Buyer's Remorse So Soon?

You’d have thought that experience would be the teacher for the man. But evidently not.

Obama learned little or nothing with his lick-and-a-promise visit to Copenhagen to boost Chicago for the Olympics. One short speech about ME and he was gone, much to the disgust of the Olympic Committee and the other contenders. As I said at the time, the hubris of his appearance did more harm than good to his cause.

Well, here we go again. Norway, silly boys, gave Obama a premature Peace Prize and now they’re miffed because he’s picking it up and leaving…more or less.

Barack Obama’s trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children’s event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.

“Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king,” said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. “This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy,” she told VG.

Shabby? It’s tacky, rude, insensitive, and boorish. It’s embarrassing for Americans. But unfortunately, the Norwegians brought this on themselves. In their unseemly haste to kick George Bush in the leg again, they picked a recipient who does this kind of thing on a regular basis. At least when he’s not being inappropriate in the other direction, bowing to emperors, etc.

Americans don’t think much of Norway’s choice for this year’s Peace Prize either. CNN ran a poll:
- - - - - - - - -

Hours before Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a new national poll indicates that fewer Americans than ever think the president deserves the award. But according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, a majority of the public believes the president will eventually accomplish enough to merit the honor.

Nineteen percent of people questioned in the poll released Wednesday afternoon say Obama currently deserves the prize, with another 35 percent saying that it’s likely he will eventually accomplish enough in office to deserve the award. Still, greater than four in 10 believe the president will never deserve the prize.

The 19 percent who believe Obama deserves the award is down 13 points from a CNN poll conducted in October, soon after the award was announced.

[…]

But although most people do not think the president currently deserves the peace prize, seven in 10 questioned - including a majority of Republicans - say he should go to Oslo, Norway Thursday to accept the award.

It’s not like Obama doesn’t have the time to do this trip and accept this honor correctly and with all due humility. He sure has had the time for basketball and golf. Why not give the Norwegians their due respect and stay a little longer than twenty-six hours?

What am I saying? This is the man who gave his general for Afghanistan a fifteen-minute interview on the tarmac in Copenhagen.

Hamlet definitely doesn’t have the timing right during this run, as is shown by the buyer’s remorse that seems to be driving the polls of late.

Ben Smith says:

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore, which is good news generally for Republicans.

Somewhat of a surprise?? Obama has been in office less than a year and only 6% of Americans now prefer him to George “Hitler” Bush? Remember the blood-for-oil villain?

This “closeness” in the numbers has more than mere “implications” for the 2010 elections. It means that few, or none of his Democrat Congressional pack is going to want him around during the elections.

Maybe that would be the right time to mosey on back to Norway and beg a lunch off King Harald? He could bring a peace gift: say a few CDs of his better speeches.

Read further...

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/9/2009

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.
- - - - - - - - -

	Financial Crisis
	Croatia: Too Many Pensions, System at Risk
	Falling Dollar Pushes Manufacturing Out of Europe
	Obama Administration Predicts $30b Loss on Auto Bailout
	Trade Ministers Summit, Objective is Common Area
	USA
	“Obama’s Address Empty and Filled With Rhetoric”
	America’s Last War
	Autocracy for Dummies
	Closed Chrysler Dealers to Drive Obama’s Eligibility
	Covering Up for ACORN
	Feminist Vendetta Against Men’s Sports
	Marxists, Socialists Launched Obama?
	Obama Pulls End Run
	Science Czar’s Guru Backed Eugenics
	The Islamification of America, And the Emasculation of the U.S. Military
	Why Have the Feds Taken Interest in Muslim Mafia Case?
	Woman Wearing Hijab Asked to Leave Bank
	Europe and the EU
	British Couple Not Guilty of Abusing Muslim
	Copenhagen Climate Summit: 1,200 Limos, 140 Private Planes and Caviar Wedges
	Daniel Pipes: Swiss Minarets and European Islam
	Greece: Protest Peaceful After 2 Days of Riots
	Italy: Vatican Bank ‘Accused of Money Laundering’
	Italy: Activists to Protest Against Obama Peace Prize
	Italy: Hillary Clinton to Review Knox Case
	Italy: New Pizza and Kebab Shops Banned in Venice
	Netherlands: 70% of Gays Suffer Discrimination or Violence
	Netherlands: School ‘Too Diverse’ For Christmas Tree
	Netherlands: PvdA Leadership Overruled by Local Muslims
	Netherlands: Gays Rarely Make Complaints About Violence
	Norwegians Judge Obama’s Nobel Snubs ‘Impolite’
	Sarkozy Warns Against Religious “Provocation”
	Spain: Catalonia, Islamic Moral Brigades Impose Sharia Law
	Swiss Legislator Condemned by Islamic Scholar as ‘New Hitler’
	UK: Conservatives Are Wistful, Angry, And Fearful, Says Think Tank
	Balkans
	EU: Enlargement Including Balkans Must Continue, Pahor
	Kosovo: Russia and US Adopt Opposite Views on Independence
	NATO: Secures Path for Membership, Bosnia Waiting
	Mediterranean Union
	Culture: Council of Europe, Agreement on Euro-Med Region
	Egyptian Parliament to Report on Minaret Importance
	Farming: Spanish Producers Against EU-Morocco Deal
	North Africa
	Cinema: Kusturica in Marrakech, Arab Culture May Save Film
	Egypt: ‘Italian Child’ Appears in Cairo After 22 Years
	Egyptian Men Unite to Fight Women’s “Tyranny”
	Terrorism: Algeria, 12 Sentenced to Death
	Israel and the Palestinians
	Abbas Slams EU’s Watered Down Jerusalem Draft
	EU Ministers: 27 Divided on East Jerusalem Status
	Justice Minister: We Will Impose Torah Laws on State
	Knesset: Yes to Biometric Data Filing
	Middle East
	“War President” Obama Seen Unworthy of Nobel
	Iran: Turkey Important Partner in Resolving Crisis, Obama
	Jonathan Spyer: Hezbollah’s Delusions
	The “Dream” Of Helem
	There is No Peaceful Solution to Terrorism
	Turkey: 800-Year-Old Kaaba Key Taken Out of Auction
	South Asia
	Chaos in Afghanistan Policy
	Erick Stakelbeck: New Battlefield Rules Putting U.S. Troops at Risk?
	Java Widows Wants Compensation From Netherlands
	Kazakh Teacher Not Allowed to Wear Hijab at School
	Far East
	Philippines: CHR to Probe Death of 200 Others in Maguindanao
	Australia — Pacific
	Australia Bans N Korean Artists, Accused of ‘Censorship’
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Guinea Accuses France of Complicity in Shooting
	Somalia Suicide Bomber From Denmark
	Immigration
	Britain is “Terrorised” By Population Projections, Says Home Secretary
	Netanyahu Wants Barrier on Sinai
	UK: Migrant Numbers Double in 30 Years: One in Ten Living in the UK is Now Foreign-Born
	UK: One in 10 of Population Born Abroad
	UK: Population Boom is a ‘Spectre’, Says Alan Johnson
	General
	Famous Weather Scientist: Climategate ‘Tip of Iceberg’
	Global Cooling Documented in Last Decade
	Soy Doesn’t Harm, And May Even Help, Breast Cancer Survivors, Study Finds
	We’ve Been Had

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.”

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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

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Read further...

Final Status Report…she said hopefully

The Baron is gone till tomorrow, taking the fB back to his lodgings and his life. The latter seems recovered enough, and not contagious, so he even made it to choir practice in time this evening. Recovering from swine flu and pneumonia, they may put him in the baritone section till his real voice comes back.

And tomorrow he jumps back into the daily routine: a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles to change his voter registration and his permanent address on his driver’s license. Then an appointment to an organization that can fix him up with food, help with prescriptions, and perhaps a referral to a free clinic.

The next day (after a hair cut) on to the world of employment, the one so rudely interrupted with this onslaught of pestilence. He’s been ill for over a month, so who knows if his job is still available? Couldn’t blame them if it wasn’t.
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Meanwhile, we pick up the pieces here. I now have pneumonia and am on steroids since the antibiotic was ineffective. I hate steroids. Especially the 3rd day when “steroid psychosis” begins. Thank heavens this doesn’t last much more than a week.

The house is unnaturally quiet once more. I am glad, mostly. It was definitely time to go. And I can quit being on guard duty, waiting for coughing spasms. Now I can hear the cat snoring again.

The Baron will return tomorrow. He did the news feed before he chugged out of here, loaded down with medications and all the other belongings one boy-man accumulates in a month. Like I noticed the fB made off with a pair of his father’s pajama bottoms, but I didn’t say anything since they don’t fit his dad anyway.

The biggest adjustment is always (besides the stillness) remembering to cook for two again instead of four…when you’re cooking for a young man in his twenties who needs to gain weight, that’s like setting two extra places.

Buona salute a tutti!!

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Brtish Court Declares Judaism "Racist"

Given my frustration with First Things magazine’s registration problems, I probably should wait until this essay comes out from behind the registration wall to tell you about it. However, my disgust at the British Court’s recent rulings against Jews trumps my aggravation at First Things clunky on line registration glitches.

I have received the print edition for January 2010. Having read this appalling news, I am compelled to let you know about it. I can’t provide a URL for this essay, but next month it should be available (and by then I’ll be no less apoplectic about the UK court but perhaps the website issues of First Things) will have been resolved.

David Goldman writes (and I am forced to transcribe by hand):

Since Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to settle in England in 1656, Britain’s Jews have often suffered indignities, but have they ever undergone a legal assault on the practice of their religion within their own institutions?

Certainly they have now.

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On June 26, a British court of appeals labeled “racist” a founding premise of Judaism: the election of Abraham and his descendants and the determination of Jewish status by matrilineal descent. That the court’s decision is preposterous is the least of the matter. Not since the Middle Ages have Jews had to defend their religion before state authorities. And not since the Treaty of Westphalia have states claimed the right to compel changes in religious doctrine. For the first time in many years, a secular liberal state has arrogated to itself the right to determine the legality of millennia-old practices of a monotheistic religion.

Britain’s chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, was apoplectic, declaring, “An English court has declared [the religious definition of Jewish status] racist, and since this is an essential element of Jewish law, it is in effect declaring Judaism racist. To be told now that Judaism is racist is distressing. To confuse religion and race is a mistake.”

The leaders of the various forms of Judaism - Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform - have joined Rabbi Sacks in his condemnation of this ruling.

The Catholic Education Services of England and Wales gave public support to their Jewish colleagues. Oona Stannard, the director, said:

It is important that the right to determine who is a member of any religions ought to lie with the religious…I am extremely dismayed that the ruling has so far gone against our Jewish colleagues/providers of schools with a religious character. England’s chief Catholic prelate…fully backs the CES statement.

So what does the Archbishop of Canterbury say? Birds chirp in the bare, ruined choirs. Silence. They won’t be issuing a statement is what they said.

Meanwhile, that segment of Judaism known as the suicidal Jews (probably with a few Unitarians thrown in for good measure) hailed the ruling (warning: barf bag moment coming up here) because it would make Judaism “more inclusive”. There goes the idea of God’s chosen people, right down the chute with the rest of those who would attempt to differentiate themselves. Lovers of their own culture, nationalists, believers in sovereignty, those who thought the wall between Church and State was pretty well established...Forget it; we’re all racist hamburger now.

Except the Muslims, of course. They can continue to make their arrogant, in-your-face demands for their religious tenets. No pork, no Christmas, disruptive five-times-a-day prayer (wherever), separate schools, separate hospitals, separate pools, different rules, public threats to destroy the UK…that all pales beside the Jewish law regarding matrilineal descent.

This is a new low-water mark for British jurisprudence. You can read the full essay shortly, when it becomes the “current issue” on line at First Things. Meanwhile, I’ll close with Mr. Goldman’s final statement:

More than any other major Jewish population in the Diaspora, Britain’s Jewish community has attempted to steer clear of controversy - for example by keeping its distance from the state of Israel…but much as Britain’s Jews have tried to avoid trouble, trouble has come looking for them.

There is a moral in that somewhere…one that I hope Israel considers very carefully before it hands over any flu vaccines to Gaza. Just one Muslim death and the bombs will be flying, Jews will be dying.

Such perverted altruism has to stop before it gets any more people killed. Just as the rest of the world, particularly America, has got to take off its blinders regarding zombie jihadists like Major Hasan. We knew with fair certainty he was psychotic, but in the name of saving his superiors’ precious careers, we let him go on his merry way, until he had killed enough of us for people to take notice. Even then, it’s “shush, shush, can’t say it aloud/killing kufar makes the Jihadist proud”. No, the mantra is, instead: “wrong, wrong, you Islamophobes. The Religion of Peace shall rule the globe.”*

Close your eyes, cover your ears, yell real loud. Then when the blade is on your throat, or the bullet lodged in your son’s heart, you won’t be able to feel it till everything is over. Painless, right?

What a price to pay for a deeply false sense of security: a paralyzed fear that cannot speak its name.


*admittedly bad doggerel. You are encouraged to improve upon it.

Read further...

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/8/2009

Swine flu has arrived in force in the Gaza Strip, with three deaths from the disease — the first fatalities from H1N1 in Gaza. The Israeli authorities are concerned, and plan to send 10,000 doses of vaccine to the Gaze Strip to try to impede the further spread of the disease.

In other news, the Danish People’s Party has officially proposed a ban on minaret-building in Denmark, similar to the one which was just passed by referendum in Switzerland.

Thanks to 4symbols, C. Cantoni, Esther, Gaia, Henrik, Insubria, JD, Pundita, Sean O’Brian, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
- - - - - - - - -

	Financial Crisis
	Egypt: Inter-Arab Investments Only 4.5% Total Arab Worlwide
	Jobs — Or Snow Jobs?
	USA
	Defenseless Enviro-Thugs Go on Offense
	Hijacking ‘Dry Run’ Testimony Mounts
	How Chinese Products Are Stealing Christmas
	Is ‘Victory’ In Obama’s Vocabulary?
	Obama’s Gigantic Military Empire
	The Waste of Taxpayer Dollars Never Ends
	US to Pay $3.4bn to Settle Native Americans Land Case
	Europe and the EU
	Austria: US Student Arrested Over Christmas Market Thefts
	Denmark: No to Minarets!
	EU’s Secretive Anti-Piracy Talks Cause Concern
	France: Sarkozy Weighs in on National Identity Debate
	France: UMP: No Foreign Flags During Weddings
	Italy: Activists to Protest Against Obama Peace Prize
	Italy: ‘Bourbons’ Bid to Boost South
	Italy: Minister’s Dig at Archbishop
	Switzerland Stays Neutral, Vetoes Israel
	UK: Christian Hotel Manager in Dock ‘After Asking Hijab-Wearing Guest If She Was a Terrorist’ In Breakfast-Time Religion Row
	UK: Honour Crime Up by 40% Due to Rising Fundamentalismby Rebecca Camber
	UK: Help, They’re Trying to Kick My Head in: Victim’s Desperate 999 Call as Killers Pounce in the Street
	UK: Human Traffickers Sell Sex Slave on Britain’s Busiest Street
	UK: Killer With New ID Who Got Pregnant Behind Bars Wants to Live in Her Old Home
	Balkans
	Croatia: 275 Mln Euro in 2010 to Adjust to EU Standards
	Serbia: EU to Proceed With Trade Accord
	Serbia: Surplus of USD 11 Million in Trade With Iran
	Serbia: Teen Pregnancy on the Rise, One of Highest in World
	Mediterranean Union
	Transport: Euromed Airspace, 4 Bln Euros Over 25 Years
	North Africa
	Algeria-Italy: Frigate Aliseo at Port of Algiers
	Israel and the Palestinians
	First Swine Flu Deaths Reported in Gaza
	Gaza Border: Israeli Killed by Soldiers
	Govt Team to Oversee Settlement Freeze
	Israel-Italy: Air-Force Commander: Strong Ties
	Oldest Church in the World May Turn Prison Into Tourist Attraction
	Peres Launches Own Youtube Channel
	Religious Law Should Govern Israel: Justice Minister
	Swine Flu: Gaza, 10,000 Vaccines From Israel After 1st Deaths
	Middle East
	“From Teheran to Riyadh, This is How We Are Discriminated Against”
	“Turkey Will Not Surrender to European Countries Just to Become an EU Member, “ Bagis Says
	Ahmadinejad Reportedly Claims U.S. Is Blocking Return of Mankind’s Savior
	Arab Press Say Swiss Neutrality is Failing
	Iranian Nuclear Scientist Abducted by US: FM
	Kuwait: Imam Jailed for Collecting Al-Qaeda Money
	NASA to Launch Space Education Program for Arab Youth
	Saudis ‘In a Panic Mode’ As Shi’ite Rebels Move North From Yemen
	Saudi Arabia Calls to Boycott Swiss Over Minaret Ban
	‘Sleeper Cells’ In Lebanon Palestinian Camps: Experts
	Survey: 59% of Muslim Turks Against Allowing Other Religions to Meet Openly, Exchange Ideas
	Turkey: Pope’s Attacker Wants to Live in Italy After Release
	Turkey Not to Surrender to Some EU States, Says Minister
	Turkey May Ban Kurdish DTP Party
	Turkish Soldiers Shot Dead in Ambush
	South Asia
	Afghanistan: Taliban Shadow Officials Offer Concrete Alternative
	Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 1
	Germany to Compensate Victims of Afghan Airstrike
	India: Islamic Experts: No to the Political Exploitation of the Ayodhya Mosque
	India: Over 1,500 Muslims Held in City
	Philippine, Muslim Rebels Resume Peace Talks
	Sikhs Strive for Recognition in New Afghanistan
	Far East
	China Sentences Uyghur Church Leader to 15 Years
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Al-Qaeda Claims Kidnapping of Four Europeans: TV
	Terrorism: Al-Qaeda Tape Claims Kidnapping of Four Europeans
	Latin America
	Iran Demands Nurses in Bolivia Wear Hijabs (Via NRP)
	Immigration
	China Now Australia’s Top Source of Immigrants
	Immigration: Why Import Workers Now?
	Iraqis Top of EU List for Asylum in 2008
	Thousands of Iraqis Granted Swedish Asylum
	Culture Wars
	Dozens in Congress: Oust Obama’s Porn-Promoter
	General
	Bolton Slams U.N.’s ‘Adverse Press’ Crackdown
	Copenhagen’s Hidden Agenda: The Multibillion Trade in Carbon Derivatives
	Socialists Demand Trillions in “Climate Debt”
	Swine-Flu Bribe Fever!
	The Free Press vs. The New World Order

Egypt: Inter-Arab Investments Only 4.5% Total Arab Worlwide

(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, DECEMBER 7 — Inter-Arab investments represent only around 4.5% of the total Arab investments worldwide. This will be one of the themes of the 9th session of the Economic Unity Council, slated for Thursday, taking place amid great challenges that require collective efforts to confront them and ease their effects, Mena reported. The global economic crisis, which the world is currently going through, requires promoting Arab cooperation especially inter-Arab investments as the Arab world possesses giant potentials and the Arab states are capable of creating a better atmosphere for investment. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

[Return to headlines]

Jobs — Or Snow Jobs?

President Obama keeps talking about the jobs his administration is “creating,” but there are more people unemployed now than before he took office. How can there be more unemployment after so many jobs have been “created”?

Let’s go back to square one. What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use.

But government creates no wealth. Ignoring that plain and simple fact enables politicians to claim to be able to do all sorts of miraculous things that they cannot do in fact. Without creating wealth, how can they create jobs? By taking wealth from others, whether by taxation, selling bonds or imposing mandates.

However it is done, transferring wealth is not creating wealth. When government uses transferred wealth to hire people, it is essentially transferring jobs from the private sector, not adding to the net number of jobs in the economy.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Defenseless Enviro-Thugs Go on Offense

At a time when leftist enviro-tyrants ought to be hanging their heads in shame, they are, instead, taking the offensive. They are not only dismissing the staggering Climategate scandal as insignificant but also redoubling and accelerating their push to enslave the world with their progress-swallowing treaties, laws and regulations.

It’s the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action. If the public begins to wise up to the distortions and exaggerations, elevate the threat warning from dire to urgent.

We saw it in our domestic politics in the United States when President Barack Obama’s leftist Democrats manufactured a simulated crisis over health insurance, deliberately overstating by multiples the number of uninsured as a predicate to Obama’s demand that a comprehensive bill had to be passed before Congress’ August recess.

Shortly thereafter, it came to light that Democrats had also grossly manipulated the projected costs of their proposals and flagrantly lied about such issues as rationing and government-funded abortions. All the while, these “progressives” concealed from the public the underlying facts and data and their ultimate aims, obliterating Obama’s pledge for greater transparency in government.

Like-minded global and American leftists know the jig is almost up on the fabricated global warming “consensus,” as the public is catching on to their deception (reflected by fresh polling data), and the Climategate scandal has lifted the veil on the leftist scientific community’s global conspiratorial corruption. They tell us to pay no attention to the Climategate behind the curtain and to join with them in launching the reverse thrusters on modernity and progress in deference to the global-warming hoax. Meanwhile, the Obama-leftist Environmental Protection Agency has hedged its bets (in the event Copenhagen is a bust) by declaring the air we exhale an environmental hazard.

[…]

The Associated Press reports that Copenhagen envisions a deal to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries every year over decades to help them adapt to climate change.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Hijacking ‘Dry Run’ Testimony Mounts

Cover-up hinted as case recalls ‘flying imams’

Evidence that an incident on an Air Tran flight from Atlanta to Houston could have been a “dry run” for a possible hijacking is mounting, with analysts hinting at a cover-up because of an airline gag order on employees and more witnesses coming forward to say they were afraid.

The airline, meanwhile, is sticking to its prepared statements that there was an issue with a passenger and a cell phone but the matter is considered closed.

Word of the situation first came through a viral e-mail that included a passenger’s description of about a dozen Muslims causing a disturbance aboard Flight 297 on Nov. 17.

[…]

Meanwhile, a second similar incident has been related to WND by an airline employee who has asked her company to investigate. She insisted on anonymity in this report until she gets a response.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

How Chinese Products Are Stealing Christmas

Dangerous toys, clothes, appliances, even baby strollers, pacifiers flood U.S. stores

WASHINGTON — Zhu Zhu Pets, furry robotic hamsters, are the hottest Christmas craze of 2009 — with millions being flown into the U.S. from China on 747s to keep up with the demand.

But, like so many other toys, clothes, appliances and even baby strollers and pacifiers on the market for holiday shoppers this season, they may be unsafe, say consumer watchdogs.

While Zhu Zhu pets have not faced a Consumer Product Safety Commission recall, a report from GoodGuide.com says they contain antimony, a toxic metal known as a carcinogen. The federal limt for antimony in products is 60 parts per million, while the Zhu Zhu has 93 parts per million in the fur and 103 in the nose.

“If ingested in high enough levels, antimony can lead to cancer, reproductive health and other human health hazards,” said Dara O’Rourke, an associate professor of environmental science at U.C.-Berkeley and co-founder of GoodGuide.com. “If these toys aren’t even meeting the legal standards in the U.S., then I would say that it isn’t worth the risk for me to bring it into my household.”

[…]

Bicycles are always a favorite Christmas gift for kids. But 6,400 distributed by Easton Sports of Scotts Valley, Calif., and manufactured in China were recalled this season because of stem failure that cause the rider to lose control.

[…]

Thinking about giving someone a kitchen appliance this year? Be warned.

Haier America Trading of New York, N.Y., voluntarily recalled nearly 54,000 blenders made in China when it was learned the blade assemblies came apart or broke, posing laceration risks.

Or maybe you were thinking about getting Dad a gas grill. About 663,000 Perfect Flame grills made in China and sold in Lowe’s were voluntarily recalled because they posed burn hazards to users. They caused at least 40 fires resulting in burns to hands, arms and faces and at least one eye injury requiring surgery.

Power adapters used with IBM back-up disk hard drives, also made in China, were recalled when it was found they were failing and exposing live electrical contacts that posed shock hazards to consumers.

[Comments from JD: As an exercise, the next time you go shopping, try to find something NOT made in China. It’s really quite incredible.]

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Is ‘Victory’ In Obama’s Vocabulary?

The verdict is in. Not only did Barack Obama fail miserably in his speech from West Point Military Academy, but he looked angry and peevish in doing so. It was kinda like a comic delivering flat, predictable punch lines before a tough audience who wanted, but didn’t expect, much more than they got.

In Obama’s case, he had actually delivered his pseudo punch lines much earlier, when he renamed the War on Terror, “The Overseas Contingency Operation,” and when he stuck it to Gen. McChrystal by dithering as American troops died. His other punch lines included sticking it to heroic Navy SEALs after their extraordinary service in capturing a wanted terrorist, and telling Congress not to get involved in the Malik Nidal Hasan terrorist murders at Fort Hood (which is the advice he should have followed before he ended up supplying beer and snacks as a mea culpa after recklessly insulting the Cambridge Police Department), having his Justice Department give legal standing in our courts to enemy combatants (so terrorists worldwide would understand what a just system of jurisprudence we have, “cough-cough”), and curtseying to foreign potentates.

Receiving no applause for those punch lines, he fell back upon his oft-used narcissistic view of himself, which allowed him to believe he could just show up at West Point, teleprompter in tow, pivot his head side to side, and the cadets would be impressed. Well, he did, but they weren’t. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone but the “Towel-e-bon” in “Pock-e-ston” were impressed — and they were only impressed by a display of weakness unwitnessed in their culture.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Obama’s Gigantic Military Empire

From Norwegian: As Obama is about to arrive to get his Noble Peace Prize, VG Nett reports that the US has 5,500 military bases at home and abroad, and 350,000 soldiers stationed abroad. More soldiers have died under Obama in Afghanistan than before. 488 soldiers were killed since he took office

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

The Waste of Taxpayer Dollars Never Ends

This past Fall, turning in our clunkers for cash was all the rage. Obama even took credit for “stimulating” the auto industry back to health. Well, here’s the real financial result of the program.

If you traded in a clunker worth $3500, you get $4500 off the purchase of a new car, for an apparent “savings” of $1000. However, here’s a little known secret I bet the auto dealer didn’t mention — you have to pay taxes on the $4500 as income. If you are in the 30% tax bracket you will pay $1350 on that $4500. So, rather than save $1000, you actually pay an extra $350 to the feds.

In addition, now you probably have a car payment that will cost you for the next 4 — 5 years. But it gets even better. It appears than many of the car dealers actually raised the prices of the cars. Just before the Cash for Clunkers program began, LA Ford dealers were selling Ford Focus for about $12,500. During the program they stopped discounting them, instead selling for the list price of $15,500. Other dealers, from Chevy to Toyota did the same.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

US to Pay $3.4bn to Settle Native Americans Land Case

The US government has agreed to pay $3.4bn (£2.1bn) to settle a long-running case over Native American land.

The Cobell case, filed in 1996, alleged the government had mismanaged billions of dollars in income from natural resources on Native American land.

Under the deal the interior department will share $1.4bn (£859m) among 300,000 tribe members as compensation and set up a $2bn fund to buy land from them.

President Barack Obama said it was “an important step towards reconciliation”.

“I heard from many in Indian Country that the Cobell Suit remained a stain on the nation to nation relationship I value so much,” Mr Obama told Congress.

He said he had pledged as a presidential candidate to resolve the issue and was proud the step had finally been made.

The secretary of the interior department also said it would aid reconciliation.

“This is an historic, positive development for Indian country,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement released by the department.

Contentious case

The dispute dates back to the 1887 Dawes Act, which seized Indian land — much of it rich in natural resources — and gave it to white-owned companies to exploit.

Under the Act, the land was divided into plots and each Indian family was assigned a parcel of land, a concept alien to their culture in which all land belonged to the tribe.

The idea was for them to be “compensated” for the use of their land, however disputes arose almost immediately, perpetuated as ever smaller parcels of land were inherited by new generations.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the parties had tried to reach an agreement “many, many times”.

“But today we turn the page. This settlement is fair to the plaintiffs, responsible for the US, and provides a path forward for the future,” he said.

Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfoot tribe and who filed the complaint in 1996, welcomed the settlement, saying the administration had listened to Native American concerns.

But she said there was “no doubt” that the final amount was “significantly” less than what those affected actually deserved.

The plaintiffs had claimed they were owed $47bn.

On its website the department for the interior said that the litigation had included hundreds of motions, dozens of rulings and appeals, and several trials.

The agreement must be approved both by Congress and a federal judge.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

Austria: US Student Arrested Over Christmas Market Thefts

A US student was arrested yesterday (Sun) after he was caught breaking into a Christmas market in Tyrol.

Police said the 21-year-old had tried to flee when officers caught him going through goods at a stand at a market in Innsbruck’s old city at 3am and ignored warning shots before jumping into the River Inn trying to escape.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

Denmark: No to Minarets!

By Professor Sven Hakon Rossel

The international media — apart from Great Britain’s best newspaper The Daily Telegraph — does not know how to react properly in connection with the Swiss referendum last Sunday, November 29, with its unambiguous “no” to the construction of minarets. On the one hand, the result probably must be accepted, the journalists write, but on the other hand, the result is undemocratic and terrible to such a degree — and, furthermore, the voters have probably been led astray — so that, in fact, the result of the referendum ought to be ignored.

But this, of course, is impossible. The oldest democracy in the world has a law in place which requires a referendum to be held when it is demanded by 100,000 voters — and the outcome must be acknowledged whether one agrees or not! Furthermore, it has hardly been mentioned in the press, that also Swiss feminists have supported the referendum because of the well-known Islamic oppression of women!

Nevertheless, critical voices are heard from all over the world — mostly from politicians and journalists — but, characteristically, a majority of the letters to the editor found in the international media clearly support the outcome of the Swiss referendum. “A disgrace”, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the South African Navi Pillay exclaims, but in the forefront of the protests we find, ironically enough, a number of Islamic countries spearheaded by the EU-candidate Turkey. “This is an expression of racism and fascism”, foams the Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan with rage demanding, that Switzerland nullifies the referendum. Well, that’s perhaps what is being done, where he comes from . . . And, please do not forget that it was the very same Erdogan who pronounced the threatening statement, that minarets were the bayonets of Islam!

That precisely Erdogan’s protest is nothing but hypocritical and grotesque becomes obvious from the fact, that Christians in Turkey are neither allowed to gather publicly or in order to worship, nor are they allowed to build churches, a ban which exists in almost all Arabic countries.

The writers of the letters to the editor almost all agree that large mosques and minarets symbolize that oppression and intolerance which comes to the fore everywhere in the Koran and the Shariah laws. Time and again, the writers of the letters mention and comment on the hypocrisy to be found in the protests against the Swiss referendum inasmuch as it is common knowledge that no infidel is allowed even to approach the holy city of Mecca, whereas any Muslim is welcome to enter the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome. If a Muslim in Saudi Arabia converts to Christianity, he or she is being decapitated; and how come that in the year 2003 1,5 million Christians lived in Iraq, whereas today the number is reduced with 50%? Peaceful coexistence? And just think of the persecution of Christians in Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. Everybody is welcome to check these and additional statistics on the website of the international human rights organization Open Doors: www.od.org.

The Coptic Christians in ever so western Egypt are being persecuted and killed without the same mass media protesting which otherwise have been beside themselves with indignation in connection with the Swiss referendum. These are the same media which also wished to curtail our western, democratic freedom of speech in connection with the courageous publication of the satirical Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, but apparently did not mind that the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard had to go underground and that the head of the Danish People’s Party, Pia Kjærsgaard, because of her support day and night must be protected by two bodyguards.

Furthermore, it has not escaped the attention of the international press that precisely Pia Kjærsgaard has suggested that a similar referendum about the building of mosques and minarets should also be held in Denmark, a suggestion that is also expressed by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders and various politicians in Italy. Thus, the highly respected Austrian newspaper Die Presse with the headline: “The Danish right wing exults and also demands a referendum” writes: “Also Pia Kjærsgaard’s party which is strongly critical of Islam and which guarantees the majority of the centre-liberal coalition government [in Denmark] has subscribed to the fight against the building of mosques”. And the newspaper’s correspondent, who apparently is unable to distinguish between Islam in general and its militant groups, cannot let go of labelling The Danish People’s Party as a right wing party.

It is certainly not the first time and will not be the last that this old cliché about a right wing orientation is being dug out, simply because The Danish People’s Party — once again — represents the sentiments of the general Danish public, its fear of Muslim intolerance and of militant Islamists. To the Danish as well as to the Swiss population, Muslim aggression is symbolized through the building of large mosques and minarets. However, as the same correspondent states with relief: “Of course, she [i.e. Pia Kjærsgaard] will not get anywhere with her demand for a referendum”.

But let us see. For according to the recent Megafon-poll, done by the Danish television programme TV2 and the daily newspaper Politiken, 51% of the Danish population is against minarets in Denmark. So, who, after all, is it who in our democratic Denmark, listens to the voice of the people?

— Hat tip: TB

[Return to headlines]

EU’s Secretive Anti-Piracy Talks Cause Concern

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — EU officials are working on a global intellectual property treaty which could rewrite national legislation on copyright but which is being put together in a secretive process which helps to “launder” policies that may be too unpopular to pass through normal democratic channels.

The EU and industrialised countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and Japan have since last spring been negotiating a trade pact known as Acta — the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement.

The treaty has been presented first and foremost as a way of tackling physical forgeries, such as designer handbags or or pirated DVDs. But leaks reveal that it will also have a much broader scope, including the sensitive issue of intellectual copyright on the internet.

A document from the latest round of Acta talks, held in South Korea last month, reveals that the US is pushing for a global version of the so-called “three strikes law” — a measure by which people who illegally download music or films receive warnings but ultimately face having their internet cut off and going to jail.

The leaked text, a three-page European Commission memo written by an unnamed official, purports to summarise a private briefing given by US trade officials.

“The US wants Acta to force ISPs [Internet Service Providers] to put in place policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP [Intellectual Property] infringing content (for example clauses in customers’ contracts allowing a graduated response),” it says. The term “graduated response” is jargon for the three strikes law.

France recently passed a three-strikes bill, with the UK, Spain and the Netherlands reportedly working on their own versions. But the controversial legislation is highly unpopular, with some critics saying access to information on the internet is a basic human right.

The Acta talks are taking place outside all existing multilateral treaty-making bodies such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the UN or the WTO. They are also taking place in extreme secrecy, making it impossible for elected politicians, media or the public to get access to official documents.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

France: Sarkozy Weighs in on National Identity Debate

PARIS — Faced with swelling unease over the place of Muslim immigrants in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy called for tolerance among native French people Tuesday but warned that arriving Muslims must embrace Europe’s historical values and avoid “ostentation or provocation” in the practice of their religion.

Sarkozy’s appeal, in a statement published by Le Monde newspaper, reflected concern that a government-sponsored debate on France’s “national identity,” sharpened by a recent referendum banning minarets in neighboring Switzerland, seemed to be contributing to expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment and generating resentment among Muslim citizens and immigrants.

“I address my Muslim countrymen to say I will do everything to make them feel they are citizens like any other, enjoying the same rights as all the others to live their faith and practice their religion with the same liberty and dignity,” he said. “I will combat any form of discrimination.

“But I also want to tell them,” he continued, “that in our country, where Christian civilization has left such a deep trace, where republican values are an integral part of our national identity, everything that could be taken as a challenge to this heritage and its values would condemn to failure the necessary inauguration of a French Islam.”

Sarkozy said he understood the fears of many native French at the growing visibility of Muslims, estimated at well more than 5 million, Europe’s largest community. That, he said, is what led him to propose the national identity debate managed by Eric Besson, his minister of immigration, integration and national identity.

“This muffled threat felt by so many people in our old European nations, rightly or wrongly, weighs on their identity,” he added. “We must all speak about this together, out of fear that, if it is kept hidden, this sentiment could end up nourishing a terrible rancor.”

Dismissing criticisms from leftist figures and some members of his own government, Sarkozy said the Swiss decision Nov. 29 to ban construction of minarets arose from a democratic vote and, instead of outrage, should inspire reflection on the resentment felt by Swiss people and many other Europeans, “including the French people.”

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had said he was “a little scandalized” by the Swiss vote and suggested it “means a religion is being oppressed.” Intellectuals in the Paris chattering class took their criticism further, suggesting the Swiss vote betrayed bigotry and isolationism.

But Xavier Bertrand, head of Sarkozy’s political coalition, the Union for a Popular Movement, seemed to indicate a referendum like the one in Switzerland would be a good idea for France. In an appearance before reporters, he questioned whether French Muslims “necessarily need” minarets for their mosques.

Bertrand’s stand, and Sarkozy’s entry into the controversy Tuesday, were seen against the background of regional assembly elections in March, in which the governing coalition is seeking to make inroads into provincial Socialist Party strongholds. The extreme right National Front, which could drain off Sarkozy votes, openly applauded the Swiss decision and said minarets — towers beside mosques from which the faithful are called to prayer — should also be banned here.

Along the same lines, members of parliament from Sarkozy’s coalition introduced a bill this month giving mayors the authority to ban foreign flags at city hall marriages, aiming at Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian flags that often accompany the weddings of immigrants’ children. Similarly, a mayor from the government majority complained recently that, in his city hall, weddings more often accompanied by Arab-style ululating than polite applause.

While urging Muslims to avoid ostentation and provocation, Sarkozy avoided specific comment on another test soon to be poised for his government, this one over whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils that cover their entire faces. Although only a small number do so, a parliamentary commission has held three months of hearings and is expected to issue a report next month proposing legal restrictions.

The president has said publicly “the burqa has no place in France,” placing his opposition in the context of women’s rights. But since then, a number of political leaders have suggested the French constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, would make legislating on the question difficult no matter what the angle of attack.

— Hat tip: TB

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France: UMP: No Foreign Flags During Weddings

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, DECEMBER 8 — Foreign flags will no longer be allowed at foreign weddings at municipal halls in France, including the Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian colours: this was the proposal set forth in France by a group of about 100 UMP delegates, the right-wing party of President Nicolas Sarkozy, which delivered a draft law to Parliament that intends to allow mayors to “ban participants at wedding from flying flags or symbols of countries other than France.” The proposal, explained French newspaper, Le Monde, has been set forth to strike at a tradition of Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans, who during the weddings of their friends and relatives, parade about in their cars waving large flags with the colours of their countries of origin. Drawing a parallel with the boos received by the French national anthem at football matches, UMP representatives believe that showing foreign colours in French town halls represents “a display of a lack of respect for France’s identity.” They specified that these practices, widespread mainly in the south of France, “disturb the national conscience”. “The guests arrive on board expensive convertibles. They do not respect the driving code, they drive with eastern music playing loudly, waving Algerian or Moroccan flags. They go back and forth while speeding, and inside the town halls they shout and wave flags,” complained UMP rep, Elie Aboud, one of the 100 signees of the proposal. A plan that was anticipated at a local level in several right-wing controlled municipalities in the south of France, which have imposed a new code for proper conduct at wedding ceremonies. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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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.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Italy: ‘Bourbons’ Bid to Boost South

Dynasty fans to open ‘parliament’ in Naples

(ANSA) — Naples, December 8 — Admirers of the Bourbon dynasty that once held sway across southern Italy are bidding to restore its former glory with a ‘parliament’ in Naples.

The ‘Neo-Bourbonic’ Movement has declared its intention to move into Naples’ famous Maschio Angioino castle, once home to the Bourbon kings, on January 16. Their resurrected government will appoint ministers for interior and foreign affairs as well as equal opportunites between northern and southern Italy, the movement’s leader, Gennaro De Crescenzo, told Oggi magazine.

“We want to publicise our history, stir up rage, and turn it into pride,” said De Crescenzo, whose group say they have tapped into longstanding southern resentment about the way unification was imposed on the South.

Although it is unclear whether Naples city council have been informed, De Crescenzo said he was determined to open the parliament to mark 150 years since the abdication of the last Bourbon king, Franceso III.

Italy is already gearing up to celebrate in 2011 the 150th anniversary of the end of the Risorgimento, the tumultuous and often bloody movement that led to Italy’s rebirth as a single state in 1861.

Not everyone was happy with unification and some people in both northern and southern Italy think Italy should have stayed divided.

Both the Northern League, now a major political player, and the tiny Neo-Bourbons, who have been dismissed as a band of nostalgic dreamers, have played on anti-Rome sentiment.

But De Crescenzo told Oggi his group’s initiative could not be dismissed as mere “folklore”.

He stressed the members of the parliament would not be politicians but “professional people, the self-employed, lawyers, technical experts, university professors and businessmen”. “We will train a new ruling class. We will analyse laws and measures to assess their impact on the South,” he said, referring to legislation from the Italian parliament in Rome.

The Bourbon equivalent in the 13th Angevin castle will also have ministers for the economy, police, cultural heritage and communications, he said. But there would be no attempt to consult with Italy’s established political groupings, De Crescenzo said. “We have no links to parties. The League tried, because of certain common issues, but then we didn’t see them again”.

Declaring that the assembly would help the South reclaim its “dignity”, De Crescenzo stressed that while the Northern League’s purported homeland of ‘Padania’ never historically existed, “the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was a united State for 13 centuries”.

The Bourbons grew out of the French Capetian dynasty, founded in 987 AD, and eventually became Europe’s biggest royal house, holding sway in France, Spain, Italy and Luxembourg.

Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’ of France, was perhaps its most famous member.

The Spanish branch ruled southern Italy as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1734 till 1806, when Napoleon’s troops were forced out of Naples, and from 1815, when the French emperor was defeated at Waterloo, until 1860.

The largest of Italy’s pre-unification states, it is more commonly called the Kingdom of Naples.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Italy: Minister’s Dig at Archbishop

League minister’s remarks continue to draw criticism

(ANSA) — Milan, December 8 — Remarks by a cabinet minister suggesting the Archbishop of Milan Dionigi Tettamanzi should show more support for Christian Italians and less for foreigners and Islam continued to draw comment on Tuesday.

Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano voiced implicit support for Tettamanzi after the attack by Legislative Simplification Minister Roberto Calderoli, who criticized the archbishop’s condemnation of the eviction of 250 Roma gypsies from their camp. Both opposition and majority politicians also expressed concern over the remarks by the rightwing Northern League minister, which appeared in Monday’s edition of national daily La Repubblica.

Visiting Milan on Tuesday, Bertone urged “respect” for Tettamanzi, who he said was a “great pastor of the Church and its people”.

Napolitano, also in Milan for celebrations marking the feast day of the city’s patron saint Ambrose, said the Church and its ministers had an absolute right to comment on social issues. “The Church’s commitment to social issues is essential to Italian society,” he said.

Program Implementation Minister Gianfranco Rotondi, a member of a different government party to Calderoli, expressed similar views to the president. “A secular state means giving the Church the right to have its say,” said Rotondi of the People of Freedom party. Senator Roberto Di Giovan Paolo of the largest opposition group, the centre-left Democratic Party, criticized Calderoli’s Northern League party more generally. “The League claims to defend religious values but every day it attacks the Church’s social doctrine,” said Di Giovan Paolo, who chairs the Senate European Affairs Committee.

The Senate whip of the centrist Christian UDC party, Gianpiero D’Alia, said the “Northern League’s ‘religious teaching’ should be met with laughter and catcalls”.

The House whip of the small opposition Italy of Values party referred to a controversial proposal by the Northern League following a Swiss referendum outlawing the construction of new Muslim minarets.

“Am I mistaken or didn’t the League suggest adding a crucifix to the Italian flag a few days ago?” asked Massimo Donadi. “This day-on/day-off Christianity merely demonstrates the League’s lack of responsibility and dangerous efforts to play to the crowd”.

The row was sparked by an editorial that appeared in the Northern League daily La Padania on Sunday, which asked whether Tettamanzi was “the bishop of Milan or the imam of Milan”, in reference to his past defence of Islam. Defending the editorial, which also criticized the archbishop’s condemnation of the recent gypsy eviction, Calderoli said Tettamanzi should pay more attention to Christian problems. “Why has he never spoken out in defence of the cross?” asked Calderoli, referring to a recent European Court of Human Rights ruling ordering the removal of crucifixes from Italian classrooms. “Why does he only defend the Roma? Denying that people of a certain ethnic background carry out certain types of activity is refusing to recognize reality”. Monday’s attack was not Calderoli’s first on Tettamanzi, whom he described as a “secret communist” a year ago after the archbishop asked that Muslims be given prayer spaces in Milan.

There have also been series of disagreements between the Catholic Church and the Northern League more generally in recent months, usually over the issue of immigration or Islam. In August, League leader Umberto Bossi said the Vatican should “open its doors” to illegal immigrants if it didn’t like a controversial government ‘push-back’ policy, under which migrant boats intercepted at sea are forcibly escorted back to Libya.

In November, the League and the Church were at odds again, this time over the outcome of the Swiss minaret referendum, which the League greeted with delight and calls for a similar vote in Italy. The head of the Vatican’s Council for Migrants, Monsignor Antonio Maria Veglio expressed “deep concern” at the League’s response, while an annoyed editorial in Catholic daily Avvenire urged readers to give the proposal “short thrift” and accused the party of exploiting religion for its own purposes.

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Switzerland Stays Neutral, Vetoes Israel

From Hebrew: Israel wanted to join the interest group which included Switzerland in COP15, but Switzerland vetoed the idea.

— Hat tip: Esther

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UK: Christian Hotel Manager in Dock ‘After Asking Hijab-Wearing Guest If She Was a Terrorist’ In Breakfast-Time Religion Row

A Muslim convert was reduced to tears after being asked by a Christian hotelier if she was a terrorist and a murderer because she was wearing traditional Islamic dress, a court heard today.

Ericka Tazi, 60, said wearing the hijab ‘triggered something’ in hotel proprietor Benjamin Vogelenzang and his wife Sharon.

She told Liverpool Magistrates’ Court she was subjected to a 60-minute tirade of abuse by the couple because on March 20, the final day of her stay with them, she decided to wear a hijab head covering and gown.

Mrs Tazi, who converted to Islam 18 months ago, spent a month at The Bounty House Hotel on Church Avenue, Aintree, Liverpool, while attending a four-week pain management course at The Walton Centre at Aintree Hospital.

The couple deny a charge, made under the 1986 Public Order Act, of using threatening, abusive or insulting words which were religiously aggravated.

Prosecutor Anya Horwood told the court that Benjamin Vogelenzang, 53, called the prophet Mohammed a ‘warlord’ and likened him to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.

He and his 54-year-old wife told Mrs Tazi, who has two grown up sons, that her Islamic dress represented ‘oppression’ and was a form of ‘bondage’, the court heard.

Ms Horwood said that a row flared when Mrs Tazi, who had worn European dress during her four-week stay, came down on the morning she was due to leave dressed in traditional Islamic dress.

She said Benjamin Vogelenzang asked her: “Why are you wearing those clothes’ and began laughing at her. She explained to him it was important to her.

‘He started to discuss his faith, he is a Christian, and the role Jesus played in both their religions.

‘He became angry and was shouting at her and at that point Sharon Vogelenzang joined in. She was saying that the clothes she was wearing represented oppression and bondage.’

Ms Horwood said Mrs Tazi walked into the dining room but was followed by Benjamin Vogelenzang who was like ‘a whirling dervish’.

She said: ‘He was agitated and upset and began repeatedly asking her was she a terrorist, was she a murderer like Mohammed?

‘Ericka Tazi kept asking him to stop and he became more agitated, saying Mohammed was a warlord and likened Mohammed to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.

‘She asked the couple to stop insulting her. She tried to explain again how important her faith was.

‘At that point Sharon Vogelenzang pointed her finger in her face, shouting, saying she had provoked this because of wearing the gown.’

Mrs Tazi came to court dressed in a hijab and gown and using a walking stick. She swore an oath on the Koran and kissed the holy book before giving evidence to the prosecutor.

She told the court that dressing in the hijab seemed to ‘trigger something’ in Benjamin Vogelenzang and that she had found the episode extremely traumatic.

Mrs Tazi, who suffers from fibromyalgia and lives with chronic pain, said: ‘He just couldn’t accept the way I was dressed.

‘He was laughing at me and it seemed to trigger something, I don’t know why, I kept saying ‘I’m Ericka’, it was my outfit that had triggered him.

‘He asked me if I was a murderer, if I was a terrorist. I’m a 60-year-old disabled woman, I couldn’t understand where it was coming from, it was shocking to me.’

Mrs Tazi said the couple told her that her dress was bondage. She told the court: ‘I was on this journey of being a convert, it was my decision, I couldn’t be in bondage if it was my decision.’

She said: ‘He followed me into the dining room and he was jumping up and down. I’ve never seen anything like it, his arms were flailing.

‘Sharon came running in, she was shouting ‘you started this with your dress’ and she was pointing in my face and I was frightened at this stage. I was absolutely traumatised by it all.

‘I kept putting my hand up saying ‘please stop it’. I just wanted to get out. If I had had the legs to run I would have run out of that hotel.’

She said she told the couple she had been a Christian and that “I’ve always had God in my life” and had once been a member of the Catholic Legion of Mary.

Mrs Tazi contacted the police that night. When questioned by detectives the couple said they had been sharing their ‘faith views’.

The court heard that Sharon Vogelenzang told officers she did not mean to be disrespectful when she referred to the hijab as bondage.

She said she was entitled to respond when her faith was challenged and that she was merely expressing her opinions.

Benjamin Vogelenzang said he had referred to historical figures, but not Mohammed, and had not meant to be offensive or insulting.

Mrs Tazi told Hugh Tomlinson QC, for the defence, that she was not trying to make a statement by wearing the hijab and denied having robust arguments about religion with other guests during her stay.

She told him her father and grandfather had fought in both world wars and said: ‘I love my country, I thought I had the freedom to wear what I wanted to wear.’

Mrs Tazi said she had thought the Vogelenzangs were a ‘genteel couple’ until the incident.

She said she tried ‘many religions’ before converting to Islam when she married.

Mrs Tazi said: ‘My journey has been a long, long journey, it was a very difficult decision to wear these clothes… I’m a normal Warrington girl who liked the Beatles.

‘I had a different life before and I’m proud. My hijab is part of my faith, it’s in the Koran.’

Supporters of the Vogelenzangs from The Christian Institute demonstrated outside the court this morning by singing songs.

— Hat tip: 4symbols

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UK: Honour Crime Up by 40% Due to Rising Fundamentalismby Rebecca Camber

Police have seen ‘honour’ crime surge by 40 per cent due to rising fundamentalism, new figures show.

Honour-based violence, including crimes like murder, rape and kidnap has rocketed in London during the past year.

Reported instances of intimidation and attempts at forced marriage have also increased by 60 per cent.

A report into the scale of the problem by Scotland Yard found there were 161 honour-based incidents recorded in 2007-8, of which 93 were criminal offences.

But in 2008/9 the number of incidents had risen to 256, with 132 being criminal offences.

The latest figures indicate that the trend is continuing, with 211 incidents reported in the last six months until October, of which 129 were offences — more than double the number in the same period last year.

Police define honour crimes as offences motivated by a desire to protect the honour of a family or community.

Diana Nammi, of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, said the group is now dealing with four times more complaints relating to honour than two years ago.

She said: ‘More women are coming forward. They are becoming more aware of their rights in the UK, that there is help available and they feel confident enough to report matters to the police.

‘But I also think cases and violence are increasing.

‘One reason is the rise in fundamentalism. The problem is increasing in communities around the UK.

‘We are seeing a rise not only in honour killings, but also in female genital mutilation and polygamy.’

She added: ‘The rise in Sharia courts is another indication of more fundamental beliefs.

‘There must be more support from the Government to organisations who are working to combat this problem.’

The Metropolitan Police also records incidents where no offences has been committed, such as complaints by women that they are under pressure to enter into forced marriages.

Recently there have been a series of horrific attacks linked to ‘honour’.

Detectives are still investigating the death of mother-of-two Geeta Aulakh, 28, who was hacked to death with a sword in Greenford, north west London last month.

An 18-year-old student has been charged with her murder.

In July, a 24-year-old Asian man from Denmark lost part of his tongue and was left blind in one eye when he had acid thrown in his face in Leytonstone.

Police believe he was attacked over his relationship with a married Muslim woman.

Two men are awaiting trial over the assault.

Campaigners believe honour attacks are on the up due to rising fundamentalism in communities around Britain.

Up to 12 people are murdered every year in the name of honour, and police fear a further 500 people are forced into an arranged marriage or attacked.

One of the most high-profile cases was that of Banaz Mahmod who was murdered by members of her own family after falling in love with a man they disapproved of.

The 20-year-old, who had left an arranged marriage and started a relationship with Rhamat Sulemani, 29, was strangled with a bootlace at her home in Surrey in January 2006.

Her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and uncle Ari Mahmod, 50, of Mitcham, were later convicted of the killing after the pair decided she must pay ‘the ultimate price’ for bringing shame on them.

Earlier this year, police were issued with new guidance telling them to assume honour crimes have been committed in more circumstances.

Senior officers anticipated that the move would drive up figures as in many cases only limited information is available or a potential victim refuses to help police.

Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, of the Metropolitan Police, said: ‘The description of this type of crime is misplaced. There is no honour in these crimes.’

Mr Campbell said the Met had improved its intelligence systems to better identify such crimes.

He said: ‘Ten years ago our knowledge was almost absent but we have worked hard and our knowledge has improved substantially.’

— Hat tip: Gaia

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UK: Help, They’re Trying to Kick My Head in: Victim’s Desperate 999 Call as Killers Pounce in the Street

Two drunken teenage thugs stalked and murdered a stranger to steal his mobile phone and the designer boots off his feet.

Simon Ash, 35, was kicked and battered to death while taking a late-night riverside stroll.

He breathlessly dialled 999 as he fled the youths and told the operator they were ‘trying to kick my head in.’

Although he gave his general location, a police patrol failed to find him. Three-and-a-half hours later his body was discovered in a pool of blood by a passer-by.

— Hat tip: JD

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UK: Human Traffickers Sell Sex Slave on Britain’s Busiest Street

Pimps sold a young woman as a sex slave in broad daylight on Britain’s busiest shopping street.

A brothel owner paid just £3,000 for the Lithuanian victim, a woman in her 20s, in the transaction on London’s Oxford Street.

Police surveillance footage shows an Albanian man handing over the cash to two of his countrymen outside Selfridges department store as shoppers pass by, unaware of what is happening.

The helpless woman — guarded by a thug — is forced to watch as the men discuss the deal.

She would have been expected to earn her new ‘owner’ £100,000 a year by having sex up to 25 times a day in a brothel.

On this occasion, the woman was lucky. Police swooped to free her and her traffickers were jailed for a total of 63 years.

The Home Office estimated that in 2003, the most recent figures available, 4,000 women were trafficked into the UK for prostitution.

Police warn that the numbers of Eastern Europeans being trafficked into the UK will grow significantly in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

A rise in so-called ‘vice activity’ has already been detected in the five Olympic boroughs of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Greenwich, to cater for demand from 25,000 construction workers.

A special police squad has been set up to tackle the trafficking. Officers cite the example of a 16-year-old Albanian girl who thought she was coming to London for a romantic weekend with her boyfriend. When they arrived, he handed her over to pimps.

Police released the photo of the woman being trafficked on Oxford Street in a bid to raise awareness of the problem.

Seller number one, Izzet Fejzullahu — an Albanian vice gang member — is pictured selling the girl for £3,000. He was jailed for 14 years at London’s Southwark Crown Court for controlling prostitution.

Seller number two, Albanian Agran Demarku, is seen discussing the deal with the brothel owner. He was sentenced to 18 years, as was his brother, Flamur, who stood guard over the girl.

The buyer, brothel owner Gazmet Turku, was also jailed.

Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin, of the Metropolitan Police Clubs and Vice Unit, said: ‘The man to the left in the picture has £3,000 in cash in his hand, with which he is buying a human being.

‘She is just a commodity to them. She is an item for selling sex.

‘The man is buying the girl for his own brothel from the men to his right, who ran a network of nine brothels. He is simply replenishing his stock, as a shopkeeper would.

‘These women are put into slavery and exploited in the vilest way.’

Detective Superintendent Martin said 25 trafficked women had been rescued by his unit this year.

‘We have had people kidnapped and smuggled into the UK,’ he said. ‘Others came in thinking they were working in bars but were put to work in brothels.

‘Their passports were taken, they were threatened — and some were systematically raped and beaten up.’

— Hat tip: Gaia

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UK: Killer With New ID Who Got Pregnant Behind Bars Wants to Live in Her Old Home

A murderess who became pregnant while a prisoner is to be given a taxpayer-funded change of identity — even though she is returning to live in her family home.

Lisa Healey, who was 15 when she tortured and killed a lonely pensioner, is due to be released on parole later this month after serving 11 years.

She gave birth to a daughter earlier this year after being seduced by an inmate from another open jail, whom she met at a Ministry of Justice forum on prison reform.

Now taxpayers face footing the bill to provide Healey and her child with new identities when the killer is freed.

[…]

In 1998, Healey and a friend, Sarah Davey, 14, murdered Lily Lilley at her home in Failsworth, near Manchester.

The girls befriended the lonely 71-year-old widow and, after being invited in for a cup of tea, tortured her for 48 hours before choking her to death.

They placed her body in a bin and trundled it through the streets before pushing it into a canal.

— Hat tip: JD

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Croatia: 275 Mln Euro in 2010 to Adjust to EU Standards

(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 30 — Croatia has reserved around 275 million euros in its 2010 financial act to support ITS adjustment to EU regulations, the Croatian press announced. The country hopes to become a member of the European Union in 2011. The figure is the highest so far to be used to bring the country’s regulations in line with European standards, and one of the few segments of the Croatian budget where no cuts have been made due to the economic crisis. In 2010 another 200 million will be used to adjust to EU standards.(ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Serbia: EU to Proceed With Trade Accord

Belgrade, 7 Dec. (AKI) — European Union foreign ministers have decided to proceed with an interim trade agreement with Serbia, after noting Belgrade’s cooperation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and implementation of key reforms.

Serbia and the EU signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement in April last year, as a first step towards EU membership, but the agreement was put on hold until Belgrade established full cooperation with the ICTY.

The Netherlands has insisted that Belgrade should arrest the remaining two fugitives wanted by the ICTY, wartime Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, a wartime leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia.

Mladic and Hadzic are still at large, but ICTY chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told the United Nations Security Council that Serbia had made progress in cooperating with the tribunal.

Serbia started implementing the trade agreement in January this year, abolishing or drastically reducing customs taxes for goods imported fro EU countries.

But Monday’s decision, which still has to be approved during an EU summit next week, will open the door to Serbian exports to the EU.

EU ministers, however, cautioned that Serbia should continue its efforts to achieve further “positive results” in cooperation with the ICTY.

Pro-European president Boris Tadic has proclaimed EU membership as his main political goal and vowed Mladic and Hadzic would be arrested as soon as they were found.

The EU abolished visas to citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia last week, and government officials have said that Belgrade might apply for the status of candidate as soon as the trade agreement was unblocked.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Serbia: Surplus of USD 11 Million in Trade With Iran

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 1 — Serbia’s surplus in trade with Iran in the first nine months of this year was USD11 million, but Serbia’s exports in that period fell by 40% and amounted to around USD19 million, the Serbian Chamber of Commerce said, reports BETA news agency. Serbian Chamber of Commerce Deputy President Mihailo Vesovic said at an economic forum between Serbia and the Iranian province of Zanjan that the current line of trade between Serbia and Iran ought to be improved through cooperation between companies and the exchange of technology. He said that difficult inter-banking operations was the only problem in the cooperation between business people in Serbia and Iran and said that he expected this to be resolved by allowing correspondent relations between the two countries’ banks. Zanjan Chamber of Commerce President Ebrahim Jamili said that Iranian companies were interested in establishing joint companies with firms from Serbia. Representatives of 17 companies traveled to Serbia on a three-day visit as part of the Zanjan delegation. Zanjan is located in southwestern Iran on the border with Pakistan.(ANSAmed)

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Serbia: Teen Pregnancy on the Rise, One of Highest in World

(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, DECEMBER 7 — Serbia has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world, reports radio B92. Every year, about 7,000 girls between the age of 15 and 19 get pregnant in Serbia. According to data from the State Center for Family Planning, more than half of teenage pregnancies end in abortions. World Health Organization and UNICEF research shows that there has been a sharp increase in sexually transmitted diseases among Serbian teenagers as well. About 60% of unplanned teen pregnancies registered at the student polyclinic end in abortions. Less than 10% of young women ask a gynecologist for help when they notice a problem, and most hope that the infection will go away by itself in time or take drugs to combat the infections without consulting a doctor, which often worsens the situation. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Transport: Euromed Airspace, 4 Bln Euros Over 25 Years

(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 26 — The creation of the Euro-Med Common Aviation Area (EMCAA), the common airspace between EU and ten Mediterranean countries, will have a total cost of 120 million euros in the first five years. Whilst the advantages, in economic terms and over a period of 25 years, total some 4 billion euros for the ten countries. This is what has emerged from the assessment of the Euro-Med Aviation project, which focuses on promoting an EU common airspace with Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey. The project is financed by the EU through the Euro-Med Transport programme. According to Robert Piers, team leader of the Euro-Med Aviation assessment, after the common airspace has been set up, which the study expects to be in 2010, the annual expenditure will become approximately 15 — 18 million per year. Meanwhile the benefits overtake the costs by a long way. Amongst the most important effects, an impact in terms of opening the market, explains Piers, with profits of some 1 billion for the ten countries. There are also effects on the safety of air travel, on the management of airport traffic, with fewer delays expected, as well as positive aspects for the environment. All in all, for Piers the estimate of benefits is 4 billion euros, which also include the advantages in the reduction of ticket prices for consumers, the growth of margins for airlines and greater employment in the sector. Considering that not all countries involved are at the same level and will have to set up bilateral and multilateral agreements, one or two years delay, he concluded, compared to other countries start, does not change the conclusions of the analysis. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Algeria-Italy: Frigate Aliseo at Port of Algiers

(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, DECEMBER 7 — The Italian frigate Aliseo, arrived yesterday evening at the port of Algiers, where it will remain until December 9. The visit by the Aliseo, under command of the Captain Claudio Confalonieri, forms part of “the reinforcement of bilateral cooperation between the naval forces of Italy and Algeria” explained the spokesperson for the Algerian Navy Command, Mohamed Kaddour, as cited by APS. In service since 1983, the frigate, a missile-carrying craft of the Maestrale Class with a crew of 230, is visiting the port for its fourth time. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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First Swine Flu Deaths Reported in Gaza

A baby and two women have died in Hamas-run Gaza after contracting swine flu, the first deaths from the virus in the densely populated Palestinian territory, officials said on Monday.

Hassan Khalaf, a spokesman for the Hamas health ministry, declined to give details, but said there were four new cases on Monday of people infected with the disease in the Gaza Strip.

Khalaf added, however, that the condition of three of five people who had been confirmed on Sunday as having the virus was improving.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Gaza Border: Israeli Killed by Soldiers

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 7 — An Israeli civilian (about 30 years old) was killed last night at the Erez border crossing while trying to get over the border fence in what seems to have been an attempt to get into the Gaza Strip. After having repeatedly ordered him to stop, the Israeli border guards shot at the man’s legs “since they believed he might have been a Palestinian terrorist”. However, the man was hit in an artery and died of blood loss shortly thereafter. Reports say that he seemed to have been suffering from a mental imbalance. In a separate incident last night, a member of the elite navy forces Shayetet 13 was killed in Ashdod (south of Tel Aviv). The young man was involved in a diving drill when he suddenly lost consciousness, and all attempts to save his life proved in vain. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Govt Team to Oversee Settlement Freeze

(ANSA) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 7 — An Israeli government commission led by two ministers will be supervising the 10-month freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank recently announced by Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu. They will be overseeing its implementation as well as possible adjustments in response to settlers’ needs, according to reports on a government meeting. The commission will be coordinated by Defence Minister Ehud Barak (leader of the Labour party section in the government and strong supporter of the freeze), and the minister without a portfolio Benny Begin (representative of the right-wing majority in the government and figure connected with settlement circles). The setting up of the team and its constituent parts have been interpreted by the media as an attempt to calm down settlers without withdrawing the moratorium. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Israel-Italy: Air-Force Commander: Strong Ties

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 7 — A four-day visit to Israel has been concluded by the Commander of Italy’s Air Forces, General Daniele Tei, dedicated to exchanges of information with Israeli counterparts and consolidation of the strong ties between the two countries’ air forces. Reports of the meeting have been supplied to ANSA by an Israeli military spokesperson. During his mission, Tei visited four bases, accompanied by the commander of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), General Ido Nechushtan, and held talks with high-ranking officials and pilots. He went on to meet the head of the chiefs of staff of Israeli defence, General Gaby Ashkenazi, to discuss new projects for bilateral and multilateral military cooperation once more and flew over the border between Israel and the Palestinian territories in a helicopter to review aspects of the security conditions in the area. There was also the customary visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. . (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Oldest Church in the World May Turn Prison Into Tourist Attraction

Tel Aviv — It’s believed to be the oldest church in the world, and because of it, an Israeli prison may become a tourist site. The prison is located at Megiddo, close to the Armageddon of the New Testament book of Revelation. It houses both common criminals and prisoners labeled “security detainees”.

The church was unearthed four years ago by Israeli archeologists, aided by prisoners, who, in accordance with Israeli law concerning building work at sites known for archeological pickings, were carrying out excavation work prior to the construction of

a new wing at the prison.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Peres Launches Own Youtube Channel

(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, DECEMBER 7 — The Israeli head of state, Shimon Peres (86), will tomorrow launch his own YouTube channel in the presence of Chad Hurley, one of the founders of the website, who has come to Jerusalem for the occasion. Peres’ office has made it known that the intention is to release a selection of his speeches and activities, as well as to relay press conferences he attends via internet. As his office also divulges, the head of state believes that this will contribute to peace in the region as well as to inter-religious dialogue. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Religious Law Should Govern Israel: Justice Minister

AFP — Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman said on Tuesday that he intends to have the state gradually adopt Jewish religious law.

“Step by step we will impose on Israeli citizens the laws of the Torah and we will make the laws of Halacha (Jewish religious law) the governing law of the state,” Neeman said in comments aired on public radio.

“We have to impose the heritage of our forefathers on the nation. The Torah has all the answers to the questions that concern us,” he said.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Swine Flu: Gaza, 10,000 Vaccines From Israel After 1st Deaths

(ANSAmed) — JERUSALEM, DECEMBER 8 — Israeli health authorities announced today the desire to send 10,000 vaccines against Swine Flu to the Gaza Strip, the portion of the Palestinian territory governed by the radical-Islamist party Hamas which has been under embargo and isolation for the last 2 years. The decision was made after, in recent days, the Hamas government in Gaza reported the first three fatal cases of the disease among the population of the Strip (a newborn and two women). Until now there have been hundreds of cases reported in the Gaza Strip, while in the West Bank (the other part of the Palestinian territory, under the authority of the PA and moderate president Mahmoud Abbas) the number has reached 1,300 cases. In recent days the same PNA and some Palestinian humanitarian organisations have accused Hamas of limiting the number of permits for the people of the Gaza Strip who ask to leave to seek medical treatment in Israel or the West Bank. Greatly devastated by the war last winter, the Gaza Strip has strict internal controls, as well as the block imposed on its borders by Israel since Hamas came to power (2007), with rare and partial exceptions regarding humanitarian or international aid. (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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“From Teheran to Riyadh, This is How We Are Discriminated Against”

A conversation with Hossein Alizadeh

Turkey and the Lebanon are the countries most tolerant of gays; Iran and Saudi Arabia are the most homophobic. The picture painted by Hossein Alizadeh, a young Iranian who is the spokesman for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHTC) with headquarters in New York, is that of a patchy Middle East, where on the one hand embryonic gay movements appear while on the other sentences against sodomy are ferociously applied.

An interview by Ernesto Pagano.

Tell us about this organisation. When was it founded and what are its objectives?

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission was founded in 1990. Its mission is the emancipation of human rights for everyone, in all countries, to put an end to sexual discrimination, gender identity or restrictions to the expression of one’s sexuality.

What are the most important problems faced by homosexuals in the Middle East?

Sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular are considered taboo by people and by the media…

— Hat tip: Insubria

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“Turkey Will Not Surrender to European Countries Just to Become an EU Member, “ Bagis Says

Turkey’s Chief EU Negotiator said that Turkey would not surrender and commit to all demands of each and every member countries of the EU just because it wanted to become a part of the club.

In an interview on BBC show “Hardtalk”, Bagis said that Turkey’s membership was as important to EU as it was to Turkey.

“This is a relationship based on a win-win situation and either we all win or we have to look at the situation,” Bagis said.

Bagis said Turkey was a proud nation and that the European Union needed Turkey just as much as Turkey needs the EU.

“Europe has to make big decisions,” he said. “At a time when 70 percent of all the energy resources Europe needs, are either to the south or to the north or to the east of Turkey.”

Bagis went on saying, “at a time when Turkey is a bridge to these energy resources, a bridge to new consumers, a bridge to 1.5 billion consumers within 3 hours flying, a bridge to all the raw materials and a barrier to illegal immigration, a barrier to narcotics and terrorism, a partner in solving climate problem, a partner in solving the economic crisis with a median age of 28, having the fourth largest work force, can Europe afford to lose Turkey?”

Asked about recent comments that Turkey shifted its axis to the East, Bagis said Turkey had always been a bridge between the East and the West.

Stating that a bridge needed two pillars, Bagis said Turkey had neglected one of these pillars for years. He said Turkey was now trying to make them both stronger.

“Our relations with Iran, Syria, Armenia and Georgia are not alternative to relations with Europe, but they are complementary,” he said.

Bagis also reaffirmed Turkish government’s commitment to negotiations and membership to EU and added that “Turkish government would continue negotiations as long as it is fair and impartial.”

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Ahmadinejad Reportedly Claims U.S. Is Blocking Return of Mankind’s Savior

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the United States is attempting to thwart the return of mankind’s savior, according to reports from Al Arabiya, a television news station based in Dubai.

Ahmadinejad reportedly claims he has documented evidence that the U.S. is blocking the return of Mahdi, the Imam believed by Muslims to be the savior.

“We have documented proof that they believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world,” Ahmadinejad said during a speech on Monday, according to Al Arabiya.

“They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

Ahmadinejad continued the rant by claiming there have been plots by both the West as well as countries in the East to wipe out his country, according to Iranian news Web site Tabak.

“They have planned to annihilate Iran. This is why all policymakers and analysts believe Iran is the true winner in the Middle East,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the site. He also alleged that foreign nations seek to control Iran’s oil and natural resources.

“In Afghanistan, they are caught like an animal in a quagmire. But instead of pulling their troops out to save themselves, they are deploying more soldiers. Even if they stay in Afghanistan for another 50 years they will be forced to leave with disgrace — because this is a historical experience,” Ahmadinejad reportedly said.

“They know themselves that they need Iran in the Middle East, but because of their arrogance they do not want to accept this reality. They are nothing without the Iranian nation and all their rhetoric is because they don’t want to appear weak.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Arab Press Say Swiss Neutrality is Failing

Following Switzerland’s decision to ban new minarets, reaction in the Arab media has ranged from calls for sanctions to the need for self-critical reflection.

“Shame”, “Holocaust”, “Islamophobia”, “humiliation” — words that have appeared regularly in Arab press since 57.5 per cent of Swiss voters said yes on November 29 to a ban on the construction of minarets.

Most commentators wondered what could have pushed the Swiss to vote as they did, and what the consequences would be for a country that found itself attracting criticism from all sides, including from the United Nations and the European Union.

The Qatari newspaper Al-Raya was amazed at the voting behaviour of a country known for its freedom of speech and democratic principles.

According to the Assabah newspaper in Tunisia, “the stigmatisation of Islam in the West is no longer a question of mere media provocation — from now on it genuinely threatens the Muslim minority”.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi, edited in London, observed: “If Switzerland — known for its neutrality, quality of life and very high levels of education — is foundering with Islamophobia, one can no longer blame certain other European countries which appear sensitive because of unemployment and the financial crisis.”

September 11

“Why do they hate us and what does the minaret ban hide?” asked Al-Dostour in Jordan, for whom the vote reflected the rise of the European far right. It added that this was the result of a campaign against Islam led by Western political authorities and media since September 11, 2001.

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan said the vote was the sign of “European mental regression, a return to the Middle Ages and a desire to eliminate others”.

For a columnist in Egypt’s Al-Ahram, everything being said about creeping Islamicisation and the introduction of sharia law was “pure fantasy”.

The comments of Al-Shourouq in Algeria were hardly more flattering. Under the headline “Four minarets rock Switzerland and tear down its neutrality”, it blamed the Swiss government for allowing the vote to be put to the people. It also placed responsibility on Swiss Muslims, “who failed to unite and speak under one banner and let themselves be distorted”.

Sanctions

Some media called for a boycott of Switzerland or other sanctions. The Palestinian website Dounia Al-Watan demanded rich Arabs withdraw their money from Swiss banks.

Al-Dostour in Egypt drew comparisons between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and pointed out how the hatred of Jews slowly gained ground in Germany, resulting in the Holocaust.

Alam Al-Akhbar, an Arab site in Turkey, invited Muslims to deposit their money in Turkish banks.

In London Al-Sharq Al-Awsat believed there was a connection between the minaret vote and the two Swiss businessmen sentenced to 16 months in prison three days later by a Libyan court for visa irregularities and tax evasion.

Dialogue

Less harsh words were found on the London-based Elaph website, which wondered whether the Swiss vote was not ultimately linked to the poor image offered to the West by Muslims in Western countries.

Similarly Al-Ittihad, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, said one shouldn’t “insult” a democratic and sovereign country which was free to adopt whatever measures it deemed necessary.

It added: “Maybe [the Swiss voted like that] because they fear for their Christianity?”

The Moroccan daily Al-Alam asked whether the vote didn’t throw back into question the issue of interreligious dialogue — precisely what Al-Watan in Kuwait was calling for, suggesting conferences to fight Islamophobia.

The appeal for dialogue was also made on IslamOnline, a moderate site that recognises a serious crisis between the West and Muslims.

The problem, it said, “is the absence of a reasonable voice … it falls to Arabs and Muslims to be responsible for preventing problems and protecting their beliefs and customs”.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Iranian Nuclear Scientist Abducted by US: FM

AFP — Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Tuesday accused the United States of abducting its nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri who went missing in Saudi Arabia earlier this year.

“Based on existing pieces of evidence that we have at our disposal the Americans had a role in Mr. Amiri’s abduction,” Mottaki said at a press conference in Farsi which was translated into English by Press TV channel.

“The Americans did abduct him. Therefore we expect the American government to return him.”

— Hat tip: Esther

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Kuwait: Imam Jailed for Collecting Al-Qaeda Money

Kuwait City, 7 Dec. (AKI) — A court in the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait has sentenced a prominent local imam to seven years in jail after he was found guilty of having collected money to help fund the Al-Qaeda terror network.

According to the local daily al-Jarida, the unnamed imam, preached at the al-Hamdi mosque and apparently asked the faithful for donations to build a second mosque.

However, the news report said that the money was instead diverted to two other accomplices who were due to travel to Pakistan for training at an alleged Al-Qaeda camp.

— Hat tip: Esther

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NASA to Launch Space Education Program for Arab Youth

AFP — NASA has teamed up with the Dubai-based Arab Youth Venture Foundation to provide students from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) the chance to work on NASA missions, the US space agency said Monday.

Under the program, up to 12 engineering students from the UAE will each year join US students to work on a research project at the US space agency’s Ames Research Center in California.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Saudis ‘In a Panic Mode’ As Shi’ite Rebels Move North From Yemen

LONDON — Jordan has sent several hundred troops from its special operations forces to help the Saudi military with its many Shi’ite units contain the Yemeni Shi’ite rebellion, which has spread deep into the Arab kingdom.

Western intelligence sources said Jordan’s King Abdullah sent the SOF units to Saudi Arabia in November 2009. The sources said the Jordanian king was acting on an urgent request from his Saudi counterpart for elite soldiers who could hunt for Iranian-backed Shi’ite rebels in both Saudi Arabia and northern Yemen.

“The Saudis are in a panic mode and don’t have the troops or capabilities to stop the Yemeni Shi’ites,” an intelligence source said.

The sources said Riyad’s need for foreign forces stemmed from a refusal by Shi’ite-dominated Saudi units to fight the Believing Youth. They said this has led to the dismantling of several local security units familiar with the Saudi-Yemeni border.

Saudi officials have not confirmed the assertion of the Western intelligence sources. But on Nov. 27, Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled Bin Sultan acknowledged that Yemeni Shi’ite fighters held at least two southern Saudi villages for nearly a month. Later, officials said 15,000 Saudis had been evacuated from their homes.

The sources said Jordan has been the only Arab League state to respond to Saudi appeals for help in fighting the Iranian-backed Believing Youth movement. Believing Youth has been fighting an intermittent war in northern Yemen since 2004, but in November 2009 invaded southern Saudi Arabia and captured several border villages.

“The Saudi air force has been heavily bombing villages inside Yemen, but this has not made a dent in the capabilities of the Shi’ite rebels,” the source said. “They have been well-trained by Iran and Hizbullah and have moved steadily north in Saudi Arabia.”

The Saudi military has focused on trying to impose a blockade on northern Yemen. The Royal Saudi Naval Forces has bolstered its presence with at least four fast attack craft and missile boats and reported the destruction of weapons smuggling ships from neighboring Somalia.

“The infiltrating terrorists intended to attack our nation when they encroached upon our territories and terrorized our peaceful people,” King Abdullah said in an address to his troops. “Undeterred by religion or ethical values, the intruders shed the blood of the people.”

— Hat tip: Henrik

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Saudi Arabia Calls to Boycott Swiss Over Minaret Ban

A number of religious figures in Saudi Arabia called to boycott Switzerland and withdraw all Muslim deposits from bank accounts in the country in protest against the Swiss referendum that banned building new minarets.

The UAE-based newspaper al-Bayan reported that religious moderator Khaled al-Shamrani called for afar-reaching boycott on all good and products originating in Switzerland. He also called upon Muslims to avoid traveling to the country. Religious figure Ahmed al-Hassan called wealthy Muslims to withdraw their deposits from Swiss banks. (Roee Nahmias)

— Hat tip: Esther

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‘Sleeper Cells’ In Lebanon Palestinian Camps: Experts

Despite the relative calm of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps in recent months, experts warn that Islamist groups are still operating within and could strike at any time.

At Ain al-Helweh, the largest of Lebanon’s 12 camps, which is known to harbour extremists and fugitives, small sleeper cells have kept a low profile but could mobilize quickly depending on developments, they say.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Survey: 59% of Muslim Turks Against Allowing Other Religions to Meet Openly, Exchange Ideas

ISTANBUL -Survey finds nearly 40 percent of population has negative view of Christians. More than half of the population of Muslim-majority. Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith, according to a recently issued survey.

Fully 59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas. Fifty-four percent said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Turkey: Pope’s Attacker Wants to Live in Italy After Release

Mehmet Ali Agca is due to be released on 18 January 2010 from Yenikent prison in the Turkish capital Ankara where he is serving a sentence for crimes committed after the papal attack.

Rome, 7 Dec. (AKI) — The Turkish gunman, who tried to kill the late Pope John Paul II in 1981, wants to move to Italy after spending more than 28 years in jail, an Italian daily said on Monday. Mehmet Ali Agca is due to be released on 18 January.

According to a report in La Repubblica, Agca wants to leave Turkey and come to Rome to pray at the tomb of the late pontiff and live here.

Agca shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981. He was a member of the radical right-wing Turkish group, the Grey Wolves and was tried and served almost 20 years of a life sentence in prison in Italy.

“Once freed, I would like to be baptised. I would like to do it in front of media from all over the world, in the Vatican, exactly in front of St. Peter’s Square, the place where I struck Pope Wojtyla (John Paul II),” said Agca in an interview published in May.

After serving almost 20 years of a life sentence in prison in Italy, Agca received an official pardon from former Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 2000 and was deported to Turkey.

He was then jailed at the Yenikent jail in the capital Ankara where he is serving a separate sentence for robbery and murder.

Agca said that he has contacted Dan Brown, author of the best-selling fiction novel The Da Vinci Code, to write a book and there is speculation about television appearances.

He will not be required to do the obligatory military service in Turkey due to what has been called his “anti-social personality”, a Turkish hospital told the Italian newspaper.

Agca converted to Christianity in 2007 and has said he wants to be baptised as a Catholic in Rome.

At first Agca claimed he was commissioned to kill the pontiff by Bulgaria on the orders of the Soviet KGB or intelligence services.

Agca later recanted, but suspicions continued about a Bulgarian connection, involving the secret services of the then Communist bloc that feared the Polish Pope’s influence on the global stage.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

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Turkey Not to Surrender to Some EU States, Says Minister

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, DECEMBER 7 — Turkey’s Chief EU Negotiator said that Turkey would not surrender and commit to all demands of each and every member countries of the EU just because it wanted to become a part of the club. In an interview on BBC show “Hardtalk”, as reported by Anatolia news agency, Bagis said that Turkey’s membership was as important to EU as it was to Turkey. “This is a relationship based on a win-win situation and either we all win or we have to look at the situation,” Bagis said. Bagis said Turkey was a proud nation and that the European Union needed Turkey just as much as Turkey needs the EU. “Europe has to make big decisions,” he said. “At a time when 70 percent of all the energy resources Europe needs, are either to the south or to the north or to the east of Turkey.” Bagis went on saying, “at a time when Turkey is a bridge to these energy resources, a bridge to new consumers, a bridge to 1.5 billion consumers within 3 hours flying, a bridge to all the raw materials and a barrier to illegal immigration, a barrier to narcotics and terrorism, a partner in solving climate problem, a partner in solving the economic crisis with a median age of 28, having the fourth largest work force, can Europe afford to lose Turkey?” Asked about recent comments that Turkey shifted its axis to the East, Bagis said Turkey had always been a bridge between the East and the West. Stating that a bridge needed two pillars, Bagis said Turkey had neglected one of these pillars for years. He said Turkey was now trying to make them both stronger. “Our relations with Iran, Syria, Armenia and Georgia are not alternative to relations with Europe, but they are complementary,” he said. Bagis also reaffirmed Turkish government’s commitment to negotiations and membership to EU and added that “Turkish government would continue negotiations as long as it is fair and impartial.” (ANSAmed).

— Hat tip: Insubria

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Turkey May Ban Kurdish DTP Party

Turkey’s Constitutional Court is considering whether to ban the country’s leading Kurdish party.

Prosecutors accuse the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which holds 21 seats in the 550-member parliament, of supporting Kurdish separatist rebels.

The 11 judges are expected to take days or weeks to reach their verdict.

Tension in the mainly Kurdish south-east of Turkey has risen in recent months despite a government drive to improve ties with the Kurdish minority.

Analysts say if the court decides to close down the DTP, it could derail Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s effort to broaden the rights of Kurdish citizens.

Several predecessors of the DTP have been shut down in the past over links to the separatist PKK, which is outlawed and classed by the US and EU as a terrorist group. But the party’s members have reformed under different names.

Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK launched its armed campaign in 1984. The government’s recent Kurdish initiative is aimed at ending the insurgency.

When eight PKK members handed themselves in at the Turkish border in October, the government and many nationalists were angry that there was a large gathering offering a hero’s welcome, reportedly organised by the DTP.

One of the party’s leaders, Emine Ayna, warned that banning the DTP would damage attempts to end the Kurdish conflict.

It “would lead to a much worse climate than the one in the 80s and 90s” when the PKK insurgency began and reached its peak, she said.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Turkish Soldiers Shot Dead in Ambush

Seven Turkish soldiers have been shot dead after gunmen opened fire on a military unit in northern Turkey, officials have said.

A further four soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place in the town of Resadiye in Tokat province.

There was no immediate indication of who was behind the attack. However, both Kurdish and leftist militants are reported to be active in the area.

Attacks on military bases in the north of the country are, however, rare.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Afghanistan: Taliban Shadow Officials Offer Concrete Alternative

LAGHMAN, AFGHANISTAN — Like nearly all provinces in Afghanistan, this one has two governors.

The first was appointed by President Hamid Karzai and is backed by thousands of U.S. troops. He governs this mountainous eastern Afghan province by day, cutting the ribbons on new development projects and, according to fellow officials with knowledge of his dealings, taking a generous personal cut of the province’s foreign assistance budget.

The second governor was chosen by Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and, hunted by American soldiers, sneaks in only at night. He issues edicts on “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” stationery, plots attacks against government forces and fires any lower-ranking Taliban official tainted by even the whiff of corruption.

As the United States prepares to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bolster Karzai’s beleaguered government, Taliban leaders are quietly pushing ahead with preparations for a moment they believe is inevitable: their return to power. The Taliban has done so by establishing an elaborate shadow government of governors, police chiefs, district administrators and judges that in many cases already has more bearing on the lives of Afghans than the real government.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

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Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 1

Client State. Definition: A country that is dependent on the economic or military support of a larger, more powerful country

Setting the record straight

I think Americans who don’t know anything about Pakistan tend to assume that the worst aspects of the society are rooted in extremist Islam imported from Saudi Arabia. That’s not the case; it’s just that when Wahabism intersected with the maharaja system, a way of life that had been preserved in certain Pakistan regions through various interventions, including the British Raj and U.S. actions during the Cold War, the outcome was perhaps the world’s most toxic society.

Several Americans I’ve heard speak on the topic over the years also wrongly assume the U.S. government first got involved with Pakistan when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. That is incorrect. America was there, at the beginning of Pakistan’s independence. Yet when you know something about the beginning you’ll understand why it’s rarely discussed in the USA.

Pakistan first became a U.S. client state in 1947, shortly after the country came into existence. The U.S. provided $411 million to the government to establish Pakistan’s armed forces.

So it’s a myth, which even many Western leftists believe, that the U.S. ‘sided’ with Pakistan’s military against India because India was on friendly terms with the Soviet Union. That’s not how things got started.

The U.S. chose Pakistan over India to make into a client state because Pakistan’s feudal lords reigned supreme at Independence; that, coupled with Pakistan’s rigid caste system, guaranteed that a military coup could derail any genuine democracy in the country. That made Pakistan’s military, and the country’s defense policy, easy for the U.S. to control.

India was a different story. From Scottish historian William Dalrymple’s clear-eyed eulogy for Benazir Bhutto, which Pakistan’s Chowk literary magazine republished from the U.K. Guardian…

— Hat tip: Pundita

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Germany to Compensate Victims of Afghan Airstrike

BERLIN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) — The German government is considering to compensate the families of Afghan civilians killed in a German-ordered airstrike in September, the German Defense Ministry said on Monday.

The ministry was in contact with a lawyer representing the victims’ families, Defense Ministry spokesman Christian Dienst told a regular press conference in Berlin.

“We have said we will be in touch with him to discuss the demands for compensation. We will look at how this is to be done in concrete terms,” Dienst said.

— Hat tip: Esther

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India: Islamic Experts: No to the Political Exploitation of the Ayodhya Mosque

Asgar Ali Engineer doubts that the parliamentary debate on the allegations against BJP leaders will bring any results . He invites Muslims and Hindus not to follow “aggressive and ambitious ringleaders “ and work for education, development and secularism..

Mumbai (AsiaNews) — The parliamentary debate on the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya and on those responsible for massacres is in danger of being politically manipulated for the benefit of ambitious party leaders, without helping to understand the real problems between Hindu and Muslim communities or safeguarding the secular nature of the country. Speaking to AsiaNews Muslim intellectual Asgar Ali Engineer, Chairman of the Center for Study of Society and Secularism, comments on the Liberhan report into the Hindu extremists attack on the mosque of Babar, or Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 ( photo).

— Hat tip: Esther

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India: Over 1,500 Muslims Held in City

CHENNAI: On the 17th anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition, more than 1,500 activists from Muslim organisations were arrested when they held protests in different parts of the city on Sunday.

Over 500 activists, including 180 women, of the Tamil Nadu unit of Indian Tauheed Jamaat gathered near a five star hotel in Nungambakkam at 10.50 am and tried to march towards Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s house on Haddows Road.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Philippine, Muslim Rebels Resume Peace Talks

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) — The Philippines resumed stalled peace talks with the country’s largest Muslim rebel group on Tuesday, with the government’s top negotiator expressing optimism of achieving a lasting settlement.

The two-day talks in Kuala Lumpur between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), is also joined by a newly set up International Contact Group made up of Britain, Japan and Turkey.

The stop-start talks brokered by Malaysia since 2001 aim to end a four-decade Muslim insurgency that has killed 120,000 people and scared off potential investors in a region believed to be sitting on huge oil and gas deposits.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Sikhs Strive for Recognition in New Afghanistan

Decades of fighting has almost wiped out the Sikh and Hindu communities in Afghanistan. Most of them fled the country, and those who are left are struggling to find a place in Afghan society.

Sikhs and Hindus have been in Afghanistan for generations, but whereas once they thrived as a community, three decades of fighting has seen their numbers and influence diminish.

Many of them were killed during the civil war of the 1990s, when their houses, shops and properties were seized by powerful warlords.

Later, under the Taliban, they were forced to wear patches, turbans, or yellow veils to identify themselves. Now, President Karzai’s promises to them are also delivering precious little.

— Hat tip: Esther

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China Sentences Uyghur Church Leader to 15 Years

China House Church China has sentenced an Uyghur house church leader to 15 years “criminal detention” on charges of “providing state secrets to overseas organizations”, but his supporters linked the sentence to his Christian activities.

China Aid Association (CAA), an advocacy group with close ties to house churches, said Monday, December 7, that 36-year-old Alimujiang Yimiti received the sentence October 28, but that he his lawyers have filed an appeal.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Al-Qaeda Claims Kidnapping of Four Europeans: TV

A spokesman for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed the kidnappings of a Frenchman and three Spaniards, seized late last month in Mali and Mauritania, in an audio tape released Tuesday by Al-Jazeera television.

“Two units of the valiant mujahedeen managed to kidnap four Europeans in two distinct operations: the first in Mali where Frenchman Pierre Camatte was seized on November 25, and the second in Mauritania where three Spaniards were held on November 29,” spokesman Saleh Abu Mohammad said.

— Hat tip: Esther

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Terrorism: Al-Qaeda Tape Claims Kidnapping of Four Europeans

Nouakchott, 8 Dec. (AKI) — Al-Qaeda’s North African branch on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the kidnapping last month of three Spanish aid workers in Mauritania and a French citizen in Mali. The Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb’s spokesman Salah Abu Muhammad made the announcement in an audio tape aired by Arabic satellite TV network, Al-Jazeera.

Muhammad said the group claimed the abduction of French citizen Pierre Camatte, who was seized in Mali on 25 November, and the kidnapping of three Spanish aid workers on 29 November in Mauritania.

AQIM would soon send a message to the Spanish and French governments stating the group’s demands for the release of the hostages, said Muhammad.

Camatte, 61, is a regular visitor to Mali and leads a non-governmental organisation dedicated to fighting malaria in the region and also manages a hotel, according to reports.

Camatte was kidnapped from Menaka in the Sahel region of northern Mali, more than 1,500 kilometres from the capital, Bamako.

Located close to the border with Niger, the region is plagued by Tuareg rebels, Al-Qaeda militants and traffickers.

The three kidnapped Spanish aid workers, Albert Vilalta, Alicia Gamez, and Roque Pascual, are all employees of the Barcelona-based NGO Accio Solidaria.

They were seized on a road near the northern city of Nouadhibou when their convoy was stopped by masked men who opened fire from their Land Rover. The convoy was bound for the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

Mauritania declared a state of maximum alert after the kidnappings and sent anti-terrorism units to its desert borders to seal off all outlets for the kidnappers. The borders with Mali, Algeria and Morocco were closed.

The Al-Qaeda branch claimed responsibility for killing Briton Edwin Dyer, one of a group of six foreigners kidnapped in the Sahel in May, according to SITE Intelligence, a US-based monitoring group.

The others were all released after ransoms had been paid, according to observers , despite denials from various governments concerned.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Iran Demands Nurses in Bolivia Wear Hijabs (Via NRP)

On Wednesday, November 24, Iranian demands that female nurses don the hijab in response to Iran’s providing $1.2 million for funding of the new El Alto city hospital in Bolivia sparked a national outcry among women’s rights advocates within Bolivia. In an international teleconference in La Paz held between Bolivian President, Evo Morales, and Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to celebrate the hospital’s opening, nurses were shown wearing hijabs as part of their new uniform regulations.

This imposition of political Islamic pseudo-religious attire from another country is causing a rift within Bolivian political ranks. Even though the Morales administration is the profoundly socialist MAS party, the Iranian demand is still seen as an affront on Bolivian cultural integrity especially in a country with a Roman Catholic majority.

— Hat tip: Esther

[Return to headlines]

China Now Australia’s Top Source of Immigrants

China has overtaken the UK and New Zealand as Australia’s biggest source of immigrants, official figures reveal.

The latest government figures show a record 6,350 people arrived from China in the four months to October.

China’s new primacy was due largely to a fall in migration from the UK and New Zealand, as people there opt to hold on to jobs instead of moving to Australia.

Arrivals from the UK were down 28% to 5,800 and the number from New Zealand was down 47% to 4,740.

Diplomatic spats

British migration has also been affected by a cut in the number of skilled workers Australia allows to settle in the country.

Chinese migration, however, is dominated by family reunions and grew by 15% over the same period last year.

New Zealanders do not require visas to migrate to Australia and so the drop in migration from there is a direct response to economic conditions, demographer Graeme Hugo told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The upsurge in Chinese migration comes despite a series of spats this year between Beijing and Canberra.

Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto spurned a bid from Chinese state-owned firm Chinalco in favour of an offer from another Anglo-Australian company — BHP Billiton.

Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu and three Chinese staff were arrested in China on suspicion of industrial espionage.

Deepening the diplomatic chill, Australia allowed high-profile Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer to visit in August.

Since then, both sides have worked to improve ties. A survey of Chinese attitudes to Australia released earlier this month indicated that a majority of respondents agreed Australia has attractive values and a good political system.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

Immigration: Why Import Workers Now?

At last week’s Job Summit, there was talk of a second stimulus package, of tax credits for small businesses that hire new workers, of an infrastructure bank to select national priority pubic-works projects like the Hoover Dam and TVA of yesteryear.

But no one, it seems, advanced the one obvious idea that would have the most immediate and dramatic impact — a moratorium on all immigration into the United States.

Unemployment is at 10 percent, near the post-war high of 1983. Fifteen million Americans are out of work. Ten million more have given up looking or are working fewer hours than they would like.

We have been losing jobs every month for two years.

Why, then, are we still bringing immigrants into the United States at a rate of 125,000 a month to take jobs from fellow Americans and compete with our unemployed for the jobs that open up?

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Iraqis Top of EU List for Asylum in 2008

The EU granted asylum to 16,600 Iraqis last year — by far the largest group, forming 22% of the total, the EU’s statistical office Eurostat says.

Out of 281,120 asylum applications in total across the EU 76,320, or 27%, were successful.

France granted asylum to the largest number (11,500), followed by Germany (10,700) and the UK (10,200).

After Iraqis, the largest groups to get EU asylum were from Somalia (12%), Russia (10%) and Afghanistan (7%).

Greece took in the smallest number — less than 1% of the total.

Most of the Iraqis settled in Germany and Sweden, while Italy took in the largest number of Somalis.

— Hat tip: Sean O’Brian

[Return to headlines]

Thousands of Iraqis Granted Swedish Asylum

Sweden granted protection to 8,700 asylum seekers in 2008, with Iraqis accounting for almost half the total, according to new figures from EU statistics office Eurostat.

Just four EU countries took in more asylum seekers than Sweden: France (11 500), Germany (10,700), the United Kingdom (10,200), and Italy (9,700).

Aside from almost 4,000 Iraqis, Sweden’s other top recipients of asylum status were 1,540 Somalis and 655 Eritreans.

One in five successful asylum seekers across the European Union are Iraqis, the vast majority accepted by Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Some 16,600 Iraqis won the right to settle in the 27-nation bloc in 2008, the Eurostat agency said. At 22 percent, that was far and away the biggest group among 76,300 people considered at risk if they returned to their countries.

Somalia furnished the next largest number, 9,500, followed by 7,400 Russians, 5,000 Afghans and 4,600 people from Eritrea in the Horn of Africa.

Italy was the most welcoming to the Somalis, while Poland was the preferred destination for the Russians.

The figures, published ahead of UN Human Rights Day on Thursday, showed that decisions were made on 209,200 cases, with a third going to appeal.

Two thirds of all successful applicants were taken in by France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Sweden, with Austria and the Netherlands also taking in more than 5,000 applicants each.

— Hat tip: C. Cantoni

[Return to headlines]

Dozens in Congress: Oust Obama’s Porn-Promoter

Homosexual activist Jennings now heading America’s ‘safe schools’ office

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following includes descriptions of adult themes and objectional subject material.

More than four dozen members of Congress have signed a letter to President Obama urging the removal of Kevin Jennings, the pro-homosexual activist appointed to head the nation’s office of safe schools.

The campaign is available online under the website StopJennings.org. The site tells why signers believe Jennings is unfit for the office.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Bolton Slams U.N.’s ‘Adverse Press’ Crackdown

Global organization creating ‘credibility problem’ with decisions

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations’ refusal to allow a WorldNetDaily senior staff writer access to the Copenhagen summit on climate change that started this week is but the latest in a series of clashes between the world organization and media.

The standoff between the U.N.’s Department of Public Information and WND publisher Joseph Farah continues, but Farah confirmed a senior U.N. official has offered to meet with him to “discuss” a “future” relationship.

[…]

Bolton told WND: “Over the years, there have been numerous complaints about U.N. efforts to prevent adverse press coverage. Every time it happens, such as denying access or credentials, the U.N. simply increases its credibility problem.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Copenhagen’s Hidden Agenda: The Multibillion Trade in Carbon Derivatives

Architect of Credit Default Swaps behind the Development of “Carbon Derivatives”

As I have previously shown, speculative derivatives (especially credit default swaps) are a primary cause of the economic crisis.

And I have pointed out that (1) the giant banks will make a killing on carbon trading, (2) while the leading scientist crusading against global warming says it won’t work, and (3) there is a very high probability of massive fraud and insider trading in the carbon trading markets.

Now, Bloomberg notes that the carbon trading scheme will be centered around derivatives:

The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.

[Blythe] Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity — in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases…

Who is Blythe Masters?

She is the JP Morgan employee who invented credit default swaps, and is now heading JPM’s carbon trading efforts.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Socialists Demand Trillions in “Climate Debt”

Ignoring the fallacies behind the “science” of man-made global warming, a new U.N. report on “climate justice” says the U.S. and other countries owe $24 trillion in “climate debt” to the rest of the world. The report, “Climate Justice for a Changing Planet,” argues that the United States is “historically the largest global emitter” of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore has the biggest “debt” to pay…

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

Swine-Flu Bribe Fever!

U.N.’s H1N1 scientists linked to companies making vaccine

World Health Organization scientists are suspected of accepting secret bribes from vaccine manufacturers to influence the U.N. organization’s H1N1 pandemic declaration, according to Danish and Swedish newspapers.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical profits from swine-flu related drugs have soared — with earnings between $10 billion and $15 billion in 2009, investment bank JP Morgan estimates.

As WND reported, the WHO Director General Margaret Chan initially raised the influenza pandemic alert to its second highest level in May — but evidence reveals the agency may have made it easier to classify the flu outbreak as a pandemic by changing its definition to omit “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” just prior to making its declaration.

[…]

“Many of the apparently impartial researchers the WHO uses, however, are paid by the companies that produce vaccines,” states a translated version of the Information article, “Strong lobbying behind WHO resolution on mass vaccination.”

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

The Free Press vs. The New World Order

It’s official!

The United Nations banned the news agency most critical of “man-made catastrophic climate” hysteria from coverage of the Copenhagen convention billed as a major leap forward for global governance.

That new agency is my own, of course — WND.

You might think the banning of a news agency, any news agency, would evoke some coverage from colleagues.

Yet, to date, not one story about the censorship has appeared on Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS or any other major news outlet.

I shouldn’t be surprised.

With few exceptions, the major press has not yet covered to any measurable degree the biggest development since Al Gore invented “global warming.” (By the way, unlike the Internet, he really did invent “global warming” — to his everlasting shame, except in Nobel Prize circles.)

I refer, of course, to what has come to be known as “Climategate” — e-mails from pseudo-scientists at East Anglia University that reveal an effort to spin and even change real temperature data to fit the theory and obscure the facts.

The e-mails were a new discovery, but the lying and manipulation of data is hardly a recent occurrence. It goes back 10 years.

— Hat tip: JD

[Return to headlines]

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A Wish List for Swiss Muslims

The article below, from the Swiss periodical Winkelried, was published before last month’s referendum on the banning of minarets. It provides some useful background information on issues which may have helped the Swiss voters to make their decision.

Many thanks to our Flemish correspondent VH for translating it:

List of gifts wanted by Muslims

By McCarthy

The minarets are among the main desires of our “culture enrichers”. That would be the key to the integration of these oh-so-peaceful and industrious immigrants from the area of the rule of Allah. That is what we almost daily read in the media.


But then there are still a few little things that still have be resolved as well, so that the Muslims will not feel themselves racially discriminated against. A remarkable study on “The position of the Muslim population in the canton of Zurich” [see the notes for a link to the pdf] presents a litany of demands. This contains about 200 pages and deals with key areas of the life of Muslims in Switzerland: social benefits and the penal system. We would like very much to sum up all the demands here, but there are simply too many to mention them all. Therefore, we restricted ourselves to a few of the demands:

1. Burial in the country of origin

Of all Muslims — who are after all supposedly completely non-religious according to our media — 95% want to be buried in the country of origin. The cost amounts to approximately €27,000 per deceased. The transportation of the body alone would cost almost €7,000. These costs are not paid by social services; however, the travel costs of a limited number of people to attend the funeral is taken into account. The transport is paid by a cultural association. That cultural association is paid with tax money and thus cannot be counted among the social costs.

2. More prayer rooms

The demand for [building permits for] minarets is, according to the study, of secondary importance even to Muslims. They demand more prayer rooms, which in Islam are also meeting places, to maintain group coherence. The ever increasingly frequent protests around those prayer rooms (noise, random parking, crime) are regarded by Muslims as intolerance.

3. Their own hospital

Medical care by Christians is seen as inappropriate by Muslims. Muslims therefore demand a their own hospital as well as their own homes for the elderly [pensioned].

4. Muslims in public administration

There must be more Muslims appointed to public administration, especially with the police. Moreover, there also needs to be an ombudsman to whom they can turn to when they feel they are religiously disadvantaged, especially when they are hindered in the prescribed prayers during working hours. Scarf and chador may in no case be prohibited.

5. Workplaces without male contact

- - - - - - - - -

Muslim women are forced onto social benefits, because there are not enough jobs where contact with men can be ruled out.

Here, Switzerland has a great need to great catch up with.

6. Muslim doctors/medical practitioners

Muslim doctors will make a lot possible for patients in health care. For example, the necessary medical circumcision of 3% of the boys/men is paid for by government health care. In Switzerland, however, 100% of the circumcisions of Muslims are medically essential.

7. Religious education of the children

Every Muslim already has the right to Quran lessons at the expense of the state. These are called “lessons in the native language and culture”. In the future, these classes must simply take place at school.

8. Religious holidays and advanced payments

Muslims should receive advanced payments for their religious holidays, so they can buy gifts.

9. Islamic social workers

Muslims want social workers in their own language and their own religion. In the current situation, they feel disfavored in their access to social services.

10. The imam as mediator

The Muslims demand that the imam acting as an important intermediary with the authorities receive political recognition. If there are problems with members of the Islamic community, the authorities should be obliged to involve him in their decisions.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Notes:

The source of this translation is the Dutch version by E.J. Bron as published on HetVrijeVolk.com and the original German language article by McCarthy on the Swiss conservative website Winkelried.

The Department for Integration Matters of the Kanton Zurich, in the has in the meantime taken the study — as linked to in the German article — offline. The study [“Studie zur Stellung der muslimischen Bevölkerung im Kanton Zürich”] can, however, still be downloaded from the online platform of Social Affairs here [1.1Mb]

A summary can be downloaded here [Report on the situation of the Muslim population in the canton of Zurich, see webpage here, and read online here.

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Fjordman: The Cult of Reason — The Dark Side of the Enlightenment

Fjordman’s latest essay has been published in the Brussels Journal. Some excerpts are below:

There are few books published these days that are worth a second look, but The Suicide of Reason by Lee Harris is one of the exceptions. Many observers currently sense — correctly in my view — that something is fundamentally wrong with the Western world, but they differ substantially in their analysis of the cause(s) of this. The First and Second World Wars were horrible, and most thinking people agree that something went wrong with the Western Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, which unlike the Chinese Cultural Revolution became institutionalized. But does that mean that everything was fine in the 1950s?

The Communist Manifesto was written already in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Marx published Das Kapital in 1867. There are those who believe that Marxism could only have been born in a Christian environment, and there are also those who claim that the real father of Communism was Plato in ancient Greece, not Karl Marx. So where exactly did the West go wrong, and just how far back do we have to go before things were “right”? 1950? 1850? Before the Enlightenment and industrialization? Before Christianity? Before Plato?

Even Christian conservative writer Lawrence Auster admits that modern liberalism “would not have come into existence without Christianity, and liberalism can fairly be described as a secularized offshoot of Christianity,” but he thinks that this does not necessarily mean that all forms of Christianity in every context have been or need to be suicidal, which may be true.

The jury is still out on whether Christian universalism is suicidal for Europeans in a world of global communications where most Christians are non-Europeans, yet I am convinced that we must take a look at a dark side of the Enlightenment which can be dubbed the Cult of Reason.

- - - - - - - - -

As I argue in my online essay Why Did Europeans Create the Modern World?, the West is now dominated by Darwinists who don’t believe in the theory of evolution, or rather, fail to accept the logical consequences of this theory when applied to human beings.. I stand by my previous statement that if you believe that human beings are the product of evolutionary pressures then there is no such thing as “racism,” which is a totally anti-scientific term.

Various human groups will during thousand and tens of thousands of years of natural selection have adjusted themselves to different natural environments, with results that don’t merely include superficial differences such as skin color but probably also mental differences. Yet absurdly, saying this makes you vilified and labeled a “Nazi” in Western countries today.

I have struggled to explain why. My conclusion is that we live in a society where the ideal is not merely Reason Alone but Thought Alone; we are supposed to create an entire society and physical reality purely by thought, which should result in perfect, cosmic, universal justice and equality for all. Anything and everything that impedes with our ability to create this reality must be banned as “irrational” or “hate.” If God and religion prevent us from creating what we want then God and religion must be removed; the theory of evolution can take care of that for us. However, we must be careful not to follow this theory to its logical conclusion because then biology instead of God would inhibit our ability to create perfect equality between men and women and between humans of all races. In short, we must ban reality.

This is in essence what Political Correctness is all about: Banning any discussion of reality so we can create a perfect world based on Thought Alone. In a strange sense this could ironically be seen as the final culmination of millennia of Western use of reason until we finally succeeded in creating a society based on Reason Alone. Although I cannot pinpoint exactly how I suspect you could successfully argue that there is a form of Platonism underlying this mental construct. After all, in Plato’s world the perfect, unchanging Ideas were physically separated from observed reality. In a way this is exactly what the modern West has created.

The dream of a perfect world of absolute equality may be a beautiful dream but it is a dream, based on many different false beliefs. It will quickly turn into a very real nightmare if you try to implement it. Among the largest of these false beliefs is the idea that man is naturally good and a perfectly rational being. I am personally not ready to embrace the opposite claim either, that man is by nature evil or sinful. My preferred view is that man is flawed and imperfect, yet that is quite sufficient to show that you can never create a perfect society with universal justice, just like you cannot create a perfect building using imperfect building materials.

The perfect world of Reason Alone is beautiful in all its symmetry and mathematical precision.. There is only one problem with it: It is a lie. Unfortunately, the media, the political and intellectual leaders as well as the education system have become passionately dedicated to preserving and upholding this lie as The Only Truth and will ruthlessly harass any dissenters who suggest alternative ideas. This means that there will be no reality check until the entire mental bubble is punctured through a painful crash with actual reality. By the time that happens, the collapse may well take much of the edifice of Western civilization with it.

Read the rest at the Brussels Journal.

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The Granddaddy of Them All

I posted last night about the absurd Orwellian language imposed by the British government on its civil servants. I also embedded a video of retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who pointed out the extent to which the United States government has been infiltrated by apologists for Islamic extremism — or worse.

These are not unconnected phenomena. The Muslim Brotherhood — al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen — lies behind both of these incidents, as well as many other similar cases. It has penetrated all major Western governments down to the local level as well as many of our academic institutions.

Has a government agency imposed politically correct language restrictions, which coincidentally benefit Muslims?

The Muslim Brotherhood has been at work.

The Muslim chaplains in the American military, our universities, or the state and federal prison systems?

Supplied by various Muslim Brotherhood affiliates.

The instructors and advisors hired by our governments to educate its bureaucrats and generals in the finer points of Islamic law and theology?

Trained and provided by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Qaeda, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizb ut-Tahrir, CAIR, ISNA, MCB, OIC, etc.?

As Erick Stakelbeck says in the following CBN news report, the Muslim Brotherhood is “the granddaddy of them all.”

The video below takes a look at one particular Muslim Brotherhood representative, who — just a month after an Islamic terrorist went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood — gave a briefing on Islam to our troops there, prior to their departure for Afghanistan:


More information is available at the CBN article. Some excerpts:
- - - - - - - - -

Dr. Louay Safi lectured on Islam last week to U.S. troops about to deploy to Afghanistan. He is a top official for the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA.

In 2007, the group was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. Evidence introduced at that trial showed that ISNA is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. The brotherhood is a global Islamic jihadist movement that laid the foundation for groups like al Qaeda and Hamas.

Dr. Safi has also worked for a Saudi-funded organization called the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The group has been on the radar screen of federal investigators for years. But Safi’s radical ties don’t end there.

In 1995, he was recorded on an FBI wiretap talking to convicted Palestinian terrorist Sami al-Arian.

So how was Safi chosen to lecture at Fort Hood? A spokesman for the Army base told CBN News that “Safi was one of the faculty members during a seminar about Islam for the Army’s 135th expeditionary unit. He said speakers are invited based on learning objectives, audience experience, and availability. The spokesman added that “organizers of the seminar were not aware of Safi’s alleged association, but have had no issues or concerns over his presentations nor has any unit raised any.”

This is the most staggering part of this whole affair — Safi was vetted by military intelligence officials, and they had no problem with his background. He was cleared to instruct our troops because the Muslim Brotherhood helpfully provided the criteria which the Defense Department uses to evaluate its Muslim contacts and recruits.

As Mr. Stakelbeck points out, anyone who spends just a little time doing open-source research on the internet could have easily discovered the shady background and questionable associations of Dr. Louay Safi.

But our military analysts aren’t allowed to do that. They have to follow the rule book, and the rule book was written with the help of…

The Muslim Brotherhood!

Nice catch, that Catch-22.


Thanks to Vlad Tepes for Youtubing this video.

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Speaking Out About Forced Marriages and Honor Killings

The following interview is not new, but it is quite relevant to current events, especially given the Swiss minaret ban and the recent OSCE roundtable on gender equality and violence against women. It appeared in the Austrian newspaper Die Presse on April 24, 2008, and has been translated by JLH:

Forced Marriage: Do Not Be Silent

German-Turkish author Seyran Ates accuses society of hiding problems like forced marriage and honor killing, because it is afraid of appearing hostile to foreigners.

Die Presse:		You see multiculturalism as organized irresponsibility. Are we too good to immigrants.
Seyran Ates:		That doesn’t mean that we should treat them worse. I don’t think that we treat them too well, either. What I mean is that there are people who think of themselves as good, because they think of foreigners as good. And they won’t say that something is wrong, because they do not look closely to see how things really are for people.
Presse:		Politically correct, but ignorant?
Ates:		In parallel societies, it is the women and children who suffer the most. When a multiculturalist says, leave them to themselves, that is giving support to patriarchal structures, which are (therefore) maintained and are not questioned.
Presse:		Is being a do-gooder [Gutmensch] a bad thing?
Ates:		I want to be a good person, too, naturally. But there are people who believe they are the sole proprietors of “Being Good.” I am more likely to think of myself as a good person, than them.
Presse:		Is harshness toward immigrants better for coexistence?

- - - - - - - - -

Ates:		What is needed is not so much harshness as openness, clarity and honesty. We must look at what is happening in these communities, and whether it is compatible with our constitution and values. In exactly the same way, we must look at the Austrian, German, European side, to see how we deal with minorities. It will not do to be outwardly friendly and then discriminate legally and socially.
Presse:		The Netherlands were often mentioned as a model. The multicultural society there has come apart.
Ates:		The multicultural society there was glorified and it was said that everything functioned wonderfully. But most of the do-gooders (who say this) don’t know a single foreigner or people from a different culture.
Presse:		So, were the right-wing populists right ten years ago?
Ates:		Absolutely not. They used the subject for their own purposes. I also reproach the left and liberal do-gooders for that. We are playing into the hands of the right-wing populists, when we do not speak about forced marriage, honor killing and domestic violence, because it could be perceived as hostile to foreigners.
Presse:		You write that Turkish babies are aborted if they are girls, in Europe as well, but you offer no evidence.
Ates:		Tell me, who is going to admit that? You talk to doctors, but what doctor can talk about that?
Presse:		So you have to let that [the lack of evidence] be an unanswerable argument?
Ates:		I report on things that I hear. And unfortunately, I am correct. In 1983 I first spoke about forced marriage. Then, too, there was no proof. In the meantime, it has been accepted that this happens in Austria as well. It has long been said that genital mutilation does not take place here. But now there are examples of doctors who perform it.
Presse:		In the big picture, however, it [abortion of girl children] is a dwindling minority.
Ates:		I don’t accept that characterization. Every single [aborted] child is one child too many.
Presse:		You are holding all other immigrants hostage.
Ates:		Here again, the do-gooders have caused this with their unanswerable argument. They should offer some ideas on how to prevent this. If you say that everything is an “isolated incident,” it changes nothing for women, girls and children.
Presse:		Well, where is the great outcry from Muslim women?
Ates:		How many women dare to say publicly that they are wearing the hijab unwillingly? In the 1970s, Alice Schwarzer began the project “I Aborted.” How long did it take before women could admit that? Why is the standard different for Muslim women? Why does one expect that they can suddenly speak freely?
Presse:		But there are, in fact, many women who wear it willingly.
Ates:		That is what you say. An assertion that you can’t prove.
Presse:		I have spoken with many of them.
Ates:		Have you asked: if a school-age child must wear a hijab, can she take it off when she is a grown woman? And why should the child tell you she isn’t wearing it because she wants to?
Presse:		Many wear it as a protest against their parents or the assumptions of the majority population.
Ares:		With that, you prove my contention that it is a political provocation. I would rather women emancipated themselves in other ways.
Presse:		Is it helpful that many watch exclusively Turkish TV by satellite?
Ates:		It is a preconception that people are exposed only to the old traditions in television programs from home. On Turkish television they see treatment of the subjects of honor killing, domestic violence, and forced marriage.
Presse:		Is Turkey further along with these themes than we are?
Ates:		Yes. There, it isn’t hushed up with disguised indifference.

Seyran Ates, born April 20, 1963, is a lawyer and author living in Berlin. In her book, “The Multi-Culti Mistake,” she reports on experiences with women clients who were pushed or dragged into marriage. During her work at a counseling service in 1984, she was shot and severely wounded.

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Mr. President: Give Us Back Our Streets!

I received a message this morning from the French anti-jihad organization VV&D about the French citizens of a Muslim-controlled area, who have written a letter directly to President Nicolas Sarkozy calling for help.

Here’s the text of the letter, as translated by Gaia:

Mr. President,

This is an appeal for help from the citizens of the 18ème Arrondissement. For several years now, certain of our streets have been occupied by fundamentalists who come from all over the Parisian region to practice their cult activities.

The pavements for hundreds of metres are taken over, putting pedestrians in grave danger as they are obliged to walk in the street to get past the people “praying”.

Entire streets are roped off with cars and security barriers and no entry signs, preventing the inhabitants of the area from going out or returning to their homes, the shopkeepers from working, ordinary citizens from circulating normally.

Every protest or even a simple attempt to penetrate into the zones occupied by these fundamentalists risks being met by insults, threats and aggression and for some time now no one dares to protest, such is the fear installed in our area.

Are we no longer a secular Republic? Isn’t occupation of the public highway by unauthorized cultic activities a public order offence? Is preventing the free circulation of citizens in public areas, by means of threats or other means, normal in our city? Why do we no longer have the right to enter or leave our homes? Why do we have to live in a climate of fear?

- - - - - - - - -

Mr. Delanöe, the Mayor of Paris, knows perfectly about our situation, as does Mr. Vaillant Mayor, of the 18ème, and Mr. Gaudin Préfet de Police. All of them have abandoned our streets to Islamic fundamentalists; they have abandoned their citizens who can no longer walk around their city because certain areas are out of bounds to non-Muslims during prayer times.

Mr. President, you have affirmed that in France there are no “no-go zones”. So what would you call these areas or the militant fundamentalists who have shut roads for their exclusive private use for a number of years now without the police intervening to re-establish public order?

Mr. President. Do not abandon us also. Stop this occupation of our streets by fundamentalists.

The inhabitants of the 18ème Arro