Sikhs who were forced to leave the tribal areas of Waziristan when the Taliban took control have decided that they want to leave Pakistan entirely. Their preference would be to move to India.Meanwhile, in Edmonton, Alberta, a calendar for the coming year will celebrate local Muslim women, including a third-grade teacher who moonlights as a kickboxer — in sports hijab.
Thanks to 4symbols, C. Cantoni, Esther, Insubria, JD, Lurker from Tulsa, Paul Green, Steen, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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City of Tulsa to Receive $1.55 Million in Stimulus Funds
The city of Tulsa will get $1.55 million in stimulus monies for public safety and public works projects.Associated Press
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The federal stimulus package passed by the U.S. Senate includes $1.55 million for public safety and public works projects in Tulsa.
The city says in a news release Tuesday that the $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill includes $750,000 for natural gas vehicles for Tulsa Transit, $200,000 to update the police department’s records management system and $100,000 for equipment for the Tulsa Fire Department.
“It’s a credit to the value and importance of these programs that they receive this funding,” said Mayor Dewey Bartlett. “Additionally, the support and leadership provided by Sen. Inhofe and Rep. Sullivan in Congress was nothing short of critical in helping secure these allocations for Tulsa.”
The bill now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
New TARP? Only This Bypasses Even Congress
Barney Frank plan slides through House without committee hearings
While America was distracted by the arguments over health care, Copenhagen, terror trials in New York and a “jobs” summit, a new type of TARP proposal that would set up a tax-and-spend process involving hundreds of billions of dollars and that would bypass Congress has been adopted by the U.S. House.
The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was approved recently on a 223-202 vote without a single cosponsor and no hearings. Its major congressional actions were its introduction on Dec. 2 and its adoption on Dec. 11.
It is, according to Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., worse than Democrat plans to have the government take over health care across the nation and the massive new taxes proposed in the global warming “cap-and-trade” proposal, combined.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spanish Saving More Energy
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 22 — In the present global crisis, 9 Spanish out of 10 have taken energy and water saving measures and three quarters of families recycle. This is the result of the survey into domestic consumption and the environment regarding 2008, published today in Spain by the national statistics institute (INE). According to the survey, 96.9% of Spanish families have taken measures to save water and 85.5% use low-energy lighting, though less than 1% have installed solar panels. The crisis is good for the environment: 86.6% de-frost food without using the microwave; 81.9% use their washing machine or dishwasher only when full; 64.2% drink tap water and 54.7% has a garbage can in the toilet to avoid having to flush materials. Inhabitants of Andalusia are most active in water recycling (31.5%); people in Valencia pay more attention to starting household appliances only when full (91.6%) and the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands are best at washing dishes by hand (74%). In Spain 70.3% of houses are heated, 32.3% of these use gas for heating. Only a minority of families has an air conditioner (35.5%). However in the Murcia region 63.9% of houses has one, in the Estremadura 58%. The use of cars to move around is not declining on the other hand. According to the survey only 21.7 of Spanish use public transport, 45% use their own car. And the rest? By bicycle or, better, on foot. (ANSAmed).
2009-04-22 17:06
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Secret Plan to Pass a Global Tax
With President Barack Obama attacking “fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) see a great opportunity to pass a global tax on financial transactions that could generate at least $700 billion a year from the U.S. and other “rich” countries. They are expecting Obama’s support.
The banks are a key target because of the “anger” that already exists against them for their roles in the global financial crisis, says a detailed 13-page memorandum from Max Lawson of the foreign aid group Oxfam.
Calling the global Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) “an idea whose time has come,” Lawson says in his memorandum that “politically the time is now” to pass such a tax. “It will take some great campaigning but I think we can do this,” he says in a message introducing the memo.
Lawson explains, “The global anger against the bankers; the huge pressure on rich country budgets; the need for money in 2010 to rescue the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] and from failure; to protect poor countries from the economic crisis; and the need to come up with money for climate change to unlock a global deal. All combine to make a very strong political backdrop.”
The MDGs were established by the United Nations to make sure that the U.S. and other Western nations devote 0.7 percent of Gross National Product to official development assistance or foreign aid. As a Senator, Obama had introduced a bill, the Global Poverty Act, to mandate U.S. compliance with the MDGs at an estimated cost of $845 billion.
Lawson, head of development and finance for Oxfam in Britain, has distributed his 13-page memorandum to members of NGOs in the U.S. and other countries. “There is potentially plenty of money here for all of our issues,” he tells them.
The global tax is being called “the Robin Hood tax,” in order to convince people that it is somehow designed to take money away from rich people in order to help the poor. Another variation on this theme is the claim that the tax is aimed at Wall Street to help Main Street.
In reality, such a tax would affect IRAs, Mutual Funds and pensions by taxing the exchange of financial transactions. It would hand over great sums of money to politicians in the name of bashing the big banks but ordinary Americans and their life savings would be hurt.
As outlined by Lawson, however, the idea is to create the appearance of public support for the plan, ultimately enabling G8 leaders meeting in Canada in June to agree to the global tax and then get acceptance from the G20 leaders meeting afterward.
[…]
Lawson also cites support for the tax from billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffet and such media organizations and figures as Le Monde, The Mail, The Guardian and Paul Krugman of the New York Times.
President Obama “supported [the idea] during his campaign,” Lawson says, but the U.S. Treasury Department under Timothy Geithner has been resisting it.
However, Politico reported on December 3 that Pelosi is now pressuring Geithner to accept the global tax proposal. “Geithner was widely seen as opposing such a levy when it was proposed by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, at a meeting of G-20 finance ministers last month in Scotland,” the publication reported. But after a telephone conversation, “Pelosi told colleagues that the secretary indicated he was more open to some such fee than had been reported,” it added.
Some elements of the Lawson plan that are designed to secure passage of the legislation seem modeled on the 1999 “Battle in Seattle,” when 5,000 activists marched against the idea of global free markets, producing confrontations with police trying to keep order on the occasion of a meeting of the World Trade Organization. Lawson suggests “two or three global events” and “days of action” where “activists climb up banks” in order to pressure officials to adopt the global tax.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
40 Congressmen Call on Special Ops Commander to Dismiss Case Brought Against Navy Seals Over Alleged Punching of Terrorist
(CNSNews.com) — Forty members of Congress are calling on the military commander who ordered the court martial of three Navy SEALs over the alleged punching of a terrorist to dismiss the charges.
The letter, circulated by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), was sent Thursday to Army Major Gen. Charles T. Cleveland, commander of Special Operation Command Central. Gen. Cleveland ordered the prosecution of the three SEALs.
“In our opinion, prosecutorial discretion should have been exercised,” the 40 congressmen said. “Failing that, we respectfully and strongly urge you to exercise your leadership authority, stop the impending court martial and exonerate these men.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
American Airlines’ Talks With 3 Unions Stuck in Holding Pattern
Legally, there’ll be no impasse in American Airlines Inc.’s labor talks until the National Mediation Board decides there’s an impasse.
But practically speaking, the talks with American’s three major unions are at a virtual stalemate.
•More than three years after the airline and the Allied Pilots Association began negotiations, the two sides have made little substantive progress. Their last talks, overseen by a federal mediator, were in September.
•American and the Transport Workers Union, which started contract talks in November 2007, have reached agreements for none of the union’s work groups.
•The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which began its negotiations in June 2008, put up picket lines at airports in November and conducted a simulated strike to prod the Fort Worth-based airline. The union is talking strike next year, even though no union can walk out until the mediation board says it can.
And it appears that the board is in no rush to declare an impasse and release the parties from mediation, an action that would set the clock ticking for a potential work action in 30 days.
Bill Haug, secretary-treasurer of the Allied Pilots Association, told members last month that the National Mediation Board has put the union’s negotiations “on ice.” Haug predicted that his union will not be released from mediation for at least a year.
Union president Lloyd Hill said the freeze probably applies to the entire airline industry and no union in particular.
Hill and the union’s negotiating team met mediation board members several months ago. The federal officials brought up “the economic turmoil they perceive in the airline industry, the overall economic cycle and the fact American Airlines has three groups in … mediation,” Hill said.
“And they made a broad-brush comment that you can probably expect that nobody near term is going to get released [from mediation],” he said.
Careful path
The Railway Labor Act, which governs airline labor relations, sets out a careful path to agreements or strikes. The National Mediation Board must first appoint a mediator, who works with the airline and union to try to reach a deal.
If the mediator concludes that the talks have come to an impasse, the board will proffer binding arbitration to both parties. If either side turns down arbitration, the board releases them from mediation and starts a 30-day clock.
After that cooling-off period ends, either side can legally engage in “self help,” such as an imposed contract or a strike.
The existing union contracts became amendable (airline contracts never expire) on May 1, 2008. A combination of events has brought about the current stalemate:
•American’s unions made massive concessions in 2003 to keep the airline out of bankruptcy, in hurried deals negotiated in less than two months. Average salaries remain far below their pre-2003 levels. Employees want as much money back as possible.
•American, which briefly enjoyed a cost advantage over some major carriers, saw those rivals — Delta Air Lines Inc., United Airlines Inc., Northwest Airlines Inc. and US Airways Inc. — go into bankruptcy court and reduce their employee costs. American wants at least parity with those competitors.
•Industry’s profits went into free fall in 2008 as fuel costs soared. Although energy prices moderated, the economy then went into the tank in late 2008. Traffic dropped precipitously, particularly among the high-paying, highly profitable business travelers.
The International Air Transport Association says the industry worldwide lost $16.8 billion in 2008 and will lose $11 billion in 2009 and $3.8 billion in 2010.
Jeff Brundage, American’s top negotiator as senior vice president of human resources, said the spate of bankruptcies created an “unusual situation” in the airline industry.
Typically, other airlines should have higher labor costs because they signed contracts after American’s 2003 contracts, he said. But American’s rivals obtained even deeper concessions because of their bankruptcies.
“It has left American in a position where we have the highest block-hour costs and some of the absolutely highest wages in the industry,” he said. As a result, American is bargaining for increased productivity to cut its costs.
“These are tough conversations, hard conversations in light of the situation over the past decade,” Brundage said.
Stock acrimony
Compounding employee unhappiness has been the annual stock awards made to close to 1,000 American executives, managers and “key employees.”
While the carrier defends the stock awards as part of the variable compensation plans for top people, the bonuses under the “performance unit plan” have become a continuing rallying cry for union leaders and their members.
A common complaint: Employees’ sacrifices are paying for executives’ stock.
“They’ve taken a quarter-billion dollars just in PUP bonuses alone,” Hill said. “That doesn’t even talk about their stock appreciation rights or base compensation or the many other forms of compensation. … The employees want to participate at the same level that management is.”
If the unions push now to be released from mediation, they face the prospect of trying to make their case when American is bleeding money.
American has been particularly hard hit by the industry downturn. It has lost more than $3 billion since the start of 2008 and more than $10 billion since 2001.
In the past eight years, It has been profitable in only two of the last eight years — 2006 and 2007. Analysts expect the carrier to lose more than $200 million in 2010.
Flight attendants union president Laura Glading, who won her office last year on a “restore and more” platform, acknowledged the tough times now but said the airline has never found a good time to reward rank-and-file employees.
“It’s always something. I’ve been with American for almost 32 years, and there’s a transition plan; an expansion plan; there are low-cost carriers; it’s the economy. There’s always something,” she said. “The company never has the money to pay the flight attendants.
“You can’t bargain a cycle,” she said. “You can’t predict the cycles. Right now, we’re in a down economic cycle. At some point, we’re going to be in an up economic cycle.”
The transport workers’ international vice president John Conley, who as director of the union’s air transport division is responsible for its side of the table, said it’s probably not time to ask the National Mediation Board to declare an impasse in the TWU talks.
With negotiations scheduled into next year and four agreements with American Eagle employees also in discussions, “we have a huge oar in the water, a huge stake,” he said. “I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet.”
Brundage said it’s premature to talk about asking the mediation board to declare an impasse and release the airline and unions from mediation.
“The standard for release is for the board to come to the conclusion that further mediatory efforts are unlikely to produce a result,” he said.
“We have a significant number of open items in each of our negotiations. We are making progress on all those items,” he said. “I think it’s inappropriate to even speculate on that at this point because we’re doing what the law requires on both sides.”
| — Hat tip: Lurker from Tulsa | [Return to headlines] |
Homegrown Terror on the Rise in 2009
The five young Americans accused last week of traveling from Washington to Pakistan to wage jihad cap what appears to be a record year for homegrown terror plots, exposing a dangerous trend that experts say poses the biggest challenge America’s security officials have ever faced.
Not including the Pakistan case, the Rand Corporation says that of the nearly 30 homegrown terror plots uncovered in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, 10 surfaced in this year alone, including two actual attacks — in Little Rock, Ark. and Fort Hood, Texas.
SLIDESHOW: 2009 Homegrown Terror Suspects
That puts “the level of activity in 2009 much higher than that of previous years,” Rand Senior Adviser Brian Jenkins told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month.
Click here to read Jenkins’ full testimony.
“There’s definitely a rise in jihad recruits and volunteers in the United States, whether they’re concerning plots here in the U.S. or whether they involve material support to terror plots overseas,” says counterterrorism analyst Steve Emerson, author of “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us.”
Danny Coulson, former deputy assistant director of the FBI, agrees.
“I ran the entire terrorism program for the FBI for a period of time, and just from what you see in the newspaper there have been more American Islamic extremists terrorists arrested than years in the past,” Coulson told FoxNews.com.
A major concern, Coulson says, is that the majority of the suspects in the 2009 cases have no direct links to major terror organizations.
“They’re just homegrown terrorists who sympathize with the same Islamic extremist philosophy, and although they’re not connected by order or by organization, they’re connected by philosophy and religion,” he said.
The smaller cells tend to be less powerful than a central terrorist organization like Al Qaeda, but they are harder to detect, Emerson says.
“When the group of conspirators are small it’s much more difficult for the FBI to penetrate…. The larger the group, the greater the chances the FBI can infiltrate,” he said. “So I think the FBI has a big challenge on its hands, probably the biggest challenge it’s ever faced.”
Scott Stewart, vice president of tactictal intelligence for the global intelligence company Stratfor, says the FBI’s increased ability to infiltrate larger foreign-born plots has actually contributed to the spike in domestic terrorism.
“On 9/11 we had what we call an Al Qaeda all-star attack, where all the operatives had been dispatched from the core,” Stewart told FoxNews.com.
“But then, after the U.S. started taking them down, they really lost the ability to do that kind of operation, and so they’re regressing to the grassroots-type attacks, sometimes with an operational leader that was trained by them in the camps,” he said.
According to Rand, U.S. policy decisions are another contributing factor.
“American foreign policy should not be determined by a handful of shooters and would-be bombers, but we must accept the fact that what America does in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan may provoke terrorism in the United States,” Jenkins said in his testimony. “Wars are no longer confined geographically.”
Emerson says it’s not the location of the wars, but the way they are perceived.
“I can tell you that the one common denominator in almost all of the cases are the views held by the jihadists that we’ve arrested or identified in terms of their believing that there’s a war against Islam,” he said.
In the case of four ex-convicts accused this year of trying to blow up two New York City synagogues and attack military aircraft, at least two of the men are believed to have adopted these beliefs while in prison.
Frank Cilluffo, director of the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, says American prisons have become a breeding ground for this kind of radicalization.
“Just as young people may become radicalized by ‘cut-and-paste’ versions of the Koran via the Internet, new inmates may gain the same distorted understanding of the faith from gang leaders or other influential inmates,” he said.
The Internet and those “cut-and-paste” versions of the Koran are the other major factor, he says, in matching the long-held intent for these attacks with the capability to organize them.
“The Internet is very significant here, for those who turn to, say, Google for their facts. There’s a lot of violent narrative out there … it has grown exponentially and continues to grow exponentially,” he said.
“The killer ‘application’ of the Internet is the people,” he added. “Affirmation from like-minded people around the world — it plays that uniting kind of role.”
Cilluffo said that the key to stopping homegrown radicalism is the actual defeat of Al Qaeda, plus a powerful counternarrative aimed at defeating the terrorist organization’s brand.
“Al Qaeda rose to prominence through a story that explains history, justifies violence, and promises victory,” he wrote in an April report. “What’s needed … is a global rethink about how the other side of the story — the side of the often Muslim victims — gets told.”
The answer, he says, is to tell the victims’ stories “compellingly and exhaustively.”
“That narrative could tap online social networks, creating a Facebook of the bereaved that crosses borders and cultures. A series of public service announcements, timed after attacks, could detail the innocent lives snuffed out by Al Qaeda,” he said.
“Giving its victims a chance to make their stories heard as well will cast a harsh light on Al Qaeda’s actions, helping delegitimize and deglamorize the terrorist narrative. End of story.”
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
Sorry Barack, But You’re in the Same Boat as US Now
America boasts of its uniqueness, but its belief that it is exempt from breeding terrorists is flawed
Once a suicide bomber has killed himself and everyone unlucky enough to be in his vicinity, ideologues rush to claim him like rival firms of undertakers fighting over a corpse. If he has posted a video raging about the Iraq war then Bush, Blair and the neo-cons are the “root cause” of the mass murder. If his university teachers had stood back while Islamists radicalised the campus, then liberals who cannot tell their friends from their enemies are to blame.
Not until I read the New York Times last week, however, did I learn that jihadism could be explained away as a jolly jape. Pakistani police, who must cope with the equivalent of a 7/7 massacre virtually every week, had arrested five American citizens, who came from Washington DC and its Virginia suburbs. The Pakistanis claimed that they had exchanged emails written in code for months with a recruiter for the Pakistani Taliban, and were heading for an al-Qaida stronghold. The suspects left behind a video, which Washington police said had jihadist overtones and which a local Muslim leader described as a “disturbing farewell statement”.
Surveying the evidence, the New York Times wondered, “whether the men acted on a lark or were recruited as part of a larger militant outfit”. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, of course, but “a lark”? Maybe Billy Bunter has taken over the newspaper’s foreign desk. More probably, American journalists still believe that radical Islam is an ideology that cannot infect their fellow citizens. If so, they are not alone in their delusion.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Women Celebrated in New Calendar
A Grade 3 teacher with a passion for kickboxing is one of 13 Edmontonians featured in a new calendar celebrating local Muslim women.
Noreen Bashir will be seen in the calendar wearing boxing gloves and a sports hijab at the gym where she works out almost everyday. The martial arts champion first took up the sport as a way to exercise while recovering from a car accident.
“I’ve … never been part of any kind of project like that before especially in our community and I’m actually very proud to represent the Muslim women of Edmonton,” said Bashir.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Basque Countries: Lopez Takes Oath Without Religious Symbols
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 7 — The new president of the Basque government, socialist Patxi Lopez, today took the oath as Lehendakari (president) in the Council House of Guernica in the Basque Countries, without references to God and without the traditional Catholic symbols. Surrounded by supporters, unionists and, for the first time, associations of terrorism victims, Patxi Lopez took the oath on a copy of the Constitution and a copy of the Basque Statute of Autonomy, replacing the traditional bible in Basque language from 1856 and the crucifix used until now during ceremonies. The socialist, the first non-nationalist Lehendakari for 30 years, avoided the oath used normally by nationalist Basque presidents: “Humbly before God, my feet on Basque ground, under the shade of the Guernica Oak, before you, representatives of the Basque people, I swear to carry out my functions faithfully”, replacing it instead with a promise “before you, representatives of Basque citizenship and before our ancestors”. The traditional oath used by the Lehendakari had been inherited from the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party, Sabino Arana, and was used for the first time in October 1936 during the Spanish Civil War by José Antonio de Aguirre. Vice Premier Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega and Vice President Manuel Chavez were present for the central government at the ceremony. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark Terror Plot Suspect: I’m a Pacifist
One of the accused in the case involving a plot to blow up Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten says he’s a pacifist
Tahawwur Rana is defending himself against the accusation he took part in planning to blow up the newspaper that published the infamous Mohammed cartoons by saying he only deals in non-violent actions, reports public broadcaster DR.
Rana, who is accused of financing and planning an attack on the paper, has told the police he believes in the late Mahatma Ghandi’s methods.
This stands in sharp contrast to the covert recordings the US police took of Rana and another man accused in the case, David Headley. In those, Rana praises a Pakistani terror organisation and says they ought to have details of their work.
Rana also reveals in those recordings that he knew about the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. He is due in court in Chicago today to try to be released on bail.
In the last week, it has emerged that a third person will be charged in the case. Abdur Rehamna Hashim, a retired major in Pakistan’s army, is suspected of coordinating the surveillance of Jyllands-Posten.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Decree Calls for Heavy Sentences on Violence Against Animals
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, APRIL 23 — The Greek Minister for Agricultural Development, Sotiris Hatzigakis, announced the adoption of a bill that calls for heavy sentences for those who are responsible for acts of violence against animals. The measure, a statement from the ministry reads, will be applied to those who maltreat strays and poison animals, as well as those who maltreat circus animals. Some of the bill’s provisions call for the creation of special centres for temporary shelter and vaccinations for stray dogs and cats. Hatzigakis has already held meetings with representatives from over 200 animal rights associations. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Irish Victims of Child Abuse Angry at Vatican Response — Feature
Dublin — Pope Benedict’s “distress” at a report highly critical of the Irish Catholic Church’s handling of cases involving child sex abuse by priests was met with scepticism from victims of abuse in Ireland. The survivors support group One in Four has described the Papal response as “disingenuous and inadequate.”
The Pope’s statement last Friday followed talks between the pontiff and top Irish clerics summoned to Rome to discuss the scandal over how child sexual abuse complaints were dealt with by the authorities from 1975 to 2004.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Fury at UK Attempt to Arrest Tzipi Livni
Israel has reacted angrily to the issuing by a British court of an arrest warrant for the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.
The warrant, granted by a London court on Saturday, was revoked on Monday when it was found Ms Livni was not visiting the UK.
Ms Livni was foreign minister during Israel’s Gaza assault last winter.
It is the first time a UK court has issued a warrant for the arrest of a former Israeli minister.
Ms Livni said the court had been “abused” by the Palestinian plaintiffs who requested the warrant.
“What needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system,” she told the BBC.
“This is not a suit against Tzipi Livni, this is not a law suit against Israel. This is a lawsuit against any democracy that fights terror.”
She stood by her decisions during the three-week assault Gaza offensive which began in December last year, she said.
Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the UK’s ambassador to Israel to deliver a rebuke over the warrant.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the situation was “an absurdity”.
“We will not accept a situation in which [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendants’ chair,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement.
“We will not agree to have Israel Defence Force soldiers, who defended the citizens of Israel bravely and ethically against a cruel and criminal enemy, be recognised as war criminals. We completely reject this absurdity taking place in Britain,” he said.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners have tried several times to have Israeli officials arrested under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
‘Cynical act’
This allows domestic courts in countries around the world to try war crimes suspects, even if the crime took place outside the country and the suspect is not a citizen.
Israel denies claims by human rights groups and the UN investigator Richard Goldstone that its forces committed war crimes during the operation, which it said was aimed at ending Palestinian rocket fire at its southern towns.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas has also been accused of committing war crimes during the conflict.
Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday: “Israel rejects the cynical act taken in a British court,” against Ms Livni, now the head of the opposition Kadima party, “at the initiative of extreme elements”.
It called on the British government to “act against the exploitation of the British legal system against Israel”.
Addressing a conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Ms Livni did not refer specifically to the arrest attempt.
But she said: “Israel must do what is right for Israel, regardless of judgements, statements and arrest warrants. It’s the leadership’s duty, and I would repeat each and every decision,” Israeli media reported.
‘Strategic partner’
Israel says it fully complies with international law, which it says it interprets in line with other Western countries such as the US and UK.
On Monday Ms Livni’s office denied the reports that a warrant had been issued and that she had cancelled plans to visit the UK because of fears of arrest.
It said a planned trip had been cancelled two weeks earlier because of scheduling problems.
The British foreign office said it was “urgently looking into the implications of the case”.
“The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East, and to be a strategic partner of Israel,” it said in a statement. “To do this, Israel’s leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government.”
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed during Israel’s Cast Lead operation between 27 December 2008 and 16 January 2009, more than half of them civilians.
Israel puts the number of deaths at 1,166 — fewer than 300 of them civilians. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
The BBC’s Tim Franks says that, privately, senior Israeli figures are warning of what they see as an increasing anti-Israeli bent in the British establishment.
In turn, our correspondent adds, there is clearly concern among British officials that should further arrest warrants be issued, relations with Israel could be damaged.
| — Hat tip: 4symbols | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Find More Art Hidden by Tanzi
Most works were in ex-Parmalat chief’s basement
(ANSA) — Parma, December 11 — Police on Friday said they had found another 16 works of art believed to belong to disgraced Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi which were allegedly hidden from creditors of the dairy multinational.
Last week police seized 19 paintings and drawings, including works by Van Gogh and Monet, which Tanzi is believed to have stashed with friends and relatives just before Parmalat collapsed at the end of 2003 in Europe’s biggest case of corporate fraud.
“The success of last week’s operation and reports that many other works were in circulation broke down a wall of silence and a flood of information came in on where the art could be,” Parma prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said in a press conference on Friday.
“Anyone who has any information or is in possession of similar Tanzi assets should come forward before we find about them,” he added.
Friday’s discovery included paintings by such artists as Bocconi, Segantini, Kandinsky and Chagall.
Police began looking for the hidden art work, said to be worth over 100 million euros, after an investigative TV news program on national broadcaster RAI reported on November 29 that it had discovered that negotiations were in the final stages for the sale of Tanzi’s trove of art to an anonymous buyer, believed to be a Russian billionaire.
The former Parmalat boss immediately denied any knowledge of the collection, some of which was found in the home of his son-in-law Stefano Strini, but has since refused to make any statements.
Strini is said to be under investigation for attempting to arrange the illegal sale, which also included paintings by Picasso, Manet, Gauguin and Ligabue and drawings by Degas, Grosz and Modigliani. Twelve of the 16 works found on Friday were hidden in the basement of Tanzi’s villa just outside Parma, while the others were in the possession of people close to the disgraced Parmalat founder.
Tanzi is currently appealing a 10-year sentence handed down a year ago by a court in Milan for market rigging, while a second trial continues here where he stands accused of fraudulent bankruptcy, accounting fraud, issuing false financial statements and criminal conspiracy. Parmalat was declared bankrupt in December 2003 after it emerged that four billion euros it supposedly held in an offshore Bank of America account did not in fact exist.
The case escalated, eventually leading to Parmalat’s collapse amid debts of some 14.5 billion euros and a fraud scandal which rocked the Italian financial world.
Parmalat has since been put back on its feet by corporate turnaround expert Enrico Bondi who, first as government-appointed administrator and later as official CEO, shed the group’s non-core activities, cut foreign activities and reduced staff.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Premier Says Judiciary ‘Political’
President voices concern over Berlusconi’s attack
(ANSA) — Rome, December 10 — Premier Silvio Berlusconi used a foreign forum on Thursday to renew his attacks against Italian magistrates, saying they have turned into a political force which has taken over parliamentary sovereignty.
Addressing the European People’s Party convention in Bonn, the premier said the country’s judiciary, including the Constitutional Court, has become a political party which rejects legislation approved by Parliament.
“A strange thing is happening in Italy which we’ll have to deal with: according to the Constitution, sovereignty belongs to the voters and Parliament approves laws. But if the ‘leftist magistrates’ party’ doesn’t like these laws, it asks the 15 members of the Constitutional Court — 11 of whom are leftists — to abrogate them”.
The premier told the assembly, which included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that his People of Freedom (PdL) party “was working to remedy the situation through a Constitutional reform”.
He particularly singled out the Constitutional Court, saying that it had turned “into a political organ”, attributing the trend to the appointments made by the last three Italian presidents, whom he claimed were all “leftists’.
“Consequently, sovereignty in Italy no longer belongs to Parliament but to the magistrates’ party,” said the premier who has stepped up his attacks since the Constitutional Court in October struck down a controversial immunity law which shielded him from several trials while in office.
The court argued that the Berlusconi government should have used a special Constitutional law to give the premier immunity.
The so-called Alfano law, despite being modified compared to a previous version quashed in 2004, was also overturned because it denied the fundamental principle that everyone is equal before the law, the court said.
“After the Alfano law was struck down…the prosecutors resumed their manhunt,” said the premier, referring to two trials which have resumed in Milan.
Berlusconi is charged by prosecutors with bribing English lawyer David Mills — sentenced to four and a half years — to perjure himself in two other trials and for tax fraud in the sale of film rights by his TV group Mediaset. The premier said that “despite the hundreds of proceedings and thousands of hearings” which ensured him a “world record” for involvement in trials he had always been cleared.
Berlusconi, who has been in power for almost eight of the last 15 years, has been convicted in several corruption cases relating to his business empire but the sentences have always been overturned on appeal or annulled by a new shortened statute of limitations.
He has always denied wrongdoing, insisting he is the victim of a politically motivated judiciary.
“Fortunately, only a portion of judges side with the left and judges sitting in second and third appeal trials (in Italy’s three-tiered judicial system) are fair, similar to those in other countries,” said the premier, accusing the centre left opposition of trying to “get him” through the judiciary.
“Allow me to talk about my country for a moment: Italy is the third ranking economy in Europe, the government has a solid and united majority, a hard-working government and a super premier …someone who had a 60% popularity rating after solving the Naples garbage problem and a 68% popularity rating after (dealing with) the quake in L’Aquila”.
Referring to a spate of scandals over his private life, Berlusconi said the centre-left opposition had whipped these up in a bid to dent his appeal.
“Instead, these attempts have further strengthened me because people say to themselves: mamma mia, who else would be as strong and tough as he is, who else would have Berlusconi’s balls?” Reactions in Italy against the speech were strong and immediate, with President Giorgio Napolitano voicing concern about “the violent attack against the institutions”.
A statement released by Napolitano said the president was “deeply saddened and worried” over Berlusconi’s speech, and called for “a spirit of cooperation” among political parties and the judiciary. House Speaker Gianfranco Fini, who though one of the founders of the PdL has distanced himself from Berlusconi with his recent liberal-minded stances, also took issue with the speech.
Fini told reporters in Rome he did not “share” the premier’s statements and urged him “not to generate confusion about what is taking place in Italy and the government’s real intentions” while abroad.
Berlusconi’s reply to both was immediate and brief: “I’m fed up by the hypocrisy, I’ve got nothing to clear up”.
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Netherlands: Korans for the Afghans
From Dutch: The Netherlands is donating 200 korans to the Afghan army.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Military Airbus Maiden Flight, 2 Years Behind Schedule
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — The A400M military transport plane has carried out its maiden flight today in Seville, with almost two years of delay to the schedule. The four-engined plane took off at 10:15am from the San Pablo aerodrome, where the Spanish plant Airbus EADS Company is based, in front of an audience of 2,500 people invited from all over the world, reports the company. These included King Juan Carlos and authorities from the seven partner countries of the project: Germany, Spain, France, UK, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg, who will analyse the consequences of the delays to the development of the A400M. The airplane will allow helicopters and combat aircraft to refuel in flight and to quickly transport large cargos over long distances. It has a cargo capacity of 37 tonnes, is 45.1 metres long and 14.7 metres high. Its range can reach 6,389km with a cargo weighing 20 tonnes. 184 A400M airbuses have been ordered so far from Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey and the UK. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: First Gay Victim of Francoism Repression Compensated
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 5 — In 1976, aged 17, Antonio Ruiz was arrested and detained for 97 days because he was homosexual, in line with the Francoism law on social danger and rehabilitation. Today Ruiz has become the first gay Spanish citizen to receive compensation from the government for repression suffered during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship on the grounds of his sexual orientation, in line with an order agreed by the high authority for public pensions as reported by Spanish media sources. Antonio Ruiz is to receive damages for 4,000 euros, but in a statement made to El Pais, he stressed the symbolic value of the order: “we have fought hard to have the repression suffered recognised, which has always been a taboo topic,” he observed, “and we managed it. Recognition is written black on white, in my hands. This is a great triumph.” Ruiz is president of the association of former social prisoners, after being reported to the authorities by his neighbour, a nun, in 1976. Like many other homosexuals sent to prison, Ruiz was forced to undergo what was known as a rehabilitation project in the prison of Badajoz, in Extremadura, which consisted of electric shocks and study of images of men and women: “when images of men appeared you got an electric shock,” Ruiz recalled. Since 2004, the association of former social prisoners began a battle to get recognition of the retaliation experienced during the dictatorship. Together with the one filed by Antonio Ruiz, there are more than 185 pending requests for compensation which have been filed by homosexuals. (ANSAmed).
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Spain: Islamists Sentenced for Barcelona Plan
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 15 — Eleven Islamists terrorists were sentenced yesterday for up to 14 years of reclusion by the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid for having planned kamikaze attacks on the Barcelona subway in January 2008. The attack on the subway on the Catalonian capital was foiled thanks to a leak from French secret services, which warned Spanish authorities at the last minute. The head of the cell, which was made up of 9 people from Pakistan and two Indians, the imam Maroof Ahmed Mirza, 40, accused of having planned the attacks, was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison. During the trial there was the testimony of the “protected witness” before the Audiencia Nacional, that of the informer who allowed for the arrest of the Islamist group. The Barcelona cell was connected to Pakistani Taliban militias and to Baitullah Mehsud, the ‘warlord’ who was killed last summer by a US missile.(ANSAmed).
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Terrorists Have Had it With the Netherlands
From now on, the threat of a terrorist attack on Dutch soil is only “limited”. Over the past two years the threat was “substantial”, but Muslim extremists prefer to seek refuge across the border, an analysis of the Netherlands’ National Anti-Terrorism Co-ordinator published on Tuesday has revealed.
Politicians in The Hague and other potential targets can breathe a sigh of relief. According to the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD) local networks of radical Muslims such as the notorious Hofstad group were weakened over the past year by internal divisions and a lack of leadership.
The Netherlands is rarely being mentioned in video threats issued by jihadist groups, despite the rise of anti-Islam opposition politician Geert Wilders. His controversial film Fitna caused a lot of commotion last year, but it seems to have gone off the jihadist radar since.
Other conflict zones
The judgment that the Netherlands is no longer a “preferred target” does not imply that the threat as a whole has got smaller, AIVD’s Director of Internal Security Wil van Gemert warns. If anything, the threat has moved elsewhere.
“There are still plenty of radical youths and people who warmly sympathise with the struggle. But we also see that they are more focused on conflict areas abroad. I’m referring to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. People are talking about travelling to those areas, or are actually there to receive training.”
Earlier this year four men from the Netherlands were arrested and sent back, because they were allegedly on their way to a jihadist training camp in Somalia.
Symbolic moments
The rest of Europe is also no safer, stresses the AIVD and the Netherlands’ National Anti-Terrorism Co-ordinator. There have been terrorist threats in Germany and Denmark in the past year.
In Germany, the threats were connected with the elections, and the debate over the German mission in Afghanistan. “Extremists are particularly sensitive to such symbolic moments,” says terrorism expert Jeffrey Murer from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
In the Netherlands 2009 has been a relatively quiet year, and Mr Murer stresses that the increasingly robust debate here over immigration and integration has played a positive role…
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Algeria: Tebessa, Hotspot for Smuggling Into Tunisia
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, MAY 5 — The Tebessa region, which is a just few kilometres from the Tunisian border and 600km south east of Algiers, is becoming a real junction for smuggling all kinds of products into Tunisia. Although the traffic of petrol and diesel is well known, since it is much cheaper in Algeria, not only into Tunisia but also along the western border with Morocco, the newspaper Liberté reports that the smuggling of goods such as used clothes, medicines and archaeological remains has recently been developing. “Foreigners come here with clear ideas, they know what to look for, they arrive with exact maps of what is under the sand and take the historical remains away,” a teacher told the newspaper. The region of Tebessa has many Roman remains, as does the city which was once ancient Thevest. “If you go for a walk you will find Roman coins and other remains,” the newspaper went on, “some sites are completed abandoned,” although “the authorities are establishing new surveillance measures.” In 2007, the Gendarmes set up a special unit to fight the trafficking of archaeological remains. (ANSAmed).
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Algeria: Hepatitis, 70% Cases Contracted at the Dentist
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, MAY 6 — In Algeria, 70% of people affected by Hepatitis B and C have contracted the illness at the dentist, reports the Algerian Association SOS Hepatitis. The association has said the high number of cases is due to “archaic” medical devices, inefficient methods of sterilisation, and a general lack of hygiene. The President of the association, Mohamed Bouallag, was quoted saying, “the health of our population is of top priority, a solution can and must be found”. The high cost of machinery for proper sterilisation of medical instruments has been the primary excuse presented by Algerian dentists. According to official data, 2.5% of the country’s population is affected by Hepatitis B, and 2.7% currently carries Hepatitis C. (ANSAmed).
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Hamas Denies Digging Up Christian Bodies
Threatens to sue over allegations Muslims complain of ‘polluting’ earth
JERUSALEM — The Hamas terrorist organization has strongly denied accusations it dug up the bodies of Christians because they were polluting the earth in the Gaza Strip.
“There is no truth to these claims. We will sue anyone who publishes them,” a spokesman for the office of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told WND.
The spokesman pointed to a scheduled meeting this month between Hamas officials and local Christian leaders as evidence of dialogue and coexistence with Gaza’s tiny Christian community.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Minister Reassures Settlers, Freeze Fictitious
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 11 — The 10 month freeze on building activity in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, recently decided on by Premier Benyamin Netanyahu in light of pressure from the Obama administration and Washington’s attempts to resume the peace process with the Palestinians, is in reality a fictitious measure. Maintaining the view was Israeli minister Benny Begin, the ‘falcon’ of the Likud party (rightwing, of Netanyahu) close to the settlement movement. “It has nothing to do with an actual freeze, but just with putting some limits on construction”, Begin admitted during a meeting with the public in Tel Aviv, with the evident intention of reassuring the “settlers”, who were on the point of war when the moratorium was announced. Not only. “During these 10 months, another 10,000 residents will be added to the existing 300,000 that already live” in the settlements of the West Bank, the minister, son of the late historic leader of the Israeli right Menachem Begin and who currently belongs to the closed government council that implemented the moratorium, stated. The fictitious nature of the moratorium was affirmed on the opposing front, and with contrary feelings, by the Palestinians as well (who do not consider the measure sufficient to return to peace negotiations) and Israel’s pacifist organisations like ‘Peace Now’. The measure, in effect, as well as being temporary, does not include the settlements in East Jerusalem (which for the Netanyahu government was annexed definitively by Israel), or the thousands of projects for new homes that have been authorised in the West Bank up until just a few weeks ago, as well as the financing and construction of public buildings. (ANSAmed).
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Spain: High Court Appeal Against Inquiry Into Gaza Massacre
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 7 — The Spanish High Court has lodged an appeal against the Audienca Nacional Judge Fernando Andreu’s decision to go ahead with the inquest into the death of 14 civilians in Gaza on July 22, 2002, so said judicial sources quoted today by El Pais. This is the second appeal that the High Court has filed against the inquiry opened by the magistrate into the attack on the Hamas leader Salah Shahadeh, which led to the death of 14 civilians, making reference to the principle of universal jurisdiction which Spain agreed in 2005, which recognises the Audienca Nacional’s power to investigate crimes against humanity, in cases of genocide, torture or terrorism, which are considered indefeasible rights. In the appeal, the High Court asked the Penal Court to revoke Judge Andreu’s order to proceed with the enquiry, without affecting his competence to investigate the circumstances of the incident, maintaining the state of Israel’s priority for jurisdiction. The High Court uses severe language in its discussion of the magistrate’s order, which according to the appeal,”lacks a minimum of systematic rigour” and allows for “an opportunistic interpretation” of the event. In his order, Andreu equated the attack on the Hamas leader with “an attack against the civilian population,” which “was illegitimate in its conception” and which was “a product of a clearly disproportionate or excessive course of action.” (ANSAmed).
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Baghdad Bomber Called Syria Before August Attack: Minister
Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani told parliament on Monday that a suicide bomber who attacked the foreign ministry in August made a phone call to Syria before detonating his payload, an MP said.
“He told us that the security services found the SIM card of the bomber in the attack on the foreign ministry, and that the last number that appeared was a number in Syria,” Shiite MP Abbas al-Bayati told AFP.
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Fethullah Gülen: The Neo-Ottoman Dream of Turkish Islam
In just a few decades Gülen, the son of an imam, has generated an Islam-based cultural, religious and economic revival. Backed by PM Erdogan he is disliked by secularist. He preaches dialogue with Christians against atheism and dreams that Turkey can be a key player from the Balkans till Central Asia.
Ankara (AsiaNews) — Atatürk’s secularism and the social order guaranteed by the military appear to be teetering in Turkey today. This is due to the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, backed by a moderate Islamist party, but especially to the fact that despite the secular constitution, religion appears to be taking root in society. This trend in turn is supported by one of the best known and more controversial figures in today’s Turkey, Fethullah Gülen, who is seen a the most important modern Muslim theologian and political scientist today.
Son of an imam, Gülen was born in Erzurum in south-eastern Turkey, in 1938. A great disciple of Said Nursî, a mystic of Kurdish origin who died in 1960, he is in favour of a conservative and orthodox vision of Islam without rejecting modernity which he believes must be addressed.
In the 1970s he organised summer camps in Izmir to teach Islamic principles, setting up the first student or ‘light’ hostels. Still tolerated by the state he began building his first schools, then a university, mass media, groups and associations to breathe life into “modern Turkish Islam” whereby religion and nationalism could be one.
Because of some statements, Turkey’s National Security Council condemned in 1998 for “trying to undermine the country’s secular institutions, concealing his methods behind a democratic and moderate image.” For this reason he has been living in voluntary exile in the United States since he was sentenced in absentia.
From his headquarters in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), he continues to build his empire, which includes a network of more than 300 private (Islamic) schools in Turkey and 200 abroad (from Tanzania to China, Morocco to the Philippines and former Soviet Republics with large Turkic minorities), a bank, various TV stations and newspapers, a 12-language website and many charities, a virtual business empire worth billions of dollars.
The key to his success lies in the work of thousands of members of his movement, who are willing to volunteer their time and energy promote education, especially where there are few institutions and limited economic means. Indeed Gülen’s ideas have attracted intellectuals and diplomats who have become his promoters because they see him as a promoter of peace and inter-faith dialogue.
In the 1950s Gülen’s mentor Said Nursî preached that Muslims should join Christians against atheism, trying to contact Pope Pius XII and Patriarch Athenagoras. Following in Nursî’s footsteps, Fethullah Gülen began promoting inter-faith dialogue in Turkey. Stating that his only goal was to “honestly serve humanity,” he developed ties with all Christian Churches in Turkey, including relations with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I and Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan. He sought an audience with Pope John Paul II which was held in Rome in 1998, and met the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron.
Officially his movement has about a million followers, including tens of thousands of public sector employees in Turkey who are protected by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (one of Gülen’s best known sympathisers).
In 2006 a Court in Ankara acquitted him from charges of creating an illegal organisation for the purpose of overthrowing Turkey’s secular state and replacing it with one based on the Sharia. But despite that and his large following, he has been criticised by a large number of secularists who believe that underneath a veneer of humanist philosophy, Gülen plans to turn Turkey’s secular state into a theocracy.
Secular Kemalists have compared him to Khomeini and fear that his return to Turkey might turn Ankara into another Tehran. The governments of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are also weary and suspicious of his “Turkish schools promoted by Islamic missionaries.”
At the basis of Gülen’s teachings is the notion that state and religion should be reconnected as they were in Ottoman times and that Turkey should play the role of beacon for the Balkans and the republics in the Caucasus. Through him a “neo-Nur” philosophy is integrated into Turkish, if not pan-Turkic nationalism, which explains his success among ethnically related Turkic peoples in post-Soviet Central Asia.
Through hundreds of private schools operating in the Central Asian republics the Gülen movement is giving Turkey a new strategically significant cultural and economic role and leading communities who lost their own identity with the fall of Communism back to their cultural and religious roots in Turkish culture and Islam.
Following this approach Turksoy, an “International Organisation for Development of Turkic Culture and Art”, was set up in Ankara in 1993. Created by the Turkish Ministry of Culture its goal is to sponsor and coordinate initiatives within the “Turkic world.” It came into existence after the culture ministers of Turkey, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkish Republic of Cyprus as well as the autonomous Russian republics of Tatarstan and Bašqortostan signed an agreement of cultural cooperation.
According to the agreement, the new organisation was established as a function of new emerging international relations in order to back cultural restructuring in the Trans-Caucasus region and around the world. More specifically, Turksoy’s goals are: to establish friendly relations among Turkish-speaking peoples and nations; explore, disclose, develop, and protect the common Turkic culture, language, history, art, customs, and traditions as well as pass them down to future generations and let them live forever; and develop an environment that allows Turkic peoples to use a shared alphabet and language.
Given Turkey’s predicament today, the country appears even more divided between secularism and political Islam, torn between a desire to turn towards Europe and the dream of becoming a pan-Turkic regional power.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Politiken Exclusive: Ahmadinejad Interview
In an exclusive interview with Politiken, President Ahmadinejad of Iran says: “Those who believe that nuclear weapons provide political strength are mentally deranged.” — Foto: IRIB
Iran will be using the Climate Summit to further its argument for its nuclear programme, according to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his first exclusive interview with a Danish newspaper since he came to power.
“I believe that nuclear energy is a good replacement for fossil fuel, just as other forms of sustainable energy like the sun and wind are too,” says Ahmadinejad in an interview in the heart of his presidential palace in Teheran.
“This is not just about Iran. It is good for all countries to have access to this technology,” he says.
His statements come at a time when the clerics in Iran have not yet been able to stop the violent domestic tensions that followed the controversial re-election as president of the strongly religious Ahmadinejad.
They also come at a time when the international community is threatening Iran with new sanctions in an increasingly dramatic international power game over the Iranian nuclear programme that Western intelligence agencies believe will be used to produce nuclear weapons.
Iran has hitherto rejected the claim, and in his interview with Politiken, Ahmadinejad further rejects the notion.
“We don’t need nuclear bombs,” he says and denies that Iran could increase its security by having nuclear weapons at its disposal — irrespective of the fact that it is surrounded by international powder kegs such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey.
“Those who believe that nuclear weapons provide political strength are mentally deranged,” Ahmadinejad retorts with a string of rhetorical questions.
“Did nuclear weapons save the Soviet Union? No. Have nuclear weapons been able to secure the United States stability in Iraq and Afghanistan? Have nuclear weapons been able to secure peace for the Zionist regime in Gaza? No. They have become useless weapons in our modern age,” President Ahmadinejad says.
Ahmadinejad will be arriving in Copenhagen with his delegation tomorrow and will be presenting two messages to the Climate Summit: That nuclear programmes like Iran’s can help reduce CO2 emissions, and that the rich countries must shoulder a great responsibility in mitigating climate change.
“75 percent of pollution comes from a small group of countries who are now going to have to find themselves under international regulation. They must take the responsibility for creating a healthy climate in the world,” Ahmadinejad says.
Up to the Climate Summit, the Iranian president has had contacts with the leaders of the main developing nations such as Brazil’s President Lula and Venezuela’s fiery Hugo Chavez, both of whom will be coming to Copenhagen to fight the cause of the developing nations.
Several days ago, the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged South American leaders to ‘think twice’ before becoming too attached to the Iranian government, which she says supports and furthers international terrorism.
Ahmadinejad shakes his head.
“The United States must learn to live within its own borders. Who has actually said that the United States should rule the whole world?”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Business Woman Closes Firm Over Male Boss Rule
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, MAY 4 — A prominent Saudi businesswoman has announced she is shutting her IT firm in protest at a new government rule that requires her to appoint a male director general, it was reported today. A circular sent to all businesses in the country two months ago from the undersecretary at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry made it a mandatory requirement for every Saudi company owned by a woman to appoint a male director-general. Aliya Banaja, who owns 2 The Point, has been at the forefront of a campaign to get Hossan Aqeel’s dictate overturned, according to UAE daily Gulf News. Banaja has now said she will close her company, which is the first Saudi IT firm to be run and staffed exclusively by women, in protest and has urged other businesswomen to follow suit. In an interview with Al Watan Arabic daily printed today she said her decision would take effect immediately. “It is not possible for businesswomen to carry out their business activities together with a male commercial agent. We have spoken a lot about this difficult problem. For five years, we have been waiting for the decision taken by the Council of Ministers revoking the requirement to be implemented. But nothing has happened,” she said. Banaja added that she had told other leading business women of her decision, but it was not reported how many other firms could be affected. However, figures collated by the Khadeeja Bint Khowailed Centre, which is part of Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, estimates that there are around 20,000 companies run by women. The report did not say how many men and women are employed at these firms but estimated that the firms had a total capital investment of more than SR60bn (over USD 15 billion). (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. To Test Missile Shield vs. Iran-Style Strike
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States will test its core missile defenses for the first time in January against a simulated long-range Iranian attack, a top Pentagon official said on Monday, amid tensions with Tehran.
Speaking at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington, Army Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, the head of the Missile Defense Agency, said the roughly $150 million test was a departure from the more standard scenario of a North Korean attack.
It also would be more difficult testing the U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system against a missile that would be faster and more direct as it races toward the United States than a simulated strike from North Korea.
“Previously, we have been testing the GMD system against a North Korean-type scenario,” O’Reilly said.
“This next test …. is more of a head-on shot like you would use defending against an Iranian shot into the United States. So that’s the first time that we’re now testing in a different scenario.”
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
US Senators Rebuke Turkey for Worsening Israeli Ties
A bi-partisan group of 10 senators in the 100-member U.S. Senate have criticized Turkey for deteriorating its ties with Israel. They said that Ankara’s recent move to expel the Israeli air force from planned military exercises in Turkish airspace was disappointing.
“Turkey’s exclusion of Israel from the exercise, Anatolian Eagle, which was also to include U.S. and NATO forces, was both unexpected and disappointing,” the senators said in a letter sent to the Turkish Embassy in Washington.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Coming to Iran’s Defense
Signals opposition to increased sanctions
As the United Nations prepares to consider increased sanctions against Iran due to its refusal to halt its nuclear enrichment program, Russia has sent signals that it may take Iran’s side against sanctions as the two nations expand energy cooperation, including nuclear development, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Government Does Nothing to Stop Violence Against Pakistan’s Minorities
This is the conclusion reached by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in its 2009 report. Taliban leader promises total war against the government, an “enemy of Muslims”. Catholic cabinet minister stresses his government’s commitment in favour of minorities and reiterates that religious freedom is protected under the constitution. A petition campaign is undertaken in Karachi against Swat extremists.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) — Violence against religious minorities is commonplace in Pakistan, one of 13 countries named by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom where the government condones or supports such behaviour.
This year “has seen the largely unchecked growth in the power and reach of religiously-motivated extremist groups whose members are engaged in violence in Pakistan and abroad, with Pakistani authorities ceding effective control to armed insurgents espousing a radical Islam ideology,” the 2009 report stated. Recent events in the Swat Valley confirm the situation.
Calling the Pakistani government and army “enemies of Muslims”, the local Taliban vowed on Monday to march forward till death. “Either we’ll be martyred or we’ll march forward,” Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said, who added that elements in the military and the government were trying to sabotage the peace process to please the United States.
Maulana Abdul Aziz, former imam of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), said that whatever situation has emerged in the troubled areas of Swat was a reaction of a military operation conducted on the mosque in 2007 when 86 people officially died.
In the meantime Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti reiterated his government’s commitment to ensure the safety of minorities in the country. “The present government believes in the principles of tolerance, human equality and peaceful co-existence,” the minister said.
Bhatti, a Catholic, slammed demands by the Taliban that non-Muslims pay the Jizia, or poll tax, saying that religious minorities are not conquered native communities but sons of the same soil and rightful citizens of Pakistan.
Explaining that the situation would improve the minister said that Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan guarantees that “every citizen shall have the right to profess, practise and propagate his religion” without discrimination.
Last Saturday activists and groups from civil society groups launched a petition campaign in Karachi, collecting signatures against the Taliban and the imposition of Sharia in the Swat valley.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
India: Girl Shot Dead in Suspected Honor Killing in Khatozi
In Khatozi, India a 20-year old girl was allegedly shot dead by her brother because she eloped with a boy from a different community.
The killing is a suspected honor killing.
In a fit of rage, the girl, Rahila, was shot dead by her brother, Wasim, when she returned home, police said.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
India: “We Can Celebrate, But With No Illusions”
Ramachandra Guha talks to Valeria Fraschetti
“This general election is an event that deserves to be celebrated not only in India but all over the world.” The famous Indian historian Ramachandra Guha celebrates the largest democracy in the world, which will be voting for a new Parliament until May 13th. Guha, the author of “India after Gandhi” and a columnist for various newspapers, observes, however, that Indian politics are still influenced by two evils: misgovernment and the imbalance between regional and national interests. In this interview, among other things, he explains the weaknesses of the two great national political parties, the Congress Party and the BJP.
In the past some expressed doubts about the capacity of a diverse country such as India, to hold on to its democratic system. Yet Indians have been choosing their representatives regularly for more than half a century. How healthy is Indian democracy?
This general election is an event that deserves to be celebrated not only by India but all over the world. The fact that we hold election regularly; it is truly remarkable that people choose their candidates without fear and do so fairly. It was commonly believed that India was too big, diverse and fragmented to be run by a democracy, as it is a multicultural and multilingual democracy. Yet, now we are at our 15th election and it has the largest ever electorate: 714 million voters. This is a number larger than the population of Europe. It is something to celebrate, but of course there are weaknesses. Instead of just celebrating the conduct of the elections, I think it is important for Indian citizens to look at what happens between elections. The quality of governance provided and the functioning of public institutions are declining. I believe a lot more can be done in public policies for areas such as health, education and the environment. I think it would be good if a serious debate was opened on questions of governance.
One of the features of this election seems to be the growing political strength of regional parties. Do you believe this is a symptom of the deepening of democracy or a mark of emerging latent tensions concerning the central government?
On one level, since India is so large in the religious and even more so linguistically, the proliferation of regional parties and the decline of national parties is a sign of the deepening of Indian democracy. Because of this diversity, it is hard to envisage a single party dominating the entire country. Yes, it did happen with the Congress Party in the first years of independence; it was able to represent the entire country because it was Gandhi’s party. It was the party that helped India gain independence from British rule. But, inevitably, over a period of time those groups that felt marginalised, that were geographically distant and excluded from the power centre of New Delhi, wanted their own representatives, their own parties. So this is what is steadily happening. On another level, the negative aspect of having so many regional parties is that we have to form a national government. We have 28 states, but we are still one country. The presence of so many small parties results in weak multiparty coalition governments.
So does this reverse side of the coin of a more solid Indian democracy mean that needed reforms will languish?
Absolutely. Most of the Prime Minister’s time will be spent on massaging the egos of his coalition partners, while India continues to be a very unequal society. I have identified five sectors — education, health, environment, economy and foreign policy — that a government should handle by implementing far-sighted policies.
How can the socio-economic gap be narrowed?
By empowering citizens, promoting good education and health care for all, planning for long term development through sustainable environmental policies. However, these are the kinds of things one is not going to get with a weak multiparty coalition government…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Expelled Sikhs Want to Migrate to India
Islamabad, 6 May (AKI/Asian Age) — Scores of Sikh families recently forced out of Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan by Taliban militants, want to migrate and settle in India, according to a report in the Indian daily, The Asian Age.
“We can’t say anything openly against the Taliban as we fear for our lives. What we will prefer is to migrate to India where we will have more freedom,” a Sikh doctor told the daily.
“We have conveyed this to the Pakistan government but they have promised us that things will change and we will be secure,” he said.
Sikhs approached by The Asian Age requested anonymity, fearing Taliban reprisals.
“Most of our people have been giving pro-Taliban statements on television channels. This does not mean we love them, but we fear them. We may have to go back and then there’s the question of survival,” said a Sikh woman who has taken refuge in Islamabad after migrating from Orakzai Agency.
“I have four children, all of them are with me. My husband has a shop (in Orakzai Agency). We can’t say anything against them (the Taliban) on record but the truth is that they are brutal.”
A Sikh shopkeeper named Gurmeet said: “I think the militants are not against any specific religion. They are fighting against humanity. No peaceful citizen can be their friend.”
“Though I would prefer to go back home, I still think India is much better as far as human rights are concerned,” Gurmeet added.
“Several of my family members live in Amritsar and one day I might move there with my wife and children,” he said, referring to the holy Sikh city located in India’s northern Punjab state.
Earlier this month, the Sikhs in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas were forced to leave by Taliban militants who demanded that they pay jizya (Islamic tax).
A local jirga or tribal meeting last week ordered the Sikhs to pay the Taliban militants protection money after militants captured the shops and homes of 35 Sikh families and “arrested” two Sikh community leaders in Orakzai’s Ferozkhel area.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Australia Announces Controversial Internet Filter
Australia said Tuesday it would push ahead with a mandatory China-style plan to filter the Internet, despite widespread criticism that it will strangle free speech and is doomed to fail.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said new laws would be introduced to ban access to “refused classification” (RC) sites featuring criminal content such as child sex abuse, bestiality, rape and detailed drug use.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Ethnic Population Increase Predicted
In 40 years, every sixth person in this country will be defined as ‘ethnic’, statistical study shows
Approximately 21 percent of people living in Denmark in 2050 will be descendents of immigrant, suggests a report from Danmarks Statistik released today.
The figures also indicate that a record number of women with non-Danish ethnic backgrounds will choose to embark on an education. In the last 10 years, the number of 20-year-old women of non-Danish heritage obtaining an education has nearly doubled to 41 percent.
Unfortunately, the statistical trend has also manifested itself negatively on the crime figures. Male descendants of immigrants are represented heavily in crime statistics as they commit 33 percent more crime than all other groups put together.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Celebs to Kids: America Stinks!
‘55 rich white men drafted Constitution to protect their class — slaveholders’
Hollywood celebrities and education gurus have teamed together to distribute to schools across the country a dramatic new curriculum that casts American history as an epic march of victims seeking to shrug off the shackles of the warmongering, racist, capitalist, imperialist United States.
The History Channel’s airing of the “The People Speak” last night marks the public coming-out party of a movement that has been in place since last year to teach America’s school children a “social justice” brand of history that rails against war, oppression, capitalism and popular patriotism.
The television special featuring performances by Matt Damon, Benjamin Bratt, Marisa Tomei, Don Cheadle, Bruce Springsteen and others condemns the nation’s past of oppression by the wealthy, powerful and imperialist and instead trumpets the voices of America’s labor unions, minorities and protesters of various stripes.
[…]
Critics of the Zinn Project, however, warn that the curriculum is more about pushing Zinn’s admitted pacifist and socialist agenda on the next generation.
Michelle Malkin blasts “The People Speak” as an effort to promote “Marxist academic Howard Zinn’s capitalism-bashing, America-dissing, grievance-mongering history textbook, ‘A People’s History of the United States.’ … Zinn’s work is a self-proclaimed ‘biased account’ of American history that rails against white oppressors, the free market and the military.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Anti-Semitism is Making a Loud Comeback
CLEARLY, THE media plays a leading role in nurturing and solidifying such beliefs. While many in the US strenuously believe the American media is biased toward Israel, in fact the press in the US is quite tame and balanced in its depiction of Israel and its Jewish majority compared to its counterparts in Europe, Latin America and the Arab world.
In a landmark study of Europeans, Edward Kaplan and Charles Small of Yale University found unequivocally that individuals with extreme anti-Israel views were more likely to be anti-Semitic. As media outlets proliferate via satellite and 24/7 cable TV, the platform for spreading anti-Israel views and consequently anti-Semitism has increased exponentially.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Do You Fear Carbon Dioxide?
For two decades now, politicians, pseudo-scientists and the media have made a concerted effort to persuade us that the biggest threat to mankind comes from manmade, catastrophic global warming resulting from a precipitous increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Are you afraid yet?
I’m not afraid of carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas vital to all life on planet Earth.
But I am afraid that, despite the obvious hoax designed to convince Americans to give up their liberties and transfer their wealth to others, so many are willing to go along with the dangerous, well-orchestrated charade.
What is it that makes people so willing to give up their freedom and follow leaders like lemmings headed to their doom?
It’s hard to say — manipulation, coercion, propaganda, promises of security, a dependency mindset, stupidity, weakness of character. They all play a role.
But I want to introduce another factor — lack of faith in God.
I raise this possibility in light of a truly astonishing article in the Financial Post last week that explained where this carbo-phobia ultimately leads.
The answer, of course, for anyone who thinks ahead, is population control.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Greatest Battle of the 21st Century
By Phyllis Chesler, for Human Rights Service
For years, the world stood by and did nothing as the Palestinians perfected their diabolical arts of airplane hijacking and suicide terrorism against the tiny Jewish state. On the contrary, the world cheered the terrorists on. Palestinian terrorists were seen as victims or as freedom fighters, Israelis were viewed as the “genocidal” aggressors. Suddenly, the Palestinians became the “new Jews,” while the Jewish Israelis became the “new Nazis.” Western progressives, including feminists, became more concerned with the occupation of a country that never existed (Palestine) than they were with the occupation of womens’ bodies, world-wide.
This “narrative” Romance was well funded by the Soviets and the Arab League, housed by the United Nations, supported by the Arab and Western media and professoriate, and by international human rights groups. The bombing of synagogues, the boycotting of Israeli academics, demonstrations against the Israeli “occupation” of Muslim land, and the shunning of Israeli athletes became routine all over Europe. The Arab and Muslim media, joined by their mainstream western counterparts have accused the Jews and the Zionists—falsely—of deliberately shooting down a young Palestinian boy, committing a massacre in Jenin, poisoning Palestinian water, spreading cancer and AIDS among Palestinians, rendering Palestinian men sterile, and harvesting the organs of Palestinian prisoners for profit.
The targeting and isolating of Israel continues. Just last week, the EU resolved to promote East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. And, the British government resolved to label products produced by Jewish settlers in order to help consumers boycott them. In the United States, anti-Israel fanatics have started a boycott of Trader Joe’s for carrying Israeli products, even going so far as removing Israeli items from the shelves and putting anti-Israel stickers on them…
| [Return to headlines] |
U.N. Climate Chief Turns Carbon to Green
In lucrative carbon trade ‘all roads lead to Pachauri’
NEW YORK — Further examination of U.N. climate chief Rajendra K. Pachauri’s resume shows more extensive international business relationships through which he stands to profit from global warming activism.
WND reported last week A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.
Now, the head of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, is warning governments that failure to reach a deal at the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen could lead to a collapse of the carbon market. He says rich countries, therefore, should commit up to $100 billion to finance a climate deal that would benefit the developing world.
Pachauri chairs the Asian Development Bank Advisory Group on Climate Change.
[…]
The following are some of the carbon-related business ties Pachauri has established:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Want to Save the Planet? Ban Babies
Want to reduce carbon emissions and curb global warming?
Global warming believers say you should stop having babies, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.
China has declared that controlling population growth is the final solution to climate change.
This pronouncement officially linked the zeal for population control with climate hysteria, surfacing an issue that has been quietly at the heart of Malthusian writings since Obama science czar John Holdren began writing college textbooks on “Eco-science” with Paul Ehrlich of “Population Bomb” infamy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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