight to be heard.
Mr. Shepherd is director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society. His new book, “A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem With Israel,” has just been published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Condemned to an Early Death: Rationing Body Tells Liver Cancer Victims That Life-Prolonging Drug is ‘Too Costly’
Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn.
They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib — which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed.
Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.
The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was ‘simply too high’ to justify the ‘benefit to patients’.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Community’s Fury at Continued Detention of Shaikh Asif Farooqui
[Note from JP: Police acknowledge sharp reaction from the community. Local MP has called for calm.]
As the police are granted more time to question the five individuals apprehended on suspicion of inciting terrorism overseas, the family of Shaikh Asif Farooqui has released a statement expressing their shock and dismay at the arrest of the 62 year old preacher.
The family’s statement reads:
“It is simply incredible to those that know him and his work to imagine he could be involved in the promotion or incitement of any kind of violence.
“It is particularly shocking that, having influenced so many, young and old, male and female, to live as law-abiding, trustworthy citizens, he is now being accused of actions which he has so openly opposed for so long.
“He has always gone out of his way to foster good relations with the local police in order to work together as a community and this makes his arrest all the more disgraceful and unacceptable.”
The local MP for Bolton, Dr Brian Iddon has called for calm in the circumstances.
Mr Iddon, speaking of the local community’s horror at the arrest of the well-known and well-respected imam from Deane, Bolton, said:
“I would ask everyone to remain calm.
“This gentleman is very well known. He comes from the Sufi tradition, a branch of Islam which is traditionally very peaceful. That is why the community is so surprised.”
Assistant Chief Constable Dave Thompson of the local police force, acknowledging the sharp reaction from the local community, has moved to reassure them that the police are “working closely with local partners and key contacts to ensure that any relevant information is shared as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile the Al Rahman Mosque in Daubhill, Bolton has started an e-petition calling for the immediate release of Shaikh Asif Farooqui.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hadley CRU Has Apparently Been Hacked — Hundreds of Files Released
The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown
I’m currently traveling and writing this from an aiprort, but here is what I know so far:
An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertsied an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to
be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents
The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files.
It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.
I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.
Here is some of the emails just posted at Climate Audit on this thread:
[…]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
[…]
| — Hat tip: Archonix | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Pirate Finder to Create Militias and Laws
A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I’ve ever seen. Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson — or his successor in the next government) the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:
1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)
2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)
3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)
Mandelson is also gunning for sites like YouSendIt and other services that allow you to easily transfer large files back and forth privately (I use YouSendIt to send podcasts back and forth to my sound-editor during production). Like Viacom, he’s hoping to force them to turn off any feature that allows users to keep their uploads private, since privacy flags can be used to keep infringing files out of sight of copyright enforcers.
This is as bad as I’ve ever seen, folks. It’s a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.
This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.
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UK: Shocking Report Reveals That 92% of Gang Rapists in London Are Non-White
A shocking report, ordered by the Metropolitan Police Authority, has revealed that 92 percent of all gang rapists in London are non-white. Fifty percent of all the victims are white.
The report, drawn up by a senior detective from the Yard’s Operation Sapphire team, which investigates sex crimes, revealed that eight percent of all gang rape suspects in 2008/09 were white, 32 percent were black, and 24 percent contained members of different ethnicities. The make-up for the rest was unknown.
The proportion of white victims fell from 69 percent in 1998/99 to 50 percent last year, while the number of black victims doubled from 17 percent to 34 percent, the report continued.
In total, there were 93 gang rapes last year compared with 36 in 2003/04.
Police define the offence as being a sex attack by three or more people, although research by the Met shows an increase in the number of assaults involving four or more attackers.
The report’s other statistics show that in 1998/99, a total of 48 percent of victims were 19 or younger. Last year that total had reached 64 percent. Thirty-six percent of victims were 15 or younger.
The ages of the perpetrators has also dropped. According to the Met, 42 percent were 19 and under last year, compared with 38 percent In 2003/04.
The number of suspects in their twenties fell slightly over that period, from 32 percent to 30 percent.
The report, by Detective Chief Inspector Mark Yexley, says the Met “recognises multiple-perpetrator sex offending linked to youth violence as one of the most serious crime types.”
It adds that gang rape is less likely to be reported than other offences because there are often social links between victims and suspects.
Boroughs with the highest rates of gang rapes include Lambeth, Croydon, Newham, Southwark, Westminster and Hackney.
The Met also said it had asked for research into the issues of female gang membership and gang violence.
The report says: “Offences are complex … from allegations of consensual sex between victims and a known party followed by non-consensual assaults committed by associates, to stranger attacks involving large groups.”
| — Hat tip: LN | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sadistic Mother-of-Eight Found Guilty of Abusing Her Children With Belt, Meat Mallet, Hot Screwdriver and Even a Garlic Crusher
A sadistic mother-of-eight has been found guilty of subjecting six of her children to a ‘sickening’ six-year campaign of abuse and neglect.
The 37-year-old beat her children — aged between four and 16 — with objects including a belt, a broken coat hanger and a meat-tenderising mallet, a court heard.
She was found guilty of 18 charges of abuse including scratching one of her daughters with a knife and burning another with a hot screwdriver.
Cambridgeshire County Council admitted monitoring the family since 1999 yet charges were only brought on the mother after two children discussed the abuse with a teacher.
The mother, a Jamaican national living in Cambridge, was found guilty of 18 charges including nine counts of assaulting a child under 16 in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering with injury to the child’s health.
She was also found guilty of one count of affray and two counts of witness intimidation.
Her reign of terror against her children lasted from January 1 2002 to July 1 2008, the court heard during a five-week trial.
ONE OF THE ABUSED CHILDREN:
‘She hit me on the head with the garlic crusher and grabbed me round the throat. I was crying and putting my hands up to stop her.
The allegations came to light when two of her daughters told teachers at their school that they were being mistreated.
On one occasion, the woman locked up two of her daughter’s school friends in the family home after they witnessed her violence towards her daughter.
They saw her hit her daughter with a meat mallet and garlic press and threaten to slit her throat with a knife if she did not move her hands out of the way.
Summing up the case, Judge Jonathan Haworth read an extract from video evidence from the girl who suffered the attack.
She said: ‘I thought she was going to hit me until I died.
‘She hit me on the head with the garlic crusher and grabbed me round the throat. I was crying and putting my hands up to stop her.
‘She said “I am going to slice your throat with the knife”. I could hardly breathe and she cut me with the knife she was holding in her hand.’
The mother subjected her children to a catalogue of abuse and smacked them with a belt, leaving buckle marks on their skin.
On one occasion the mother heated a screwdriver to mend a toy and then used it to burn her daughter on the thigh and buttock areas, leaving scars.
Two of the children aged just 12 and 14 said they did the shopping and cooking for the family and looked after their younger siblings while their mother lay in bed watching TV.
The mother even sent her young daughters out late at night to find ice for her drinks. Rather than return empty-handed, the youngsters often hid in a park overnight to avoid being attacked.
The woman was heavily pregnant when the allegations were made and has since given birth to her eighth child. All of her children are now in care of the social services.
One of her daughters told the court that she had considered suicide.
She said: ‘I was bullied at school, beaten and burned by my mum. My life was terrible.’
When police arrested the mother, they found the house dirty, with no food in it and no sheets on the children’s beds.
Medical reports said doctors found scars and marks on the children which could not have been from accidental injuries.
The children’s teachers described them as quiet and withdrawn and noticed that one of her sons was always cold and hungry, eating second and third helpings of school dinners.
They were concerned at times that the girls were fending for themselves and appeared frightened of their mother.
In her defence, the mother claimed that a former partner used to beat her and hit the children with a belt and that her children and their friends had made up the allegations.
She admitted slapping them but not using weapons.
She told a parent of one of her children’s friends: ‘Tapping them is different from hitting. I loved my kids, I still do. I did not do these things to them.’
Georgina Gibbs, defending, said that witness reports about the house being messy and smelling of urine did not indicate that the children were being neglected.
Cambridge City Council admitted that they had been aware of the situation since 1999, but despite ‘ongoing monitoring’ the children were only recently taken into care.
A spokesman said: ‘We acted as soon as these allegations came to light and the children were immediately taken into care.
‘Social care teams offered extensive support when the family first came to our attention in 1999, and the situation improved significantly when a relative moved into the family home.
‘There was ongoing monitoring of the family situation by all the relevant agencies.’
Peter Bradley, deputy director of national children’s charity Kidscape, described the abuse as ‘sickening’.
He said: ‘If you’ve got six children, over a six year period, showing signs of serious physical harm, it begs the question as to why there was no intervention earlier.
‘This seems to be part of an ongoing problem with social services nationally where departments are not joined-up in their thinking process and are not sharing information effectively.
‘This has been the failing of many social services around the country which needs to be addressed urgently.
‘In this case the child who reported the abuse was braver than social services themselves who should have been there to protect those children.’
Detective Superintendent Tim Underhill of Cambridgeshire police’s child abuse investigation unit described the state of the house when they arrived.
He said: ‘The mother was arrested and her children taken into care on the same day that the children reported the situation at school.
‘The house was untidy and cluttered. It smelt and there were no, or very few, toys around.’
DCI Karen Rowell, also of the child abuse investigation unit, said the trial had been ‘particularly harrowing’.
‘I would like to thank all of the children involved who have all been incredibly brave throughout,’ she added. ‘I hope the children will be able to move on with their lives.’
Sentencing will take place on December 7.
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UK: The More the State Cares for the Old, The Less We Care for Them
So the Government is to spend £670million to offer free personal care for the most vulnerable elderly people in their own homes. Good, you may say. I’m not so sure. The more the state intervenes, the more we seem to treat the elderly with contempt.
The hallmark of a civilised society is the attention paid to the old, infirm and vulnerable. By that yardstick, Britain has become a disturbingly uncivilised, even brutal society.
How have we descended to this appalling state of affairs? The core reason is that in Britain, we do not venerate our elders in the way that other cultures do.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Patriarch Pavle Dies; Funeral, Pope’s Condolences
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, NOVEMBER 19 — Pope Benedict XVI has expressed his condolences to the Serbian Orthodox Church and its followers on the death of the Serbian patriarch Pavle, as announced by the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade. In a letter brought by the delegation representing the Vatican at the funeral, led by Cardinal Sodano, the pope noted that Patriarch Pavle was “a witness of faith in spiritual forces in very difficult years marked by wars and conflict on Serbia and other Balkan countries”. Pope Benedict XVI expressed the hope that the memory of Patriarch Pavle would be an invitation for all to follow in the path of dialogue and unity of those who follow Christ. With the mass in Belgrade’s central cathedral began the funeral this morning for the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pavle, who died on Sunday at age 95. Taking part in the funeral were representatives of all the orthodox churches led by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew. Also present were the highest-level political figures of Serbia. In the central mass to be held in front of the San Saba cathedral, at least half a million believers from all across Serbia are expected. The Patriarch will then be buried, as he had asked in his will, in the monastery of Saint Michael in Rokovica, a Belgrade suburb. Serbia is observing a day of rest today. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Orascom: Black Day on Bourse After Attacks in Algeria
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, NOVEMBER 18 — It has been a black day for Orascom Telecom, which went into free fall on the Cairo Bourse today, losing around 6%, after news that the Algerian tax authorities had notified the group that it must pay around 596 million dollars in back tax for the 2005-2007 period and sanctions. The bad news, which was predicted by company president Naguib Sawiris yesterday in a press conference in Cairo, follows damage costing millions to the companys offices and shops in Algeria which is the result of the climate of violence which followed Egypts football victory over Algeria in Cairo last Saturday. Shares in Orascom Telecom fell by 6.04% while the damage to Orascom Construction Industries was limited to 3.9%, according to Mena. The fall of Sawiris giant dragged the Cairo titles down with it, with sales on the part of Arab and foreign investors. The new statement by Algerias tax authorities for large businesses, said a statement by the holding company, is chiefly based on the unfounded and unacceptable accusation that Ota (Orascom Telecom Algeria, ed.) failed to keep correct accounting records for 2005,2006, and 2007. The statement says that the group and Ota will appeal.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Football: Algeria in World Cup;20 Yrs of Fear, Now Celebrating
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, NOVEMBER 19 — Fireworks, ‘ululululu’ (Arab women’s cry of joy) and even ship sirens rung out across yesterday evening in Algiers, where — immediately after the final whistle of referee Eddy Maillet of the Seychelles — a resounding boom marked the beginning of celebrations for the win against Egypt (1-0) in Khartoum, the qualifying match giving Algeria the right to compete in the 2010 World Cup South Africa. It was a much-desired victory, which after 24 years has brought the North African country to the World Cup for the third time in its history. “A well-deserved match,” Amina told ANSA, “which I hope can restore some joy to the young generation, after 20 years of suffering and pain. Twenty years of war and fear.” “I am happy especially for them, and I hope this marks the beginning of the true rebirth of Algeria,” said the 58-year-old woman, mother of three children — including one who made his way to Sudan to watch the match. Algeria hadn’t qualified for the most important football competition in the world since the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. A few years later, the fundamentalists of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) began to dictate laws, and in 1992, with the annulment of the elections in which the FIS won a landslide victory, violent actions began to be taken by Islamist armed groups: terrorism, and civil war. Art, culture and sport almost entirely disappeared. Since yesterday evening the entire country has been dreaming — even Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who thanked the players in an official statement for having given Algerians “immense joy and immense pride”, by pulling off “a feat which until this very moment had been seen as impossible”. Millions of young and old alike, including many women, celebrated in the streets of all the cities of Algeria, from the capital to the oases of the farthest reaches of the Sahara, with the celebrations broadcast live on state-run TV, ENTV. And many, between one slogan and the next, just could not hold back their tears. “After what the Egyptians did to us they got what they deserved. It is a question of pride. Wére on our way to the World Cup!”, said one young fan. Security forces, deployed in riot gear across many zones of Algeria, where in the case of a defeat public disturbance had been feared, helmets were lowered. The tension building up after Saturday’s defeat in Cairo disappeared, as did the violence of the last few days against Egyptian companies. “One, two, three, vive l’Algerie!”. Now, and for many days to come, the time has come to celebrate.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Football: Egypt-Algeria, Diplomatic and Media Clash
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, NOVEMBER 19 — The Egyptian Foreign Minister has summoned the Algerian Ambassador to Cairo to tell of Egypt’s deep discontent over a series of incidents caused by Algerian football fans after the match yesterday in Sudan, in which Algeria qualified for the World Cup in South Africa. Several Egyptian fans were attacked by the other sides supporters, armed with rocks, but also knives, whilst they were returning to the airport to get their flight back to Cairo. The Egyptian Health Minister however stated in a TV interview that the injuries suffered by Egyptian supporters were mild and that a team of Egyptian doctors were waiting at the airport to provide first aid. As regards the message to the Algerian Ambassador to Cairo, a spokesman from the Foreign Ministry spoke of harsh tones, and repeated Egypt’s request of a guarantee of safety for its citizens in Algeria, for which the government in Algiers is responsible But the Foreign Minister also berated the mercenary press, blaming them for the incidents. The press, reads a statement, have distanced the sport of the Arab world from the sporting spirit, whilst the winner has continued his aggression towards the loser, adding sad memories to the bitter defeat, which only the diplomats can now erase. The statement invites diplomats from Egypt and Algeria to repair the fractures created between the two countries, and underlines the need for a Charter of sports for the Arab world which promotes the role of it as an element of unification between peoples. The Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera is in particular accused of throwing petrol on the fire over a documentary on the history of sporting rivalry between the two countries, which is said to have given both sides the impression that the other was preparing for war. TV programmes featuring interventions by sports analysts were also criticised in general. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy-Egypt: Information Campaign for Minors
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, NOVEMBER 16 — Challenge yourself…dont challenge the sea, is the slogan for a awareness-raising campaign over the dangers and alternatives to immigration by Egyptian children to Italy, to be presented tomorrow in Cairo by the Egyptian Minister for the Family and Population, Mushira Khattab, and Italys ambassador, Claudio Pacifico. The campaign — which the Italian Employment Ministry and the International Organisation for Migration will participate in — is called ‘Safe Migration and positive alternatives for Egyptian Youth’, and has the intention of providing information on legal alternatives to emigration to Italy and on the importance of professional and linguistic abilities. The initiative will be launched by the Governorate of El Fayoum and will continue in other Governorates with high migratory pressure. The issue of irregular emigration by Egyption minors into Italy has reached worrying levels in recent years. According to data from the Italian government, 41.8% of the 2,881 irregular migrants who arrived in Italy in 2008 were between 15 and 18 years old. It is fundamental that the minors and their families are made aware not only of the dangers from irregular crossings but also of the possible conditions for regular migration. The launch event will be sponsored by well-known Egyptian actor Amr Waked. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netanyahu Party Member Slams ‘Racist’ Obama
Lawmaker decries U.S. demand to halt Jewish construction
A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party today slammed as “racist” President Obama’s longstanding demand for a halt to Jewish construction in the strategic West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.
“President Obama should not interfere with the rights of the Jewish people to live in Jerusalem,” said Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon. “This … is a racist demand, saying that Jews cannot live in Jerusalem, only Arabs.”
Danon continued: “Our duty is to the nation that chose to deepen the settlement across Judea and Samaria, and of course Jerusalem. We will fulfill that duty, even at the cost of ignoring Obama and his advisers.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Settlements: Beilin, Netanyahu, 10 Month Moratorium
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, NOVEMBER 19 — Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will soon announce a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, which will not apply to East Jerusalem. This was made public yesterday by the former Meretz (secular left) party chairman. In the next few days Netanyahu will announce a 10-month moratorium on construction in the settlements, which will apply to all of the West Bank except Jerusalem, confirmed Yossi Beilin during a ceremony where French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, awarded him the Legion of Honour at the French Embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its indivisible capital, including the eastern part conquered and annexed in 1967, while Palestinians want to establish the capital of the state they aspire to in this annexed section. The international community has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will refuse, and this move (by Netanyahu) will actually be a step back, leading to a political void and the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, predicted Beilin, one of the architects of the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accord in 1993.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Temporary Palestinian State, OK by Peres and Barak
(by Aldo Baquis) (ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, NOVEMBER 19 — A temporary Palestinian state in the middle of the West Bank in a limited time, combined with serious international guarantees to the Palestinians that within two years at the most a definitive peace agreement can be reached with Israel. On that day their State will cover an area equivalent to the West Bank and Gaza before the 1967 Six-Day War. Daily newspaper Maariv reports that these are the central elements of a plan which is still being worked out, and which has been discussed privately between Head of State Shimon Peres and representatives from the United States, the PNA and the Arab world. Defence Minister Ehud Barak is in complete agreement with Peres, according to Maariv. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is being kept informed, and is not against it. Opposition party Kadimas number two Shaul Mofaz presented a personal plan based on similar concepts ten days ago. He presented it to United States government officials yesterday, who reacted with keen interest said Mofaz. For his part, Netanyahu is about to announce a ten-month moratorium on building projects in the West Bank. But a mini-State in the West Bank, with a considerably problematic limb in Gaza (due to the deep and lasting bitterness between Fatah and Hamas) seems not to be exciting interest among the Palestinians. While Jerusalem multiplies its own trial balloon, twenty kilometres to the north in Ramallah, a profound sense of mistrust reigns. In an interview from prison with Reuters, al-Fatah chief Marwan Barghuti claims that talks with Israel will be considered a failure and that now is the time to resume the peoples battle against the settlements, against the security barriers and against the Jewification of Jerusalem. President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) asked rhetorically: if not even the president of the United States can manage to freeze the Israeli settlement-building, how can I? In a television interview Mahmoud Abbas said he was determined not to stand again as leader of the Palestinian National Authority. Nobody is replaceable if the Israelis seriously want to move forward with the peace process, let them speak with my successor as well he said, continuing his international itinerary from Egypt to Brazil. Demoralised tones now mark Abu Ala and Saeb Erekat, the best-known Palestinian negotiators. Meanwhile Premier Salam Fayad is concentrating on building the infrastructure of the Palestinian state regardless of any particular agreements with Israel. Despite the negative atmosphere, talks are going on behind the scenes for a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. A cautious optimism has been growing since yesterday. Israeli corporal Ghilad Shalit, who has been held in Gaza since June 2006, could soon be taken to el-Arish (in the Egyptian Sinai) to be examined by Israeli doctors. Palestinian newspaper al-Manar maintains that Israel will then release 450 Palestinian prisoners accused of serious attacks. Thanks to Hamas, says the newspaper, Barghuti will be released. Minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer (Labour) says that Barghuti could be the best successor to Mahmoud Abbas: he is a genuine leader who also enjoys the support of Hamas. He knows the difference between dreams and reality. I would like to do business with hard people like him. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Supporting Palestinian Land-Grab
Operating in areas under Israeli authority according to Oslo Accords
While the Obama administration has demanded a halt to Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, it is “totally supporting” the building of official Palestinian institutions in those same areas as well as the strategic West Bank, a top Palestinian Authority official told WND.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a recent report by Israel’s Shabak security services that the PA has been opening official institutions in what are termed areas B and C.
According to the 1993 Oslo Accords, territories defined as area A are entirely administered and controlled by the Palestinians; area B is administered by the PA but controlled by Israel; whereas area C, including eastern Jerusalem, is supposed to be entirely administered and controlled by Israel.
In defiance of the accords, the Palestinians in recent months have opened up official institutions, including PA ministry offices, in area C.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Challenging Theater Performance by Transsexuals
Transsexuals have come together to perform in the theater as the Group Opal. ‘Either love us or not, but know us first,’ the artists say as they depict their struggles through the language of art
A group of Turkish transsexuals has created a theatrical play to share the difficulties members of the community face, telling audiences, “Either love us or not, but know us first.”
The biggest problem faced by Turkish transsexuals, Group Opal artists say, is that they are not given a chance to express themselves. They must pay the price of their sexuality in their daily lives and have difficulties finding the jobs they need to survive. Their families generally reject them, and many find themselves caught up in prostitution due to financial problems and social pressure. Only some succeed in coping with these difficulties.
“Everyone will confront themselves and life [in this play],” Dilruba Saatçi, who is staging “Üç Kurusluk Mahalle Dersleri” (Worthless Neighborhood Lectures) at Süzer Plaza’s Theater Mann in Istanbul’s Elmadag neighborhood, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. Drawing attention to the problems faced by transsexuals in Turkey, Saatçi added, “Turkish society cannot stand the ‘other.’“
An accidental encounter
Saatçi, who moved to Vienna with her family when she was a child, received an education in the performing arts. She took the stage in almost every European city, including Vienna, and followed events in Turkey distantly, through the eyes of a young person growing up in Europe.
Wanting to know more about her own culture, she came to Turkey a few years ago to satisfy her curiosity. Saatçi said she was very upset that she could not find what she desired in Turkey. “I was really disappointed. Human rights are not respected in this country,” she said, adding that it was difficult to hide from this reality because she is a Turk.
The main reason behind Saatçi’s attitude was an incident that occurred at Çapa Hospital in Istanbul’s Fatih district when she was attending scriptwriting classes. She asked herself, “What kind of role would I choose if I were a director?” and came up with the idea of playing the role of a transsexual. She started researching the topic and met with a psychiatrist at Çapa Hospital. During the meeting, a nurse entered the room and said a tormented transsexual had been brought to the hospital. This was a turning point for Saatçi.
Difficult to gain trust
Following this incident, she chose to devote more research to the difficulties experienced by transsexuals, attending meetings organized weekly by members of the community. “They share their most private secrets at the meetings, from their troubles with the police to problems with their families,” Saatçi said.
Though she regularly attended the meetings for three months, she said it was difficult to gain the participants’ trust.
“When I asked them why, they adopted a distant manner,” she said. “Their answer was ‘You’ll get bored and leave a short time later.’“
Saatçi was determined not to leave. With her friend Yilmaz Öney, she wrote the play “Üç Kurusluk Mahalle Dersleri” and later shared her project with the meeting participants. “None of them had any experience with acting. They accepted it at first, but wanted to go when they had difficulty,” she said. “I encouraged them, saying, ‘If you have succeeded in surviving against all odds as a transsexual in this country, you can also get onstage.’ I enabled them to discover their power.”
She said all viewers, whether Turkish or foreign, would see a different face of life in this play.
“Üç Kurusluk Mahalle Dersleri” runs until the end of the season; the next performances are Nov. 21 and 28 at 8:30 p.m. For further information, visit www.tiyatromanno.com.tr.
‘They make my life hell’
Didem Soylu, 27, one of the performers, is a tourism and hotel-management graduate. She said she realized her sexual tendencies at a very young age. “I felt the feelings of all young girls while being a woman, too. I wanted to get the support of my family. But it was difficult to break the taboos; the cost was heavy,” she said.
“If we are given the right to education, we want to become successful and do our business,” Soylu said. “I don’t understand why people are curious about others’ sexual lives, but not their brains.”
Sevi Yilmaz, 30, graduated from a school for gifted students. She said her right to live as she chooses has been violated because of her sexual preferences. “My soul hurts, they make my life hell. I don’t know what cost we will have to pay in this world,” she said. Yilmaz added that transsexuals working as prostitutes should not be made to feel shame, saying: “If you don’t give me a job and create an opportunity for me to be included in society, then I will sell my body and soul.”
Using the example of Turkey’s “diva” soloist Bülent Ersoy, who underwent a gender-change operation in the early 1980s, Yilmaz said: “If a transsexual is famous, she is warmly applauded, but if not, all doors are closed. What a bad contradiction!”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Davutoglu Criticizes Speaker of EU Parliament
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reacted Monday to the Polish speaker of the European Parliament’s statement that Turkish culture has no place in Europe’s cultural heritage.
“I am a bit surprised by this statement because it does not fit with the European mentality,” Davutoglu said in an address to the New Economy Forum in Madrid. “I can give you a hundred reasons why Turkey is part of European culture.”
Parliament Speaker Jerzy Buzek made the remarks in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais.
“Let’s say Turkey gave up on its membership aspiration… Do you think all European cultural challenges would be solved?” Davutoglu asked. “Introducing a unified European culture and excluding the rest is wrong.”
“You cannot understand the history of at least 15 European countries without exploring the Ottoman archives,” the Turkish foreign minister added. “One cannot understand the European cities of Sarajevo, Belgrade and Thessaloniki without considering the Ottomans’ urban culture.”
“The European Union should think more globally than continentally,” Davutoglu said. “We want a Europe open to all cultures.”
In his lengthy address to the Turkish and Spanish audience, Davutoglu said the world must restore the global political, economic and cultural order for the well-being of the future of humanity.
On his last day in Spain, Davutoglu went to Barcelona to re-open a Turkish consulate in the city. Turkey had operated a consulate there between 1925 and 1981, but was forced to shut it for economic reasons.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Death of an Iran Prison Doctor Raises Suspicion
“An Iranian doctor who went public with reports of tortured protesters he treated at Tehran’s most feared detention facility dies, amid conflicting reports of a heart attack, a car accident or suicide — raising opposition accusations that the 26-year-old was killed.
Revelations that protesters detained in Iran’s postelection crackdown were tortured, some to death, were a deep embarrassment to the country’s clerical rulers. Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani was pressured to change the death certificate of one of the most well known victims and later spoke to a parliament commission investigating the abuse, opposition Web sites reported.”
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Islam: First ‘Official’ Copy of Koran in Italian to be Printed in Medina
Mecca, 18 Nov. (AKI) — The first ‘official’ copies in Italian language of the Islamic holy book, the Koran, will be published in the Saudi Arabian city of Medina next year. The copies will be printed in the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Koran, which issues hundreds of thousands of copies of the Koran all over the world. A team of Islamic scholars in Medina has been working on the translation for a number of years.
“Compared to the previous translation that sold thousands of copies in Italy, the Saudi version will have fewer annotations, and the Italian translation will also contain the original Arabic equivalent,” former secretary of one of Italy’s largest Muslim groups, UCOII, Hamza Piccardo.
Piccardo drafted an Italian translation of the Koran, which the Islamic scholars in Medina used as a basis for the ‘official’ translation which will be available next September.
“There were corrections and revisions where I also participated after spending many days here in Medina,” Piccardo said in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).
Distribution of the Italian Koran will begin next September and many Italian mosques will soon have a copy, according to Piccardo.
He was also in Saudi Arabia for the annual ‘hajj’ or pilgrimage to Mecca.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: School for Palestinians Reopened Thanks to EU
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 18 — The Deir Qasi school in Said, Lebanon, has been opened after it was rebuilt with EU funds. Around 900 children will be able to learn in the new building, avoiding double shifts and increasing lesson times. The initiative, says the Enpi website (www.enpi-info.eu), was part of a 15 million-euro educational project, which aims to give extra job opportunities to young Palestinians in Lebanon, by increasing and improving the quality of the UNRWAs education system, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Young people are the future and we must invest in them, said Karen Abou Zayd, general commissioner of UNRWA, at the opening ceremony. by 2012, thanks to our joint endeavour, no school in Saida will be operating on double-shift; and more than 6,000 Palestinian children across Lebanon will have a new classroom., said Ambassador Patrick Laurent, Head of the European Commission Delegation to Lebanon. The EUs support for the education of Palestinian refugees through the UNRWA also includes a programme of University scholarships for Palestinian students in Lebanon. The EU has approved this initiative for three years, with up to 8.3 million set aside for scholarships for Palestinians. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
India: Church Vandalised in South of Country
Bangalore, 18 Nov. (AKI/IANS) — A church located in the southern Indian state of Karnataka has been vandalised and a cross, doors and windows have been damaged, police and church authorities said Wednesday.
Vasanthkumar, the priest at the church in Humnabad in Bidar district, told reporters that the attack must have taken place late Tuesday and the damage was noticed Wednesday.
“It looks like a deliberate act of desecration as nothing has been stolen,” Vasanthkumar said.
He said the cross on top of the church, the main door and windows have been damaged.
The police visited the church and registered a case on the complaint lodged by the priest.
In September last year, more than 15 churches were vandalised in different parts of the state by pro-Hindu activists, protesting alleged conversion activity by missionaries.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesian Catholics Helping Farmers and Labourers
Farmers are powerless in the face of shrinking farmland and foreign competition. KPTT, an organisation founded by a Dutch Jesuit, holds a two-day workshop in Central Java to discuss the matter.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) — In Indonesia farmers and labourers are powerless, living on the edges of society. Farmers have also lost a lot of farmland to large-scale industrial development.
“The problems of everyday life are getting worse,” Fr Winangun said. “On the market, the price of wheat is low, but the cost of seeds is rising sharply.”
However, sharing these problems tends to sharpen a sense of solidarity among those involved. People are forced to come up with solutions to common problems, protecting their rights and improving their quality of life, this according to a two-day workshop organised by an Indonesian Catholic NGO that brought together 34 farmers and workers in Salatiga, a town in Central Java.
“Our mission is to improve farmers’ morale,” said Fr John Wartaya Winangun SJ, director of KPTT, an organisation founded in 1964 by a Dutch Jesuit, Fr Callens.
The meeting, which took place last week, saw farmers and labourers (pictured) come from Jakarta, Central Java and East Java.
Those present talked about their “experiences and problems,” Fr Winangun said. They also tried to develop common solutions to “improve their quality of life.”
Networking in support of workers is an essential part of that because it enables members to “promote their products” and “exchange ideas and opinions,” the priest said.
Farm workers face the same challenges. Not only are they paid low wages but they are also subject to haphazard working conditions, increasingly at the mercy of outside businesses that penalises local production.
Boosting solidarity to help local farmers develop the country’s agriculture go hand in hand with a better quality of life, the KPTT director said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
White House Aides: No Afghan Decision Before Thanksgiving
President Barack Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said on Thursday.
The news came as the president greeted 1,500 troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, just before boarding Air Force One and heading back to Washington after an eight-day Asia trip. Obama and his top military and diplomatic aides have been deliberating for months over how to proceed in Afghanistan, where the United States and its partners have sought for eight years to defeat the Taliban and deny al-Qaeda a safe haven from which it can plan and launch attacks.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has stated that without the deployment of up to 40,000 additional of troops within the next year, the mission “will likely result in failure.” But some aides are arguing for a much smaller troop increase, and the U..S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, has questioned whether the Afghan government can be a reliable partner.
Obama said in interviews Wednesday that he would reveal his decision within the next several weeks. On Thursday, aides clarified that there would be no announcement before Thanksgiving, one week away. Senior administration officials said Obama intends to meet with his national security team again before going public with his plans.
Obama did not mention the looming decision in his remarks to U.S. troops, referring to the Afghan conflict only by thanking South Korea for its efforts and expressing gratitude to the American soldiers who have served there.. But he did discuss the region in his meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, whose government has is sending 150 civilian aid workers to Afghanistan.
Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures. “You guys make a pretty good photo op,” the president said.
Standing on a riser wearing a blue suit and red tie, with a cluster of troops and a large American flag behind him, Obama expressed “the gratitude of the American public” and said his meetings in four countries over eight days in Asia will help deliver a “safer more prosperous world for all of us.” He got a huge cheer when he told them he was increasing military pay. “That’s what you call an applause line,” he said, before boarding his jet and taking off at 4:11 p.m.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
North Korean Exile: Beijing Uses Pyongyang to Threaten the World
A former university professor, who fled to China, warns: “The government of Hu Jintao has done everything to provoke a nuclear strike by Kim Jong-il. Our people are afraid of dying slaves to the empire”.
Beijing (AsiaNews) — The regime of North Korea “fears Beijing more than Washington. China is using Pyongyang to frighten the world, but is not interested in its future. We’re on a train launched at breakneck speed, driven by the People’s Republic and with us, South Korea and Japan on board”. The speaker is a former university professor of the northern Korean Peninsula, escaped from the totalitarian rule of Kim Jong-il and currently a refugee in China. According to Choi, a fictitious name given to the interviewer, “the elite of Korean Stalinist regime is animated by a deep hatred towards China. Until recently, the relationship between the two countries was described as ‘a covenant of blood’, but today the reality is much clearer. They use us, they use our nuclear capability to tighten the ropes on other nations. And then they will discard us, when they no longer need us”.
Until two years ago, continues the former academic, “the population of the North believed anti-American propaganda. Now it fears becoming a slave of the Chinese, who are worse than the Americans. We were forced into poverty, we were hated by the whole world, and for what? So they could be our watchdogs. No-one cares about our security”.
Choi stresses that this “is not solely my idea: almost all North Korean intellectuals think like me. Everything started when the nuclear plans of the ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il clashed with the wishes of the Chinese. Even he agrees with what I said, so much so that is trying in every way to escape from that situation. “
Beijing’s strategy “is very simple. They want to play with the international community, which is aware of the fact that Pyongyang takes orders only from China. They use the adventurism of our Republic to point missiles at everyone and then disarm us, in order to prove themselves better than the United States. Beijing has manipulated us, it has done everything to increase our arsenal of weapons: it said it was putting pressure on us, but it did the opposite. “
According to the dissident, “the aim was to bring North Korea to a level that could directly threaten, if not America, at least Japan. At that point, Beijing would have torn us to pieces, saying that the real fault lay with the other nations. On the other hand, our regime knows this well: by launching a nuclear attack, we would disappear from the face of the earth. Intellectuals succeeded in asking the government to move with caution on the subject, but until we have China breathing down our necks we are all in danger of dying”.
The interview with this exiled intellectual appeared on a well known website, the North Korean Daily, which collects the testimonies of those who manage to escape the regime of Kim Jong-il. Immediately after its publication in Chinese and English, a message appeared in the window to comment on the post from a Chinese user who calls himself “a patriot”. The text of the post reads: “Choi is only an ungrateful worm. The Chinese know who they are dealing with, and that is why the Koreans will never be tolerated by us”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
North Korea: The Life of Communism’s Playboy
MI6 uncovers the inside world of Kim Jong-il
Across the border from where Kim Jong-il rules, Obama was told on his whistlestop trip around Asia that Kim is “the mad, bad dictator dangerous to know.”
He has impressive missiles, a stockpile of plutonium for dirty bombs and a track record of selling whatever weapons he has to dangerous customers.
Politely, Obama had tried the “open hand” approach — sending no fewer than four U.S. delegations to Pyongyang this year. They have come away with the news that the dictatorship is hard-wired to interpret conciliation as weakness.
But now Britain’s intelligence service MI6 has pieced together a picture of the lifestyle of Kim and a handful of the country’s secretive elite.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Leaves a Victorious Beijing. More Activists Arrested
Before leaving for Seoul, the U.S. president met with Wen Jiabao and visited the Great Wall. Hundreds of activists with petitions arrested or deported.
Beijing (AsiaNews) — On the last day of his visit to China, Barack Obama met with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. As a final gesture, before his departure, the U.S. president visited the Great Wall. Meanwhile reports of persons arrested and deported from Beijing to ensure they will not meet with the American guest are persistent.
The meeting with Wen Jiabao took place in the late morning, and focused mainly on economic relations between the two superpowers and on the imbalance between the two. China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, with 797 billion dollars.
The meeting was followed by lunch together in the residence for VIPs at Diaoyutai.
Before his departure for South Korea, the last leg of his trip to Asia, Barack Obama visited the Great Wall.
Meanwhile, the CHRD (Chinese Human Rights Defenders) reports that hundreds of people who arrived in Beijing to press the U.S. president on human rights, have been detained and deported. On the evening of November 16, about 90 activists from Shanghai, arrived at Diaoyutai be able to see Obama, but were taken by the police. About 40 of them were transferred to prison in Ganjiakou, the other inmates to a “black prison” (unofficial) near the southern station. All those arrested belong to a group whose homes have been expropriated and destroyed to prepare space for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
Another hundred people who had come to Beijing to petition, were taken and deported to their provinces.
According to experts and analysts, Beijing has emerged victor from Barack Obama’s visit, which saw its role as a superpower publicly recognized; its claim on Tibet and Taiwan confirmed; human rights overshadowed. For its part Beijing made no promise to appreciate the Yuan or on climate issues.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Goes Mao
By supporting the policy, Obama has committed the US to backing the PRC position on One China. As T-shirts featuring a stylized Obama and Mao were selling like hot cakes in Beijing, and health care nationalization that Mao himself might have approved of was moving through congress, Barack Hussein Obama took the opportunity to embrace his inner Mao by predictably enough selling out the last remnants of Taiwan’s sovereignty vis a vis the political successors of Mao’s monstrous Communist butchers, the People’s Republic of China.
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Philippines: ‘Climate Change Pushes Poor Women to Prostitution, Dangerous Work’
Effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines to risk dangerous jobs, and sometimes even into the flesh trade.
Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.
“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection,” Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.
In the Philippines, small brothels usually pop out near the coastal areas where many women do sexual services to transient seafarers. Often, these prostitutes are ferried to bigger ships by their pimps.
Based on the UNFPA report, there are 92 million Filipinos in the country as of 2009 and that number is expected to balloon to more than 146 million in the next 40 years.
Of the 92 million Filipinos, about 60 percent are living in coastal areas and depend on the seas for livelihood, said former Environment secretary Dr. Angel Alcala.
Alcala said that “we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our marine environment.”
But as the sea’s resources are depleted due to overpopulation and overfishing, fishermen start losing their livelihood and women are forced to share the traditional role of the man in providing for the family.
Alacala, who also heads the Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management in Siliman University, said some women often pick out shellfish by the coastlines, exposed to storm surges.
Women who could no longer endure this work often go out to find other jobs, while some are tempted into prostitution, Alcala added.
In an interview with the Inter Press News Agency, Marita Rodriguez of the Centre for Empowerment and Resource Development, Inc. said women are taking the brunt of climate change.
“Aside from their household chores and participation in fishing activity, they have to find additional sources of income like working as domestic helpers in affluent families,” she said.
The UNFPA noted that the temperature in the earth’s surface has risen 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past 100 years. The 10 warmest years globally since 1880 have also been recorded in the last 13 years.
“Slower population growth, for example, would help build social resilience to climate change’s impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gas-emissions in the future,” the UNFPA report said.
The UNFPA suggested five measures to mitigate climate change and overpopulation…
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
President Obama Returns Home From Visit to China Almost Empty Handed
On nearly every subject critical to the US he got virtually nothing from Beijing President Obama achieved very little from his three-day trip to China: on nearly every subject critical to the US he got virtually nothing from Beijing.
The trip, which was closely regimented by Beijing, far more than when Bill Clinton and George Bush visited the country, was also notable for how often Mr Obama asked for China’s help, rather than the other way round.. He got almost nothing in return. By the end of the trip it was evident that the two nations were unable to overcome their differences on key matters, including currency disputes, trade, climate change and Iran’s nuclear programme.
That no main breakthroughs were achieved reflects the changing power dynamic between the two countries. China has weathered the financial crisis better than the US. Mr Obama, burdened with colossal national debt and two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had little bargaining power to bring to the table. The White House insisted that it was unrealistic to expect immediate results from the trip. Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, said that the President “did not think the waters would part and everything would change as a result of his trip to China”.
There are increasingly nagging doubts among the US public about Mr Obama’s ability to get things done on the world stage and exact concessions from America’s rivals and enemies. The trip to China has only enhanced those perceptions.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Tremonti Lectrues at Chinese University
Economy minister praises reforms in socialist system
(ANSA) — Beijing, November 19 — Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti on Thursday gave a lecture to the rising stars of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in which he called for a new ‘Global Standard’ to govern a now global economy.
Speaking at the PCC’s Central School, a post-graduate campus for future party leaders, the Italian minister observed that “the market has become global but the rules which govern it have remained local”.
And what this has created, he explained, “is a divide between politics and the economy, between reality and the rules”.
The recent global economic downturn, Tremonti observed, “was curbed but not resolved by government policies which restored confidence among the people through classic Keynesian spending policies and through direct intervention in finance and banking”.
But all this “was not enough,” he added, “what is needed is political intervention to draw up new, governing rules which are global and multilateral: a new Bretton Woods”.
“What we need is not a new code based on old codes but a tool which can help write a new page in history. Something which has been christened a ‘Global Standard’… which to many may appear to be a utopia,” Tremonti explained.
Only a few years after he had warned about the risks connected with China’s aggressive trade policy, Tremonti appeared to have changed his tune and said that it was essential that China be directly involved in drawing up future rules for the global economy.
The future ‘Global Standard’ must be drawn up by nations with different political systems and ensure “that we are all on the same footing based on reciprocal respect. For us in the West this means accepting political systems which are different from our own,” the Italian minister said.
In a statement which drew applause from the young Communist audience, Tremonti observed that “what is special about China’s political experience is not its shift from socialism to capitalism but the internal reforms your brand of socialism has adopted, reforms which are still ongoing”.
In summing up, Tremonti said that “only reciprocal tolerance will get us through the crisis. A tolerance which must not only be economic but also cultural and religious, because the essence of our society is not just commercial but above all moral and political”.
Tremonti this week was voted the fifth best finance minister in the European Union by Britain’s Financial Times.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Africa: Foreign Aid Not Good for Region
Harare — I COME from Africa, a resource-rich continent which is depicted as poor by conventional development statistics — so as to justify foreign aid. Aid has driven Africans to lose confidence in their abilities and opportunities. It has promoted a culture of dependence — a culture of relying on other people’s help.
African children are born into a cycle of dependency. Imagine yourself as a child, growing up in a country where your parents have been reduced to mere procreators. They cannot feed you, because their indigenous foods have been crowded out by exotic foods that came from donors. They cannot choose the type of education you ought to get, because donors have supplied all sorts of “free education systems” that orient you to the West. You become an automatic candidate for the “brain drain”, for immigration to the developed world — but your education does not prepare you to solve Africa’s problems.
So-and-So/IRIN
You grow up in a confused political environment. Donors’ direct funding of civil society cuts your government out of the picture and leaves it impotent. On the other hand if the donors give direct funding to your government, they breed political cronyism, corruption and the evils of ethnic division. A mixture of both leads to political upheavals — as we saw in Kenya last year. Donors made Kenya into a country whose government does not pay attention to the electorate. At the same time they paid its civil society to organise citizens into agitators.
Attempts by donors to impose their organisational structures on Africa create confusion — and force people on the continent to focus on short-term goals. Although donors might brag about promoting education in Africa, they do not admit that they’re simply helping their own industry, by creating a supply of labour. Donors decry the dearth of leadership in Africa, but stop short of pointing out that the majority of the so-called “bad leaders” were educated in Western schools using donor funds…
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Half Brother Describes Abuse
The self-published “Nairobi to Shenzhen” follows Ndesandjo’s peripatetic life. He was born in Kenya to Barack Obama Sr., the president’s father, and his third wife, Ruth Nidesand, the daughter of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. The couple later divorced and Ndesandjo moved to the United States, earning degrees in physics from Brown University and Stanford and an MBA from Emory University.
He was married last year to a Chinese woman from Henan province.
As with the president’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Ndesandjo’s book delves into growing up as a mixed-race child and into a psyche shaped by an erratic father.
“My father beat my mother and my father beat me,” Ndesandjo told the Associated Press in an interview released Wednesday. “I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting.”
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
Brazil: Last Word on Battisti on ‘Political’
Brazilian supreme court rules in favor of extradition
(ANSA) — Rome, November 19 — Now that Brazil’s supreme court has given its green light to the extradition to Italy of convicted terrorist Cesare Battisti, the final decision on his return will be political, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Thursday.
“We await this next move with respect and serenity,” he added.
“In the meantime, I wish to congratulate the two ambassadors who handled this painful chapter with competence, resolve and a sense of institutional responsibility,” the foreign minister said.
“Our whole diplomatic network worked as a team and did a magnificent job. I thank everyone on behalf of all Italians,” Frattini added.
Brazil’s supreme court, in a five-to-four decision, ruled on Wednesday that Battisti could be extradited to Italy but that President Inacio Lula da Silva should have the final word.
Lula was in Italy this week, to take part in a United Nations food security summit and discussed the Battisti case when he met with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on the sidelines of the gathering.
“I couldn’t come to Italy without addressing the Battisti case, but I don’t want to tell you what we said to each other,” Lula told journalists as he left the premier’s office.
He added: “I have already voiced my position, I’m waiting for the Supreme Court ruling”.
In the past, Lula has come out against Battisti being returned to Italy, but he has also said he will respect the court’s decision.
Battisti, 54, was convicted in absentia for complicity in four murders committed by a leftist militant group in the 1970s.
He was arrested in Brazil in March 2008, some four years after he had fled to that country to avoid extradition to Italy from France, where he had lived for 15 years and become a successful writer of crime novels.
In January, the Brazilian justice ministry granted Battisti political asylum on the grounds that he would face “political persecution” in Italy.
The ruling outraged the Italian government who demanded that it be appealed to the Brazilian supreme court.
Those arguing against his extradition claim he is the victim of political persecution, while those who think he should be sent back to serve out his sentence say the crimes he was convicted of were not political.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
122 Kurds Disembark in Calabria
(ANSAmed) — RIACE (CALABRIA), 18 NOVEMBER — A boat with 122 immigrants of various nationalities on board was intercepted by the Finance Police a few kilometers from the coast of Riace, in the Jonnio region, this morning. The boat, after having been intercepted, tried to go further, but ran aground. The immigrants that were on board were thrown into the sea, but have subsequently been recovered and brought to shore. Investigators are now looking for the people traffickers. The group of immigrants comprised 74 men, 24 women and 24 minors, about ten of which were children, two very young. Two of the women were pregnant and one man was taken to a local hospital, but their conditions are not cause for concern. According to verifications from the Finance Police, who are developing their investigations together with the other police units, the immigrants are Kurdish, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran. They departed from a port in Turkey last Friday. The immigrants have been taken into two facilities in Riace made available by the Mayor, Domenico Lucano, as they await transportation for to a reception centre. In Riace there has been a strong immigrant presence for a long time , under a Council initiative, wherein they are settled in the centre of the Locride region, creating a community that is assimilated within the wider social context.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Britain’s Soaring Population on Course to Hit 74million
Britain’s population may grow to 74million over the next 20 years, according to official estimates. The Office for National Statistics said that if immigration continues at high levels the population will swell by more than a fifth — some 12million — in two decades. And according to calculations of the highest likely scale of future population growth published yesterday, numbers will reach the 70million mark in 2023, six years earlier than otherwise expected.
The projection from the ONS follows a pledge by Gordon Brown last week that numbers in the country will not hit 70million in the next 20 years. Ministers say new immigration curbs will ensure the record migration levels of the last five years are cut back. Last month the ONS said the most likely date for the 70million level to be reached is 2029.
The 74million estimate was based on what will happen if immigration continues at the highest levels seen in recent years, if birthrates among new migrants are maintained, and if the life expectancy of Britons keeps rising.. A spokesman for the ONS said the high-level population projection was calculated from ‘ alternative, but still plausible, assumptions’.
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| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Minister Announces New Measures
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, NOVEMBER 18 — Minister of Citizen Protection (established by the new Papandreou government) Michalis Chrysochoidis has announced that he will modernise the Coastguard, so that the wave of illegal immigrants who reach the coast of the islands in the Aegean Sea can be managed better. Chrysochoidis, has also decided to increase the number of employees and to update the equipment used by the port authorities on the islands of Lesbos, Samo, Leros and Patmos, in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea. The minister has expressed his concerns about the daily arrival of illegal immigrants on the Greek islands. Talking to reporters after a meeting at the headquarters of the Coastguard, the minister said that he will form a special team that will follow the movements from and to the ports of Patras and Igoumenitsa, because of the serious problems these ports are experiencing with illegal immigration. The Secretary-General of the Ministry and the Chiefs of Greek Police and of the Coastguard will be on the team, the minister added. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Human Rights Commission, Filipino Maids ‘Slaves’
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, NOVEMBER 18 — The parliamentary commission for Labour Affairs of the Philippines has urged the government to suspend the sending of domestic workers to the Middle East followed an inspection by three delegates to the region, who documented situations tantamount to “modern slavery”, reports the daily paper Khaleej Times. The mission, sent by the parliament of the Philippines, visited five cities: Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Amman in Jordan. “We have seen violations in all three countries,” said member of parliament Carlos Padillas, explaining that “some of the victims were tricked by the employment agencies, while others suffered physical and sexual abuse from their employers.” Abuse and maltreatment have also been revealed by Human Rights Watch in Lebanon, where there is an ever-growing number of suicides among foreign domestic help. The director of the Immigration Department of Dubai, Mohammed Ahmed Al Marri, refused to comment on the news, saying that the department had not yet been officially informed of the inspection. However, he added that if the information is proven accurate, then the Ministry for Foreign Affairs would take the necessary measures. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Northern Mayor Launches ‘Immigrant Clean-Up’ Initiative
Brescia, 18 Nov. (AKI) — The mayor of the small town of Coccaglio, located in the northern Italian region of Lombardy has launched a campaign to “clean-up” the city of immigrants, ahead of the Christian holidays next month, Italian media said on Wednesday. The town council has dubbed the operation “White Christmas”.
“There is no crime here. We only want to start cleaning up,” said the mayor of Coccaglio, Franco Claretti.
The “White Christmas” campaign is being spearheaded by Claretti and six town councillors from Italy’s ruling conservative People of Freedom party and its junior coalition partner, the anti-immigrant Northern League party.
“For me, Christmas is not the holiday of hospitality, but instead that of the Christian tradition, of our identity,” said Coccaglio’s councillor in charge of security, Claudio Abiendi, from the Northern League, quoted by Italian daily La Repubblica.
The operation will see police officers going to every home in the town to make sure its residents have their immigration documents in order, otherwise they will lose their residence and risk deportation.
The move also applies to those whose legal permit of stay expired over six months ago and cannot prove that they have begun the procedure to renew it.
Coccaglio has a population of 7,000 residents of which more than 1,550 are immigrants, most of them from Morocco, Albania, and from the former Yugoslavia. In 1998, there were 177 immigrants living in the town.
The nearby towns of Castelcovati and Castrezzatoare also beginning to copy Coccaglio’s idea, La Repubblica reported.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Multi-Lingual Guide to Find House in Lombardy
(ANSAmed) — NAPLES, NOVEMBER 18 — It is aimed at immigrants in Lombardy and offers numerous pieces of information on the regional home market, with instructions and suggestions on how to rent an apartment, buy a home or have recourse to local public housing. It is the multi-lingual guide “Living in Lombardy: The Guide for Immigrants to Rent or Buy a Home”, which will be presented tomorrow in Milan. Published by the Region of Lombardy with the ISMU Foundation — Multiethnic Research and Initiatives — through the financing of the Ministries of labour, health and social policy, the volume is supplied free in the ten widest spoken languages in the area of Lombardy (Arabic, Spanish, Albanian, English, Romanian, Tagalog, Chinese French, Ukrainian and Portuguese). 80,000 copies have been printed and they will be distributed over the entire territory: in 130 private and public offices, including those of SpazioRegione, the courts, police stations, employment agencies, immigration windows and Caritas. Moreover the guide will be available on the internet on the ISMU website (www.ismu.org/radici). (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Morocco Obstacle for New Islamic Party
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, NOVEMBER 19 — There is a hurdle called Morocco to be got past for the new Islamic party PRUNE, which was created in Spain this year and would like to run for office in the 2011 city council elections. PRUNE (Partito Renacimiento y Union de Espana), founded by the Moroccan-born journalist Mustafà Bakkach, addresses its platform mainly to the about half a million Muslim citizens of Spain, as well as legal immigrants from Islamic countries having agreements with Madrid which allow their citizens to vote in city council elections. According to the online edition of ABC, however, it is rather unlikely that an agreement of this type could happen with Morocco, the home country of over 700,000 legal immigrants to Spain — which would constitute the main electoral base of the new party. The Moroccan constitution does not allow foreign citizens to take part in its elections, and the accords signed by Madrid with non-European countries allowing their immigrants to vote in local elections are all based on reciprocal agreements. “A referendum is necessary for a change to the constitution in Morocco, and this complicated matters,” said Rabat university professor Mohamed Khachani. PRUNE, formed at the beginning of the year and registered since July at the Interior Ministry, with sections for the time being only in Granada and Oviedo, would like to be present in 2011 in major Spanish cities, and hopes to rack up votes also among the non-Muslim population which can take part in the elections. Two other Muslim parties have long existed in Spain in the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on Moroccan territory, but so far the latter have been limited to local politics. PRUNE aims to extend its electoral base as far as possible by promising, as Bakkach said, “to defend the interests of minorities and those living on the fringes of society”. Bakkach himself, a naturalised Spanish citizen since 2001, does not hide the hope that one day “one of our children could become the mayor of a large city…or minister. And why not?”. Of course, ABC noted, the matter would be simpler for PRUNE if the idea of a law allowing all legal, stably residing immigrants to vote were to take root, spoken of a number of times within Premier José Luis Zapatero’s PSOE. However, for the time being it is only an idea.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turks: Germany Must Do More for Integration
The vast majority of Turkish immigrants in Germany think their adopted country should do more to accommodate them, according to a new study released on Thursday.
Forty-five percent of the Turks surveyed said that they feel unwelcome in Germany. But an overwhelming 82 percent said their host should do more to aid their integration.
Germany is home to almost three million people with Turkish roots, making it the world’s largest Turkish diaspora and Germany’s largest ethnic minority.
The study said Turks were already engaged in many aspects of German society such working, paying taxes and being able to afford consumer goods such as cars. But mentally, there was still a huge gulf between Turks and their host country.
“This is a group of people who are deeply committed to their cultural and religious roots and Turkish values,” the study said. “And they are not fundamentally prepared to give them up.”
A damning report published in February found that although many Turks have been in Germany for nearly 50 years they are the least well integrated of all immigrant communities.
Other recent surveys have shown that they are more likely to leave school without qualifications than the overall population, more likely to be unemployed and below the poverty line.
This latest survey was carried out by research institutes Info GmbH and Antalya-based Liljeberg Research International. Around 1,000 Germans, people in Germany with Turkish roots and Turks in Turkey took part in the survey.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
200 Web Sites Spread Al-Qaida’s Message in English
RIYADH,Saudi Arabia — Increasing numbers of English-language Web sites are spreading al-Qaida’s message to Muslims in the West.
They translate writings and sermons once largely out of reach of English readers and often feature charismatic clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki, who exchanged dozens of e-mails with the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shootings.
The U.S.-born al-Awlaki has been an inspiration to several militants arrested in the United States and Canada in recent years, with his Web-based sermons often turning up on their computers.
“The point is you don’t have to be an official part of al-Qaida to spread hatred and sectarian views,” said Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator for the New York-based NEFA Foundation, which researches Islamic militants.
“If you look at the most influential documents in terms of homegrown terrorism cases, it’s not training manuals on building bombs,” Kohlmann said. “The most influential documents are the ones that are written by theological advisers, some of whom are not even official al-Qaida members.”
Most of the radical Islamic sites are not run or directed by al-Qaida, but they provide a powerful tool for recruiting sympathizers to its cause of jihad, or holy war, against the United States, experts who track the activity said.
The number of English-language sites sympathetic to al-Qaida has risen from about 30 seven years ago to more than 200 recently, said Abdulmanam Almushawah, head of a Saudi government program called Assakeena, which works to combat militant Islamic Web sites.
In contrast, Arabic-language radical sites have dropped to around 50, down from 1,000 seven years ago, because of efforts by governments around the world to shut them down, he said.
Al-Qaida has long tried to reach a Western audience. Videotaped messages from its leader, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri usually have English subtitles. But translations of writings and sermons that form the theological grounding for al-Qaida’s ideology, along with preachers like al-Awlaki, mostly eliminate the language barrier.
Al-Awlaki’s sermons have turned up on the computers of nearly every homegrown terror suspect arrested in the United States, Kohlmann said.
Members of a group of Canadian Muslims arrested in 2006 for allegedly forming a training camp and plotting bombing attacks in Toronto listened to his online calls for jihad, according to the case against them in court. According to prosecutors, an al-Awlaki sermon on jihad was among the numerous materials — including videos of beheadings — found on the computers of five men convicted in December of plotting attacks on the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey.
On his Web site and in widely circulated lectures, the 38-year-old al-Awlaki, now in hiding in Yemen, often calls on Muslims to fight against the United States, accusing it of waging war on Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nidal Hasan, who has been charged in the Fort Hood shootings, contacted al-Awlaki nearly a year ago. In an interview published in The Washington Post, al-Awlaki said he did not pressure Hasan to carry out the shooting, but after the attack, al-Awlaki praised him as a hero. U.S. investigators have said Hasan appears to have acted alone, not on orders from anyone, when he opened fire Nov. 5 at the Texas military base, killing 13.
The cleric met two of the 9/11 hijackers at mosques where he preached in the United States, and after his return to Yemen he was detained for more than a year on suspicion of involvement in a kidnapping gang. Yemeni officials released him because they could not confirm an al-Qaida link, but they say they are hunting for him again on suspicion he may have ties.
U.S. intelligence officials declined comment on the spread of English-language jihadist Web sites.
Such sites are expected to follow closely the upcoming trials of Hasan and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused of being a top architect of the 9/11 attacks, said Rita Katz, head of the U.S. based SITE Intelligence Group, which follows on line militant traffic. The Obama administration announced this week that Mohammed and four others will be put on trial in New York City.
Almushawah said clerics like al-Awlaki are “more dangerous than any other group.” And if these clerics are jailed, “it’s no big loss for al-Qaida because they don’t belong to the network,” he said.
Many of the sites post speeches by English-speaking clerics like al-Awlaki or, more often, translations of sermons and lectures by Arabic-speaking clerics.
One site, the Pulpit of Monotheism and Jihad links to sermons by al-Awlaki, alongside English versions of speeches by some of the top sheikhs of jihadist ideology — even some who are dead like Abdullah Azzam.
The proliferation of sites in English means “potential jihadists can know only their native language and still be radicalized,” Katz said.
While al-Awlaki has become popular, “other, more prominent and influential Arabic-speaking jihadist sheikhs … have had their works and speeches translated into English and other languages. Their works tend to be used more often by the jihadist community to justify violence,” she said in an e-mail interview. Al-Awlaki “fills a void in that he can directly interact, understand and communicate with English-speaking jihadists in a way that Arabic-speaking clerics cannot.”
Almushawah says most of the servers for the sites are in Britain, but they can be run from anywhere and most of them are operated and receive content from the U.S. Most of the clerics who appear on them are in the Arab world with some in France and England.
U.S. intelligence officials declined to comment on the spread of English language sites and their influence.
Saudi Arabia set up its Assakeena program after authorities found that 70 percent of al-Qaida sympathizers were drawn to the group through the Internet. In the campaign, government-backed preachers monitor 400 radical Islamic web sites and inject a more moderate message on the sites.
The campaigners also directly contact and dialogue with militants they encounter on the Web, conversations that can take weeks or months. Of 2,631 militants contacted by the group, 1,170 withdrew their support for radicals, according to the campaign. About a fifth of the militants were from Europe and North American, and the rest from Arab countries.
Assakeena — the name is Arabic for “Tranquility from God” — is part of other hearts-and-minds programs the kingdom launched to complement its crackdown on al-Qaida after the group carried out a series of attacks on foreigners and oil infrastructure in 2004.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
2 comments:
When I was in Subic bay during the 80's global warming was not the excuse. The excuse is abject poverty.
Brantigny: When I was in Subic bay during the 80's global warming was not the excuse.
Well, it certainly explains the skimpy outfits worn by all those girls near the base.
The excuse is abject poverty.
Poverty is more of a sympton. The Root Cause is corruption. If you think America is insane for letting its lawyer-politicians write and pass laws, imagine how much worse it is in the Philippines where their lawyer-politicians are also the major landholders. Our sun will go nova before there is any voluntary reform of land ownership.
As is the case with almost everywhere around the globe, and especially so in Third World countries, corruption will not end until it becomes physically painful to be corrupt. A few cases of terminally painful reprisal for corruption will go a long way toward curing the problem in any given country.
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