Public opinion in the Muslim Middle East has turned against Barack Hussein Obama. Polls show that Muslims now consider him unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, because he has decided to send more troops to Afghanistan.In other news, a British Christian hotelier and his wife have been acquitted of verbally abusing a Muslim woman guest for wearing a hijab.
Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Esther, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, JP, LN, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Croatia: Too Many Pensions, System at Risk
(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, DECEMBER 3 — The Croatian pension system risks suffering grave repercussions due to the loss of jobs (over 35,000 in the last three months) which has modified the proportion between employments and pensioners. In particular, according to the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) office in Zagreb, there are too many privileged pensions and disability pensions (20% of the total, compared to other countries where the percentage is 9% or 10%). A Croatian pensioner currently has a living thanks to the work of 1.33 employed people. It is a drastic drop compared to 1990, when three employed people supported one pensioner. With 75 pensioners to every 100 employed people, Croatia is amongst the bottom countries in Europe (only Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania are worse off). Croatian assigns more than 34 billion dollars per year, namely 11% of GDP, to pensions. With an average of only 29.1 years as a pensioners length of service, the pension has dropped to 41.45% of the average wage in the country. Despite the enormous allocation for pensions, more than half a million pensioners receive less than 2,000 kunas (approximately 275 euros) per month. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Falling Dollar Pushes Manufacturing Out of Europe
Production jobs have been moving out of Europe for years. But as the Daimler decision last week to move C-Class production to the US shows, the process is accelerating as the dollar becomes weaker. Companies from Airbus to ThyssenKrupp are opening factories in America to improve their bottom lines..
Workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Sindelfingen outside Munich aren’t usually the rebellious types. They are proud of their jobs and of the cars they build. But last Wednesday workers at the plant were nothing but angry.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Administration Predicts $30b Loss on Auto Bailout
Washington — The Obama administration will tell Congress Wednesday that it expects to lose about $30 billion of the $82 billion government bailout of the auto industry.
Gene Sperling, senior counsel to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, confirmed in an interview late today that the administration’s forecast is that it will lose $30 billion on its auto investments — but that’s down from an earlier estimate of $44 billion.
“The real news is the projected loss came down to $30 billion from $44 billion,” Sperling said, noting that auto sales have improved ahead of what many analysts had forecast. The administration still holds out hope that if things improve, the administration could still recover more.
Saving General Motors and Chrysler saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, President Barack Obama said today.
“It was right decision then and the right decision now,” Sperling said, calling it a “courageous decision by the president” to give the two automakers a “rebirth even though he knew it was not going to be politically popular.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Trade Ministers Summit, Objective is Common Area
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 8 — A new building block in the setting of the Union for the Mediterranean tomorrow in Brussels, with the first summit of Trade ministers from 43 countries in the basin. The final objective is to adopt a road map of concrete actions that will intensify the region’s economic integration and launch trade and investments, to achieve a common area of free trade with a long-term horizon beyond 2010. What are the necessary steps for such an ambitious project? From a North-South relations perspective, completing the network of EU Association Agreements, and including also Syria, is necessary. Additionally needed is the acceleration of negotiations already begun in various sectors, such as agriculture, services, and enterprise establishment, and also the rules for dispute resolution. The next step will be to transform this already existing network into one with intentions beyond free trade. Creating a network of bilateral agreements represents a necessary condition for the economic integration of the Euro-Mediterranean region on the South-South front as well. As a first step toward take-off for a common area on the southern bank of the Mediterranean, the application of the Agadir Agreement between Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt has been somewhat fruitful, but less than generally expected. From here it’s important to leave the door open to possible new adhesions by other area countries, as stipulated in other free trade agreements like those Israel and Turkey already concluded with various countries from the southern bank. However, enterprises will play a principal role in the Euro-Mediterranean project. Therefore another key point in the meeting tomorrow is putting mechanisms in place to provide tax breaks on investments for companies, starting in 2010. Beyond considerations of an economic and commercial nature, a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area also implies an evaluation of the social impact, first of all in terms of employment. Recalling this is a resolution by the European Parliament, approved in light of the Union for the Mediterranean trade ministers meeting. According to the resolution, “youth and female unemployment represents the foremost social emergency of the Mediterranean”. Among other things, the Euro-delegates stress, “that any other liberalization in the agriculture and fisheries sector must keep in mind the necessity of protecting sensitive merchandise, systematically evaluating the social impact of the liberalization processes and phyto-sanitary norms”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
“Obama’s Address Empty and Filled With Rhetoric”
Barack Obama presented three key proposals to turn around the nation’s beleaguered jobs market, but the US President’s address was predictable and empty, Trends Research Institute head Gerald Celente told RT.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
America’s Last War
Marxism 101: To destroy the fabric of a nation, like the United States, cannot be done through war. The US is too strong to defeat militarily. In order to render it pacified, one must destroy it from within, through its institutions and moral belief systems. Turning neighbor against neighbor, creating political and labor unrest, inciting race against race, and CAUSING THE PEOPLE TO START TO DOUBT THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, CAST ASPERSIONS UPON THEIR SPIRITUAL LEADERS AND DOCTRINES, CREATING SOCIETAL ANARCHY THROUGH A SYSTEM OF MORAL RELATIVITY, WHERE ALL SOCIETAL RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS COME UNDER QUESTION—these are at the root of our present moral decay.
My dear friend, this is why saying “Merry Christmas” is now under attack! This is the first shot over the bow in a war, America’s LAST WAR, that you will be forced to fight. Don’t like the idea of fighting? Get used to it! You (we) have dawdled too long. The night is spent, the dawn is near, and America must wake up to the new slave masters that are at the door. Someone once said that freedom is only won through the shedding of blood from time to time. I think this is true. But we can avoid it from being OUR blood only if we act now.
Witness:
- In San Diego, Calif., Muslim taxi drivers take up an entire street downtown with their prayer mats rolled out on the sidewalk. NO ONE DARE BOTHER THEM, THEY WALK AROUND THEM DURING PRAYER! Ask yourself: Would Christians blocking the path of shoppers and businesses be accorded the same niceties?
- In Dearborn, Mich., the residents must suffer the blaring from the Muslim minarets FIVE TIMES A DAY, calling for prayer in Allah’s name. HERE! NOW! IN AMERICA, NOT AFGHANISTAN!! Ask yourself: What would the AClU do if Christians were to affirm their prayer in such a brazen, incorrigible way?! You already know the answer.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Autocracy for Dummies
I can’t help noticing the similarities between the Democrats’ drive to pass Obamacare, and the methods used to collectivize agriculture in the Soviet Union.
The three main parallels I see are:
1. Scapegoats — Stalin used the evil “kulaks” as an excuse to take over agriculture. Democrats demonize doctors and insurance companies as an excuse to take over the medical field.
Stalin relied on a scapegoat because the ordinary citizen could relate to that more easily than to abstract notions of economics and Marxist theory:
[T]he naming of the kulak enemy … presented a flesh-and-blood foe accursed by history; and such a target made for a far more satisfactory campaign than mere abstract organizational change.
— Robert Conquest, “The Harvest of Sorrow,” p120
Proponents of Obamacare also use scapegoats, because such a target makes for a far more satisfactory campaign than mere abstract organizational change:
We should be prepared to respond to the other side, but we don’t need to … feel pressure to answer their accusations point by point. Instead, we should treat them as agents of the insurance lobbyists who want to maintain the status quo.
— from the Health Care for America Now website
2. A specious crisis atmosphere — Stalin’s was a trumped-up “bread crisis.” Obama’s “crisis” is a combination of rising medical expenses and the number of uninsured people.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Closed Chrysler Dealers to Drive Obama’s Eligibility
Seeking damages for lost businesses, will question administration’s ‘authority’
Two lawyers have joined forces to assemble a case challenging in U.S. bankruptcy court the federal government’s use of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to bail out Chrysler and in doing so may have created a scenario that finally will bring to a head the issue of Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.
The attorneys are Leo Donofrio, who has launched cases directly challenging Obama’s eligibility, and Stephen Pidgeon, who also has worked on the issue.
Their new case questions the authority by which the federal government and administration officials intervened in the auto industry, specifically allocating some $8 billion-plus to Chrysler, which later was forgiven.
Pidgeon told WND the clients in the case are former Chrysler dealers who lost their businesses as part of the “restructuring” of the automobile company. They have been damaged with the loss of their businesses, and the case alleges the Obama administration, through its use of TARP money, influenced Chrysler’s outcome.
Donofrio told WND the core issue is the disbursement of TARP funds to the auto maker that were intended to help banks and financial institutions. The previous Treasury secretary had indicated such expenditures were not appropriate, and, in fact, a congressional effort to authorize the expenditures failed, he said.
So, along with a bankruptcy court challenge, a “quo warranto“ case is being filed in Washington, D.C., demanding to know by what authority administration officials set up the financial arrangements with Chrysler and handed out taxpayer money.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Covering Up for ACORN
The newly released “independent” review of the ACORN undercover prostitution video saga is a breathtakingly audacious work of fiction.
There is hardly a word of truth to be found anywhere in the document’s 47 pages. The report unveiled yesterday by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger is an all-you-can-eat buffet of lies and distortions that faults ACORN only for poor management practices.
No wonder those who organized the news teleconference yesterday kept the event so brief. The call lasted just 36 minutes, an amazingly brief period considering the level of public interest in ACORN’s ongoing scandals and the complexity of the issues involved. Within that, the question-and-answer session was barely 23 minutes long.
Only five reporters were called upon and four of them lobbed softballs.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Feminist Vendetta Against Men’s Sports
We were shocked to read a November report from the U.S. Army that 75 percent of America’s 17- to 24-year-olds are not eligible for military service, largely because they are poorly educated, involved in crime or are physically unfit. According to this report, titled “Ready, Willing and Unable to Serve,” 27 percent of young Americans can’t join the military because they are too fat and out of shape, can’t do push-ups or pull-ups, and can’t run.
The Obama administration claims that the solution for this dilemma is to spend lots of money on pre-K schooling, but that doesn’t pass the laugh test. A better remedy would be to terminate “Title-Nining,” the malicious anti-masculine weapon used by feminists to eliminate men’s sports in college and high school.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal law passed to prohibit discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools and colleges. Its sponsors solemnly promised it would never result in quotas, so it seemed like a good law to assure women every educational opportunity.
The radical feminists saw their opening to pursue their anti-male agenda. Feminists in Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education, led by Bernice Sandler, picked the innocuous word “proportionality” out of the dictionary (not out of the law) and turned it into a feminist code word for one of three tests on which college athletic departments would be judged for compliance with Title IX. She created a new definition for this word: If 60 percent of students taking academic classes are female, then 60 percent of students playing on athletic teams must be female.
This rule is unfair and ridiculous because it’s a fact of human nature that female college students do not seek to play on athletic teams in anywhere near the percentage male students do. For example, “re-entry” women (older women who return to college after their children are grown) surely aren’t going back to college to play soccer.
[…]
Title IX quotas forced the elimination of 467 college wrestling teams, a particular target of feminist anti-masculine ideology. This shows that Title IX is not about equalizing male-female funding, since wrestling is one of the least expensive sports.
Other victims of Title Nining include men’s track and field and swimming. Title IX caused the elimination of all but 19 men’s college gymnastics teams and even forced Howard University to eliminate its baseball team.
This injustice hit us hard at the Olympics in Beijing. The Chinese (who are not restricted by feminist nonsense) won seven out of eight gold medals in men’s gymnastics, while our team failed to win a single gold medal in eight events.
In the Olympics, we compete against other countries that field their best athletes without regard to political correctness. Title IX disadvantages our country by denying opportunities to male athletes and pushing less-talented women into sports just to get free college tuition, not because they are keen on sports.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Marxists, Socialists Launched Obama?
Extremists tied to Ayers organized event said to propel president’s political career
During President Obama’s West Point address last week in which he committed 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he referred to his opposition to the war in Iraq, which he first voiced at a 2002 anti-war rally said to have helped launch his political career.
The rally, which drew some 2,000 participants, was planned by socialist and Marxist activists associated with Weatherman Underground founder William Ayers.
“I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions,” Obama declared Tuesday.
The Oct. 2, 2002, rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza that was widely credited with propelling to Obama to the national stage.
That event, meant to protest the impending invasion of Iraq, was coordinated on behalf of a small group, Chicagoans Against the War & Injustice, run by Marxist Carl Davidson and extremist activists Marilyn Katz and Bettylu Saltzman.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Pulls End Run
As I wrote here yesterday, I believe the feeding frenzy currently taking place at the Copenhagen trough will result in the ultimate global governance of every man woman and child on the planet. A climate treaty may not actually be signed and agreed upon by the 192 countries whose representatives are currently living LARGE on caviar and limousines at the conference, but the rules such a treaty might impose will still take effect.
The main reason to believe this will happen is that President Barack Obama has pulled an end run around the American people and the legislators they have elected by having the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declare carbon a toxic pollutant, despite the fact that all life on the planet is basically carbon-based. But fascists can never be swayed by facts and Obama has shown that when it comes to imposing his draconian agenda he isn’t particularly squeamish about violating the principles of the Constitution or the rights of the people.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Science Czar’s Guru Backed Eugenics
Sought to limit ‘unfit’ from ‘breeding’ to save civilization
This is the second of a three-part series of articles exploring Obama administration science czar John P. Holdren’s self-acknowledged intellectual debt to geochemist and early ecological alarmist Harrison Brown. In the first part, WND reported Brown recommended pumping carbon dioxide into the global atmosphere to promote the food production needed to prevent starvation resulting from over-population. In the third part, WND will examine Brown’s call for global government.
In the 1950s, geochemist Harrison Brown — a member of the Manhattan Project who supervised the production of plutonium — advocated the use of government-mandated eugenics to prevent overpopulation from ecological disaster that could cause civilization to “revert to a way of life not unlike that which existed in Europe in the seventeenth century or that which exists in China today.”
“Is there anything that can be done to prevent the long-range degeneration of human stock?” Brown asked on page 104 of his 1954 book “The Challenge of Man’s Future.”
Answering his question, Brown wrote: “Unfortunately, at the present time, there is little, other than to prevent breeding in persons who present glaring deficiencies clearly dangerous to society and which are known to be of a hereditary nature.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Islamification of America, And the Emasculation of the U.S. Military
It is well known that the Far Left and Islamic terrorists are in cahoots, as are liberals and “moderate” Muslims. Both sides are using the other as “useful idiots” to further their agendas—one ideological, and the other theological. One is using clandestine sabotage and subterfuge, while the other openly promotes global jihad.
Their common enemy is the “Great Satan” of the United States of America, which they agree, must be destroyed in order for their plans to proceed. For the time being, they are in league with one another.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon remains asleep at the wheel, busily enmeshed in asinine internecine squabbles, hamstringing our fighting forces, and covering their butts from charges of being politically incorrect.
[…]
Political correctness is a poison introduced by the Far Left over a period of decades. The infiltration of the U.S. Military by Muslims, is a fairly recent phenomenon traceable to Saudi Arabia, and the first Gulf War (1990-1991).
According to Harvard’s Dr. Gal Luft, “While the Saudis were adamantly opposed to any expression of religious practice by their guests, including a ban on Christmas carols, bible classes and Christian and Jewish prayers, they embarked on a well-orchestrated and generously funded effort sponsored by the Saudi government to convert as many American military members as possible to Islam.”
Luft concludes, “…it is time to investigate what exactly happened back then in the desert, and assess how serious and deep-rooted the damage is.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Why Have the Feds Taken Interest in Muslim Mafia Case?
A string of mysterious sealed filings and orders in a case pitting a Islamic group against the authors of Muslim Mafia — as well as a WorldNetDaily claim about an FBI intervention — suggests that some aspect of the case has caught the attention of federal authorities.
The question in the case has become: who is under scrutiny by the Feds? Is it the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or could it be Dave Gaubatz, the man behind the WND-published book that purports to expose CAIR as a terrorist front?
CAIR sued Gaubatz and his son, Chris, over thousands of pages of documents taken while Chris was working as an intern at CAIR, undercover as a Muslim convert. WND says the book, which is partly based on the documents, shows CAIR is a terrorist front devoted to instituting “Saudi-style Islamic law” in America.
The case seemed to be coming to a close last month when Gaubatz agreed to return the documents. But on Nov. 25 the government filed a sealed motion, which was followed be a sealed order. A court has the power to seal records if, among other reasons, they are deemed sensitive to an ongoing investigation.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper says the group’s lawyers are aware of a government subpoena in the case, but that they are still trying to figure out what exactly is going on.
Another change in the docket of the case is the addition of an interested party, an assistant U.S. attorney in the DOJ’s National Security Division named Lynn Haaland. According to Hooper, she is the official whose name was on the subpoena.
Some have suggested that CAIR may be under investigation. The group was named in a lengthy and controversial list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas involving funding of Hamas.
It’s not clear what’s in all of the CAIR documents, but one memo that was trumpeted as incriminating by WND and a group of House Republicans was underwhelming. Politico described it at the time as “basically [laying] out a fairly straight forward public relations and lobbying strategy.” CAIR, which has repeatedly denounced terrorism, has been defended by an 87-member congressional caucus.
Adding to the mystery is a Nov. 24 report from WND, the conservative clearinghouse for Birther and War on Christmas news.
On the day before the government’s sealed motion, according to WND, the FBI “swooped in” to confiscate the CAIR documents, visiting the Washington office of Bernie Grimm of Cozen O’Connor, one of Gaubatz’s attorneys.
The WND story isn’t entirely coherent — it refers alternately to a grand jury subpoena and a search warrant — but the central claim is that the FBI came in to take the documents that were about to be returned to CAIR. Along with the article was a press release blasted by WND. Joseph Farah, the CEO of WND, said, “The revelations raised about CAIR in Muslim Mafia have clearly piqued the [FBI’s] interest.”
Bernie Grimm, the lawyer whose office WND claims was visited by the FBI, has not returned calls.
A spokesperson for the FBI’s Washington field office told TPMmuckraker she could find no record of a search, but the bureau’s policy is not to comment on grand jury proceedings, even to confirm or deny that one has been convened.
Just yesterday another sealed order was noted in the case’s docket, “granting Defendant’s Motion for Emergency Hearing,” to be held yesterday. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this case, so stay tuned.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Woman Wearing Hijab Asked to Leave Bank
A Chicago woman says she was hassled by a security guard when she walked into a bank, because of something she was wearing. CBS 2’s Anne State reports that the Council on American-Islamic Relations says it’s considering a lawsuit.
The group says the woman deserves an apology.
Shani Smith says she is a recent convert to Islam. When she prays, she asks for guidance to walk the straight path. She says her faith helped her handle a tough situation at a Citibank at west 79th Street and Damen Avenue.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
British Couple Not Guilty of Abusing Muslim
A British court on Wednesday acquitted a devout Christian hotelier and his wife of verbally abusing a Muslim woman guest for wearing a hijab.
Benjamin and Sharon Vogelenzang were accused of subjecting Ericka Tazi, who converted to Islam 18 months ago, to an hour-long tirade at their hotel near Liverpool, northwest England, on March 20.
But judge Richard Clancy dismissed the case after a two-day trial at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court.
The Christian couple, who have five adopted children and have fostered a Muslim boy, denied a charge of using religiously aggravated threatening, abusive or insulting language.
Fifty-three year-old Benjamin Vogelenzang was accused of asking her if she was a terrorist, while his wife allegedly said her dress “represented oppression and bondage.”
But Vogelenzang said he did not shout at Tazi, although he admitted his wife may have called her Islamic head-covering a form of bondage.
He added that 60-year-old Tazi called Jesus a “minor prophet” and said the Bible was “untrue”, but insisted she left the hotel “as cool as a cucumber” after their discussion.
At one point during Wednesday’s hearings, the judge ordered Vogelzang to calm down after he lost his cool, raising his voice and thumping the witness box.
The hotelier said he initially thought Tazi was a “nice person” but added: “I was mistaken, you know why? She wasn’t a nice person, she wasn’t a loving person, she ratted to the police and is trying to make us lose our business.”
His comments prompted the judge to warn him: “Behave yourself, please.”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Copenhagen Climate Summit: 1,200 Limos, 140 Private Planes and Caviar Wedges
Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports — or to Sweden — to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change “Truth Squad.” The top hotels — all fully booked at £650 a night — are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.
At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen’s clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city’s famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week “Climate Bottom Meeting,” complete with a “storytelling yurt” and a “funeral of the day” for various corrupt, “heatist” concepts such as “economic growth”.
The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a “parallel conference” in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon — one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it — plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.
And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to “be sustainable, don’t buy sex,” the local sex workers’ union — they have unions here — has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate’s pass. The term “carbon dating” just took on an entirely new meaning.
At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants’ travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of “carbon dioxide equivalent”, equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.
The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from “saving the world,” the world’s leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.
Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon — say, two per cent a year, starting next year — for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.
Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries — Britain excepted — are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.
And as the delegates meet, they do so under a shadow. For the first time, not just the methods but the entire purpose of the climate change agenda is being questioned. Leaked emails showing key scientists conspiring to fix data that undermined their case have boosted the sceptic lobby. Australia has voted down climate change laws. Last week’s unusually strident attack by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, on climate change “saboteurs” reflected real fear in government that momentum is slipping away from the cause.
In Copenhagen there was a humbler note among some delegates. “If we fail, one reason could be our overconfidence,” said Simron Jit Singh, of the Institute of Social Ecology. “Because we are here, talking in a group of people who probably agree with each other, we can be blinded to the challenges of the other side. We feel that we are the good guys, the selfless saviours, and they are the bad guys.”
As Mr Singh suggests, the interesting question is perhaps not whether the climate changers have got the science right — they probably have — but whether they have got the pitch right. Some campaigners’ apocalyptic predictions and religious righteousness — funeral ceremonies for economic growth and the like — can be alienating, and may help explain why the wider public does not seem to share the urgency felt by those in Copenhagen this week.
In a rather perceptive recent comment, Mr Miliband said it was vital to give people a positive vision of a low-carbon future. “If Martin Luther King had come along and said ‘I have a nightmare,’ people would not have followed him,” he said.
Over the next two weeks, that positive vision may come not from the overheated rhetoric in the conference centre, but from Copenhagen itself. Limos apart, it is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilised pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism so beloved of British greens.
And inside the hall, not everything is looking bad. Even the sudden rush for limos may be a good sign. It means that more top people are coming, which means they scent something could be going right here.
The US, which rejected Kyoto, is on board now, albeit too tentatively for most delegates. President Obama’s decision to stay later in Copenhagen may signal some sort of agreement between America and China: a necessity for any real global action, and something that could be presented as a “victory” for the talks.
The hot air this week will be massive, the whole proceedings eminently mockable, but it would be far too early to write off this conference as a failure.
| — Hat tip: LN | [Return to headlines] |
Daniel Pipes: Swiss Minarets and European Islam
However, I see the referendum as consequential, and well so beyond Swiss borders.
First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar’s first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary’s priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: “The idea is to be discreet because we don’t want to inflame any sensitivities.” And when the Christians of a town in Upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of “laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities,” won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.
Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christian suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified “consequences” of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the Danish cartoon fracas of 2006.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Protest Peaceful After 2 Days of Riots
More than 1,000 demonstrators chanting “Cops, Pigs, Murderers” have marched through central Athens on the third day of protests to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenage boy.
Tuesday’s march ended peacefully following two days of violent protests in Athens and other cities in which police detained more than 800 people. Authorities say 35 people were injured.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Vatican Bank ‘Accused of Money Laundering’
Rome, 3 Dec. (AKI) — The Vatican bank is under investigation for suspected money laundering via accounts held at one of Italy’s largest banks, the UniCredit Group, according to the Italian investigative weekly Panorama.
In its latest issue to be published on Friday, the magazine claims prosecutors are probing transactions totalling 180 million euros handled between 2006 and 2008 by Vatican bank (IOR) accounts held at Unicredit’s branch near the Vatican in Rome’s Via della Conciliazione.
Some of the funds came from the sale and purchase of real estate, according to the weekly and the banking operations allegedly break moneylaundering laws.
Prosecutors told the magazine that they would in the next few days question Unicredit’s senior management over the suspect operations.
They are also investigating deposits made at other Italian banks, Panorama said.
Prosecutor Nello Rossi is spearheading the investigation, which is being carried out in conjunction with financial specialists from the Italian tax police.
The Vatican bank is no stranger to controversy. It owned a small part of the Banco Ambrosiano and was held partially responsible for the 1.3 billion dollars in bad debts that it left when the bank collapsed.
A Rome court in 2007 said the Italian mafia was behind the 1982 death of former Banco Ambrosiano president Roberto Calvi, who was known as ‘God’s banker’ because of the illicit financial dealings he handled that connected him to the Vatican bank.
Calvi was found hanging beneath Blackfriar’s Bridge in London on 18 June, 1982, with his pockets weighed down with bricks and stones and over 15,000 dollars in cash.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Activists to Protest Against Obama Peace Prize
Vicenza, 7 Dec. (AKI) — Italian peace activists opposed to the construction of a US airbase in the northern city of Vicenza have travelled to the Norwegian capital, Oslo, to challenge the presentation of the Nobel Peace prize to president Barack Obama. “Our goal is to protest against president Barack Obama, who will be receiving the Nobel peace prize for his war policy,” said the No Dal Molin organisation on its website.
“It materialised in Vicenza with the construction of a new and devastating military base.”
No Dal Molin says that the base, which will house the 173rd Airborne Brigade, plays a leading role in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The city of Vicenza also hosts Africom the US headquarters for military operations in the African continent.
“The US military presence is an occupation that the ‘Vicentini’ reject,” the activists said. “The man who will receive the Nobel Peace prize refuses to respect democracy in a European city and by imposing this new military project on Vicenza.
“With this decision president Obama loads a further magazine in his war machine-gun.”
The group defines itself as a movement led by ordinary people of all ages from across political, social and cultural boundaries mobilised to oppose the new US military base in Vicenza.
There are currently four major US Army installations in the country and several other naval bases.
The Americans established a military presence in Vicenza immediately after World War II.
Obama has been criticised for receiving the peace prize immediately after announcing an extra 30,000 more troops would be sent to war in Afghanistan, amid concern about the future of the Palestinian territories, and the failed promise of closing the US jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by early 2010.
After it was announced that Obama had won the award, a Gallup poll in the US found that 61 percent of Americans did not believe he deserved the highly-coveted prize.
He will accept the award at Oslo’s town hall on Thursday and will be accompanied by family and close friends.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Hillary Clinton to Review Knox Case
US secretary of state says she will speak to anyone but has not expressed concerns to Italian government
WASHINGTON — Three days ago, one of Amanda’s aunts said that the US state department would look into the case. It sounded more like wishful thinking than a news item. But the Knox family’s relentless campaign to mobilise support has reached into the heart of political Washington at the highest level. In an interview with ABC, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said that she would “meet with anyone who has a concern” over how the Amanda case was handled. She did, however, add that for the time being, she had not expressed “concerns” to the Italian government. The statement came in answer to a question from journalist George Stephanopoulos, who referred to the harsh comments on the Italian judicial system from Democratic senator Maria Cantwell.
Adding her voice to the chorus of protests over the verdict, Senator Cantwell had claimed that the guilty verdict was reached despite not enough evidence having been presented and the obvious anti-Americanism of Italian public opinion. Senator Cantwell repeated her views yesterday and also said she was disappointed because she had been confident of a not guilty verdict.
An almost apologetic (but what for?) Hillary Clinton said that she hadn’t had time to go into the Amanda case because she was “immersed in what we’re doing in Afghanistan”. But the secretary of state wants to make up for lost time: “Of course, I’ll meet with Senator Cantwell, or anyone who has a concern, but I can’t offer any opinion about that at this time”. News of the pledge is understood to have been communicated to Amanda at Capanne prison by her family.
Amanda’s parents hope that the secretary of state will support her innocence and bring the superpower’s political weight to bear on its ally. “Now I do want the government involved and I would be very, very disappointed if they did not get involved”, said Amanda’s father, Curt Knox. The appeal is in line with some of the television coverage of the past few months along the lines of “What’s America waiting for to send in the Marines and free the poor woman?” As if Amanda was in the clutches of some despotic regime.
But such language is light years away from Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic caution. Meanwhile over the past few months, the friends of Amanda have been hard at work to dispel her negative image and rebut the charges. Amanda’s family, the glory-hunting self-styled private investigators and her lawyers have found willing listeners in the media. Television coverage has been almost entirely one-sided and studio guests have presented the Seattle woman as the victim of an arcane legal system. In effect, this has turned the case into a face-off between Italy and the United States, leaving to one side Amanda’s curious behaviour after the crime and forgetting that the very Italian Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted with her. Perugia has been depicted as a small, provincial town with a blinkered mindset. Experts predict that the media offensive will go on until the appeal hearing, where the friends of Amanda are confident of an acquittal.
English translation by Giles Watson
www.watson.it
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: New Pizza and Kebab Shops Banned in Venice
Venice, 7 Dec. (AKI) — New pizza takeaways and kebab outlets will be banned in the historic centre of the northeastern Italian city of Venice for the next two years in a bid to safeguard the city’s cultural heritage. The city council has ruled against the issue of any new licences for takeaway food outlets in an area from St Mark’s square to the famous Rialto bridge until December 2011.
According to the local daily Il Gazzettino, Venice mayor, Massimo Cacciari, a former communist, said a proliferation of pizza and kebab takeaway outlets was contributing to the “impoverishment” of restaurants and affecting the quality of the architecture in the city’s historic centre.
The council said its decision is designed to preserve the historic and artistic heritage of the city and the future of its precious tourism market.
But it is certain to provoke more debate in Italy where conservative government ministers have already backed a campaign against ethnic food elsewhere in the country.
Earlier this year Luca Zaia, minister of agriculture and a member of the Northern League from the Veneto region surrounding Venice, applauded local authorities in the northern city of Milan and the Tuscan town of Lucca for restricting non-Italian food outlets.
“We stand for tradition and the safeguarding of our culture,” he said.
The Venice measure was proposed by Giuseppe Bortolussi, the councillor responsible for local commerce, and approved by the city council last week.
It will affect half the 24 commercial zones in the city of Venice.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: 70% of Gays Suffer Discrimination or Violence
From Dutch: 70% of gays suffer discrimination or violence, but they rarely complain to the police. The attackers are usually young men, both immigrants and ethnic Dutch (per their ratio in society), and religion rarely has anything to do with it.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: School ‘Too Diverse’ For Christmas Tree
THE HAGUE, 09/12/09 — The Haagsche Hogeschool college will not put up a Christmas tree this year because it does not want to cause provocation to immigrant students. The tree is too closely linked with Christianity, according to the school management.
Traditionally, a meters-high tree always stood in the school’s atrium. Now there are only some streamers and fairy lights hanging there. Management wants to “stress the international character and the diversity within the school” by this move. The school is opting for “light and heat,” which can be enjoyed by everyone in his or her own manner, according to the management.
The college has 20,000 students. Thirty percent are of immigrant origin, as are 12 percent of the teachers. Many pupils expressed fury on the Internet about the decision not to put up a tree this year. “Because a handful of religious good-for-nothings take offence about a tree with some lights and coloured balls, the rest of the school community has to suffer,” complained one pupil.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: PvdA Leadership Overruled by Local Muslims
THE HAGUE, 09/12/09 — Labour (PvdA) has been made to look a fool by local party members in Amsterdam choosing an unknown Muslim as their leader for the local elections.
Despite the fact that the entire party leadership, including PvdA leader Wouter Bos and party chairman Lilianne Ploumen, was involved in helping Ahmed Marcouch get the job, the local members chose another Muslim, Ahmed Baadoud, as PvdA front-runner in the Nieuw West district. Another job will now be sought for Marcouch within the PvdA.
Marcouch is known for his ambivalent views. He has combined pleas for compulsory lessons in Islam in all schools in the Netherlands with more liberal calls for making homosexuality discussible among Muslims. This liberal side to Marcouch, which the PvdA leadership likes to stress, proved unacceptable to many Muslims in Amsterdam.
Bos and Ploumen yesterday tried to explain away the defeat of the party leadership as positive. “The members have shown themselves to be active and involved. This is democracy,” said Bos.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Gays Rarely Make Complaints About Violence
Some 70% of gay men and woman have been subjected to verbal or physical attacks because of their sexual orientation but most of them do not report the incident to the authorities, according to government research published on Wednesday.
Some 70% of attacks were verbal while 30% involved threatening behaviour or actual violence, the survey showed. Most of the perpetrators are young men operating in groups and at least a third are under the age of 18. Younger attackers are more likely to use physical violence.
Analysis of actual reports made to the police in the first six months of this year show 86% of the perpetrators are native white Dutch people and 14% from the ethnic minorities. Other research carried out by the University of Amsterdam last year showed 36% of the attackers were native Dutch — reflecting their share of the city’s juvenile population.
From 2011, the Netherlands will have a public prosecution department official dedicated to cases involving discrimination.
(c) DutchNews.nl
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Norwegians Judge Obama’s Nobel Snubs ‘Impolite’
According to a poll conducted by the InFact institute and published in daily Verdens Gang (VG), 44 percent of 1,000 people surveyed said it was “impolite” of Obama to not lunch with the king, while 34 percent said it was okay.
More than half, 53 percent, said it was “impolite” not to attend the Nobel concert, while 27 percent disagreed.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Sarkozy Warns Against Religious “Provocation”
President Nicolas Sarkozy warned French believers to refrain from religious “ostentation and provocation” on Tuesday after the Swiss vote to ban minarets stoked debate about Islam in France.
The president made the statement in an opinion piece in Le Monde daily, wading into an increasingly tense debate over national identity that has zeroed in on immigration fears in France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim minority.
“Christians, Jews, Muslims, all believers regardless of their faith, must refrain from ostentation and provocation and … practice their religion in humble discretion,” wrote Sarkozy.
“Anything that could appear as a challenge” to France’s Christian roots and republican values would lead to “failure” in efforts to promote a form of moderate Islam in France, he warned.
With Islam now the nation’s second faith, France has sought to reaffirm its staunchly secular tradition which sees religion as a strictly private affair while seeking to avoid a clash of civilizations within its borders.
“No to the mosque”
A court, meanwhile, on Tuesday banned France’s anti-immigrant National Front party from giving out leaflets attacking plans to build a giant mosque because they used pictures of it without permission.
The ruling was to protect the architects’ intellectual property, but also came at a sensitive time following Swiss ban on minarets.
The Marseille court ordered the far-right party to destroy all leaflets on which it had reproduced designs for the planned Grand Mosque in the southern city, alongside the slogan “No to the mosque.”
It also ordered the National Front to pay 1,500 euros ($2,210) in costs, according to a copy of the judgment.
Despite several local campaigns by the French far right, dozens of mosques are scheduled for construction in France, including a Grand Mosque in Marseille that will have a 25-meter (82-ft) minaret.
The French government has pledged that it will not ban minaret construction and said mayors have the final say on whether new mosques can be built with tall towers, based on urban planning rules.
Sarkozy’s opinion piece was published as the National Assembly was due to pick up the debate on national identity after weeks of town hall meetings and public commentary posted on an Internet forum.
Addressing French Muslims directly, Sarkozy pledged to do “everything” to combat discrimination and ensure they can feel like full-fledged citizens of France.
“Instead of condemning the Swiss people, let’s try to understand what they are trying to express and what so many nations in Europe are feeling, including the French,” he said.
Sarkozy maintained that no one in Europe was seeking to deny Muslims their basic right to freedom of religion, but made clear that fears of Islamic radicalism would have to be addressed.
“The peoples of Europe are welcoming and tolerant,” he argued. “But they do not want their surroundings, their way of thinking and their social relationships to be distorted.”
France’s six million Muslims congregate in fewer than 2,500 prayers houses and mosques, many of which are housed in modest halls.
There are currently 64 mosques with minarets in France. Seven of them have “tall minarets,” according to Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux.
Responding to the government’s ruling, the right-wing mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi has said there will be no minarets build in his Riviera city.
“Minarets are not part the architecture of our country,” said Estrosi, who is also the minister for industry.
France has had a long-running debate about how far it is willing to go to accommodate Islam without undermining the tradition of separating church and state, enshrined in a flagship 1905 law.
A French parliamentary inquiry is also holding hearings on whether to bar Muslim women from wearing the full Islamic veil and the “burqa debate” will come to a head next month when the panel hands in its report.
In 2004, France passed a law banning headscarves or any other “conspicuous” religious symbols in state schools to defend secularism.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Catalonia, Islamic Moral Brigades Impose Sharia Law
(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 8 — The reported capturing of a Muslim women in Reus (Tarragona) and the issuing of a stoning sentence for adultery by religious fanatics are a gauge of a phenomenon that has already appeared in Holland and France, and which is now taking root in Catalonia: the creation of Islamic “moral brigades” by fundamentalists, who claim the role of judges and police officers imposing a strict observance of Sharia, or Islamic law. The theatre of the incursions of these Islamic “moral patrols” are the rural towns where the mosques are controlled by Salafists, a fundamentalist sect of Islam, with a substantial presence in the province of Tarragona. These groups are heavily inspired by the Koran and the rigid regulations applied in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Confirming investigators’ worries are several disturbing episodes reported by police. Specifically, on November 14, nine alleged Islamic extremists were arrested, accused of having captured and sentenced a Northern African woman to death after convicting her of adultery. The investigation, still in the preliminary phases, is classified. However, according to reports in the media, the woman was captured and held for three days in an abandoned factory, and then in the home of the group’s spiritual leader in Reus, where she was tried before an “Islamic tribunal” made up of seven people, who found her guilty of infidelity and sentenced her to death by stoning. The woman, who was pregnant, managed to escape and call the Catalonian police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, for help, and she is currently under their protection. In the meanwhile, the operation against the fundamentalist cell is ongoing. Investigators have warned that the phenomenon of these “brigades”, which could increase, has not only been found in Tarragona, but also in the provinces of Girona and Segarra, where mosques are controlled by Salafites. Many of the victims do not dare report their persecution, and intimidation continues for them. Investigators have confirmed beatings and segregation by their parents or spouses of women who do not wear veils, and the case of a Moroccan teenager who was beaten because he played football with other non-Muslim children. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Legislator Condemned by Islamic Scholar as ‘New Hitler’
Doha — The verbal war over Switzerland’s ban on building new minarets on mosques escalated Tuesday during a talk show when an Islamic academic condemned a key backer of the Swiss referendum as the “new Hitler of Europe.”The director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, Azzam al-Tamimi, made the remarks on al-Jazeera broadcaster about the Swiss legislator Oskar Freysinger.
“Freysinger is a danger for the future of Switzerland,” Tamimi said.
Freysinger, a member of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) that called the referendum, who was also a guest on the show, retorted that it was “absolutely a democratic decision” and that unlike the Swiss referendum, “Hitler did not allow people to vote.”
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Conservatives Are Wistful, Angry, And Fearful, Says Think Tank
Why do socialists always try to psychoanalyse political opponents? Whether it’s Stalin sending capitalist running dogs off to the loony bin, or modern multi-cultis winding up opponents by questioning their psycho-political mental state, it’s a common Leftist tactic to discredit the opposition by using sub-Freudian psychobabble. Angry about high taxes, hoodies outside your front door and ineffectual police? You must have issues with yourself.
Richard Reeves of think-tank Demos has been writing about the psychological make-up of conservatives.
“And a central theme of liberal thought and practice is indeed the hope that free people will lead good lives, and create good communities and societies. If social democrats are angry, and liberals are hopeful, I wonder what emotion characterises conservatives? Here are some ideas people have given me so far for the Tory emotion:
- anger at different things: modernity, Europe, immigration
- fear of modernity, of social breakdown, of difference
- wistfulness for an age that has passed
- pride in Britain, in history, in certain institutions
Then again, perhaps conservatism is a less intrinsically emotional enterprise; perhaps it is more pragmatic, more accepting, more relaxed about the way things are.”
He’s right about pride and pragmatism, but wrong about everything else. Conservatives aren’t “wistful” for the past, or at least not the young ones who weren’t around pre-Woy Jenkins — they just recognise that change isn’t good for its own sake, and that many things have indeed got worse in the past four decades (many things have got better, mind), and that mistakes are made sometimes and need to be rectified.
Likewise we’re not “scared” of social breakdown — it’s already happening, how can you fear what’s on your front door? We just accept it’s a reality. Nor are most of us angry “at modernity”, whatever that means. Mainly we feel bemusement, rather than anger, that the Left has accepted the European Union, societal collapse and demographic revolution without question.
But I do know one thing that does make me angry — the fact that our taxes fund Demos, to the tune of £553,004. Aaarggh! Now I’m off to give my Austin 1100 a damn good thrashing with a tree branch.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
EU: Enlargement Including Balkans Must Continue, Pahor
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 8 — The process of EU enlargement after the entrance of Croatia and Iceland cannot stop, and must proceed with the integration of the Balkans. The appeal was launched by Slovenia Prime Minister, Borut Pahor, before the upcoming European Council, speaking in Brussels at a conference on the Balkans organised by Friends of Europe. In Pahor’s view, among the 27 member states, there is “a tacit consensus” on three fronts: anti-crisis policy, the consolidation of European institutions, and the entrance of Croatia and Iceland, followed by a two-year pause to reflect on the enlargement process. Regarding the enlargement policy, “I think that it is a mistaken approach,” said Pahor, “and the European Council should state this at its next meeting. It is important to proceed with the enlargement process and to not forget the Western Balkans due to security issues. It is better to invest into the region early rather than having to worry about military intervention later on.” In the Slovenian Prime Minister’s view, the Balkans, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular, must not be forgotten, since the country has a highly complex situation that needs the international community’s attention. “Dayton worked for peace, but not for economic growth and stability,” added Pahor. Another weak point for the region is Kosovo, where “the EU’s approach will be very important, due to the division among the member states on its recognition.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Russia and US Adopt Opposite Views on Independence
The Hague, 8 Dec. (AKI) — The United States and Russia on Tuesday took opposite positions regarding the independence of Kosovo in arguments before the International Court of Justice. At the request of the United Nations general assembly, the court is assessing the legality of its unilateral declaration of independence, which Serbia opposes.
Kosovo — once a province of Serbia — declared independence in February 2008. The court is expected to make a non-binding ruling next year.
Twenty eight countries are presenting their verbal views on the issue before the court and are split equally both for and against independence.
The US has spearheaded the independence drive, but Russia has threatened to veto the move in the UN Security Council.
“The US calls on the ICJ to leave the declaration of independence untouched as an expression of will of the Kosovar people,” US representative Harold Hongju Koh told the panel of 15 judges.
He said the declaration was not contrary to international law, as its opponents have claimed, and that Kosovo should be treated as a “special case”, because ethnic Albanians had been subjected for years to a “campaign of violence” carried out by Serbia.
But Russian representative Kyril Gevorgian said that international law “prevents Kosovo from declaring independence”, because ethnic minorities have no right to secession and ethnic Albanians are a minority in Serbia.
Gevorgian said that under UN Security Council resolution 1244, in which Kosovo was placed under UN control in 1999, clearly stated that Kosovo was part of Serbia and guaranteed Serbia’s territorial integrity.
A total of 63 countries, including the US and leading European Union members, have recognised Kosovo.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
NATO: Secures Path for Membership, Bosnia Waiting
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 4 — NATO’s doors are open: the alliance’s foreign ministers approved Montenegro’s request for the Membership Action Plan (MAP), while Bosnia Herzegovina is still waiting. “Montenegro obtained its request for the Membership Action Plan, while a clear message was addressed to Bosnia-Herzegovina,” said NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. “Bosnia will obtain the MAP once it makes progress with its necessary reforms,” he added. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Culture: Council of Europe, Agreement on Euro-Med Region
(ANSAmed) — STRASBOURG, NOVEMBER 30 — Council of Europe Secretary General, Thorbjorn Jagland, signed today an agreement with the London-based MBI Al Jaber Foundation, in order to develop co-operation on Intercultural Dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The partnership between the Council of Europe and the MBI Al Jaber Foundation shall focus on strengthening Euro-Arab co-operation, and promoting education for human rights, rule of law, democratic citizenship and intercultural understanding. The agreement will run for 4 years with a total budget allocated by MBI of 1 million euro. “Intercultural understanding — said Jagland — is one of the main challenges of our societies: the Council of Europe has acted as a bridge in the last 60 years between different cultures in our Continent. Fostering dialogue is crucial for human rights’ protection and development. I welcome this agreement with the MBI Al Jaber Foundation. It will enhance co-operation in the Euro-Mediterranean region, building on the MBI’s extensive experience, know-how and contacts in the areaPP. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Parliament to Report on Minaret Importance
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 9 — The Egyptian parliament will be carrying out a scientific research to prove that mosque minarets, which a recent Swiss referendum okayed their ban, are important to Muslims, MENA reported. The religious affairs committee of the People’s Assembly has been assigned with the job: to issue a statement to be delivered as a letter to the presidents of the Swiss parliament, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, protesting the outcome of the poll. Ahmed Fathi Sorour, the speaker of the People’s Assembly, said the Swiss government and parliament were against the referendum, whose results came to reflect a growing sense of Islamophobia in the European country.(ANSAmed).
2009-12-09 10:54
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Farming: Spanish Producers Against EU-Morocco Deal
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, DECEMBER 2 — The conclusion of the talks between the EU and Morocco, with a draft agreement to increase exports of fruit and vegetables from the North African country, is seen as a slap in the face by the Spanish agricultural sector. The Spanish association of fruit and vegetable exporters FEPEX unanimously rejected the agreement today. It’s coming into force, the association pointed out, will cause a substantial loss of jobs and a decline of Spanish exports. FEPEX wants the agreement to be revised. According to the Spanish producers, the deal will have a particularly negative impact on Andalusia, Murcia, Valencia, the Canaries and Estremadura, where the economy depends heavily on agriculture. The deal is thought to seriously damage intensive production and early fruit production. The producers denounce that despite the long talks, the impact of the agreement has not been considered and no policies have been planned to reorganise or modernise Spanish exports to deal with the Moroccan competition. From a Spanish viewpoint, the written understanding between Morocco and the EU practically gives Morocco free access to the European market for the export of fruit and vegetables, since it only imposes limits on products that are considered to be sensitive from a competition viewpoint, like tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, garlic, clementines and strawberries; in any cases, these limits will be set higher than in the previous agreement. In the case of tomatoes, the concessions will be raised from the previous quota of 185,000 tonnes to 257,000 tonnes in 2013, a 39% increase. The quota for courgettes has doubled from 25,000 to 50,000 tonnes, clementines from 130,00 to 175,000. According to the association, in practice the market of other products is liberalised, since the agreement includes an exemption from payment of duty based on value, while it reduces duties on fruit with pits, on eating grapes and on citrus fruit. It is the worst possible deal, according to the chairman of the Andalusian fruit and vegetable federation, Maria José Pardo. “It also coincides with the crisis in the Spanish agricultural sector”. With the almost 350,000 tonnes of Moroccan tomatoes to enter the European market, setting a quota is irrelevant for the Spanish producers. They see the constant violation of the quotes as the real problem, which leads to unfair competition by the Moroccan products. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Cinema: Kusturica in Marrakech, Arab Culture May Save Film
(ANSAmed) — MARRAKECH, DECEMBER 8 — “I would like to thank the Festival of Marrakech, which like many festivals in the southern part of the world, supports the artistic side film, which is dying, crushed by the standardisation of Hollywood style films. The Arab culture may save film,” said director, Emir Kusturica, speaking last night to a large crowd at the Marrakech Film Festival, who dedicated a tribute to him this year, with a complete retrospective of his films. The director of ‘Do you remember Dolly bell?’ and ‘Underground’ was presented to the public by actress Isabella Ferrari, a member of the jury at the festival, who compared him to Fellini, and he, joking and pointing out his passion for music in addition to film, said that he really has two names: Emir Clapton and Federico Kusturica. Then he spoke to the public, which gave him a deafening applause: “if I were a military strategist, I would make good use of a powerful applause like this one: it would defeat anyone.” This spring, the Serbian director (“my name has Arab roots”, he pointed out in Marrakech) will shoot a film in Palestine called ‘Cool Water’, which will tell the story of a journey to the Gaza Strip through the eyes of a Palestinian who has been gone from his home town for many years, and returns to bury his father. Among his other projects is also a film on Pancho Villa: a role that he wants to give to Johnny Depp. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: ‘Italian Child’ Appears in Cairo After 22 Years
Rome, 8 Dec. (AKI) — An Italian child allegedly kidnapped by his father when he was five years-old has resurfaced in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, after 22 years living under a different name. Alex Anfuso reappeared via the internet social networking site Facebook looking for his Italian relatives.
“My name is Alex. I am looking for my family. I am looking for my mother,” wrote Alex Anfuso on Facebook, in a bid to find his relatives.
On 17 March 1987, the father of the then five year-old child Alex Anfuso reportedly asked a friend to kidnap his child from Guidonia, a town on the outskirts of Rome, and to bring him to Egypt, where the father lived.
At the time of the kidnapping, his mother, Silvana Anfuso was in Rome’s Rebibbia prison jailed in relation to drug-related crimes.
Before going to jail, the child was left in the house of one of Silvana’s friends, who also ended up in jail a short time later.
At that time, Anfuso was transferred to the brother of Silvana Anfuso’s friend, who then took legal action in a bid to adopt the child. He disappeared a few days later when he was playing in the street outside.
“One day, a man comes and tells me: I am your father, someone will come and pick you up. Follow them,” Alex — now called Ali Mohammed — told an Italian TV show on Monday.
Alex was picked up and driven away. He was given a new hairstyle and new clothes and taken to Cairo.
He then met a woman whom he calls ‘Grandma’ who took care of him and he began speaking Arabic. He later fell out with his father.
Alex — who does not have an Egyptian birth certificate or residency in Egypt — is now 28 years old.
Alex decided to search for his Italian relatives by searching on Facebook for anyone with the last name ‘Anfuso’.
He sent a message to many people, including Pino Anfuso, a TV technician who works for state broadcaster RAI in the southern city of Reggio Calabria.
Although Pino Anfuso is not a relative of Alex, he decided to share the story with the popular TV show “Chi l’ha visto” or “Who has seen them?” and Alex went on air to tell his story.
According to inquiries conducted by the show, Alex’s mother Silvana died before she could see him again.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Men Unite to Fight Women’s “Tyranny”
A group of Egyptian men have established an organization to fight for men’s rights and protect them from the “tyranny” of women as the country’s women take advantage of a law allowing them to divorce their husbands with no questions asked.
Men who have been unjustly left by their wives want to protect themselves and others like them from women who suddenly decide to get rid of them, Abdul-Rahman Hamed, the founder of the organization, the first of its kind, and one of its most active members, told Al Arabiya.
“The law of unconditional divorce has become a sword hanging over men’s heads,” he said, adding “men are the ones who now need organizations to fight for their rights,” to protect themselves from the “tyranny” of women.
Hamed is talking about khol’a, or the law of unconditional divorce, which was passed in 2000 and grants women the right to get a divorce if she gives up her financial rights.
Prior to khol’a, it was extremely difficult for a woman to be granted a divorce and she had to present strong evidence supporting her wish for separation such as physical abuse or adultery.
Men losing ground
The organization, named the Egyptian Organization for Divorced Men, rejects the law because it equalizes men and women and gives the woman the right to get a divorce herself, a right that was previously exclusive to men.
“Men are losing ground. In the past, a man had the upper hand. Now, the woman is acting as his peer. If he threatens her with divorce, she does the same. She might even divorce him without his knowledge.”
The organization was established so that men can voice their rejection of the unconditional divorce law and prove its violation of the Sharia, or Islamic law.
The organization boasts more than 1,000 members many of whom, Hamed claims, are celebrities.
“Many of our members are public figures but I cannot disclose their names. There are also men from several professions—doctors, engineers, businessmen, rights activists and others.”
Hamed noted that not all members have been necessarily divorced by their wives since many of them joined in support of the cause and in solidarity with the “victims” of unconditional divorce.
“The most striking thing is that we, in fact, have female members who voluntarily joined as they believe in the organization’s role in protecting the unity of the Egyptian family.”
Every 12 minutes
Hamed argued that according to official statistics a man is divorced every 12 minutes and the total amount of divorced men in Egypt has so far reached 12,000.
“This shows that unconditional divorce is no longer done discreetly and is not the exception anymore. Women even brag about divorcing their husbands with their friends. This law is making women tyrannical.”
Hamed admitted his wife divorced him but stressed he was not ashamed.
“I am, in fact, honored to be divorced by such a woman who was that careless towards her marriage and her two daughters. I tried my best to straighten her up but to no avail.”
The organization has already started proceedings with legal measures to annul the unconditional divorce law.
Official complaints were filed with Dar al-Iftaa, the body in charge of issuing religious edicts, al-Azhar, the leading Sunni institution in the Muslim world and the Ministry of Religious Endowments to prove that the law does not comply with teachings of Islam.
Other complaints were submitted to the Prosecutor General, the People’s Assembly, Egypt’s lower house of parliament and the Ministry of Justice to call for annulling the law.
“In addition to annulling the law, our initiative also aims to achieve psychological and social rehabilitation for divorced men who, being part of an eastern society, suffer a lot because of this law.”
Weak men
In the conservative, male-oriented, Egyptian society divorced men are considered weak as they are ridiculed for not living up to the stereotypical concept of manhood being about control of women.
“Divorced men also face a lot of difficulties upon trying to start a new life. Most of them are rejected when they propose to women as if they are infected with some contagious disease.”
Hamed refused to admit that the unconditional divorce law has done justice to women who suffered in their marriages or that women resort to khol’a only when they run out of ways to maintain the unity of their families.
“Women use this law to satisfy their personal whims and for the most trivial of reasons. Several cases are disgraceful.”
Hamed cited two unconditional divorce cases that he considers “disgraceful,” one of 90 year old woman who divorced her husband after a 65-year old marriage and another of a 75 year old woman. Both divorced men are members of the organizations.
“Unconditional divorce is not only used by young women. Elderly women are also divorcing their husbands, throwing away decades of companionship and family life.”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorism: Algeria, 12 Sentenced to Death
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, DECEMBER 9 — Twelve members of the armed Islamist groups were sentenced to death in absentia in Algeria. The rulings, reported by the APS agency, were issued by a court in Boumerdes, in Kabylie, 50 km east of Algiers for “belonging to an armed terrorist group”,” kidnapping with demand for ransom”, “homicide and mainslaughter” and “possession of explosives”. Another suspect was sentenced, again in absentia, to life for the “creation of an armed terrorist group with the aim of spreading terror among the people putting their lives and property at risk”. There have been hundreds of death sentences issued in recent years by Algerian courts, most of the cases have been against armed groups that are still in activity. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Abbas Slams EU’s Watered Down Jerusalem Draft
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed disappointment on Wednesday over the watered down European Union draft calling for Jerusalem to become the capital of two states and said the initial draft presented to the Palestinians was less “vague.”
Abbas said the EU statement had watered down an earlier Swedish draft, which had defined a state of Palestine as comprising “the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza.”
“Regarding the position of the EU, we all know the Swedish draft was a good draft because it put in clear cut terms the issue of East Jerusalem. Then came the final, vague form,” Abbas said after talks in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“We can say it is an important decision but certainly does not fulfill or reach the level of the draft that was presented by Sweden that we agreed with and were satisfied with,” he added.
The European Union on Tuesday called on Israel to end its occupation of east Jerusalem as part of a Middle East peace agreement and make the holy city the capital of two states, a position the current Israeli government rejects.
The status of Jerusalem — a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians — is a sensitive issue for Israel, which considers the city to be its indivisible capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of Jerusalem to serve as the capital of a Palestinian state but it is currently occupied by Israel.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top aide to Abbas, also told Reuters in Ramallah by telephone that the EU statement would not help to change the Palestinian position on resuming peacemaking efforts.
The Palestinian leadership refuses to resume peace talks with Israel, which have been suspended over the past year, until Israel freezes all settlement construction. They have rejected Israel’s partial 10-month moratorium.
“What helps in returning to negotiations is halting settlement expansion and recognizing that the borders of the Palestinian state are the 1967 borders in full, including Jerusalem,” Abu Rdainah said.
Shalit deal
Abbas also held talks with President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh and said there was still no deal between the Israelis and Gaza’s rulers Hamas to release captured soldier Gilad Shalit.
Egypt has been trying to broker a deal in which Hamas would release Shalit in exchange for Israel freeing of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
“The two sides have stopped at the details concerning the numbers and nature of people to be released … I can tell you that for now there is no deal,” Abbas told reporters.
Talks on a swap hit an obstacle in late November, a source close to the discussions said, after Israel refused to free a number of prisoners at the top of Hamas’s list whom Israel accuses of making bombs that killed dozens of Israelis.
Days before, Israel and Hamas had come close to a deal when officials said Israel had dropped objections to freeing 160 prisoners whose freedom was sought by Hamas.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
EU Ministers: 27 Divided on East Jerusalem Status
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 8 — All are in agreement expressing “serious worry” over the state of peace negotiations, but divided on the status of East Jerusalem, the foreign ministers of the EU in Brussels today are looking for a compromise on the text that has provoked a lot of tension inside the EU and between the EU and Israel. Creating the tension, last week, was the publication, in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, a draft of the document of the Swedish turn at the EU presidency which outlined the intention of recognising a Palestinian state even if it were declared unilaterally. The objective, the document specified, is to build “an independent and democratic Palestinian state, able to prosper, granted geographic continuity between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and with East Jerusalem as its capital”. Israel, which considers East Jerusalem, occupied since 1967, part of its “eternal and undividable capital”, even if this status is not recognised by the international community, officially protested the EU and began strong lobbying activities, putting European countries under pressure. A week of meetings of the 27 has not allowed for the discovery of a shared formula, even if the document on the table today is different from the first version. The Swedish presidency of the EU would like to keep a formula which affirms that the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should lead to “a two-state solution, with Israel and the independent, democratic, trustworthy, prosperous Palestinian nation including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem”. A group of countries closer to Israel, including France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain, are asking for the removal of every hint of East Jerusalem as a future Palestinian capital. Yesterday, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini stressed that for Italy the future status of East Jerusalem will have to be defined as a part of the negotiations. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Justice Minister: We Will Impose Torah Laws on State
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, DECEMBER 8 — Israel will have to be fully governed in the future by the Jewish religious law of the Torah and its system of regulations is already being implemented, “step by step”, to this end, claimed Justice Minister, Yaakov Neeman, today among the ovation of the religious right and the horror of some lay political representatives at a conference in Jerusalem for Rabbis and scholars of the Halakha (Jewish religious law). “Step after step, we will give the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will make to Halakha the fundamental law of the nation”, Neeman, a technical minister, trained jurist and personally chosen by Premier Benyamin Netanyahu, stated. “We must bring to the nation of Israel the legacy of our founding fathers and the Torah contains the complete solution to all of the problems that we face today”, he added. The protest of opposition representative Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz, Zionist Left) was indignant, defining Neeman’s ideas as the betrayal of “the lay values of the state of Israel and Zionism”, calling them a “horrifying vision (of law), which would drag Israel down into the heart of the third world”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Knesset: Yes to Biometric Data Filing
(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, DECEMBER 8 — After weeks of bitter controversy, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved yesterday the biometric filing of its citizens. But, to reduce the contestations, it decided that for an initial phase of two years it will only be applied voluntarily. The period of adjustment will also have the possibility of another 2 year extension to allow for government leaders to verify the benefits and possible disadvantages. The new law provides for the institution of biometric identity cards in which information regarding fingerprints and facial identifying characteristics for every citizen will be inserted. The collected data will be stored in a database, an archive split into two large sections with no cross-referencing between them. In Israel, the government affirmed, there are hundreds of thousands of falsified documents and in this way it will finally be possible to fight “identity theft”. The biometric documents will also allow for the identification of victims in areas affected by terrorist or military attacks. But the those contrary to the law fear that the protection of the archives is not yet adequate and that it represents a constant threat to personal freedom. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
“War President” Obama Seen Unworthy of Nobel
Controversy mounted Wednesday over the choice of U.S. President Barack Obama as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate on the eve of the award ceremony in Oslo, as public opinion judged him unworthy of the prize.
Obama, scheduled to arrive in the Norwegian capital early Thursday to receive the award just nine days after announcing a surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, will accept the prize as a “war president,” the White House said Tuesday.
“We’ll address directly the notion, I think, that many have wondered, which is the juxtaposition of the timing of the Nobel Peace Prize and his commitment to add more troops,” Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
That juxtaposition is losing support in Norway for Obama as this year’s choice for the distinguished award, an accolade that stunned the world and the laureate himself when it was announced on Oct. 9.
Obama had moved into the White House less than nine months before the recognition, and as commander-in-chief of U.S. troops was waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president was also notably silent as Israel launched a devastating air, land and sea assault on the Gaza Strip.
The surge in Afghanistan will bring the number of U.S. troops in the war-torn country to 100,000, triple the amount stationed there before Obama took office.
Two months after the prize announcement, consensus appears to have emerged that the five people appointed by the Norwegian parliament to pick the laureate of the world’s most revered peace award made a premature decision.
A December 1-6 Quinnipiac University survey of 2,313 registered voters published Tuesday showed that by a wide margin of 66-26 percent, Americans think Obama does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
And in Norway, whose capital is preparing to welcome Obama to give him the Nobel medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (around €1.0 million, $1.4 million) prize money, the award is also viewed with mixed feelings.
A poll conducted by the InFact institute and published Wednesday in the daily Verdens Gang (VG) showed that just 35.9 percent of Norwegians thought Obama deserved the prize, down from 42.7 percent when the winner was announced in October.
Nearly as many, 33.5 percent, believe the 44th U.S. president is unworthy of the award that has been handed out for over a century.
Accent on cooperation
The awkward timing of Obama’s announcement of troops for Afghanistan forced the Nobel Norwegian Committee to justify its choice again this week.
Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee, said on Norwegian NRK radio that most U.S. presidents face conflicts and wars — but the new mood in U.S. foreign policy justified Obama’s elevation.
The president had “put the accent on international cooperation, the United Nations, dialogue, negotiation, the struggle against climate change and disarmament,” Lundestad said.
Obama will be in Oslo for a bit more than 24 hours to pick up the award that adds him to a list of laureates including Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Events related to the formal Nobel Peace Prize ceremony normally run over three days, but the president has shortened his visit and excluded the traditional lunch with the king and a Friday night concert in his honor.
Wednesday’s InFact survey showed that a majority of Norwegians perceived his short programme and tight schedule as “impolite” snubs.
There will also be no traditional day-before press conference or lengthy CNN sit-down interview laureates usually grant — enabling him to avoid potentially embarrassing questions.
Yet some plan to make sure the prize attribution does not go unquestioned.
A number of peace and anti-nuclear weapons organizations have planned demonstrations on Thursday evening near the hotel where Obama will be staying.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Iran: Turkey Important Partner in Resolving Crisis, Obama
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 8 — U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday said Turkey could be an important player in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, despite differing approaches between the two countries on the crisis, Turkish dailies reported. Obama praised NATO ally Turkey, citing its important role in tackling several conflicts and crises as he welcomed Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to the White House. He noted that the international community was working ensure that Iran abides by international regulations. “I believe that Turkey can be an important player in trying to move Iran in that direction,” Obama said in the Oval Office. Erdogan has played down concerns that Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb and slammed Western powers for turning a blind eye to Israel, widely considered the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power. In the short press conference with Obama in the Oval Office, Erdogan said Turkey supported a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue. He said the two leaders “discussed what kind of studies we can jointly carry out regarding nuclear program. Turkey is ready to do what is necessary for the solution of the process through diplomatic ways, Anatolia news agency reported. Ankara insists the row with Iran should be resolved peacefully and has sought to help mediate a settlement. The U.S. president also praised Turkey for its role in Afghanistan, where it has 1,700 troops, less than a week after unveiling a 30,000-strong surge of troops designed to pave a U.S. exit from the war. But Erdogan made clear before he left Turkey that he would not be adding to the countrys troop presence in Afghanistan, despite a call by Obama on NATO allies for more resources. Obama also praised Turkeys efforts toward bringing stability in Afghanistan and Erdogan emphasized the joint efforts that the two countries were making in the war-torn country. “The Turkish Armed Forces took over command (of NATO forces in Afghanistan) for the third time with the additional troops we sent there two months ago, Erdogan said. Obama also praised Erdogan’s bold steps toward normalizing relations with Armenia, noting that he encouraged the Turkish prime minister to continue on that path. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Jonathan Spyer: Hezbollah’s Delusions
The latest events in Lebanon offer an image in miniature of larger regional developments. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite Islamist movement Hezbollah is pursuing a long-term strategy intended to eventually deliver Lebanon into its hands. In the short term, the greater commitment of the movement’s cadres and its public is delivering impressive results. But at the core of the strategic thinking of Hezbollah and its patrons lie a series of delusions, which are likely to bring about the defeat of the movement over time. Between that point and the present, however, further strife and conflict are likely.
The pro-Western March 14 movement won an unexpected victory in elections in Lebanon in June. But the subsequent protracted coalition negotiations succeeded in emptying that victory of most of its content. The composition of the new Lebanese government will enable the Hezbollah-led opposition to block any legislation not to its liking. More important, the new government’s official mission statement will include a commitment to maintain Hezbollah’s independent, Iran-facilitated military capacity.
Supporters of March 14 had little choice but to concede to the demands of the “losing” side in the election. The violence of May 2008 proved conclusively that they are incapable of resisting the armed might of Hezbollah. Hezbollah may have paid a price in terms of its legitimacy in the eyes of non-Shi’ite Lebanese for demonstrating its power, but it acquired the ability to silence any further dissent on issues it deems of cardinal importance.
But the foundation of the new Lebanese government is ultimately only one small element within a larger process taking place in Lebanon. This is the way the power of Hezbollah and its constituency is growing in all areas of life in the country. The organization recently released a new manifesto. A particularly notable aspect of the document was the call for an end to “sectarianism” in Lebanon and the expression of the desire for rule by an “elected majority.” This demand reflects the self-confidence of the movement, rather than a newfound appreciation for democratic principles.
While it is impossible to carry out accurate demographic surveys in Lebanon, Hezbollah certainly believes that the Shi’ites are on the rise demographically, due to their high birthrate and low(er) emigration rate. Senior Israeli officials who are knowledgeable about the country concur with this assessment. They also note the growing strength of Shi’ite officers in the Lebanese Armed Forces, particularly at mid-level. This development, alongside the latest political moves, is slowly blurring the borders between the official Lebanese state and the parallel state maintained by Hezbollah.
The slow, full-spectrum advance of the Shi’ite Islamist camp in Lebanon resembles developments elsewhere. No one situation is exactly like any other, of course, but it is not hard to detect the common elements in the steady advancement of Islamic politics in Turkey, the rise of Islamist radicals within the Iranian clerical regime, the onward march of Hezbollah and the strides made in recent years by Palestinian Islamism. In all cases, this is not the delusional, apocalyptic Islamism of Al-Qaida and its ilk. The rising Islamic forces in the region do not go in for violence-as-gesture, nor do they envisage the triumph of the rule of righteousness in the immediate future.
The significant differences between these rising forces and the delusional Salafi fringe has led many in the West to believe that “pragmatic,” localized Islamism can be accommodated rather than confronted…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
The “Dream” Of Helem
Beirut’s gay community has ‘come out’ and started to make its voice heard. This slow revolution has made the Lebanese capital the only city in the Arab world in which it has become possible to publicly acknowledge one’s homosexuality, also thanks to the NGO Helem (in Arabic this word means “dream”), the acronym for the “protection of Lebanese who are gay, lesbian and transgender.”
An article by Ernesto Pagano
Beirut, Lebanon
While in Italy there are some who would like to make homophobia a crime, in the Lebanon there is a law that effectively legitimises it. This is Bill number 534, a provision introduced during the French mandate in the Lebanon (1922-1943), which establishes sentences up to a year of imprisonment for sexual relations that are considered “unnatural.” A few years ago, however, Beirut’s gay community came out and started to make its voice heard. This slow revolution has made the Lebanese capital the only city in the Arab world where it has become possible to publicly acknowledge one’s homosexuality, thanks to the NGO Helem (in Arabic this word means “dream”), the acronym for the “protection of Lebanese who are gay, lesbians and transgender.” In its offices it is possible to talk to psychologists, ask for legal assistance and since last year also have access to anonymous HIV testing.
Helem’s young president, George Azzi , ironically tells us that “There are no wild parties held here, as some people say. People say we are paedophiles or sadomasochists, but that is the destiny of any closed and secret group. In the end they are surrounded by gossip and superstition. That is why it was necessary to come out into the open and show who we really are” adds Azzi calmly. There has been no lack of opportunities for proving that the first gay Arab NGO projects itself well beyond the borders of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community. In 2006, for example, during the war between Israel and Hezbollah, Helem worked together with other Lebanese organisations to welcome to Beirut refugees fleeing Israeli bombardments in the south.
The first “gay-pride in embryo” was organised this year the day after a homophobic episode in the heart of Christian Beirut. Just below a building under construction in the Sassine Square, two young homosexuals were beaten by policemen in front of passers-by, because “they had kissed.” Later, at the police station, sexual torture replaced the punching and kicking. “Rather than a gay event it was a demonstration against violence, also supported by civil society’s other associations,” says Azzi. Photographs of that day, however, portray boys and girls wrapped in rainbow coloured banners of the LGBT movement and holding posters with slogans against Law number 534.
Since then the violence has continued, as witnessed by two young people who appeared at a mobilisation day for the gay community organised last summer at the avant-garde theatre Babel, in the centre of Beirut…
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
There is No Peaceful Solution to Terrorism
It has become fashionable in modern circles to believe that terrorism is the cry of the oppressed, that bombs on buses are the voice of the disempowered and that beheaded schoolteachers are the response of a people deprived of their human rights. They are of course wrong.
Terrorism is nothing more than strategic atrocity, a horror show meant to shock and repulse, to weaken morale and bring about negotiations. Which is precisely what diplomats and peace activists willingly provide them. Their notion of a “peaceful solution” invariably ends with the butchers in charge and everyone else on the run. The result may indeed be a peaceful solution, insofar as anyone who disagrees has been executed or fled into exile, and a reign of terror insures that no one disturbs the peace.
The liberal premise is that terrorists are themselves victims who act violently only because they lack any alternative recourse. And yet when given a chance to rule, terrorists invariably demonstrate that they are not monsters because they are oppressed, but that they are oppressed because they are monsters. Communist terror on behalf of the oppressed peasants and workers before the Revolution, was nothing compared to the horrors that were unleashed under the USSR. Nazi violence on behalf of a dispossessed Germany proved to be forgettable compared to the genocide they unleashed as the ruling party. Palestinian Arab terror before the Oslo Accords seems almost simple in comparison to their reinvention of Suicide Bombings after the agreements granting them autonomous territory inside Israel.
From Shiite terror in Iran to the Taliban in Afghanistan. From Latin American Marxists to the Brown Shirts of Berlin to Mugabe and the Viet Cong—empowered terrorists are not peaceful terrorists. A brutal thug before a treaty is no different than the same brutal thug after the treaty. The only difference is how much power he has.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: 800-Year-Old Kaaba Key Taken Out of Auction
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 8 — A 13th century key to Kaaba, the holy site of Islam in Saudi Arabia, has been withdrawn from an auction in Istanbul, the auction house said on Tuesday as reported by Anatolia news agency. The Abbasid-era iron key has been taken out of the auction, planned to be held on December 13, as the “sale might be inconvenient”, Portakal Arts and Culture House said. No pre-sales estimate had been set for the key. The priceless key would be given back to anonymous owner, the auction house said. There are 59 recorded Kaaba keys: 54 of them are in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, two are in the Nuhad Es-Said Collection, one is in the Louvre in Paris and one is in the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo. The key is engraved with a verse from the Koran. The last time a Kaaba key was put up for auction was last year. It was sold to an anonymous buyer for 18.1 million USD in a Sotheby’s auction in London on April 18, 2008. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Chaos in Afghanistan Policy
Much more troubling are the new rules of engagement for our troops in Afghanistan. They’ve been ordered not to fight a war, but to conduct a police action much like they would if they were dealing with suspected criminals in the United States.
U.S. troops are under orders not to fire unless fired upon.
U.S. troops are under strict orders not to return fire if civilians are present.
U.S. troops are under orders not to fire on terrorists who they believe have just planted improvised explosive devices meant to kill them if they are walking away. Only if they catch them in the act are they permitted to engage.
This is a recipe for disaster.
It’s a recipe for another Vietnam, where the politicians back home were calling the shots rather than the brave fighting men and women on the scene.
Our soldiers know they will be second-guessed if they make a bad call. They might even be second-guessed if they make the right call.
We simply can’t win like this.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Erick Stakelbeck: New Battlefield Rules Putting U.S. Troops at Risk?
Controversial battlefield restrictions may be making the fight even tougher for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The military’s new rules of engagement emphasize protecting Afghan civilians.
But is this focus on population protection putting American troops at risk in the fight against the Taliban?
For more details, watch my new CBN report at the link above.
| [Return to headlines] |
Java Widows Wants Compensation From Netherlands
From Dutch: the widows of hundreds of men executed by Dutch soldiers in Java 62 years ago are suing for recognition and compensation.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Kazakh Teacher Not Allowed to Wear Hijab at School
A high school geography teacher in the southeastern Kazakh city of Taldy-Qorghan has turned to the Prosecutor’s Office for permission to wear an Islamic head scarf (hijab) while teaching, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports.
Aida Dekebaeva says school principal Gulnara Muratbekova “recommended” that she not wear the hijab while teaching.
Dekebaeva said the school recently adopted a dress code that bans head scarves for both students and teachers.
Muratbekova told RFE/RL that she warned Dekebaeva about the way she dresses and told her to make sure it is in accordance with Education Department guidelines.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Philippines: CHR to Probe Death of 200 Others in Maguindanao
MANILA, Philippines-The Commission on Human Rights is set to investigate allegations made in an anonymous letter that at least 200 bodies are buried in mass graves in Maguindanao from a supposed killing spree by the Ampatuan clan throughout their decade-long reign in the central Mindanao province.
CHR chairman Leila de Lima told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) on Wednesday that the human rights body “would take advantage” of the relative peace in the area for the investigation and possible exhumation of bodies.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Australia Bans N Korean Artists, Accused of ‘Censorship’
AFP — Five North Korean artists have been banned from entering Australia for an exhibition of their work, the government said Wednesday, drawing accusations of censorship from the arts community.
The artists and a translator have been refused visas because they are from a studio linked to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Il, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Guinea Accuses France of Complicity in Shooting
CONAKRY, Guinea — The French ambassador was stopped and his diplomatic car was searched as troops loyal to Guinea’s ruling junta continued a manhunt for the renegade soldier that shot and wounded the head of Guinea’s military junta, an official said on Tuesday.
The search of a diplomatic car is a violation of international law and is evidence of how uncontrolled the Guinean military has become following the assassination attempt on their leader who was evacuated overseas for emergency treatment last week, said a diplomat who had been briefed on the matter.
| — Hat tip: Esther | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia Suicide Bomber From Denmark
A suicide bomb that killed 23 people in Mogadishu last week was detonated by a young Danish-Somali man, reports Berlingske Tidende newspaper.
Close friends have confirmed Somali police’s identification of the 24-year-old man from pictures taken after the blast, which devastated a hotel ceremony for newly educated doctors.
The suspect lived 20 years in Denmark, growing up in the city district of Brønshøj and later living in the suburb of Rødovre.
Danish intelligence service PET has not released the name of the man, nor has it yet made a positive identification. But yesterday the agency reported that the bomber was ‘a Somali citizen who had residence in Denmark’.
But after being shown pictures of the man’s body by PET, Abdirashid Nur Artan said he was certain the bomber was his childhood friend.
‘I’m unfortunately convinced it’s my friend in the photos,’ said Artan. ‘Several of our other friends are saying the same thing. It’s scary and I almost can’t believe it.’
Somali media have indicated the bomber had connections to al-Qaeda offshoot group Mujahidin al-Shabaab. But Artan said he played football with the suspect and that the young man was well-liked.
‘He was the type who could always get away with making fun of people and causing a little harmless mischief on the football club,’ said Artan. ‘But it was done in a very charming way and almost everyone liked him.’
Artan admitted, however, that before leaving Denmark last year his friend became very isolated and often talked about wanting to get out of the country.
According to a PET press release, the 25-year-old man is one of many people with connections to Denmark who are being trained as terrorists abroad.
‘As PET has indicated numerous times in the past, there are people with ties to Denmark who have gone through militant Islamic training and radicalisation and who are involved in terror-related activities in several countries, including in Somalia.’
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Britain is “Terrorised” By Population Projections, Says Home Secretary
Britain is being “terrorised by the spectre” of the population hitting 70 million, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has said.
The stark message risked reopening the row between the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), whose projections say the landmark total will be hit within two decades. However, Mr Johnson insisted the country “would cope” if the population did hit such a level but predicted again that it would not happen.
He was speaking ahead of a public debate on immigration between himself, his Tory shadow Chris Grayling and Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne, believed to be the first of its kind. It comes after The Daily Telegraph told that more than one in ten of the UK population was born abroad after hitting record levels. Official figures published by the ONS say the total UK population will increase by nearly nine million to hit 70 million by 2028. A similar projection was repeated yesterday by Jil Matheson, the national statistician, who said numbers will hit 71.6 million by 2033 on current trends.
The Government has continually insisted it is only a projection and will not hit that level. Mr Johnson said he did not think the debate around the 70 million figure was “sensible”. “The prediction was we would be at 76 million population by 2001. When I was a kid in the 60s all the stories were around that there would be a population explosion (and) that you wouldn’t be able to move in London by 1980. I don’t know whether that is the sensible debate of people just being terrorised by some spectre. But the ONS make it very clear they don’t predictions they make projections. I don’t think that’s going to happen (the population reaching 70 million).” Mr Johnson said the 70 million was a “worst case scenario and a hypothetical” one. “I think we will always cope whatever the population is. We are a civilised society. We will cope but I think there is an awful lot of hurdles to cross and ifs and buts as to whether you actually get to a figure of 70 million. Just look at previous projections and look what happened — even the projections from the ONS.”
The Home Office and ONS were embroiled in a major row in March this year after Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, accused the statistics body of a “sinister” release of immigration data. He claimed the ONS was “playing politics” over the way if released some information, which came at a time concern over the influx of foreign workers was at a peak. As a result, he, and the Home Office, were criticised for the challenging the freedom and independence of the body.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think tank, accused the Home Secretary of attacking the ONS. “It is appalling that the Home Secretary should attack professional statisticians in this way. Their projections have in fact been correct at the 20 year range to within 2.5 per cent for the last 50 years. The reality is the Government has lost control of immigration. This is having a huge impact on our population — but they remain in denial.”
Ahead of the debate, Mr Johnson accepted there “may be some truth” to the claim ministers had avoided talking about immigration in the past. He also admitted Labour had been slow to deal with backlogs in the system when they came to power in 1997. Earlier this year officials admitted they had discovered 40,000 case files — some dating back to the 1980s — where there was no record of whether the individual had left the country.
Yesterday the Home Affairs Committee criticised the awarding of bonuses of £10,000 for 29 senior staff at the UK Border Agency. Chairman Keith Vaz said UKBA was still “not fit for purpose”. Mr Johnson said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the report. Officials were handling cases much more quickly and working through the backlog, he said. “I thought the term ‘not fit for purpose’ just doesn’t marry up with the facts,” he said. He added: “There was a problem of cardboard boxes with files in that were shoved under tables previously.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Netanyahu Wants Barrier on Sinai
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 8 — A long barrier, with varying levels of sophistication depending on the solution chosen, which will run along Israel’s border with Egypt: this, according to Israeli newspaper, Maariv, is the answer that has been chosen by Israeli Premier Benyamin Netanyahu, to avoid the Jewish state from being the destination of a wave of immigration from Africa, which in addition to representing a burden for the local economy, would risk altering Israeli demographics. Including the area between the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Eilat (Red Sea) the Israeli-Egyptian border is about 200km long and does not have any important physical obstacles. In the past, its closure has been considered to impede criminal activity (such as drug and human trafficking) and to obstruct terrorist infiltrations. The exorbitant costs of the project have led past governments to search for stopgap measures, including intensifying border patrols. Now the issue has returned to the forefront for social reasons. The presence of African refugees has started to become evident in several Israeli cities, such as Eilat, Arad, and Tel Aviv. Netanyahu, writes Maariv, believes that the issue is destined to worsen in the future, also because elsewhere, African migrants travel by sea or ocean, while the Sinai Peninsula represents a relatively porous border for refugees determined to reach a developed country such as Israel. On the table, specified the newspaper, are three models: a separation barrier similar to the one built between Israel and the West Bank; a more modest fence-like structure with barbed wire; and an intermediate solution. The first solution would cost the equivalent of one billion euros, the second would only cost one-tenth of that sum. Concrete solutions have not yet been adopted. In the meanwhile, according to the newspaper, Netanyahu is planning on changing the position of foreign workers who have come to Israel in recent years. Specifically, workers whose children were born in Israel and who have been absorbed by the educational system. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Migrant Numbers Double in 30 Years: One in Ten Living in the UK is Now Foreign-Born
The number of immigrants living in Britain has almost doubled in less than three decades, official figures show. More than 10 per cent of the population — 6.7million — were born abroad, the Office for National Statistics has found. The analysis shows that the count of those born abroad — now agreed to be the best figure for measuring the rate of immigration — is two million higher than it was just eight years ago.
And the figure is nearly double the 3.38million people born abroad who were recorded as living in Britain in 1981. The scale of immigration over the past few years was set out in a breakdown by National Statistician Jil Matheson, the recently-appointed head of the Government’s Office for National Statistics. She said that there are 689,000 migrants from Eastern Europe in Britain, an increase of 522,000 since Poland and seven other Eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004. But these make up only one in ten of the foreign-born population of the country, Miss Matheson found.
She also endorsed the ONS projections that say that the UK population will hit the politically sensitive 70million mark in 2029.
She added the recession is likely to have only a small impact on the record levels of immigration since 2001. The ONS report found that Eastern Europeans have begun to emigrate as well as to arrive in Britain, and overall 20,000 more Eastern Europeans came to this country than left it in 2008. Current research, Miss Matheson added, suggests that ‘a short-term period of falling immigration can be expected, before immigration levels rise again to pre-recession levels’. She concluded: ‘The current recession is likely to have a small and temporary effect on net migration.’
Her findings run counter to assurances from Gordon Brown and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas that the new Home Office points-based immigration system will curb numbers coming into the country and the 70million population mark will never be reached.
Sir Andrew Green, of the Migrationwatch think-tank, said: ‘This report confirms the massive impact of immigration on our population under the present Government. It must be brought under control, but so far Government policies are completely inadequate for the purpose.’
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: One in 10 of Population Born Abroad
More than one in 10 people living in Britain were born abroad, a record level, new figures show
The proportion of the population that is foreign-born has almost doubled in the past two decades to 11 per cent, or 6.7 million people. At the same time, almost a quarter of babies born in England and Wales had foreign mothers. This is also a record, according to the Office for National Statistics. The figures indicated that, in 2008, some 11 per cent of the population was born overseas, up from about 8 per cent in 2001 and 6.7 per cent in 1991.
Figures are not available for 1997 when Labour came to power but, based on trends, the figure is likely to have been just above 7 per cent. A key factor has been the increase in migrant workers from Poland, Lithuania and six other eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004. The number of eastern European nationals resident in Britain has risen sharply from 114,000 in 2001 to 689,000 last year. More than a tenth are children.
According to the study by Jil Matheson, the national statistician, Britain’s population is on course to pass 70 million in about 20 years. She said projections based on past demographic trends suggest a 17 per cent increase in population over the next 25 years, to hit 71.6 million by 2033. It currently stands at 61.4 million and ministers have insisted that the landmark 70 million total will not be reached. The study is further evidence of the way in which Labour’s immigration policies have changed the make-up of British society.
A former government adviser recently claimed that Labour deliberately ran an open-door policy on immigration to change radically the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of the campaign group, Migrationwatch, said: “This is a measure of the way in which our society is being changed without the British public ever having been consulted. Immigration on this scale can only add to the strains in our society and the pressure on our public services. These figures confirm the enormous impact of mass immigration on our society.”
Immigration is having a double impact on population numbers because, as well as those arriving in the country, the proportion of children born here to foreign mothers has also reached a peak. Some 24 per cent of the births in England and Wales last year — or 170,834 — were to mothers born outside the country, the highest level since records began in 1969. That is double the 12 per cent in 1990 and the proportion has increased year on year since, according to the Population Trends report produced by the statistics office. In England alone, the proportion is now as high as 25 per cent.
Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, will debate immigration today with his Conservative and Liberal Democrat counterparts.
Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: “This government has never had any control over immigration numbers. Some government insiders have said this was a deliberate plot, others claim it was just a mistake. “Either way, they have left our borders unprotected. It is one of the biggest policy failures of the Labour years.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Population Boom is a ‘Spectre’, Says Alan Johnson
Britain is being “terrorised” by official projections that the population will reach 70 million within two decades, the Home Secretary said today. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that the population of the UK will increase by almost 9 million by 2028. Alan Johnson dismissed this figure as a “spectre” and pointed to earlier projections by the ONS that overestimated future population increases. Mr Johnson said that even if the population did reach 70 million, the country’s public services and infrastructure would cope.
Although Mr Johnson was careful to avoid criticising the ONS, in private Home Office ministers are angry at the increasing high profile taken by the organisation in promoting its statistics. The Home Office and ONS were involved in a row earlier this year after Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, accused it of a “sinister” release of immigration figures. He said the ONS was playing politics over the way it released some information.
Today Mr Johnson said that a debate about immigration based on the 70 million projection was not sensible. He said: “I don’t know if it is where the sensible debate is because these are predictions. The prediction was we would be at 76 million population by 2001. When I was a kid in the Sixties all the stories were around that there would be a population explosion [and] that you wouldn’t be able to move in London by 1980. I don’t know whether that is the sensible debate of people just being terrorised by some spectre. But the ONS make it very clear they don’t make predictions, they make projections. I don’t think that’s going to happen [the population reaching 70 million].”
Mr Johnson said the offical population projection was a “worst case scenario and it’s hypothetical”. He added: “I think we will always cope whatever the population is. We are a civilised society.” A spokesman for the ONS said today: “We stand by the projection we produced in August.” The Home Secretary was speaking before a debate tonight with Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, and Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman.
Mr Grayling said : “I think Alan Johnson is showing breathtaking complacency and a complete lack of understanding of the pressures that uncontrolled immigration under this Government is putting on our country. Schools, the NHS and housing all face immense pressures, but the Home Secretary just seems to think it’s okay to carry on as he has been. He is completely out of touch.”
[…]
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think-tank, said: “It is appalling that the Home Secretary should attack professional statisticians in this way. “Their projections have in fact been correct at the 20-year range to within 2.5 per cent for the last 50 years.” He added: “The reality is the Government has lost control of immigration. This is having a huge impact on our population, but they remain in denial.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Famous Weather Scientist: Climategate ‘Tip of Iceberg’
‘Conspiracy would become manifest’ if all climate research e-mails unveiled
The Colorado scientist described by the Washington Post as “the World’s Most Famous Hurricane Expert” says the “ClimateGate” e-mails from the United Kingdom that revealed possible data manipulation are evidence of a conspiracy among “warmists,” those who believe man’s actions are triggering possibly catastrophic climate change.
“The recent ‘ClimateGate’ revelations coming out of the UK University of East Anglia are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years,” said Colorado State University’s Dr. William Gray.
[…]
Gray said, “This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the e-mails of the publically funded climate research groups of the U.S. and of foreign governments were ever made public.”
[…]
His comments are in a commentary at the online Climate Depot.com and were posted just as officials from around the globe are conferencing in Copenhagen on the issue of “global warming” and what taxes should be imposed on those who use energy.
“The Cap-and-Trade bill presently before Congress, the likely climate agreements coming out of the Copenhagen Conference, and the EPA’s just announced decision to treat CO2 as a pollutant represents a grave threat to the industrial world’s continued economic development,” Gray warned. “We should not allow these proposals to restrict our economic growth. Any United Nations climate bill our country might sign would act as an infringement on our country’s sovereignty.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Global Cooling Documented in Last Decade
Contradicts data released at Copenhagen climate summit
The mainstream media is reporting the World Meteorological Organization’s assessment of global average temperatures asserting this decade is “the warmest on record,” without mentioning the WMO data actually documents the United States and Canada experienced cooler-than-average conditions since 2000.
The reports circulating from the U.N.’s climate summit in Copenhagen also don’t mention scientific climate data that suggest the globe has cooled in the last 10 years.
Data from the U.S. National Climate Data Center indicate temperatures in the U.S. have cooled over the last decade at a rate that projects to a decline of 7.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Soy Doesn’t Harm, And May Even Help, Breast Cancer Survivors, Study Finds
Earlier research in animals had raised fears that soy foods might cause a recurrence of the cancer because soy can act like estrogen. A new study of women finds just the opposite.
By Shari Roan
Soy foods do not appear to increase the risk of breast cancer recurrence among survivors of the disease and may even confer some health benefits, new research suggests.
The study, published in today’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., should reassure breast cancer survivors that they need not scrupulously avoid soy foods, which have become increasingly popular in the United States in recent years. Research in animals has indicated that soy might increase the chances of breast cancer recurrence because it can act like the hormone estrogen, which promotes tumor growth.
“Some doctors have advised women not to eat soy foods,” said Dr. Xiao Ou Shu, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and lead author of the paper. “But another school of physicians think it’s safe. So it has been controversial. Our findings are important because, nowadays, it’s very difficult to avoid soy exposure. Soy flour and soy protein has been added to many foods in this country. Women may consume it and not even know it.”
Shu and her colleagues analyzed data from the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study of 5,042 women in China. The breast cancer survivors were ages 20 to 75 and were followed for an average of four years.
The study showed that the higher a woman’s intake of soy foods, the lower her chances of cancer recurrence and death. Patients with the highest intake had a 29% lower risk of death during the study period and a 32% lower risk of breast cancer recurrence compared with patients with the lowest intake of soy foods. Soy food intake was measured by either soy protein or soy isoflavone intake. Isoflavones are hormones found in plants.
“Isoflavones can act as estrogens and add to the circulating pool of estrogen that is available and promote tumor growth. That is the concern,” said Bette J. Caan, a senior nutritional epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, who was not involved in the current study.
In research released earlier this year, Caan and colleagues at UC Berkeley also found that higher soy intake was linked to lower rates of breast cancer recurrence. That study, published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, followed almost 2,000 U.S. breast cancer survivors.
“We do not see a harmful effect of soy. That is the main message out of both studies,” Caan said. “Breast cancer survivors shouldn’t go out and take soy supplements, but they shouldn’t be afraid to drink soy milk in their coffee or eat tofu.”
Shu’s study found no adverse effects from soy food intake among women whose tumors grow faster because of exposure to estrogen, called estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, or among those whose cancers are unaffected by estrogen, called estrogen receptor-negative.
Nor were there differences in the findings among women who used the breast-cancer drug tamoxifen and those who did not. However, the study found that the drug was related to improved survival only among women who had low or moderate soy food intake, not higher intakes.
Women who did not take tamoxifen but who had the highest intake of soy food had a lower risk of death and cancer recurrence than women who had the lowest levels of soy food intake and used tamoxifen.
That soy food intake may yield benefits that are comparable to tamoxifen is noteworthy, Caan said, because some experts fear that soy intake could counteract some of the effects of tamoxifen.
“People are afraid soy might actually counteract the effects of tamoxifen because it may be competing for the same receptors,” she said. “That is why [Shu’s] study is so interesting. She found it did not counteract any of the benefits of tamoxifen and, at high levels, soy is as effective as tamoxifen.”
Women should not stop taking tamoxifen or use soy foods to replace the medication, Caan and Shu warned. Further studies will be needed to measure the effect of soy foods with or without tamoxifen.
It’s also not clear why soy may lower cancer recurrence and death rates, Shu said.
“We cannot conclude from this study that there are no negative effects” from soy, she said. “We are studying soy as a whole food. We are not studying its components. It could be some components are not good for some people. But overall, we see women who eat a high amount of soy with better outcomes.”
However, the quantity and quality of soy foods differ among U.S. and Chinese women, said experts in an editorial that accompanied the study. It is also difficult to compare U.S. and Chinese women because of differences in screening rates and treatments.
“Both this study and the Kaiser Permanente study give us a little more reassurance that soy foods are safe,” said the lead author of the editorial, Dr. Rachel Ballard-Barbash of the National Cancer Institute. “But on the basis of just these two studies, we can’t tell women to go out and significantly increase the amount of soy they eat.”
| [Return to headlines] |
We’ve Been Had
Last year, my column “Global warming rope-a-dope” (Dec. 24, 2008) started out: “Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy the planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil.” New evidence proves that climatologists and environmental-policy advocates have not only fed us lies and engaged in scientific and academic fraud, but committed criminal acts as well.
Last month, Russian computer hackers obtained thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. CRU has the world’s largest temperature data set. In collaboration with scientists around the world, including the U.S., its research and mathematical models form the basis of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 global-warming report.
The e-mails involved communication among climate researchers and policy advocates around the world who brazenly discuss both the destruction and hiding of data that does not support their global-warming claims. They discuss criminally deleting data rather than comply with Freedom of Information Act requests. There’s also discussion of faking data for journals such as Nature, conspiring to keep opposing science out of peer-reviewed journals (which they controlled the editorial boards), and using statistical “tricks” to hide the cooling period of the last 10 years. One e-mail said, “The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Another said, “It would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘MWP,’ even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back.” MWP refers to the Medieval Warm Period (800 A.D. to 1300 A.D.) when the Earth was much warmer than it is now. This bothers the global warmers because they can’t blame the temperature increase a thousand years ago on SUVs, coal-burning power plants, incandescent bulbs and 60-inch TV screens.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
1 comment:
from Egyptian Men Unite...
"I tried my best to straighten her up but to no avail.”
Yeah, bro, me too. LOL
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