Thursday, December 02, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: One message, often buried, comes out loud and clear from the embassy cables: the US should choose its allies more carefully
Among the most arresting lines in the trove of diplomatic cables made public this week was one from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. "Cut off the head of the snake," he advised his American friends. Any herpetologist would agree that this is good advice in dealing with a threatening viper. But who is this snake? King Abdullah was referring to Iran, obliquely arguing for a military attack.
Yet, there was another tantalising detail in the trove of cables that suggests the larger threat comes from inside King Abdullah's own country. "Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al-Qaida," the New York Times reported in its first article on the leaked documents.
That is a huge, though not unsurprising, revelation. It reflects how complex and sometimes self-defeating America's foreign alliances have become. Saudi Arabia is an intimate ally of the United States, yet Saudi money supports the world's most violently anti-American terror network.
This deeply troubling contradiction has its roots in Saudi history and tradition. The regime's survival is based on a deal with the Wahhabi clerics who dominate religious practice in Saudi Arabia – and whose austere brand of Islam is among the world's most reactionary. Clerics agree to support the regime, ignoring both its alliance with infidel America and the notoriously unIslamic lifestyles of its thousands of princes. In exchange, the regime gives these clerics billions of dollars, much of which they use to run mosques and religious schools across the Islamic world. More than a few of these mosques and schools, often run by Saudi clerics or others they have trained, are incubators of terror, where generations of lost boys learn to chant the Qur'an and hate America.
The deal is, as former CIA director James Woolsey once described it, "for the Wahhabis to be given all of the money in the world they could ever remotely dream of needing or wanting to spread their sect's beliefs, and for them to leave the House of Saud alone." Read on and comment >>> Stephen Kinzer | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Kremlin relies on criminals and rewards them with political patronage, while top officials collect bribes 'like a personal taxation system'
Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state", according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.
Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus: the cables paint a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organised crime. Read on and comment >>> Luke Harding | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Sweden's royal family has been rocked by allegations that the father of Queen Silvia made a fortune from a factory seized from Jewish owners in Nazi Germany.
Swedish TV4 broadcast a documentary detailing how Walter Sommerlath, a German Nazi Party member, had bought the factory from Efim Wechsler, a Jew.
The transaction was part of the so-called "Ayranisation" of such enterprises according to the Nuremberg Laws which stripped Jews of their rights and property. The factory allegedly made Ack Ack guns for the Luftwaffe and also parts for tanks.
When she married in 1976 the Queen's German father denied he had ever been a member of the Nazi party. That fiction was exposed some years later by a Swedish newspaper which proved he joined the movement in 1934.
Earlier this year Queen Silvia spoke for the first time about it in a TV documentary in which she said he was not "politically active"[.]
"The truth about Queen Silvia's father, which she doesn't want to tell herself or her family, is that he joined Hitler's Nazi party beginning on December 1st, 1934," said Swedish investigative journalist Bosse Schon [sic] [Schön]. >>> Allan Hall in Berlin | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: Fresh scandal for Swedish royal family after Nazi past of Queen’s father is revealed by TV documentary: Sweden’s royal family - recovering from revelations of the secret affair the king enjoyed with a pop singer - has been thrown into fresh turmoil over the Nazi past of the queen’s father. >>> Allan Hall in Berlin | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG: Neuer Imageschaden für das schwedische Königshaus: Jüngste Enthüllungen über die Nazi-Vergangenheit ihres Vaters stellen Schwedens Königin Silvia bloß.
Walther Sommerlath, der Vater der schwedischen Königin Silvia, ist immer sehr verschwiegen gewesen, wenn es um seine Vergangenheit ging. Mindestens einmal hat er sogar gelogen: Er sei nie Mitglied der NSDAP gewesen, sagte er im Interview mit einer schwedischen Boulevardzeitung. Das war kurz vor der Hochzeit seiner Tochter mit Carl XVI. Gustaf, und es dauerte fast dreißig Jahre, bis herauskam, dass er eben doch ein Nationalsozialist war.
In Schweden verursachte das damals einen Skandal. Und am Sonntagabend gewann diese alte Geschichte nun erneut an Fahrt. Als der Fernsehsender TV4 berichtete, dass Sommerlath 1938 in Berlin eine Fabrik übernahm, die man im Zuge der "Arisierung" zuvor ihren jüdischen Eigentümern weggenommen hatte. Für Königin Silvia ist diese Entdeckung besonders peinlich, hatte sie doch erst vor einigen Monaten die Vergangenheit des Vaters in einem Interview nach Kräften heruntergespielt.
Hinter den Enthüllungen steht erneut der Historiker Mats Deland, der bereits vor acht Jahren im Archiv Sommerlaths Karte aus der NSDAP-Mitgliederkartei ausgegraben hatte. Sommerlath war am 1. Dezember 1934 der Partei beigetreten, genauer gesagt der Auslandsorganisation in Brasilien, wo die Familie bis zum Umzug nach Berlin 1938 gewohnt hatte.
Als die Nazivergangenheit ihres Vater 2002 bekannt wurde, tat Silvia zunächst das, was der schwedische Hof in heiklen Fragen immer zu tun pflegt: sie schwieg. Erst im vergangenen Frühjahr, einige Monate vor der Hochzeit ihrer Tochter Victoria, rang sie sich schließlich dazu durch, in einem Interview über Walther Sommerlaths NS-Verbindungen zu sprechen. >>> Von Gunnar Herrmann, Stockholm | Dienstag, 29. November 2010
FOTOGALERIE: Königin Silvia von Schweden wird 60 >>>
THE ADVOCATE: As fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosure of U.S. diplomatic cables rolls throughout the international community, the documents indicate that Alan Duncan, the gay international development minister from Britain, was among the many foreign officials Americans spied on.According to the Daily Mail the U.S. inquired about Duncan, a Tory, when he was his party’s prisons spokesman. He once shared a flat in London with William Hague, the foreign secretary who this year admitted sharing a hotel room with his younger male aide but denied any impropriety. >>> Julie Bolcer | Tuesday, November 29, 2010
SCHWEIZER FERNSEHEN: Wikileaks-Gründer Julian Assange hat sich nach den Enthüllungen tausender Diplomaten-Berichte an die Öffentlichkeit gewandt. An einem geheimen Ort prangerte er die US-Regierung an. Der Polit-Aktivist versteckt sich offenbar vor der Polizei in London. Diese soll ihm dicht auf den Fersen sein.
SCHWEIZER FERNSEHEN: Julian Assange ist der Gründer von Wikileaks. Die US-amerikanische Regierung bezeichnet Assange als Kriminellen. Für andere ist er ein Held der Pressefreiheit. Doch auch hierzulande kritisieren Medienrechtler und Diplomaten den Transparenzdrang des Wikileaksgründers, wie der «10vor10»-Bericht zeigt.
*Zum Teil in Schwyzertüütsch
MAIL ONLINE: Britain has become ashamed of Christmas, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey declared yesterday.
He said Christmas cards are censored, school nativity plays stripped of Christian content and Christmas decorations banned in the campaign to block the festival out of the calendar.
Lord Carey said the trend was part of a broader attack on the Christian faith which underpins tolerance and democracy in this country.
He made his remarks in support of the launch today of a move to persuade Christians to show their faith in public and challenge employers who stop staff expressing their Christianity.
The ‘Not Ashamed’ campaign, organised by the pressure group Christian Concern, will encourage millions to wear a cross to work or a badge with a slogan saying they are ‘not ashamed’ of their religion.
Pope Benedict also criticised the marginalisation of Christianity in Britain and the accompanying push to discourage the celebration of Christmas during his recent state visit.
Lord Carey said: ‘The attempt to air-brush the Christian faith out of the picture is especially obvious as Christmas approaches.
‘The cards that used to carry Christmas wishes now bear “Season’s greetings”. The local school nativity play is watered down or disappears altogether.
‘The local council switches on “winter lights” in place of Christmas decorations. Even Christmas has become something of which some are ashamed.’ He added that ‘a new climate hostile to our country’s tradition and history is developing’. >>> Steve Doughty | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Read on >>>
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: WikiLeaks: guilty parties 'should face death penalty' – Leading US political figures have called for the death penalty to be imposed on the person who leaked sensitive documents to whistle-blower website WikiLeaks as anger intensified against those responsible for the international relations crisis. >>> Nick Collins | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: A group of former members of WikiLeaks is planning to launch its own whistleblowing platform in mid-December, according to a German newspaper. The activists criticize WikiLeaks for concentrating too much on the US and want to take a broader approach.
Julian Assange is the public face of the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks, and Sunday's publication of the leaked US diplomatic cables will have raised his profile even higher. In fact, the former hacker is now a leading candidate for Time magazine's "2010 Person of the Year."
But former members of the organization have criticized his supposedly autocratic leadership style. "I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off," Assange famously wrote to one internal critic.
Now a group of former WikiLeaks activists are planning to launch a whistleblowing platform of their own in mid-December, according to a report in the Wednesday edition of the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung. The group stresses that the as-yet-unnamed platform should not be seen as a competitor to WikiLeaks but as a different approach, the newspaper wrote. >>> dgs - with wire reports | Wednesday, December 01, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Diplomatic memos reveal Bank governor thought top Conservatives lacked experience to deal with deficit
The head of the Bank of England privately criticised David Cameron and George Osborne for their lack of experience, the lack of depth in their inner circle and their tendency to think about issues only in terms of their electoral impact, according to leaked US embassy cables.
Mervyn King told the US ambassador, Louis Susman, he had held private meetings with the two Conservative politicians before the election to urge them to draw up a detailed plan to reduce the deficit.
He said the pair operated too much within a narrow circle and "had a tendency to think about issues only in terms of politics, and how they might affect Tory electorability". He also predicted that economic recovery would be "a long drawn-out process", since Britain had not been through an economic restructuring.
His apparent pressure on the Tories, a few months before the election, gives further credence to the claim that King was central in persuading leading coalition figures to back a far more dramatic deficit-reduction programme than any politician advocated during the election campaign. He has recently been criticised by members of the Bank's monetary policy committee for straying into politics. Read on and comment >>> David Leigh and Patrick Wintour | Tuesday, November 30, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Leaked US cables show governor of Bank of England's 'thirst for power has clouded his judgment', former colleague says
David Blanchflower, a leading economist and former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, has called on Mervyn King to quit as governor of the Bank of England following leaked US cables that he claims show King's "thirst for power and influence ... has clouded his judgment one too many times".
In his toughest attack on his former colleague to date, Blanchflower seized on revelations that suggest King may have been central in persuading leading coalition figures to back a far more dramatic deficit-reduction programme than any politician advocated during the election campaign.
Blanchflower, who stepped down from the policy committee last year and who has warned the coalition government's deficit reduction programme could lead to a recession, seized on the information revealed in the latest tranche of leaked US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks to say King's position was now untenable. >>> Hélène Mulholland, political reporter | Wednesday, November 01, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: In showing his true party political colours, Mervyn King has compromised the Bank of England's independence
Mervyn King is one smart guy and that has always been abundantly clear. Unfortunately, it is his thirst for power and influence that has clouded his judgment one too many times. He has now committed the unforgivable sin of compromising the independence of the Bank of England by involving himself in the economic policy of the coalition. He is expected to be politically neutral but has shown himself to be politically biased and as a result is now in an untenable position. King must go. >>> David Blanchflower | Wednesday, November 01, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Muammar Gaddafi has demanded that the European Union give him more than £4 billion to fight illegal immigration or else Europe will turn "black" and be swamped by Muslims.
During an EU-Africa summit, that ended on Tuesday in Tripoli, the Libyan leader described European's economic relationship with the African continent as a "failure".
Unless "Christian, white" countries gave him extra funding, Colonel Gaddafi predicted that Europe would be flooded with illegal immigrants leaving impoverished Africa.
"We should stop this illegal immigration. If we don't, Europe will become black, it will be overcome by people with different religions, it will change," he said. >>> Bruno Waterfield, Brussels | Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)