’White Flight’ Begins to Harm Obama
Photo of Hillary Clinton looking upbeat, sporting sunglasses given her by an admirer and supporter, courtesy of The Sunday Times
THE SUNDAY TIMES: On the eve of two crucial primary election contests, Hillary Clinton is pinning her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination on a collapse in the white vote for Barack Obama.

“White flight” from Obama, who was hailed as the first post-racial presidential candidate, has been gathering force since Clinton’s nine-point victory in last month’s Pennsylvania primary.

Her allies will be looking at voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday, the two largest remaining states to go to the polls, for any signs that Obama’s proven weakness among white working-class voters may turn into a rout.

Clinton is campaigning with fresh confidence that she has a plausible path to the nomination, despite trailing Obama in states won and delegates pledged to support her at the Democratic national convention this summer. She has already beaten him among white, non-college-educated voters in 26 out of 29 states, according to exit polls. Hillary Clinton Clings On as ‘White Flight’ Begins to Harm Barack Obama >>> By Sarah Baxter in Indianapolis | May 4, 2008

THE SUNDAY TIMES:
Fiery father figure putting a match to Barack’s dream: PROFILE: Rev Jeremiah Wright >>> | May 4, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
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Italy: Arabic Version of Constitution to Aid Immigrants
ADN KRONOS INTERNATIONAL: Palermo, 2 May - Catholic charity Caritas will on Tuesday present an Arabic translation of the Italian constitution in a bid to help immigrants integrate in the southern city of Agrigento.

Caritas will distribute the Arabic translation to schools, offices, and public bodies in Agrigento in southern Sicily.

It is the iniative of the archbishop of Agrigento, Monsignor Carmelo Ferraro. Caritas' office in the diocese of Agrigento helped to supervise the translation.

"Immigrants are welcome in our country, but they have a duty to respect Italian laws," said local Caritas' director, Vito Scilabra.

"We have translated the constitution to increase immigrants' awareness of the laws that govern civic life in Italy."

Two thousand copies of the translation are being printed in Arabic and Italian. [Source: Italy: Arabic Version of Constitution to Aid Immigrants]

Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch

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Cuba Lifts Ban on Home Computers
BBC: The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but a ban remains on internet access.

This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.

Crowds formed at the Carlos III shopping centre in Havana, though most had come just to look.

The desktop computers cost almost $800 (£400), in a country where the average wage is under $20 (£10) a month.

But some Cubans do have access to extra income, much of it from money sent by relatives living abroad.

Since taking over the presidency in February, Raul Castro has ended a range of restrictions and allowed Cubans access to previously banned consumer goods.

In recent weeks thousands of Cubans have snapped up mobile phones and DVD players.

But only now have the first computer stocks arrived.
Internet access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and universities on the island.

The government says it is unable to connect to the giant undersea fibre-optic cables because of the US trade embargo.

All online connections today are via satellite which has limited bandwidth and is expensive to use.

Cuba's anti-American ally, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, is laying a new cable under the Caribbean.

It remains unclear whether, once the connection is completed, the authorities will then allow unrestricted access to the world wide web. [Source: Cuba Lifts Ban on Home Computers >>> By Michael Voss, Havana | May 3, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
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Delicious or What, George? Who Says the West Doesn’t Love the East?
Photo of President Bush kissing King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia courtesy of Live Leak
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’Provocative' Clinton Angers Iran
Photo of Hillary Clinton courtesy of The Times
Video: Hillary Clinton’s threat to Iran
BBC: Tehran has complained to the UN about remarks made last week by Hillary Clinton on the circumstances under which the US might attack Iran.

The Democratic presidential hopeful said last week the US could "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.

Tehran, which insists its nuclear programme is solely for power generation, denounced her words as "provocative and irresponsible".

It said the remarks were "a flagrant violation" of the UN Charter.

In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, Iran's deputy ambassador to the UN, said Mrs Clinton had "unwarrantedly and under erroneous and false pretexts threatened to use force against the Islamic Republic of Iran". ’Provocative' Clinton Angers Iran >>>

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La Grande Mosquée de Paris refuse de participer aux élections du Conseil français du culte musulman
LE MONDE: La Fédération nationale de la Grande Mosquée de Paris (GMP), une des principales associations de musulmans, a décidé "à l'unanimité", samedi 3 mais, de ne pas participer aux prochaines élections du Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM), instance représentative des musulmans de France, estimant que les critères de représentativité lui sont défavorables.

Dalil Boubakeur, recteur de la Grande Mosquée de Paris et président du CFCM, a déclaré que son association préconiserait "l'abstention" lors du scrutin, prévu le 8 juin, car elle "ne peut admettre de se voir reléguée à un rôle secondaire et une place insignifiante, voire fantomatique". M. Boubakeur, qui se présente pour un troisième mandat à la tête du CFCM, a toutefois "souhaité que les élections aient lieu" et a lancé un appel à "toutes les autorités" pour rouvrir le dialogue.
 La Grande Mosquée de Paris refuse de participer aux élections du Conseil français du culte musulman >>>

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Female Teachers Dying on Saudi Roads
ASSOCIATED PRESS: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Roads in Saudi Arabia are among the world's most dangerous but one type of victim stands out: female teachers who are dying at alarming rates because of long commutes through the desert to reach remote schools.

The Saudi government appoints teachers to work in villages where local staff cannot fill all vacancies. But unlike their male counterparts, female teachers in this conservative Muslim country have difficulty living alone in the villages, forcing them to commute each day.

Nof al-Oneizi was so worried she would die that she wrote to education officials urging them to find her a school nearer to her home in the northern town of Jouf, rather than the one she was assigned to 108 miles away — a three-hour drive because of the bad roads. Since women are forbidden to drive, she carpooled in a van with a driver along with several other female teachers.

Her fears came true before a solution to her problem could be found: The 28-year-old English language teacher died in a horrific crash last November. Five other female teachers, their driver and four people in the car they hit also were killed.

"We were devastated," said Suad Amri, al-Oneizi's aunt. "I still have her school papers, all splattered with blood. Her mom can't look at them. She can't absorb what has happened to her daughter."

Nearly 6,000 people died in traffic accidents in 2007 in this country of 27.6 million, according to the Saudi Traffic Department. That is a rate of about 21 deaths per 100,000 people — one of the highest in the world. By comparison, around 14 per 100,000 people died in road accidents in the United States in 2006. Female Teachers Dying on the Roads in Saudi Arabia >>> By Donna Abu-Nasr | May 1, 2008

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More Protests in Pakistan Against Fitna
AFP: KARACHI — Thousands of Islamists rallied in southern Pakistan Saturday to condemn an anti-Koran film by a Dutch lawmaker and cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Danish newspapers, witnesses said.

About 4,000 supporters of a conservative Islamic movement marched in the southern port city of Karachi demanding that Islamabad cut diplomatic ties with Denmark and The Netherlands.

"We are ready to lay our lives to protect the honour of our great prophet," the emotional crowd shouted as speakers demanded the government snap ties with the two European nations. Pakistanis Protest Dutch Anti-Koran Film >>> | May 3, 2008

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Auschwitz: la solution finale

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Saudi Scholar Finds Ancient Women’s Rights
REUTERS: RIYADH - When clerics, ministers and businessmen gathered at a forum in Riyadh last month to discuss women in the workplace, there were no women in sight.

Typically for Saudi Arabia, the women who took part were seated in a separate room so the men could only hear them.

Such oddities are part and parcel of the complex system of social control maintained by clerics of Saudi Arabia's austere version of Sunni Islamic law, often termed Wahhabism. It's a system called into question by scholar Hatoon al-Fassi.

In her study, "Women In Pre-Islamic Arabia", the outspoken rights advocate argues women in the pre-Islamic period enjoyed considerable rights in the Nabataean state, an urban Arabian kingdom centered in modern Jordan, south Syria and northwest Saudi Arabia during the Roman empire.

Most controversially, Fassi says women in Nabataea -- whose capital was the famous rose-red city of Petra in south Jordan and which was at its height during the lifetime of Jesus Christ -- enjoyed more freedom than in Saudi Arabia today because clerics have misunderstood the origins of Islamic law.

She also suggests some Saudi restrictions on women may have their origins in Greco-Roman traditions. Saudi Scholar Finds Ancient Women's Rights >>> By Andrew Hammond, edited by Sara Ledwith | April 30, 2008

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Point de View: La charia expliquée
eMARRAKECH: Cambridge (Massachusetts) - Le mois dernier à Londres, Rowan Williams, archevêque de Canterbury, a donné une conférence nuancée, érudite, posant la question de savoir si le système juridique britannique devrait permettre que des tribunaux non-chrétiens aient compétence sur certains aspects du droit de la famille. La Grande-Bretagne ne connait pas constitutionnellement le principe de la séparation des églises et de l'Etat.

L'archevêque a relevé que "la loi de l'Eglise d'Angleterre est la loi du pays". Effectivement, les tribunaux ecclésiastiques qui étaient naguère compétents en matière de mariage et de divorce font toujours partie du système juridique britannique, où ils ont encore compétence en matière de biens d'église et de doctrine de l'église. Sa suggestion, sous réserve de l'accord de toutes les parties et de la stricte obligation d'assurer l'égalité des droits des femmes, serait d'envisager de permettre à des tribunaux islamiques et juifs orthodoxes de régler les affaires de mariage et de divorce.

Une bombe. Les responsables politiques de toutes couleurs, les dirigeants ecclésiastiques, les tabloïds les plus notoires, tout le monde a demandé au chef de la deuxième église chrétienne du monde de se rétracter, voire de démissionner. Depuis quelques années, l'archevêque Williams fait des pieds et des mains pour maintenir la cohésion de la communion anglicane universelle, en butte à la controverse sur l'ordination de prêtres homosexuels et le mariage homosexuel. Quelque acerbe que fût cette controverse, ce n'est rien à côté du déchaînement suscité contre lui par cette évocation des tribunaux religieux. Faut-il le préciser? Ce n'est pas la mention du droit juif orthodoxe qui a fait scandale. Dans ce débat public, c'est le mot "charia" qui fit l'effet d'une bombe atomique. La charia expliquée >>> Par Noah Feldman

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China Condemns Dalai Lama Ahead of Planned Talks
REUTERS: BEIJING - Beijing lambasted the Dalai Lama as a criminal on Saturday as representatives of the exiled Buddhist leader headed for a meeting in southern China on the most serious unrest in Tibet for nearly two decades.

The barrage of criticism suggested the government was in no mood to compromise following riots and protests in Tibet, which have shaken China's preparations for the Beijing Olympics and stoked Western criticism of its rule in the mountain region.

"Patriotic people of Tibet strongly condemn and vehemently denounce the litany of crimes committed by the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers," said the official Tibet Daily, according to the region's official news Website (www.chinatibetnews.com).

"They (the aides) should have reached China ... we can't have great expectations (about the talks)," Chhime Chhoekyapa, a senior aide to the Dalai Lama, told Reuters in Dharamsala. China Condemns Dalai Lama Ahead of Planned Talks >>> | May 3, 2008

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Bouffant Boris, the Unkempt, Eccentric Toff, Wins the London Race!
Photo of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the eccentric new Mayor of London, courtesy of Google Images
THE TELEGRAPH: Boris Johnson claimed a remarkable victory in the London mayoral contest on Friday night to cap a disastrous series of results for Gordon Brown in his first electoral test as Prime Minister.

The Conservative candidate's win over Ken Livingstone followed a calamitous showing for Labour at the local elections - the party's worst performance at the polls for 40 years.

Mr Johnson's landmark victory, a result that would have been almost unthinkable six months ago, was the most symbolic blow to Mr Brown's authority on a day that left the Prime Minister facing the gravest crisis of his leadership.

By taking City Hall, Mr Johnson becomes the first Tory politician to hold a senior role in British politics since the party was swept out of power in 1997. His win provided a significant boost to David Cameron's bid for victory at the next general election. Boris Johnson Is the New London Mayor >>> By Andrew Porter and Robert Winnett | May 3, 2008

BBC:
Boris Johnson’s Victory Speech | May 2, 2008

BBC:
The Boris Johnson Story By Brian Wheeler | May 3, 2008

CNN INTERNATIONAL/EUROPE:
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, London's New Mayor Is Eccentric, Offensive >>> | May 2, 2008

LE FIGARO:
Boris Johnson «le bouffon»,
nouveau maire de Londres: L'excentrique candidat conservateur a ravi la capitale britannique au maire sortant Ken Livingstone avec 140 000 voix d'avance. Un échec cuisant pour les travaillistes qui perdent aussi les élections locales >>> | 03. 05. 2008

WELTONLINE:
Neue Konservative sind voll Witz und Exzentrik: Bei den Kommunalwahlen ließen Engländer und Waliser die Labour Partei ganz schön alt aussehen. Premierminister Gordon Brown kommt mit seiner grüblerischen Art nicht an. Die neuen Politstars sind Tory-Chef David Cameron und sein Parteifreund Boris Johnson, Londons neuer Bürgermeister >>> | 3. Mai 2008

NZZ Online:
Britische Konservative feiern den Triumph: Tories streben die Macht in der Downing Street an >>>> | 3. Mai 2008

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG:
Boris Johnson gewinnt in London: Britische Konservative in Siegesstimmung >>> | 3. Mai 2008

LE FIGARO:
Un échec personnel
pour Gordon Brown: Après moins d'un an à son poste, le premier ministre sort très affaibli de son premier test électoral >>> De Cyrille Vanlerberghe à Londres | 03. 05. 2008

DIE PRESSE:
London: Johnson stößt Livingstone vom Thron >>> | 03.05.2008

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Slimy, Weak Politicians Pandering to Muslims
THE GUARDIAN: The government's attempts to placate Muslims will cause long-term damage to communities, a charity said yesterday.

The warning came from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, chair and co-founder of the British Muslims for Secular Democracy, a new organisation claiming to represent the "silent majority who feel no conflict between their faith and democracy".

Speaking before the launch, attended by Baroness Kishwer Faulkner and former Islamist Ed Husain, the journalist said the government was pandering to Muslims by granting too many concessions, fuelling their separation from the rest of society.

"The government has found a way of placating Muslims in a way that will only damage us in the long term, Muslims wanting separate schools or different measures. There must be one law for all. Stop Pandering to Muslims Says 'Silent Majority' >>> By Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent | May 2, 2008

Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch

MY ESSAY ON THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF ISLAM WITH DEMOCRACY:
Islam: The Enemy of Democracy and Freedom

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A ‘George Washington’ for Europe
Who Will Be the First President of Europe?
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Islamic Fashion: ”From Drab to Dramatic”
Photo courtesy of The Star
THE STAR: There’s more to the Islamic dress than just black robes.

THE recently concluded Kuala Lumpur-Jakarta-Dubai Islamic Fashion Festival (IFF) was proof of an Islamic fashion renaissance. The runways at the tri-country fashion event were bursting with colour, with traditional garments like the burqa, jibab [jilbab] and abaya being transformed from drab to dramatic.

The festival, an attempt to turn Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Dubai into Islamic fashion capitals, attracted top designers from Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Among them were Malaysia’s Datuk Tom Abang Saufi and Radzuan Radziwill, Indonesian designer Ghea Panggabean, Pakistani Deepak Perwani and UAE’s Shabana Asif. Colour and Pizzaz >>> By S Indramalar

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The Rise of Neo-Fascism in Europe No Light Matter
TURKISH DAILY NEWS: There is a lot of talk in Europe about how “Turkey should reckon with its past and draw the necessary lessons.”

There is also a lot of focus in Europe presently on where Turkey is headed politically. Both questions are valid. But looking at the rise of neo-fascism, in a continent where such things should have long been buried in the past, one cannot help but ask the same questions about Europe as well.

Have Europeans really reckoned with their past and drawn the necessary lessons? Evidence is mounting to suggest that they have not. Just look at Gianni Alemanno, the newly elected mayor of Rome, who is also a “darling” of Italy's new Prime Minister, the reelected and theatrical – not to mention “testosterone-driven” – Silvio Berlusconi.

Alemanno the neo-fascist

Alemanno is a firebrand neo-fascist and he is proud of it. Not surprisingly his election was celebrated by hundreds of supporters raising their arms in the fascist salute and chanting "Duce! Duce!” As for Prime Minister Berlusconi – who appears to be consciously mimicking Mussolini at times – he declared after Alemanno's election that they were “the new Falange," in a reference to the Spanish fascist party founded in the 1930s.

Then there is Umberto Bossi, the leader of the anti-immigration Northern League, who is himself a fascist and with whom Berlusconi is due to form a government. To understand what Bossi is made of it is enough to note his remarks earlier this week.

Indicating that immigrants had to be hunted out, he said, according to press reports, "We have no fear of taking things to the piazzas. We have 300,000 martyrs ready to come down from the mountains. Our rifles are always smoking." The Rise of Neo-Fascism in Europe No Light Matter >>> By Semih İDİZ | May 2, 2008

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Court Challenge to EU Referendum
BBC: Millionaire Stuart Wheeler has won his battle to force a High Court review into whether the government should hold a referendum on the EU's Lisbon treaty.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has ruled out a public vote on the treaty, saying it does not alter the UK constitution.

But Mr Wheeler said a vote was promised on the EU constitution and says the Lisbon treaty is virtually identical.

The hearing will be on 9 and 10 June. The Foreign Office said they were "confident" of their case.

In March MPs voted by 346 votes to 206 to approve the EU (Amendment) Bill, after topic-by-topic debates over six weeks.

The Bill - which is now in the Lords - will ratify the Lisbon Treaty, which was drawn up to replace the EU constitution after that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Court Challenge to EU Referendum >>> | May 2, 2008

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Today’s News from The Guardian
Guardian Daily: Local elections 2008: In a special edition of our daily audio show, Jon Dennis and guests discuss Labour's trouncing in the local elections >>>
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PD James on Political Correctness: "A Pernicious If Risible Authoritarian Attempt at Linguistic and Social Control"
Photo of PD James courtesy of The Telegraph
THE TELEGRAPH: Modern life is bedevilled by political correctness, PD James, the crime author, said last night.

There was a growing risk that Britons would live in "ghettos" and experience little contact with other people, she said in a speech on policing in the 21st century.

Baroness James of Holland Park, who is best known for creating the detective Adam Dalgliesh, told an audience in the Palace of Westminster: "Our society is now more fractured than I, in my long life, have ever known it.

"Increasingly there is a risk that we live in ghettos with our own kind, with a strong commitment to our local community but little contact with those outside it. PD James: Political correctness ruining society >>> | May 2, 2008

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Falling Out of Love with Europe
THE ECONOMIST: REMEMBER the shock of May 29th 2005, when the French rejected the draft European Union constitution by 55% to 45%? Yet this was largely a vote against an unpopular president, Jacques Chirac, and against the forces of globalisation. Far more worrying for Brussels was the even bigger majority, 61% to 39%, by which voters in the Netherlands rejected the EU constitution three days later. A resentful bolshiness from the French seems unsurprising, almost routine. But the Dutch are placid, stolid—and, surely, reliably pro-European, whatever the issue.

Clearly not then. And it is not hard to detect tensions in Dutch society now. Just stop a few passers-by of an April morning on Dam square in Amsterdam. Within ten minutes one finds somebody like Pieter, a graphic designer who confirms that he voted no, and adds that his big fear was the loss of Dutch identity. A banner hangs helpfully from the nearby Nieuwe Kerk, which is staging an exhibition on Afghanistan, proclaiming (in English) that “A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive”.

Over the past 60 years the Netherlands has been one of Europe's biggest success stories. The Dutch are among the richest (and tallest) people on earth. Their social tolerance is widely admired. Yet immigration and the rise of Islam have triggered a backlash. Rotterdam may soon become the EU's first big Muslim-majority city. The meteoric political career of Pim Fortuyn, a populist who was assassinated in 2002, followed two years later by the murder of Theo van Gogh, a film-maker, by a (Dutch-born) Islamist radical has left scars on a society that once took pride in its embrace of multiculturalism. The Netherlands is a place that is now palpably fretful about its future. Going Dutch >>> | May 1, 2008

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May Day Violence: Hamburg
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: May 1 is a traditional day of workers' unity rallies in Europe, but in Germany the day often brings clashes, particularly between anti-fascist leftists and neo-Nazis. On Thursday there were some isolated incidents in Berlin but it was Hamburg that saw the worst rioting.

Major May 1 riots rocked the northern German port city of Hamburg and isolated attacks occurred on Thursday in Berlin, where the head of the city's police department was forced to flee an angry crowd of left-wing demonstrators.

In Hamburg, an estimated 1,100 right-wing extremists and 7,000 left-wing radicals clashed, escalating to an unusual level of violence for the city. "These were the biggest riots the city has seen in a long time," Ralf Meyer, a spokesman for the Hamburg police, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

In the city, rioters burned trash cans, cars, lit firecrackers, set off smoke bombs and volleyed a hail of stones. In one incident, a pile of tires was burned just 20 meters (65.6 feet) away from a gas station. Around 2,500 police were deployed in the city, and officers attempted to disperse the crowds by firing water cannons.

Neo-Nazi groups in Germany often hold rallies during the May 1 holiday that frequently end in massive clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-fascist, left-wing groups. The day is traditionally one for workers' unity rallies across Europe, but in Germany it often boils down to confrontations between extreme-right and far-left protesters. Hamburg Sees Worst Rioting in Years >>> | May 2, 2008

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Modern Britain: No Laughing Matter
BRUSSELS JOURNAL: Earlier generations of Britons believed that certain things simply could not happen in Britain. Even in the country’s darkest moments of war or depression, this conviction differentiated the then proud nation from the U.S.S.R., third world countries, and unstable regimes that might fall to dictatorship any moment. News blackouts, and the banning of a book or film of course occurred here or there, but these never seemed very serious events.

When the Thatcher government banned the sale of the novel, Spycatcher, in Britain, it was smuggled into the country from abroad, and reported in the press despite legal challenges. Humor was the public’s usual way of dealing with such things, and the banning of a book that most people could get a hold of, turned politics into a laughing stock. And not for the first or last time either. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, when Oswald Moseley’s “black shirt” fascists were parading through London, Lady Astor commented that if they should ever gain power the British people would die laughing. How prophetic this was. A few years later Charlie Chaplin denounced and mocked the Nazis in his film, The Great Dictator, even as prime minister Neville Chamberlain sort [sic] to win “peace for our time” by appeasing Hitler. Modern Britain: No Laughing Matter >>> By A Millar | May 1, 2008

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Putting a Positive Spin on Islam
REUTERS: BEIRUT, May 1 (Reuters Life!) - Islamic dogma is narrowing the space for debate in the Arab world, argues an Egyptian professor whose own life was overturned by persecution for free thinking.

Thirteen years after an Egyptian sharia court declared him an apostate from Islam, annulled his marriage and effectively forced him into exile, Nasr Abu Zayd looks back without rancour.

"I define myself as an ordinary Muslim who is able to think," he told Reuters during a recent visit to Beirut.

"Now when some people say 'you are an apostate' or something, I really laugh rather than try to defend myself."

Abu Zayd, a short, portly man whose eyes often gleam with humour beneath bushy eyebrows, said in early Islamic tradition different modes of thinking about the divine were acceptable.

Today, constant claims to a monopoly of Islamic truth by Arab rulers and opposition groups scrabbling for legitimacy have stifled discussion, in contrast to debate flourishing elsewhere in the Muslim world, notably in Iran and Turkey, he added.

"Religion has been used, politicised, not only by groups but also the official institutions in every Arab country," the 64-year-old professor of humanism and Islam at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht, The Netherlands, asserted.

"Nearly everything is theologised -- every issue society faces has to be solved by asking if Islam allows it. There is no distinction between the domain of religion and secular space."

He said ulema (Muslim scholars) were all too keen to deliver rulings on economic, social or even medical issues like organ transplants: "You'll hardly find any scholar who says, 'I'm very sorry, but this is not my business, go consult a doctor'." Dogma Cloys Debate in Arab World [Says] Islamic Scholar >>> By Alistair Lyon

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French Births Soar
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: WASHINGTON, April 30 -- The news that France has overtaken Ireland to boast the highest birthrate in Europe is intriguing for three different reasons.

The first is that for a Europe that is worried about too few children being born to support the fast-growing numbers of elderly retirees, it suggests that public policy can make a difference. France now pays any mother with a third child about $1,200 in child support, along with massive discounts on train and public transport and subsidized day care. These incentives seem to work.

The second development to note is that INED, France's National Institute of Demographic Studies, has done some detailed research and concluded that France's immigrant population is responsible for only 5 percent of the rise in the birthrate and that France's population would be rising anyway even without the immigrant population.

That is important in a country where the number of immigrants from traditionally Muslim countries and their French-born children and grandchildren is now reckoned to be more than 6 million from a total population of 60.7 million. The anti-immigration Front National Party has claimed the rise in births came from Muslims, who were thus on track to become an eventual majority, and this appears not to be the case.

In fact in France, like everywhere else in Europe, the birthrate among immigrant mothers drops quickly toward the local norm in less than two generations. The measure most commonly used in international statistics is the Total Fertility Rate, which seeks to measure the number of children born to the average woman in her fertile years. (The formal definition of TFR is the average number of children a woman would have during her reproductive lifetime if current age-specific fertility rates remained constant over her reproductive life.)

In France, the TFR has risen from 1.66 in 1993 to 2.0 in 2003 and 2.1 last year. If maintained, that means the population of France will rise from 60.7 million today to 70 million sometime before 2050. Walker's World: French Births Soar >>> By Martin Walker, UPI Editor Emeritus

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Wanted: The Last Nazis
Swanstika courtesy of Google Images
THE INDEPENDENT: At first glance, the mugshots appear to be a gallery of roguish grandfathers, but the octo- and nonagenarians are the 10 most-wanted fugitives of one of the most heinous regimes the world has ever seen. They are the last remaining Nazis, and the codename of the hunt to find them – Operation Last Chance – says it all

More than 60 years after the Nuremberg trials put the first of Hitler's henchmen in the dock, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre yesterday released its most wanted list of the remaining Nazi war criminals. The battle to bring them to justice is complicated by a mix of political apathy, legal wrangling, legendary powers of evasion and what Nazi-hunters term "misplaced sympathy" for the craggy-faced men in their twilight years.

"They are old, and the natural tendency is to be sympathetic toward people when they reach a certain age, but the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrators," said Efraim Zuroff, the Jerusalem-based director of the Wiesenthal Centre. "If we were to put a chronological limit on prosecution, we would basically be saying you can get away with genocide." Wanted: The Last Nazis: They are accused of some of the worst war crimes of the 20th century. Now a final bid has been launched to bring them to justice before they die >>> By Claire Soares | May 1, 2008

THE INDEPENDENT:
We Must Never Forget the Evil Inspired by Hitler's Regime >>> By Rupert Cornwell | May 1, 2008

BBC:
Schindler List Survivor Recalls Saviour: As Israel marks its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, one of those whose lives were saved by German businessman Oskar Schindler has spoken of his lasting gratitude >>> | May 1, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)

Victory Not in the Bag for Obama
TIMESONLINE: It is scarcely a fortnight since Nancy Larson announced that after much agonising — and despite a “heartbreaking” last-minute plea from Chelsea Clinton — her super-delegate vote would go to Barack Obama. Now she is not so sure.

“Our role is to keep gauging and re-gauging what the public wants. Although I’m comfortable with the decision I made, there is nothing to stop me changing my mind,” said this Minnesotan yesterday.

She cited how the controversy of Mr Obama’s pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, “keeps cropping up” and said that his comments over bitter small-town Americans “may bother some voters”, saying: “We have to ask ourselves who will be able to go the distance when it counts in November. We have a big responsibility.”

Ms Larson is one of the 795 members of the Democratic Party elite — the super-delegates — who could yet wrest the nomination away from Mr Obama, who is so close to winning this prize that he can almost touch it.

No one doubts that he will claim the larger slice of elected delegates. Mr Obama has also had the overwhelming bulk of super-delegate pledges over the past couple of months. Even in this traumatic week for him, he has had six endorsements, compared with four for Hillary Clinton.

Yet almost 300 super-delegates stubbornly sit on the fence. Some are said to fear retribution from the Clintons, who are not shy of reminding them of favours done. The Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, has already been denounced as a “Judas” for pledging himself to Mr Obama.

Others, particularly those sitting on thin majorities in Congress, hesitate because they do not want to alienate any section of the Democratic electorate. And, even though dozens of Congressmen have privately made up their minds to back Mr Obama, many appear to be waiting for proof that he really is the candidate who will deliver them the White House.

Successive missed opportunities to finish off Mrs Clinton — in New Hampshire, in California on Super Tuesday, in Ohio last month and then in Pennsylvania last week — have reinforced doubts about whether he can transcend divisions of race, class and age that scar American society.

The extraordinary spectacle Mr Wright made of himself this week has opened up further questions about the judgment and, perhaps, honesty of a candidate who says that in 20 years of sitting in the pastor’s pews he never heard him deliver such “rants”. Undecided Democratic Elite Remind Barack Obama that Victory is Not in the Bag >>> By Tom Baldwin in Washington | May 1, 2008

THE INDEPENDENT:
On the Road with Bubba Bill as Clintons Court Blue-Collar Votes >>> By Leonard Doyle in Elkin, North Carolina | May 1, 2008

THE GUARDIAN:
Controversy Causes Obama to Lose Ground >>> By Ewen MacAskill in Indianapolis | May 1, 2008

THE TELEGRAPH:
Barack Obama Turns to Wife to Win Back Voters: Barack Obama has turned to his wife, Michelle, in an effort to woo working class voters after being cast as an elitist in the race for the White House >>> By Alex Spillius in Indianapolis | May 2, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardcover – USA)

Lesbians of Lesvos Fed Up of Being Called ‘Lesbians’
Photo of the idyllic Lesvos courtesy of TimesOnline
TIMESONLINE: Dimitris Lambrou is tired of being called a lesbian.

As a magazine publisher on the Greek island of Lesvos — Lesbos according to the classical spelling — he is suing Greece’s biggest gay and lesbian association to get the term (with a small l) expunged from public usage.

He claims it is insulting to what he calls the proper Lesbians — the people of Lesvos. “We are suffering psychological and moral rape,” said Mr Lambrou.

Mr Lambrou’s magazine, called Davlos (Torch), has been campaigning against the lesbian identification with the island for years, even since gay women around the world made it a place of pilgrimage. The town of Eressos has become known as a world lesbian conference centre.

He and two local women, Maria Rodou and Kokkoni Kouvalaki, are the plaintiffs in the case scheduled to be heard in an Athens court on June 10.

“This is ludicrous,” countered Evangelia Vlami, a member of the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union, which is being sued. “The term has been in use for thousands of years to denote gay women.” The Union is now fighting for the right to same-sex marriage in this otherwise devout Orthodox country. Lesvos was the birthplace of Sappho >>> | April 30, 2008

THE GUARDIAN:
Sun, sea and Sappho >>> By Julie Bindel | May 8, 2008

BRISBANE TIMES:
'We're not gay (not that there's anything wrong with that)' >>> | By Helena Smith in Athens | June 11, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)