HT: Amil Imani »
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – DAMIAN THOMPSON: "They could pay off the Triads," says Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower interviewed by the Guardian in his Hong Kong hideout. Meaning: the CIA could use a proxy to kill him for revealing that Barack Obama has presided over an unimaginable – to the ordinary citizen – expansion of the Federal government's powers of surveillance over anyone.
Libertarians and conspiracy theorists of both Left and Right will never forget this moment. Already we have Glenn Beck hailing Snowden on Twitter:
Courage finally. Real. Steady. Thoughtful. Transparent. Willing to accept the consequences. Inspire w/Malice toward none.#edwardsnowdenSnowden will be a Right-wing hero as well as a Left-libertarian one. Why? First, he thought carefully about what he should release, avoiding (he says) material that would harm innocent individuals. Second, he's formidably articulate. Quotes like the following are pure gold for opponents of Obama who've been accusing the President of allowing the Bush-era "surveillance state" to extend its tentacles even further:
NSA is focussed on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible… Increasingly we see that it's happening domestically. The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone, it ingests them by default, it collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and its stores them for periods of time … While they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they're collecting your communications to do so. Any analyst at any time can target anyone…Read on and comment » | Damian Thompson | Sunday, June 09, 2013
The iconic stand-up and star of the beloved sitcom The Cosby Show routinely weighs in on cultural matters.
This past weekend, Cosby penned an op-ed for The New York Post in which he detailed some of the flaws in modern society. He also suggested we should take a page out of the Koran if we want to have healthier families, less crime and more productive people. » | Breitbart News | Monday, June 10, 2013
South of Utah's Great Salt Lake, the National Security Agency (NSA), aUnited States foreign intelligence service, keeps watch over one of its most expensive secrets. Here, on 100,000 square meters (1,100,000 square feet) near the US military's Camp Williams, the NSA is constructing enormous buildings to house superfast computers. All together, the project will cost around $2 billion (€1.5 billion) and the computers will be capable of storing a gigantic volume of data, at least 5 billion gigabytes. The energy needed to power the cooling system for the servers alone will cost $40 million a year.
Former NSA employees Thomas Drake and Bill Binney told SPIEGEL in March that the facility would soon store personal data on people from all over the world and keep it for decades. This includes emails, Skype conversations, Google searches, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, bank transfers -- electronic data of every kind.
"They have everything about you in Utah," Drake says. "Who decides whether they look at that data? Who decides what they do with it?" Binney, a mathematician who was previously an influential analyst at the NSA, calculates that the servers are large enough to store the entirety of humanity's electronic communications for the next 100 years -- and that, of course, gives his former colleagues plenty of opportunity to read along and listen in.
James Clapper, the country's director of national intelligence, has confirmed the existence of a large-scale surveillance program. PresidentBarack Obama further explained that Congress authorized the program -- but that American citizens are exempt from it.
…
'Total Surveillance of Germans is Inappropriate'
On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed through a spokesman that she plans to discuss the NSA's controversial data surveillance program with President Obama during his visit to Berlin next week. A spokesperson for the German Justice Ministry also said that talks are currently underway with US authorities. The discussions will include implications to Germany and "possible impairment of the rights of German citizens."
German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called for "clear answers" from the companies implicated in the document, and the German Green Party has demanded that the government investigate the circumstances of Prism immediately.
"Total surveillance of all German citizens by the NSA is completely disproportionate," Volker Beck, secretary of the Green Party group in parliament, said on Monday. The party has proposed that the topic be discussed at next week's parliamentary session.
Mormon Roots, International Reach
The program's Utah compound is full of security fences, watchdogs and surveillance cameras, as well as biometric identification system equipment. Two informants say the location for the server facility was by no means an accident. Utah is home to the largest number of Mormons in the world. This highly patriotic religious community sends its young members around the world as missionaries -- and many are then recruited by the Utah Army National Guard, whose 300th Military Intelligence Brigade employs 1,600 linguists. The NSA has access to these linguists at all times, and one insider believes they are used in "analyzing international telecommunications."
…
Read the whole article here » | Marcel Rosenbach, Holger Stark and Jonathan Stock | Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein | Monday, June 10, 2013
MAIL ONLINE: Helen Rumbali was dragged from her home tortured and beheaded in public / Villagers said fire flies led them to her house - a sign she was a witch / They accused her of killing another villager - who died from sickness - with her sorcery / Experts say disparity in wealth and jealousy are main reasons for increases in such attacks
A teacher has been tortured and beheaded by her neighbours in a Papua New Guinea village because they say she was a witch responsible for the death of a sick villager.
The angry mob brandishing guns, machetes and axes surrounded her house and pulled Helen Rumbali, her sister and two nieces away. They then burnt down the house.
They say a swarm of fire flies led them from the deceased person's grave to her house - sure evidence they say that she was a sorcerer and was practicing black magic.
Helen's older sister and younger nieces were slashed with knives, then released after negotiations with police. But the mob went on to torture the former teacher, in her 40s, and then publicly cut off her head.
The sickening and heinous act is one of many horrific similar stories coming out from the island, often considered a paradise in the Pacific. » | Helen Collis | Monday, June 10, 2013
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: In its annual report on extremist activity in Germany, the country's domestic intelligence agency has identified a surge in support for Islamists and growth in the number of influential neo-Nazi music groups.
During the past year, Islamist organizations experienced a surge in support in Germany according to an annual report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution obtained by SPIEGEL in advance of its planned public release on Tuesday.
The report states that the number of members and supporters of groups like Milli Görüs, the largest Islamist organization in the country, or Hezbollah in Germany rose from 38,080 in 2011 to 42,550 last year.
The largest growth was seen among members and supporters of Salafists, which increased from 3,800 to 4,500, the government agency stated. Last year, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich of the conservative Christian Social Union moved to ban three Salafist groups. » | dsl/SPIEGEL | Monday, June 10, 2013
Verwandt »
And even in Isparta, a religiously conservative region that is a wellspring of support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a small group of residents, drinks in hand, gathered outside the office of the local governor who is an ally of the embattled prime minister and chanted, “Cheers, Tayyip!”
Drinking is far from the only issue held up in the intense antigovernment protests that have convulsed Turkey for more than a week. But it has become closely intertwined with the broader complaints of demonstrators fighting what they see as the rising authoritarianism of the Turkish government.
It also cuts to the heart of Turkish identity, as both sides have cast it as a clash of Islamic and secular values. While protesters have held up new limits on drinking as an affront to the secular values of modern Turkey, Mr. Erdogan has said that “religion demands” curbs on drinking. He has gone so far as to implicitly refer to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey and a notoriously heavy drinker, as a “drunkard,” and in one of a series of speeches he delivered Sunday to cheering supporters, accused protesters of taking beer into mosques. » | Tim Arango | Sunday, June 09, 2013
JNS.ORG: LOS ANGELES—Europeans “need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state” to counter the growing Islamization of their countries, Dutch politician Geert Wilders said Sunday in Los Angeles.
“My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe,” Wilders, founder and leader of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, said at the “Europe’s Last Stand?” conference, organized by the American Freedom Alliance.
Wilders described that Europe’s inner cities “have come to resemble Northern Africa and the Middle East” because they are ruled by Islamic Sharia law, noting that Islamic areas border the European Union headquarters in Brussels and that “largely Islamic suburbs” surround Paris.
“Europe is in a terrible state,” Wilders said. “Bit by bit, European countries are losing their national sovereignty.” » | JNS.org | Monday, June 10, 2013
THE GUARDIAN: Snowden's whistleblowing gives us a chance to roll back what is tantamount to an 'executive coup' against the US constitution
In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that includes the Pentagon Papers, for which I was responsible 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution.
Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.
The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, and with the broadest possible interpretation. This makes mockery of the rule of law, let alone of the bill of rights. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: "It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp."
For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is a nonsense – as is the oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. The fact that their leaders were briefed on this and went along with it, without question, only shows how broken the system of accountability is in this country. As the founder James Madison wrote:
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."» | Daniel Ellsberg | Monday, June 10, 2013
THE GUARDIAN: US members of Congress ought to be seeking the earliest opportunity to learn what this brave whistleblower is saying
Edward Snowden is a very modern spy – neither gun-blazingly dashing nor cat-strokingly sinister. He is young, tech-savvy, quietly articulate and intensely interested in human rights. His work did not involve high-speed car chases or elaborate gadgets – just a desk and a computer. Using these simple tools he could spy on anyone, anywhere.
There are many people like him, and they are, on his account, potentially frightening figures. "We hack everyone everywhere," he told the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald in the foreign hotel where he has taken refuge. "I had the authorities to wiretap anyone – you, a federal judge, to even the president if I had a personal email." He describes a "horrifying" infrastructure where he and other analysts could intercept the vast majority of human communications around the world. » | Editorial | Monday, June 10, 2013
Sunday, June 09, 2013
"Je n'ai aucune intention de me cacher parce que je sais que je n'ai rien fait de mal", a déclaré Edward Snowden dans un entretien publié sur le site internet du journal. Le Guardian explique que c'est Edward Snowden lui-même qui a demandé de révéler son identité. Le Washington Post a confirmé que l'ancien employé de la CIA, informaticien aujourd'hui exilé à Hong Kong, était également sa source.
Snowden travaillait depuis quatre ans pour l'Agence de sécurité nationale (NSA) – dont il a révélé des documents confidentiels – en tant qu'employé de divers sous-traitants, dont Dell ou Booz Allen Hamilton, son dernier employeur. "Mon unique objectif est d'informer les gens de ce qui est fait en leur nom et de ce qui est fait contre eux", assure-t-il au Guardian. Il y a trois semaines, il a donc quitté sa compagne alors qu'il menait une vie très confortable à Hawaï pour se rendre à Hong Kong avant la révélation de ses fuites. "Je suis prêt à sacrifier tout cela parce que je ne peux, en mon âme et conscience, laisser le gouvernement américain détruire la vie privée, la liberté d'Internet et les libertés essentielles pour les gens tout autour du monde avec ce système énorme de surveillance qu'il est en train de bâtir sécrètement", explique-t-il. » | Le Monde.fr avec AFP | dimanche 09 juin 2013
Visionnez la vidéo ici
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: NSA surveillance: American authorities launch investigation into Edward Snowden's leak of project: American officials have launched an investigation into how a government contractor authored the leak of a vast covert surveillance project. » | Harriet Alexander | Monday, June 10, 2013
THE GUARDIAN: Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower: 'I do not expect to see home again': Source for the Guardian's NSA files on why he carried out the biggest intelligence leak in a generation – and what comes next » | Ewen MacAskill | Sunday, June 09, 2013
Sur une tribune dressée dans la matinée au milieu de la place, les harangues dénonçant la politique du gouvernement et les brutalités policières se succèdent, entrecoupées de morceaux de musique et immanquablement ponctuées de "Tayyip, démission !" ou "Gouvernement, démission !", scandés par la foule. » | Le Monde.fr avec AFP | dimanche 09 juin 2013
Fires were started at a community centre in Muswell Hill on Wednesday, and a Chislehurst school on Saturday.
An increased police presence has now been put in place around potentially "vulnerable" locations, said Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.
He called on Londoners not to be divided by the death of Lee Rigby. » | Sunday, June 09, 2013
THE GUARDIAN: US shock jock lambasted by BBC TV presenter after interrupting fellow guest to warn viewers over 'Bilderberg Group puppeteers'
The BBC's Sunday Politics show is generally a rather sedate affair, heavy on serious interviews and light on controversy. But viewers were treated to a highly charged confrontation between host Andrew Neil and US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, which saw the latter labelled the worst person to be interviewed on the show and an idiot. » | Alexandra Topping | Sunday, June 09, 2013
Turkey's prime minister has climbed on top of a bus to give a fiery speech to thousands of his supporters, challenging increasingly angry anti-government protesters to beat his party at the ballot box after they flooded the streets for a 10th day of demonstrations. On Sunday Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited two cities where unrest has occurred and again condemned his detractors as a handful of looters and vandals.
In the southern city of Adana, where pro- and anti-government protesters clashed on Saturday night, Erdoğan greeted supporters before lashing out at his opponents in the polarised country.
"We won't do what a handful of looters have done. They burn and destroy …They destroy the shops of civilians. They destroy the cars of civilians," Erdoğan told supporters who had greeted him at the local airport. "They are low enough to insult the prime minister of this country."
He urged his supporters to avoid violence and predicted that his Islamic-rooted party would defeat his opponents during local elections in March. "I want you to give them the first lesson through democratic means in the ballot box," he said. Read on and comment » | Associated Press in Ankara | Sunday, June 09, 2013
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Islamistische Organisationen haben im vergangenen Jahr deutlich mehr Unterstützer gewonnen - das geht nach SPIEGEL-Informationen aus dem Bericht des Verfassungsschutzes hervor. Beim Rechtsextremismus sieht die Behörde widersprüchliche Tendenzen - die NPD schrumpft, Neonazi-Bands bleiben einflussreich.
Am Dienstag stellt das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) den Jahresbericht vor, erste Details sind schon jetzt bekannt. Demnach stieg die Zahl der Mitglieder und Anhänger von Gruppierungen wie der türkischen Milli Görü oder der arabischen Hisbollah in Deutschland von 38.080 (2011) auf 42.550. Eine Gruppe hatte besonders viel Zulauf. Am stärksten wuchs im Beobachtungszeitraum die Zahl der Unterstützer derSalafisten von 3800 auf nun 4500. » | Sonntag, 09. Juni 2013
THE INDEPENDENT: One driver said 'Of course people stare at you a little when you are on the platform'
Male train drivers in Stockholm have rebelled against a ban on wearing shorts by turning up for work in skirts.
Temperatures in the train cab can reach 35C during the summer, and now a group of 13 employees working for the Roslagsbanan railway system have ditched trousers for skirts to keep cool.
According to Sweden’s The Local website, the train company Arriva reportedly insists that staff cannot wear shorts. » | Liam O’Brien | Saturday, June 08, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT: World View: The PM's inability to counter unrest within and enemies without make any talk of a 'new Ottoman empire' absurd
There is something almost comic in the way the missteps of the Turkish government turned a small demonstration aimed at preserving sycamore trees in Taksim Square from the developers' bulldozers into the biggest and most widespread popular protest ever seen in Turkey. The Turkish security forces made the classic mistake of being pictured on television and social media publicly assaulting peaceable protesters with water cannon and pepper spray. Just enough violence was used to enrage and provoke while wholly failing to intimidate.
There was a time when brutality by the security forces was easier to keep off TV screens by censorship or frightening journalists and media-owners. But these mechanisms no longer work when people have a multitude of TV channels inside and outside the country to choose from. Running documentaries on penguins, as CNN Turkey notoriously did, simply creates a vacuum of information which is rapidly filled by protesters. The government's version of what is happening becomes self-marginalised and is ignored.
It is astonishing that skilled politicians such as the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and those around him should make so many mistakes in such a short time. It is easy to why Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt should have miscalculated popular reaction to repression at the start of the Arab uprisings in 2011, because as rulers of police states their approach to public opinion was to ignore it. Read on and comment » | Patrick Cockburn | Sunday, June 09, 2013
BBC: Swiss voters have overwhelmingly backed a controversial move to tighten asylum restrictions amid a spike in the number of refugees in the country.
Almost 80% of voters approved changes made to the asylum law last September, final results of a referendum said.
Under the new rules military desertion is no longer a reason for granting asylum, and people cannot now apply through Swiss foreign embassies.
About 48,000 people are in the process of seeking asylum in Switzerland.
The BBC's Imogen Foulkes, in Geneva, says Switzerland has a long tradition of generosity towards asylum seekers - its proportion of refugees per head of population is twice the European average.
But the number of asylum seekers is rising sharply and is at its highest in a decade.
That, coupled with sharp rises in immigration overall, has led to public concern that too many people are coming to Switzerland, our correspondent says. » | Sunday, June 09, 2013
Verwandt »
The 30-year-old returned to the Swedish capital from New York, where she met Mr O'Neill two years ago.
Some 500 guests were invited to the ceremony at the Royal Chapel in Stockholm.
Sweden's royal family enjoys wide public support and the ceremony was broadcast live on state TV.
Princess Madeleine's elder sister, Crown Princess Victoria, married her personal trainer Daniel Wesling in Stockholm three years ago. But Saturday's wedding was not considered as big an occasion.
In June 2010, the whole of the Swedish capital was transformed for the celebrations.
Along with representatives from many European royal families present for Princess Madeleine's wedding, John Taylor of UK pop group Duran Duran was among the guests.
The couple tied the knot in a ceremony that was part in Swedish and part in English. They then travelled in a horse and carriage procession through the city centre. (+ BBC video) » | Saturday, June 08, 2013
Related »
It seems that the mechanisms of remembrance and forgetfulness worked perfectly in shaping the collective memory of the relations between Israel and Iran. The Israeli narrative goes as such: during his reign, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi tried to create a modern, progressive, and western Iran (Iran’s relations with Israel were at the core and foundations of the shah’s geostrategic policies). The new documentary, Before the Revolutionby Dan Shadur, beautifully conveys the story of the large Israeli community in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, progressing in two simultaneous lanes: the lane of memory, and the lane of forgetting.
The vast spectrum of interviewees in this documentary allows the audience to gain a fuller picture of those relationships. The interviewees come from different walks of life: from senior diplomats to teachers in Tehran’s Israeli school or employees of the myriad Israeli companies that worked in Iran at that time. They tell us how and why the picture of this “special relationship” was drawn in such this way. They also describe the creation of the “oriental fantasy” in which they lived. Fancy luxurious department stores that offered goods that did not exist in Israel at that time (like Pampers diapers) welcomed the Israelis who held “unbelievable earning power.” Many of them describe the wealth, huge houses, live-in maids, and the large and thriving community. » | Lior Sternfeld/Haokets | Saturday, June 08, 2013
YA LIBNAN: MOSCOW – In a new crackdown on Russian Muslims, Moscow police have detained more than 300 worshippers after rounding them up during prayer at a Muslim prayer room in the Russian capital.
“The situation in the North Caucasus should be kept under particular control,” President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of security force officers, Reuters reported on Friday, June 7.
“The policy in the fight against corruption, crime and the insurgency has to be carried out harshly and consistently.”
In a raid carried on Friday, the forces detained 300 Muslims, including 170 foreigners, without disclosing reasons behind their arrest.
The forces, led by Federal Security Service (FSB), also confiscated Islamic literature to check its content.
Friday’s raid is the third targeting Muslim places of worship in Moscow or St Petersburg this year. » | Sunday, June 09, 2013
DIE PRESSE: Die Schweizer stimmen über Änderungen im Asylrecht ab, die im September in Kraft getreten waren. Die Zustimmung soll bei knapp 80 Prozent liegen.
Die Schweizer Bürger haben in einem Referendum ersten Ergebnissen zufolge mit großer Mehrheit ein verschärftes Asylrecht gebilligt. In neun der 23 Kantone wurde am Sonntag für eine im September in Kraft getretene Neuregelung gestimmt, mit der die Zuwanderung gebremst werden soll, wie Hochrechnungen des Schweizer Fernsehens zeigten. Demnach liegt die Zustimmung für die Novelle bei knapp 80 Prozent.
Angesichts steigender Zuwanderungszahlen hatten Umfragen bereits eine Mehrheit für die Verschärfung vorausgesagt. Die von der Regierung eingebrachte Asylrechtsänderung war Ende September vom Parlament in Bern in Kraft gesetzt worden. Unter anderem Kirchen, Menschenrechtsorganisationen und Gewerkschaften wollten mit dem Referendum erreichen, dass die Änderungen rückgängig gemacht werden. » | APA/AFP | Sonntag, 09. Juni 2013
THE OBSERVER: Recently, Shia-Sunni conflicts have seen Hezbollah help Syrian government forces to recapture Qusair. Battles rage between the two sides in Lebanon while in Iraq the monthly death toll from Sunni-Shia violence has topped 1,000. But religion alone does not explain the escalating tensions. Fundamental political shifts begun by the Arab spring are helping create new regional disputes in the Middle East
Nine days ago the influential Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi denounced the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement – whose fighters helped Bashar al-Assad's regime retake the Syrian city of Qusair last week – as the "party of Satan".
Speaking in Doha not long before Qusair's fall, Qaradawi did not stop there: the cleric, whose speeches and sermons are heard by millions, went a dangerous step further, calling on Sunni Muslims with military training to support the Syrian uprising against Assad.
It was a sermon that not only marked a sharp shift in the sectarian tensions in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia but an escalation in Qaradawi's own rhetoric. When I heard him preach on Syria at Cairo's crowded al-Azhar mosque last autumn, he was sharp in his condemnation of the Assad regime, but stopped short of endorsing a jihad.
In Doha, however, Qaradawi's remarks embraced a more dangerous sectarian notion. "The leader of the party of the Satan comes to fight the Sunnis … now we know what the Iranians want … they want continued massacres to kill Sunnis," Qaradawi said. "How could 100 million Shias defeat 1.7 billion [Sunnis]? Only because [Sunni] Muslims are weak."
Qaradawi's comments – endorsed last week by Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, Abdul Aziz al-Asheikh – did not come out of nowhere. They were a direct response to a speech made by Hezbollah's general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut, not only admitting that his fighters were in Syria but pledging that his men would help Assad – a member of the Shia Alawite sect – to final "victory".
If ever evidence was needed of the escalating sectarian dimension to the growing regional instability in the Middle East – in which the worsening conflict in Syria is playing a large part – it was visible last week. » | Peter Beaumont | Saturday, June 08, 2013
Click here for a pdf depicting key Sunni and Shia populations »
Among the tents, snoozing youth and pleasant shady trees of Istanbul's Gezi Park there are portraits of one man in a European suit. Wherever you look Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – founder of the Turkish Republic – gazes sternly at you. Photos of the first president hang from branches, have been affixed to tea stalls, and even encircle a giant banner showing Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dressed as Hitler.
"We really love Ataturk. He changed our state. He made it into a modern republic," explained Murat Bakirdoven, a 24-year-old biology student who has been camping in the park for a week. Someone had stuck another photo of Ataturk – this time in a lounge suit, sitting on a leather chair, cigarette in hand – on a nearby tree. Bakirdoven added: "Erdogan wants us to forget him. Instead we are trying to create an Ataturk renaissance."
For the protesters who have taken part in Turkey's anti-government demonstrations, Ataturk is a hero. Dead for 75 years, he has become the reborn symbol of this student-driven anti-Erdogan movement. (The other motif is a penguin – a reference to the state media, which failed to report on the uprising for several days; one channel, CNN Turk, instead screened a nature documentary on Antarctica).
The symbolism goes to the heart of what this unprecedented uprising is about: Turkey's modern identity. At issue is whether Turkey should be the progressive, secular European nation-state that Ataturk originally envisaged and shaped from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, or a more explicitly religious country, a sort of Muslim version of Christian democracy. The protesters want the former; Erdogan, and his ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP), it appears, the latter. » | Luke Harding Istanbul | Saturday, June 08, 2013
With her red cotton dress, white shoulder bag and flowing black hair, she has become the colour-coded emblem of Turkey's new people-power movement.
Caught on camera as she was sprayed head to toe in tear gas, Ceyda Sungur's treatment at the hands of Istanbul's riot police seemed the epitome of using a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" and encapsulated the government's heavy-handed response to a civilised protest.
Pictures of the "Lady in the Red Dress" quickly spread around the world via the internet. Those who shared the pictures online joined protesters in demanding to know why a woman who looked attired for a summer picnic had been treated like a masked, brick-throwing anarchist.
Last week, Ms Sungur said she was a reluctant heroine, describing herself as just part of a wider grass-roots movement, and pointing out in brief remarks to a Turkish newspaper that hundreds of others had been gassed in similar fashion.
Now, though, having declined requests for interviews from all over the world, Ms Sungur, an academic, has spoken briefly but vividly to The Sunday Telegraph about her involvement in what happened, and how she is now working in a makeshift clinic to help others hurt in demonstrations. » | Ruth Sherlock, Istanbul | Saturday, June 08, 2013
Saturday, June 08, 2013
IBN LIVE: London: Miss World contestants will not wear bikinis when they vie for the pageant's crown in Indonesia this September to avoid causing offence in the world's most populous Muslim country.
Miss World organizers said the 137 women in the competition will instead wear one-piece swimwear, some of which will also have sarongs over the top.
"This is perfectly reasonable in a country that prefers one-piece swimwear," London-based Miss World Organization Chairwoman Julia Morley said on Thursday. Morley denied suggestions the decision to ditch bikinis was made after local complaints about the contest. However, reports in Indonesian newspapers said a number of conservative groups had taken issue with the staging of the contest, highlighting bikinis as a key objection. » | Reuters | Saturday, June 08, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT: Tough and combative, he physically embodies the modern country he has done so much to shape. But this week’s protests are his biggest test yet
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the symbol as well as the architect of modern Turkey as it has developed over the past decade. His rule followed 80 years of quasi-military rule enforced by army coups of great brutality, in which hundreds of thousands were jailed and tortured under regimes as cruel and oppressive as anything seen in Argentina and Brazil. Dissent was crushed and organisations as small as local chess clubs permanently banned.
It was Erdogan and his AK (Justice and Development) Party that ended the dominance of the old elite after 2002 with three successive election victories. As important, since opponents of military rule had won elections before only to be ousted or overruled by army commanders, the AK leaders succeeded in outmanoeuvring the generals to remove the threat of another military takeover. Only in the past five or six years has the possibility of the return of the army ceased to be an option in Turkey, though the shadow of what Turks call the “deep state” is still in evidence with periodic unexplained assassinations. On the back of stable civilian rule, Turkey has developed economically into the 17th largest economy in the world.
It is important to restate Erdogan’s achievements, in order to understand his failings and the causes of the protests that began in Taksim Square in central Istanbul, and have now swept across the country. His aggrieved tone of voice, as he flew into Istanbul airport at the end of a week of turmoil, conveyed a certain bewilderment on his part as he combined appeals for unity with denunciations of the protesters. » | Patrick Cockburn | Friday, June 07, 2013
Read more here »
Friday, June 07, 2013
EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele was speaking ahead of talks on Turkey's ambition to join the EU.
In response, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said similar protests in Europe would be dealt with more harshly.
Turkey has seen a week of civil unrest sparked by a police crackdown on a local protest over an Istanbul park.
Mr Fuele and Mr Erdogan were both speaking at a conference in Istanbul on Turkey's relations with the EU.
The EU enlargement commissioner said the EU had no intention of giving up on Turkey's accession, but Turkey had to maintain values of freedom and fundamental rights.
He urged a "swift and transparent" investigation and those responsible should be held to account.
"Peaceful demonstrations constitute a legitimate way for groups to express their views in a democratic society," he said.
"Excessive use of force by police against these demonstrations has no place in such a democracy". » | Friday, June 07, 2013
HTs: Atlas Shrugs and Always On Watch »
Click here for a better quality video »
Whether using drones for the 'targeted killing' of alleged terrorists, or data-mining the phone records of everyone in America, Barack Obama has a standard response to those who would question his use of these questionable clandestine programmes: "we welcome a debate".
That debate – which Mr Obama described last month as "the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are" – has exploded into the open following this week's revelations about the extent of National Security Agency surveillance programs.
Mr Obama's offer of debate sounds all very liberal, and reasonable but for his frustrated critics on both the liberal Left and libertarian Right the offer is nothing more than a cover for a president who campaigned as a liberal but on national security has governed as an outright authoritarian.
If Mr Obama really wanted a debate on drones, or the ethics of dragnet-surveillance of the phone records of all Americans, they ask, why has it taken a series of damaging leaks for his administration to even admit the existence of these programmes, let alone openly debate them? » | Peter Foster, Washington | Friday, June 07, 2013
GATESTONE INSTITUTE: A growing number of German legal exerts are now sounding the alarm about the rise of a parallel Islamic justice in Germany. "It follows its own rules. The Islamic arbiters aren't interested in evidence when they deliver a judgment, and the question of who is at fault doesn't play much of a role. Islamic conflict resolution, as I've experienced it, is often achieved through violence and threats. It's often a dictate of power on the part of the stronger family." — Joachim Wagner, German legal expert, author.
An appeals court in north[-]western Germany has decided a contentious divorce case based on Islamic Sharia law.
The ruling is the latest in a growing number of court cases in Germany in which judges refer or defer to Islamic law because either the plaintiffs or the defendants are Muslim.
Critics say the cases -- especially those in which German law has taken a back seat to Sharia law -- reflect a dangerous encroachment of Islamic law into the German legal system.
In the latest case, the Appeals Court [Oberlandesgericht] in Hamm, a city in German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, ruled on June 2 that whoever marries according to Islamic law in a Muslim country and later seeks a divorce in Germany must abide by the original terms set forth by Sharia law. » | Soeren Kern | Friday, June 07, 2013
The very public spat came after the far-right group's leader tweeted his approval of a piece written by the former Prime Minister in which he strongly criticised Islam.
Robinson, also known by his real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, boasted that Blair's article, which said there was a "problem within Islam", was correct and "confirms everything we say."
The former Labour leader's representatives quickly took to Twitter to distance himself from the controversial group, posting under the username @tonyblairoffice.
"@EDLTrobinson Not the case at all," Blair's office responded.
"You obviously haven't read the article properly - there is nothing in common with what you have to say." Read on and comment » | Charlotte Meredith | Friday, June 07, 2013
Slon.ru Calls the Bilderberg Group Meeting the ‘Congress of the Elders of Zion’ »
Greeted by thousands of cheering supporters as he landed back in Istanbul in the early hours from an overseas trip, the prime minister defied the protesters rallying against him and his conservative reforms as he fought to settle the sharpest challenge yet to his decade-long rule.
"I call for an immediate end to the demonstrations, which have lost their democratic credentials and turned into vandalism," Erdogan said in a speech at Istanbul's main airport.
He insisted he was the "servant" of all the people, but hinted that he would act against further defiance.
"We cannot turn a blind eye to anybody disturbing peace in the country and trying to hijack democracy," he said.
The stakes rose on Friday for Turkey's international image as Erdogan's office said he was due to meet with European Union Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule [WIKI]. » | AFP | Friday, June 07, 2013
Read more here
here
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: There are too many immigrants in France, former prime minister Francois Fillon has said, insisting that the country cannot cope with everyone who wants to come in.
Asked on the France 2 television channel whether there are already too many immigrants in France, Fillon replied "yes".
"France today is unable to accept, in decent conditions, everyone who wants to come and live here," he added.
"Therefore we must reduce the policy of immigration, " the right-wing UMP party figure declared. » | Edited by Barney Henderson | Friday, June 07, 2013
Thursday, June 06, 2013
THE LOCAL – GERMANY: Germans might not know it, but they desperately need the moral guidance of a re-instated royal family, the great-great grandson of the last Kaiser, Prince Philip Kiril of Prussia, told The Local's Jessica Ware in an exclusive interview.
“Subconsciously, I think young Germans wants something they can orientate towards,” said Prince Philip. The 45-year-old father of six may work as a Protestant vicar, but he has become one of the loudest voices out of those who want to see Germany revive its monarchy.
Second in line to the throne Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918, Prince Philip believes that a royal family with divine right conferred by God could offer Germany what it is missing.
“When a leader answers to himself, and not God, an atheist-led country ends in disaster. Look at Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin,” he told The Local. Religion, “tames the selfishness naturally present in all of us.”
For the prince, a country guided by politicians and a ceremonial president means not only is there no strong family to look up to, nor is there anyone to rally up enthusiasm for family life. “A presidential head of state is not enough...what Germany needs is moral guidance and a friendlier face,” which, he added, “people do not get, and shouldn't expect, from politicians.”
Indeed, this appears to be what [an] increasing amount of young Germans want, after a survey for news agency DPA revealed last month that as many as one in three 18-24-year-olds would like the Kaiser back on the throne. Jump to the over-50s, and this figure dropped to one in six.
“Looking up to a king or queen would be much better for Germany's young people than to pop stars or football players,” Prince Philip said. He lamented that people were putting too much value on consumerism and material goods instead of having children – something desperately needed as Germany faces a demographic implosion. Von Preußen's own brood being between seven and 17 years old. » | Jessica Ware | Thursday, June 06, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)