Hat tip: Jihad Watch >>>
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
THE NEW YORK TIMES: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants opened fire on security guards and rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel in this northwestern city on Friday, detonating a large bomb in the parking lot and killing at least 11 people and wounding 55, Pakistani officials.
The blast, which left a crater six feet deep and 15 feet wide, was powerful enough to be heard for miles, witnesses said. Television images showed parts of the hotel badly damaged by the blast and wounded people, with blood soaked clothes, being helped out of the smoke filled lobby of the hotel, the Pearl Continental, one of the few in the city that cater to Western visitors.
Guests at the time of the attack included United Nations officials and an airline crew, and five women and three foreigners were among the dead, officials said. Two United Nations World Food Program officials were wounded, one critically, a United Nations official in Pakistan said.
The attack was the most spectacular against a Western target in Pakistan since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad, last September, which left more than 50 dead. >>> By IRFAN ASHRAF and SALMAN MASOOD | Tuesday, June 09, 2009
FRANCE 24: Europe has elected its angriest, most eurosceptic and xenophobic parliament ever - with a battalion of hard-right parties breaking through for the first time on a wave of anti-immigrant feeling and an unholy cocktail of both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
But while there is no denying the fury of the "angry middle-aged men" apparently responsible for electing the violent anti-Roma Jobbik party in Hungary, the BNP in Britain, Heinz-Christian Strache's Third Reich nostalgics in Austria and Geert Wilders Freedom Party in Holland - who alone on the extreme right is proud to call himself a Zionist - the new parliament will also have a caucus of new and surprising progressive voices.
Sweden's Pirate Party, who have campaigned for freer internet downloading and a loosening of copyright restrictions, have struck a chord among the young everywhere, and France's crusading anti-corruption magistrate Eva Joly - elected on the Green ticket - and her Italian opposite number Antonio Di Pietro are likely to hold many in Brussels and beyond it to account.
This is also a much more colourful and controversial parliament than the one that went before. If half of the parliament's accountability problem is its lack of visibility, a bit of personality surely has to be a good thing - granted, of course, that it does not turn into a theatre of hate. But even that unedifying prospect may prompt the majority of Europeans who did not bother to vote to do so the next time. >>> By Fiachra Gibbons/RFI | Sunday, June 07, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The collapse of the traditional vote in working-class strongholds was the key as an openly racist party won seats for the first time in a nationwide election, says Philip Johnston.
The smirk on Nick Griffin's face as he walked on to the platform at Manchester town hall in the early hours of yesterday morning said it all. The BNP had arrived. For the first time in a nationwide election, the voters of the United Kingdom had returned candidates from an avowedly racist political party.
Our cosy complacency that imagined that only Continental Europeans elect fascists to parliament was shattered. A collective wail of middle-class angst went up from mainstream party leaders: what have we done? Liam Fox the Tory shadow cabinet member, said: "All politicians should be asking themselves 'how did we allow this to happen?' "
The hostility engendered by Griffin's victory was palpable: as he took his place on the stage, giving a Churchillian "V for Victory" salute, his opponents all walked off. But we cannot keep walking away from the BNP. They need to be tackled head on. It is because the mainstream parties, Labour in particular, have failed so comprehensively to address any of the issues exploited by Griffin and his followers that they have been able to win two seats in the European parliament (under a PR system whose proponents might now think twice about pursuing it for Westminster).
Harriet Harman, Labour's blue-stocking deputy leader, said: "It's a terrible thing that we've now got representing Britain in the European parliament a party that is a racist party, a party that doesn't believe black people should even be allowed to join this party. What extremist, far right, racist parties like the British National Party do is exploit people's fears and if people are worried about their future they turn inwards."
But whose fault is that? This has not happened in a political vacuum. It was the collapse of Labour's vote in areas it considered its fiefdom that let in the BNP. After 12 years in power, Miss Harman cannot try to pass the buck. Most galling of all is that the British taxpayer will now fund the BNP through the generous salaries and allowances for which it now qualifies in the European parliament. >>> By Philip Johnston | Monday, June 08, 2009
This article is totally unbalanced, since it fails to mention some of the most important reasons why people felt moved to vote BNP: The mainstream parties gave them no alternative. The election of two BNP MEPs has clearly rattled the British establishment.
The fact is that all three mainstream parties will not face, still less confront, the real issues facing us all. Islam is growing apace in Europe. The demographic jihad (as well as many other jihads!) is being waged against us. The nature of European society is changing before our very eyes, and nobody is prepared to discuss the problem from the mainstream parties, still less do anything about it. The BNP is prepared to attack the problem head on. That is one big reason why many so-called "working class" people voted BNP, I believe. The liberal, leftist élite, of whom David Cameron is one, judging by his policies, knows nothing about the dangers of Islam, and they are too cowardly to confront the problem head on. The BNP is not.
All main parties are for the accession of Turkey into the EU. Most people I know - middle class people or working class - are against this accession. Yet nobody in the mainstream parties will speak for them. The BNP will. It is firmly against Turkey’s accession; and rightly so.
I predict that if things go on as they are, the BNP will grow and grow, because they will fill the political void that the other parties have created.
It is such a pity that the Conservative Party has lost its courage. Historically, one could always depend on the Conservative Party to get us out of a hole. No longer, it seems. Hence, many must have felt disenfranchised. The result: Many decided not to vote at all; others voted for extreme parties.
This problem needs to be tackled head on; otherwise extremism will continue to rear its head. – ©Mark
BBC: BNP leader Nick Griffin has been pelted with eggs and forced to abandon a press conference outside Parliament.
Dozens of protesters disrupted the event, which follows the British National Party winning its first two seats in the European Parliament.
Chanting anti-Nazi slogans and holding placards they surrounded Mr Griffin as he was bundled into a car.
Mr Griffin was elected for the North West region - a result condemned by parties across the political spectrum.
Mr Griffin and Andrew Brons, who was elected in the Yorkshire and Humber region, staged a press conference on College Green, opposite the Houses of Parliament.
The BNP leader began the event by holding up copies of national newspapers and talking about what he said were media lies about him and his party. >>> | Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Watch BBC video: BNP leader pelted with eggs >>>
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: MANAMA, Bahrain -- Every weekend, bumper-to-bumper traffic blocks the causeway into this small island nation as visitors from nearby Saudi Arabia flock to delights unavailable at home: movie theaters, bars and, for some, commercial sex.
With few other attractions, Bahrain's booming tourism industry thrives on the island's reputation as a freewheeling oasis just a short drive from major Saudi cities. Bahrain has little oil of its own; tourism, mostly by the four million Saudis who cross the causeway each year, accounts for a tenth of its economy.
All of this is endangered, as Bahraini legislators press to scrap the country's drinking laws -- currently the most liberal in the Persian Gulf -- and to impose near-total prohibition.
"I'm sorry to say, but Bahrain has become the brothel of the Gulf, and our people are very upset about it," says parliamentarian Adel Maawdah, one of the promoters of the new legislation. "It's not only the drinking that we oppose, but also what it drags with it: prostitution, corruption, drugs and people-trafficking."
The Parliament's elected lower chamber unanimously approved a motion last month to prohibit alcohol in hotels, restaurants, duty-free shops and aboard Gulf Air, the national airline. Lawmakers acted amid outrage over a widely circulated men's Web-site article placing Bahraini capital Manama in the world's "top 10 cities to pursue vice and debauchery." The prohibition proposal must now go to the upper chamber, appointed by King Hamad, and to the government for endorsement.
Not even Mr. Maawdah expects that Bahrain will enact a complete Saudi-style ban in the immediate future. The government, however, is likely to respond to parliamentary pressure with fresh curbs. "Nobody is talking about banning alcohol completely," says Sheik Mohammed bin Essa al Khalifa, chief executive of Bahrain's Economic Development Board and a prominent member of the royal family. Still, "we all want to put restrictions on sleaze, and this will be for the good of Bahrain."
Already, just before last month's Parliament vote, the government forbade alcohol and live entertainment in dozens of one-star and two-star hotels popular with weekenders from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the two Gulf countries that outlaw booze. It also clamped down on prostitution, which is illegal but widely tolerated, rounding up and deporting hundreds of women. In earlier restrictions, Bahrain has begun to enforce legislation that prohibits alcohol consumption during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and has closed popular wine shops in residential areas.
"Step by step, they're tightening up," a Western diplomat says. "In the medium term, it may well come to a complete prohibition."
This drive contrasts with other Gulf monarchies, such as Qatar and Abu Dhabi, where harsh drinking laws have been relaxed lately. "When everyone else is opening up, we're going in the opposite direction," complains Ebrahim Sharif Alsayed, leader of Bahrain's secularist Waad movement. Bahrain's ruling family, he adds, "is allowing the Islamists to gradually Islamize the society." >>> By Yaroslav Trofimov | Tuesday, June 09, 2009
WELT ONLINE: Immer schriller werden die Äußerungen des nordkoreanischen Regimes. Im Leitartikel einer staatlichen Zeitung verbreitet es, das Atomarsenal des Landes sei nicht nur ein Mittel der Verteidigung, sondern auch ein für einen "gerechten Vergeltungsschlag" geeignet. Gedroht wird allen, die Nordkoreas "Würde und Souveränität" anrühren.
Nordkorea hat die Rhetorik im Streit um seinen jüngsten Atomtest erneut verschärft. Dabei drohte das kommunistische Regime auch mit einem atomaren Angriff. „Unsere atomare Abschreckung ist ein überzeugendes Mittel der Verteidigung (...) ebenso wie ein erbarmungsloses Mittel zur Offensive als gerechter Vergeltungsschlag gegen diejenigen, die die Würde und Souveränität des Landes anrühren“, hieß es in einem Leitartikel der staatlichen Zeitung „Minju Joson“, den die amtliche Nachrichtenagentur KCNA weiterverbreitete.
Im UN-Sicherheitsrat laufen zurzeit Beratungen über mögliche weitere Sanktionen gegen Nordkorea wegen des jüngsten Atomtests. Diese Waffentests in Verbindung mit der Suche von Staatschef Kim Jong-il nach einem Nachfolger könnten nach Einschätzung des US-Geheimdienstkoordinators Dennis Blair noch sehr gefährlich werden.
Zwar handle die nordkoreanische Führung derzeit nach einem vertrauten Verhaltensmuster. Allerdings seien dieses Mal „gefährlichere Waffen, womöglich Interkontinentalraketen und Atomwaffen“ im Spiel, sagte Blair bei einer Konferenz in Washington. Somit sei das Risiko größer, obwohl das Verhaltensmuster bekannt sei. >>> | Dienstag, 09. Juni 2009
TIMESONLINE: Political history was made last night when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, was forced to abandon an election rally because the crowds who gathered to hear him were too vast.
As many as 50,000 fanatical supporters of the Islamic fundamentalist President had stood jam-packed for four hours in suffocating heat inside a vast prayer hall in Tehran.
Outside, an overflow crowd almost as great blocked all access to the venue. Officials said that Mr Ahmadinejad’s vehicles spent 90 minutes trying to force their way through, without success. There was talk of him holding the rally outside, but the idea was dropped when officials warned that people would be crushed to death.
As Mr Ahmadinejad’s disappointed followers flooded on to the streets, supporters of the President’s strongest rival, the reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, mounted their own show of might. Tens of thousands of them, all dressed in green, formed a human chain running the length of Valiasr, the thoroughfare that runs 30km (18 miles) from the north to the south of the Iranian capital.
As darkness fell last night the city was in chaos, with all traffic paralysed and rival groups rampaging through the streets in support of two leaders with radically different visions for the future of their country.
It was a highly combustible situation and testimony to the extraordinary passions and excitement generated by Friday’s election in which Mr Mousavi, a former prime minister, is fighting to become the first challenger to defeat a sitting president in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic. Iranians say that the only other presidential election that has caused such fervour was when Mohammed Khatami was swept into power on a tide of reformist fervour in 1997.
The chasm that has opened up in Iranian society after four years of Mr Ahmadinejad’s ultra-conservative, socially repressive presidency were starkly apparent yesterday.
The President’s rally matched any that Barack Obama held last year in both size and ardour. It was attended by the deeply devout, the working poor — Iranians still consumed by revolutionary fervour. The men were bearded and draped in red, white and green Iranian flags; the women dressed in all-encompassing black chadors with their headscarves drawn tight. The sexes were segregated. >>> Martin Fletcher in Tehran | Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
leJDDfr: Allemagne, France, Italie, Belgique, Pays Bas... Dans toute la vieille Europe, la gauche a pris une claque, dimanche, au profit des libéraux et des conservateurs. Au Nord comme dans l'ex bloc de l'Est, populistes et eurosceptiques ont fait une percée. Qu'elle soit au pouvoir ou dans l'opposition, libérale ou conservatrice, à l'Est comme à l'Ouest, c'est donc la droite qui a raflé la mise.
Alors que le capitalisme mondial subit une crise sans précédent, ce sont les libéraux et les conservateurs qui l'emportent au Parlement européen. Le scrutin de dimanche est en effet marqué -pour ce qui est des 43% de suffrages exprimés, en tous cas- par une victoire des partis de droite, de centre-droit voire de droite extrême. Surtout si on compare leurs résultats au camouflet qu'a pris la gauche gouvernementale, un peu partout en Europe.
En Grande-Bretagne, en Espagne et au Portugal - où ils sont dans l'opposition- libéraux et conservateurs réalisent de beaux scores; respectivement 29%, 42% et 33%. Mais là où ils sont au pouvoir, également, ils arrivent largement en tête: la coalition de la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel totalise ainsi 38% des voix, le parti libéral au pouvoir en Pologne réalise un score de 45% et même les chrétiens démocrates belges -malgré la crise politique que traverse le pays- tiennent le haut de l'affiche. Berlusconi et Sarkozy s'en tirent un peu moins bien; leurs formations arrivent certes en tête, en Italie et en France, mais leurs résultats peuvent sembler décevants au regard de ceux de leurs voisins. En Europe de l'Est également (Bulgarie, Lettonie, Lituanie, Slovénie, Chypre, Roumanie), la droite est vainqueur. >>> Par Marie-Lys LUBRANO, leJDD.fr | Lundi 08 Juin 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The British National Party is in line for a £4 million cash boost as its European election breakthrough was widely condemned as a "shaming" for Britain.
The far right group won its first two seats in the European Parliament as the Labour vote collapsed, sending shock waves through Westminster and the country.
Leader Nick Griffin, one of the successful MEPs, said it meant a "huge change in British politics". Critics lined up to condemn the result.
Mr Griffin and his new MEP colleague, Andrew Brons, will now be able to take advantage of EU expenses and allowances worth up to £395,000 a year each over their five year term.
Mr Griffin and Mr Brons will each have access to an annual salary of £80,443, an annual staff budget of £190,000, phone and postal allowances of £45,000 a year and a daily attendance allowance worth up to £80,000 a year, with no receipts required.
In comparison, in 2007, the BNP raised just £500,000 and in the first five months of this year are said to have raised £650,000.
Their success has also presented new problems for broadcasters who have to offer "due impartiality" to all political parties.
Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, admitted the success poses a "dilemma" under impartiality rules.
Mr Bradshaw told the Commons: "I'm sure that the broadcasters will be taking their responsibilities under the impartiality rules extremely seriously, but you are right to say that what happened yesterday does pose a dilemma for them.
"My own view is that usually when you give these people a platform, they condemn themselves through their own mouths."
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said: "It sickens me and it should sicken everybody here that the British National Party has succeeded in these European elections.
"It brings shame on us that these fascist, racist thugs have been elected to the European Parliament."
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, labelled the BNP a "party of thugs and fascists" who "don't provide any hope, they don't provide answers, they don't provide solutions to people's problems, whether it is jobs, climate change or crime."
Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, said the result was "horrific" but admitted it was partly down to Labour's collapse in its heartlands. >>> By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor | Tuesday, June 09, 2009
SULTAN KNISH: If there's one thing that the Carter Administration can be given credit for, it's creating the new wave of Islamist terrorism, both Sunni, operating out of Afghanistan, and Shiite, operating out of Iran. The Carter Administration cracked down on Israel and put its "faith" in Muslim terrorists, who then went on to wage war on America, even while Carter was in office.
28 years after Carter was removed from office, we're in reruns again with the Obama Administration, which is not only following the Carter line, but whose plans greatly exceed it. 28 years ago, Wahhabi Sunni and Shiite terrorists were generally an afterthought when compared to the standard USSR backed Marxist terrorist groups, such as the PLO.
Today, thanks in part to the Carter Administration, they control several countries and have designs on several more. From Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Gaza to Lebanon, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the threat is very real and bigger than ever particularly as the race by both Sunni and Shiite groups to build and deploy nuclear weapons continues.
Like Carter before him, Obama has chosen to cut backdoor deals with the Mullahs in Iran, offering them power over Iraq and Afghanistan, in exchange for quieting things down enough to let him hang up a Mission Accomplished banner and pull the troops out. "Peace with honor", preferably before the next election. The rape law for Shiites in Afghanistan, the push for a US funded Hamas/Fatah Unity government in the territories and the rising expansion of the Taliban are all fruits of this arrangement.
If Iran is to be our new best friend under this arrangement, Israel is to be our new best enemy.
Obama stacked the deck by deploying Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in a position that gave her an important title, but absolutely no power to go with it, while stacking the National Security Council and even the Pentagon with oil appointees in the pockets of the Saudis or his own left wing radical friends.
Israel electing a conservative government really put the ball into play, freeing up even more resources for attacking Israel. The strategy runs something like this.
The Obama Administration has broken down the Israel problem into two subsections, Israel itself, and American Jews.
Obama's people have studied the problem and understand where Carter went wrong. Obama does not want to have the same image problems as Carter in the Jewish community. Should that happen, the Beloved Leader and his lapdog press are fully prepared to unleash a Chavez style hate-on targeting American Jews. But that would be inconvenient and messy. Even with the changing face of America, there are significant differences between the average American and European or Venezuelan, and what kind of ugliness they are willing to tolerate. So Obama's people have split their attention in handling the two factors as two different problems. >>> Sultan Knish
THE NEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — The United States government and Western rights groups protested Monday after North Korea’s highest court sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor, a move that introduced another complicating factor into Washington’s stand-off with North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests and its broader nuclear ambitions.
The two journalists — Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36 — were detained by North Korean soldiers at the Chinese border on March 17 and charged with illegally entering North Korean territory and “hostile acts,” but not with the more serious charge of espionage as some had feared. The North’s official news agency, KCNA, announced the conviction and sentence in a report monitored in Seoul.
Lisa Ling, Laura Ling’s sister, told ABC television that the two journalists were working on a story about the trafficking of North Korean women into China when they were detained, but other reports said they were reporting on North Korean refugees who had fled their country. The exact circumstances of their arrest remain unclear.
President Obama was “deeply concerned” by reports of the sentencing, the White House said in a statement Monday. The United States is “engaged through all possible channels to secure their release,” the statement said.
The human rights group Amnesty International sharply criticized the legal procedures behind the sentencing and called for the journalists’ immediate release. “No access to lawyers, no due process, no transparency: the North Korean judicial and penal systems are more instruments of suppression than of justice,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director.
In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists described the sentence as “deplorable” and called on all participants in the six-party talks on North Korea — both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States — to work together for the women’s release.
Ms. Ling’s father, Doug Ling, spoke briefly to The Associated Press at his home outside Sacramento, California on Monday, saying the family was “going to keep a low-profile until we hear something better about the situation.” >>> By CHOE SANG-HUN | Monday, June 08, 2009
TELEGRAPH BLOGS – AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD: The establisment Left had been crushed across most of Europe, just as it was in the early 1930s.
We have seen the ultimate crisis of capitalism -- what Marxist-historian Eric Hobsbawm calls the "dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union" -- yet socialists have completely failed to reap any gain from the seeming vindication of their views.
It is not clear why a chunk of the blue-collar working base has swung almost overnight from Left to Right, but clearly we are seeing the delayed detonation of two political time-bombs: rising unemployment and the growth of immigrant enclaves that resist assimilation.
Note that Right-wing incumbents in France (Sarkozy) and Italy (Berlusconi), survived the European elections unscathed.
Left-wing incumbents in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and of course Britain were either slaughtered, or badly mauled.
The Dutch Labour party that has dominated national politics for the last half century fell behind the anti-immigrant movement of Geert Wilders (banned from entering Britain). It serves them right for the staggeringly stupid decision to force through the European Constitution (renamed Lisbon) after it had already been rejected by their own voters by a fat margin in the 2005 referendum.
The Portuguese Socialists face Siberian exile after seeing a 18pc drop in their vote. The slow drip-drip of debt-deflation for a boom-bust Club Med state, trapped in the eurozone with an overvalued exchange rate (viz core Europe, and the world), has suddenly turned into a torrent. The country is already in deflation (-0.6pc in April). It has been suffering its own version of Japanese perma-slump for half a decade.
Portugal's opposition is calling for an immediate vote of no censure, while the Government clings to constitutional fig-leaves to hide its naked legitimacy. "O Governo está na sua plenitude de funções," said the chief spokesman. You can guess what that means. Not long for this world, surely.
In Germany and Austria, the Social Democrats suffered their worst defeats since World War Two. I don't say that with pleasure. A vibrant labour-SPD movement is vital for German political stability. It was the peeling away of Socialist support during the Bruning deflation of the Depression years -- so like today's Weber-Trichet deflation -- that led to the catastrophic election of July 1932, when the Nazis and Communists took half the Reichstag seats. >>> Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Monday, June 08, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: A diminutive 64-year-old grandmother who refuses to be bound by the rigid constraints imposed on women in Iran proved more than a match for the President of the Islamic Republic yesterday.
Zahra Rahnavard had already broken all precedent by actively campaigning for her husband, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a relative moderate who is President Ahmadinejad’s strongest challenger in Friday’s presidential election. Yesterday she went a step further by summoning the domestic and international media to a press conference at which she tore into the President for lying, humiliating women, debasing his office and betraying the principles of the revolution.
What sparked her fury was Mr Ahmadinejad’s televised debate with her husband last week in which he challenged Dr Rahnavard’s considerable academic qualifications, suggesting that they were earned not on merit, but through the patronage of a corrupt political elite.
“He wanted to destroy his rival through lies,” she declared in a 90-minute finger-wagging tour de force, and she vowed to sue the President if he did not issue a public apology within 24 hours.
It was a more forceful attack than any of Mr Ahmadinejad’s three male challengers have managed, and would have been remarkable in any election, let alone in male-dominated Iran. It also injected more uncertainty into a race that already has an outcome impossible to call. Dr Rahnavard’s boldness is likely to enrage conservatives, but should delight the women and young urban Iranians who must vote in great numbers if Mr Mousavi is to unseat the incumbent.
Dr Rahnavard offered further inducements. She promised that her husband, if elected, would appoint women to Cabinet posts for the first time, and name many female deputy ministers and ambassadors. He would end discrimination and ensure that women were no longer treated as second-class citizens. He would release women’s rights activists from prison and abolish the “morality police” who, during Mr Ahmadinejad’s first term, cracked down on women deemed to be dressed inappropriately. She even suggested that women should not be forced to cover their heads. >>> Martin Fletcher in Tehran | Monday, June 08, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The far-Right British National Party won a seat in the European Parliament for the first time in its history after receiving 120,139 votes in the Yorkshire and Humber region.
Andrew Brons won the last of six seats for the anti-immigration party, sending shockwaves through the mainstream political parties.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham said that it was "deeply uncomfortable" to see the BNP polling in such large numbers.
He said that they had been the beneficiaries of an "anti-politics mood" which had hit all the main parties in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal.
"It is a sad moment in British politics," he said.
"The BNP is like the ultimate protest vote. It is how to deliver the establishment a two-fingered salute. I think largely it is a comment on Westminster politics."
Meanwhile, far-Right parties and extremists made gains across Europe on Sunday night as protest votes and low turnouts marked elections for the European parliament. >>> By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels | Sunday, June 07, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
MAIL Online: Europe was leaning to the right tonight as exit polls showed voters were backing conservative parties amid a global economic crisis and anti-Islamic sentiments.
The British National Party could win its first seat in the EU parliament if the results elsewhere follow in the UK.
It comes after the party won its first seat on a county council at Thursday's local elections.
While official results for the elections to the European Parliament were not expected until late this evening or early tomorrow, the polls showed right-leaning governments edging the opposition in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and elsewhere.
With most votes counted in Austria, the main far-right party was gaining strongly while the Social Democrats, the main party in the governing coalition, lost substantial ground.
The big winner was the rightist Freedom Party which, according to polls, more than doubled its strength over the 2004 elections to 13 per cent of the vote.
It campaigned on an anti-Islam platform, with posters proclaiming 'The Occident in Christian hands' and describing today as 'the day of reckoning.'
In the Netherlands, exit polls predicted the anti-Islamic party of Geert Wilders - who was banned from Britain earlier this year - would win more than 15 per cent of the country's votes, muscling in on the ruling alliance of Conservatives and Socialists. >>> | Sunday, June 07, 2009
leJDD.fr: Avant la cérémonie de Colleville-sur-mer, célébrant le 65e anniversaire du 6-juin, Barack Obama et Nicolas Sarkozy se sont rencontrés quelques instants, avant de donner une conférence de presse commune. Malgré de nombreux points d'accord, les deux présidents ont montré des divergences sur la question, épineuse, du voile islamique et sur l'entrée de la Turquie dans l'UE.
Avant de se rendre au cimetière de Colleville-sur-mer, Barack Obama a fait un détour par Caen pour une rencontre succincte - d'une heure, photo souvenir comprise - avec Nicolas Sarkozy. Lors d'une conférence de presse qui a suivi, le président français a loué l'action de son homologue américain au Proche et Moyen-Orient: "Ça fait bien longtemps qu'on attendait que les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, la première puissance du monde, prennent toutes leurs responsabilités pour éviter le choc des cultures entre l'Occident et l'Orient.". Le locataire de l'Elysée a même affirmé "être totalement d'accord" avec le discours que Barack Obama a prononcé jeudi au Caire. "Y compris sur la question du voile" islamique, a-t-il ajouté.
Pourtant, Nicolas Sarkozy est loin de la tolérance prônée par la Maison Blanche. La restriction du port du voile était même devenue son cheval de bataille quand il était au ministère de l'Intérieur. Il est l'artisan d'une loi sur la laïcité, entrée en vigueur le 2 septembre 2004, qui interdit le port de signes religieux ostensibles à l'école publique. Une limite qu'il n'a pas manqué de rappeler: "Parce que nous sommes un Etat laïque, [...] aux guichets des administrations, les fonctionnaires ne doivent pas avoir de signes visibles de leur appartenance religieuse. C'est ce que nous appelons l'impartialité de l'administration, la laïcité." >>> Par Gaël VAILLANT, leJDD.fr | Samedi 06 Juin 2009
TIMES ONLINE BLOGS – CHARLES BREMNER: Obama Keeps His Distance in France
After Barack Obama's two days in France and Germany, Europe is getting a clearer idea of the way the new US president operates. Lesson number one: he keeps his distance.
In Germany on Friday Chancellor Angela Merkel was put out by Obama's decision to steer clear of Berlin during his flying visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In France, Obama's way of imposing his own schedule has been more striking -- to the embarrassment of President Sarkozy.
As I write on Sunday morning, the US imperial cavalcade (30 vehicles), has just driven up to the Pompidou Centre. The Obama family are visiting the modern art museum before the President flies home and leaves Michelle and the children to lunch with Nicolas and Carla Sarkozy and their four offspring at the Elysée Palace (There's an echo of Sarkozy's 2007 barbecue with George W Bush at Kennebunkport, when Cecilia Sarkozy, the President's then wife, failed to turn up.)
In 39 hours in France, staying in Paris a one-minute walk from the presidential palace, Obama was unable to find a moment to accept Sarkozy's repeated invitations to drop by. They had a 20 minute working lunch with their advisers yesterday in Normandy but Obama has also had time to take his family to Notre Dame cathedral and to dinner at La Fontaine de Mars, a good brasserie near the Eiffel tower (230 euros for their dinner in a private upstairs room, with water, no wine).
Sarkozy could not hide his disappointment when they appeared yesterday in Caen, but he has clearly got the message. Theirs is a good working relationship but Obama is not out to play buddy-buddy with Sarko or any other European leader (Gordon Brown of Britain included). >>> Charles Bremner | Sunday, June 07, 2009
ASSOCIATED PRESS: BRUSSELS — Europe was leaning to the right Sunday as tens of millions of people voted in European Parliament elections, with conservative parties favored in many countries amid a global economic crisis.
Opinion polls showed right-leaning governments edging the opposition in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and elsewhere. Conservative opposition parties were tied or ahead in Britain, Spain and some smaller countries.
Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and five other EU nations cast ballots in the last three days, while the rest of the 27-nation bloc voted Sunday. Results for most countries were expected later in the day.
The EU parliament has evolved over five decades from a consultative legislature to one with the power to vote on or amend two-thirds of all EU laws. It has 736 seats and lawmakers serve for five-year terms.
With most votes counted in Austria, the main rightist party was gaining strongly while the Social Democrats, the main party in the governing coalition, lost substantial ground.
The big winner was the rightist Freedom Party, which more than doubled its strength over the 2004 elections to 13 percent of the vote. It campaigned on an anti-Islam platform, with posters proclaiming "The Occident in Christian hands" and describing Sunday as "the day of reckoning."
In the Netherlands, exit polls predicted Geert Wilders' anti-Islamic party would win more than 15 percent of the country's votes, bruising a ruling alliance of Conservatives and Socialists. >>> By Michael Weissenstein and Robert Wielaard | Sunday, June 07, 2009
REUTERS: BOSTON - The expansion of legal gay marriage across New England could deliver an economic windfall by attracting a youthful "creative class" of workers to a region with an aging population.
In the past year, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have joined Massachusetts, which in 2004 became the first U.S. state to allow same-sex weddings, in blessing gay and lesbian weddings.
That makes the region the first in the United States where same-sex couples can move from one state to another while retaining marriage benefits.
New arrivals include John Visser and Nick Keffer, who recently moved to Hartford, Connecticut, from Raleigh, North Carolina. They plan to wed later this month.
"The sole, only reason why we moved was because it was now legal for us to get married here," said Visser, 42. "No other reason whatsoever other than marriage equality. We were perfectly happy in North Carolina."
New England has long burnished an image of tolerance. Early European settlers in the 17th-century escaped religious persecution, although they imposed their own stern doctrines and sometimes expelled dissenters. Later, the region led the right for the abolition of black slavery.
Five out of the region's six states now endorse gay weddings after New Hampshire legalized same-sex marriage on Wednesday, leaving Rhode Island as the sole holdout.
The spread of gay marriage could serve as a recruiting tool for universities, health care companies and financial services firms that dominate the region's economy, experts said. >>> By Scott Malone | Thursday, June 04, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: ‘Colonel Imam’, the Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, says the US must negotiate with its enemies
THE Pakistani intelligence agent who trained Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to fight has warned that Nato forces will never overpower their enemies in Afghanistan and should talk to them rather than sacrifice more lives.
“You can never win the war in Afghanistan,” said so-called “Colonel Imam”, who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s occupation from 1979 to 1989, then helped to form the Taliban.
“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”
A tall, bearded figure, whose real name is Amir Sultan Tarar, he trained at Fort Bragg, the US army base where America’s special forces are stationed.
During the late 1970s and 1980s he controlled CIA-funded training camps for 95,000 Afghans and often accompanied his students on missions.
After the Soviet defeat and the collapse of communism, he was invited to the White House by the first President George Bush and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: “To the one who dealt the first blow.”
Today western intelligence agencies believe Imam is among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) who continued to help the Taliban after Pakistan turned against them following the attacks of September 11, 2001. >>> Christina Lamb in Rawalpindi | Sunday, June 07, 2009
LE MONDE: “Je suis totalement d'accord avec le discours du président Obama, y compris sur la question du voile", a expliqué le président Sarkozy, samedi 6 juin à Caen. Dans un discours sur l'islam prononcé au Caire deux jours plus tôt, M. Obama avait dit qu' "il importe que les pays occidentaux évitent d'empêcher les musulmans de pratiquer leur religion comme ils le souhaitent, par exemple en dictant ce qu'une musulmane devrait porter". La déclaration avait été vue comme une attaque contre la législation de certains pays européens, notamment la loi française de 2004 qui a de facto mis fin au port du foulard dans les écoles publiques françaises.
"En France une jeune fille qui veut porter le voile peut le faire. C'est sa liberté", a assuré le président français, estimant que la France y mettait "deux limites, parce que nous sommes un Etat laïque". "La première, c'est qu'au guichet des administrations, les fonctionnaires ne doivent pas avoir de signe visible de leur appartenance religieuse", a poursuivi le président. La "deuxième réserve" vise à s'assurer que la décision de porter le voile émane du "libre choix" des jeunes filles musulmanes et ne soit pas imposé "par leur famille ou par leur entourage". Car la France est un pays "où l'on respecte la femme". M. Sarkozy a affirmé avoir beaucoup fait lorsqu'il était ministre de l'intérieur "pour que les musulmans puissent vivre leur foi comme n'importe quelle religion". Dans la soirée, l'entourage de Nicolas Sarkozy précise tout de même : "Il est bien évident que le président de la République n'est pas pour le port du voile à l'école. C'est ce qu'impose la loi."
M. Sarkozy a qualifié le discours du Caire de "remarquable". "Il y a bien longtemps que nous attendions que les Etats-Unis, première puissance du monde, prennent toutes leurs responsabilités pour éviter un choc des cultures entre l'Occident et l'Orient", a-t-il poursuivi.
Barack Obama a explicité ses intentions: "Ce que j'ai essayé de faire au Caire, c'est d'ouvrir une conversation dans les pays musulmans mais aussi dans les pays non musulmans… Nous ne devrions pas avoir deux normes sur la liberté d'expression religieuse, l'une pour les musulmans et l'autre pour les non musulmans". >>> Caen, Envoyé spécial du Monde | Samedi 06 Juin 2009
AL ARABIYA NEWS CHANNEL(العربية): "Islam Is Also France," Sarkozy Says at Iftar
French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to protect Muslims' rights as he joined the Iftar feast Monday at the Great Mosque in Paris, marking the breaking of the daily fast in the holy month of Ramadan.
In the first such gesture by a French president to the country's sizeable Muslim minority, Sarkozy met senior Muslim clerics and promised: "I will be at your side to defend your rights. I ask you to be at my side to carry out your duties."
"Even in the government, some are observing this fast (of Ramadan)…this shows that from the top to the bottom of our society Islam is an integral part of our country," Sarkozy told his hosts.
"Much as it might displease some of those I oppose, Islam is also France," he said.
But he also said France expected all its citizens to respect French core values such as the separation of Church and state, and he condemned extremists who were using Islam to spread hate.
"Those who want violence in the name of Islam, hatred for others in the name of Islam, have no business being on French soil," Sarkozy said.
"I haven't betrayed the commitment that I made to give all my backing to Islam in France, and to fight extremism with all my strength. The two things go together," he said.
"Certain extremists want to put an end to this peace which we have in our country. Those who kill in the name of Islam and want to push the world into a global religious war smear Islam by speaking its name," he said.
With about five million Muslims, France is home to Europe's biggest Islamic community.
Sarkozy has encouraged institutional dialogue between mainstream French Muslim clerics and the broader society, but his tough stance on immigration has made him unpopular among Muslims.
France is also one of the few countries to have passed legislation banning visible religious symbols in public schools, such as the Islamic headscarf.
The law sparked a wave of anger and incomprehension among Muslims worldwide, but in France the controversy that surrounded its adoption three years ago has all but died down. [Source: Al Arabiya News Channel] AFP | Tuesday, October 02, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The American President may not know it, but his 'Muslim world' is split by a war of ideas, says Amir Taheri.
What do you do when you have no policy, but want to appear as if you do? In the case of Barack Obama, the answer is simple: you go around the world making speeches about your "personal journey".
The latest example came last Thursday, when Mr Obama presented his "address to the Muslim world" to an invited audience of 2,500 officials at Cairo University. The exercise was a masterpiece of equivocation and naivety. The President said he was seeking "a new beginning between the US and Muslims around the world". This implied that "Muslims around the world" represent a single monolithic bloc – precisely the claim made by people like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who believe that all Muslims belong to a single community, the "ummah", set apart from, and in conflict with, the rest of humanity.
Mr Obama ignored the fact that what he calls the "Muslim world" consists of 57 countries with Muslim majorities and a further 60 countries – including America and Europe – where Muslims represent substantial minorities. Trying to press a fifth of humanity into a single "ghetto" based on their religion is an exercise worthy of ideologues, not the leader of a major democracy.
Mr Obama's mea culpa extended beyond the short span of US history. He appropriated the guilt for ancient wars between Islam and Christendom, Western colonialism and America's support for despotic regimes during the Cold War. Then came the flattering narrative about Islam's place in history: ignoring the role of Greece, China, India and pre-Islamic Persia, he credited Islam with having invented modern medicine, algebra, navigation and even the use of pens and printing. Believing that flattery will get you anywhere, he put the number of Muslim Americans at seven million, when the total is not even half that number, promoting Islam to America's largest religion after Christianity.
The President promised to help change the US tax system to allow Muslims to pay zakat, the sharia tax, and threatened to prosecute those who do not allow Muslim women to cover their hair, despite the fact that this "hijab" is a political prop invented by radicals in the 1970s.
As if he did not have enough on his plate, Mr Obama insisted that fighting "negative stereotypes of Islam" was "one of my duties as President of the United States". However, there was no threat to prosecute those who force the hijab on Muslim women through intimidation, blackmail and physical violence, nor any mention of the abominable treatment of Muslim women, including such horrors as "honour-killing". The best he could do was this platitude: "Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons." >>> By Amir Taheri | Saturday, June 06, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: If his performance in the television studios is anything to go by, Mir-Hossein Mousavi is scarcely the obvious choice to oust President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and bring Iran back in from the cold.
A former hardliner, whose plodding style evokes comparisons from John Major to Leonid Brezhnev, he is as much a blast from Iran's revolutionary past as a breath of fresh reformist air.
Yet the bespectacled 67-year-old, who was Iran's prime minister during its revolutionary heyday in the 1980s, has come out of retirement in an attempt to end what he describes as Mr Ahmadinejad's "disgraceful" presidency.
And in his bid to convince voters that he himself is now an agent of change, he has deployed a weapon no Iranian politician has dared use before. He is the first Iranian politician in 30 years to campaign with his wife alongside him - a bold nod to equality that has given credibility to his pledges to take Iran down the liberal, pro-Western route that Mr Ahmadinejad rejects.
True, Mr Mousavi's partner, Zahra Rahnavard, a grandmother, painter and ex-university chancellor, is no Michelle Obama. While the US president's wife raises eyebrows with dresses that show her bare arms, Ms Rahnavard, 61, sticks to the chador, the all-encompassing charcoal cloak that has long symbolised Islamc [sic] conservatism.
But that has not stopped supporters hailing her as Iran's first-ever "First Lady", and on the campaign trail, her speeches in favour of greater women's rights have stolen the show for her quietly-spoken husband.
"Why are there no women presidential candidates or cabinet ministers?" she asked her audience last week in the city of Tabriz, referring to a political scene still dominated largely by bearded clerics.
"Getting rid of discrimination and demanding equal rights with men is the number one priority for women in Iran."
Thanks to the "Zahra factor", Mr Mousavi is now the strongest of the three challengers to Mr Ahmadinejad in this Friday's poll, which is proving one of the liveliest presidential contests in Iran's post-revolutionary history. Mr Ahmadinejad's bellicosity on the nuclear issue, threats to Israel and quasi-Soviet economic policies has both alienated many of his own hardline followers and galvanised the reformist camp, which suffered in the 2005 elections from disillusionment and apathy.
"In your foreign policy, you have brought shame upon Iran," Mr Mousavi told Mr Ahmadinejad during a televised election head-to-head on Wednesday. "You have created tension with other countries, and heavy costs have been brought on the nation in these four years." >>> By Colin Freeman in Tehran | Saturday, June 06, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Can Iran’s Young Ring the Changes?
As a crucial election looms, young Iranians are once again standing up against a repressive and brutal regime
Four layers of curtains prevented Havva from ever seeing out of the window of the small apartment in an affluent neighbourhood of central Tehran that she once shared with her husband and young daughter. More importantly, as far as her husband was concerned, the thick folds of material ensured nobody could ever see in to catch sight of her — even though their apartment was on the second floor and overlooked only by a tall willow tree.
Not once in nine years of marriage was Havva allowed to pull those curtains back.
When I ask Havva gently what drove her to finally try to take her own life, she wrings her hands, revealing scars on her wrists. Over a period of four months she made numerous suicide attempts. The first were undoubtedly cries for help. The final time she thought she had ensured success by swallowing 140 tranquillisers and barricading herself in her home. But a last-minute call to a relative to say goodbye raised the alarm. Emergency services broke in, and she was rushed to hospital, where she remained on life support in a coma for several days. “There was no one incident that pushed me to do this, just very heavy pressure for a long time until I understood I couldn’t take it any longer,” says Havva, a strikingly beautiful 31-year-old who asks to be identified only by this pseudonym (meaning “Eve” in Farsi), since she comes from a rich and prominent Iranian family. “All my dreams were destroyed when I married at 17. There was no light, no hope in the way I was forced to live,” she says. She talks in a low voice of how she could never leave the house without her husband’s permission, nor make friends, work or resist him forcing himself on her several times a day. “But it is the traditional way. I thought that was all there was.”
Havva’s experience is far from unusual in modern-day Iran. Despite some advances in women’s rights over the past decade, and the fact that 60% of the country’s university graduates are now female, legally and socially women are still considered far inferior to men. In the words of the lawyer Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel peace prize, “criminal laws adopted after the revolution took away a woman’s human identity and turned her into an incapable and mentally deranged second-class being”.
When Havva refers again to the curtains that she felt symbolised the crushing restrictions imposed on her by her marriage, the apartment feels claustrophobic and suffocating. It’s an all-too-common feeling in Iran today. As the country sits on the cusp of what many regard as the most significant presidential election since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deposed Reza Shah Pahlavi from his Peacock throne at the start of the Islamic revolution 30 years ago, denouncing westernisation and ordering every woman to cover herself with the chador, there is wide acknowledgment that Iran is sitting on a powder keg of barely suppressed fury at the stifling political, economic and social constraints its citizens have had to endure under the leadership of the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. >>> Christine Toomey | Sunday, June 07, 2009
Saturday, June 06, 2009
FAMILLE CHRÉTIENNE: Alors que la campagne des européennes, particulièrement atone, cherche toujours ses thèmes, Philippe de Villiers pousse un coup de gueule sur la Turquie. Pour lui, les élites politiques connaissent bien le phénomène de l’affaiblissement démographique européen et de « l’inéluctable » progression des populations musulmanes sur le continent. Propos recueillis par Jean-Claude Bésida.
Pourquoi êtes-vous autant focalisé sur le thème de la Turquie et de l’islamisation ?
Tout simplement parce que nous verrons les premières transformations d’églises en mosquées dans les trois ans qui viennent. En tout cas, c’est ce que m’a dit Nicolas Sarkozy.
Quand ?
J’ai eu une discussion de fond avec lui à l’Elysée à la fin de l’année dernière ; il m’a dit : « Toi tu as les intuitions, moi j’ai les chiffres. Et tes intuitions sont confirmées par mes chiffres. L’islamisation de l’Europe est inéluctable. » Attention : c’est un processus qui ne se fera pas instantanément, mais qui prendra quelques décennies.
Pourquoi cette question vous paraît-elle centrale ?
La plupart des hommes politiques ont une douce ignorance de ce qu’est l’islam et se proposent de transformer l’Europe en supermarché des religions concurrentes. Sans prendre conscience que l’islam n’est pas seulement une religion, mais que, confondant le temporel et le spirituel, il impose un droit. Mais derrière cette douce ignorance des hommes politiques, il y a ceux qui savent. Et ceux qui savent ont rédigé le livre vert paru en 2000, qui est un outil stratégique de la Commission de Bruxelles. Il fait le constat suivant : dans les années qui viennent se prépare un effondrement démographique qui porte sur des dizaines de millions de bras manquants. Pour y faire face, l’Union européenne propose un apport de peuplement nouveau – c’est dit en toutes lettres. La réalité c’est que nous allons vers un chassé-croisé avec, d’un côté en Europe l’avortement de masse et la promotion du mariage homosexuel et, de l’autre, l’immigration de masse qu’on appelle maintenant l’immigration choisie et qui ajoute à l’absurdité du déracinement un élément moralement scandaleux qui consiste à piller les élites des pays pauvres. >>> Par Jean-Claude Bésida | Jeudi 04 Juin 2009
THE BRUSSELS JOURNAL:
Sarkozy: “Islamization is Inevitable” >>> Tiberge | Saturday, June 06, 2009
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Das Dritte Reich in Farbe >>>
THE JERUSALEM POST: US President Barack Obama claims to be a big fan of telling the truth. In media interviews ahead of his trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and during his big speech in Cairo on Thursday, he claimed that the centerpiece of his Middle East policy is his willingness to tell people hard truths.
Indeed, Obama made three references to the need to tell the truth in his so-called address to the Muslim world.
Unfortunately, for a speech billed as an exercise in truth telling, Obama's address fell short. Far from reflecting hard truths, Obama's speech reflected political convenience.
Obama's so-called hard truths for the Islamic world included statements about the need to fight so-called extremists; give equal rights to women; provide freedom of religion; and foster democracy. Unfortunately, all of his statements on these issues were nothing more than abstract, theoretical declarations devoid of policy prescriptions.
He spoke of the need to fight Islamic terrorists without mentioning that their intellectual, political and monetary foundations and support come from the very mosques, politicians and regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt that Obama extols as moderate and responsible.
He spoke of the need to grant equality to women without making mention of common Islamic practices like so-called honor killings, and female genital mutilation. He ignored the fact that throughout the lands of Islam women are denied basic legal and human rights. And then he qualified his statement by mendaciously claiming that women in the US similarly suffer from an equality deficit. In so discussing this issue, Obama sent the message that he couldn't care less about the plight of women in the Islamic world.
So, too, Obama spoke about the need for religious freedom but ignored Saudi Arabian religious apartheid. He talked about the blessings of democracy but ignored the problems of tyranny.
In short, Obama's "straight talk" to the Arab world, which began with his disingenuous claim that like America, Islam is committed to "justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," was consciously and fundamentally fraudulent. And this fraud was advanced to facilitate his goal of placing the Islamic world on equal moral footing with the free world.
In a like manner, Obama's tough "truths" about Israel were marked by factual and moral dishonesty in the service of political ends.
On the surface, Obama seemed to scold the Muslim world for its all-pervasive Holocaust denial and craven Jew hatred. By asserting that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are wrong, he seemed to be upholding his earlier claim that America's ties to Israel are "unbreakable."
Unfortunately, a careful study of his statements shows that Obama was actually accepting the Arab view that Israel is a foreign - and therefore unjustifiable - intruder in the Arab world. Indeed, far from attacking their rejection of Israel, Obama legitimized it. >>> By Caroline Glick | Friday, June 05, 2009
YNET NEWS: Obama’s speech in Cairo presents Netanyahu with unequivocal dilemma
President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo is supposed to be no less than a terribly loud bell ringing through the corridors of Israel’s political establishment. For those who thus far did not understand – or did not wish to understand – the winds blowing from Washington, Obama left no room for doubt: The United States supports Israel, yet the era of trickery, promises, and the gradual annexation in Judea and Samaria is over. The time has come for action; the time has come for moving towards a resolution of the Palestinian problem. And in Obama’s view, there is only one solution: A Palestinian state.
Beyond its expected effect within the Muslim world, the Cairo speech is no less than an effort to outline a path for Israel’s political establishment; a clear signal where things are headed. Ever since Obama’s election, officials in Jerusalem have sought ways to explain, interpret, and circumvent what has been obvious for a while now. With arrogance and contempt, officials here attempted to downplay the tension vis-à-vis the Americans, blur the disagreements, and hide behind various “natural growth” arguments. Now, Obama has made it clear: Wasting time and continued settlement construction are out; negotiations on the establishment of a Palestinian state are in. This message will affect Israel’s public and political discourse in the near future.
For Netanyahu, this is a major junction that offers only two directions: A collision course with the world’s greatest power, which will lead to Israel’s isolation and ostracism in the international arena – or a dramatic policy shift [e] that will exact difficult political prices. In other words: The prime minister must decide whether he’s going with Likud’s more rightist members, or with Obama.
When these are the options, Netanyahu has reason for concern in political terms. Wherever he turns, he will be hurt: If he folds in the face of the American pressure and modifies the narrative that has been accompanying him since he took office, he will encounter domestic resistance and an “Intifada” on the part of the Right and the settlers. Yet if he insists on going along with the conservative line that characterizes him and his government, in the face of the American pressure, he will quickly lose the Israeli public’s support, and possibly also the support of the Labor party, which is committed to the two-state solution. In both cases, Bibi’s current coalition may be shaken up. >>> Attila Somfalvi | Saturday, June 06, 2009
THE WASHINGTON TIMES: OPINION/ANALYSIS:
Now it's on to Normandy, to apologize to the Germans. It's the least an American president can do after the way the Allied armies left so much of Europe in rubble. There's a lot of groveling to do for what America accomplished in the Pacific, too.
This prospect should appeal to Barack Obama, who relishes the role of Apologizer-in-Chief. Apologizing for manifold sins against civilization is not always easy, but it's simple enough: "Blame America First." You just open a vein and let it flow. In Cairo, Mr. Obama opened an artery.
America, unlike the president, is guilty of hubris, arrogance and cant. All that must change. "Change" is what the smooth-talking Chicago messiah says he is all about. "Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail," he told the Muslim elites Thursday at Cairo U. "So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it." It's not "a world order" that elevates America, but events. No other country is as generous, as forgiving, as willing to sacrifice blood and bone when the world calls for help. If not America, who? Hasn't the president heard?
Big talkers don't know when to stop when they're on a rhetorical roll because they can't remember which facts are actually facts and which "facts" they're making up. Mr. Obama even attributed the Golden Rule, from the teachings of Christ, to "every religion." In an interview before the Cairo speech, he called the United States one of "the largest Muslim countries," based on its Muslim population, and he later put the number of Muslims in America at 7 million, more than even most Islamic advocacy groups claim. The most reliable estimate, by the nonpartisan Pew research organization, is 1.8 million. That would make the United States the 48th "largest" Muslim nation, just behind Montenegro. Mr. Obama often has trouble with numbers, big and small; he once boasted of having campaigned in 57 states.
Mr. Obama described himself as "a Christian, but," and offered a hymn to the Muslim roots he insisted during the late presidential campaign he didn't have. He invoked his middle name, "Hussein," as evidence that he was one of "them." The Obama campaign insisted last year that anyone who uses the middle name was playing with racism. >>> Wesley Pruden*, Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC | Friday, June 02, 2009
*Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
What a stupid, idiotic thing to do! The Obamas are behaving like petulant children. Shame on them! Most undignified! – ©Mark
TIMES ONLINE: The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys.
President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.
America’s First Family will not be dining with President Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, even though they are staying at the residence of the US Ambassador, yards from the Elysée apartments where the Sarkozys spend their weekends. >>> Charles Bremner in Paris | Friday, June 05, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
NZZ Online: Präsident Obama hat mit einem Besuch im früheren Konzentrationslager Buchenwald deutlich gemacht, dass der Holocaust auch in seinem Politikverständnis eine entscheidende Rolle spielt.
Zusammen mit seiner Gastgeberin, der deutschen Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel, hat der amerikanische Präsident Barack Obama am Freitagnachmittag das Nazi-Konzentrationslager Buchenwald bei Weimar besucht. Damit machte er deutlich, dass seine Dialogbereitschaft gegenüber der islamischen Welt nicht etwa als Abwendung von den Juden oder vom Staat Israel zu verstehen ist. Nach einem Rundgang durch das Lager riefen er und Merkel zu Wachsamkeit gegenüber Unmenschlichkeit und Terror auf. Er werde nie vergessen, was er hier gesehen habe, sagte Obama, der sichtlich zutiefst bewegt war.
«Nie wieder»
Obama ist der erste amerikanische Präsident, der Buchenwald besichtigt. Mit dem Lager, in das unter der Herrschaft der Nationalsozialisten rund eine Viertelmillion Menschen verschleppt wurden und in dem mehr als 56'000 zu Tode kamen, verbindet sich in seinem Fall auch ein Stück Familiengeschichte. Laut Angaben des Präsidenten gehörte der heute 84 Jahre alte Bruder seiner Grossmutter 1945 zu den amerikanischen Soldaten, die einen Teil des Lagers befreiten. «Dieser Ort lehrt uns, wachsam zu sein in unserer eigenen Zeit, damit so etwas nie wieder passiert», sagte Obama. Am Denkmal für alle Häftlinge auf dem einstigen Appellplatz legte er eine weisse Rose nieder. Merkel machte klar, dass es Teil deutscher Staatsräson sei, die immerwährende Erinnerung an den Zivilisationsbruch durch den Völkermord an den Juden wachzuhalten. Der KZ-Überlebende und Nobelpreisträger Elie Wiesel erzählte Obama von seiner Zeit in dem Lager. >>> U. Sd. Dresden | Freitag, 05. Juni 2009
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