The man who drove the car through the crowd at the Queen’s Day parade in the Netherlands has died, bringing the total number of deaths to seven. A host of conspiracy theories is swirling around the internet in attempt to understand why a thirty-eight year old native Dutch (i.e. white) citizen would do such a thing.In other news, Hans Blix thinks a nuclear Iran is necessary to balance out Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Thanks to AA, CB, CSP, Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, islam o’phobe, JD, KGS, Paul Green, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
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‘Bailed-Out Banks Failing UK’s Small Firms’
Britain’s cash-strapped small businesses are being failed by the very banks bailed out by taxpayers, MPs claim.
High loan charges and hefty arrangement fees face many local firms desperately in need of credit, while some are denied loans altogether.
“We deplore the behaviour of a number of those banks who have received so much public money and behaved in such an insensitive manner particularly to established customers,” the Treasury Select Committee’s latest report said.
It added there was an “unresolved inconsistency” between the assurances of bank bosses and complaints on the ground from struggling businesses over a lack of lending.
The select committee report calls for a probe into such practices and more detailed lending figures from the banks which have received state support.
Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group have made lending commitments of £25bn and £14bn over the next 12 months in return for insuring hundreds of billions in toxic assets with the taxpayer.
The culture within parts of British banking has increasingly been one of risk taking leading to the meltdown that we have witnessed.
Treasury Select Committee report
The MPs welcomed the Government’s move to impose conditions on banks in return for public support but added there were “conflicting pressures” between boosting their finances and lending more.
An RBS spokeswoman responded to the report by saying the bank was “very much open for business”.
She said lending to small businesses was up 10% compared to last year and it recently announced a commitment to make £16bn of additional lending available to viable businesses this year, including £3bn through 12 regionally-managed funds of £250m.
MPs also attacked bankers for making “an astonishing mess” of the financial system.
“The culture within parts of British banking has increasingly been one of risk taking leading to the meltdown that we have witnessed,” the report said.
Committee chairman John McFall said the UK had experienced “a comprehensive failure of the banking system at all levels”.
He attacked the inability of banks to govern themselves and manage risks, with inadequate scrutiny from non-executive directors.
He added: “Governments, politicians, regulators and central bankers in the UK and across the world also share a responsibility for sustaining the illusion that banking growth and profitability would continue for the foreseeable future.”
The report called for a “more durable framework” for finance from the Financial Services Authority, while the separation of riskier “casino” banking from retail deposit-taking was also worthy of “further debate”.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Global Crisis Hits Turkish Workers Abroad, Survey
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 24 — The number of Turkish employees who lost their jobs in 2008 due to the ongoing global financial crisis makes up 31% of the population of Turkish workers in some 55 countries, according to a recently released report from the Ministry of Labor. The number of Turkish workers or job seekers abroad had reached 1.34 million as of 2007, of whom 17.7% were without work. The ministry’s report states that many Turks living overseas have decided to return to their homeland amidst a growing unemployment problem. As Today’s Zaman reports, official data put the number of Turks living abroad at 3.66 million, with 3.1 million residing in Western Europe, 291,000 in the US and Canada, 112,203 in the Middle East, 61,500 in Australia, 31,000 in the Turkic republics, 30,326 in Israel and 26,000 in Russia. The majority of European civil institutions and unions, however, say there are some 4.2 million Turks living in Europe alone and that 1.4 million of them are employed. The ministry report says the number of Turkish workers abroad has exceeded 1.3 million, and the majority, some 1.03 million, work in Western European countries. According to Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) figures, unemployment in Turkey has reached a peak, approaching a historic high of 15.5%, which translates to some 3.6 million jobless in the country. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Saving Capitalism Just One of Obama’s Jobs
THE US President, Barack Obama, has described the US Government as a reluctant shareholder in the nation’s banks, car makers and insurance companies, promising to exit as soon as market conditions allow, as he faced the media to mark his first 100 days in office.
In a wide-ranging nationally televised session from the White House, Mr Obama was asked questions about his achievements and policies on topics as varied as abortion, harsh interrogations, immigration, Iraq, Pakistan, and the car industry.
Despite new figures showing that the US economy contracted sharply during the first three months of this year — 6.1 per cent annualised — Mr Obama encountered little questioning about the future of the world economy.
Only the last question in the hour-long media conference on Wednesday touched on the issue that has consumed much of his first 100 days as President. Asked whether he was taking the US down a new path of public ownership, he insisted that he had not planned or sought an ownership role for the Government in banks and the car industry. Even as he spoke to the media, the deal to save Chrysler from bankruptcy appeared to be collapsing.
“I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector,” he said.
Acknowledging the persistent criticism of his young Administration, that he had a great deal on his plate, he said: “We are going to be the type of shareholder who is looking to get out.
“If you could tell me right now that when I walked into this office, that the banks were humming, the autos were selling and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal.”
In another reflective moment, Mr Obama conceded that he was “sobered” by the fact that changing the ways of Washington was proving more difficult than he thought. He said the Republican leadership had been unwilling to accept his overtures of bipartisanship, instead wanting 100 per cent of their position to prevail.
“There is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place, even when we’re in the middle of really big crises,” he said.
He moved to reduce expectations that the change he was seeking to bring would bear fruit in his first term.
“The ship of state is an ocean liner; it’s not a speedboat. And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue … is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, we may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now, or 20 years from now,” he said.
“Our kids will be able to look back and say that was when we started getting serious about clean energy, that’s when health care started to become more efficient and affordable, that’s when we became serious about raising our standards in education.”
Mr Obama began his address on the issue dominating world news, swine flu, promising $US1.5 billion ($2 billion) in emergency funds but refusing to close the border with Mexico.
He said he was “confident” Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would be secured by Pakistan’s army and kept safe from the Taliban.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Unemployment: Women Beat the Odds in Crisis in Turkey
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 24 — Gender and education differences have emerged from Turkey’s record unemployment figures, as daily Hurriyet reports today quoting a survey by the Center for Economic and Social Research. It shows more women are finding jobs while men with low education have borne the brunt of record-high job losses. Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek last month said “especially women” are contributing to the increasing labor force and rising unemployment, but a study published this week by Bahcesehir University casts doubt on his assertion. According to the university’s Center for Economic and Social Research, or BETAM, women who are newly entering the labor force are not contributing more to unemployment than men. “Labor market indicators show that there is another story behind the increasing unemployment,” said Gokce Kolasin, one of the authors of the study, which says women’s employment is actually rising despite an overall decrease in employment rates. “As of December 2008, annual growth in nonagricultural female employment has reached 9%,” the study said. Households often try to compensate for economic insecurity by having more household members seek work. Between December 2007 and December 2008, 528,000 men and 500,000 women entered the labor market, according to figures published in the BETAM study. During the same period 160,000 men lost their jobs, while 249,000 women found jobs. In percentage terms, the male nonagricultural labor force increased by 4%, while employment for those men decreased by 1%. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Demjanjuk Sues German Government
He has used almost every legal means to try to avoid being deported to Germany. Now alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk is filing suit against the German government in his bid to stay in the US.
The alleged war criminal John Demjanjuk has used almost every legal means to avoid being deported from the US to Germany, where prosecutors accuse him of having been a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp. Now his lawyer Ulrich Busch has filed suit against the German government.
Demjanjuk’s identity card from when he was a displaced person: Germany wants to put the suspected war criminal on trial.
On Thursday Busch sent a fax to the administrative court in Berlin with the suit: Demjanjuk, “44131 Seven Hills, Ohio, USA” versus “Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the Federal Justice Ministry.” Busch wants to ensure that the Berlin government withdraws its agreement to accept Demjanjuk in Germany.
The 89-year-old retired auto worker, who is accused of being an accessory to the murders of Jews in the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943, lost his last appeal to keep his US citizenship, which had been removed in 2001, in May 2008. However, it was only when the Bavarian state court issued a warrant and the German government issued him with travel papers that the way was cleared for his deportation. Busch is also playing for time. He has asked the Berlin Administrative Court judge to temporarily suspend the German government’s declaration that they would allow Demjanjuk to enter the country — until a ruling is made. It is developments in the US that have prompted the suit. The US Justice Department had made a statement to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals not to deport Demjanjuk until April 30. The Cincinnati court had halted Demjanuk’s deportation at the last moment — after deportation officers had already carried him out of his home on April 14 to be put on a private plane to Munich.
The same court now has to decide if Demjanjuk would be at risk of “torture” if he goes to Germany. His American lawyers argue that forcing a man who is this ill to undergo a trial amounts to torture. If the court in Cincinnati rejects this appeal, then officials could soon be calling at the 89-year-old’s door again.
The deportation case began in March when the Munich prosecutor’s office issued a warrant for Demjanuk’s arrest on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 29,000 people. This is the number of Jews who were killed during Demjanjuk’s alleged time as a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp.
The case has since become a bitter legal battle with both the Demjanjuk family and the US authorities using images to back up their cases. The family released photographs of Demjanjuk in terrible pain being examined by a doctor. The US Justice Department countered with secret video footage (available on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Web site) of the accused, showing him briskly walking from a clinic to a car and getting in without any assistance. Deportation officers have given sworn affidavits that Demjanjuk had been bright and animated in their offices. The family has claimed that the authorities only filmed him when he looked in good health and that they never took images when he was being transported in a wheelchair even though they were present.
The US Justice Department is increasingly irritated by the wrangling. It argues that Demjanjuk is making a mockery of it and of justice, writing that “he is, quite obviously, a vigorous man, particularly for his age.” The officials even use political arguments in their letter to the judges in Cincinnati. Demjanjuk, they write, “is seeking, in effect, to show the world that, even if the United States has the will to carry out statutorily mandated removal of one who helped carry out lethal Nazi crimes of persecution, our legal system is so full of loopholes and pitfalls that such an individual may succeed in obtaining the only thing he really wants — to die in America.”
Berlin ‘Bypassed’ Client’s Rights
If the judges of the federal appellate court decide against Demjanjuk, his only remaining option is the Supreme Court. But it could refuse to hear the case at all, without having to give reasons.
Demjanjuk’s German lawyer Busch is therefore trying to move the legal tug-of-war to Germany. In remarks to SPIEGEL, Busch accused the German authorities of “circumventing the law” in consenting to the deportation of Demjanjuk. “For such cases we have the instrument of extradition,” he said. In the case of an extradition, there would have to have been an examination beforehand, including by the German side, as to whether Demjanjuk was fit enough to be transported and to be held in custody.
According to Busch, the German government wanted to save itself from that obligation by deciding not to apply for extradition and instead agreeing to deportation. Berlin bypassed his client’s rights in this way, he said.
Moreover, Busch complained that Germany had deprived Demjanjuk of any possibility of returning to the US and to his family. Even if he was acquitted after a trial or was not even fit to be tried, he could never return to the US after being deported and so could not be reunited with his family, without whom he is “not capable of living,” in the words of Busch. Germany had accepted that and so violated the right of presumption of innocence.
As it happens, the US wants to eject Demjanjuk from the country in any case. In 2001, a court ruled that his US citizenship should be revoked. Appellate courts have repeatedly upheld that ruling. “There is plenty of evidence that Demjanjuk participated in genocide,” says former prosecutor Jonathan Drimmer.
Busch now argues that Demjanjuk would — despite the court rulings — have remained in the US until the end of his life, if the Germans had not declared they were prepared to take him. Moreover, Busch says, Demjanjuk is so ill that he could not be adequately cared for in a prison hospital. He needs nurses who can speak Ukrainian, as that is the only language that he really has a command of, Busch say, explaining that Demjanjuk is an “old, sick man.”
Whether Busch’s suit will be successful is uncertain. The administrative court might not even accept such a complaint. Busch has already appealed to Munich District Court against the warrant against Demjanjuk. The court rejected his petition two weeks ago. Busch is now appealing against that decision.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Farmers Fear Pigs May Get Swine Flu From People
KANSAS CITY (Reuters) — Humans have it. Pigs don’t. At least not yet, and U.S. pork producers are doing everything they can to make sure that the new H1N1 virus, known around the world as the “swine flu,” stays out of their herds.
“That is the biggest concern, that your herd could somehow contract this illness from an infected person,” said Kansas hog farmer Ron Suther, who is banning visitors from his sow barns and requiring maintenance workers, delivery men and other strangers to report on recent travels and any illness before they step foot on his property.
“If a person is sick, we don’t want you coming anywhere on the farm,” Suther said.
Those sentiments were echoed by producers around the nation this week as fears of a possible global flu pandemic grew, with more than 200 people sickened, including more than 100 in the United States, and at least 177 dead, all but one in Mexico.
“There is no evidence of this new strain being in our pig populations in the United States. And our concern very much is we don’t want a sick human to come into our barns and transmit this new virus to our pigs,” said National Pork Producers chief veterinarian Jennifer Greiner.
“If humans give it to pigs, we don’t have things like Tamiflu for pigs. We don’t have antivirals. We have no treatment other than to give them aspirin,” said Greiner.
The World Health Organisation on Thursday officially declared it would stop calling the new strain of flu “swine flu,” because no pigs in any country have been determined to have the illness and the origination of the strain has not been determined.
The never-before-seen H1N1 flu virus has elements of swine, avian and human varieties.
PIGS BEHIND SECURITY FENCES
Still, U.S. hog farmers said flu fears have hit them hard in the wallet as hog prices plummeted this week in response. Many countries reacted to the outbreak earlier this week by banning pork or meat from U.S. states that have human cases of the flu. And Egypt ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution.
U.S. hog producers have already been struggling financially for more than a year due to poor prices and high feed costs. If the new flu strain does hit their herds, it could spur further price declines, and could potentially spread broadly through herds.
To try to protect against such a scenario, industry groups and veterinarians this week warned farmers to step up their biosafety protocols, keeping pigs in barns behind security fences with access by any outsiders extremely limited.
Purdue University veterinarian Sandy Amass said farmers should keep an eye on pigs for “coughing, runny nose, fever and a reduction in feed intake,” and to have the animals tested immediately if they exhibit such flu symptoms.
“Pigs get flu just like people get flu,” Amass said. “We’re want to do everything possible so the pigs don’t get infected.”
For Carroll, Iowa, producer Craig Rowles that means if any of his workers feel sick, they are ordered to take time off work — paid — to keep them away from the pigs.
“It’s a real issue,” Rowles said. “If the pigs get it, there isn’t much we can do. Water, aspirin, and bed rest, that’s all we’ve got.”
(Reporting by Carey Gillam; additional reporting by Bob Burgdorfer in Chicago, Editing by Sandra Maler)
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Feds Drop Charges Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss all charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing U.S. defense secrets, ending a four-year legal battle that promised to put former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration insiders on the witness stand.
Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee accused the government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in the nation’s capital.
To prove the point, Rosen and Weissman’s lawyers won the right to subpoena a parade of Bush administration officials and have them testify at trial under oath. Those slated to testify included Rice, former national security adviser Stephen Hadley, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and several others.
Rosen’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, said each of those administration officials had conversations with Rosen and Weissman and disclosed almost exactly the same type of information that led to the prosecution of Rosen and Weissman.
Prosecutors had sought unsuccessfully to quash those subpoenas, arguing that Rice and the others had nothing relevant to add to the case.
In a statement Friday, Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case.
Boente also said he was worried that classified information would be disclosed at trial.
Defense lawyers, in a joint statement, praised the Obama administration for reconsidering the case.
“This administration truly shows that theirs is a Department of Justice, where the justice of any case can be re-evaluated and the government can admit that a case should not be pursued,” the defense team said.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had made several rulings — upheld by appellate courts earlier this year — that prosecutors worried would make it almost impossible to obtain a guilty verdict. Among them was a requirement that the government would have to prove that Rosen and Weissman knew they were harming the United States by trading sensitive national defense information with U.S. government officials, reporters and an Israeli diplomat.
The defense had also been prepared to show the information obtained by Rosen and Weissman, while technically classified, was not truly secret and its disclosure was irrelevant to national security.
The federal government’s former arbiter of classification, J. William Leonard, was slated to testify for the defense that the government overuses classification and applies the label to information that by any practical measure does not need to be secret. The government had sought to bar Leonard’s testimony.
The trial had been scheduled to start June 2. Charges were first brought in 2005.
Rosen and Weissman had not been charged with actual espionage, although the charges did fall under provisions of the 1917 Espionage Act, a rarely used World War I-era law that had never before been applied to lobbyists or any other private citizens.
Weissman’s lawyer, Baruch Weiss, called the dismissal a victory for the First Amendment. Had Rosen and Weissman been convicted, he said it would have set a precedent for prosecuting reporters any time they obtained information from government officials that was later deemed too sensitive to be disclosed.
Weiss said the four-year prosecution “has been a tremendous hardship for both Rosen and Weissman,” who have been unable to work.
A former Defense Department official, Lawrence A. Franklin, previously pleaded guilty to providing Rosen and Weissman classified defense information and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. Franklin said he was frustrated with U.S. policy toward Iran, and leaked info to Rosen and Weissman with the hopes that they might use their contacts in the administration to get the policy changed.
AIPAC spokesman Patrick Dorton said the organization was pleased the Justice Department dismissed the charges. AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in April 2005, when they were under investigation. Dorton declined to comment on whether AIPAC still thinks Rosen and Weissman acted improperly.
The AIPAC case popped back into the headlines last month after reports that Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., was overheard on wiretaps agreeing to seek lenient treatment for Rosen and Weissman.
Harman adamantly denied she had contacted anyone seeking favorable treatment for Rosen and Weissman, and demanded that transcripts of the wiretaps be released.
The indictment against Rosen and Weissman charged that they obtained and then disclosed to reporters and to an Israeli official classified information on U.S. policy toward Iran, as well as information on the al-Qaida terror network and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers dormitory in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel.
The case revolved solely around alleged oral disclosures — the two were never alleged to have traded in classified documents — which was an additional complicating factor in the prosecution.
It will be up to Ellis to formally dismiss the charges, but it would be highly unlikely that he would refuse the government’s request for dismissal.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
State Dept. Thinks Texas is a Foreign Country
In their press release celebrating 100 days of the Obama administration, State continues to include travel to Texas as one of their major accomplishments.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Sovereignty on Swap Block
Obama negotiating for seat for U.S. on U.N. commission
[Comments from JD: Obama is selling US sovereignty down the river.]
The Obama administration is preparing to swap U.S. sovereignty for a higher level of U.S. presence at the United Nations, a plan that has alarmed officials working to protect the rights of Americans, specifically the parental rights that traditionally have been recognized across the nation’s history.
Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College, said, “The move is little more than another attempt at political correctness by an administration frantic for acceptance by the international community.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Gas Fields Go From Bust to Boom
CADDO PARISH, La. — A massive natural-gas discovery here in northern Louisiana heralds a big shift in the nation’s energy landscape. After an era of declining production, the U.S. is now swimming in natural gas.
Even conservative estimates suggest the Louisiana discovery — known as the Haynesville Shale, for the dense rock formation that contains the gas — could hold some 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s the equivalent of 33 billion barrels of oil, or 18 years’ worth of current U.S. oil production. Some industry executives think the field could be several times that size.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Ron Paul — Swine Flu Skeptic: The Sky is Not Falling
As ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf reported earlier this week, Dr. Paul was a freshman Congressman in 1976, during the last swine flu panic. He says he was one of just two members of the House who voted against the emergency swine flu vaccination program ordered by President Ford. An extreme position? Not really. Only one person died from the swine flu then, but at least 25 people died because of the vaccine.
We caught up with Dr. Paul in his Congressional office and talked about this latest swine flu scare. Listen carefully: He might be as correct on this one as he was in 1976.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Mountain Equipment Co-Op Votes Down Israel Boycott
VANCOUVER — Members of the outdoor goods retailer Mountain Equipment Co-Op voted down a controversial resolution to boycott Israeli-made products at the chain’s annual general meeting Thursday night.
Jubilant participants leaving the meeting said the motion wasn’t even close to being passed. MEC spokesman Tim Southam was more restrained, saying that while he couldn’t release the exact margin by which the motion was defeated, it was definitely “by more than half.”
The motion was proposed by BC Teachers for Peace and Global Action (PAGE), a group affiliated with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.
On its website, PAGE said it’s concerned that selling Israeli-made goods amounts to supporting Israel’s policies, and “MEC’s members may not be aware of their organization’s disturbing lack of concern for the human rights of Palestinians.”
Hanna Kawas, chairman of the Canada Palestine Association, said the vote doesn’t extinguish his group’s resolve to publicize the chain’s sale of Israeli-made goods, and called for a boycott of all Mountain Equipment Co-op outlets.
“(MEC) is supporting war crimes and apartheid,” he said.
“We will promote a boycott. It’s a global movement that’s gaining strength. We’ll continue to do what South Africans did against apartheid.”
The chain gets two products through Israeli companies: seamless underwear and a hydration system for hikers and bikers.
“We’re pleased at the outcome, and that the policy of MEC has been upheld,” said Michael Elterman, chairman of the Canada-Israel Committee for the Pacific Region.
“It made sense, because it’s not just about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but about ethical sourcing and MEC policy.”
The motion fuelled a storm of controversy long before members cast their votes.
A half-hour before the meeting began, about 40 people stood outside the doors at Simon Fraser University’s Segal School of Business, locked out of the meeting.
Southam came outside to tell them the room’s capacity had been reached, and no more members would be permitted in, due to fire regulations.
MEC member Romy Zaidel, who had been waiting outside for about 30 minutes, said the retailer’s poor planning harmed the co-op’s democratic process.
“(MEC knew) there would be a bigger turnout than normal, and it’s their responsibility to accommodate all voting members,” she said. “We’re being denied our right to vote and it’s their ethical responsibility to let us vote.”
After the meeting, Southam admitted MEC could have managed its logistics better.
“This was an unprecedented situation. What we learned from this is that some of our processes weren’t adequate,” he said.
“But we feel good that the meeting was conducted in an orderly manner and that the democratic process worked.”
The co-op has an ethical sourcing program “to improve the human condition in factories.” All factories that work with the co-op are screened before any contracts are signed.
MEC has outlets in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec and Halifax.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
AIDS: Spain, Bishops Protest Motion Against Pope’s Words
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 30 — A motion to “reject” Pope Benedict XVI’s declarations on the role of condoms in the struggle against Aids in Africa, which was proposed to congress yesterday by ‘Isquierda Unida-Iniciativa para Catalunya Verde’, has caused “grave concerns” amongst the leaders of the Spanish church. The initiative made it through the usual parliamentary procedure for consideration due to favourable votes from two members of parliament from the Popular Party. According to reports in the conservative newspaper ABC, yesterday the Archbishop of Madrid, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, called the president of Congress, José Bono, to protest the motion which church leaders consider to be intended as an attack on the Pope. The IU-ICV initiative reads: “Congress expresses consternation and rejection of Pope Benedict XVI’s declarations that ‘Aids cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, and on the contrary, condoms increase the problem’, and solemnly states that, as has been scientifically proven, the male latex condom is the single most efficient means available to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections.” The motion further encourages the government to “officially and diplomatically protest through our ambassador to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI’s declarations made on his recent travels to Africa, which could have an effect on the efforts of the international community and the commitment of the scientific community to the prevention and struggle against the spread of Aids.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Guantanamo: Spain, Garzon Opens Preliminary Torture Inquiry
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, APRIL 29 — The magistrate of the Audiencia Nacional, Baltazar Garzon, has opened a preliminary investigation into the torture practices at Guantanamo, based on the reports presented by Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, known as the “Spanish Taliban”, and three more prisoners, say judicial sources quoted by the online portal of El Pais. The magistrate has also asked a colleague of the Audiencia Nacional, investigating magistrate Ismael Moreno, to hand the primary investigation into CIA flights to Guantanamo over to him again. These flights reportedly stopped over on Spanish territory. According to the report presented by Hamed Abderrahman, Lahcen Ikassrien, Jamiel Abdul Latif al Banna alias “Abu Anas” and Omar Deghayes, they were tortured during their detention “under authority of US army staff” in Guantanamo. The four were charged in Spain with membership of a terrorist organisation, from which they were then acquitted. The preliminary inquiry opened by Garzon has nothing to do with the lawsuit against six members of the former George W. Bush administration before the Spanish judge Eloy Velasco. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Inbreeding Causing Surge in Birth Defects
Denmark is once AGAIN considering banning cousin marriages due to the prevalence of serious and rare birth defects found in the children born to these muslim couples.
“Cousin marriages is most common in families with Pakistani and Turkish roots. A Norwegian study from 2007 shows that a third of Pakistanis and a tenth of Turks are married with a cousin……According to Sygeplejersken (Nurse) journal, the risk for cousin couples to have children with a handicap or genetic disease is double the average.”
There are even instances, cited, of muslim parents importing brides to marry off and consequently provide a permanent caretaker for their developmentally disabled sons. “many problems with retarded boys are solved with import brides, who are brought to the Netherlands to serve a sort of life imprisonment as a carer/spouse. LINK to above quotes (One wonders how many of these disabled sons were themselves the products of inbreeding)
Thus one glaring fact has emerged from the “culture” of Islam — an egregiously and sickening high rate of birth defects caused by muslim inbreeding. Muslims from Pakistan being the biggest offenders.
The same evidence of high levels of birth defects in muslim cousing marriages is apparent in Great Britain. So whilst in Britian the NHS is trying to prevent smokers, the obese and the elderly from receiving medical treatment — citing their lifestyles or age as justification to deny surgery, organ transplant, etc — even though the vast majority of these people are long time British taxpayers — there continues to be virtual silence on the choice of Pakistani muslims (often at least one partner is a recent immigrant) to marry their first cousins. The union of which is guaranteed to produce a high risk of major congenital birth defects amongst their progeny. A BBC report found :
Pakistanis in Britain, 55% of whom marry a first cousin, are 13 times more likely than the general population to produce children with genetic disorders, and that one in ten children of cousin marriages either dies in infancy or develops a serious disability. Thus Pakistani-Britons, who account for some 3% of all births in the UK, produce “just under a third of all British children with genetic illnesses.”—— LINK
According to a past article in the Sunday Times: “the minister, who represents Oldham East and Saddleworth said: “If you talk to any primary care worker they will tell you that levels of disability among the . . . Pakistani population are higher than the general population. And everybody knows it’s caused by first cousin marriage.”That’s a cultural thing rather than a religious thing. It is not illegal in this country. “The problem is that many of the parents themselves and many of the public spokespeople are themselves products of first cousin marriages.”
Ann Cryer MP, whose constituency has a large Pakistani population, has observed and stated that much of the Pakistani community is in denial about the problem.LINK It is clear that the majority of politicians, civic leaders and many health professionals are also wearing politically-correct blinders when it comes to confronting muslim intermarriage.
There is absolutely NO doubt that politicians and social leaders need to arise from worshipping at the altar of multiculturalism, dust off their knees, and make marriage between first cousins illegal and a reason to deny immigration into the UK. (and EU, USA, etc) This would not only help to relieve the enormous financial strain such marriages have brought to the British healthcare system but also would help to prevent another helpless child, who had no say in their origins, from undue suffering from multiple and often painful deformities and birth defects.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Queen’s Day Killer Dies
The 38-year-old Dutchman who killed five people and injured 12 during Queen’s Day celebrations in Apeldoorn has died. On Thursday the unemployed security guard drove his car at high speed into a crowd watching an open-topped coach carrying the Royal Family. The car missed the royal coach by 15 metres and came to a standstill when it crashed into a well-known monument. The driver was injured and had to be cut from his vehicle. His condition was critical.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Man Who Tried to Attack Royals Dies
AMSTERDAM (AP) — The man who drove his car into a crowd of parade spectators and killed five people died of his injuries Friday, leaving unresolved the mystery of why he tried to attack the Dutch royal family.
The 38-year-old suspect, identified by Dutch media as Karst Tates, had been in critical condition since the attack Thursday on Queen’s Day, the Dutch national holiday.
Eleven other people were hurt when he rammed his car through police barricades toward an open-topped bus carrying Queen Beatrix and several other members of the royal family.
He told one of the first police officers to rush to his car that the attack was aimed at the royal family, prosecutor Ludo Goossens said Thursday. But the motive was unclear.
“It is very difficult now that we no longer have the suspect to reconstruct what was behind this,” said Fred de Graaf, they mayor of Apeldoorn where the incident occurred.
“An element of uncertainty will remain because you can no longer question the suspect. So the last piece of the puzzle will remain in question,” he told reporters Friday.
Dutch media, citing neighbors, said Tates recently was fired from his job as a security guard and was to be evicted from his home in the small eastern town of Huissen because he could no longer afford the rent. Police said he had no history of mental illness or police record.
The neighbors described him as friendly, but a man who kept to himself, the NRC Handelsblad newspaper reported on its Web site.
Prosecutors said the suspect’s death ended the criminal investigation against him, but that they would continue to investigate whether he acted alone. Prosecutors have not released his name, in line with Dutch privacy laws.
“So far there are no indications” anybody else was involved, prosecutors said in a statement.
Police who searched the man’s house Thursday “found no weapons, explosives or indications of other suspects,” prosecutors said. No links with terrorism or ideological groups were immediately uncovered, they said.
The attack prompted officials to review security arrangements for the royal family’s public appearances, beginning with Memorial Day next Monday commemorating Dutch victims of World War II, followed Tuesday by Liberation Day festivities. The state broadcaster NOS said the 71-year-old monarch would attend at least the main memorial ceremony as planned.
The queen and her son Crown Prince Willem-Alexander seldom hesitate to approach the crowds on holidays, especially on Queen’s Day, when the members of the House of Orange are the focus of attention.
Now, the attack raised questions about “whether Queen’s Day can ever again be celebrated in the way we Dutch are accustomed to—with as its most important feature the closeness of the queen, her family and the Dutch public,” said De Volkskrant daily.
De Graaf defended security during Thursday’s parade. “You don’t assume somebody will drive straight through a crowd, straight through two barriers to do something like this. You don’t plan based on that kind of scenario,” he said.
On Friday, people laid bouquets of flowers at the scene of the attack, lit candles in Apeldoorn’s church and signed a condolence register at Apeldoorn city hall for the victims.
The failed attack on the immensely popular royal family played out live on nationwide television during coverage of the queen’s bus trip to her palace Het Loo in the eastern city of Apeldoorn.
Friday newspapers and Web sites featured photos of the carnage wreaked by his small black car as it plowed through crowds of people hoping to catch a glimpse of the royals.
The car came to a halt when it slammed into a stone monument just yards (meters) from the royal bus.
A shaken Queen Beatrix extended her sympathies to the victims in a brief nationally televised address Thursday. “What began as a great day has ended in a terrible tragedy that has shocked us all deeply,” she said.
Officials in Apeldoorn said he had a map of the queen’s route.
Nine victims remained in hospital Friday, including two children, the Apeldoorn mayor said. One woman was still in critical condition.
Officials had said that in addition to the dead, 12 people had been injured, but on Friday said the driver had been counted among them.
Celebrations were canceled for Queen’s Day, the national holiday that draws millions of people to street dances, picnics and outdoor parties around the country. Flags were lowered to half staff.
| — Hat tip: Paul Green | [Return to headlines] |
U.K. Bombing Campaign Forecast
Intel agents say hard-line Ulster faction preparing attacks
LONDON — Agents for the MI5 Security Service warn hard-line Irish Republicans are on the verge of launching a new terror campaign on Britain’s mainland, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Gordon Brown Has Lost it, Say Ministers
Labour is heading for an election defeat as heavy as that suffered by John Major because Gordon Brown has lost control of the parliamentary party, two senior Cabinet ministers have privately warned.
The Prime Minister was forced to surrender in his battle to reform MPs’ expenses yesterday after backbenchers threatened to defy his authority for the second time in two days.
The retreat was announced to avert another humiliating loss in the Commons, only 24 hours after the Government was defeated over the right of Gurkhas to live in Britain.
After another day of whips’ desperate bargaining with Labour MPs had failed to produce sufficient support for the Prime Minister, it was left to Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, to announce that reform of the second homes allowance would be left to an independent inquiry.
The turmoil of the past week, following the damage to the Prime Minister over the emails smearing senior Tories, has produced “meltdown” in the parliamentary party according to one minister. Even Mr Brown’s usually loyal Cabinet colleagues are losing patience.
One minister close to Mr Brown told The Daily Telegraph: “We can still turn this round, but Gordon is not listening. He is lashing out and reacting to headlines. It’s all so reminiscent of the last months of John Major.
“If we don’t get our act together — and that means Gordon needs some better advice — we could go down to a defeat every bit as big as, if not bigger than, the Tories in 1997.”
Another Cabinet minister said: “Gordon is looking for someone to blame for the Gurkhas but he refused to see that we were in trouble and did not see it coming. Instead we had the spectacle of the Prime Minister, insisting at the dispatch box at 12.15, that the deal was the right one, only to be defied by dozens of our MPs only hours later.
“I am afraid we are giving the impression that we have lost control of our own side. We have to get a grip, give him better advice, otherwise there will be more talk of leadership challenges, which is the last thing we want.”
The series of setbacks to Mr Brown’s authority — which followed last week’s poorly received Budget — has raised questions about his continued leadership of the party.
One senior minister said: “The Parliamentary Labour Party is in total meltdown. It is worrying. The backbenchers will now rather hit Gordon’s authority than allow things like the Gurkhas to go through.
“What that means is that we will stop putting tough legislation through the Commons for fear of getting defeated. The public are not stupid. They will soon spot that and it is then that you risk looking like a busted flush.”
Another Cabinet minister said that while they had been “jolted” by this week’s events, they remained united behind Mr Brown. Ministers are now increasingly pinning their hopes on an economic recovery to revive the party’s fortunes
One loyalist minister conceded that Mr Brown has lost the respect of many of his own MPs.
“It’s a mess,” he said. “The biggest worry is that this isn’t just the usual suspects any more, it’s the decent, quiet guys who want to be loyal but can’t take any more. They look at Gordon and where we are now and they think we’re going to get slaughtered.”
A petition on the Downing Street website demanding his resignation has now attracted almost 36,000 supporters and, with polls predicting disaster at next month’s European and local elections, some Labour MPs predict an attempt to oust Mr Brown before the next general election.
A former minister said: “He’s in a very bad situation and he has lost a great deal of authority. It’s worse because it’s self-inflicted. Just because there is no single consensus candidate to replace him, it doesn’t mean he’s safe.”
Tom Harris, a former minister who supported the Government in the Gurkha vote, said: “Governments fall apart when discipline fails. Major’s government collapsed when his MPs saw no reason to toe the party line.”
The withdrawal of Mr Brown’s proposals for the reform of expenses means that the contentious issue of the £24,000-a-year second home allowance, available to all non-London MPs, was shelved. Instead, only London MPs will lose their second homes expenses.
Other measures proposed by the Prime Minister were agreed, but they will only act as interim reforms pending the outcome of the inquiry by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said: “This was another humiliating defeat for the authority of Gordon Brown. Only a week ago he came up with his big idea on YouTube which was to pay MPs to turn up and do their job. Today, under pressure from all sides, he had to withdraw any idea that that was going to happen.”
Last night, Mr Brown rejected suggestions that his authority has been diminished. “I don’t accept that at all,” he said in a BBC interview.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Police Officers Use Megaphones to Alert Residents if Doors and Windows Open
Northamptonshire Police are being ordered to use megaphones to shout crime prevention advice at residents who leave their doors or windows open.
Officers have also been instructed to go into unlocked properties and alert homeowners to the security risk — even to the point of waking them up if they are asleep.
It is all part of a scheme that will see them patrolling the streets with the megaphones, shouting at homeowners to ensure their properties are properly protected.
The move is part of an initiative to crack down on summer burglaries, but has not gone down too well with local residents, who criticised it as patronising and intrusive.
Shirley Partridge, 75, said: “I don’t want police officers coming into my house and bellowing at me with a megaphone telling me to lock my windows and doors.
“They wouldn’t get in anyway because I am careful when I go to bed at night, all they are doing is waking my dog up and setting him off barking at all hours.
“Surely all of the criminals round here will just hear the police coming and hide until they have gone.”
The scheme was dreamed up by Northamptonshire police and began two weeks ago in the Thorplands and Lumbertubs areas of Northampton, which has seen a spate of burglaries in recent weeks.
Officers are patrolling residential streets bellowing: “This is the police, shut your windows and lock your doors, don’t let burglars in.”
According to police, one in four of the 30 recent burglaries was down to tenants failing to lock up their houses properly and the average cost of a burglary to the force is around £3,300.
Insp Mike Grady said: “Sadly, a good proportion of burglaries in this county take place at homes that have been left insecure.
“A burglar can be in and out of your home with your with your wallet, mobile or keys in just seconds if your door is unlocked.”
He said officers would only enter properties in “obvious” cases where doors are left ajar and that anyone who was asleep would be woken up.
He added: “It costs nothing to turn the key in the lock but it could cost you thousands to replace the items a burglar steals, before you even know he’s been.”
Anthony Whitehead, 59, from the Thorplands area, said he thought the idea was “bizarre”.
He said: “I can think of better ways to stop the burglars. The sound of the megaphone just scares old people and it will alert the burglars to where the police are so they can avoid them and then break into people’s houses.”
Dr Anthony Covington, 62, from Lumbertubs, said he could not believe the initiative was really going ahead.
He said: “This must be a joke. There is no way it will work — all of the burglars will hear them coming and then wait until they have gone.”
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Swine Flu Victims Face Hospital Bed Lottery
BRITAIN’S doctors will use a LOTTERY to decide which swine flu victims get intensive care during a pandemic, The Sun can reveal.
The horrific scenario — with names pulled from a hat — is the Government’s OFFICIAL guidance if hospitals get swamped.
Unlucky ones will be turned away even if critically ill — because there will not be enough intensive care beds for all.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Insurance: Croatia; Premiums +2.3% in First 3 Months
(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, APRIL 20 — According to data published by the Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (HANFA), the total gross payments registered by the 26 main Croatian insurance companies in the first quarter of 2009 totalled 2.58 billion kunas (about 350 million euro), which is a 2.3% increase compared to the same period in 2008. The Italian Trade Commission (ICE) office in Zagreb reported that in the first quarter of this year, non-life insurance premiums reached 2 billion kunas (about 270 million euro), which represents a slight increase of 2% compared to the same period last year. Most insurance premiums (about 91.15 million euro) consisted of compulsory car insurance premiums. The Croatian national insurance company, Osiguranje, continues to hold its position as the leader in the market with a 38.8% local market share, followed by Allianz Zagreb with a 10.9% share. Local company, Euroherc, with gross premiums of 238.5 million kunas (about 32.67 million euros), was third on the market with a 9.3% market share. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Economy: Morocco, European Conquest Begins From Italy
(by Diego Minuti) (ANSAmed) — ROME — In recent years Morocco has pulled in foreign direct investment totalling around 5 billion euro, but Italy is not among the top investors. Morocco is therefore set on stepping up its bid to attract capital from the Bel Paese and has decided that Italy must be the first European country to host a Moroccan economic promotion office (followed by Spain, Germany and France). The office would be more than just a representative unit, since it will have a difficult looking task: showing Italian investors the convenience of considering Morocco in their investment choices. The task is only “apparently” difficult because Morocco has decided to start up an aggressive economic policy, promising substantial tax breaks and a low cost of labour. The hopes have been pinned to the ‘Maroc en mouvement’ programme, which the country offers to potential investors. The job of running the office in Milan has fallen to Hamila Hadir, a double-graduate in chemistry and textiles, who has already lived in Italy for study and work before taking up a government post. “Morocco does not only offer economic advantages”, said Hamila Hadir, “but also its absolutely original character and, above all, political stability”. Mohamed IV’s monarchical regime is aiming to modernise the country and the efforts so far undertaken have brought good results since “giant leaps have been made”, according to Hamila Hadir, who also noted the king’s choice to make a huge break with the past. By way of example, Hadir added: “the king has chosen to have a single wife and to take her out in public, breaking with established tradition”. Nowadays, King Mohammed and his wife, Lalla Salma Bennadi (who also holds a science degree, specialising in computer science), are the symbols of a young Morocco (more than 50% of the population is under 35 years of age), which wants to see change, without dramatic revolutions but following a path of modernity and certainty. “When we tell businesspeople to invest in Morocco,” explained Hamila Hadir, “we are not looking for them to delocalise their businesses, but we put ourselves forward as partners. For what we guarantee (cost of labour is around one euro per hour), but also the prospects that we offer with our recognition of the costs entailed in the training of Moroccan technicians and leaders by foreign businesses”. Morocco has already won several important gambles, like the port in Tangiers which experts say could surpass Rotterdam, in terms of containers shifted, by 2010 — thereby becoming the most important cargo port in Europe. However, other than its ties with the EU (through the special status assigned by Brussels), Morocco also has an eye on the United States, with which it operates a free trade agreement. “That means that a businessperson that invests here can export its products without having to pay tariffs”. Why then, given all the advantages that Morocco offers, has Italian investment remained relatively low? “Italy is Morocco’s third trade partner”, said Hamila Hadir, adding: “Morocco has somehow escaped investors’ attention, as opposed to Romania, for example. My aim to change this trend and modify the image of my country”. Even if it has not been completely reached, this objective is certainly drawing nearer, as shown by the fact that after years of rejected applications, in 2009 Moroccan leather goods manufacturers will be present at Micam, the sector’s most prestigious trade fair. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
1 May: Algeria, Where Getting a Job is a Gamble
(by Laura De Santi) (ANSAmed) — TIMIMOUN (ALGERIA), APRIL 30 — The cinema in Timimoun is perhaps one of the most crowded in Algeria, but this has nothing to do with the rare showings of films: it is here that young and old alike try their luck and hope that their number will be called in what is a real job lottery in the most literal sense. In the red oasis, which takes its name from its ochre coloured sand dunes, in the heart of the Algerian Sahara (1,200 km south west of Algiers), all temporary and permanent public sector jobs are assigned via a lottery, in which the hundreds of unemployed people in the area rush to take part. “Transparency” is the aim of this unusual method of hiring workers, and this refers to more than just the plastic container which holds the photocopies of the candidate’s documents. Prayers and superstitious rituals are much in evidence as the drum rolls over, each one hoping that fate will be kind to them just once in the draw. Abdelali was successful this time: he is one of the few to have been graced with the good fortune of a permanent contract as a welder at Sonelgaz (Algeria’s electricity and gas utility). “Just like all the other times I went to the cinema with others from my village, almost just for a bit of fun. It’s always better to try,” said the 26 year old originally from Ouled, one of the small oases in the Timimoun region. “I was going with a friend,” Abdelali reccounted pridely, “who was convinced that héd win a contract due to his father’s help. If it wasn’t a real lottery I never would have got a job.” That day, for a single soldering job, there were more than 200 people at the nameless cinema, where fading letters announce “from the people and for the people.” “My family prayed for the whole week before the draw. A son with a job like that (today Abdelali makes around 20 thousand dinar a month — around 200 euro), is a relief and support for everyone”, he went on, “the first person they drew out hadn’t completed military service and so he can’t work for a public organisation, the second was the mayor’s son but he hadn’t passed the practical trial, which for technical jobs like a welder, has to be completed to show that the candidate is capable. I was the third.” The whole village celebrated for Abdelali, whilst others like Miloud, Krimo and Amina will keep trying. Yesterday they had no luck. There were two jobs available as postmen and one as a driver. “Inchallah,(by God’s will) we will be successful sooner or later,” Miloud, 22, said, smiling in an apparently care-free way, like only people in the Sahara can. Whilst he waits “for a good job, I’ll help my parents. I’m lucky. They have a shop where grain is ground up to make semolina flour. It’s just that I want to get married soon and in Algeria weddings are expensive!” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Special School-Security Corps to be Created
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, APRIL 30 — A special corps charged with ensuring security inside schools is to be set up in Algeria by the country’s Education Ministry. The announcement comes from Education Minister Boubakeur Benbouzid, as quoted by APS, explaining that “the corps will comprise teachers paid by the Ministries of Solidarity and Employment and will help to make schools safer places”. Police agents will be stationed at the entrances to schools. Student aggressions against their classmates, but also on teachers, have been the leading stories in the Algerian press. Yesterday, a young university student killed a fellow by cutting his throat. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Mubarak Criticises Iran in May 1 Speech
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, APRIL 30 — Every year the Egyptian President’s May 1 speech is given early. When Hosni Mubarak spoke yesterday, he heavily criticised what he called the “plots dreamt up by known regional powers which promote terrorism and are hostile to peace”: a verbal attack on Iran made without ever explicitly mentioning the country’s name. Contrary to expectations and tradition, for the first time Mubarak did not announce the annual rate of salary increase, which is applied in July. In response to the public’s call for this information Mubarak said, “There will be an increase and as your representative I am committed to seeing that the government establishes the highest increase possible”. The leader said that this is not the first time the country has warned against the attempts of those “known regional powers” to “extend their sphere of influence and hegemony in the Gulf region and in our Arab world.” “Now that these powers and their agents show the audacity to meddle with Egypt’s security and sovereignty, I say now that I will never allow and I will show no weakness in dealings with those who try to threaten the security and the stability or the future of the population.” Mubarak went on, “we will be patient with their outrageous statements, but we will tackle their plots with force and determination.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Aircraft Strike Gaza Tunnels
The Israeli military says its aircraft have struck smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip.
It says aircraft attacked two tunnels in two separate strikes today. Gazans dig tunnels to smuggle in weapons and other goods under the Gaza-Egypt border.
Gaza health official Moaiya Hassanain said one person was slightly injured.
The last airstrike took place two weeks ago.
Violence around Gaza has subsided sharply since Israel concluded a bruising, three-week offensive in mid-January against militants firing rockets into its territory.
More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in that war.
One of the aims of that war had been to stop smuggling.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Ahmadinejad: Swiss President Told Me US Wants to Compensate Losses From Our Pockets
[Video with transcript]
Iranian President Ahmadinejad on His Experiences at Durban II: The Swiss President Told Me the U.S. Wants to Compensate Its Economic Losses from Our Pockets
Following are excerpts from a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which aired on IRINN TV on April 22, 2009.
To view this clip, visit www.memritv.org/clip/en/2092.htm.
I Told the PM “Of One Of Those Large Industrialized Countries… ‘Tsh’“ — Meaning, “The Iranian People Will Not Withdraw”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “A few months ago, I held a meeting with the prime minister of one of those large industrialized countries. For an hour and a half, the gentleman tried to boast about their progress and industrial capabilities, on the one hand, while on the other hand, he tried to portray the front of arrogance [i.e. the West] as capable of harming the Iranian people. Then he tried to tell me that if we give up the path we have taken, and our persistence with regard to the nuclear issue, they would be willing to invest in parts of our energy [industry].
“After an hour and a half of talking, promising, and threatening, he finally asked me: ‘Well, Mr. Ahmadinejad, after everything I’ve said and all my explanations, will the Iranian people be willing to withdraw from its unequivocal position on the nuclear issue?’ I turned to him and said: ‘My answer, dear sir, is… ‘tsh.” I said it just like you do: ‘tsh.’ He asked: ‘What does that mean?’ I said: ‘In your language, that means absolutely not. The Iranian people will not withdraw from its position.’
That PM Told Me: “Mr. Ahmadinejad, You Are Very Tough and Steadfast”
“That gentleman went on talking and insisting. I felt very sorry for him, so I put my hand on his shoulder, and said: ‘Dear sir, don’t be so afraid of America. Don’t be afraid of those Zionists. They are on the verge of death. Their time has passed. Do not surrender your people to them.’“…
| — Hat tip: AA | [Return to headlines] |
Defence: Turkey and Germany to Sign Strategic Agreement
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 24 — A German delegation is set to participate in an international defense fair next week, Anatolia news agency reports today quoting a statement from the German Embassy in Ankara. The delegation headed by German Defense Ministry Undersecretary Thomas Kossendey is set to arrive in Turkey for the IDEF-2009, which will take place in Istanbul. On the sidelines of the fair, Turkish and German defense officials are expected to sign a cooperation agreement, which is seen as groundwork to set out “a strategic partnership” between the two countries. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Defence: Lockheed Signs Contracts With 3 Turkish Companies
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 30 — When the Turkish Defense Ministry made the decision to introduce Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 Lightning II onto its list of next-generation fighter jets, Turkey set the goal of increasing its domestic input in the production of these new jets to 50% of the total project. The target amounts to about $5.5 billion in domestic contracts and has resulted in a number of Turkish companies vying to ensure that they will have their share of the billions that will be flowing. On Tuesday, as Today’s Zaman reports, Lockheed Martin signed contracts with three Turkish companies — Alp Aviation, ASELSAN and Kale Aero — during a formal signing ceremony at the 9th International Defence Industry Fair (IDEF’09). Kale Aero won the contract as supplier of machined parts for the forward fuselage and wings of the F-35, having provided parts for the very first test aircraft. As an emerging partner and strategic supplier of mission systems avionics technology, ASELSAN will produce optics for the electro-optical targeting system (EOTS) of the F-35 Lightning II. Alp Aviation won a competitive contract with Lockheed Martin to provide machined parts associated with the forward fuselage. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Hans Blix on a Nuclear Iran
Interview with Hans Blix in Foreign Policy
FP: If there were just two options, how would you weigh the choice between an attack on Iran or a nuclear-armed Iran?
HB: The consequences of an attack on Iran would very likely be a nuclear-armed Iran! There would be a delay, but nuclear weapons that are hypothetical today would be certain in a few years time. Secondly, an attack would probably have horrible consequences on the supply of oil coming through the Persian Gulf; it would impact the world economy.
Nuclear arms in Iran would neutralize the threat of the Israeli nuclear weapons. I do not see that as a disaster; these weapons should not have been developed in the first place.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanon: New Shiite Militia, Hezbollah Alternative
(by Lorenzo Trombetta) (ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, APRIL 29 — Just like Hezbollah they are preaching armed “resistance” against the “zionist enemy”, and just like the same Shiite movement they are led by a man of faith wearing a black turban, beard and moustache. They are a new Islamic militia born in Lebanon that goes by the name of ‘Arab-Islamic council’ and which claims to own remote controlled missiles and tank busting weapons and which can count on the readiness of “at least 3,000 well-trained men”. Their young leader is the sayyid (descendent of the prophet Muhammad) Muhammad Ali Husseini, who from his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs (a traditional Hezbollah stronghold) claims he is no way connected to the pro-Iranian Shiite movement. Husseni states that “there is no connection nor is there any coordination with Hezbollah or with other Lebanese forces”, but he does not rule out “coordination with all the patriotic forces which share the common goal of protecting Lebanon and defending it against aggression”. Son of a retired police officer, the young Shiite leader speaks with the rhetoric of The Party of God: “Lebanon has many enemies, first of all the Zionist entity that is violating UN resolution no. 1701”, which in 2006 put an end to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. He added that “the Zionist entity violates Lebanon’s sovereignty by sea, land and air, in addition to occupying the farms in Shebaa”, a small piece of land contended by Syria and Lebanon that was occupied 42 years ago by Israel. Established in the summer of 2008, the Arab-Islamic council is an organisation registered under the title ‘social and humanitarian association for relations of the prophet Muhammad’ and publicly boasts a “powerful” military wing. Husseini stated that “we have long range remote controlled missiles, medium range grad rockets and RPGs. But none of these devices are located in southern Lebanon because we comply with resolution no. 1701”, which also forbids the presence of weapons and armed personnel, except for Unifil (the UN mission) and the Lebanese army south of the Litani river. “Many of our fighters are well educated university students who have a national conscience and who are ready to be deployed, in the event of enemy aggression, in the south and in Bekaa”. Like the Hezbollah leadership, the leader of the Arab-Islamic council wanted to make it clear, in an interview to a weekly paper printed by the Nahar publishing group, that “our weapons are only for the defence of Lebanon and cannot be used for internal purposes”. Like the Shiite movement, Husseini claims that the main sources of finance come from “Islamic ritual begging (zakat), charities and private donations”. (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Administration to Release Bin Laden Associate From Gitmo
The U.S. Justice Department has decided to release another detainee from Guantanamo, a Yemeni named Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi. It is not entirely clear why Batarfi has been cleared for release. But we can be reasonably sure, based on Batarfi’s own freely given testimony, that he was no innocent swept up in the post-9/11 chaos of Afghanistan, as his lawyers claim.
Batarfi first traveled to Afghanistan in 1988 to fight the Soviets. The government claims he was trained at the Khalden camp, which graduated hundreds of al Qaeda members, but Batarfi denies this. Batarfi has admitted to participating in at least one nighttime raid against Soviet forces. This is important because it shows that he was willing to participate in hostilities from a young age—and was not merely a humanitarian adventure seeker in Afghanistan.
Batarfi then went to Pakistan, where he became an orthopedic surgeon. From there, things get really interesting…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Turkish Regime Courts Another Anti-American Radical
Having developed good relations with Iran, which are expanding steadily on the economic front despite international sanctions; backing Hamas and Hizballah, and doing a joint military exercise with Syria (albeit small in scale) the Turkish regime is now playing host to Moqtada al-Sadr, whose forces repeatedly attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Even though he holds no official post and is a client of Iran and Syria, Sadr held personal meetings with Turkey’s prime minister and president. This is another of many steps showing the Ankara regime’s moves closer to the Iran-led alliance.
In last months’ local elections, the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) suffered some setback but remained the most popular party by a large margin. The opposition remains deeply divided and largely ineffective.
Having been honored by a special visit by President Barack Obama and warmly praised, one might think that the regime—if Obama’s style of diplomacy was going to work in such situations—would have refrained from inviting a stridently anti-American militia leader a few weeks later. One more piece of evidence showing the administration that it might be taking a wrong approach to regional powers.
| — Hat tip: CB | [Return to headlines] |
Video: UAE Torture Recording Threatens to Derail Nuclear Deal With United States
A videotape showing a member of the United Arab Emirates Royal Family torturing a man is threatening a multibillion-dollar nuclear power deal between the US and the Gulf kingdom.
The 45-minute tape shows a man that the Government of Abu Dhabi has acknowledged is Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan — one of 22 royal brothers of the UAE President and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince — mercilessly and repeatedly beating a man with a cattle prod and a nailed board, burning his genitals and driving his Mercedes over him several times. He is assisted by a uniformed policeman.
The fallout from the film — which was smuggled out of the UAE by a former business associate of the sheikh — has reached all the way to the Oval Office, where the civilian nuclear deal, awaiting the signature of President Obama, remains unsigned. A senior US official has said that the Administration is holding off certifying the treaty as a direct result of the film.
The deal was sealed on January 15 during President Bush’s last week in office, but needs to be recertified by the new Administration. Under its terms, the US agrees to provide technology and equipment to help the UAE to develop civilian nuclear power plants. In return, the UAE pledges to abide by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and not to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel.
Jim McGovern, the Democratic co-chairman of the congressional Human Rights Commission, viewed the tape last week and told The Times that it was “one of the most horrific things I have ever seen in my life”. In the tape the sheikh is seen torturing an Afghan grain salesman he claims has cheated him.
Mr McGovern has written to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, expressing his “outrage, horror and revulsion” about the tape and demanding that all sales and transfers of technology to the UAE, “including nuclear”, be suspended. He calls on Mrs Clinton to take a lead role in the investigation. He also told The Times that he would hold congressional hearings into the issue. “If the UAE think this is going to blow over, they are wrong,” he said. The case will be a further test of the Obama Administration’s commitment to human rights.
One of Sheikh Issa’s brothers heads the UAE’s Interior Ministry, and the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Sheikh Issa’s half-brother, is due in Washington next month. Mr McGovern said: “If we stand for human rights we have to speak out, even against human rights violations in countries that may be our friends or are strategically located.” The UAE is one of Washington’s main Arab allies in the region. “You need to condemn torture wherever you see it,” Mr McGovern said.
The tape was smuggled out of the UAE by Bassam Nabulsi, a former business associate of Sheikh Issa who fell out with him. The videotape was filmed by Mr Nabulsi’s brother, who used to work for the sheikh.
Mr Nabulsi says that after he confronted the sheikh about the tape he was tortured in a UAE jail by members of the Interior Ministry, a claim the UAE Government denies.
He is suing the sheikh in Houston, Texas, and wants to produce the tape as evidence.
Sheikh Issa’s Houston lawyer confirmed it was his client in the tape, and called his actions “inexcusable”. Yet he also said that his client had been “unduly defamed” by the incident.
The UAE first investigated the tape four years ago, and filed no charges against the sheikh.
Now, with the public release of the video, the Government has issued a statement in which it “unequivocally condemns the actions depicted on the video”. It pledged to conduct “a comprehensive review of the matter immediately”.
Mr McGovern believes that the latest response reflects the UAE’s concern that the nuclear deal will fall through. He is also demanding an inquiry into a claim by Mr Nabulsi that last year he showed portions of the tape to a US Homeland Security official in the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, but that no action was taken by American officials.
There were grave concerns among some on Capitol Hill about the nuclear deal even before the emergence of the tape. The UAE is one of Iran’s biggest trading partners, and security checks at its ports are lax, prompting worries about the leakage of nuclear technology to Tehran.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Kabul’s New Elite Live High on West’s Largesse
‘Gilded cage’ lifestyle reveals the ugly truth about foreign aid in Afghanistan
Vast sums of money are being lavished by Western aid agencies on their own officials in Afghanistan at a time when extreme poverty is driving young Afghans to fight for the Taliban. The going rate paid by the Taliban for an attack on a police checkpoint in the west of the country is $4, but foreign consultants in Kabul, who are paid out of overseas aids budgets, can command salaries of $250,000 to $500,000 a year.
The high expenditure on paying, protecting and accommodating Western aid officials in palatial style helps to explain why Afghanistan ranks 174th out of 178th on a UN ranking of countries’ wealth. This is despite a vigorous international aid effort with the US alone spending $31bn since 2002 up to the end of last year.
The high degree of wastage of aid money in Afghanistan has long been an open secret. In 2006, Jean Mazurelle, the then country director of the World Bank, calculated that between 35 per cent and 40 per cent of aid was “badly spent”. “The wastage of aid is sky-high,” he said. “There is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal.”
The dysfunctional reputation of the US aid effort in Afghanistan is politically crucial because Barack Obama, with strong support from Gordon Brown, has promised that a “civilian surge” of non-military experts will be sent to Afghanistan to strengthen its government and turn the tide against the Taliban. These would number up to 600, including agronomists, economists and legal experts, though Washington admitted this week that it was having difficulty recruiting enough people of the right calibre.
Whole districts of Kabul have already been taken over or rebuilt to accommodate Westerners working for aid agencies or embassies. “I have just rented out this building for $30,000 a month to an aid organisation,” said Torialai Bahadery, the director of Property Consulting Afghanistan, which specialises in renting to foreigners. “It was so expensive because it has 24 rooms with en-suite bathrooms as well as armoured doors and bullet-proof windows,” he explained, pointing to a picture of a cavernous mansion.
Though 77 per cent of Afghans lack access to clean water, Mr Bahadery said that aid agencies and the foreign contractors who work for them insist that every bedroom should have an en-suite bathroom and this often doubles the cost of accommodation.
In addition to the expensive housing the expatriates in Kabul are invariably protected by high-priced security companies and each house is converted into a fortress. The freedom of movement of foreigners is very limited. “I am not even allowed to go into Kabul’s best hotel,” complained one woman working for a foreign government aid organisation. She added that to travel to a part of Afghanistan deemed wholly free of Taliban by Afghans, she had to go by helicopter and then be taken to where she wanted to go in an armoured vehicle.
There have been numerous attacks on foreigners in Kabul and suicide bombings have been effective from the Taliban’s point of view in driving almost all expatriates into well-defended compounds where living conditions may be luxurious but which are as confining as any prison. This means that many foreigners sent to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country and the state machinery seldom meet Afghans aside from their drivers and a few Afghans with whom they work.
“Risk avoidance is crippling the international aid effort,” said one aid expert in Kabul. “If governments are so worried about risk then they really should not be sending people here and having them work under such restricted conditions.”
The effectiveness of foreign advisers and experts in Iraq is often further reduced by the very short time they stay in the country. “Many people move on after six months,” said one expatriate who did not want to be named. “In addition some embassy employees receive two weeks off work for every six weeks they are in the country, on top of their usual holidays.”
Some officials working for non-governmental organisations in Afghanistan are themselves troubled by the amount of money which foreign government officials and their aid agencies spend on staff compared to the poverty of the Afghan government.
“I was in Badakhshan province in northern Afghanistan which has a population of 830,000, most of whom depend on farming,” said Matt Waldman, the head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Kabul. “The entire budget of the local department of agriculture, irrigation and livestock, which is extremely important for farmers in Badakhshan, is just $40,000. This would be the pay of an expatriate consultant in Kabul for a few months.”
Mr Waldman, the author of several highly-detailed papers on the failures of aid in Afghanistan, says that a lot of money is put in at the top in Afghanistan but it is siphoned off before it reaches ordinary Afghans at he bottom. He agrees that the problems faced are horrendous in a country which was always poor and has been ruined by 30 years of war. Some 42 per cent of Afghanistan’s 25 million inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day and life expectancy is only 45 years. Overall literacy rate is just 34 per cent and 18 per cent for women.
But much of the aid money goes to foreign companies who then subcontract as many as five times with each subcontractor in turn looking for between 10 per cent and 20 per cent or more profit before any work is done on the project. The biggest donor in Afghanistan is the US, whose overseas aid department USAID channels nearly half of its aid budget for Afghanistan to five large US contractors.
Examples cited in an Oxfam report include the building of a short road between Kabul city centre and the international airport in 2005 which, after the main US contractor had subcontracted it to an Afghan company, cost $2.4m a kilometre — or four times the average cost of road construction in Afghanistan. Often aid is made conditional on spending it in the donor country.
Another consequence of the use of foreign contractors is that construction has failed to make the impact on unemployment among young Afghans which is crucial if the Taliban is to be defeated. In southern provinces such as Farah, Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul, up to 70 per cent of Taliban fighters are non-ideological unemployed young men given a gun before each attack and paid a pittance according to a report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. By using these part-time fighters as cannon-fodder, the Taliban can keep down casualties among its own veteran fighters while inflicting losses on government forces.
Some simple and obvious ways of spending money to benefit Afghans have been neglected. Will Beharrell of the Turquoise Mountain charity, which is encouraging traditional Afghan crafts and reconstruction of part of the old city, says tangible and visible improvements are important. He said: “We went in for rubbish clearing because it is simple and provides employment. We brought the street level down by two metres in some places when we had cleared it away.”
A striking feature of Kabul is that while the main roads are paved, the side streets are often no more than packed earth with high ridges, deep potholes and grey pools of dirty water. New roads have been built between the cities, such as Kabul and Kandahar, but these are often too dangerous to use because of mobile Taliban checkpoints where anybody connected to the central government is killed on the spot.
The international aid programme is particularly important in Afghanistan because the government has few other sources of revenue. Donations from foreign governments make up 90 per cent of public expenditure. Aid is far more important than in Iraq, where the government has oil revenues. In Afghanistan a policeman’s monthly salary is only $70, which is not enough to live on without taking bribes.
Since the fall of the Taliban the Afghan government has been trying to run a country in which the physical infrastructure has been destroyed. Kabul is now getting electricity from Uzbekistan but 55 per cent of Afghans get no electricity at all and just one in 20 get power all day. Money can be distributed more swiftly by the US military but this may not undercut the political support of the Taliban to the degree expected.
Afghans themselves are unenthusiastic about President Obama’s plan for more US military and civilian involvement in Iraq. And the failure of foreign aid to deliver a better life to Afghans also helps explain plummeting support for the Kabul government and its Western allies. Oxfam’s Mr Waldman believes better-organised aid could still deliver the benefits Afghans hoped for when the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, but he warns: “It is getting very late in the day to get things right.”
Go figure: The West’s spending in Afghanistan
$57 The foreign aid per capita to Afghanistan, compared with $580 per capita in the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict.
$250,000 Typical salary of foreign consultants in Afghanistan, including 35 per cent hardship allowance and 35 per cent danger money. Afghan civil servants typically receive less than $1,000 a year.
$22bn The shortfall in donations compared to the international community’s estimate of Afghanistan’s need — around 48 per cent.
40 per cent Share of international aid budget returned to aid countries in corporate profit and consultant salaries — more than $6bn since 2001.
$7m Daily aid spend in Afghanistan. The daily military spend by the US government is around $100m.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Says Pakistan’s Nukes No Threat
WASHINGTON — President Obama said last night he’s confident Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of enemies or terrorists because that country’s army understands how dangerous that would be.
“I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure,” he said in his third prime-time press conference last night. “Primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.”
Taliban forces — aided by elements of Afghan forces, as well as al Qaeda — have come within about 50 miles of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in recent days, threatening a critical US ally that possesses as many as 100 nuclear weapons.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Myth of Talibanistan
Apocalypse Now.. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media — from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.
But unlike St Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won’t fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.
Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan’s 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There’s no evidence they are about to embrace Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi’ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis — faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari’s centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People’s Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces — amounting to 85% of Pakistan’s population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class — are an infinitesimal minority.
The Pakistan-based Taliban — subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles — are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab.
To believe this rag-tag band could rout the well-equipped, very professional 550,000-strong Pakistani army, the sixth-largest military in the world, which has already met the Indian colossus in battle, is a ludicrous proposition.
Moreover, there’s no evidence the Taliban, in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, have any capability to hit a target outside of “Af-Pak”(Afghanistan and Pakistan). That’s mythical al-Qaeda’s privileged territory. As for the nuclear hysteria of the Taliban being able to crack the Pakistani army codes for the country’s nuclear arsenal (most of the Taliban, by the way, are semi-literate), even Obama, at his 100-day news conference, stressed the nuclear arsenal was safe.
Of course, there’s a smatter of junior Pashtun army officers who sympathize with the Taliban — as well as significant sections of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But the military institution itself is backed by none other than the American army — with which it has been closely intertwined since the 1970s. Zardari would be a fool to unleash a mass killing of Pakistani Pashtuns; on the contrary, Pashtuns can be very useful for Islamabad’s own designs.
Zardari’s government this week had to send in troops and the air force to deal with the Buner problem, in the Malakand district of NWFP, which shares a border with Kunar province in Afghanistan and thus is relatively close to US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops. They are fighting less than 500 members of the Tehrik-e Taliban-e Pakistan (TTP). But for the Pakistani army, the possibility of the area joining Talibanistan is a great asset — because this skyrockets Pakistani control of Pashtun southern Afghanistan, ever in accordance to the eternal “strategic depth” doctrine prevailing in Islamabad.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
China Reopens Border With North Korea to Tourists
BEIJING — China has reopened its land border to tourists traveling to North Korea after a three-year break, with a group of 71 tourists visiting the isolated country, state media reported Thursday.
The Chinese tourists left the city of Dandong in northeastern Liaoning province this week for a one-day tour of Sinuiju, on the other side of the Yalu river that marks the frontier, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
It was the first tour group to cross the border since February 2006, when crossings were suspended following rampant gambling by Chinese tourists, the report said. The report didn’t say where the tourists had been gambling or what had changed to allow the border to reopen.
The frontier is a sensitive area and the point where most Koreans fleeing the regime pass through.
Two U.S. journalists reporting on refugees in the area were arrested March 17 in the area. Pyongyang has accused them of committing “hostile acts” and will try them on criminal charges.
The group that crossed this week were mostly locals from Dandong who paid 690 yuan (about $100) to visit six scenic sites in Sinuiju, including a museum on North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, Xinhua said.
Ji Chengsong, manager of the travel agency that organized the trip, was quoted as saying that the company hoped to offer tours four days a week.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Chavez Takes Charge
A Venezuelan chronicles his president’s evolution from democrat to dictator.
As a Venezuelan, I am often asked what I think of my president, Hugo Chávez. What the questioner really means to ask is whether I think my president is a dictator or a democrat. It can be difficult to answer this question, given Chavez’s repeated legitimate electoral victories. Lately, however, it has become much easier. The recent indictment brought against Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales is a good example of why, despite his unrelenting popularity, El Comandante will ultimately be remembered as another addition to Latin America’s long list of bombastic dictators.
In the oil-rich state of Zulia, on October 20, 2008, President Chávez gave a speech in which he declared to the assembled business community that he was “determined to jail Manuel Rosales.” Rosales is a social democrat who managed to unite the opposition under the banner of his candidacy during the 2006 general elections, which Chávez won. In November, Rosales was elected to serve as mayor of Zulia’s capital, Maracaibo. President Chávez probably chose to deliver his harangue in Rosales’ home state in order to appear more intimidating. During his speech, Chávez predicted that Rosales would end up in prison. The audience responded to this declamation with joyous and fervent applause. During a party ceremony in December the president made his intentions even clearer, calling Rosales a wretch and assuring the multitude of adoring, red-clad followers that he would “erase [Rosales] from the Venezuelan political scene.” Both scenes, which I would not hesitate to call televised records of despotism, demonstrate how Chávez gives Venezuela’s public institutions orders.
Dutifully, on March 19, Attorney General Luisa Ortega DÃaz, filed a perfectly phrased indictment against Rosales, whom her office accuses of embezzlement. The self-abasing way DÃaz rushed to manufacture a legal justification for this thuggish attack is thoroughly shameful.
In Venezuela today, it is uncontroversial—even boring—to argue that our public institutions fulfill different responsibilities within the president’s party. A typical Chavista would probably not even contest this point, but would hasten to add that it’s a good thing; a sign that our “revolution” is progressing. Fearing his verdict had been decided in advance of his trial, Rosales fled the country on April 21. In doing so he abdicated his position as mayor of Maracaibo, but also avoided becoming the most recent victim of our partisan courts and the ideological justice they dispense. He is currently in Peru, where he was recently granted political asylum. Chávez responded by recalling the Venezuelan ambassador from Lima.
Another prominent dissident in whom the president has taken a special interest is Raúl IsaÃas Baduel, a retired general and ex-Minister of Defense under Chávez. Baduel played an instrumental role in returning Chávez to power after a muddle of a coup in April 2002 briefly ousted him from power. Baduel later won the epithet of “traitor to the revolution” in late 2007 when, having resigned as Defense Minister, he came out publicly against the Constitutional Reform Referendum and exhorted Venezuelans to vote against it.
The proposed reforms, which included abolishing presidential term limits and giving the president the authority to establish regional vice-presidents, were rejected by a slight margin (In February, the president submitted the presidential term limit question to the people once more, calling it an amendment referendum instead of a reform referendum, and won). On April 2, agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Militar arrested Baduel near his home. He is currently being held at Ramo Verde prison, and Baduel’s lawyer has declared that he fears for his client’s life. Mayor General Ernesto Cedeño, the Military Attorney General, stated that he would be filing a complaint against Baduel in the next 30 days.
The Venezuelan courts are unlikely to rein in the president’s abuse of executive power, because it is simply not in their nature to strike down a decision made by the president. During the official ceremony marking the start of the Venezuelan judicial year in 2006, our venerable Tribunal Supremo de Justicia presided over the event in self-satisfaction while a chorus of new judges shamelessly repeated the familiar Chavista slogan: “¡Uh, Ah, Chávez no se va!” or “Chávez is not leaving.” The chief justice of the Tribunal Supremo, Omar Mora, did not think the partisan outburst was unethical. The episode was, in his words, merely the result of the atmosphere of joy that reigned during the ceremony.
It is obvious that Venezuelan public bodies operate, and will continue to operate, as the disciplinary arm of the president. These latest instances of swift judicial vengeance against Rosales and Baduel, two highly regarded opposition leaders, reveal the true nature of our dismembered republic and the manner in which the president will continue to suppress dissent and take care of potential challengers in the future. These indictments and arrests are as unsurprising as they are representative of the government’s style. El Comandante makes a sustained accusation against a political opponent, denouncing them as an accomplice of imperialism, and the courts and appropriate officials then turn the president’s demagogic bluster into punitive discipline. The same narrative was employed to shut down the independent television station RCTV, and it is recurrently used to threaten Globovisión, the only remaining non-Chavista channel, as well as the small group of opposition leaders and politicians—of whom Rosales is one.
These disgraceful episodes also foreshadow the legal basis upon which the legitimacy of an even harsher regime will likely come to rest. And you can be sure that that regime will also be a popularly elected one, which gives me the opportunity to end on an ironic note: When the onset of President Chávez’ dictatorship is finally complete and obvious to even the most disinterested observer, Venezuelans will have to take comfort in the fact that we have only gotten what we deserve.
| — Hat tip: islam o’phobe | [Return to headlines] |
Nicole Ferrand in the Americas Report: Ecuador’s Correa Until 2017?
As many polls had predicted, President Rafael Correa was re-elected for a second term in the Ecuadorian general elections, which were held last Sunday, April 26 2009. He was running against banana magnate, Alvaro Noboa and former president Lucio Gutierrez. Ecuador has had a turbulent political past, having elected ten Presidents since 1997, three of which were ousted by revolt. “Onward with the socialist revolution!” Correa told his supporters after exit polls showed he’d won by a wide margin.
Ecuador is of strategic importance to the United States since it is home to the only U.S. air base in South America, called Manta. In addition, Ecuador is the smallest member of OPEC. The country is the largest banana exporter in the world and is the biggest economy outside of the United States that uses the dollar as its currency…
| — Hat tip: CSP | [Return to headlines] |
Kennedy Brings ‘Hate Crimes’ Into Senate
Matches House-approved plan to crack down on biblical teachings
A bill that would provide federal money to train law enforcement officers to identify and criminally prosecute speech and thought offensive to homosexuals has been introduced into the U.S. Senate, matching a House-approved bill that critics fear will be used to crack down on biblical teachings.
The proposal, from Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, aligns with H.R. 1913, which was approved in the U.S. House yesterday.
It denies protections to classes of citizens such as pastors, Christians, missionaries, veterans and the elderly that would be granted to homosexuals and those with gender issues.
[…]
Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., introduced a striking argument: If Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who supports traditional marriage, had slapped the homosexual judge who derided her on the stage under H.R. 1913 she could be indicted as a “violent hate criminal,” facing a possible 10 years in prison. But, Forbes said, if the homosexual judge had slapped her, she would have had no special protection under H.R. 1913.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Real Culture War is Over Capitalism
Tea parties, ‘ethical populism,’ and the moral case against redistribution.
Despite President Barack Obama’s early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the “tea parties” that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop up those who engaged in corporate malfeasance and mortgage fraud.
The data support the protesters’ concerns. In a publication with the ironic title, “A New Era of Responsibility,” the president’s budget office reveals average deficits of 4.7% in the five years after this recession is over. The Congressional Budget Office predicts $9.3 trillion in new debt over the coming decade.
And what investments justify our leaving this gargantuan bill for our children and grandchildren to pay? Absurdities, in the view of many — from bailing out General Motors and the United Auto Workers to building an environmentally friendly Frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas. On behalf of corporate welfare, political largess and powerful special interests, government spending will grow continuously in the coming years as a percentage of the economy — as will tax collections.
[…]
To put a modern twist on the old axiom, a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head, or pays no taxes. Social Democrats are working to create a society where the majority are net recipients of the “sharing economy.” They are fighting a culture war of attrition with economic tools. Defenders of capitalism risk getting caught flat-footed with increasingly antiquated arguments that free enterprise is a Main Street pocketbook issue. Progressives are working relentlessly to see that it is not.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
East Versus West
A psychology professor dares to compare how Asians and Americans think.
Richard Nisbett used to be a universalist. Like many cognitive scientists, the University of Michigan professor held that all people—from the Kung tribe that forages in southern Africa to programmers in Silicon Valley—process sensory information the same way. But after visiting Peking University in 1982 and partnering with an Asian researcher, Nisbett found his beliefs challenged.
He embarked on a project to probe the thought processes of East Asians and European Americans. His experiment presented subjects with a virtual aquarium on a computer screen.
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Yahoo! Buzz”The Americans would say, ‘I saw three big fish swimming off to the left. They had pink fins.’ They went for the biggest, brightest moving object and focused on that and on its attributes,” Nisbett explains. “The Japanese in that study would start by saying, ‘Well, I saw what looked like a stream. The water was green. There were rocks and shells on the bottom. There were three big fish swimming off to the left.’“
In other studies Nisbett discovered that East Asians have an easier time remembering objects when they are presented with the same background against which they were first seen. By contrast, context doesn’t seem to affect Western recognition of an object.
“I thought there wasn’t going to be any difference, and then we kept coming up with these very large differences,” says Nisbett, a stately, white-haired man of 67, as we sit in the Upper East Side headquarters of the Russell Sage Foundation. In lieu of his regular salary, he has a grant from Sage to research the nature of intelligence while on sabbatical from Michigan’s psychology department, where he has taught since 1971.
Scientists now attach gizmos to people’s heads that track eyeball movement; these experiments have confirmed Nisbett’s findings, recording that Americans spend more time looking at the featured object in an array while Asians take in the entire scene, darting between background and foreground.
East Asians see things in context, while Westerners focus on the point at hand; the former are dependent, the latter independent; the former are holistic, the latter analytic. There’s a social aspect to these differences: Asians are collectivistic, Westerners individualistic.
Even if cognition does differ across cultures, why should we care?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
What Pandemic Alert Phase 6 Means
Under the World Health Organization’s alert system on a developing flu pandemic, phase 6 is the highest level. At the moment, the world has risen to phase 5 from phase 3 since the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico last week. Here’s what the phases mean:
- Phase 3, an animal or human-animal flu virus causes some infections of people, but with little or no subsequent human-to-human transmission.
- Phase 4, verified human-to-human transmission able to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community. Any country that suspects or has verified such an event should urgently consult with WHO to decide whether rapid moves are needed to avert a pandemic.
- Phase 5, human-to-human spread of the virus in at least two countries in the same region. This is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent, with little time left to finish preparations.
- Phase 6, global pandemic has begun. This includes community level outbreaks in at least one other region. This may trigger countries to activate their own pandemic response plans, though some countries may already have done this in phases 4 or 5. WHO continues to monitor the virus’ spread, check for resistance to antivirals and consider whether vaccine producers should be asked to switch from making seasonal flu vaccine to pandemic vaccine. Based on how the virus spreads, WHO may also advise countries to take measures such as closing schools, workplaces and mass gatherings. The agency will also make specific recommendations for health workers and doctors as to how to treat the disease and reduce its spread in hospitals. And it will oversee distribution of its emergency stockpile of 5 million antiviral treatments to countries in need.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
1 comment:
Ah yes. Blix's reasoning is that nuclear arms for a nutcase who sees auras and imagined the world stopped during one of his UN addresses, a Muslim supremacist who has threatened a second Holocaust and believes in a mystical 13th imam who will appear after a conflagration...that guy needs nukes to "balance" Israeli nukes.
Blix did his utmost in his day to make it possible for that to come about by not finding what he was sent to Iran to find, didn't he?
Why are idiots and enablers like Blix in such plentiful supply? Guess stupidity is the natural human condition and only a minority gain wisdom?
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