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
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