Blogging for a free world

Kosovo’s Primer Minister, Hashim Thaçi, has underlined that the conference of donors has been “an extraordinary success” and that it will signal a new chapter in the history of Kosovo, which self-proclaimed its independence from Serbia last February. The compromised quantity goes above the objective of €1,000 millions stablished by the European Commission, which has announced a donation of €500 millions for Kosovo’s development.

The Donors’ Conference has taken place in Brussels and representatives from United Nations, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have met there. According to the European Commission, the target of this amount of money is to create the appropriate conditions that will facilitate the economic growth, the reduction of unemployment and the rise in foreign investment.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, has told the international representatives that his country wants to be a member of IMF and WB, even though Kosovo’s economy needs a “great help” from international community.

Will they agree to the payment so easily if the majority of the citizens of this “self-proclaimed new state” wouldn’t be Muslim?

(+) Sheik Yermami has more on the subject.

Technorati Tags: Kosovo, Serbia, Hashim+Thaçi, European+Commission, Conference+of+Donors+for+Kosovo

It happens less than a week after another seven soldiers from the UN peacekeeping force were killed, From CNN:

The ambassador said Friday that the International Criminal Court has indicated to Sudanese officials that al-Bashir may be charged over the five-year campaign of violence in the country’s Darfur region. If the warrant is issued by Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo it would make al-Bashir the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for genocide.

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador Mahmoud Mohamad spoke angrily as speculation swirled about an impending arrest warrant. “All options are open for us. All reactions are open,” he told CNN outside the Security Council. Moreno-Ocampo, he said, is “playing with fire.”

The prosecutor said in a progress report last month to the Security Council that Sudan’s “whole state apparatus” has been mobilized “to plan, commit, and cover up crimes” in Darfur.

As a result Sudan is seeking an Arab League’s meeting to speak about this: Sudan has said any such move could undermine the Darfur peace process. Two senior government officials told Reuters Sudan would likely seek Chinese, Russian and African support at the United Nations to help block any warrant for Bashir.

It will happen the same as with Mugabe, because China is actually violating the UN embargo in Darfur:

The Panorama TV programme tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in 2005. The BBC was also told that China was training fighter pilots who fly Chinese A5 Fantan fighter jets in Darfur. China’s government has declined to comment on the BBC’s findings, which contravene a UN arms embargo on Darfur.

(…) The UN started looking for these lorries in Darfur three years ago, suspecting they had been sent there, but never found them. “We had no specific access to Sudanese government army stores, we were not allowed to take down factory codes or model numbers or registrations etc to verify these kinds of things,” said EJ Hogendoorn, a member of the UN panel of experts that was involved in trying to locate the lorries.

Technorati Tags: International+Criminal+Court, Sudan, al-Bashir, Mahmoud+Mohamad, UN, Chief+prosecutor+Luis+Moreno-Ocampo, Darfur

ISLAMABAD: About 3,000 Islamist women gathered at the radical Lal Masjid in the capital on Wednesday and vowed to raise their children for jihad, days after a suicide bomber killed 19 people after a similar rally on July 6. Chanting slogans of “jihad is our way”, burqa-clad women, some carrying babies, listened to fiery speeches from the daughter of the mosque’s jailed cleric on the eve of the anniversary of a raid on the complex in which more than 100 people died. “Our mujahideen laid down their lives for the enforcement of the Islamic system in Pakistan. We are left behind to carry forward their mission,” the daughter of cleric Abdul Aziz told the tightly guarded rally in the mosque compound. Several thousand men had attended a similar rally on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the commando raid that ended a weeklong siege that had begun when gunmen from the mosque clashed with police.

Video of the event:

Peaceful and quiet.

This happened three days after after a suicide bomber killed 18 people after a similar rally.

Technorati Tags: Lal+Masjid, Red+Mosque, Pakistan, Islamabad, burqa, Islamic+law, Sharia+Law

I wrote about the Ayatollahs’ solution to produce terrible fear among all “the infidels” about their missile test. Well, there are very funny people in the blogosphere who have made up a contest laughing about the photoshopped images of Iranian missile test:

Technorati Tags: Iran, Shahab-3, missile+testing, nuclear+weapons, Ahmadinejad, Mullahcracy

From The Economist:

Already there is substance in the haze. The Mediterranean’s southern and eastern coasts are pulling in huge quantities of foreign direct investment, on a scale second only to China among emerging economies (see chart 1). The wave started about five years ago (…).

This is not the story usually told about the Mediterranean’s poorer coasts. The MEDA ten (a group of southern and eastern economies) have an average income per head of only $6,200, putting them roughly where western Europe was in 1950 and Romania was in 1975. Even though the gap in GDP per head has been closing, thanks to falling fertility rates as well as relatively faster economic growth, at today’s pace it would take almost 160 years for the MEDA ten to catch up with the European Union average. Unemployment is probably between 20% and 30%, even though official figures say it is around 12%.

This last figure helps to explain why Europeans have tended to see the other side of the sea as more of a threat than an opportunity: a source of immigrants, often young and illegal, mainly Muslim and frequently unwelcome. In Italy, Spain and tiny Malta, illegal arrivals are of especial concern. Another reason is nervousness about the region’s political health. Work your way around the map below and you will find few true democracies and much instability, actual or potential.

Yet commerce is scarcely a novelty in the Mediterranean. Centuries ago, the Middle Sea was a hub of world trade: to the Romans, it became mare nostrum—“our sea”—surrounded by the empire. Now the inflow of foreign direct investment may be reversing a long relative decline in the fortunes of the southern and eastern shores. The MEDA economies have managed to step up their growth rates to 4.4% since the turn of the century. A summit to be held in Paris this weekend may give the Mediterranean’s revival a further push.

(…) Twenty years ago, Europe’s car industry stopped building new factories in low-wage Spain and Portugal, and turned to eastern Europe, including Turkey. The step across the Med, to a country where wages are one-fifth of what they are on the northern shore, is of great significance. (…) Now the capital is moving to the labour: the mountain is moving to Muhammad, if you will.

Related readings: Mediterranean, EU nations to boost ties with grand new union.

Technorati Tags: Mediterranean+Union, Europe, Morocco, Maghreb, China, Tanger+Med,

That’s right: Bolivarian revolution tights itself with Islamist revolution, while at the same time they are going after the Jews and the Catholic Church. Truly interesting.

Technorati Tags: anti-semitism, Venezuela, Catholicphobia, religious+persecution, Bolivarian+revolution, Catholic+Church, Hugo+Chávez, Christianophobia, Hizbullah, Islamism, Islamist+revolution

Counterterrorism Blog posts a summary of it:

According to Mr. Nawaz, these elements are not representative of previous interpretations of Islam nor of current Islamic thought held by the vast majority of Muslims:

1. Islam is treated as a political ideology rather than as a religion. There is an “Islamic Solution” to everything.
2. Sharia law must be codified into state law.
3. The ummah has a political identity, not just a religious one, and there is no allegience to any other body or group, including non-Muslims.
4. Muslims must strive to create an expansionist state, the caliphate.

Mr. Nawaz analogized between these elements and the elements of Communist ideology as proposed and developed by and through the leaders of the Sovet Union. He traced the roots of these elements, in part, to membership in the Marxist-oriented Baath Party of the 1920s by the founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani.

Mr. Nawaz also described three types of Islamists:
1. Political Islamists, nonviolent “5th columnists” who work behind the scenes;
2. Revolutionary Islamists, such as Hizbut, which seek to overthrow secular Arab regimes but are peaceful in the West;
3. Militant Islamists, such as Al Qaeda, who use armed struggle at all points.

Technorati Tags: Hibz+ut-Tahrir, Nawaz, Islamism+has+elements+of+Communist+ideology, Baath+Party, Sheikh+Taqiuddin+an-Nabhani, US+Senate+Committe+on+Homeland+Security+and+Governmental+Affairs.

From The Augean Stables:

Manji explained that in Middle Eastern tribal traditions, women are the carriers of culture. Therefore, their lives and bodies do not belong to them, but to their family, tribe, or nation. If she acts in such a way that brings disrepute or dishonor upon herself, she is actually defaming her nation. As such, her punishment must be serious enough for the crime of dishonoring the nation.

Also read the comments: they are worth it.

Related posts:

Honor killing in Pakistan: the women was suspected of having a bad character.

Georgia’s honor killer: “I have done nothing wrong”. “The family was very stressed”. Honor killing in Georgia.

Two brothers charged with honor killings.

Technorati Tags: Irshad+Manji, Honor+Killings, Middle+East, Islam, Islamism

La Voz Digital.es:

According to a communiqué issued by the Police, investigations show that the deeds took place in the night  of last June 28’s during the local holidays in Barañáin, when a group of youths were with the victim, “just taking advantage of the somewhat drunk state of the victim”, carried her to an isolated place near Cendea de Zizur st., where several raped her.

After being cared in the local hospital and informed about her rights as the victim, the girl stated she had been raped. The police then began the investigations, who had led to the authors. The detained are 23-year-old MFCC who had already been detained twice and 18-year-old DAVR, both of them from Ecuador, and other 6 boys, minors, coming from Ecuador (2), Colombia (2), Bolivia (1) and Russia (1).

Does this mean ALL immigrants in Spain are rapists? No, it just means that, if it’s proved they actually raped this girl, they are rapists. The most worrying thing for me is that 6 out of 8 were actually minors.

Meanwhile in Italy, the public opinion is horrified with the photo of the murdered 23-year-old Italian, Federica Squarisse, being kissed some hours before the murder by Uruguayan Víctor Díaz, nicknamed “The Fat, the main suspect of her murder. The murder took place in Lloret de Mar (Tarragona, Spain).

Technorati Tags: rape, rape+victims, Spain, Navarra,

National Terror Alert:

The government will be warned later this year of the significant threat posed to British security by biological weapons.

A warning of the profound security implications of the worldwide biotechnology revolution is expected to be a key tenet of a major counterterrorism report out later this year.

The Institute for Public Policy Research’s (IPPR) national security commission, which is co-chaired by Lord Ashdown and Lord Robertson, is not due to reveal its initial findings until its interim report in October.

But the commission’s deputy chair Ian Kearns, deputy director at the IPPR, spoke to inthenews.co.uk to outline what the commission was expecting to offer advice on.

He said the potential to use disease as a weapon and advances in biotechnology were major worries.

“We need to be resilient to biological terrorism and to the potential use of biological weapons,” he told inthenews.co.uk.

So what? Are the public being prepared for that possibility? Or are they just telling this because it is a good title for a press conference?

Technorati Tags: UK, biological+weapons, biotechnology, terrorism, Institute+for+Public+Policy+Research, Ian+Kearns, biological+terrorism

Yesterday I posted about Islamist Global War on Christianity.Today JW reports about the situation of Christians in Islamic countries:

Plight of Christians in Iraq continues to worsen: After explaining the articles of Iraqi Constitution which refer to Sharia Law, it says that “Iraqi Christians have continued to find themselves in the cross hairs of faith-inspired violence. The worst episodes have occurred in regions with diverse ethnic and religious groups, such as Baghdad and Mosul, where the majority of Iraq’s Christians live. The State Department reported last year that Muslim extremists “warned Christians living in Baghdad’s Dora district to convert, leave or be killed.“

Peshawar’s Christians under threat from Taliban encroachment:  According to the Voice of the Martyrs, Taliban militants seized the Christians. Last week as they were in prayer at a child dedication service. the service was held in a former Madrassa Islamic school. Some of the Christians were beaten. Cell phones, money and personal possessions were stolen from them. The Taliban abductors demanded that the group’s pastor convert to Islam. He refused.

Iran: persecuting Christians: Iranian authorities have detained two converts to Christianity in the southern city of Shiraz for eight weeks on suspicion of “apostasy,” or leaving Islam. In Iran, apostasy is a crime that can be punishable by death. Mahmood Matin, 52, and Arash Bandari, 44, remain imprisoned in a secret police detention center (…) A draft penal code under discussion in Iran’s parliament this month may make the death penalty obligatory for those who leave Islam or use the Internet to encourage others to do so.

Technorati Tags: Sharia+Law, Iraqi+Christians, Pakistani+Talibans, Christians+in+Iraq, Christians+in+Pakistan, Christians+in+Iran, religious+persecution, persecuted+Church

Blazing Cat Fur:

“Liberal Muslims are not only silenced by literalist Muslims, but also by those non-Muslims who have developed the hollow pattern of being ‘fair’ and ‘tolerant’ to every religion. The existence of ‘political fairness’ among large circles of non-Muslim activists is actually a much bigger obstacle than extremist Muslims because those non-Muslim activists dominate the media outlets across the world and often ignore genuinely liberal Muslim voices.”

Technorati Tags: multiculturalism, liberal+muslims, literalist+Muslims, non-Muslims