April 28, 2009
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Nation will rise against nation
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Matthew 24:6-8
"You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. "But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
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Matthew 24:14
"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
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2 Chronicles 15:1-7
Now the Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, "Listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: the LORD is with you when you are with Him. And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. "For many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law. "But in their distress they turned to the LORD God of Israel, and they sought Him, and He let them find Him. "In those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in, for many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. "Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. "But you, be strong and do not lose courage, for there is reward for your work."
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| Shalom in Christ Jesus, |
The word 'nation' is ethnos
in the original Greek and is the word from which we get our English word 'ethnic'.
Today we clearly see ethnic groups rising up against other ethnic groups across
the entire world.
The word for kingdom is basileia
in the original Greek and means the authority to rule, royal power, dominion or rule
according to Strongs.
There are many facets involving
the fulfillment of this small statement Christ made in the Olivet Discourse
that we see happening today.
Probably the number one
single cause of the ethnic uprising we see across much of the globe can be
traced back to the carving up of parts of the first Roman Empire, that is Europe, Africa, The Middle East and
Asia by the Allied countries after World Wars One and Two where national
boundaries did not match those of ethnic ones.
Add to this Islam and the
desire of it's fundamentalist proponents to take over nations, uprisings due to
class based oppression, class warfare and the desire for wealth redistribution,
lawlessness of all sorts including drug smuggling and illegal immigration, to
kidnapping and slavery, the need for natural resources and what can simply be labeled as "racism" and we have a
toxic brew across the entire globe ready to explode.
This is clearly a time to
keep your eyes focused on The Lord Jesus and to Be Alert!
May the Lord bless you and
keep you,
Scott
Brisk
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| Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe Amid Little Integration |
 FOX NEWS [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Greg Burke - March 24, 2009BRUSSELS, Belgium - A clash of civilizations may be taking place on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's also happening a lot more quietly in European cities. Old Europe's population is dwindling even as immigration and high birth rates among Muslim groups are swelling in cities all over the continent. And in Belgium, it is no different. Filip Dewinter, a leader of the far-right separatist party Vlaams Belang, predicts there will eventually be a kind of civil war when the longtime residents of Brussels - the nation's capital and administrative seat of the European Union - realize their city is about to be taken over by Muslim immigrants. Although there are no official statistics on how many Muslims live in Brussels, it is believed they make up about 25 percent of the city's 1 million urban residents. Dewinter, who opposes immigration and has called Islamophobia a "duty," claims three of the 19 sections of Brussels, each with its own mayor, now have Muslim majorities. "In those neighborhoods it's not our government that's in power," he said, "but the Muslim authorities - the mosques, the imams - who are in charge." ... Read Full ReportAlso: VIDEO: Muslim DemographicsIs Europe Doomed to Become Muslim?Islam will overwhelm Christendom unless Christians recognize the demographic realities, begin reproducing again, and share the gospel with Muslims. Must See VideoVIDEO: British Police Run Away From "Allah Akhbar" Screaming Muslim Protesters....."Run you Cowards..." See Video Here |
| British Parliament Surrenders |
FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE - By Stephen Brown - February 6, 2009
The place where Winston Churchill once so eloquently and forcefully rallied the British people to defeat the Nazi threat is now under siege from a new tyranny.
Islamic intimidation achieved a new high last week when it forced the British Parliament, one of Western civilization's most venerable institutions, to quietly surrender its most basic of freedoms.
Almost unreported in the Western media, including Britain's, a Muslim member of the House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed, showed the advanced state of Britain's dhimmitude when he threatened to mobilize 10,000 fellow Muslims to block Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders, from entering Westminster. Wilders had been invited by another House of Lords member to show his controversial film, Fitna, last Thursday in a Westminster conference room. Invitations had been sent to all House members to attend the screening that was to be followed "by discussion and debate in true parliamentary fashion." ...
Read Full Report |
| Fundamentalist Moslem Member Of House Of Lords Jailed In Motorway Death |
 Commentary by Jacob Prasch - February 25, 2009 Nazir Ahmed, the Moslem member of the British House of Lord who orchestrated the campaign to have Britain's Labour government ban Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders from entering Britain to show his factually accurate film 'FITNA" at the House of Lords amidst threats of Moslem intimidation, has been sent to a British prison for his responsibility in the death of a driver on a motorway accident in South Yorkshire. It is in the same area where defeated Moslem boxer Prince Nazim was also locked up in prison for similarly causing the death of a citizen by reckless driving. Ahmed's actions in pushing for the ban on Geert Wilders caused reaction from various sectors tired of the British government of Gordon Brown continually pandering to what is often viewed as fundamentalist Islamic intimidation. While the UK government of Gordon Brown would not allow the elected member of the Dutch Parliament to enter the UK, the Labour government did grant a visa to a radical pro terrorist Islamic preacher to be hosted as "most welcome" at a publicly funded event by London's former Mayor Ken Livingston. See article below...
Labour peer Lord Ahmed jailed for 12 weeks over text message death crash on M1
LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - By Vanessa Allen - February 26, 2009
Britain's first Muslim peer was jailed for three months yesterday for texting at the wheel shortly before ploughing into a car and killing its driver.
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Live Teaching Engagements
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Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah - April 16, 2009
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.
The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants' main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.
To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
"This was a bloody revolution in Swat," said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. "I wouldn't be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan."
The Taliban's ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal.
Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient, the officials and analysts said. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.
Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to Punjab, saying that the province, where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas.
Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama's, said, "The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution." ...
Read Full Report
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Islamists Push to Expand Taliban-Style Shari'a Across Pakistan
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CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE (CNSN.com) [Media Research Center] - By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor - April 21, 2009
Emboldened by the Pakistan government's agreement to allow the imposition of shari'a in the extremist-controlled Swat valley, fundamentalist clerics are pushing to spread the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law across the country. ...
Read Full Report
Also:
U.S. Questions Pakistan's Will to Stop Taliban
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt - April 23, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government's willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military's decision to remain on the sidelines.
Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley. ...
The military remains fixated on training and deploying its soldiers to fight the country's archenemy, India. It remains ill equipped for counterinsurgency, analysts say, and top officers are deeply reluctant to be pressed into action against insurgents who enjoy family, ethnic and religious ties with many Pakistanis. ...
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Ethiopians Withdraw From Key Bases
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Mohamed Ibrahim and Jeffrey Gettleman - January 13, 2009
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Ethiopian troops pulled out from crucial bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Islamist fighters who seized their positions.
It appeared to be the end of two years of bloody Ethiopian intervention in this chaotic nation. Hundreds of cheering Somalis lined the streets to watch the dozens of Ethiopian military trucks rumbling out of Mogadishu, Somalia's bullet-pocked capital. ...
The Ethiopian troops stormed into Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that briefly controlled much of the country and to help shore up Somalia's weak transitional government.
It did not go as intended. The Ethiopian intervention set off a bitter guerrilla war, killing thousands of civilians and driving nearly one million people out of Mogadishu.
Many Mogadishu neighborhoods are now like ghost towns, while the transitional government's zone of control has shrunk to a few city blocks in the capital and in Baidoa, a market town where the Parliament meets. And Somalia's Islamist movement has made a steady comeback, with Islamist factions again controlling much of the country.
The Ethiopian troops lost hundreds of soldiers in Somalia, and on Tuesday an Ethiopian commander bid the country farewell. ...
Many Western diplomats and other Somalia analysts have warned that once all the Ethiopians are gone, the various Islamist factions will unleash their considerable firepower on one another in a scramble to take over the country. Some of that fighting has already kicked off, with dozens of people killed in the past week in combat between moderate and radical Islamist factions. ...
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Somali Pirates Form Unholy Alliance with Islamists
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DER SPIEGEL [BMG: Bertelsmann Media Group/Gruner & Jahr Magazines] - By SPIEGEL Staff - April 20, 2009
Warships have done little to deter Somalia's pirates. But following the latest spate of hijackings, the West plans to take a more robust approach to protecting shipping. Intelligence agencies are alarmed at the pirates' increasingly close ties to Islamist groups. ...
With their small fiberglass boats, the pirates are making fools of the world's most powerful countries. No less than four international fleets of high-tech warships are patrolling the waters off Somalia's coasts, and there are frigates and destroyers from countries like China and Russia that are working independently. All of these ships have cannons or missiles, helicopters and satellite support; some could lay waste to entire cities. But this has done little to deter the pirates, with their bashed-up outboard boats and Kalashnikovs. It's a fight between David and Goliath -- except in this case, the bad guys are playing the role of David, and the good guys are Goliath. ...
The Americans and the French have changed course and started shooting at the pirates. Even the Germans considered freeing the Hansa Stavanger by force. Some of the strategies which experts in Washington, London and Berlin are developing resemble battle plans for a new military campaign -- and that in a war-torn country like Somalia, which has already been the site of a number of military debacles. ...
And there's no time to waste, now that a new threat is emerging. Intelligence agencies have managed to deeply penetrate the pirate clans. They have inside information about the bosses, arms caches, alliances and arrangements. Experts also have reason to believe that the pirates are increasingly working hand-in-hand with Islamists, who are allies of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. It's a terrifying alliance: The pirates supply money and arms, while the Islamists have troops and the power on land.
But it is also a highly unlikely alliance. Up until recently, the pirates and Islamists have been mortal enemies. When fighters loyal to the radical Council of Islamic Courts seized power in Somalia in 2006, they immediately put the pirates out of business because piracy violates Islamic Sharia law.
Half a year later, an invading army from US-backed neighboring Ethiopia swept aside the Islamists -- and the pirates quickly headed out to sea again in search of new booty.
The Ethiopians have meanwhile largely retreated, but the new government in Mogadishu, which was elected in January, controls only a fraction of the country. The rest is ruled by Islamist groups, like the al-Shabab militias and a new faction called Hizbul Islam (Party of Islam).
The pirates want money and the Islamists want power -- but these interests can overlap at times. ...
... The enemy from the outside is welding together the old adversaries. The pirates are "mujahideen because they are at war with the Christian countries," says Sheikh Hassan Turki, the leader of Hizbul Islam. And Mukhtar Robow of the al-Shabab militias praises the pirates, saying that they are defending "the coast against Allah's enemies."
Ever since American snipers shot dead three pirates to rescue the captain of the US-registered freighter Maersk Alabama on Easter Sunday, the pirates have been calling for revenge -- and they suddenly sound very much like the Islamists. The US is now "our number one enemy," says Jamac Habeb, a pirate from Eyl. "We're now out to get Americans," says a pirate named Ismail from Harardhere. "And when we have them, we'll slaughter them."
If the "fragile alliance" between the pirates and the Islamists grows stronger, writes the intelligence journal Jane's Intelligence Review, this will "increase the threat from pirate groups." According to an analysis by the intelligence experts, the pirates are far better networked than was previously thought. ...
Read Full Report
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Obama brands Armenian killings `great atrocities'
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ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Desmond Butler and Ben Feller - April 24, 2009
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Friday refrained from branding the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey a "genocide," breaking a campaign promise while contending his views about the 20th century slaughter had not changed.
The phrasing of Obama's written statement attracted heightened scrutiny because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the two countries are nearing a historic reconciliation after years of tension. The Obama administration is wary of disturbing that settlement.
Marking the grim anniversary of the start of the killings, the president referred to them as "one of the great atrocities of the 20th century."
"I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed," Obama said. "My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts." ...
For Obama, referring to the killings as genocide could have upended recent pledges of a closer partnership with Turkey, a vital ally in a critical region. Steering around the word, however, put him at odds with his own pledges to recognize the slaughter as genocide.
Obama said the Armenians who were massacred in the final days of the Ottoman Empire "must live on in our memories." He said unresolved history can be a heavy weight. "Reckoning with the past holds out the powerful promise of reconciliation," he said. ...
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| Sectarian Tension Takes Volatile Form in Bahrain |
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By MICHAEL SLACKMAN - March 27, 2009
MALIKIYA, Bahrain - It was just another night in this small Shiite Muslim village on the Persian Gulf. A mattress and chairs were set on fire in the street. The police shot tear gas canisters at the crowds. Neighborhood children taunted the police. The police fired more tear gas. ...
It was just another night, and there would be another and another and another all over this sliver of a nation where, as in Iraq before the American invasion, a majority Shiite population is ruled by Sunni Muslims.
It is an inherently unstable arrangement, and the Shiites frequently complain that they are marginalized and discriminated against. As in Iraq, the situation has endured for decades, and no one is suggesting that the security forces are in danger of losing their grip.
But Bahrain, the base for the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet, is in turmoil. ...
For years there have been tense relations between Bahrain's Sunni elite and the Shiite majority. That tension exploded into regular protests this year after the police arrested 23 opposition organizers, including two popular figures, Hassan Mushaima'a and a Shiite cleric, Sheik Mohammed Habib al-Moqdad. Prosecutors accused them of trying to destabilize the government and planning terrorist attacks. ...
Bahrain's politics are heated, too. The 40-member Parliament is controlled by religious parties, Sunnis and Shiites, who have turned it into a sectarian battleground. The country is run by a self-declared king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who presides over a police force staffed primarily by foreigners: Syrians, Iraqis, Jordanians, almost anyone who happens to be a Sunni and is eager to earn a Bahraini passport.
Shiites are all but banned from the military and security forces - certainly from command positions - one of their primary grievances.
The Shiite majority complains that the government has a plan to naturalize as many Sunnis as possible, to change the demographic balance. The government and its supporters insist that is not true.
But the Shiites do not believe them. "I don't work, and I don't go to school," said Muhammad Nasser, 19. "I am demonstrating because there are no jobs because of naturalization of foreigners, because of the political prisoners, because of the abuse of the rights of the citizen."
The government and its supporters say that the Shiites are not discriminated against, but that they also cannot be trusted to serve in the security forces.
"There are so many riots, burnings, killings, and not even one case is condemned by the Shiites," said Adel al-Maawdah, chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, defense and national security and a member of a fundamentalist Sunni political party. "Burning a car with people inside is not condemned. How can we trust such people?"
In fact, plenty of people condemn the violence. But the young people are so bored, and so agitated by religious leaders who define the conflict as sectarian, that they see protest as both entertainment and a duty. ...
Read Full Report |
Fears of New Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Dan Bilefsky - December 13, 2008
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Thirteen years after the United States brokered the Dayton peace agreement to end the ferocious ethnic war in the former Yugoslavia, fears are mounting that Bosnia, poor and divided, is again teetering toward crisis.
On the surface, this haunted capital, its ancient mosques and Orthodox churches still pocked by mortar fire, appears to be enjoying a renaissance. Young professionals throng to stylish cafes and gleaming new shopping malls while the muezzin heralds the morning prayer. The ghosts of Srebrenica linger - recalling the worst massacre in Europe since World War II - but Sarajevans prefer to talk about President-elect Barack Obama or the global financial crisis.
Yet for the first time in years, talk of the prospect of another war is creeping into conversations across the ethnic divide in Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic that the Dayton agreement divided into two entities, a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic.
The power-sharing agreement between former foes has always been tense. Now, however, the uneasy peace has been complicated by Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in February, which many here worry could prompt the Serbian Republic to follow suit, tipping the region into a conflict that could fast turn deadly. ...
The peace agreement, negotiated at a United States Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, accomplished its goal of ending a savage three-and-a-half-year war in which about 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims. A million more Muslims, Serbs and Croats were driven from their homes, while much of this rugged country's infrastructure was destroyed. ...
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Islamic Revival Tests Bosnia's Secular Cast
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Dan Bilefsky - December 26, 2008
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Thirteen years after a war in which 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims, Bosnia is undergoing an Islamic revival.
More than half a dozen new madrasas, or religious high schools, have been built in recent years, while dozens of mosques have sprouted, including the King Fahd, a sprawling $28 million complex with a sports and cultural center.
Before the war, fully covered women and men with long beards were almost unheard of. Today, they are common.
Many here welcome the Muslim revival as a healthy assertion of identity in a multiethnic country where Muslims make up close to half the population.
But others warn of a growing culture clash between conservative Islam and Bosnia's avowed secularism in an already fragile state. ...
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Sudan On The Brink
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FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE - By Stephen Brown - June 16, 2008
It just shows what is wrong with our media.
The front pages of most newspapers last week carried a story about a horrific plane crash in the Sudan that cost 100 lives. While this tragedy was certainly newsworthy, hardly a single media outlet has been covering the real story in Africa's largest country that could turn into a human catastrophe for millions of its non-Muslim citizens.
A twenty-year civil war between the Sudan's Arab and Islamic North and Christian and animist African South that ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 is set to explode again. Fighting broke out last month between the North's Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the armed forces of southern Sudan, in the oil-rich Abyei region, resulting in dozens of deaths.
The Abyei region, located between North and South, is technically part of northern Sudan, having been transferred there by the British colonial power in 1905. According to the CPA's Abyei Protocol, which was put into the accord at America's insistence, the Abyei area, which is inhabited mainly by Africans of the Dinka tribe, is supposed to hold a vote to decide whether it wants to join the South. In 2011, the entire South Sudan will have its own referendum on independence.
Disgracefully, the world hardly noticed that the town of Abeyei was destroyed in May by aggressive federal forces, which are controlled by the ruling National Congress Party in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, located in the North. As usual, it was the civilians who suffered the most. More than 100,000 Dinka, according to one report, were driven from their homes. Many Dinka arrived in refugee camps with little or no belongings with some grieving for their children who were lost in the flight. ...
Such Arab atrocities are nothing new to southern Sudan's black African population. This large area of about 227,000 square miles and 11 million people was once one of the main sources of slaves for the Islamic world until British colonization put a stop to the inhuman practice. But when the British left and the Sudan was granted its independence in 1956, the Arab North's oppression of the non-Muslim, African South quickly picked up where it left off. ...
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Far-Right Crimes Up Sharply in Germany
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DER SPIEGEL [BMG: Bertelsmann Media Group/Gruner & Jahr Magazines] - April 21, 2009
Political crime is on the rise in Germany, and far-right crimes in particular rose 16 percent in 2008, according to new government figures. Part of the increase is a result of new statistical standards, but the numbers on the right include two murders.
The number of far-right crimes recorded in Germany increased by around 16 percent last year to 20,422, with violent crimes up 5.6 percent at 1,113 cases, including two killings, according to figures released by the German government this week.
Far-right crimes accounted for two thirds of all "politically motivated" crimes last year, which reached 31,801 -- an increase of 11.4 percent and the highest level since 2001.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Sch�uble said the rise in politically motivated crime was disturbing and swore the government would counter it with a variety of measures against extremism, racism and intolerance.
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| As Economic Turmoil Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungary's Gypsies |
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Nicholas Kulish - April 26, 2009
TISZALOK, Hungary -- Prejudice against Roma - widely known as Gypsies and long among Europe's most oppressed minority groups - has swelled into a wave of violence. Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.
But the police have focused their attention on three fatal attacks since November that they say are linked. The authorities say the attacks may have been carried out by police officers or military personnel, based on the stealth and accuracy with which the victims were killed. ...
Jozsef Bencze, Hungary's national police chief, said in an interview on Friday with the daily newspaper Nepszabadsag that the perpetrators, believed to be a group of four or more men in their 40s, were killing "with hands that are too confident." Military counterintelligence is taking part in the investigation, Hungarian radio reported, and Mr. Bencze said the pool of suspects included veterans of the Balkan wars and Hungarian members of the French Foreign Legion.
Experts on Roma issues describe an ever more aggressive atmosphere toward Roma in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, led by extreme right-wing parties, whose leaders are playing on old stereotypes of Roma as petty criminals and drains on social welfare systems at a time of rising economic and political turmoil. As unemployment rises, officials and Roma experts fear the attacks will only intensify.
"One thing to remember, the Holocaust did not start at the gas chambers," said Lajos Korozs, senior state secretary in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, who works on Roma issues for the government. ...
Read Full Report |
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Euro-Protests & Civil Unrest
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Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of TwitterNEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Ellen Barry - April 7, 2009MOSCOW - A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova's Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police. The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation's tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network. ... The immediate cause of the protests were parliamentary elections held on Sunday, in which Communists won 50 percent of the vote, enough to allow them to select a new president and amend the Constitution. Though the Communists were expected to win, their showing was stronger than expected, and opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging. ... Behind the confrontation is a split in Moldova's population. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought benefits to much of Eastern Europe, but in Moldova it ushered in economic decline and instability. In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs. ... Read Full ReportGreek violence spreads across EuropeTHE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By David Byers - December 11, 2008Suspected anarchist protests which have dogged Greece for the last week spread outside the country today, with mobs causing violent scenes in Italy, Spain, Russia, Denmark and Turkey. ... Yet what were originally relatively localised protests over [a] killing have since been hijacked by mobs of self-styled anarchists who authorities say are looking for trouble, and today they spread out of Greece for the first time. In Denmark, a total of 32 people were arrested in Copenhagen after protests turned violent while, in Madrid and Barcelona, several police officers were injured and 11 people were arrested following clashes. The violence also spread to Turkey, where a dozen protesters were reported to have painted the Turkish-flag red on the Greek consulate. In Moscow and Rome, meanwhile, petrol bombs were reported to have been aimed at Greek Embassies. ... Read Full Report
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Financial crisis sparks unrest in Europe
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REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - February 26, 2009
Thousands of Opel workers from around Germany took part in a mass rally on Thursday demanding parent General Motors (GM.N) scrap plans for plant closures in Europe.
The global financial and economic crisis has sparked many protests in parts of Europe. Here are some details:
* BOSNIA -- Workers of Bosnia's only alumina producer Birac protested on Feb. 9 in Banja Luka, demanding salary payments and government support to offset falling metal prices.
* BRITAIN -- British workers held a series of protests at power plants, demonstrating against the employment of foreign contractors to work on critical energy sites.
-- The protests follow a week-long dispute at the Total-owned Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, which resulted in Total agreeing to hire more British workers on the project. Workers voted to end the unofficial strike on Feb. 5.
* BULGARIA -- Police officers, banned by law from striking, have held three "silent" protests since December to demand a 50 percent pay hike and better working conditions. Bulgaria, the poorest EU nation, has been hit by protests demanding the government take measures to shore up the economy.
-- Farmers blocked the only Danube bridge link with Romania and rallied across Bulgaria on Feb. 4 demanding the government set a minimum protective price for milk and stop imports of cheap substitutes.
* FRANCE -- President Nicolas Sarkozy faced criticism from both unions and bosses on Feb. 19 over new measures to tackle the economic crisis. Sarkozy offered an additional 2.65 billion euros ($3.4 billion) of social spending in an effort to quell labour unrest over a previous stimulus package that targeted investment rather than consumers. France's eight union federations called for a day of action on March 19.
-- Up to 2.5 million protesters took to the streets of France on Jan. 29 in a day of strikes and rallies to denounce the economic crisis but the strike failed to paralyse the country and support from private sector workers was limited.
-- A union representative was killed last week and several policemen wounded by protesters on the French Caribbean island in violence over the cost of living. Guadeloupe, a region of France and part of the EU, has been brought to a standstill in February by a general strike over high prices for food.
* GERMANY -- Thousands of Opel workers from around Germany took part in a mass rally at the company's headquarters, demanding on Thursday that parent General Motors scrap plans for plant closures in Europe. Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the rally, added, "This is about more than just Opel. It's about the future of the car industry in Germany." * GREECE -- Greek farmers protesting low product prices ended a two week blockade of a border crossing with Bulgaria on Feb. 7 when their demands for compensation were met. Greece had endured days of travel chaos with thousands of angry farmers setting roadblocks across the country, but most have ended after the government pledged 500 million euros ($640 million) in subsidies on products such as olive oil and wheat. -- High youth unemployment was a main driver for rioting in Greece in December, initially sparked by the police shooting of a youth in an Athens neighbourhood. The protests forced a government reshuffle.
* ICELAND -- Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned on Jan. 26 after protests. The first leader in the world to fall as a direct result of the financial crisis, he was replaced by Johanna Sigurdardottir, who heads a new centre-left coalition.
* IRELAND -- Nearly 100,000 people marched through Dublin on Feb. 21 to protest at government cutbacks in the face of a deepening recession and bailouts for the banks.
* LATVIA -- A new Latvian prime minister was appointed on Thursday after the four-party ruling coalition collapsed on Feb. 20 and the president called for talks to forge a new government to tackle a deepening economic crisis. The government was the second to succumb to the financial crisis.
-- Latvia's agriculture minister had already gone on Feb. 3 amid protests by farmers over falling incomes. A 10,000-strong protest on Jan. 13 descended into a riot. Government steps to cut wages, as part of an austerity plan to win international aid, have angered people.
* LITHUANIA -- Police fired teargas lon Jan. 16 to disperse demonstrators who pelted parliament with stones in protest at cuts in social spending. Police said 80 people were detained and 20 injured. Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said the violence would not stop an austerity plan.
* MONTENEGRO -- In Podgorica, aluminium workers demanded on Feb. 9 to be paid their salaries and an immediate restart of suspended production at the Kombinat Aluminijuma Podgorica (KAP), a Russian-owned plant.
* RUSSIA -- Hundreds of angry communists rallied in Moscow on Feb. 23 in protest at the Kremlin's handling of the crisis that has rocked the Russian economy, the latest in a series of demonstrations held across Russia as the economic crisis bites.
-- The opposition rallied about 350 people in central Moscow two days earlier to demand early presidential elections.
-- On Jan. 31, thousands of opposition supporters rallied in Moscow and the port of Vladivostok over hardships caused by the financial crisis. The next day hundreds of Moscow demonstrators called for Russia's leaders to resign.
* UKRAINE - Hundreds of Ukrainians protested at separate demonstrations on Feb. 23, with some urging President Viktor Yushchenko to quit while others demanded their money back from banks hit by the financial crisis.
Original Report
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Britain faces summer of rage - police
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Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets
THE GUARDIAN [Guardian Media Group, UK] - By Paul Lewis - February 23, 2009
Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year. ...
The warning comes in the wake of often violent protests against the handling of the economy across Europe. In recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik. ...
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Storm of global riots on the horizon
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RUSSIA TODAY [TV-Novosti/RIA Novosti] - January 28, 2009
This year will see a major economic breakdown followed by worldwide riots, as people who have lost everything rebel against the situation, where those in power save themselves at the expense of everyone else.
This is according to the forecast by Gerald Celente of The Trends Research Institute, New York, who successfully predicted the panic of 2008.
The global crisis will only get worse according to Celente and turn into the greatest depression in modern history.
He compares the world economy with the cruise liner Titanic. The ship is sinking, he says, and spaces on the lifeboats are few.
Even now people who suffered from the global crisis are ready to resort to violence, as the reports from Iceland, Latvia and Lithuania indicate. As the meltdown continues, the situation will only get worse. ...
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Mass protest in Rome over financial crisis
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - April 4, 2009
Several hundred thousand workers, pensioners, immigrants and students filled a Rome park on Saturday in protest at the Italian government's handling of the financial crisis.
Led by Italy's largest union, the left-wing Italian General Confederation of Labour, many wore red hats or waved the CGIL's red flag as helicopters circled above Rome's Circo Massimo, an ancient hippodrome. ...
Italy went into recession in the third quarter of last year, and gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 1.0 percent for the year in the worst downturn since 1975. ...
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China Fears Tremors as Jobs Vanish From Coast
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Andrew Jacobs - February 22, 2009
As the global economic crisis deepens and the demand for Chinese exports slackens, manufacturing jobs in the Pearl River Delta and all along the once-booming coast are disappearing at a stunning pace. Over the last few months, more than 20 million migrant workers have been cast into the ranks of the unemployed, depriving impoverished towns like Tanjia of the much-needed income the workers sent home. ...
Although the government has not released updated information about rural unrest, officials have been strategizing about how best to keep large protests and riots from spreading, should the dispossessed grow unruly.
This week, more than 3,000 public security directors from across the country are gathering in the capital to learn how to neutralize rallies and strikes before they blossom into so-called mass incidents. At a meeting of the Chinese cabinet last month, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told government leaders they should prepare for rough times ahead. "The country's employment situation is extremely grim," he said. ...
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Greeks shut airports, services to protest economy
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - By Renee Maltezou - February 26, 2009
ATHENS - Greeks disgruntled by their country's economic woes ramped up protests against the government on Wednesday, shutting down airports and disrupting many public services. ...
In January, thousands of farmers protesting low product prices blocked border crossings, causing 11 days of travel chaos across Greece and hurting commercial transport. They ended the protest after securing a 500-million-euro aid package. ...
Truckers went on strike last week, demanding a crackdown on unlicensed transport companies and illegal economic immigrants, who they said were destroying goods and fighting drivers in their effort to stow away on board. ...
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| US: Evangelicals taking a look at immigration policy |
The NAE's goal is to adopt a resolution later this year.
THE WASHINGTON POST [Wash Post Group/Graham] - By Jacqueline L. Salmon - April 11, 2009
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is wading very gingerly into the issue of immigration reform.
Immigration has long been an awkward issue for evangelicals. Most of the nation's large, politically influential evangelical organizations have either supported legislation that focuses on border enforcement and deporting illegal immigrants or have taken no position on the issue. But smaller white church groups and Hispanic evangelicals have supported what they consider more compassionate treatment of illegal immigrants, including a path to citizenship and streamlined procedures for reuniting separated families.
So far, the NAE, whose members encompass 52 denominations, hasn't taken a position on the issue because its members have been divided on how to deal with it. But they won't be much longer.
NAE President Leith Anderson said recently that the organization has held several immigration forums around the country and has begun drafting a position statement. The goal is to adopt a resolution in October, he said.
"What we're trying to do is say 'How do we address this in a way that is Biblical and just and fair?' " said Anderson, pastor of a megachurch in Minnesota.
President Barack Obama, who supports comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for law-abiding people who entered the country illegally, is expected to take up the issue later this year.
Anderson recently penned a forward to a new book, "Welcoming the Stranger," written by two staffers at World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the NAE. The book, which weaves together Bible teachings and statistics, presents a largely positive view of immigrants, legal and illegal. World Relief, unlike NAE, has long supported comprehensive immigration reform.
The book points out the hard facts for evangelicals: An increasing number of evangelical Protestants are Hispanic immigrants, who support a path to citizenship and other reforms. ...
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Also:
Latino leaders reject boycotting illegal immigrant census
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER [Freedom Communications/Providence Equity Partners LLC.] - By Cindy Carcamo - April 23, 2009
Local Latino politicians, pastors and activists are denouncing the efforts of a national group of ministers calling for illegal immigrants to boycott the 2010 census until Congress passes immigration reform.
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders say they launched the movement to protect the undocumented population, which they said accounts for about 30 percent of the members of their churches.
"If the 12 million of our brothers and sisters are good enough to be counted, then they are good enough to be legalized," said the Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the coalition. ...
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'No one should feel immune': Mexican cartels spread to hundreds of US cities as war rages on
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ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Pauline Arrillaga - April 19, 2008
COLUMBIANA, Ala. - Five men dead in an apartment.
In a county that might see five homicides in an entire year, the call over the sheriff's radio revealed little about what awaited law enforcement at a sprawling apartment complex.
A type of crime, and criminal, once foreign to this landscape of blooming dogwoods had arrived in Shelby County. Sheriff Chris Curry felt it even before he laid eyes on the grisly scene. He called the state. The FBI. The DEA. Anyone he could think of.
"I don't know what I've got," he warned them. "But I'm gonna need help."
The five dead men lay scattered about the living room of one apartment in a complex of hundreds. ...
Curry would soon find this was a retaliation hit over drug money with ties to Mexico's notorious Gulf Cartel.
Curry also found out firsthand what federal drug enforcement agents have long understood. The drug war, with the savagery it brings, knows no bounds. It had landed in his back yard, in the foothills of the Appalachians, in Alabama's wealthiest county, around the corner from The Home Depot.
One thousand, twenty-four miles from the Mexico border.
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Forget for a moment the phrase itself - "War on Drugs" - much-derided since President Richard Nixon coined it. Wars eventually end, after all. And many Americans wonder today, nearly four decades later, will this one ever be won?
In Mexico, the fight has become a real war. Some 45,000 Mexican army troops now patrol territories long ruled by narcotraffickers. Places like Tijuana, in the border state of Baja California. Reynosa, across the Rio Grande from Texas. Ciudad Juarez, next door to El Paso. But also the central state of Michoacan and resort cities like Acapulco, an hour south of the place where, months ago, the decapitated bodies of 12 soldiers were discovered with a sign that read:
"For every one of mine that you kill, I will kill 10."
Some 10,560 people have been killed since 2006, the year Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office and launched his campaign against the organized crime gangs that move cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin to a vast U.S. market. Consider that fewer than 4,300 American service members have died in the six-year war in Iraq.
The cartels are fighting each other for power, and the Calderon administration for their very survival. Never before has a Mexican president gone after these narco-networks with such force. ...
And now the cartels have brought the fight to us: In 230 U.S. cities, the Mexican organizations maintain distribution hubs or supply drugs to local distributors, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
Places like Miami and other longtime transportation points along the California, Arizona and Texas borders. But also Twin Falls, Idaho. Billings, Mont. Wichita, Kan. Phoenix. St. Louis. Milwaukee.
Even Shelby County.
The quintuple homicide occurred just outside the Birmingham city limits and a half-hour's drive north of Columbiana, the county seat.
"We became a hub without knowing it," Sheriff Curry says. "We've got to wake people up because we're seeing it all over the place. It is now firmly located throughout this country." ...
Those in the know understand that this kind of violence is nothing new. In border communities that have long been trafficking hubs it's uncommon not to hear of a drug-related crime on the evening news.
What's new is where that violence is erupting, where distribution cells and hubs and sub-hubs have surfaced. How an apartment in Alabama became the site of a drug hit in many ways tells the story of the narco-trade in America in 2009, and of the challenges we face in combatting a blight that has spread to big cities and small all across the land. ...
But there is another reason this area, and others, have become what some agents call "sub-hubs."
With some 4.9 million trucks crossing into the United States from Mexico every year, tractor-trailers have become a transportation mode of choice among traffickers. Drugs head north, but weapons and cash also head back south - like the $400,000 Border Patrol agents found on April 2 near Las Cruces, N.M., stashed in the refrigeration unit of a semi.
Shelby County is a trucking mecca, with highways 65, 20, 59 and 459 running east to Atlanta, north to Nashville, south to New Orleans, west to Dallas. Once reluctant to haul drug shipments too far beyond a border state, drivers are willing to take more chances now, because there are so many trucks on the road, ...
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US/Mexico: Nafta's Promise, Unfulfilled
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Elisabeth Malkin - March 23, 2009
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's former president, Carlos Salinas, used to promise that free trade and foreign investment would jump-start this country's development, empowering a richer and more prosperous Mexico "to export goods, not people."
Fifteen years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, only the first part of that promise has been realized.
Mexico's exports have exploded under Nafta, quintupling to $292 billion last year, but Mexico is still exporting people too, almost half a million each year, seeking opportunities in the United States that they do not have at home. ...
Economists here say much of the blame lies with Mexican leaders, unable or unwilling to take on oligarchs and unions controlling key sectors of the economy like energy and telecommunications. But they say some blame goes to the unintended consequences of Nafta.
In some cases, Nafta produced results that were exactly the opposite of what was promised.
For instance, domestic industries were dismantled as multinationals imported parts from their own suppliers.
Local farmers were priced out of the market by food imported tariff-free. Many Mexican farmers simply abandoned their land and headed north. ...
Global giants spent billions of dollars turning Guadalajara into a manufacturing hub for the information technology industry. The industry boomed, spurred by cheap labor and the sense that Nafta guaranteed investor-friendly policies. Today the city is ringed with low-slung factories that churn out everything from BlackBerrys to digital tape storage libraries for Sun Microsystems.
But investors came because the city was already a center of technology. I.B.M, Hewlett-Packard and others had come in the 1960s and 1970s when Mexico's market was closed.
After Nafta, the new factories imported parts from their global suppliers, wiping out local companies that had sold printed circuit boards or assembled computers under tariff protection, said Kevin P. Gallagher, a Boston University professor who has written about the Guadalajara information technology industry.
Things grew worse when the tech bubble burst, the American economy cooled and the companies moved to China, where they could pay even lower wages. Once China entered the World Trade Organization, Mexico lost much of the edge in exporting to the United States that Nafta had given it. Employment in Guadalajara's I.T. factories dropped 37 percent in 2001 and continued to slide for two years. ...
"A new phenomenon has grown up under Nafta - high-productivity poverty," said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. ...
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U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of Mexico is possible
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EL PASO TIMES [MediaNews Group/Gannett] - By Diana Washington Valdez - January 13, 2009
EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities. ...
The report is one in a serious focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico. ...
The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present. ...
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| The Drug War Spreads Across 2 Continents |
Peruvian Rebels Kill 13 Troops in Coca Region
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - April 11, 2009
LIMA - Suspected leftist rebels killed 13 troops in two ambushes in a mountainous region of Peru where security forces are fighting cocaine traffickers, the government said on Saturday.
Defense Minister Antero Flores said both attacks took place on Thursday in Ayacucho province, a coca-growing area and the birthplace of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group. ...
Peru's government says the Shining Path has all but abandoned its fight from leftist ideological in favor of running drugs in Peru, the world's No. 2 cocaine producer. ...
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Wider Drug War Threatens Colombian Indians
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Simon Romero - April 21, 2009
NUNCIDO, Colombia - Up and down the rivers of western Colombia, a new breed of criminal armies is pressing deeper into this isolated jungle, fighting with guerrillas for control of the cocaine trade and forcing thousands of Indians to flee.
It is the kind of nightmarish ordeal that is an all-too-common feature of Colombia's long war: peasants being terrorized by gunmen seeking dominance in the backlands.
But as Colombia's war for control of the drug trade intensifies in frontiers like this one, with new combatants vying for smuggling routes and coca-growing areas where Indians eke out a meager existence, it is adding to the already grave toll on the nation's indigenous groups. At least 27 of the groups are at risk of being eliminated because of the country's four-decade conflict, according to the United Nations, and human rights organizations worry that the new violence is pushing even deeper into the Indians' ancient lands. ...
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3,000 families flee N. Mexico violence to US: expert
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - August 15, 2008
Mounting drug-related violence and 800 murders so far this year have driven some 3,000 families from the Mexico town of Ciudad Juarez into the United States, a border expert said Thursday.
Most of the 3,000 families seeking safety across the border this year were middle-class, said Antonio Payan, a political science professor at the University of Texas in El Paso, the US city adjacent Juarez. ...
Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and related violence, but some 2,000 people have been killed so far this year.
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| Brazil builds walls around Rio de Janeiro slums |
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - Reporting by Raymond Colitt; Editing by Bill Trott - March 31, 2009
RIO DE JANEIRO - The government of Rio de Janeiro is building concrete walls to prevent sprawling slums from spreading farther into the picturesque hills of this world-famous tourist destination, an official said on Saturday.
Construction has begun in two favelas, or shantytowns, in the southern districts of Rio de Janeiro, a government spokeswoman told Reuters. One of the two is Morro Dona Marta, which police occupied in November to control crime and violence caused mostly by rival drug gangs.
Officials say the wall is to protect the remaining native forest but critics fear the move could be seen as discriminatory and become a blemish symbolizing Brazil's deep divisions between rich and poor. ...
By year-end the Rio de Janeiro state government wants to build almost 7 miles (11 km) of walls to contain 19 communities. It will spend 40 million reais ($17.6 million) and have to relocate 550 houses ...
Known for the stunning views of its rugged coastline, with golden beaches and lush mountains, Rio de Janeiro attracts millions of tourists each year -- many for its world-famed Carnival celebrations.
Violence between gangs and with police periodically erupts beyond the favelas, forcing stores and roads in entire neighborhoods to shut down. Occasionally juvenile gangs ransack tourists on the beach in posh districts such as Ipanema or Leblon.
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China's 1-child policy now threatens crime wave
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Study cites 'real risk' from men unable to find partners
WORLDNETDAILY - April 10, 2009
A new study published by BMJ, which used to be known as the British Medical Journal, has documented a worsening problem on which WND has been reporting for 12 years: the domination of males in a Chinese society that encourages the abortion of unborn daughters.
The new report says males under the age of 20 outnumbered females by more than 32 million and warned, "China will see very high and steadily worsening sex ratios in the reproductive age group over the next two decades."
One of the authors, Therese Hesketh, told the Associated Press that translates into a huge threat of criminal activity.
"If you've got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes," said Hesketh, a lecturer at University College in London.
A commentary in the BMJ said the China policy of limiting families to one child "is one of the most controversial policies ever implemented."
"It has reduced the fertility rate and has helped raise living standards for most people in China, but it has been heavily criticized for violating human rights and having many negative social consequences, one of which is an excess number of male births," the commentary said.
Chinese families often use abortion - or actual infanticide - to eliminate daughters in favor of sons. Some estimates suggest there have been hundreds of millions of deaths because of the policy. ...
Besides the potential for additional crime, social problems are expected to peak because of the millions of men who ultimately will be unable to find a mate.
"Nothing can be done now to prevent this imminent generation of excess men," the report warned. ...
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Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys' Abductions
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Andrew Jacobs - April 4, 2009
SHENZHEN, China - The thieves often strike at dusk, when children are playing outside and their parents are distracted by exhaustion.
Deng Huidong lost her 9-month-old son in the blink of an eye as a man yanked him from the grip of his 7-year-old sister near the doorway of their home. The car did not even stop as a pair of arms reached out the window and grabbed the boy.
Sun Zuo, a gregarious 3 1/2-year-old, was lured off by someone with a slice of mango and a toy car, an abduction that was captured by police surveillance cameras.
Peng Gaofeng was busy with customers when a man snatched his 4-year-old son from the plaza in front of his shop as throngs of factory workers enjoyed a spring evening. "I turned away for a minute, and when I called out for him he was gone," Mr. Peng said.
These and thousands of other children stolen from the teeming industrial hubs of China's Pearl River Delta have never been recovered by their parents or by the police. But anecdotal evidence suggests the children do not travel far. Although some are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, most of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say.
The demand is especially strong in rural areas of south China, where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country's strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business.
Su Qingcai, a tea farmer from the mountainous coast of Fujian Province, explained why he spent $3,500 last year on a 5-year-old boy. "A girl is just not as good as a son," said Mr. Su, 38, who has a 14-year-old daughter but whose biological son died at 3 months. "It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you don't have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one."
The centuries-old tradition of cherishing boys - and a custom that dictates that a married woman moves in with her husband's family - is reinforced by a modern reality: Without a real social safety net in China, many parents fear they will be left to fend for themselves in old age.
The extent of the problem is a matter of dispute. The Chinese government insists there are fewer than 2,500 cases of human trafficking each year, a figure that includes both women and children. But advocates for abducted children say there may be hundreds of thousands. ...
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| Enslaved: Modern Day Slavery in India, Africa and the U.S. |
Modern face of slavery
They are lured by the promise of money and training, but end up as domestic workers who endure abuse and beatings at the hands of their masters.
THE INDEPENDENT, UK [APN / INM / O'Reilly] - By Andrew Buncombe - December 23, 2008
She came to Delhi dreaming of a new start, of escape from a life of poverty and hardship. Yet when she arrived, Sushma Kumari quickly realised she had been tricked.
Far from being trained in the skills of acupuncture, for two years she was forced to work as an unpaid domestic help in the home of the "doctor" supposed to be teaching her. She toiled from 5am to midnight, seven days a week. She was abused and mistreated. Almost certainly she was brought to Delhi by a professional trafficker; what is beyond doubt is that once she got here she lived the life of slave. ...
The story of Sushma is a journey to the dark side of the new India, away from the tales of soaring economic growth and gleaming fashion malls, of Western-style coffee-shops filled with a newly wealthy class. The two are surely connected; chief among the reasons for the growing demand for young, poor women from places like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and other desperately poor states to come to toil in India's growing metropolitan centres, is that a new generation of professional women entering the workforce no longer have the time or inclination for household chores. Human traffickers fill the gap. ...
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Sex slavery: Living the American nightmare
MSNBC [NBC Universal (General Electric Co.-Vivendi SA)/Microsoft] and TELEMUNDO - By Alex Johnson and Cesar Rodriguez - December 22, 2008
When FBI and immigration agents arrested a 28-year-old Guatemalan woman three months ago in Los Angeles, they announced that they had shut down one of the most elaborate sex trafficking rings in the country. It was also the family business.
The woman, Maribel Rodriguez Vasquez, was the sixth member of her family to be rounded up in the two-year multi-agency investigation. Vasquez, five of her relatives and three other Guatemalan nationals were charged with 50 counts, alleging that they lured at least a dozen young women - including five minors as young as 13 years old - to the United States with promises of good jobs, only to put them to work as prostitutes. ...
Vasquez - quickly dubbed the "L.A. Madam" - attracted attention because she had been featured on the fugitive-hunting television program "America's Most Wanted." But it was one of only a few such cases to be spotlighted by national media, contributing to the false impression that cases of immigrant sex trafficking are isolated incidents, law enforcement officials and advocates for immigrants say.
The reality is that human trafficking goes on in nearly every American city and town, said Lisette Arsuaga, director of development for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, a human rights organization in Los Angeles. ...
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How China has created a new slave empire in Africa
LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - By Peter Hitchens - September 28, 2008
... These poor, hopeless, angry people exist by grubbing for scraps of cobalt and copper ore in the filth and dust of abandoned copper mines in Congo, sinking perilous 80ft shafts by hand, washing their finds in cholera-infected streams full of human filth, then pushing enormous two-hundredweight loads uphill on ancient bicycles to the nearby town of Likasi where middlemen buy them to sell on, mainly to Chinese businessmen hungry for these vital metals. ...
Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines - the basic raw materials of modern life.
It is crude rapacity, but to Africans and many of their leaders it is better than the alternative, which is slow starvation. ...
China offers both rulers and the ruled in Africa the simple, squalid advantages of shameless exploitation.
For the governments, there are gargantuan loans, promises of new roads, railways, hospitals and schools - in return for giving Peking a free and tax-free run at Africa's rich resources of oil, minerals and metals.
For the people, there are these wretched leavings, which, miserable as they are, must be better than the near-starvation they otherwise face. ...
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| As Protesters Pause in Thailand, Their Grievances Against Elite Simmer |
 NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Thomas Fuller - April 14, 2009
BANGKOK -- Protest leaders called off a demonstration on Tuesday when their supporters were surrounded by government troops. After weeks of blockading the prime minister's office and two days of rioting in which two people were killed and more than 100 were injured, the protesters streamed home peacefully, some in tears, with government officials offering conciliatory words. ...
The red shirts, as the protesters are known, draw their strength from the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand. Many are farmers and small-businessmen who portray themselves as battling an entrenched, unelected but influential elite, notably the judiciary, the military and the powerful advisers of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
A central grievance of the red shirts is that the will of the electorate has been repeatedly thwarted: three prime ministers since 2006 have been forced from office - one in a military coup in 2006 and two removed by the courts in highly politicized trials. ...
Many of the red shirts are followers of Thaksin Shinawatra, the charismatic prime minister ousted in the 2006 coup who is seen by the poor as their champion and by the elite as a threat. Convicted last year of abuse of power and facing other charges in Thailand, he now lives in exile. ...
Many protesters say they do not trust the Thai news media, which they believe are siding with the government. Protesters from the provinces also resent being looked down on as people with funny dialects.
They draw a contrast between the light touch used by security forces last year against royalist, anti-Thaksin protesters and the tactics used by thousands of troops who forcibly dislodged them from Bangkok's streets this week. The royalists, known as the yellow shirts, were demonstrating against two consecutive pro-Thaksin prime ministers who were dismissed by the courts.
The yellow shirts brought the country to its knees last year by blockading Bangkok's two commercial airports for a week, stranding hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors. They surrounded the Parliament, then controlled by a party allied with Mr. Thaksin, and trapped legislators inside. They received moral support from Queen Sirikit, who in October attended the funeral of a royalist who was killed during clashes with the police.
"This country has a double standard, has no justice and will never be peaceful," read a comment on pantip.com, an Internet chat site with a popular political section. "There will be civil war because people see that injustice has become an acceptable thing." ...
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From Sandy Strip of Sri Lanka, Tales of Suffering as War Traps Thousands
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Thomas Fuller - April 25, 2009
Now, as the country's long-running civil war appears to be reaching its climax, a picture of desperation is emerging from the sliver of territory between a lagoon and the sea where rebels from the ethnic Tamil minority are making their last stand.
Stories of suffering have streamed out of the area along with the tens of thousands of civilians who were able to break through the front lines last week and straggle into overwhelmed hospitals and refugee camps. ...
Civilians have been trying for weeks and sometimes months to leave the ever-shrinking area of fighting between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels in the north, but the rebels have been holding them as human shields, building earthen barriers that make it harder not only for soldiers to get in but also for civilians to get out, according to aid agencies and the Sri Lankan military. The rebels have also forced some civilians to take up arms, the United Nations says. The government, meanwhile, has ignored appeals from the United Nations, India, the United States and other nations for a cease-fire until all the civilians are out of the combat zone. ...
"Even in ordinary times a population of 100,000 would be a huge burden on the health system," said Gordon Weiss, the United Nations spokesman in Colombo. "But these are people who have had three months with very little food, they've traveled across mine fields and endured months of shelling and small-arms fire. It's no surprise that the hospitals are overwhelmed."
"There are kids here who have had amputations, their mother and father are gone - their whole family is missing," he said. "Yet they can still smile. I'm amazed at their resilience."
On Saturday, the Tigers said that tens of thousands of civilians faced "imminent" starvation, according to a Web site that serves as their voice, Tamilnet. ...
Read Full Report
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| South Africa's next president: He has four wives and he faced 783 counts of corruption |
LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - By Peter Hitchens - March 31, 2009
Imagine how you would react if Gordon Brown opened and closed his election rallies by bursting into a song called Bring Me My Machine Gun, swaying and jigging to the hypnotic chorus of this menacing ditty.
And how would you feel if the Prime Minister were alleged to be taking campaign money from Colonel Gaddafi; faced 783 counts of fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and corruption which somehow never came to court; and had been acquitted of rape while his fearsome supporters mobbed the courthouse?
Then ponder how you would despair if, despite all these things, Mr Brown's party was certain to win the election whatever he did or said.
If you can picture all this happening here, then you have an inkling of the horrible process South Africa is now going through. Except it is much, much worse.
This fast-approaching catastrophe is a source of shame and apprehension to millions of honest people, white and black, in South Africa itself.
It is also a tragedy for Africa as a whole, a continent hungry for any reason to hope. And it is grave news for the civilised world, which needs no more failed states.
Yet I can promise you I will be accused of alarmism and pessimism for saying so, and quite possibly of 'racism' too.
Why? All the soppy admirers of Nelson Mandela - especially the BBC - gave the new South Africa a free pass when apartheid ended 15 years ago.
They wanted to believe this complicated and important nation had become a sort of heaven on Earth where all tears were dried and all problems solved. ...
Once, South Africa dominated the nightly news for weeks on end. Now the liberal media barely mention it. Why not? Because post-apartheid South Africa is a failure.
You don't hear about the terrifying crime. You don't hear about the pestilence of corruption, or the absurd purchase of needless submarines and aircraft for a country with no serious enemies except its own elite.
There is a little about AIDS, but nothing like as much as there should be, given the acres of graves that commemorate the government's moronic policies, of denial and folk remedies (including beetroot).
Violent xenophobic rage against uncontrolled mass immigration was played down both in South Africa and abroad because it did not fit the smiley picture beloved by the Mandela worshippers. And little is said about the unstoppable spread of shanty towns, far outstripping state attempts to build proper houses for the poor.
Electricity blackouts - the invariable sign of a country on the slide - are now frequent. The ill-run nuclear power station inherited from the apartheid regime's atom bomb programme is beginning to judder and fail, raising fears of an African Chernobyl.
Then there are the overstretched water supply, the railway system fraying at the edges and the unguarded borders open to migrants and refugees from every destitute nation in Africa.
It is largely thanks to these new arrivals that wretched, instant slums sprout right up to the edge of Cape Town's slick new airport, currently being expensively modernised ready for the World Cup next year during which Mandela groupies will doubtless once again swoon about the 'success' of the Rainbow Nation.
Of course much of tourist South Africa still looks like the American West Coast: smooth six-lane highways, shopping malls, big houses in shady gardens, all tended by cheap black servants.
But close to the prettiness is fear and apprehension. Even in the lovely Cape wine country, squatter camps have erupted on the outskirts of towns where chefs drizzle olive oil on to fancy salads less than a mile from open sewers and gang wars among corrugated iron shacks.
Here is another world, much bigger than the tourist paradise, and truly, cruelly poor.
It is also increasingly hostile to the soft enclaves where the new rich and the holidaymakers are apparently oblivious of the filth, hunger, alcoholic stupor, drug-taking and wretchedness which lie just the other side of every hill.
Like ice and fire, these two societies cannot coexist forever, and when one is 40 million strong and the other one tenth of that, there is little doubt which will win. The only question is how and when the dreamtime will end.
In the coming weeks, South Africa seems to me to be taking several definite steps towards its cold, shocking awakening - as a full member of the Third World.
The man who will lead it there is called Jacob Zuma. Remember the name. You are going to hear a lot more of it.
Zuma is wholly African. He has at least four wives and 18 children. He has for years avoided standing trial on fraud and corruption charges. Nobody seriously believes he ever will: his approaching election is already spreading fear in South Africa's legal establishment.
Mr Zuma joined the Communist Party in 1962 (he only left a few years ago), and has a dark and inadequately examined past as a much-feared intelligence chief in the ANC's ruthless armed wing, Spear of the Nation. He underwent 'military training' in the old Soviet Union in 1978, when the KGB was very much in charge of such things.
On April 22 he will become President of one of the world's most important countries.
Comrade Zuma, as his supporters know him, certainly is not dull. And South Africa will not be dull either when he takes over.
Many fear it will rapidly become a lawless kleptocracy when he comes to power, which he will do after a hopelessly one-sided and rather crooked election. ...
Read Full Report |
Uranium: Battle in a Poor Land for Riches Beneath the Soil
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Lydia Polgreen - December 14, 2008
AIR MOUNTAINS, Niger - Until last year, the only trigger Amoumoun Halil had pulled was the one on his livestock-vaccination gun. This spring, a battered Kalashnikov rifle rested uneasily on his shoulder. When he donned his stiff fatigues, his lopsided gait and smiling eyes stood out among his hard-faced guerrilla brethren.
Mr. Halil, a 40-year-old veterinary engineer, was a reluctant soldier in a rebellion that had broken out over an improbable - and as yet unrealized - bonanza in one of the world's poorest countries.
A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.
It is a new front of an old war to control the vast wealth locked beneath African soil. Niger's northern desert caps one of the world's largest deposits of uranium, and demand for it has surged as global warming has increased interest in nuclear power. Growing economies like China and India are scouring the globe for the crumbly ore known as yellowcake. A French mining company is building the world's largest uranium mine in northern Niger, and a Chinese state company is building another mine nearby.
Uranium could infuse Niger with enough cash to catapult it out of the kind of poverty that causes one in five Niger children to die before turning 5. ...
Read Full Report
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| Congo's Riches, Looted by Renegade Troops |
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Lydia Polgreen - November 15, 2008
BISIE, Congo - Deep in the forest, high on a ridge stripped bare of trees and vines, the colonel sat atop his mountain of ore. In track pants and a T-shirt, he needed no uniform to prove he was a soldier, no epaulets to reveal his rank. Everyone here knows that Col. Samy Matumo, commander of a renegade brigade of army troops that controls this mineral-rich territory, is the master of every hilltop as far as the eye can see. ...
On paper, the exploration rights to this mine belong to a consortium of British and South African investors who say they will turn this perilous and exploitative operation into a safe, modern beacon of prosperity for Congo. But in practice, the consortium's workers cannot even set foot on the mountain. Like a mafia, Colonel Matumo and his men extort, tax and appropriate at will, draining this vast operation, worth as much as $80 million a year.
The exploitation of this mountain is emblematic of the failure to right this sprawling African nation after many years of tyranny and war, and of the deadly role the country's immense natural wealth has played in its misery. ...
The ore these fighters control is central to the chaos that plagues Congo, helping to perpetuate a conflict in which as many as five million people have died since the mid-1990s, mostly from hunger and disease. In the latest chapter, fighting between government troops and a renegade general named Laurent Nkunda has forced hundreds of thousands of civilians here in eastern Congo to flee and pushed the nation to the brink of a new regional war.
The proceeds of mines like this one, along with the illegal tributes collected on roads and border crossings controlled by rebel groups, militias and government soldiers, help bankroll virtually every armed group in the region. ...
This is Africa's resource curse: The wealth is unearthed by the poor, controlled by the strong, then sold to a world largely oblivious of its origins. ...
Read Full Report
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| Hate incidents in U.S. surge |
Election seen as factor behind revival of Klan
CHICAGO TRIBUNE [Tribune Company] - By Howard Witt - November 23, 2008
BOGALUSA, La.-Barely three weeks after Americans elected their first black president amid a wave of interracial good feeling, a spasm of noose hangings, racist graffiti, vandalism and death threats is convulsing dozens of towns across the country as white extremists lash out at the new political order.
More than 200 hate-related incidents, including cross-burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama, have been reported so far, according to law-enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. Racist Web sites are boasting that their servers are crashing under the weight of exponential increases in page views.
Even more ominously, America's most potent symbol of racial hatred-the Ku Klux Klan-has begun to reassert itself, emerging from decades of disorganization and obscurity in a spate of recent violence. ...
Read Full Report
Also:
REVERSE RACISM: Do as we say, not as we do
Racism of the Congressional Black CaucusWORLDNETDAILY - January 26, 2009At least three times racism has raised its head in the new administration of President Obama, and now his chief spokesman has cited "membership policies" as an explanation for the all-whites-are-banned practice of the Congressional Black Caucus. ... Read Full Report | |
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