In the wake of the Lap Bomber’s failed attack on Flight 253, Yemen is rapidly becoming the primary focus of the struggle against Al Qaeda. The West’s preferred strategy in the War on Terror now seems to be to close its embassies in Yemen: the French have joined the USA and Britain in closing their embassy in Sanaa.In other news, the Palestinians and the Jordanians have both laid claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been on loan to a museum in Canada, but are scheduled to be returned to Israel shortly.
Thanks to AA, C. Cantoni, CSP, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Sean O’Brian, TB, The Frozen North, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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Economy: Italy: 2009 Inflation at Lowest Level Since 1959
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JANUARY 4 — Italy’s rate of inflation in 2009 was +0.8%, its lowest level in 50 years, according to the Italian national institute of statistics ISTAT. In December the rate was 1% compared with December 2008, while in November the growth in prices was 0.2%. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Stimulus Cash Went to Nonexistent Zip Code Areas, Too
Not only did the Obama Administration spend stimulus funds in nonexistent districts but recently it was discovered that stimulus cash went to nonexistent zip code areas, too.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The £20bn Handout: Housing Benefit Bill Soaring as Recession Bites
A staggering £20billion will be paid in housing benefit this year as the effects of the recession push up the welfare bill.
Official figures show the handouts are expected to rise by 15 per cent — despite a pledge by ministers to crack down on excessive claims.
The predicted total of £19.6billion is nearly £3billion up on last year.
It is the steepest rise for 15 years as families are forced onto benefits as the recession bites and more people become unemployed.
The Department for Work and Pensions revealed the year-on-year rise as it emerged that one family has been given a record £279,000 of taxpayers’ cash to pay their rent.
Information released under the Freedom of Information Act shows the claimants are being paid £2,875 a week for a seven-bedroom house in Brent, North-west London.
The family — which has received £208,000 since July 2008 — is one of three in the capital who have claimed more than £200,000 in housing benefit.
In November it was revealed that Somali-born Nasra Warsame and seven of her children were living in a £1.8million house in Westminster at a cost to taxpayers of £1,600 a week.
Her husband Bashir Aden and her eighth child were living in an ‘overspill’ property, also on housing benefit.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-CIA Agent: Threat From Al Qaeda Greater Now Than on 9/11
Washington (CNN) — The man once charged with overseeing the CIA’s hunt of Osama bin Laden said Sunday that the threat posed by al Qaeda is greater now than at the time of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that bin Laden orchestrated.
“We’ve killed some of the al Qaeda leaders and every dead al Qaeda leader is a success. But all we have is a body count,” former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
[Comments from JD: video at above link.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Federal Guard, Gunman Die in Vegas Shootout
LAS VEGAS — A gunman opened fire in the lobby of a federal building in downtown Las Vegas on Monday, killing one court officer and wounding a deputy U.S. marshal before he was shot to death.
The gunfire erupted moments after 8 a.m. at the start of the work week and lasted for several minutes. Shots echoed around tall buildings in the area, more than a mile north of the Las Vegas Strip. An Associated Press reporter on the eighth floor of a high-rise building within sight of the building heard more than 20 shots during the sustained barrage of gunfire.
The U.S. Marshals Service said the victims included a deputy U.S. marshal and a court security officer. The 48-year-old deputy marshal was hospitalized, and the 65-year-old security officer died.
FBI Special Agent Joseph Dickey said the gunman died across the street shortly after the shootout. The man’s identity and motive were not immediately known.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Frank Gaffney: Where Does the Buck Stop?
Harry Truman kept on his desk a sign that read “The Buck Stops Here.” As President Obama gathers with his national security team Tuesday to ensure that, as he put it last week, “there is accountability at every level” for the latest in a rising tide of terrorist attacks inside the United States, Mr. Truman’s successor must accept responsibility for his own role in the growing danger.
I am not suggesting that Mr. Obama was directly complicit in the failure to keep Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab and his explosive-laden underwear off Northwest 253 on Christmas Day. As is often the case with these things, there were lots of red flags “in the system” about this would-be terrorist that should have kept him off that plane. Such “dots” are easily connected with hindsight, after the attack is launched. The trick is for people well south of the President to act on them beforehand.
The fact that the trick was not performed in this instance or, for that matter, in connection with the penultimate attack — the one perpetrated by Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood last November — does indeed constitute, in President Obama’s words, a “systemic failure.” It is entirely appropriate to try to find out who dropped which ball, less to assign blame than in the hope of preventing a repeat.
One thing is already obvious, though. What Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano famously called “the system” has been trying with increasing difficulty to prevent terrorism here at home within impossible policy and programmatic constraints. Mr. Obama must take a measure of responsibility for those constraints…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Give Homeland Security Role in U.S. Visas: Senator
Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman raised the idea during a discussion on ABCs “This Week” of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound plane on Dec 25.
“I believe, incidentally, that we ought to take a look at taking the visa application and admission responsibility from the State Department. It doesn’t really fit with foreign policy anymore,” he said.
“And in an age of terrorism, I think the Department of Homeland Security ought to be handling visas abroad.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How Offended Are You?
I was recently in the Kansas City airport and watched in horror as four TSA people focused on a frail woman in her late 80s who was in a wheelchair as they tried to get her through security.
There were only two lines, so passengers had to wait as they made her get out of the chair and forced her to walk thru the machine. She was so frail, they had to hold her up.
Finally, on the other side, they weren’t done. As she sat in the chair, they patted her down, wanded her repeatedly and then made her get up and stand again!
I was shocked and approached an elderly man who waited patiently as this insulting, intrusive invasion of that woman’s privacy continued. He was her husband. I told him of my anger.
He was resigned. He told me she had pins in her hip from an operation and she’d recently had a pacemaker installed.
Apparently, a doctor’s letter wouldn’t suffice. The man said it happens every time they travel. I apologized to him.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
No One Yet Has Said He’s a Nutcake. But What Does “Isolated Extremist” Really Mean?
Joe Klein, who spent a lot of print trying more or less to exonerate Dr. Major Nidal Malik Hasan by dint of his being a nutcase, has been curiously silent about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In fact, there’s been a certain shyness among the whole left-wing blogosphere (and among Democrats, generally) about the skivvies terrorist. There is no place for these journalists to hide and no logic, however dubious, with which they can transfer the guilt to us. And, believe me, if they can’t invent this, there is nothing to invent—nothing.
The fact is that the only personage of note to call Abdulmutallab an “isolated extremist,” which is the closest thing to a solitary crank, was the president himself. And he said it when he already knew that American intelligence, in several of its iterations, had long ago been informed that the would-be bomber had been connected to Al Qaeda in Yemen.
[…]
I believe that it is Obama’s perception of Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist” that is the real source of the intelligence calamity so dramatically revealed in this case. It is true, of course, that this dispiriting intelligence failure goes back to the Clinton and Bush years, even though Bush did almost uniquely grasp the very essence of the holy Muslim terror. But what the president has done is to wrap the Islamic orbit in a sweetly scented cashmere afghan (if you’ll permit this ironic choice of words) that disguises the reality of the real Islam of this world. Obama has done this grandly several times, most especially with his addresses in Istanbul and Cairo, but also in his more quotidian remarks. The failure of the CIA and the other alphabet agencies to connect the dots is a methodological failure. The president’s failure to grasp the realities is an ideological and psychological failure. In a top-down structure, the top always has the advantage.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
CIA Reportedly Ordered Murder of 9/11 Suspect in Hamburg
A CIA assassination team reportedly targeted a Syrian-German man living in Hamburg after he was connected to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
According to the latest edition of Vanity Fair magazine, the US spy agency wanted to liquidate Mamoun Darkazanli, who is thought to have been a financier for the Islamist terror network Al-Qaida. Intelligence officials in Washington even farmed out the hit to a squad of contract killers, but the deed was never carried out.
“The CIA team supposedly went in ‘dark,’ meaning they did not notify their own station — much less the German government — of their presence,” the magazine wrote in article about Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious security firm Blackwater. “They then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.”
Vanity Fair reported CIA officials contend the assassination was called off because the killers were not in the position to pull it off, however, a source familiar with the mission said it never happened due to lacking “political will.”
Darkazanli is believed to have had contact with several of the terrorists involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington DC since they lived or studied in the northern German port city.
German officials probed Darkazanli’s terrorist connections for several years, but had to close their investigation in 2006 after they failed to uncover incriminating evidence.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Cartoon Crisis Forcing Extra Security
Ensuring Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s safety plays a big part in increasing police security tasks
Eastern Jutland Police have used more than 30,000 police man-hours, not include those used by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), on terrorism threats since the publication of the Mohammad cartoons in late 2005.
The latest threat related to the Mohammed cartoons came on Friday last week when a man armed with an axe and a knife broke into the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
Police in Århus have since the crisis began been kept busy with bomb threats, evacuations, extra security for the offices of newspaper Jyllands-Posten — which originally published the cartoons — and security surveillance of the cartoonists and editors of the paper over the last four years, reports Århus Stiftstidende newspaper.
Westergaard is the most high-profile of the cartoonists and therefore receives intense security attention. The incident on Friday involved a 28-year-old Somali man who has lived in Denmark since he was a teenager.
The attacker broke into Westergaard’s home armed with an axe and a knife. Westergaard fled to the safety of a panic room to alert nearby police to the attack.
His five-year-old granddaughter was at the home but immobilised by a leg cast in another room. Westergaard judged he could draw the intruder’s attention away from the child by running to the panic room.
Police arrived on the scene within three minutes and shot the attacker twice after he allegedly threw the axe at an officer and threatened police with his knife. As a result of his injuries to his leg and hand, the suspect was brought to his court appearance the next day on an ambulance stretcher under heavy police guard and with his face hidden by a blanket.
The man declined to answer questions in court, but pleaded not guilty to attempted murder through his defence team. He has been remanded in custody until 27 January and police say he will spend the first two weeks of custody in isolation.
PET say the man is linked to a network that has been monitored by intelligence agencies for some time and that he is suspected of having carried out terror-related activities in East Africa.
Concerns have been raised that security was lax around Westergaard, who had previously lived in police safe houses and was accompanied for a number of months by PET bodyguards.
Jakob Scharf, head of PET, defended the security for the cartoonist, saying that arrangements were periodically adjusted in order to allow the subject to live his life more freely, but added the security would now be re-evaluated following Friday’s incident.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
EU President to Earn More Than Barack Obama
EUROPE’S new president is to cost taxpayers almost £300 million — and amazingly he will be paid MORE than U.S. chief Barack Obama.
Total cost for Herman Van Rompuy and all his hangers-on will be a massive £22.5 million, leaked documents show.
But the EU is spending another £252 million building a new palace.
Van Rompuy, who started work on Friday, will earn £273,814 a year — the U.S. president gets £250,000.
The Belgian became Europe’s new figurehead after beating front-runner Tony Blair in November.
The cost of his salary, travel and entitlements will be £1.3 million.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg, leaked European Council papers show. Costs include £2.1 million for security, £2.3 million for equipment, £6.2 million for summits and £5.2 million for 22 staff.There will be a £4.5 million reserve fund and £252 million to convert the Brussels palace.
Stephen Booth of campaign group Open Europe said: “It’s outrageous.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
France Mulls ‘Psychological Violence’ Ban
If you insult your wife or husband repeatedly, you could soon find yourself in court if you live in France.
The charge? Psychological violence.
That’s what the new offence will be called if a bill backed by the government is passed by parliament.
Once considered a purely private domain, rows between married or cohabiting couples could now prompt intervention from the state.
The French government wants to take the controversial step of introducing a new law banning “psychological violence” between married couples or partners living together.
But there are questions about how such an offence could be proved.
No visible scars
Many people fear that courts might find it tricky to assess the rival claims of squabbling couples.
But the government says it would allow the authorities to deal with mental and verbal abuse in couples which leaves no visible scars, but where the victims are often badly damaged psychologically.
[…]
Even supporters of the bill have concerns about how courts could prosecute a crime for which there’s unlikely to be any physical evidence.
Psychiatrist Marie-France Hirigoyen is an authority on psychological violence but she said she was “cautious” about a new law because she fears it might be easily misused.
“I think it’s important to have a law but it must be formulated so there isn’t too much risk of manipulation or mistakes,” she told me.
[…]
The government says if the authorities can deal with psychological violence, physical violence can be prevented or reduced.
But many members of the public have misgivings about how a law would work in practice.
Parliament is almost certain to pass this controversial bill on psychological violence.
It is backed by Prime Minister Francois Fillon and key members of the governing party.
And the move is being welcomed by women’s groups — and by those, like Gabrielle, who believe it could save women from mental breakdown and the threat of physical violence.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: A Lethal Mix of Cocaine and Chilies
Drug Use Linked to Pepper Spray Deaths
Police officers around the world often use pepper spray to restrain people who are out of control. But after a series of unexplained deaths, researchers now suspect the spray, which is derived from chili peppers, could be fatal if the subject has been using cocaine or other drugs.
The man was clearly out of his senses. Peter M., 42, was naked and covered with blood as he ran across Munich’s Höhenstadter Street. He threw himself on the ground, shouting: “I am God.” Then he smeared superglue on his wounds and smashed his head into a window.
Policemen rushed to the scene and sprayed pepper spray into the man’s face, but it had no effect. Several officers eventually managed to subdue him. When they finally handcuffed him, Peter M. collapsed. He was taken to a hospital, where he died two days later, on July 5…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Massive Snowball Fight Descends Into Chaos in Leipzig
Police were forced to break up a massive snowball fight in Leipzig at the weekend after some of the 200 participants started attacking trams and buses, according to daily Die Welt.
Hundreds of people gathered at the city’s Connewitzer Kreuz intersection for some wintry fun on Saturday evening, but the situation quickly snowballed as they began targeting public transportation and the windows of a nearby supermarket.
As police arrived on the scene, they were also attacked with snowballs and bottles. Two officers were injured, the paper reported. The authorities eventually had to redirect trams and buses and shut the major street intersection to car traffic.
There have been several altercations between the police and leftists in the neighbourhood around Connewitzer Kreuz in the past and the city had expected unrest on New Year’s Eve. But until Saturday night there hadn’t been any disturbances.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Henryk M. Broder: The West is Choked by Fear
The attack on illustrator Kurt Westergaard wasn’t the first attempt to carry out a deadly fatwa. When Muslims tried to murder Salman Rushdie 20 years ago, the protests among intellectuals were loud. Today, though, Western writers and thinkers would rather take cover than defend basic rights.
In 1988, Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” was published in its English-language original edition. Its publication led the Iranian state and its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to issue a “fatwa” against Rushdie and offer a hefty bounty for his murder. This triggered several attacks on the novel’s translators and publishers, including the murder of Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi. Millions of Muslims around the world who had never read a single line of the book, and who had never even heard the name Salman Rushdie before, wanted to see the death sentence against the author carried out — and the sooner the better, so that the stained honor of the prophet could be washed clean again with Rushdie’s blood.
In that atmosphere, no German publisher had the courage to publish Rushdie’s book. This led a handful of famous German authors, led by Günter Grass, to take the initiative to ensure that Rushdie’s novel could appear in Germany by founding a publishing house exclusively for that purpose. It was called Artikel 19, named after the paragraph in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights that guarantees the freedom of opinion. Dozens of publishing houses, organizations, journalists, politicians and other prominent members of German society were involved in the joint venture, which was the broadest coalition that had ever been formed in postwar German history…
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Govt Waging ‘Total War’ Against the Mafia
Rome, 31 Dec. (AKI) — The Italian government has been waging “total war” against organised crime and injected “new vigour” into the fight against the mafia, interior minister Roberto Maroni said on Thursday. He also claimed the government has cut the number of illegal immigrants entering Italy by 90 percent and wants this figure to reach 100 percent in 2010.
“We have shown that the state is present in Italy and that it has unleashed a total war against the mafia to regain control of national territory,” Maroni told his anti-immigrant Northern League party’s La Padania daily.
“The government has worked with Italy’s security forces to create a climate in which the fight against the mafia has found new vigour and that is something of which I am particularly proud,” Maroni said.
Maroni recently won praise for his work in fighting the mafia from investigative journalist Roberto Saviano, author of the best-selling book ‘Gomorrah’.
The book has sold more than three million copies around the world and documents the violence and criminal activity of the Naples mafia or Camorra. It was also made into an award-winning film.
In the 18 months since it took office, the Berlusconi government has arrested 21 of the 30 most wanted mafia fugitives and seized suspected mafia assets worth more than six billion euros.
It has worked to restore citizens’ confidence in the state in mafia strongholds in southern Italy, Maroni said.
The minister said businessmen in the southern city of Caserta in the Campania region surrounding Naples have told him they have confidence in the government’s commitment to crush the mafia and want to invest in the area once again.
“This is a sign that civil society is thriving again — something that we all hoped to see,” Maroni said.
Turning to illegal immigration, he said: “Stopping the illegal landings is a difficult task, which some consider impossible.”
“But the figures speak for themselves. Since Italy’s friendship pact with Libya came into force (in May), the number of illegal immigrants reaching our shores has dropped by more than 90 percent.”
The controversial ‘friendship’ pact with Libya has has drawn criticism from the Vatican, the United Nations, the Italian opposition and rights groups.
Under the pact, thousands of migrants have since May been returned to the North African country aboard people smuggling boats intercepted in the Mediterranean by Italian and Libyan patrols.
Libya is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has no national asylum system. It also has a poor human rights record.
The Italian government which took office in May last year has pledged to crack down on illegal immigrants, which many Italians blame for a surge in crime.
The Northern League, Maroni’s party, is a junior partner in a coalition led by the ruling conservative People of Freedom Party.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Sunday Sermons Often Unpalatable
Parishioners’ minds need good nourishment, top cleric says
(ANSA) — Vatican City, December 30 — The minds of churchgoers need to be nourished but too often Sunday sermons are boring, uninspired and unpalatable fare, a top Italian cleric said on Wednesday.
Msgr Mariano Crociata, secretary-general of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), urged trainee priests to take their preaching seriously if they want to connect with their flock.
“Too often, sermons are just boring mush, unappetizing fare and certainly not too nourishing” for parishioners’ minds, Crociata said. The monsignor’s warning was taken seriously by the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano, which printed large parts of his address.
photo: Father Alessandro Santoro celebrating midnight mass at Christmas in Florence’s Santa Maria Novella train station.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
More Organic Pork is Eaten in the Netherlands Than in Any Other European Country
In fact, the market is looking good for organic pig farmers both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, as long as they keep a tight rein on the price, according to the findings of a study by Wageningen University’s Agricultural Economic Institute. Between 2005 and 2009 the Dutch market for organic pork grew by 25 percent.
In the Netherlands, retail sales are dominated almost exclusively by one organic store chain, De Groene Weg (‘the green way’). Last year a total of 75,000 organically produced pigs were slaughtered. Half of the meat was bound for export, chiefly to Germany and the United Kingdom.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Museums: 7.4% Increase in Visitors Over Christmas in Italy
(ANSAmed) — ROME — On Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and St. Stephen’s Day, the top 30 italian cultural sites, many of which were open on December 25, showed a 7.41% increase in visitors, increasing from 61,584 in 2008 to 66,147 in 2009, announced the Cultural Ministry. On Christmas Day, the Coliseum, which had special hours from 8AM to 2PM, was visited by 3,827 tourists. The entire archaeological circuit, which this year saw the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill open on Christmas Even and Boxing Day, registered 21,009 visitors, up by 22.79% compared to last year, numbers that put the site at the top of the list for visits to Italy’s state museums and archaeological sites. The result obtained by the Palace of Caserta, with 2,863 visitors over three days, up 96% on 2008, with 296 visits on Christmas Day, was also significant. The Borghese Gallery in Rome also received 3,457 visitors, up 34.88% on 2008, the Castel Sant’Angelo National Museum received 4,212 visitors, up by 46.76% on last year, while in Milan the Brera Art Gallery had 1,161 visitors, an 85% increase on 2008, and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper had 2,156 visitors, up by 12%. In Turin, the Egyptian Museum received 2,764 visitors, up by 14.36%, in Florence, the Silver Museum and the Porcelain Museum in addition to the Boboli Gardens received 1,226 visitors this year, up by 53.45%. In Venice, the Accademia Gallery was visited by 1,625 people, 20.2% more than last year, when all of the museums were closed, however, on Christmas Day.(ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Synagogues Reflect the Way to Acceptance
Once a tiny, marginalised group, targets of discrimination, the Jews of Switzerland are today citizens like anyone else — and it would be shocking if they were not.
The changing architecture of synagogues over the past 160 years or so reflects the route followed by Swiss Jews as they sought their place in Swiss society.
Architect Ron Epstein, himself a member of the Conservative Jewish community, has written a richly documented book about Swiss synagogues, Die Synagogen der Schweiz (The Synagogues of Switzerland), in which he explains how the Jewish community saw its religious buildings as demonstrating its newly acquired equality and as an expression of its Swiss identity.
“As an architect, what I find interesting is acculturation, the adoption of bourgeois cultural values,” he told swissinfo.ch.
Both the Jewish and non-Jewish press would report on the opening of new synagogues, he says in his book. The Jews were portrayed as eager to integrate, with their synagogues an assertion of the equality of their religious community.
Foreigners — and foreigners
Until three-quarters of the way through the 19th century Swiss Jews were literally foreigners in their own country.
Treated as outsiders, denied citizenship, they were next to invisible to the majority Christian population. Already discriminated against through special laws and taxes, in 1776 a new law restricted the estimated 550-strong Jewish community to the two villages of Lengnau and Endingen in what is now canton Aargau.
The 19th century, with its radical political and economic changes in both Switzerland and Europe, was a turning point in the fortunes of western European Jewry.
France and Germany moved much faster than Switzerland in emancipating their Jewish populations, and ironically, for much of the 19th century foreign Jews had more rights in Switzerland than Swiss ones.
Today the two Aargau villages boast the oldest of the 22 synagogues still in existence. They date back to 1847 and 1852 respectively. But although separated by only five years, the differences in architecture already reflect changing attitudes.
“In Lengnau the people wanted to integrate rather than to stand out, but the synagogue in Endingen, which opened a few years later, has some ‘orientalising’ features,” Epstein explained.
The “orientalising” features were taken over from the German and French synagogue tradition, since Switzerland had no synagogue-building tradition of its own. They were supposed to hark back to the architecture of Moorish Spain. They are certainly a far cry from Switzerland’s Christian churches.
While the Jews of Lengnau and Endingen were not granted full freedom of movement until 1879, economic pressures at home had already caused an influx of Jews from neighbouring countries who established small communities in various Swiss towns.
These communities requested plots and commissioned (Christian) architects to build synagogues. These buildings helped the Jews to assert their presence as a community.
Orientalism
The imposing synagogues in Geneva, St Gallen, Basel and La Chaux-de-Fonds — built in 1859, 1868, 1881 and 1896 respectively — could at first sight be taken for mosques with their domes and horseshoe arches.
“It was the expressed desire of the community to assert itself in the Christian environment through prestige buildings,” Epstein writes in his book.
Zurich’s main synagogue — still in use today — was designed to show visitors to the 1882 national exhibition the contribution that the city’s new Jewish community could make to the town.
But a few decades later things had changed.
“When the Jewish population had achieved legal equality and economic integration, the synagogue stopped having a prestige value,” Epstein writes. Most later synagogues were for the benefit of the Jewish community alone.
The inflow of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe with different traditions in the 20th century is also reflected in synagogue design.
“The Orthodox didn’t really want to assimilate. Their synagogues are not huge, impressive buildings but tend to be introverted, and more modest,” Epstein explained.
Struggle for recognition
In the current controversy about the construction of minarets, is there a parallel between the Jewish experience a hundred years ago and the Muslim experience today?
“A minaret is a symbol for a building. When you see a minaret, you know straight away that is a mosque,” Epstein said.
“There is in fact also a symbol, though a much smaller one, in the overwhelming majority of synagogues, namely the tablets of the law set on the roof. But a minaret is much more obvious.”
It is not the design of the buildings where he sees parallels, but in the historical experience.
“The similarity lies in the sense that people want to document their existence as a religious community to the outside world, and this is not allowed. The struggle to achieve this is very similar to what the Jews faced.”
“What is deplorable is that nearly 200 years later this right cannot be taken for granted.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Gangs Ply Girls of 10 With Drink and Drugs to Groom Them for Sex
Girls as young as 10 are being “groomed” for sex by London gang members who use alcohol and drugs to weaken their resistance, an official report has found.
The report, by the London Serious Youth Violence Board, says that younger girls “are increasingly being targeted” because they are “less able to resist gang culture and manipulation” by predatory male teenagers.
It warns that as well as being pressured into sex by older “boyfriends”, many girls are raped, with gang leaders “passing” them to lower ranking members to exploit.
The report also says that some girls are being used as “mules” to transport drugs, while others are being coerced into recruiting their female classmates and other friends into gangs. The findings, based on evidence from police, child welfare workers, schools, probation staff and others involved in tackling gang activity, will heighten concern about the targeting of young children by older, violent teenagers.
Researchers found that “children as young as seven can be gang-involved” and lists signs such as a sudden loss of interest in school, a withdrawn nature and a dramatic change in appearance as among the indicators.
The report states: “Gang members often groom girls at school and encourage or coerce them to recruit other girls. There is also anecdotal evidence that younger girls, some as young as 10 or 12, are increasingly being targeted and that these girls are often much less able to resist the gang culture or manipulation by males in the group.
“Girls are often groomed using drugs and alcohol, which act as disinhibitors and also create dependency.” The study says that one youth offending team expressed concern about “the number of young women who regard abusive behaviour from young men as normal” and warns rape is common.
It adds: “One London project working with girls involved with gangs reports that nearly all of the girls they have contact with have been raped by male group members. Some senior gang members pass their girlfriends around to lower-ranking members and sometimes to the whole group at the same time. Very few rapes are reported.”
The report calls for greater parental supervision, close scrutiny by teachers, and referrals from police to social care teams of youngsters in households already affected by gang activity or serious youth violence.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Islam on Campus
From the Center for Social Cohesion
Islam on Campus — published in July 2008 — is the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of Muslim student opinion in the UK. It is based on a specially commissioned YouGov poll of 1400 students, as well as on fieldwork and interviews.
The report examines students’ attitudes on key issues including religious tolerance, gender equality and integration. While most Muslim students support secularism and democratic values, and are generally tolerant towards other minorities and reject violence in the name of their faith, Islam on Campus uncovered significant findings:
- 40% of Muslim students polled support the introduction of Sharia into British law for Muslims.
- Almost a third (32%) of Muslim students polled said killing in the name of religion was ever justified. By contrast, just 2% of non-Muslims polled felt the same way
- 40% of Muslim students polled felt it unacceptable for Muslim men and women to associate freely.
- 33% of Muslim students polled declared themselves supportive of a worldwide Islamic Caliphate based on Sharia law.
- 54% of Muslim students polled were supportive of an Islamic political party to represent the views of Muslims at Parliament.
- Slightly less than a quarter (24%) of Muslim student respondents do not think that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah.
- 6% of Muslim students polled said that converts from Islam should be punished “in accordance with Sharia law.”
- 25% of Muslim students (and 32% of male Muslim students) polled said they had not very much or no respect at all for homosexuals…
| — Hat tip: AA | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Johnson ‘Will Back’ Wootton Bassett Islamic March Ban
The home secretary has said he will back any request from police or local government to ban an Islamic group marching through Wootton Bassett.
Alan Johnson said he felt “revulsion” at the thought of Islam4UK’s proposed march through the Wiltshire town.
Wootton Bassett has become famous for its repatriation ceremonies for fallen British service personnel.
Islam4UK says it wants to parade empty coffins through the town to draw attention to Afghan war casualties.
Mr Johnson said: “The idea that anyone would stage this kind of demonstration in Wootton Bassett fills me with revulsion.
“I find it particularly offensive that the town, which has acted in such a moving and dignified way in paying tribute to our troops who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, should be targeted in this manner.”
He added: “If the Wiltshire Police and local authority feel that a procession of this kind has the potential to cause public disorder and seek my consent to a banning order, then I would have no hesitation in supporting that request.”
Islam4UK, which has been linked to the radical al-Muhajiroun movement, said the town was chosen to create maximum publicity.
Spokesman Anjem Choudary said: “We are having a procession, it’s in Wootton Bassett but it’s not about the people there and it’s not against them personally — rather it’s to highlight the real cost of war in Afghanistan.
“The sad reality of the situation is that if I were to hold it somewhere else it would not have the media attention that it has now.
“If I am to balance between the sensitivity of having it in Wootton Bassett and the possibility of continuing the quagmire and cycle of death in Afghanistan, then quite honestly I’m going to balance in favour of the latter.”
[…]
North Wiltshire MP Mr Gray told BBC Radio 5 live: “Fine Mr Choudary, say what you want, I detest what you say, but please, please don’t come to Wootton Bassett.”
Social Cohesion Minister Shahid Malik added: “Anjem Choudary rightly has a reputation as a dangerous and divisive figure in the UK, however, he does not speak for Muslims in the UK.”
Wootton Bassett’s mayor Councillor Steve Bucknell said the town, which has a population of just over 11,000, was entirely inappropriate for any march, protest or demonstration which refers to Afghanistan or Iraq.
“We are going to do our utmost to make sure that this march doesn’t go ahead,” he said, adding that the town’s council had received dozens of e-mails and phone calls from people concerned with the issue.
Locals have turned out to honour the corteges of more than 100 service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as they made their way from nearby RAF Lyneham to a morgue in Oxford.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Lessons in Being a Parent at Just 14: As Figures Reveal Alarming Rise of Teen Pregnancies, Labour Reveal Their Big Idea
Ed Balls stands accused of encouraging teenage pregnancy with plans to give 14-year-olds compulsory parenting lessons.
Pupils will learn how to raise youngsters under the Children’s Secretary’s proposals from 2011 onwards.
But experts warned that this could lead to teenage pregnancy being seen as increasingly acceptable, youngsters giving up education to have a baby — and teachers taking on the role of social workers.
[…]
But parents’ groups said there was a fine line between encouraging youngsters to delay parenthood and educating them for it.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslim Writers Hit Back at Lynda La Plante
Muslim writers have branded Lynda La Plante’s recent attack on the BBC ‘insulting’.
La Plante, 63, the award-winning crime writer behind Prime Suspect, claimed Muslims found it easier to get scripts commissioned by the BBC than she did. She told The Telegraph the BBC’s drama policy was very depressing.
“If my name were Usafi Iqbadal and I was 19, then they’d probably bring me in and talk,” said La Plante. “But… it’s their lack of respect that really grates on me.
“If you were to go to the BBC and say to them, ‘Listen, Lynda La Plante’s written a new drama, or I have this little Muslim boy who’s just written one’, they’d say: ‘Oh, we’d like to see his script.’
“Whether they’re just frightened of me being an independent, and quite a powerful independent, I don’t know.”
Sarfraz Manzoor, journalist and author of the memoir Greetings From Bury Park, told The Independent: “She [La Plante] should get that chip off her shoulder and return to the real world rather than playing the misunderstood victim in the fantasy world in which she is currently residing.”
He added: “I would love to meet the Muslim writers whose output is currently clogging up the television schedules: can she name any of these mythical individuals, or are her comments simply a headline-grabbing way to yet again bash the BBC and blame Muslims?”
Max Malik, a novelist and playwright, also called her comments “Divisive, unhelpful and discouraging for young writers”.
Mr Malik, winner of the Muslim Writers’ Award in 2007, added: “She’s trying to force me and my ilk into a corner. I don’t call her a ginger-haired, middle-aged, female writer. That would be insulting.”
BBC head of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson said: “I don’t quite understand these points because Lynda had two pieces in development with us. She has one piece at the moment, and one piece that we paid fully for the script development.”
| — Hat tip: The Frozen North | [Return to headlines] |
UK: NHS Refuses Free Care for Alzheimer’s Gran Who Lived for Four Days With Body of Dead Husband
Phyllis Knight is so badly affected by Alzheimer’s that she spent four days living with her husband’s dead body before neighbours became aware of her plight.
But even though the 85-year-old cannot dress herself or even open a biscuit tin, health bosses say she does not qualify for free NHS care in a nursing home.
The case once again highlights the unfairness of a system which classes many with dementia as eligible only for social care, rather than nursing care for health problems — which the Health Service has to fund by law.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia Jew Wins Discrimination Suit
(IsraelNN.com) The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Bosnia violated the rights of Jews and Roma [gypsies] and others by barring them from running for the country’s legislature or presidency. The decision is binding on Bosnia, which was ordered to pay legal costs of $28,500 to Jewish activist Jakob Finci and $1,500 to Dervo Sejdic of the Roma community. Finci also serves as the country’s ambassador to the Swiss Confederation.
The two men filed the suit in France. Finci showed the court a letter from Bosnia officials stating that he cannot run for office because he is Jewish, a stipulation that was included in its constitution when it was written in the United States in an effort to halt the country’s war that raged in the early 1990s.
A Bosnian political party that backs abolishing the official ethnic separation hailed the court’s ruling.
Finci said he was “delighted that the European Court has recognized the wrong that was done in the Constitution 14 years ago,” and he urged that changes be made immediately in the constitution. It currently reserves legislators and the president for Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs. Attempts to change the constitution, which would help pave the way for Bosnia to join the European Union, are still in progress. Bosnian Serbs have objected to the proposed changes.
The Dayton, Ohio peace accord, where the constitution was drafted, linked the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation with a three-part presidency of a Bosniak, Serb and Croat.
The European Human Rights Court acknowledged that the constitution and discriminatory clauses had been accepted by all groups but added that Bosnia agreed two years ago to conform with the European standards for human rights and eliminate the bias.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Kouchner in Cairo to Promote Initiative
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, JANUARY 4 — French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, will be in Cairo tomorrow to take part in a meeting with his counterparts from several partner nations in the Mediterranean Union, aimed at relaunching the body set up in Paris in July 2008. According to a statement from the Quai d’Orsay, Kouchner will also be holding bilateral talks with the Egyptian authorities, who in mid-December announced that the meeting would be attended by the foreign ministers of France, Egypt, Spain, Tunisia and Jordan. The Mediterranean Union has been stalled since Israel’s military operation in Gaza at the end of 2008, blocked by internal strife and diplomatic disagreements. A plenary assembly of all the Foreign Minsters of member states, planned for November, was postponed without setting a date because the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit and other Arab colleagues refused to take part in a face-to-face meeting with their Israeli counterpart, the extreme nationalist Avigdor Lieberman. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Protests Against Jewish Festival in Delta
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, JANUARY 4 — A dispute is in progress in Egypt about the coming Jewish festival that is dedicated every year to Abu Hassira, a Moroccan Jew who lived in the 19th century. According to the legend, he settled in the Egyptian village of Damanhour, in the delta area, while on his way to the Holy Land. The man, a shoemaker whose tomb is located in that village, is considered to be a saint who can perform miracles. The festival celebrates the birthday of Hassira. It starts on January 15 and should last a week. However, the Egyptian Gazette reports that a movement — a group of local members of various political opposition forces, from the Nasserians to the Al Ghad party, from the leftwing Tagamou to the Kefaya movement and the Muslim Brotherhood — has been formed against the festival. This movement, called The Popular Movement to Prevent the Jewish ‘Moulid’, has also taken legal steps against the initiatives, pointing out that the festival was already banned in 2001. Its celebration, the festival organisation claims, coincides with the anniversary of the Israeli military operation ‘Cast Lead’, a provocation both for Muslims and Christians regarding Israel’s policies in Jerusalem and the blockade in Gaza. Yesterday the first 300 Jews arrived in Cairo from Tel Aviv to participate in the festival, more are expected to arrive in the coming days. Thousands of people participate in the annual pilgrimage, which can be made since 1979 when Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Maghreb: Chinese Foreign Minister in Morocco and Algeria
(ANSAmed) — RABAT, JANUARY 4 — China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will be arriving in Morocco on January 11 for a two-day official visit on the invitation of Taib Fassi Fihri, head of Moroccan diplomacy. Reports were from the press agency MAP, which quoted Jiang Yu, spokesman for the Chinese foreign minister. The visit is part of a long African tour by Yang Jiechi, set to begin tomorrow and end on January 14. In addition to Morocco, the mission by Beijing’s foreign minister will include Algeria, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Saudi Arabia. According to Jiang Yu, the talks will include bilateral relations in different sectors and ways to promote and strengthen cooperation as well as an exchange of views on regional and international issues. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Palestinians Claim Dead Sea Scrolls
As custodians begin to pack up an exhibit of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls and ship them back to Israel, both the Palestinians and the Jordanians have demanded their seizure.
Both Jordan and the Palestinians have claimed custody over the historic Dead Sea Scrolls, currently on display at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Canada.
Israel’s Antiquities Authority loaned 17 of the Dead Sea Scrolls along with other artifacts from the time of the Second Temple to the ROM as part of a six month display. The display, entitled “Words that Changed the World”, ended on January 3.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Dubai: World’s Highest Skyscraper to be Inaugurated Today
(ANSAmed) — DUBAI, JANUARY 4 — This evening will witness the unveiling of the highest skyscraper in the world, Burj Dubai, an icon of the relentless enterprising bent which in less than a decade has raised the emirate from the desert sands its current height on the international level, with all the figures and businesses that count. Though still reeling from the unresolved financial upset recently experienced, Dubai will spotlight the monument to its potential — 800 metres of pride in glass and steel, built in five years on a budget of 4.1 billion dollars — on the fourth anniversary of the Sheik Mohammad Al Maktum’s rise to the throne. The event will be broadcast on satellite TV to at least 2 million viewers, according to Emaar, the real estate giant behind the ambitious project. Thought up in 2003 and with the first stone laid in 2004, Burj Dubai is the only one of the gigantic regional skyscrapers announced which did not see works suspended nor plans altered the despite financial adversities. The definitive height of the Burj Dubai remains an incognita, even to the Council on Tall Buildings, the Chicago-based agency certifying the tallest buildings in the world. As Emaar president Mohammad al Abbar admitted, the skyscraper is “over 800 metres”, ensuring its visible from 95 kilometres away. There are 160 habitable floors, 49 for office use and 61 for apartments, in which 58 lifts work at a speed of 10 metres per second. On the 124th floor, a panoramic balcony will offer the public 360-degree views over the city. And Italy has left its exclusive mark on it, in the form of the 18 floors set aside for the Armani hotel and residences, entirely designed and furnished by the designer himself. (ANSAmed)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Exposing the Myth of Reform in Iran
Since the recent presidential [S]elections, the international community has had a real glimpse of the brutality and inhumanity of the Islamic Regime of Iran. We’ve seen peaceful protestors beaten, arrested and shot on the streets. We’ve heard reports of illegal arrests, torture and rape of protestors in Islamic Regime prisons. Scores of protestors have lost their lives under torture while at least three protestors have been sentenced to death because of their participation in the post [s]election protests.
What the international community needs to realize is that what we’ve seen in the past few months is nothing new. The Islamic Regime has been systematically arresting, torturing, raping and executing dissidents for the past 30 years.
Iranian people have not been silent in the face of severe persecution and brutality. For the past 30 years students, writers, journalists, women, workers, teachers and doctors just to name a few groups, have been fighting against the Regime in various ways. Iranian dissidents abroad have been fighting along their compatriots who are inside the country to make sure the voices of Iranian people are heard internationally.
Besides fighting against the Islamic Regime, since 1997 and especially in the past year, Iranians have come face to face with a new and much more dangerous enemy which is the so called “Reform” movement in Iran.
[…]
It did not take very long for the Iranians to realize that Khatami was an integrated part of the Islamic Regime and did not intend to keep any of his promises. In fact some of the most brutal human rights violations took place during Khatami’s presidency. This included the government sponsored chain murders of political dissidents and academics which took place in 1998 as well as the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy student demonstrations in July of 1999. During the protests thousands of students were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and some students were even murdered by Regime Agents. During the crackdown on the students Khatami showed his true colours by publicly siding with the Regime against the students and calling the pro-democracy protestors hoodlums and hooligans.
Here is a brief biography on the two so called reformist candidates:.
[…]
Unfortunately the “reform camp” abroad which included actors, Nobel peace prize winners, writers, beauty queens, former political prisoners and even some political groups in exile, are doing everything in their power to undermine the people’s pro-democracy, anti regime movement and to relate this movement to a reformist movement taking place within the frame work of the Islamic Regime. While the Iranian people have taken to the streets saying death to the Islamic Regime, the reform camp is referring to Mousavi and Karoubi as “opposition leaders” and trying to buy them legitimacy abroad.
[Comments from JD: Good article on the reality inside Iran — well worth reading the whole article.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
France Follows Britain and US in Shutting Yemen Embassy
France has become the third Western nation to shut its Yemen embassy, after threats from an al-Qaeda offshoot, the foreign ministry in Paris announced.
The US and UK missions, which closed on Sunday, remain shut.
Reports that the closures were prompted by Yemeni security forces losing track of six trucks full of arms were denied by British officials.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula last week said it was behind an alleged plot to bomb a US airliner.
It urged attacks on “crusaders” in embassies.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Yemen was a threat both regionally and globally.
Threats to US interests in Yemen pre-dated the Christmas holiday period, and the embassy would be re-opened only when circumstances permitted, she said in Washington.
From Monday all travellers flying to America are being subjected to new security measures, introduced by the US government.
Airport staff will now carry out extra screening of people from 14 countries, including those the US considers to be state-sponsors of terrorism — Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
Yemen and Nigeria — through which the alleged bomber travelled — also face the new restrictions.
Passengers flying from other countries will be checked at random.
On Monday in Paris, French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters their Yemen ambassador had decided the previous day to suspend public access to the embassy.
Clinton says Yemen is a ‘top concern’
French citizens in the country had been warned to be vigilant and limit their movements, he added.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Frattini Urges Joint EU Action on Yemen
Ashton ‘agrees greater coordination needed’
(ANSA) — Rome, January 4 — Italian Foreign minister Franco Frattini on Monday urged European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to make sure the EU takes coordinated action on Al Qaeda bases in Yemen in the wake of the attempted terrorist bombing of a US airliner on Christmas Day.
In a phone conversation, Frattini called for Ashton, the EU’s new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to work for “concrete and effective” coordination in Yemen and Brussels, the Italian foreign ministry said.
Ashton agreed with the Italian foreign minister that “ever more coordinated action” was needed, the ministry said.
Britain followed the United States in closing its embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Sunday in the wake of a reported threat to the US embassy. France took the same step on Monday while Germany, according to a report in the Spanish daily El Pais, closed its consular section.
Japan also halted all consular activities.
The Italian foreign ministry added that Frattini was in constant touch with his counterparts in Europe and the Gulf.
It said he was trying to help harmonise international action against the terrorist threat.
On Monday two suspected Al Qaeda militants were killed by Yemeni security forces not far from Sanaa.
Yemeni tribal sources said they were the son and nephew of a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen branch of Osama bin Laden’s network. AQAP claimed responsibility for the attempt by Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bomb the American plane carrying 300 people on December 25.
The Nigerian student is believed to have been trained in Yemen and received the explosives he tried to use there.
Last week Frattini backed international action against AQAP cells in Yemen but noted that “any action against them would be very difficult and delicate”.
US President Barack Obama has said the US would not hesitate to strike against terrorists anywhere in the world should they pose a threat to his country’s national security.
Yemen, which is faced with a Shi’ite Muslim rebellion in the north and separatist protests in the south, has said it will not tolerate militant groups on its territory.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Nouri Al-Maliki and the Conundrum of Kirkuk
The forthcoming visit of Prime Minister to Kurdistan is hope for a reconciliation with Baghdad. But Kirkuk, which owns 25% of Iraqi oil, is in the sights of Arabs and Turkmen. Iran fears a Kurdish state power, the U.S. fear a conflagration that could delay their departure from Iraq in 2011.
Baghdad (AsiaNews) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is due to visit the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan to sign an agreement with President Massoud Barzani on the future of the Kurdish peshmerga militia. The news was anticipated by the agency Aswat al-Iraq, without setting a specific date. Under the agreement, the Baghdad government will recognize the peshmerga in exchange for the government in Erbil to deliver the revenues derived from taxes and duties detained so far in its coffers. As a result, salaries and pensions of 90 thousand militiamen, the primary burden of the Kurdish government, becomes the responsibility of the central government.
Is Maliki’s trip a political move to divert attention from the recent bombings in Baghdad and create new alliances with the eternal enemies of the north ahead of elections next March? Or is it the result of strong U.S. pressure for the implementation of Art. 140 of the Iraqi constitution that calls for a referendum on the status of Kirkuk to determine if its inhabitants want to remain under the government of Baghdad or Erbil?
Kurdistan already holds between l0% and 15% of oil reserves in the country. Kirkuk alone has around 25%. If the city were to fall into the hands of the Kurds, Erbil would control roughly 40% of the deposits of all of Iraq. Unacceptable to the Arabs and Turkmen who claim it for themselves, but also for Syria, Iran and Turkey, fearful that a strong Kurdistan, territorially and economically, would inflame the Kurdish demands to annex the communities within them.
Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, observers have viewed Kirkuk as the possible fuse that could ignite a civil war. This is why the referendum was always postponed and the relations between Maliki and the Kurdish authorities have started to oscillate between tension and cooperation.
Two years of haggling
Maliki began to woo the Kurds in 2007, after losing his major Sunni and Shiite allies, promising compliance with Article. 140 and the “normalization” of Kirkuk, which saw the forced relocation of about 12 thousand Iraqi Arab families settled by Saddam in the town as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the 80s. Standardization is the necessary precondition to the implementation of the referendum. These promises have ensured the survival of Maliki’s cabinet when the Sadrists, Iraqi National List and Iraqi Accordance Front broke with him. But the premier disillusioned expectations: he continuously postponed the referendum and in mid-2007 did nothing to prevent attacks against Turkish bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Kurdistan.
As a result, improving the security situation in Iraq has removed many of the excuses for delaying the normalization process and Kurdish politicians have begun to suspect that Maliki intended to use the growing power of central government to thwart hard won gains by the Kurds after the American invasion, when the Baghdad government was weak.
The enmity between the two leaders is such that al-Maliki and Barzani rarely speak. Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga have clashed repeatedly in disputed areas, forcing officials of the United States to mediate to avoid an escalation.
Today, the Iraqi prime minister has more than ever, need of strong political support: a probable success in the upcoming elections has been made more difficult after the bloody attacks in August, October and December. The Obama administration is also much more determined than the Bush administration was to resolve the matter of Kirkuk. An escalation of tension between Arabs and Kurds, in fact, could delay the completion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces, expected by 2011. The Vice-President Joe Biden is pushing for an amicable solution between the parties that claim Kirkuk. But to offset U.S. pressure are those in Tehran, totally opposed to concessions to Kurdistan and very influential on Maliki. He, therefore, may be aiming to reach an agreement with Erbil, hoping once again that small temporary concessions will help him to postpone again the referendum. At least until his re-election in March.
Thus, while the other security challenges are becoming more manageable, the Arab-Kurd divide in Kirkuk has become increasingly dangerous. This could make the relative stability of Kirkuk, a thing of the past.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen Says it Killed Militants as Three More Embassies Shut
Yemeni government forces killed two suspected Qaeda militants on Monday and wounded others in a firefight 25 miles north of the capital, Yemeni officials said, tying the militants to the continuing threats directed against the United States and British Embassies here.
Those embassies remained closed on Monday for a second day, and the French, German and Japanese embassies also closed.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Helped Pakistan Nuke Program
Aid continues despite diversions to Iran
China covertly helped Pakistan in developing its nuclear weapons program and continues that support even now while that assistance has become the basis for Pakistan’s help with Iran’s nuclear development effort, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Racially Charged Violence Claims Lives in Suriname
A murder on Christmas Eve sparked vicious riots in the Surinamese town of Albina. Locals took to the streets battering, raping and even killing Brazilian and Chinese immigrants.
Police and army offers patrolled the abandoned streets of the Suriname border town of Albina. Burnt out cars, a hotel lying in ruins, and looted shops bore silent witness to the bloody riots the town experienced this Christmas.
Wide spread violence raged through the town after a dispute between an Albina man locally acknowledged as a criminal and a Brazilian prospector escalated on Christmas Eve. The local man, who died of wound inflicted during a knife-fight, was the first of an unconfirmed eight deadly victims over the weekend.
Albina is a town of several thousand souls, located on the west bank of the Maroni River, which marks the border between Suriname and French Guyana. It is home to a native population of mostly maroon people, descendants of runaway African slaves brought to Suriname long ago by Dutch traders.
8 deaths unconfirmed
The death toll claimed by the Christmas riots in Albina is still shrouded in uncertainty. Local police have confirmed a single fatality without releasing any further details — most probably the death of a Brazilian prospector who was stabbed to death by a local on Friday night.
A Brazilian cleric who has been administering aid to the victims of the racially charged violence, Jose Vergilio, said seven had been killed in addition to the local killed on Christmas Eve, but that hey had been unable to confirm the nationality of the vicitms. Acording to Vergilio, who has lived in Surinam for eight years, three hundred people, mostly Chinese and Brazilians have fled Albina. Brazil has sent two government envoys to asses the situation locally.
After the killing, hundreds of locals maroons took to Albina’s streets, wielding axes and other weapons. They directed their aggression at the Brazilians and other foreigners living in their town, including Chinese shop owners. Thirteen people were injured and twenty Brazilian women were raped and battered.
“This stuff recalls the Rwandan genocide. And it is happening right here in our own beautiful Suriname,” a radio reporter cried out during a broadcast. “Emotions are running rampant and the authorities are nowhere to be seen,” the reporter said.
Public response to the riots was one of shock, but the events could hardly have come as a complete surprise. Albina has long been a hotbed of unrest, violence, and lawlessness. Still, no one had expected that the usually so peaceful nation of Suriname would be facing a Christmas marked by murder, violence and rape.
The Dutch teacher Hugo den Boer, who has been living in Albina for ten years, witnessed how his home town was plundered.
“I saw people I know, nice neighbourly people, suddenly running around with axes, trashing everything in sight,” Den Boer said. “I took a little group of raped Brazilian women who had totally lost it to the police to report the crime. A good acquaintance of mine, a Chinese man, had his shop looted and destroyed. This man never hurt a fly and now he has lost everything. He was only targeted because his business is doing well.”
The teacher even saw government officials and housewives roam the shops, looking for valuables to loot. “Things can apparently turn to total anarchy in a split second,” Den Boer said.
That the violence was directed at foreigners, mostly Brazilians and Chinese, seems to indicate a deep-seated frustration that has taken hold of the maroon population. These locals feel the new inhabitants of their native lands are taking advantage of their resources and flouting local laws.
The violence is also an indirect consequence of the bloody civil war waged here in the 1980s, out in the jungle, between the former military junta of Desi Bouterse and rebels led by self-styled ‘jungle commando’ Ronny Brunswijk. A whole generation was raised in violence, leading to rampant unemployment, alcohol and substance abuse and creating droves of social dropouts.
Albina, once a popular holiday destination which the jet set nicknamed the Surinamese Riviera, was blasted to bits during that war and never completely restored.
The arrival of large groups of Chinese entrepreneurs and thousands of Brazilian prospectors who have successfully mined Lawa, an area rich in gold, created a tense atmosphere in Albina. The Brazilian gold mines are regularly robbed by maroon stick-up artists. As the price of gold went up recently, so did the number of robberies.
The man stabbed to death this Christmas was publicly recognised a recurrent robber of gold mines. The Surinamese national government, based some 300 kilometres away in the country’s capital Paramaribo, has remained completely apathetic to the events in the eastern far reaches of the county. “Politicians in Paramaribo have never invested in this region. The school I teach at has classes of 40 students, even though many of them already have learning disadvantages. There is no day-care, no kindergarten. The government has lost all authority in the outer regions of Suriname,” Den Boer said.
During prior times of unrest in the region surrounding Albina, president Ronald Venetiaan asked former rebel leader and native of the region Ronny Brunswijk to restore order to the area. Brunswijk, who now leads the largest maroon party in parliament, should keep a handle on his own people, the president said.
Brunswijk, however, does little to lead by example. This year he was allegedly involved in a number of shootouts and he physically abused an employee of the utility company because he felt he was overcharged.
“As long as people like Brunswijk are supposed to be role models and are worshipped by the population, we are fighting a battle we can’t win,” Den Boer said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Immigrant Newborns Die More Frequently
Researchers believe inbreeding and poor access to health professionals plays a major part in high infant mortality rates
A medical study has discovered excessive mortality among infants born to Somali parents in Denmark.
Although the risk of losing a child at birth or in its infancy is low in this country, a study published in medical journal Ugeskrift for Læger shows that twice as many children born to Somali parents die in infancy than ones born to Danish parents. Congenital deformities in particular are costing those newborns their lives.
The three researchers who compiled the survey have various ideas as to why there is such a difference in the infant mortality between different ethnic groups.
Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen of the University of Southern Denmark is one of the researchers behind the study. She posits the possibility that close kinship between the parents could be a reason for the high mortality rates.
Parents needed to be aware of the risks involved of close relatives having children together, Nybo Andersen said.
‘It’s on par with smoking, drinking alcohol or a mother having children in middle age,’ she told public broadcaster DR.
Norway has long recorded familial bonds between all parents in connection with childbirth and found that many couples among the Turks, Pakistanis and Somalis are cousins or closely related. According to Ugeskrift for Læger, the practice is making a comeback after years of decline.
The researchers behind the Danish study say that the increased mortality among some immigrant groups could also be due to a lack of contact with health professionals, which leads to inadequate examinations during pregnancy.
But the study shows that infant mortality has decreased in some immigrant groups, such as those from Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Number of Non-EU Workers in Ireland Falls by 41% in Year
THE NUMBER of people from outside the EU working in the Republic fell 41 per cent during 2009 as the recession took hold and the Government introduced new restrictions on issuing work permits.
The rapid increase in unemployment among immigrant workers is raising serious concerns among migrant rights groups, who say they are seeing a rise in destitute and undocumented immigrants.
The Government issued 7,942 employment permits to non-EU nationals last year, compared to 13,565 permits in 2008 and 23,604 permits in 2007.
Half of the employment permits granted by the Government in 2009 were new applications while the remainder were renewals for migrants already working here.
Indians are the biggest group of non-EU nationals working in the State and currently hold 1,782 employment permits.
This compares to 3,273 permits issued to Indian nationals in 2007.
About 1,424 permits were issued to Filipinos in 2009, down from 2,194 a year earlier.
There were 551 employment permits issued to US nationals, the third-biggest group of immigrant workers in the Republic in 2009.
Anybody from outside the EU seeking to work here must hold a valid employment permit from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
In the days of full employment during the Celtic Tiger, Fás was actively recruiting non-EU nationals at job fairs in South Africa and North America.
However, the huge rise in unemployment last year led the Government to introduce new restrictions on non-EU nationals seeking employment permits last June.
The new rules require employers to advertise longer to try to find Irish or EU nationals for positions before offering a job to or getting a reissued visa for a migrant worker from outside the EU.
Permits are no longer issued for most lower-paid positions under €30,000 and certain categories of workers. HGV drivers and domestic workers are no longer eligible to take up positions in the Republic.
The Government has also taken a tougher line on issuing spousal visas for non-EU migrant workers and increased the fee for renewing an employment permit.
“Obviously, our own unemployment figures are still very severe. We are above 12 per cent unemployment and so we have to make sure that our own labour market is compatible with the current situation,” said Dara Calleary, Minister of State for Labour Affairs, who added that the Government was constantly reviewing the system.
Unemployment, which currently stands at 12.4 per cent, is hitting immigrant workers particularly hard and raising questions over their right to remain here.
The Immigrant Council of Ireland received 500 calls about redundancy and 2,100 calls about renewing work permits in the last 12 months, highlighting the difficulty non-EU nationals face when they lose their jobs and want to remain in Ireland.
“It is hugely problematic for people working here for less than five years who lose their job and must find a new one within six months to obtain a work permit and remain in the country,” says Siobhán O’Donoghue, director of the Migrant Rights Centre, another NGO working to protect the rights of migrant workers’ in Ireland.
“We are seeing a big increase in the number of former work permit holders at our drop-in centre who have lost their jobs. We are also noticing a huge increase in destitution, with many people afraid to access social welfare in case it affects their long-term residency,” she said.
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
US Lifts HIV/Aids Immigration Ban
The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/Aids from entering the country.
President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.
The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012.
The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.
It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/Aids.
The BBC’s Charles Scanlon, in Miami, says that improving treatments and evolving public perceptions have helped to bring about the change.
Rachel Tiven, head of the campaign group Immigration Equality, told the BBC that the step was long overdue.
“The 2012 World Aids Conference, due to be held in the United States, was in jeopardy as a result of the restrictions. It’s now likely to go ahead as planned,” she said.
In October, President Obama said the entry ban had been “rooted in fear rather than fact”.
He said: “We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the Aids pandemic — yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country.”
| — Hat tip: Sean O’Brian | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Names Transgender Appointee to Commerce Department
In a statement, Simpson, a member of the National Center for Transgender Equality’s board of directors, said that “as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Hint From the World’s Most Secure Airline
El Al security is not entirely devoid of that familiar “cattle stockyard” feeling, plodding forward in a line, holding your shoes and presenting your papers. There is some of that, but many travelers report that these procedures somehow seem far less intrusive than the anonymous and mechanical stripping, sniffing and prodding which is presently our lot. How can this be? Because El Al incorporates something else: a personal touch. It is a brief personal interview for every passenger, Muslim, Christian, Jew or otherwise.
Before boarding, a few simple, and a few not-so-simple questions are asked, directly, of every El Al traveler. Surely, different people are asked different sorts of questions. They are nominally personal questions, yes, but — and perhaps I only feel this way because I am not a terrorist — they do not seem unnecessarily intrusive. Some questions are specific, and some are not so specific. The questioners, in my experiences, are remarkably pleasant and kind. One gets the impression the interviewers are highly trained — watching for micro-expressions, hidden cues and many other special signs as they listen — but also highly courteous. In a word, respectful.
The brilliant and worldly Rabbi Dr. Gerald Meister told me once: “Political correctness is the enemy of personal respect.” I fully understood his meaning when I first flew El Al.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Climategate: You Should be Steamed
Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.”
If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU, of the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, exposing thousands of e-mails and other documents. CRU is one of the top climate research centers in the world. Many of the exchanges were between top mainstream climate scientists in Britain and the U.S. who are closely associated with the authoritative (albeit controversial) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals. This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers. Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.
Climate alarmists would like you to believe the science has been settled and all respectable atmospheric scientists support their position. The believers also would like you to believe the skeptics are involved only because of the support of Big Oil and that they are few in number with minimal qualifications.
But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified.
[…]
Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Climategate: Failure of a Blind and Biased Mainstream Media
It’s beyond belief that the mainstream media can’t see the devastating importance of the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) known as Climategate. The blindness cancels the claim they’re society’s watchdog. Left wing journalist Amy Goodman said when writing about the Bush administration, “You know governments are going to lie, but not the media.” Now, with a new administration she is silent, proving there are lies of commission and omission.
Most haven’t read the emails or summarily dismiss them because of political bias. Journalist Clive Crook illustrated an open mind, albeit on second look. “In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back. The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”
The mainstream media willfully ignore the massive deception just as they have the political exploitation of climate science. In fact, most led or joined attacks on scientists who dared to point out the problems. They’re still doing it directly or by their silence. There’s no excuse for missing the biggest story in history. It proves the adage that there are none so blind as those who will not see.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Socialism’s Greatest Lie: Government Can Give You Everything for Free
The idea that the government will take care of you is appealing, entire nanny states have been built on that proposition. But the government can’t take care of you, it can’t even pay its own bills without you. It can’t run a television station, a toll bridge or even an off track betting service, or any venture that in private hands would be profitable, without using taxpayer funds to prop it up.
A legitimate enterprise never needs to fool its customers into thinking that they will receive something for nothing. It is only the scammers that need to do that. What a promise of something for nothing really indicates is a venture that is run by people who are incapable of hard work, who get by on tricking others out of their hard earned money. And that in short is what socialism looks like, with its monolithic bureaucracies where incompetence is the order of the day, its offices upon offices that never need to produce their results or show their books, and its embedded corruption that insures the money never goes where you think it does.
The promise of free health care though is far more devilish than a free iPod, because it doesn’t simply promise people a gadget, but promises that the government will keep them alive. And because government free offers not only tend to cost a lot, but have a way of being universal and with no opt-out clause available, they’re a scam in which participation is not optional to individual foolishness, but mandatory to everyone.
[…]
This is not non-profit, it’s a kleptocracy. And a kleptocracy is for profit, the profit is just under the table. The more government expands, the more the kleptocracy grows. Naturally the kleptocracy just loves the idea of expanding government programs. Why shouldn’t it? Free market companies make money by selling products to consumers. The kleptocracy make money by exchanging government contracts for donations, favors and payoffs. Externally a kleptocracy may look like it’s booming, but in reality it’s rotten to the core, and nothing is done well anymore. Doing anything requires knowing a friend of a friend in the government. Because the only way to do business under a kleptocracy is to be part of it. Or be its victim.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
3 comments:
The Dead Sea Scrolls are in their rightful home. No other state on the face of God's good earth has more rights to them than the state of Israel. The Palestinians have no right whatsoever to these ancient documents. These are not even a recognized state.
Palestinians Claim Dead Sea Scrolls
Does anyone honestly think that the Palestinians would use the Dead Sea Scrolls for anything more than toilet paper? One need only to examine how the Waqf in Jerusalem are obsessed with excavating and destroying priceless ancient Jewish artifacts located beneath al Aqsa mosque. The excavations are threatening the mosque's structural stability, but that matters not when it comes to destroying all traces of pre-existing Jewish culture at the site. Besides, if the mosque collapses, it will be blamed on the usual Jewish conspiracy anyway.
We already have seen what became of the Church of the Nativity. Does anyone really think an even older and more precious piece of Jewish heritage would be treated any different once it fell into Muslim hands?
First the poll takers tell you their fluffy cotton-candy feel-good sugar-coated foregone conclusion:
"...most Muslim students support secularism and democratic values, and are generally tolerant towards other minorities and reject violence in the name of their faith,..."
Then you get to see the raw data (if you bother to read that far.)
"-40%...support the introduction of Sharia into British law...
-Almost a third (32%)... said killing in the name of religion was ever justified."
Sheesh...
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