More Foreign Aid Bollocks

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/272450/How-Britain-is-giving-355m-to-educate-the-girls-of-Asia-and-Africa




NICK Clegg triggered fresh outrage at Britain’s spiralling overseas aid budget by pledging £355million of taxpayers’ cash to educate girls in poor countries.


He announced the huge handout at the Lib Dem conference yesterday amid warnings of swingeing austerity for ­families at home.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s promise of cash for countries including South Sudan, Nigeria and Bangladesh also came as it emerged that a literacy drive in British schools is to be axed.

Nick Clegg was cheered by his party’s grassroots activists at their gathering in Birmingham yesterday.

But the move infuriated opponents of the Coalition’s policy of raising overseas aid to a massive £12.6billion a year by 2015 – equivalent to nearly £500 for every household in Britain.

Tory MP Philip Davies said: “This is totally unjustifiable. However nice these projects sound, they are simply unaffordable.


Nick Clegg announced the huge handout at the Lib Dem conference yesterday amid warnings of swingeing austerity for ­families at home



“What Nick Clegg should be focused on is raising educational standards in this country. He should look at the number of people who leave schools and cannot read or write.”

MEP Paul Nuttall, education spokesman for the UK Independence Party, said: “This is deeply unfair on the British taxpayers, who expect their taxes to be used to educate children in this country. Who does he represent?”

Mr Clegg announced the policy at a question-and-answer session, when a delegate asked what the Coalition was doing to increase aid spending.

“It is something I feel passionate about myself, having worked before I went into Parliament on development aid,” he replied. He said the ­policy was in the country’s “self interest” and that poverty in the Third World was “the breeding ground for terrorism, strife, mass movement of people”.


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Thanks to his pledge, £355million will be donated to the new Girls Education Challenge project by 2015 – enough to provide a million youngsters with secondary education for three years.

But the National Association of Head Teachers yesterday said Britain’s Reading Recovery Project was being dropped at many of the country’s schools.

Andrew Mitchell, Tory International Development Secretary, said: “Educating girls tackles the root causes of poverty. Research shows that providing girls with an extra year of schooling can increase their wages by up to 20 per cent, while also lowering birth rates.”

Officials say girls in developing countries who have been through secondary education are less likely to marry in adolescence, will have fewer children and will avoid becoming HIV positive.

Jews Flee Sweden

http://www.freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/594-sweden-unsafe-for-jews-women.html



I hate to see the land of my beloved ancestral heritage being destroyed - and some Swedes become apoplectic when such a situation is even mentioned - but here are the facts. Read them and weep, because just a couple of decades ago Sweden had attained one of the most advanced cultures in history.

First we discover that Jews in the Swedish city of Malmo have been fleeing, because of violence and abuse from Muslims:

Sweden's reputation as a tolerant, liberal nation is being threatened by a steep rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the city of Malmo....

"I never thought I would see this hatred again in my lifetime, not in Sweden anyway," Mrs Popinski told The Sunday Telegraph.

"This new hatred comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now."...

The city's synagogue has guards and rocket-proof glass in the windows, while the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through thick steel security doors.

It is a far cry from the city Mrs Popinski arrived in 65 years ago, half-dead from starvation and typhus....

A Swedish newspaper reports that the Swedish government now must set aside funds to protect Swedish Jews from Muslim hate crimes:

The Government will spend four million kroner in 2012 on increasing the security and decreasing the vulnerability of the Jewish minority. Research shows that even though tolerance is increasing in society, anti-Semitic views have not decreased to the same extent. The Jewish minority is the subject of anti-Semitic hate crimes and harassment. Even children are harassed in everyday life. Many Jews in Sweden are afraid of openly showing that they belong to the Jewish minority.

Bizarrely, Jewish organizations apparently think that bringing in hordes of those most inclined towards "anti-Semitism" will help solve the situation, as expressed by this Jewish woman, Barbara Lerner Spectre, who says:

I think there's a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time, Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies [sic] that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive.



With this wave of delightful multiculturalism, Sweden has now become the rape capital of Europe:

Sweden has the highest incidence of reported rapes in Europe - twice as many as "runner up" the UK, a new study shows.

Researchers behind the EU study, which will be presented on Tuesday, conclude that rape appears to be a more common occurrence in Sweden than in continental European countries.

In Sweden, 46 incidents of rape are reported per 100,000 residents.

This figure is double as many as in the UK which reports 23 cases, and four times that of the other Nordic countries, Germany and France. The figure is up to 20 times the figure for certain countries in southern and eastern Europe....

Naturally, this article and others will not name the ethnicity/culture of the majority of rapists - Muslim immigrants - but Pat Condell has no problem doing so:



Yet, despite the reluctance to attach a name to the problem, the Swedish police are now admitting that "Islamic terrorism" is a major threat:

Islamic terrorism is key threat: Swedish police

Islamic terrorism remains the greatest threat to Sweden, according to Anders Danielsson, head of Sweden's Security Service (Säpo)....

Säpo's mission is furthermore to prevent terrorist crimes, Danielsson underlined.

"Our mission is not to get convictions for terrorist crimes, that is not a measure of our effectiveness," said Danielsson.

"We can and are likely to be exposed to terrorist attacks again. But it will not destroy our democratic system. Terrorism rarely does, even though it may seem that way."...

To summarize, in the face of Muslim violence, Jews are fleeing Sweden, while the government sets aside money to protect them. With Muslim immigration, Sweden has become the "rape capital" of Europe. Swedish police say the greatest threat to Sweden is "Islamic terror."

Lloyds sue Saudi Arabia for 911

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lloyds-insurer-sues-saudi-arabia-for-funding-911-attacks-2356857.html


A Lloyd's insurance syndicate has begun a landmark legal case against Saudi Arabia, accusing the kingdom of indirectly funding al-Qa'ida and demanding the repayment of £136m it paid out to victims of the 9/11 attacks.


The Brighton-based Lloyd's 3500 syndicate, which paid $215m compensation to companies and individuals involved, alleges that the oil-rich Middle Eastern superpower bears primary responsibility for the atrocity because al-Qa'ida was supported by banks and charities acting as "agents and alter egos" for the Saudi state.

The detailed case, which names a number of prominent Saudi charities and banks as well as a leading member of the al-Saud royal family, will cause embarrassment to the Saudi government, which has long denied claims that Osama bin Laden's organisation received official financial and practical support from his native country.

Outlined in a 156-page document filed in western Pennsylvania, where United Airlines flight 93 crashed on 9/11, the claim suggests that the nine defendants "knowingly" provided resources, including funding, to al-Qa'ida in the years before the attack and encouraged anti-Western sentiment which increased support for the terror group.

The legal claim states: "Absent the sponsorship of al-Qa'ida's material sponsors and supporters, including the defendants named therein, al-Qa'ida would not have possessed the capacity to conceive, plan and execute the 11 September attacks. The success of al-Qa'ida's agenda, including the 11 September attacks themselves, has been made possible by the lavish sponsorship al-Qa'ida has received from its material sponsors and supporters over more than a decade leading up to 11 September 2001."

The Lloyd's syndicate is known as a "run-off", meaning that it does not accept new premiums on the Lloyd's of London insurance market and instead deals with historic claims. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, its members settled a raft of multimillion-pound claims from affected businesses, including airlines, airports and security companies, as well as injured individuals and relatives of those killed.

Its complaint, which quotes heavily from US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks detailing investigations by the US authorities into al-Qa'ida, attempts to establish funding links between some Saudi charities, and the terror group, and implicate the Saudi government in that funding through its support of the charities.

The case singles out the activities of a charity, the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo and Chechnya (SJRC), which was alleged by UN officials to have been used as a cover by several al-Qa'ida operatives, including two men who acted as directors of the charity. It is alleged that at the time the SJRC was under the control of Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, half-brother of King Abdullah and the long-standing Saudi Interior minister. The claim states: "Between 1998 and 2000, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through the SJRC, diverted more than $74m to al-Qa'ida members and loyalists affiliated with SJRC bureaus. Throughout this time, the Committee was under the supervision and control of Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz."

The Saudi embassies in London and Washington did not respond to requests from The Independent for a response to the allegations in the claim. The 9/11 Commission, America's official report on the attacks, found that there was no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials individually funded al-Qa'ida.

Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks showed that American officials remained concerned that the Saudi authorities were not doing enough to stop money being passed to the terror group by Saudi citizens.

Tony Blair and J P Morgan

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8772418/Tony-Blair-visited-Libya-to-lobby-for-JP-Morgan.html


A senior executive with the Libyan Investment Authority, the $70 billion fund used to invest the country's oil money abroad, said Mr Blair was one of three prominent western businessmen who regularly dealt with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the former leader.

Saif al-Islam and his close aides oversaw the activities of the fund, and often directed its officials on where they should make its investments, he said.

The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials were told the "ideas" they were ordered to pursue came from Mr Blair as well as one other British businessman and a former American diplomat.

"Tony Blair's visits were purely lobby visits for banking deals with JP Morgan," he said.

He said that unlike some other deals - notably some investments run by the US bank Goldman Sachs - JP Morgan's had never turned "bad".

]
But he added: "Saif and his father played these people like musical chairs. At the end the reputation of the LIA was really damaged because of these interventions."

Documents found by The Sunday Telegraph published this weekend showed Mr Blair had made at least three visits to Tripoli, twice in the lead-up to the release of the alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Megrahi in 2008 and 2009 and once last year. On the first two occasions he was flown to the country on planes arranged by Col Gaddafi.

A senior diplomat told The Daily Telegraph last night that the British embassy in Tripoli had arranged transport for Mr Blair and his entourage in Tripoli and ensured that representatives were there to “greet him and see him off” at the airport.

Mr Blair stayed overnight at the ambassador’s official residence in Tripoli and was accompanied by “several” British police officers for protection.

The documents show that among the people he was due to meet in 2009 was Mohammed Layas, head of the LIA.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said that the visits had largely been to discuss Africa, and categorically denied that he had lobbied Said al-Islam on behalf of JP Morgan.

The spokesman said last night: "As we have made clear many times before, Tony Blair has never had any role, either formal or informal, paid or unpaid, with the Libyan Investment Authority or the Government of Libya and he does not and has never had any commercial relationship with any Libyan company or entity."

Mr Blair began work in January 2008 as a £2million-a-yearn adviser to JP Morgan. Last month, American officials told the New York Post newspaper that the bank managed more than half a billion US dollars on behalf of the LIA.

The executive said that he did not see Mr Blair at the LIA headquarters in the modern Tower of the Revolution overlooking the seafront. He said officials like himself were given their instructions by two senior Saif aides, including Mohammed Ismail, a Libyan with British nationality.

One of the letters arranging the 2008 visit, in which an aide to Mr Blair told the Libyan ambassador to Britain that the former prime minister was "delighted" that "The Leader" was likely to be able to see him, was on notepaper headed "Office of the Quartet Representative", his formal title as Middle East envoy.

The Quartet he represents is made up of the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the United States. A spokesman for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said: "It's up to him to explain why he did this."

The growing closeness of the Blair government to the Gaddafi regime has already come under fire. Abdulhakim Belhadj, former leader the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group and now head of the revolutionary Tripoli Military Council, is demanding an apology after papers showed MI6 arranged for his secret extradition from Malaysia back to Libya in 2004.

Many ordinary Libyans have also expressed surprise at the policy. After the latest revelations, Hoda Abuzeid, a British Libyan whose dissident father was murdered in London in 1995, accused Mr Blair of "selling out".

"People like Blair and those who had their eyes on the business opportunities that Gaddafi could provide sold out people like my family," said Miss Abuzeid, who has returned to the country for the first time since 1980.

"When he had tea in the desert with the 'Brother Leader' did he ever ask him who killed my father?"

Libya and the Propaganda War

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6480



This week Telesur welcomed home a news team just back from covering NATO’s war on Libya from that nation’s capital, Tripoli. On arrival at Venezuela’s Maiquetia International Airport, the journalists denounced the ongoing “fabrication of lies” by mainstream media outlets and accused the international press of “producing the arguments needed for a continuation of the war”. The Libyan people “have been invaded by destruction, war, suffering and death, when the solution to the conflict could have been secured by peaceful means”, affirmed Telesur journalist Rolando Segura, who spent the last four months in Libya alongside cameraman Henry Pillajo.

Segura and Pillajo are among the handful of independent journalists who covered largely underreported stories that include: NATO’s bombing of civilian targets; the indiscriminate killing of black migrant workers by rebel forces; the million strong ‘Green March’ held across Libya demanding reconciliation between the government and opposition forces; the rebel takeover and silencing of Libya’s public broadcasting channels; and the fabricated takeover of Tripoli’s Green Plaza late last month – filmed in Qatar and disseminated by international mainstream media outlets, the video successfully secured recognition of the NATO-backed National Transition Council (CNT) as the “new government in Libya” and convinced many Libyan embassy staff abroad to defect.

After an August 8-9 NATO missile strike killed 85 civilians, 33 of which were children, Telesur’s Segura interviewed Abu Mimiar, brother of one of those killed. Mimiar asked the Telesur reporter if the killing of his brother, a rural farmer, “is the protection of civilians they (NATO) talk about? Or is it that those of us who care for and support Gaddafi don’t deserve protection?”

50,000 KILLED IN LIBYAN WAR

According to Segura, who spoke Tuesday at a forum in Caracas organized by Correo del Orinoco, “there is talk of an estimated 1,800 killed by NATO bombs and, as a result of the entire conflict, something like 50,000 dead in total – persons who were massacred as a result of this invasion, this aggression, against Libya”.

The bombings, as well as advances made by NATO-backed rebel forces, “were made possible by the lies of the mass media that reproduced an editorial line without any questioning at all”, affirmed Segura. Segura’s blog [http://rolandotelesur. blogspot.com/], in Spanish, has been one of the only independent sources of news, analysis, and images in the aftermath of NATO bombings across Libya.

The Telesur crew left Libya late last week, traveling 36 hours by boat from the Libyan coast to Malta, an island just south of Sicily, Italy. The two crowded in a boat fit for 12 alongside 50 other passengers, all of whom sought refuge from war-torn Tripoli.

Since 19 March this year, the United States and its NATO allies have launched over 20,000 sorties over Libya, carrying out an estimated 9,000 air strikes. This past Sunday alone, NATO carried out 52 aerial attacks. Damage to the country’s highly developed infrastructure – including its oil industry, water supply networks, food storage facilities, communications installations, and public health system – has resulted in growing shortages of food, water, and medicine.

TELESUR VS. NEW FORMAT FOR WAR

Speaking to a crowd gathered on Monday, Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Information Andres Izarra praised Telesur’s role in Libya and said “US imperialism” had “sown together a new format for imperial aggression” by using “the hegemonic international media” to demonize governments opposed to US foreign policy. This new “format,” he said, involves “instigating revolutions of color, revolutions of spring” inn countries in which imperialism claims “civil liberties are restricted”. Demonization is followed by international media campaigns to topple anti-US governments and, if necessary, direct military intervention follows.

According to Izarra, this new method for attacking sovereign nations has “already had a partialn victory in Libya” and “at this moment is a serious threat to Syria”. Izarra praised Telesur reporters in Tripoli, who showed “a city that was going about living its normal, daily life” as international press attempted to portray “a dictator, Gaddafi, massacring his own people” in order to justify NATO’s war.

Jordan Rodriguez, Telesur´s reporter in Tripoli at the start of NATO bombings, told the press that NATO is currently the only force responsible for “bombings
that are taking place in Libya” and blamed the international force for “killing innocent civilians, women and children”. Rodriguez pointed out that while NATO bombs continue to hit populated urban centers, “we watch as the large networks like CNN and the BBC report on the precision of NATO bombs” instead of the impact these bombs have on the Libyan people’s daily life.

According to Rodriguez, Telesur has “shown another other side of the conflict”. “When we (Telesur) spoke to Libyans from rural and other areas, many showed a great deal of appreciation for Moammar Gaddafi. We are talking about the poorest country in all of the Maghreb, before the arrival of the Revolution. The proof is in the statistics, in the hospitals that look like high tech clinics, eightlane highways, the highest quality education”, he said.

Rodriguez accused the US and NATO allies of instigating, arming and training the rebel forces. He said that when speaking to anti-Gaddafi rebels on the ground, “all they said is that they wanted ‘Gaddafi to go,’ giving no argumentation”.

Gaddafi was forced into hiding after NATO-backed opposition forces seized on weeks of airstrikes in Tripoli, capturing government offices and the presidential palace. Footage of the socalled “Fall of Tripoli” was widely disseminated by the mainstream media and opposition forces received almost immediate recognition as the “new government” in Libya.

VOICE OF TRUTH

According to Telesur President Patricia Villegas the Caracas- based Latin American news outlet plans to keep staff in Libya indefinitely as NATO steps up efforts to destroy support for Gaddafi and maintain the pro-Western “transitional government”.

According to Villegas, the station’s overall objective “has always been” to provide a “voice to the victims of conflict,” as was the case during the 2009 military coup in Honduras, the attempted ouster of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in 2010, the popular uprising against former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and most recently, the NATO bombing of Libya.

“We didn’t arrive (in Libya) alongside the invaders”, affirmed Villegas. “We didn’t arrive with the bullets…Other media outlets did. Other media outlets are riding in the rebels’ cars; others are protected by private securitycompanies. This is not the journalistic practice of Telesur. We have told this story since it first began”, she said.

“Regardless of whether or not the leader (Gaddafi) is ‘correct,’ we have been witness to exceptional acts of aggression by NATO; of NATO bombs not only attacking military but also civilian targets”, she affirmed.

CHAVEZ PRAISES TELESUR

Over the weekend Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised Telesur’s coverage of the war on Libya, stressing the importance of breaking apart the media blockade imposed by “US Empire” and its allies in international and local media networks. “I want us to award the Telesur correspondents with an honor, the highest honor given by the Republic. Those people are the ones telling the truth”. said Chavez. “Our recognition and admiration goes out to Telesur and its correspondents in Libya…What courage!” he said.

Oil and ther Falklands

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-and-the-Falklands-the-Saga-Continues.html


Like some dimly remembered Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, pitting Hardy British tars against perfidious foreigners, the Falklands periodically recycles into the gaze of bemused international observers every decade or so.

Since the brief 1982 war between Argentina and Britain, the issue of sovereignty of the Falklands has lurked beneath the internationals diplomatic surface, an irritant but hardly threatening to reignite a new round of hostilities. Three decades on from that unfortunate confrontation the issue of the Falklands is again roiling Argentinean-British relations over the possibility that the archipelago contains beneath its surrounding waters something of value - oil.

British oil group Rockhopper Exploration has unveiled optimistic plans for a $2 billion oil infrastructure investment in the Falkland Islands announcing on 14 September that it expected to start pumping oil in 2016 from its four licensed Sea Lion concessions totaling 1,500 square miles, with a projected production rate of roughly 120,000 barrels of oil per day by 2018. Rockhopper Exploration said the fifth well in the Sea Lion complex "had found a high quality reservoir package and oil column."

This roseate picture is somewhat clouded by several facts, including that currently Rockhopper Exploration has on hand a mere $170 million, enough to pay for two more scheduled wells. Nevertheless, Rockhopper Exploration shares, which have outperformed the European index of oil and gas companies by 14 percent since August, were up 1.1 percent in early trading after the company's announcement.

A second element in this picture is a sobering fact that while both British and Argentinean companies have drilled a handful of exploratory wells in the water surrounding the Falklands, only Rockhopper Exploration has discovered petroleum.

And thirdly last but certainly not least is the issue of the islands sovereignty, contested by both Argentina and Britain for the last 198 years.

While various City pundits excitedly speculate that the Falklands is to become another North Sea, the above facts taken together indicates at the very least a far greater degree of risk in underwriting Rockhopper Exploration’s ambitious program.

So if the Falklands oil potential is so promising, then why are the international major oil companies not involved? The answer is in brief that they have looked at the islands’ potential and given a pass.

According to a US embassy cable dating from February 2010 and leaked last year by Wikileaks, “ExxonMobil International chairman Brad Corson told us he does not believe there is enough oil on the Falkland Islands continental shelf to be profitable, citing Shell's earlier oil exploration attempts which they abandoned.”

Argentina is not taking the news lightly, declaring its intention following Rockhopper Exploration’s to both file an official complaint against Britain for oil exploration activities in Falklands/Malvinas disputed waters before the United Nations Decolonization Committee along with inviting the U.N. Special Committee of the 24 on Decolonization Chairman Francisco Carrion-Mena of Ecuador to visit Argentina to hold a meeting on the issue in Buenos Aires.

The Falklands now have the dubious distinction of joining the list of contested offshore maritime oil and natural gas concessions spewed by two or more countries.

These include a growing dispute in the eastern Mediterranean between Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel and Turkey, the final disposition of the Caspian's offshore waters currently contested by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan Russia and rising confrontation in the East China Sea over the region's offshore waters which involves the Spratly island’s more than 750 islands, islets, atolls and cays, whose various portions of offshore waters are claimed by China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

What makes the Falklands Argentinean-British dispute unique however is the fact that in 1980 to the countries actually fought a brief vicious war over the archipelago and its surrounding waters. At the time oil exploration of the Falklands waters had yet to begin, and the node and Argentinian writer Jorge Borges famously compared the dispute to “two bald men fighting over a comb.” The stakes are much higher now.

Common sense would seem to indicate that the best way for might be a possible joint venture between the two nations to explore their offshore waters oil potential hand, if any significant reserves are found jointly to develop them with an agreed-upon program of profit sharing, but given the increasingly strident claims sole sovereignty over the archipelago this seems increasingly unlikely.

If therefore Rockhopper Exploration’s drilling programs prove successful, a number of developments seem increasingly clear. First is that, depending on the political temperature in Buenos Aires, future activities may well need the protection of the Royal Navy.

Secondly is Latin America's increasingly lining up behind Argentina's claims to the islands, and Brazil recently stated that it would not allow British exploration vessels to use Brazilian ports to exploit any possible oil developments in the Falklands, Rockhopper Exploration will need to source virtually all of the necessary equipment from the other side of the Atlantic as well as possibly Britain, both major expenses for a company which states it has only $170 million of available cash. Furthermore should development go forward, then a total lack of access to Latin American hydrocarbon infrastructure support means that Rockhopper Exploration will probably be forced to use a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to store and transport its output.

Last but not least, the de facto boycott by Latin America of any future Falklands oil production means that the oil at the very least will have to transit South Atlantic before reaching potential markets, further increasing both development costs and shrinking potential profits.

In light of the above, a joint venture would seem to be the most common sense way to proceed, but given the rising jingoistic nationalism flaring over the issue in both London and Buenos Aires, don't count on any time soon.

While in history is rife with examples of daring oil explorers making fortunes, the number of examples shrink dramatically when major oil companies give a pass on projected production and you future output is situated in a contested site which less than 30 years ago was a “hot” war zone.

By. John C.K. Daly of OilPrice.com

SAS Captured In Libya

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8772710/Libya-Gaddafi-forces-claim-to-have-captured-British-mercenaries.html




"A group was captured in Bani Walid consisting of 17 mercenaries. They are technical experts and they include consultative officers," Moussa Ibrahim told Syrian-based Arrai TV.

"Most of them are French, one of them is from an Asian country that has not been identified, two English people and one Qatari," he added.

He said the 17 would be shown on television at a later time, but did not give more details.

It was not immediately possible to verify the claims. The French foreign ministry said it had no information regarding the report.

NATO, French and British officials had on Saturday denied a report by Arrai TV that some NATO troops had been captured by Gaddafi loyalists.

Western special forces are known to have been in Libya and to have liaised with anti-Gaddafi officials during the conflict. Private security firms have also been helping anti-Gaddafi forces, according to Western media reports.

Meanwhile, interim government forces have fled in chaos from the town of Bani Walid and pulled back from Sirte after yet more failed attempts to storm Gaddafi's final bastions and take control of the entire country.

Since taking Tripoli last month, National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters have tried several times to storm Bani Walid, 150 km (90 miles) southeast of the capital, only to retreat under heavy fire and in disorder.

NTC fighters said they had planned for tanks and pickup trucks with anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to lead Sunday's attack, but foot soldiers had piled in first.

"There is a lack of organisation so far. Infantry men are running in all directions," said Zakaria Tuham, a senior fighter with a Tripoli-based unit.

Holland Fights Back

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2219/netherlands-abandons-multiculturalism




The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.

A new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads: "The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society."

The letter continues: "A more obligatory integration is justified because the government also demands that from its own citizens. It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands. The integration will not be tailored to different groups."

The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants to ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.

The government will also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner, "it is not the government's job to integrate immigrants." The government will introduce new legislation that outlaws forced marriages and will also impose tougher measures against Muslim immigrants who lower their chances of employment by the way they dress. More specifically, the government will impose a ban on face-covering Islamic burqas as of January 1, 2013.

If necessary, the government will introduce extra measures to allow the removal of residence permits from immigrants who fail their integration course.

The measures are being imposed by the new center-right government of Conservatives (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA), with parliamentary support from the anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV), whose leader, Geert Wilders, is currently on trial in Amsterdam for "inciting hatred" against Muslims.

As expected, Muslim organizations in Holland have been quick to criticize the proposals. The Moroccan-Dutch organization Samenwerkingsverband van Marokkaanse Nederlanders, which advises the government on integration matters, argues that Muslim immigrants need extra support to find a job. The umbrella Muslim group Contactorgaan Moslims en Overheid says that although it agrees that immigrants should be better integrated into Dutch society, it is opposed to a ban on burqas.

But polls show that a majority of Dutch voters support the government's skepticism about multiculturalism. According to a Maurice de Hond poll published by the center-right newspaper Trouw on June 19, 74 percent of Dutch voters say immigrants should conform to Dutch values. Moreover, 83 percent of those polled support a ban on burqas in public spaces.

The proper integration of the more than one million Muslims now living in Holland has been a major political issue ever since 2002, when Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for his views on Muslim immigration, and since 2004, when Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death for producing a movie that criticized Islam.

Muslim immigration to the Netherlands can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s, when a blue collar labor shortage prompted the Dutch government to conclude recruitment agreements with countries like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. In the 1980s and 1990s, Muslims also arrived in the Netherlands as asylum seekers and refugees, mainly from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia.

There are now an estimated 1.2 million Muslims in the Netherlands, which is equivalent to about 6 percent of the country's overall population. Moroccans and Turks comprise nearly two-thirds of all Muslims in the Netherlands. Most Muslims live in the four major cities of the country: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

As their numbers grow, Muslim immigrants have become increasingly more assertive in carving out a role for Islam within Dutch society. For example, a documentary aired by the television program Netwerk in June 2009 reported that Dutch law was being systematically undermined by the growth of Sharia justice in the Netherlands.

In December 2004, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior published a 60-page report titled From Dawa to Jihad. Prepared by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD, the report says that the Netherlands is home to up to 50,000 radical Muslims whose key ideological aim is to target the Western way of life and to confront Western political, economic, and cultural domination.

The report concludes that Dutch society is poorly equipped to resist the threat of radical Islam because of "a culture of permissiveness" that has become synonymous with "closing one's eyes" to multiple transgressions of the law.

As for Interior Minister Donner, he has undergone a late-in-life conversion on the issue of Muslim immigration. In September 2006, while serving as justice minister, Donner provoked an outcry after saying that he welcomed the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in the Netherlands if the majority wants it. He also said Holland should give Muslims more freedoms to behave according to their traditions.

After applauding Queen Beatrix for respecting Islam by not insisting that a Muslim leader shake hands with her during a visit to the Mobarak Mosque in The Hague, Donner said: "A tone that I do not like has crept into the political debate on integration. A tone of: 'Thou shalt assimilate. Thou shalt adopt our values in public. Be reasonable, do it our way.' That is not my approach."

Fast forward to 2011 and Donner now says his government "will distance itself from the relativism contained in the model of a multicultural society." Although society changes, he says, it must not be "interchangeable with any other form of society."

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Germany Commits National Suicide

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1547/germany-debates-muslim-immigration




A national debate is raging in Germany over Muslim immigration. The issue is drawing attention not only to Germany's broken immigration system, which for many decades now has failed to integrate Germany's Muslim population, but also to Germany's demographic time bomb, which is significantly accelerating the pace of Muslim immigration.

The debate is also exposing deep rifts between Germany's politically correct elites, who for years have tried to silence discussion about Muslim immigration, and vast numbers of ordinary Germans, who are becoming increasingly uneasy about the social changes that are transforming Germany, largely due to the presence of millions of non-integrated Muslims in the country.

The debate over Muslim immigration is being fuelled by an explosive new book titled "Germany Does Away With Itself." The best-seller, authored by 65-year-old Thilo Sarrazin, a prominent German banker who is also a long-time member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), has broken Germany's long-standing taboo on discussing the impact of Muslim immigration by highlighting painful truths about the current state of affairs.

Apprehension about the future explains why Sarrazin's concerns over Muslim integration are resonating with the German population at large. (Sarrazin's book has topped the bestseller list on bookseller Amazon's German website since its publication in late August, and book tour dates are sold out across the country.) Polls show broad public support for Sarrazin's anger that many Muslim immigrants shut themselves off from Germany, do not speak German and do not share the German and European worldview.

According to a recent survey conducted by TNS Emnid pollsters, around 20 percent of German voters would back a hypothetical political party led by Sarrazin. Another poll conducted by the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag shows that 89 percent of those surveyed say Sarrazin's arguments are convincing. "For them, Sarrazin is somebody who is finally saying what many are thinking," according to Emnid.

This worries the uppity guardians of German political correctness, who have tried to silence Sarrazin by getting him removed from the board of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, and expelled from the Social Democratic Party. Infuriated by Sarrazin's audacity to question the status quo of German multiculturalism, the bulk of Germany's political and media class has been working overtime to delegitimize Sarrazin as a "racial arsonist."

Excerpts from the book, which is written in a highly confrontational style, include the following:

"In every European country, due to their low participation in the labor market and high claim on state welfare benefits, Muslim migrants cost the state more than they generate in added economic value. In terms of culture and civilization, their notions of society and values are a step backwards."

"No other religion in Europe is so demanding and no other migration group depends so much on the social welfare state and is so much connected to criminality."

"Most of the cultural and economic problems [in Germany] are concentrated in a group of the five to six million immigrants from Muslim countries."

"I do not want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in a mostly Muslim country where Turkish and Arabic are widely spoken, women wear headscarves and the day's rhythm is determined by the call of the muezzin."

"If the birthrate of migrants remains higher than that of the indigenous population, within a few generations, the migrants will take over the state and society."

"I do not want us to end up as strangers in our own land, not even on a regional basis."

"From today's perspective, the immigration of guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s was a gigantic mistake."

The roots of Germany's current problems with Muslim immigration can be traced back to October 30, 1961, with the signing of a labor recruitment agreement between West Germany and Turkey. At the time, West Germany's post-World War II economy was booming and similar treaties with Greece, Italy and Spain were insufficient to supply Germany's seemingly endless demand for labor. By the end of 1969, more than one million Turkish "guest workers" had arrived in Germany to work in the "host country's" industrial zones.

The initial idea was that the Turkish labourers would return home after a period of two years, but the so-called "rotation clause" was removed from the German-Turkish treaty in 1964, partly due to pressure from German industry, which did not want to pay the costs of constantly training new workers. The predictable result was that many Turks never returned home.

Today, the Turkish population in Germany has mushroomed to an estimated 3.5 million, and Turks now constitute the largest ethnic minority group in the country. Demographers expect that the Turkish population in Germany will increase exponentially in coming decades, largely due to a high birth rate and Germany's continuing high demand for foreign workers.

Germany's demand for foreign labor is being fuelled by a demographic crisis, in which the German population is not only ageing, but also shrinking, at a rapid clip. According to recent projections by the German Federal Statistics Office, Germany's current population of 82 million, the largest in the European Union, is set to decline by as much as 20 percent, to 65 million, over the next five decades. At the same time, 34 percent of the population will be older than 65 and 14 percent will be 80 or more by 2060, up from 20 percent and 5 percent respectively in 2009.

The twin challenges of depopulation and aging will have major consequences for the financial sustainability of Germany's cradle-to-grave social security system. For example, the number of pensioners that will have to be supported by working-age people could almost double by 2060, according to the Federal Statistics Office. While 100 people of working age between 20 and 65 had to provide the pensions for 34 retired people in 2009, they will have to generate income for between 63 and 67 pensioners in 2060.

Germany's grim demographic future will also have implications for its export-driven economy. According to the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, industrialized countries such as Britain and France "will overtake Germany in the future" because of their ability to combine higher birth rates with an inflow of qualified immigrants. "Germany will clearly decline as an economic power, especially in comparison to up-and-coming nations such as China and India." In fact, in 2009, Germany lost its cherished title of world export champion to China, heightening fears of a declining stature and importance globally.

All this implies that in the future, Germany will become more, not less, dependent on immigrants. And Turks will continue to be a major source of labor, considering that the birth rate among Turkish immigrants in Germany is 2.4, nearly double that of the native German population (which at 1.38 is far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple). At this rate, the number of native Germans will be cut in half in around six generations, while the number of Muslim immigrants in Germany will more than quadruple.

At the same time, the German left is struggling to come to terms with the fact that many Germans simply are not buying into the political elite's postmodern vision for an Islamicized Germany. The left-wing magazine Der Spiegel, in an article titled "Why Sarrazin's Integration Demagoguery Has Many Followers," asks: "In what country are we living? After the 2006 World Cup, it seemed that Germany had become cheerful and cosmopolitan. But the popular approval of Sarrazin leads us to question whether there isn't an underlying xenophobia after all."

Elsewhere, Der Spiegel refuses to accept the fact that many ordinary Germans do not share the political opinions of the media class, and summarily declares alternative viewpoints as racist. Lamenting the broken relationship between the political and journalistic class with the rest of the country, the magazine asks: "Do citizens feel abandoned on the question of integration? Or, asked another way, does Germany have a fertile breeding ground for the kind of populist right-wing party that is already par for the course in many European countries?"

But many German media outlets (on both the political left and right) have come out in support of Sarrazin. For example, the center-left newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung agrees that Sarrazin has "addressed a problem that will remain long after the waves of outrage have subsided: the enormous integration deficit of the Muslim minority in Germany, or at least of disturbingly large parts of it."

Elsewhere, Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: "A large section of the political elite wants to send Sarrazin away to the Sahara or wherever the Saracens come from, the ones who once gave his family its name. Yet many of those distancing themselves from Sarrazin aren't using arguments. They find it all simply so distasteful. For too long Germans thought they could leave it to immigrants to decide how far to integrate themselves or whether they want to do so at all. That has led to grievances that Sarrazin has correctly described."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes: "As a martyr of freedom of opinion and a chief witness to charges made by broad swathes of the population, Sarrazin will haunt [Germany's political class] for a long time. Indignant comments from the likes of the interior minister that the problems described by Sarrazin have long been known sound like mockery in the ears of many people: if the problems have been known that long, why has so little been done to deal with them?"

The center-right Die Welt writes: "The breadth and depth of the support in opinion polls for Sarrazin's theses make clear how uneasy Germans are across the political spectrum with the current integration situation…. Thanks to Sarrazin the debate on integration has now received the prominence it deserves."

Germany Commits National Suicide

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1547/germany-debates-muslim-immigration




A national debate is raging in Germany over Muslim immigration. The issue is drawing attention not only to Germany's broken immigration system, which for many decades now has failed to integrate Germany's Muslim population, but also to Germany's demographic time bomb, which is significantly accelerating the pace of Muslim immigration.

The debate is also exposing deep rifts between Germany's politically correct elites, who for years have tried to silence discussion about Muslim immigration, and vast numbers of ordinary Germans, who are becoming increasingly uneasy about the social changes that are transforming Germany, largely due to the presence of millions of non-integrated Muslims in the country.

The debate over Muslim immigration is being fuelled by an explosive new book titled "Germany Does Away With Itself." The best-seller, authored by 65-year-old Thilo Sarrazin, a prominent German banker who is also a long-time member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), has broken Germany's long-standing taboo on discussing the impact of Muslim immigration by highlighting painful truths about the current state of affairs.

Apprehension about the future explains why Sarrazin's concerns over Muslim integration are resonating with the German population at large. (Sarrazin's book has topped the bestseller list on bookseller Amazon's German website since its publication in late August, and book tour dates are sold out across the country.) Polls show broad public support for Sarrazin's anger that many Muslim immigrants shut themselves off from Germany, do not speak German and do not share the German and European worldview.

According to a recent survey conducted by TNS Emnid pollsters, around 20 percent of German voters would back a hypothetical political party led by Sarrazin. Another poll conducted by the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag shows that 89 percent of those surveyed say Sarrazin's arguments are convincing. "For them, Sarrazin is somebody who is finally saying what many are thinking," according to Emnid.

This worries the uppity guardians of German political correctness, who have tried to silence Sarrazin by getting him removed from the board of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, and expelled from the Social Democratic Party. Infuriated by Sarrazin's audacity to question the status quo of German multiculturalism, the bulk of Germany's political and media class has been working overtime to delegitimize Sarrazin as a "racial arsonist."

Excerpts from the book, which is written in a highly confrontational style, include the following:

"In every European country, due to their low participation in the labor market and high claim on state welfare benefits, Muslim migrants cost the state more than they generate in added economic value. In terms of culture and civilization, their notions of society and values are a step backwards."

"No other religion in Europe is so demanding and no other migration group depends so much on the social welfare state and is so much connected to criminality."

"Most of the cultural and economic problems [in Germany] are concentrated in a group of the five to six million immigrants from Muslim countries."

"I do not want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in a mostly Muslim country where Turkish and Arabic are widely spoken, women wear headscarves and the day's rhythm is determined by the call of the muezzin."

"If the birthrate of migrants remains higher than that of the indigenous population, within a few generations, the migrants will take over the state and society."

"I do not want us to end up as strangers in our own land, not even on a regional basis."

"From today's perspective, the immigration of guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s was a gigantic mistake."

The roots of Germany's current problems with Muslim immigration can be traced back to October 30, 1961, with the signing of a labor recruitment agreement between West Germany and Turkey. At the time, West Germany's post-World War II economy was booming and similar treaties with Greece, Italy and Spain were insufficient to supply Germany's seemingly endless demand for labor. By the end of 1969, more than one million Turkish "guest workers" had arrived in Germany to work in the "host country's" industrial zones.

The initial idea was that the Turkish labourers would return home after a period of two years, but the so-called "rotation clause" was removed from the German-Turkish treaty in 1964, partly due to pressure from German industry, which did not want to pay the costs of constantly training new workers. The predictable result was that many Turks never returned home.

Today, the Turkish population in Germany has mushroomed to an estimated 3.5 million, and Turks now constitute the largest ethnic minority group in the country. Demographers expect that the Turkish population in Germany will increase exponentially in coming decades, largely due to a high birth rate and Germany's continuing high demand for foreign workers.

Germany's demand for foreign labor is being fuelled by a demographic crisis, in which the German population is not only ageing, but also shrinking, at a rapid clip. According to recent projections by the German Federal Statistics Office, Germany's current population of 82 million, the largest in the European Union, is set to decline by as much as 20 percent, to 65 million, over the next five decades. At the same time, 34 percent of the population will be older than 65 and 14 percent will be 80 or more by 2060, up from 20 percent and 5 percent respectively in 2009.

The twin challenges of depopulation and aging will have major consequences for the financial sustainability of Germany's cradle-to-grave social security system. For example, the number of pensioners that will have to be supported by working-age people could almost double by 2060, according to the Federal Statistics Office. While 100 people of working age between 20 and 65 had to provide the pensions for 34 retired people in 2009, they will have to generate income for between 63 and 67 pensioners in 2060.

Germany's grim demographic future will also have implications for its export-driven economy. According to the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, industrialized countries such as Britain and France "will overtake Germany in the future" because of their ability to combine higher birth rates with an inflow of qualified immigrants. "Germany will clearly decline as an economic power, especially in comparison to up-and-coming nations such as China and India." In fact, in 2009, Germany lost its cherished title of world export champion to China, heightening fears of a declining stature and importance globally.

All this implies that in the future, Germany will become more, not less, dependent on immigrants. And Turks will continue to be a major source of labor, considering that the birth rate among Turkish immigrants in Germany is 2.4, nearly double that of the native German population (which at 1.38 is far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple). At this rate, the number of native Germans will be cut in half in around six generations, while the number of Muslim immigrants in Germany will more than quadruple.

At the same time, the German left is struggling to come to terms with the fact that many Germans simply are not buying into the political elite's postmodern vision for an Islamicized Germany. The left-wing magazine Der Spiegel, in an article titled "Why Sarrazin's Integration Demagoguery Has Many Followers," asks: "In what country are we living? After the 2006 World Cup, it seemed that Germany had become cheerful and cosmopolitan. But the popular approval of Sarrazin leads us to question whether there isn't an underlying xenophobia after all."

Elsewhere, Der Spiegel refuses to accept the fact that many ordinary Germans do not share the political opinions of the media class, and summarily declares alternative viewpoints as racist. Lamenting the broken relationship between the political and journalistic class with the rest of the country, the magazine asks: "Do citizens feel abandoned on the question of integration? Or, asked another way, does Germany have a fertile breeding ground for the kind of populist right-wing party that is already par for the course in many European countries?"

But many German media outlets (on both the political left and right) have come out in support of Sarrazin. For example, the center-left newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung agrees that Sarrazin has "addressed a problem that will remain long after the waves of outrage have subsided: the enormous integration deficit of the Muslim minority in Germany, or at least of disturbingly large parts of it."

Elsewhere, Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: "A large section of the political elite wants to send Sarrazin away to the Sahara or wherever the Saracens come from, the ones who once gave his family its name. Yet many of those distancing themselves from Sarrazin aren't using arguments. They find it all simply so distasteful. For too long Germans thought they could leave it to immigrants to decide how far to integrate themselves or whether they want to do so at all. That has led to grievances that Sarrazin has correctly described."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes: "As a martyr of freedom of opinion and a chief witness to charges made by broad swathes of the population, Sarrazin will haunt [Germany's political class] for a long time. Indignant comments from the likes of the interior minister that the problems described by Sarrazin have long been known sound like mockery in the ears of many people: if the problems have been known that long, why has so little been done to deal with them?"

The center-right Die Welt writes: "The breadth and depth of the support in opinion polls for Sarrazin's theses make clear how uneasy Germans are across the political spectrum with the current integration situation…. Thanks to Sarrazin the debate on integration has now received the prominence it deserves."

The Civilisational Crisis

Britain's navel-gazing politicians fail to see that they are locked in a battle for civilisation
By Melanie Phillips

Last updated at 8:05 AM on 19th September 2011

Comments (57) Add to My Stories Share

The world may currently be convulsed by escalating cataclysms, but for British politicians the order of the day is navel gazing as usual.

The EU is about to implode, the UK economy is going under, urban youth in British cities have just burned down their neighbourhoods and the Arab world is in ferment.

And so what are the big talking points of the day in Britain? Gay marriage, bashing the rich and (a few days ago) cutting the length of the school holidays.

Navel-gazing: Lib Dem party members gather in the crowd during the conference in Birmingham
With the start of the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference, the full narcissistic frivolity of the political class has been on wearisome display as the LibDems have strutted and postured from conference hall to broadcasting studio.

Their leader Nick Clegg, anxious to shore up his own position against mutinous party members who want to keep the flame of LibDem ideological purity burning brightly, has described the Tories as ‘political enemies’ who must be fought in the national interest.

Posturing: Is now really the time for the Lib Dems to be antagonising their coalition partners?
But with Britain’s economy in such a parlous state, is this really the time for cheap point-scoring against Clegg’s coalition partner in government?

His bombastic colleagues present an even more absurd spectacle. His deputy Simon Hughes says, for example, that there is ‘absolutely no majority in government for Tory views’. Doesn’t it occur to Mr Hughes that there is absolutely no majority in government for LibDem views either?

And while Mr Hughes was saying in one interview that the LibDems had to rein in the Tories, his parliamentary colleague David Laws was arguing that they must ‘not serve as this government’s brake, but its engine.’

So it appears they don’t even know whether they are pushing or pulling.
Meanwhile, the world is going through extraordinary convulsions. The West is teetering on the edge of an abyss. Britain is at war on three fronts, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The American economy is in dire trouble. President Obama is now increasingly regarded as a chronic liability even by Democrats who once compared his election to the Second Coming.

This creates a potentially devastating vacuum where the leader of the free world should be situated.

More from Melanie Phillips... Yves Cabannes is a poster-boy for the charade that is the UN 15/09/11 MELANIE PHILLIPS: Is Cameron about to vote for Palestinian statehood? 14/09/11 Britain has travelled steadily towards the edge of the cliff in the years since 9/11 12/09/11 MELANIE PHILLIPS: How could the Tories - of all people - let developers rip out the lungs of England? 11/09/11 MELANIE PHILLIPS: Why Cameron must stop running scared of these abortion zealots 05/09/11 MELANIE PHILLIPS: Britain's liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value 10/08/11 MELANIE PHILLIPS: Our police are not trusted any more. So why SHOULDN'T Dave ask America's top cop to run the Met? 08/08/11 MELANIE PHILLIPS: Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence 31/07/11 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE In response to these crises, the British political class either looks the other way or takes precisely the wrong position.

In regard to the imploding EU, the fall-out for Britain, even though it is not in the Eurozone, will be severe. Nevertheless, the crisis presents a tremendous opportunity for Britain finally to free itself from a project which has so badly eroded its democratic sovereignty and crippled its economy.

Yet the Prime Minister seems frozen like a rabbit in the headlights. He is trapped by the fact that the euro crisis makes it impossible to continue to talk like a Eurosceptic while doing nothing in practice to rock the EU boat - the fudge upon which he has relied so far to maintain party unity.

To make things even worse, his eurofanatic Coalition partner Nick Clegg departed Planet Reality altogether by observing yesterday that the Eurozone would ‘stabilise things’ by ‘integrating a bit further in certain ways’, and that it is ‘essential’ to British prosperity.

That prosperity, however, is being undermined already by Coalition policies which owe everything to left-wing posturing and nothing to common-sense. In particular, Britain’s alarming lack of growth is being made far worse by the Coalition’s ludicrous green energy policies.

These have already added a ‘stealth tax’ on electricity prices of more than 20 per cent for businesses, threatening to block the expansion of these companies and even drive them abroad and destroy thousands of British jobs.

Even more crazy is the Coalition’s devotion to wind power in pursuit of the holy grail of renewable energy sources.

Madness: Wind farms were closed down during the tail-end of hurricaine Katia
Surreally, 11 wind farms were closed down last week - because they were actually generating too much electricity as a result of the tail end of Hurricane Katia. As a result, the foreign operators of these wind-farms were paid some £2.6 million – which of course will be added on to household bills and paid for by consumers.

This is surely the policy of the madhouse. Economic power is currently leaching out of the West, and new economic suns are rising in India and on the Pacific Rim.

Yet Britain’s response is to adopt the faddish fixation with man-made global warming, for which no shred of reputable scientific evidence exists, and thus to sacrifice prosperity on the altar of New Left green ideology along with Old Left class war.

For according to Mr Clegg yesterday, cutting the 50p tax rate for the highest earners would be ‘incomprehensible to struggling Britons’. But what is really incomprehensible is a policy which will drive wealth producers out of the country, thus impoverishing it and increasing the pressure on those who are already struggling.

Along with such shallow gesture politics at home, the Coalition’s foreign policy displays a startling superficiality and disregard of realities.

In hailing the ‘Arab Spring’ as the harbinger of democracy in the region, David Cameron has displayed ignorance and arrogance in equal measure.

His triumphal victory lap in Libya last week was distinctly premature. It is not just that Gaddafi still has not been captured and the war is still continuing.

Premature: David Cameron has been too hasty in declaring victory in Libya
More disturbingly – and although the Prime Minister denied this -- there is a significant Islamist presence among the rebels, with the commander of the Tripoli Military Council even having affiliations with al Qaeda.

In Egypt, too, those who are best organised and look most likely to come to power in the end are Islamic extremists.

So Mr Cameron could wake up one day to find that in both Libya and Egypt, he has merely helped replace tyrants and monsters who were to some extent useful to the west by tyrants and monsters pledged to destroy the West.

Meanwhile, Britain is havering over whether or not to support Mahmoud Abbas’s unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state at the UN later this week.
Will Britain seriously recognise a Palestinian state committed to ethnic cleansing?
Yet the Palestinians have not only made plain that such a state is the precursor to destroying Israel, but they have also repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live in Palestine.

So Britain is seriously considering endorsing a racist state committed to ethnic cleansing, and which is designed to destroy Britain’s crucial ally in the defence of the West. If Britain does endorse this declaration, which drives a coach and horses through international law, it will cover itself in shame and disgrace.
And all the while, Iran steadily builds its nuclear bomb which would pose such a dire threat to western interests. Yet our posturing politicians don’t even mention this terrifying problem.
The core reason for this perplexing dislocation is surely that Britain is part of a civilisation in decline. The EU itself grew out of a catastrophic loss of confidence in the nation states of Europe after the Nazi period.

The subsequent demoralisation led to a process of eroding the fundamental moral building blocks of the West.

Busily trying to reinvent society and even redefine humanity itself, the political class fails to see that it is locked in a great battle for civilisation.

What’s needed is a response to the enormous challenges of the times that puts Britain on the right side of history rather than sucking up to the wreckers of western civilisation both within and without

The world is changing under our feet. If British politicians don’t lift their gaze from their collective political navel their legacy will be a Britain that is as irrelevant as the self-regarding policies they are now promoting.
Explore more:People: David Laws, Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes, David Cameron Places: Libya, Egypt, Israel, Islamic Republic of Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, United Kingdom, India, Palestine, Europe

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2038889/Britains-navel-gazing-politicians-fail-locked-battle-civilisation.html#ixzz1YQfEtIsg

Globalist Fascist State

http://www.infowars.com/soros-embrace-mass-centralization-of-power-in-europe-or-face-another-great-depression/


Billionaire globalist George Soros says that the world will face a second Great Depression unless leaders in Europe come together in a closer political union to push through bold new policies, including the creation of a European Treasury.

“It appears the authorities have reached the end of the road with their policy of ‘kicking the can down the road’,” Soros writes in a piece for Reuters.

Soros argues that further integration in Europe is the only way to prevent catastrophic financial meltdown.

“There is no alternative but to give birth to the missing ingredient: a European treasury with the power to tax and therefore to borrow.” Soros writes.

“Once the principle of setting up a European Treasury is agreed upon, the European Council could authorize the ECB to step into the breach, indemnifying the ECB in advance against risks to its solvency,” the investor adds.

In other words “The European banking system would be recapitalized and put under European-, as distinct from national-, supervision” he writes.

Adding that such a move would require a new European Union treaty, Soros states “That is the only way to forestall a possible financial meltdown and another Great Depression.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Soros warned Europeans in countries like Germany, that while they may be unhappy essentially underwriting debts for reckless Southern European countries, they basically have no choice anymore.

“The German public still thinks that it has a choice about whether to support the euro or to abandon it.” Soros writes, adding “That is a mistake.”

“The euro exists and the assets and liabilities of the financial system are so intermingled on the basis of a common currency that a breakdown of the euro would cause a meltdown beyond the capacity of the authorities to contain.” the article continues.

Asserting that prolonged recession with “incalculable political consequences” throughout the euro zone is already inevitable, Soros adds, “The longer it takes for the German public to realize this, the heavier the price they and the rest of the world will have to pay.”

Yesterday, the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso echoed the same sentiments as Soros, insisting that the economic crisis has turned into a “fight for European integration,” and calling for ” a new, unifying impulse” and “a new federalist moment”.

“Economic and monetary union cannot function properly only on the basis of decisions taken by unanimity.” Barroso said, suggesting that the Commission and the EU should have full authority over the governments of member states to enforce rules via the EU “Community method”.

In Washington, IMF chief Christine Lagarde essentially reiterated these sentiments, urging advanced countries to take radical steps to combat weak economic growth and high debt burdens.

“Without collective, bold action, there is a real risk that the major economies slip back instead of moving forward,” she said in a speech ahead of the IMF and World Bank meetings of global financial leaders next week.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to resist this brand of globalism, arguing that “collectivizing debts” would not do anything to solve economic problems.

“In order to bring about common interest rates, you need similar competitiveness levels, similar budget situations. You don’t get them by collectivizing debts,” Merkel said in a speech at the Frankfurt auto show today.

George Soros, along with the elite old guard in Europe, has been pushing the same agenda for some time now, calling for greater global financial regulation and further integration within the European Union.

On a speaking tour of Europe promoting the European Council on Foreign Relations last year, Soros told the elite Traveller’s Club. “The idea that markets can correct their excesses turned out to be false.”, adding that “The world does need order, and that order needs maintenance.”

Soros also spoke of a need for Europe to defend it’s single currency and re-order its financial structure “across borders”. He said the EU should be granted the power to “supervise and protect the banking system”, and “also to guarantee banks that become insolvent”

Close to eighteen months ago, at the height of the unprecedented €750bn EU bailout, we highlighted the fact that financial experts and economists were adamant that the rescue of the Euro represented another step on the road toward a monolithic globalist federal union, a mass centralization of power in Europe.

The sovereign nation state as viable economic entity is being jettisoned in favour of a vastly empowered European Central Bank and European Union.

Of course, this has been the idea all along, we were introduced to the problem, for the past three years we have witnessed a reaction of great destabilization and we are being presented with the same solution once again – more mass centralization in the name of stability – however, the stability is STILL no where to be seen.

For many years critics have warned that the EU has been slowly morphing into a federal superstate governed by unelected powerbrokers, who have increasingly sought to undermine the national sovereignty of member states.

What will the people of the member nations gain from this mass centralized union? They will simply see more of their earnings and their savings siphoned off to Brussels to prop up a failing paper currency they had never asked for in the first place. It will also mean their national vote counts for even less as unelected foreign bureaucrats are provided vastly more influence on the national economic policies of their governments.

This is a classic case of problem, reaction, solution – the very same European powerbrokers that brought us a major crisis, via enforced destabilizing monetary integration, are now offering up the final piece of the jigsaw, full integration as a means of stabilization.

British Freedom Blaving Account

We have today set up a new Balving account for Speak Tweets - come along and have a listen ;


http://en.blaving.com/BritishFreedom

Nationalism Rules

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/15/the_enduring_power_of_nationalism


What's the most powerful political force in the world? Some of you might say it's the bond market. Others might nominate the resurgence of religion or the advance of democracy or human rights. Or maybe it's digital technology, as symbolized by the Internet and all that comes with it. Or perhaps you think it's nuclear weapons and the manifold effects they have had on how states think about security and the use of force.

Those are all worthy nominees (no doubt readers here will have their own favorites), but my personal choice for the Strongest Force in the World would be nationalism. The belief that humanity is comprised of many different cultures -- i.e., groups that share a common language, symbols, and a narrative about their past (invariably self-serving and full of myths) -- and that those groups ought to have their own state has been an overwhelmingly powerful force in the world over the past two centuries.

It was nationalism that cemented most of the European powers in the modern era, turning them from dynastic states into nation-states, and it was the spread of nationalist ideology that helped destroy the British, French, Ottoman, Dutch, Portuguese, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian/Soviet empires. Nationalism is the main reason the United Nations had fifty-one members immediately after its founding in 1945 and has nearly 200 members today. It is why the Zionists wanted a state for the Jewish people and why Palestinians want a state of their own today. It is what enabled the Vietnamese to defeat both the French and the American armies during the Cold War. It is also why Kurds and Chechens still aspire to statehood; why Scots have pressed for greater autonomy within the United Kingdom, and it is why we now have a Republic of South Sudan.

Understanding the power of nationalism also tells you a lot about what is happening today in the European Union. During the Cold War, European integration flourished because it took place inside the hot-house bubble provided by American protection. Today, however, the United States is losing interest in European security, the Europeans themselves face few external threats, and the EU project itself has expanded too far and badly overreached by creating an ill-advised monetary union. What we are seeing today, therefore, is a gradual renationalization of European foreign policy, fueled in part by incompatible economic preferences and in part by recurring fears that local (i.e., national) identities are being threatened. When Danes worry about Islam, Catalans demand autonomy, Flemish and Walloons contend in Belgium, Germans refuse to bail out Greeks, and nobody wants to let Turkey into the EU, you are watching nationalism at work.

The power of nationalism is easy for realists to appreciate and understand, as my sometime collaborator John Mearsheimer makes clear in an important new paper. Nations -- because they operate in a competitive and sometimes dangerous world -- seek to preserve their identities and cultural values. In many cases, the best way for them to do that is to have their own state, because ethnic or national groups that lack their own state are usually more vulnerable to conquest, absorption, and assimilation.

Similarly, modern states also have a powerful incentive to promote national unity -- in other words, to foster nationalism -- because having a loyal and united population that is willing to sacrifice (and in extreme cases, to fight and die) for the state increases its power and thus its ability to deal with external threats. In the competitive world of international politics, in short, nations have incentives to obtain their own state and states have incentives to foster a common national identity in their populations. Taken together, these twin dynamics create a long-term trend in the direction of more and more independent nation-states.

Obviously, nations and states don't always reach the goal of a unified "nation-state." Some nations never succeed in gaining independence, and some states never succeed in creating a unified national identity for themselves. And not every cultural or ethnic group thinks of itself as a nation or aspires to independence (though one can never be sure when some group might begin to acquire "national consciousness" and head in that direction). Nonetheless, the past hundred years has seen a steady rise in the number of states and the emergence of strong national movements in many of them, and I see no reason to expect this trend to be reversed.

Once established, a nation-state is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Nation-states are hard to conquer and subdue, because the local population will usually resist outside invasion and continue to struggle against a foreign occupier. Successful national movements tend to spawn imitators, leading to further demands for statehood. Despite its occasional shortcomings (and the obvious examples of "failed states" like Somalia, Yemen, or Afghanistan), the national state is likely to remain the most important political entity in world politics for the foreseeable future.

Because American national identity tends to emphasize the civic dimension (based on supposedly universal principles such as individual liberty) and tends to downplay the historic and cultural elements (though they clearly exist) U.S. leaders routinely underestimate the power of local affinities and the strength of cultural, tribal, or territorial loyalties. During the Cold War, we persistently exaggerated the strength of transnational ideologies like Communism, and underestimated the degree to which national identities and interests would eventually generate intense conflicts within the Marxist world. Osama bin Laden made the same mistake when he thought that terrorist attacks and video-taped fulminations would ignite a mass movement to re-establish a transnational Islamic caliphate. And anyone who thinks that a rising China is going to tamely submit to U.S. or Western notions of the proper world order fails to appreciate the degree to which nationalism is also a central part of the Chinese worldview, and far more important than any lingering "communist" ideals.

Unless we fully appreciate the power of nationalism, in short, we are going to get a lot of things wrong about the contemporary political life. It is the most powerful political force in the world, and we ignore it at our peril.

White Slavery In Modern America

Black gang keeps white child as sex slave for sale to perverts ;


http://denver.cbslocal.com/2011/06/23/suspects-arrested-after-teen-claims-she-was-held-as-prostitute/


DENVER (CBS4)- A teenager said she ran away from a home where she was being held as a prostitute. Three people, Frank Devoe, Chester Gray and Ryann Pangle are facing charges related to child prostitution and kidnapping.


Frank Devoe (credit: Denver District Attorney)

The teen told police she was being held against her will at a home in Montbello, tattooed with the name of her pimp and beaten. She told police she was called “the white girl” and that Devoe was her alleged pimp.

A neighbor saw the girl walking down the street with blood visible on her body.


Chester Gray (credit: Denver District Attorney)

“What came through my head was somebody beat her up. She was bleeding from her face and running to the neighbor’s house,” said neighbor Alma Cardenas.


Ryann Pangle (credit: Denver District Attorney)

The girl ran to the house to get help. That’s where she found Sam Urton and asked if she could use his cell phone to call 911, but then the people from the house where she was held captive approached him.



“They told me it was okay, she was just drunk. She lived with them and it was okay, but it was obvious to me it wasn’t okay. It was obvious that she was being abused,” said Urton.

Later she told police she was offered for prostitution through an internet chat site and one for escorts. She said she was not paid as promised and that she was only 17 years old at the time.

She finally made her escape after being assaulted for not cleaning the house.

“I saw them trying to pull one girl into the house and the girl didn’t want to go back inside,” said witness James Meredith.

Eventually she was able to escape and police arrived at the home to investigate her claims.

“Oh, man. That’s crazy, forcing young girls into prostitution, that’s sad,” said neighbor Dane Gray.

Police indicated there was no question that those accused knew the girl was a minor. Her 18th birthday was recently celebrated in the home.

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MUST WATCH - PC AND ADMISSIONS TO UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA ;


http://video.foxnews.com/v/1164086504001/wisconsin-law-school-discriminates-against-whites/?playlist_id=86923

Daily Mail Journalist Wakes Up

http://singletonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/09/i-was-wrong-immigration-has-raised-our-taxes-and-wrecked-britain.html

Today, I stick my hands up and admit that I was wrong. You see, back in early 2000s, before the new Eastern European nations joined the EU, I thought that letting East European workers take jobs here was a jolly good idea.

After all, it was getting really expensive to employ tradespeople in London, so why shouldn't we get some Polish plumbers to help? And surely the City should employ whoever they thought was best, rather than be limited to Western Europeans?

Actually, the experiment with mass immigration, which started in 1997, is a disaster. It imprisons hundreds of thousands of people in permanent welfare. And it allows politicians to ignore the shocking education inflicted on the poor.

Let's face it: we would not need Eastern European bricklayers and electricians if we provided proper vocational education to children. Instead, we impose pseudo-subjects upon them at GCSE such as Citizenship and Film Studies - subjects that ensure they are unemployable.

The Coalition, despite all its rhetoric about social justice, is doing no better than Labour. David Cameron obsesses about free schools, but these do nothing for poor people: they located so they pick up middle-class pupils.

And while the underclass are imprisoned in their council estates, the rest of us are forced to support them through higher taxes. Free trade at least lets all of us enjoy cheap televisions, but what exactly does free movement of people do for most of us?
Not much, except harm our quality of life. London has been turned into a hell-hole, outside the dandyish world of SW1, where the politicians reside. It is practically impossible to take a journey on the London Underground during rush hour without being squashed up against other standing passengers, and every year the over-crowding gets worse.

Immigration would be less of a problem if migrants were dispersed better throughout the country. Only a tiny proportion choose to reside in Scotland, which could probably benefit from a bigger population. But immigrants overwhelmingly want to live in the major English cities. Would it, as the Guardianistas believe, really be such a wicked thing to repeal our EU treaties and regulate the number of migrants we let in?

McGuniness and the IRA Strategy

The announcement that Martin McGuinness is to stand as the President of Ireland has exposed the truth behind their bogus ceasefire - all along it was nothing more than a 'Strategic and Tactical Ceasefire' with the true aim being the takeover of the Irish State itself.

The IRA intend to take over the Irish state and turn the Irish army, air force, navy, police, security services, the courts and state into the IRA itself.

The IRA leadership will be put in the uniforms of the Irish state and the Irish state become the most powerful terrorist organisation in the world.

This has been their aim all along.

There has been no ceasefire - there has been a long term plan by the IRA to take over the Irish State and obtain its weapons and power for themselves.

Rather than having a few hundred terrorists armed with a few AK47's and fertiliser bombs - they will have tanks, jet fighters and soldiers armed with missiles and other equipment to invade and conquer Northern Ireland.

Do the people of Northern Ireland think the British government would stop an invasion of Northern Ireland by the Irish State led by the IRA - they will surrender it to them straight away, which is what the traitors and crooks in the British Parliament and political system have wanted for decades.

The IRA are clever bastards - they fooled everyone with their fake ceasefire.

They fooled the Loyalist leaders who are all on the payroll of the British government traitors and who grow rich whilst attending pathetic 'diversity courses' for their cheques.

They fooled the Eire government and people - and the tragedy is that the first victims of the IRA takeover of the Irish state will be the democrats and opposition parties of the Eire.

For an idea of what will happen - look at how the Nazis took over Germany.

McGuinness will do the exact same thing when he becomes President / Chancellor of Germany / Eire.

The IRA will have its quasi-Marxist, pseudo-nationalist state and private army to enable it to attack the North - no doubt with the excuse being another flase flag attack like the Nazis did in order to invade Poland.

The strategy has been so clever - to surrender ground now in order to take power in the future.

Surrender a few rusted rifles sold to them by Gaddaffi and sent to them by the NORAID American scum, and then take power in Eire and turn the Irish army into the IRA with all its arsenals of modern weapons.

Now you know the true strategy.

Mass Immigration Killing Britons

A deadly strain of tuberculosis which cannot be treated by most drugs is on the rise in Britain, health officials warn.

The number of cases of so-called ‘multidrug resistant’ TB have doubled in the past decade.

Figures from the Health Protection Agency show that there were 58 cases in 2009, up from just 28 in 2000.

Tuberculosis virus: Cases of drug-resistant forms of the illness are on the rise, according to figures released by the World Health Organisation

But experts say that the true number of infections is much higher because many cases are never reported to authorities.

The resistant strain normally develops when patients with ordinary TB stop taking their
antibiotics because they feel better or they simply forget.

But not all the bacteria in their body has been killed and the remainder mutates to become resistant to the drug.

This new strain then spreads very quickly and scientists say that every person infected passes the illness on to a least ten others.

Around half of patients with this super form of TB will die because they are not given the right drugs in time.

More...Kathleen thought she had the flu. In fact, it was meningitis - and it cost her both legs

Chilling truth about the ice in your drink which is covered in bacteria

This particular type of the illness can be treated only with a handful of drugs which are far more expensive, and aren’t readily available.

The World Health Organisation yesterday issued a warning that multi-drug resistant TB is spreading at an 'alarming rate' across Europe.

Scientist say all GPs and hospital doctors need to be trained to spot the early warning signs in patients to stop it being passed on.

Dr Ibrahim Abubakar, a TB expert at the Health Protection Agency’s centre for infections, said: 'I think without a doubt there’s a need to make all healthcare workers, but GPs and A&E staff in particular, aware of the signs and symptoms of TB so they can recognise this earlier.'

Dr Ogtay Gozalov, from the WHO European regional office, said anyone could become infected with resistant TB, not just groups such as children, migrants and the homeless.

'It can affect anyone,' he said. 'Any one of us can be exposed to these diseases and get infected.

'A big proportion of these people who are infected can convert and develop the resistant disease.'

Immigration: An unidentified patient suffering from TB eats her lunch on her bed at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto township on the outskirts of Johannesburg

Rates of all types of TB have hit a 30-year-high and there were 9,040 cases last year, the highest number recorded since 1979, when there were 9,266 cases.

This increase is partly due to higher numbers of immigrants coming in from India, South-East Asia and Africa where the disease is widespread.

London has by far the highest rates of infections in Britain, accounting for 40 per cent of the country’s total number of cases.

Other hotspots include Birmingham, Leicester and North-West England
The disease infects the lungs and typical symptoms include cough, fever, tiredness, lack of appetite night sweats and weight loss.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2037150/Tuberculosis-Deadly-strain-drug-resistant-super-TB-cases-double-decade.html#ixzz1Y8rNseCI