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Italy inspired by France to expel citizens from other EU states by September

EU Times — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:42:48 +0000

A beggar on the streets of Venice. The Italian remarks come hot on the heels of Roma expulsions in France

Italy has said it intends to expel citizens from other EU states if they are not able to support themselves, in a move apparently inspired by France’s current crackdown on Roma.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told daily newspaper Corriere della Sera on Saturday (21 August) that French president Nicolas Sarkozy – whose recent actions include closing down Roma camps and deporting around 200 Roma to date – is “right.”

The minister, from the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, said that “if anything, it’s time to go a step further” and referred to the mandatory expulsion of EU citizens who do not meet certain criteria.

“Yes, expulsions just like those for illegal immigrants, not assisted or voluntary repatriations. Of course only for those who violate rules on requirements for living in another member state: a minimum level of income, adequate housing and not being a burden on the social welfare system of the country hosting them.”

“Many Roma are EU citizens but do not respect any of these requirements,” he said. But added, when asked if this would be discriminatory, that the policy should apply to all EU citizens and not just Roma.

“If anything, the problem is something else: unlike in France, many Roma and Sinti here have Italian citizenship. They have the right to remain here. Nothing can be done.”

Mr Maroni admitted that previous attempt by Rome to go in this direction were shot down by the European Commission but said he intends to re-raise the issue of automatic expulsions at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Paris on 6 September.

In 2008, the commission threatened Italy with legal action if it went ahead with a decree allowing the expulsion of other EU citizens facing two years of jail. It gave its blessing to a controversial proposal by Italy to fingerprint Roma, however.

Some in Italy have suggested there is a discrepancy between the relatively strong reaction by Brussels to Italy two years ago compared with its muted response to Mr Sarkozy’s policy towards the Roma community.

According to Mr Maroni this is due to an old “prejudice” whereby a policy carried out by a minister from the Northern League, a junior coalition partner in Rome’s right-wing government, is assumed to “violate human rights.”

France

Mr Sarkozy’s government deported around 10,000 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria last year but the current raids against against a planned total of 300 Roma camps come after the French president for the first time expressly linked immigration and crime.

The European Commission, for its part, has said it is monitoring the situation in France noting that any deportation decisions must be proportionate and carried out on a case-by-case basis, with human rights watchdogs already questioning whether these criteria are being fulfilled.

Meanwhile, critics of Mr Sarkozy’s policy have suggested that the Roma will simply return as soon as they are able.

They also suggest that Paris is contributing to a vicious circle due to its decision to maintain until 2014 rules restricting access to the labour market to nationals from Bulgaria and Romania – where the majority of Roma come from – and with it a means of supporting themselves.

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Expelled Roma promise to return to France

EU Times — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:33:34 +0000

French authorities have said the majority are returning on a voluntary basis

But as the 124 people landed in Timisoara, in their native Romania, many said they planned to head straight back to France.

“Of course I’m thinking about returning to France. Life is better than in Romania,” said 26-year-old Ionut Balasz as he arrived in Romania.

Aurel Cioaba echoed his sentiment: “I was there [in France for] four months with my wife, and if I can’t get by here in Romania I will go back.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the crackdown on Roma in late July as part of a larger “war” on people who outstay their work permits in France. But the programme has sparked criticism, with human rights group saying it targets a single ethnic group, which is illegal under EU law. French authorities deny the claim, saying the programme is voluntary.

France can repatriate Roma, even though they come from EU-member states Romania and Bulgaria, if they are unable to prove they can support themselves.

French authorities have said the majority are returning on a voluntary basis, given small sums of money – €300 (£245) for each adult and €100 for each child – to help them re-establish themselves at home.

Since Mr Sarkozy’s announcement of the crackdown, police have dismantled dozens of illegally installed gipsy camps, checked the situations of each inhabitant and prepared to whisk them to their Romanian homeland.

Nearly 100 gipsies were sent to Romania on two flights on Thursday. Similar flights were expected later this month and into September.

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Anger over Israel soldier’s prisoner Facebook images

EU Times — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:02:18 +0000

Palestinian groups said the images showed the Israeli occupation was "corrupting"

A former Israeli soldier has been sharply criticised for posting images of herself on Facebook posing next to Palestinian prisoners.

Eden Aberjil had put the images in an album on the site entitled “The army: the best days of my life”.

Army officials have condemned her behaviour as “shameful” and said they would investigate the matter further.

Palestinian groups said the images were humiliating and revealed the “mentality of the occupier”.

Israel and the Palestinians

The controversial images were among 26 photographs Ms Aberjil posted on her Facebook page.

In one, she is shown smiling next to three bound and blindfolded prisoners and in the second, she is sitting with her face turned towards a prisoner.

Ms Aberjil had already been discharged from the army having completed her mandatory military service, and it was unclear whether she could face disciplinary action.

But a military spokesman said all the details had been passed to her commanders for “further attention”.

“This is shameful behaviour by the soldier,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Palestinians are routinely blindfolded and handcuffed when arrested by Israeli troops, to prevent them trying to escape.

While the photographs do not depict overt abuse, the Palestinian Authority said they did show “the mentality of the occupier to be proud of humiliating Palestinians”.

“The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting,” said spokesman Ghassan Khatib.

Yishai Menuchim, head of the Israeli Committee Against Torture, also criticised the images, saying the incident “reflects an attitude which has become the norm and consists in treating Palestinians like objects, not like human beings”.

Last month, six Israeli soldiers were widely criticised for posting a video of themselves performing a dance routine while on duty in the West Bank town of Hebron.

The soldiers escaped disciplinary action after the army said no harm had been done.

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A Rapist in the Guise of TV Journalist

EU Times — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:29:58 +0000

A French-language TV journalist, Hugues-Denver (HEWE’) Akassy that he called himself as, has been accused of a number of crimes against the New York women.

Earlier, in the last month, he was indicted for exploiting three women. In the first case, he raped a Russian tourist in a park, whom he met at Time Warner Center. In other case, he was found prowling on the fire escape of a woman claiming that he is homeless and in the third one; he harassed a woman, when she forbade hanging out with him.

As for now, he is on $100,000 bail, after landing into prosecution in New York. In order to disguise himself to avoid the questions on a website, he designated himself as French-language TV journalist.

Apart from the stated cases, the man committed a series of crime around Manhattan, where he lived for almost eighteen months. He was also prosecuted for those allegations, which have not been revealed publically yet. The complaints against him in Manhattan started pouring in after his prosecution on July 30.

Howard D. Simmons, lawyer of Akassy said, “Mr. Akassy doesn’t deny having social interactions with any of these women. However, he vehemently denies ever assaulting or victimizing any of them”.

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Gypsies blocked a major road bridge near Bordeaux, France

EU Times — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:45:12 +0000

Traveller minorities blocked the bridge near Bordeaux in protest at plans to remove them

Roma (Gypsies) have blocked a major road bridge near Bordeaux in protest after hundreds of them were evicted from an illegal campsite.

Around 250 vehicles blocked the bridge for five hours on Sunday, causing tailbacks of up to five kilometres on a public holiday weekend.

More than 40 illegal camps have been closed in the past week.

The French interior minister says Roma from Eastern Europe will be deported on “specially chartered flights”.

The blockade on the Aquitaine Bridge was the first major counter-protest by Roma and travellers since the French government began its crackdown.

Crackdown

The regional traffic information centre said the blockade caused tailbacks of five kilometres on the Paris-bound carriageway of the A630.

Police said the Roma had been expelled from a camp in the town of Anglet, to the south, and were prevented from setting up a new camp on an exhibition ground nearer Bordeaux.

There are hundreds of thousands of Roma or travelling people living in France who are part of long-established communities.

The other main Roma population is made up of recent immigrants, mainly from Romania and Bulgaria. They have the right to enter France without a visa, but must have work or residency permits to settle over the long term.

The interior minister has announced that he will be meeting Romanian junior minister next week to call on Romanian police to assist in the crackdown in France.

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Obama gets blasted as ‘worst President’ ever

EU Times — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:52:18 +0000

Well, we wondered who would be the first public figure to call Barack Obama “the worst president in history” — an appellation applied to most White House occupants at one time or another.

We just didn’t think it would be Dan Quayle’s son.

Ben Quayle, 33, who is seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. House seat in Arizona, has cut a commercial denouncing Obama, as well as “drug cartels in Mexico” and “tax cartels in D.C.”

For good measure, the former vice president’s son ends his stark ad by proclaiming: “I love Arizona. I was raised right. Somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”

Note that Quayle, a lawyer and managing director of a Scottsdale, Ariz., investment firm, has also been criticized for alleged links to a racy website, claims his campaign has denounced as a smear.

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14-year-old British schoolgirl turned into a sex slave by a gang of 9 Arab Immigrants

EU Times — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:28:04 +0000

A girl who was abducted at the age of 14 was forced to work as a sex slave. This picture is posed by model

A girl who was abducted at the age of 14 and forced to work as a sex slave was yesterday praised for giving evidence which saw her abusers jailed.

The privately-educated teenager was picked up and plied with vodka and drugs, passed around groups of older men for sex and then forced to work as a prostitute.

Her ordeal highlights previously-aired fears that white schoolgirls are being groomed for underage sex by gangs of Asian men in northern England.

Former Labour MP Ann Cryer provoked a storm when she warned that the practice of arranged marriages helped tempt a criminal minority of Asian men into targeting young, white girls for sex.

After nine men were jailed over the sustained sexual abuse of their victim, Superintendent Paul Savill of Greater Manchester Police commended her bravery and said: ‘This young girl has been through an absolutely horrifying ordeal.

‘The level of abuse she has suffered is almost beyond belief. She has been treated like a commodity – beaten, threatened and sexually exploited.’

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was adopted as a baby by a professional, middle-class couple in Greater Manchester and educated at a private school.

She was removed from the school for exhibiting ‘inappropriate sexualised behaviour toward male pupils’, a court heard, and after she twice ran away from home her adoptive parents reluctantly agreed that she be placed in care.

In February 2008 she was picked up in Rochdale by Asad Hassan, 27, who took her to a nightclub.

He and his friends Mohammed Basharat, 27, and Mohammed Atif, 28, then took her to a house where she was given vodka before all three men had sex with her.

The next morning, Hassan, who had given her his phone number, dropped her at a bus station and gave her cigarettes and money, but after being found by her mother she was taken back to the care home.

A week later she went missing again. She met restaurant worker Abdul Rob, 33, in Rochdale and he took her back to a flat where he gave her alcohol before having sex with her.

The following morning she rang Hassan – her initial abuser – and met him, Basharat and Atif who again all had sex with her.

She was then taken to another house in the Rochdale area where she was also abused by a group of men whom police have been unable to trace.

The predators who were jailed: Top row, from left: Asad Hassan, Mohammed Basharat, Mohammed Khan. Middle row: Ahmed Noorzai, Mohammed Anwar Safi, Aftab Khan. Bottom row: Abid Khaliq, Mohammed Atif, Najibullah Safi

The next day, as police hunted for her, the girl took a bus to Manchester and drifted to the city’s ‘Curry Mile’ in Rusholme, where she met Aftab Khan, 30, described by police as a ‘nasty, exploitative individual’.

Khan, who was acquitted two years ago of having sex with an underage girl, lured her back to his house, gave her alcohol, cocaine and cannabis and offered her a bed for the night.

But between 3am and 4am Khan woke the youngster and told her: ‘You’re working for me now.’
He stabbed a door with a kitchen knife and threatened to harm her unless she complied.

Khan then forced her to work for five nights as a prostitute in Manchester.

The girl drank huge amounts of alcohol to blot out her ordeal and even tried to avoid wearing makeup to make herself look too young for sex, but her ploy failed.

On February 28 last year plain-clothed police officers patrolling the area stopped and questioned the girl as she looked for clients but, fearing Khan, she gave a false name and said she was 16.

The officers took the girl to a bus station so that she could go home. But she returned to Khan, who began to ‘tout her round’ groups of men, boasting that he had a girl who was available for sex.

He took her to a block of flats in Hulme where Mohammed Anwar Safi, 30, Ahmed Noorzai, 28, and Mohammed Khan, 25, were waiting.

Safi and Noorzai had sex with her but Mohammed Khan, who paid the money, said he thought she was ‘too young’.

The following day the officers who had stopped the girl recognised her from a missing person appeal and suspected that Khan was holding her.

But by the time they got to his home, he had been tipped off and had sent the girl away with £5.
She returned to Rusholme where she met Najibullah Safi, 32, who plied her with drink and drugs before having sex with her.

Her ordeal finally ended when she left Safi’s house and approached an Asian couple in a car.

Safi tried to drag her away but the woman passenger heard the girl claim she had been raped, and police were called.

In total she is thought to have fallen victim to at least three predatory gangs.

Campaigners say many similar cases go unpunished because the victims refuse to make formal complaints.

However the 14-year-old bravely identified her abusers and gave compelling evidence against them in court, and now nine have been jailed for a variety of offences.

Aftab Khan was jailed for seven years and his friend Abid Khaliq for eight months; Najibullah Safi, Atif, Hassan and Basharat for two years; Mohammed Khan for four years; Mohammed Anwar Safi for 31 months and Noorzai for four years.

In the final case at Manchester Crown Court this week, a judge ordered Rob to be found not guilty after accepting he could reasonably have believed the girl’s claims to be over 16.

Yesterday the victim, now 17, condemned her abusers.

‘These people exploit young girls,’ she said.

‘They feed them drugs and alcohol and tell them they love them.

‘i know because it happened to me and it has changed my life enormously.’

Martin Narey of Barnardo’s said his charity worked with at least 1,000 vulnerable girls a year who had been preyed on in this way.

But he said said there was no evidence of a racial element to such abuse.

‘Those who exploit children in this awful way come from all races,’ he added.

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Ruling against Prop. 8 could lead to federal precedent on gay marriage

EU Times — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:05:08 +0000

A federal judge declared California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional Wednesday, saying that no legitimate state interest justified treating gay and lesbian couples differently from others and that “moral disapproval” was not enough to save the voter-passed Proposition 8.

California “has no interest in differentiating between same-sex and opposite-sex unions,” U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker said in his 136-page ruling.

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The ruling was the first in the country to strike down a marriage ban on federal constitutional grounds. Previous cases have cited state constitutions.

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Obama called to act as Wall Street prepares to tax all US homes 1% for 99 years

EU Times — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:30:57 +0000

Foes want the Obama administration to ban a 1% ‘private transfer’ charge — assessed every time a property is sold for 99 years — paid to investors who backed the home’s original builder.

Can you name a housing controversy that pulls Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, consumer advocates, labor unions representing transport workers and government employees, the title insurance industry, the National Council of La Raza, libertarian and property rights groups and the National Assn. of Realtors all together into a protest coalition demanding quick action from the Obama administration?

A more unlikely collection of real estate bedfellows is hard to imagine. Yet at the end of July, 11 groups with widely divergent agendas and memberships formed something called the Coalition to Stop Wall Street Home Resale Fees.

The target of their protest: private transfer fees being attached as liens on homes and requiring successions of property owners to pay a fee every time the house or lot resells during the coming 99 years. Though proponents say the concept helps real estate developers raise capital for projects by bringing in Wall Street investors, critics contend the liens amount to a perpetual money machine that lowers equity values for unsuspecting consumers and complicates real estate sales.

Here’s how the plan works. Say you buy a $300,000 house in a subdivision where the developer is participating in a private transfer fee program and has recorded liens on every lot. When you later sell the property, you will be required to pay a fee of 1% of the price you receive. The money must be disbursed out of the closing proceeds and sent to a trustee representing investors. Those investors fronted cash to the developer in exchange for the right to receive streams of payments for decades as individual houses sell and resell.

So, if you buy a house this year for $300,000 and resell it for $325,000 a few years from now, you will owe $3,250 at closing. Even if the house drops in value, you will still owe the 1% fee. And if you refuse to pay it, the deal will not close because a lien has been recorded that runs with the title to the property and mandates that every seller pay.

Your purchaser might not like the fee requirement either, and might demand a lower price as compensation. When your purchaser later goes to sell, the same rules will kick in. And so on, through successions of sales until 2109, when the covenant recorded in 2010 disappears. Along the way, assuming modest appreciation in real estate values, investors and their estates stand to reap huge amounts of cash.

In the words of Kurt Pfotenhauer, chief executive of the American Land Title Assn., “it’s a pretty slick way to make money, but it’s bad public policy and bad for consumers.” Pfotenhauer’s group and the National Assn. of Realtors have spearheaded drives directed at state legislatures to ban or restrict private transfer fees. But now the focus has shifted to the federal level, where the 11-member coalition wants the Obama administration to prohibit transfer fees on all mortgages purchased or backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

The FHA has already indicated that the fees violate its rules, the coalition said in a July 29 letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which both operate under federal conservatorship, follow suit, the underlying mortgage-financing fuel that feeds transfer-fee programs effectively will be shut off. Along with the FHA, Fannie and Freddie now account for an estimated 95% of all mortgage financings.

The principal advocate for the private transfer fee concept, Freehold Capital Partners of New York, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In an e-mail earlier this year, Curtis Campbell, a spokesman for Freehold, said that “private transfer fees represent an adaptation in how to pay for development costs” incurred by builders “at a time when funding is not available” to them on “reasonable terms.”

On its website, Freehold claims that major real estate development firms controlling “hundreds of billions of dollars in real estate projects nationwide,” including some of the “largest, most well respected,” have participated in the program. However, the company has declined to identify any of them.

Members of the new anti-fee coalition said they have very specific reasons for joining. For example, Jon Soltz, co-founder and chairman of VoteVets.org, said military families generally move every three years, and have been disproportionately hard hit by the real estate bust. Because of their frequent moves, “these fees hurt the military more than anyone,” he said, and “take advantage of unsuspecting homeowners and buyers.”

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Police detain 4 in France following urban unrest

EU Times — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:55:33 +0000

French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivers a speech in Grenoble, French Alps, Friday, July 30, 2010. Nicolas Sarkozy came in Grenoble to install the new prefect after confrontations between youths and policemen, which came after a local resident suspected in the armed robbery of a casino was killed while fleeing police.

Four men, including two minors, were detained in a morning raid Wednesday in the southeastern French city of Grenoble, the site of recent clashes between police and local youth, a police official said.

The unrest in Grenoble has had far-reaching political fallout, with conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy calling for naturalized French citizens who threaten the lives of police to be stripped of their nationality.

Officers conducting Wednesday’s raid were trying to identify the accomplice of Karim Boudouda, a resident of Grenoble’s Villeneuve neighborhood who was shot dead by police following an armed robbery at a nearby casino, a police official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named according to police policy.

Boudouda’s death touched off several nights of unrest in the neighborhood last month, with dozens of cars torched and an annex of the City Hall burned. Police said they were shot at, though no one was injured in the rioting.

Wednesday’s raid came a day ahead of a visit to Grenoble by Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux.

Sarkozy’s proposal on revoking citizenship sparked heated criticism from left-wing opposition parties. The immigration minister, however, wants to go even further and bring before Parliament a bill that would allow naturalized citizens to be stripped of their nationality for a raft of serious crimes.

Separately Wednesday, Sarkozy’s office said in a statement that the French leader has commissioned a report on preventing juvenile delinquency. The report to be compiled the justice minister is due by late October.

Sarkozy has long had a tense relationship with youth in the heavily immigrant suburbs, which exploded in nationwide riots in 2005.

Fury as Israel president claims English are ‘anti-semitic’

EU Times — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 19:07:16 +0000

Israel's President Shimon Peres said that England's attitude towards Jews was Israel's "next big problem".

Israel’s president has accused the English of being anti-semitic and claimed that MPs pander to Muslim voters.

Shimon Peres said England was “deeply pro-Arab … and anti-Israeli”, adding: “They always worked against us.”

He added: “There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.”

His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had “got it wrong”.

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron’s remark that Gaza was a “prison camp”, as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England’s attitude towards Jews was Israel’s “next big problem”.

“There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that’s the difference between getting elected and not getting elected,” he said.

“And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment.

“They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 UN partition resolution … They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s … They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.”

By contrast, relations with Germany, France and Italy were “pretty good”, he added.

He made the comments in an interview with the historian Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published last week in Tablet, a Jewish news website.

The wide-ranging interview covered Mr Peres’ role as one of Israel’s longest-serving political leaders – an MP for 48 years, twice prime minister, and holder of other ministerial posts over the decades. He is firmly on the Israeli Left.

He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for his part as foreign minister in the peace talks which produced the landmark Oslo Accords.

But following his comments, James Clappison, the Conservative MP for Hertsmere and vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “Mr Peres has got this wrong.

“There are pro- and anti-Israel views in all European countries. Things are certainly no worse, as far as Israel is concerned, in this country than other European countries.”

The MP added that he could “understand the frustration” that people in Israel felt with “certain elements of the British broadcast media” which present an unbalanced view of Israel.

He said: “I can understand Mr Peres’ concerns, but I don’t recognise what he is saying about England.”

Yet in Israel, Mr Peres is far from alone in holding such views, which have gained a wider following, particularly on the Right, since the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over accusations that Mossad sent agents using British passports to assassinate a Hamas commander in Dubai.

Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, accused Britain of working against Israeli interests for decades – ever since it “betrayed” its promises to build a Jewish homeland when it governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

“Both governments from the right and the left prefer Arab interests over Israeli interests,” said Mr Eldad, whose father Israel was a leading figure in the Stern Gang, the most radical of the Jewish terror groups that fought British mandatory rule.

“The other layer is an ongoing, subtle form of anti-semitism. It is not as overt as it was in Germany, it is a quiet, polite form.”

Some leading Jewish commentators in Britain disagreed. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, minister of Maidenhead synagogue and a writer and broadcaster, said: “I am surprised at Peres. It is a sweeping statement that is far too one-sided.

“Britain has supported both Israel and Arab causes at different periods over the last 50 years. There are elements of anti-semitism but it is not endemic to British society.

“The tolerance and pluralism here make Britain one of the best countries in the world in which to live.”

Mr Peres found support, however, from other pro-Israeli groups. Jacob Vince, the director of Christian Friends of Israel, said there was anti-semitism in the UK although many people had a positive view of Israel but were unwilling to express it publicly.

Mr Vince said it was “difficult to see how many MPs would not be influenced by the number of Muslim voters in their constituencies”.

The Government was not treating Arabs as the underdogs but rather was trying to appease them, he said. “The question is how well they understand those with whom they are seeking conciliation.”

Mr Peres is “measured and moderate,” he added.

He said: “His comments have serious connotations and I am sure would not be said lightly.”

One Israeli politician expressed disbelief that the doveish Mr Peres had launched such a broadside against the British.

Benny Begin, a cabinet minister whose father Menachem was prime minister and before that leader of Irgun, the group that killed 91 people in an attack on Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946, said: “Peres? I simply can’t believe he said that.”

The latest figures show that the number of anti-semitic incidents in Britain is rising, according to the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity set up in 1984 to monitor such incidents.

The situation in Britain had worsened “significantly” in the past decade, a spokesman said.

In 2009 there were 924 anti-semitic incidents, the highest figure since CST began keeping records in 1984, and 55 per cent higher than the previous record in 2006.

The figures include reports, accepted only when backed by evidence, of physical assaults, verbal abuse and racist graffiti.

The monthly figure has soared from 10-20 incidents in the 1990s to 40-50 now.

Last year nearly half of the 924 anti-semitic race attacks recorded by the CST showed a political motivation, with 66 per cent of those including some reference to Israel and the Middle East.

A 2009 report by the US-based Anti-Defamation League found one in five Britons admitted Israel influences their opinion of British Jews, and the majority of those said that they felt “worse” about Jews than they used to. It found, however, that Britain was less anti-semitic than other European countries.

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Mexican drug cartel offers $1M bounty for Arpaio

EU Times — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:14:03 +0000

A chilling audio tape with text, circulating by e-mail, has been reported that puts a million dollar price on conservative hero, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head. Is it a coincidence that this was reported on the same day that Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, became effective?

Though the SB 1070 law that has gone into effect is a gutted version of the real bill, yesterday was also the day that Governor Brewer filed an expedited appeal, vowing to fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Yesterday was also the day that busloads of imported protesters from California chained themselves outside Sheriff Arpaio’s jail.

Still, there are those who think the real solution isn’t immigration reform or securing the border. Some feel certain the fact that Arizona is trying to block the drug highway from Mexico, thus cutting off the drug cartel’s route to supply drugs to the United States is the primary reason that the drug cartel is allegedly out to eliminate Sheriff Joe. Therefore, they think the solution is to legalize drugs.

In the message, $1M reward is placed on Arpaio’s head, and for mafia cartel recruiting purposes, another $1K to join the cartel.

The information about the tape was provided by a man, frightened enought to request anonymity, who was disgusted when his wife showed him the tape and followed up by reporting it to the sheriff’s office. Death threats aren’t uncommon for law enforcement officers who battle the lawlessness of border states,woefully overwhelmed and understaffed, and Sheriff Joe has had more than a few. This threat is considered real and credible, especially because of its timing.

It is believed this message originated in Mexico. The tape provides an international phone number and investigators are trying to trace the text message.

Ms. Allen from the Sheriff’s office is “sure he’s concerned… for his family more than anything else.”

DALLAS — At last, “Undocumented”, a film about illegal immigration “levels the ground” for all involved. Premiered at the Texas Film Fest, May 17th at the Angelika Film Fest in Dallas. See this trailer of the powerful documentary filmed by Dallas director and fim maker, Justin Malone.

Amid frightening, but unconfirmed reports that multiple Texas border ranches, located south of Laredo, had possibly been seized by a dangerous Mexican…

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio stands in front of his county jail the day Arizona's immigration enforcement law SB 1080 went into effect on July 29, 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. Although U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton suspended several controversial provisions of the law the previous day, Arpaio said he did not need the law in order to detain undocumented immigrants during his planned crime sweep in Phoenix.

Scotsman gets 2 years prison for tearing of muslims veil

EU Times — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:16:56 +0000

The woman was attacked and her veil ripped off outside Central Station

A man who ripped a veil from a Muslim woman’s face as she walked though Glasgow has been jailed for two years.

William Baikie, 26, admitted racially assaulting 26-year-old Anwar Alqahtani by forcibly removing her niqab in the city’s Hope Street on 27 April.

Glasgow Sheriff Court heard how Baikie, who has previous convictions for racist behaviour, ran off but was later identified through CCTV footage.

Passing sentence, Sheriff Lindsay Wood branded the assault “shameful”.

The court heard how Ms Alqahtani had come to Scotland from Saudi Arabia to study a masters degree.
‘Absolute disgrace’

The 26-year-old, who wears the niqab to protect her modesty as part of her religion, was attacked as she walked to get a train from Central Station.

The force of Baikie’s actions damaged Ms Alqahtani’s niqab and she had to find another item of clothing to cover her.

Sentencing Baikie, Sheriff Lindsay Wood told him that what he did was an “absolute disgrace”.

He said: “The offence you committed was a shameful one.

“You are a man who has a number of racist convictions and you knew full well how offensive the act would have been to the lady.”

15 y/o German girl and 22y/o Dutch Woman Raped in South Africa, after World Cup

EU Times — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:59:46 +0000

Two foreign nationals were raped in two separate incidents in the Eastern Cape, police said on Sunday.

A 15-year-old German girl was raped, allegedly by two armed men who broke into a chalet she was sharing with her 14-year-old brother at a bed and breakfast facility in Addo, said Captain Ernest Sigobe.

“The men allegedly gained entry by breaking the back window at 06:00 yesterday (Saturday).”

The two men allegedly raped the teenager while her brother watched helplessly.

They then ransacked the chalet and stole a camera and other personal belongings, Sigobe said.

Their parents were sleeping in another bed and breakfast nearby.

In the second incident, a 27-year-old man was arrested after he allegedly raped a 22-year-old woman from the Netherlands in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The woman was doing voluntary work in Storms River since July 15.

She was out walking when she was raped around 06:00.

The man is expected to appear in court soon.

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American Politician Speaks up about Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege

EU Times — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:08:35 +0000

Equal Opportunity by Martin Kozlowski

The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

How so?

Lyndon Johnson’s initial program for affirmative action was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions in order to eliminate “the badges of slavery.” Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The clearest example of today’s misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that “fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery.”

The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting black and white alike.

In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national commission to study what he termed “the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section.” At that time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South’s 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks’ average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.

Memo to my fellow politicians: Drop the Procrustean policies and allow harmony to invade the public mindset. Fairness will happen, and bitterness will fade away.

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