Looks like it's gonna be hours not days before Greece defaults. Then it gonna be goodby to the whole sorry saga.
Less than half of Greece's international creditors had agreed to a vital 206bn (£172bn) bond swap on Wednesday night, leaving Athens dangerously exposed to default. The Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC joined 30 European banks and institutions in declaring their acceptance of the deal - but the tally was still far short of the 95pc needed to avoid being officially declared in default.
The International Institute of Finance (IIF), the body that has negotiated with the Greek government on behalf of bondholders, put out several announcements on Wednesday, counting the proportion of the vote as it inched up. The latest statement said bondholders "amounting in aggregate to 84bn, or 40.8pc of the 206bn total eligible debt" would support the deal.
The regular updates coincided with provocative comments from Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said he had discussed with Greece's finance minister Evangelos Venizelos whether it would be better for the country to leave the euro.
Speaking at the European University Institute in Italy, Mr Schaeuble said he had discussed the issue "very openly" with Mr Venizelos.
"Maybe you could say it was the wrong decision for Greece to join the common European currency," Mr Schaeuble said. "Greece has failed for a long time to deliver what is needed to be in a common currency." Only the last couple thousand of years... Continued on Page 47
Geert Wilders, who leads the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) in Holland, said last week he believes Jordan should be renamed Palestine.
Oh that's going to get some Hashemite turbans to unwind...
The Jordanian government responded by saying Wilders' speech was reminiscent of the Israeli right wing.
That may in fact be a true statement...
"Jordan is Palestine," said Wilders, who heads the third-largest party in Holland. "Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland."
Wilders added that Israel deserved a special status in the Dutch government because it was fighting for Jerusalem in its name.
"If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next. Thus, Jerusalem is the main front protecting the West. It is not a conflict over territory but rather an ideological battle, between the mentality of the liberated West and the ideology of Islamic barbarism," he said.
"There has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946, and it is the kingdom of Jordan." Wilders also called on the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.
The Saudi Al-Watan carried Jordan's response to Wilders' speech. The kingdom's embassy in Hague was fearful outraged, and said the Dutch ambassador would soon be summoned to explain.
"It's called 'free speech', your Enormity, which is why you don't understand his comments."
Jordan's minister for media affairs and communications, Nabil Al Sharif, asked for clarifications. He described Wilders' declaration as "an echo of the voice of the Israeli Right" and "crows' screams".
"Jordan is an independent and secure country which supports the Palestinian issue, and these imaginings of finding them an alternate homeland are nothing but the delusions of a few people," he said.
The PVV nearly tripled its power in the last election, going from nine parliament seats to 24. The right-wing party, which has called for a ban on minarets and Muslim scarves, has been holding so far unsuccessful negotiations with the liberal Right.
Continued on Page 47
Czech public television is reporting that police have arrested an Iranian national suspected of trying to buy weapons with the goal of transporting them to Iran.
The broadcaster, which did not name its sources, says the man was trying to buy 500 M4 rifles in the Czech capital. It says exports of such weapons to Iran are banned under an international embargo.
Continued on Page 47
#1
Our Country Team, ie, defence attaché and LEGAT fellows in Prague not tuned it? Not interested in a possible.... "Fast and Furious" style dealer sample shipment tracking effort?
Details a bit sparse, but sounds like a missed intelligence exploitation opportunity.
Because nothing says pushing back against Islamist colonizers like shoving out the Jews.
Francois Fillon suggests Muslims, Jews give up ritual slaughter as President Sarkozy steps up their efforts to woo far-right voters
France's prime minister urged Muslims and Jews to consider scrapping their halal and kosher slaughter laws on Monday as President Nicolas Sarkozy and his allies stepped up their efforts to woo far-right voters.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon made the suggestion after Sarkozy called at the weekend for butchers to clearly label meat slaughtered according to religious laws and his allies warned immigrants might impose halal meat on French schoolchildren.
Fillon and other conservative leaders linked this tough stand on ritually prepared meat to issues such as immigration and French identity that the far-right National Front uses to tap into resentment against Europe's largest Muslim minority.
"Religions should think about keeping traditions that don't have much in common with today's state of science, technology and health problems," Fillon told Europe 1 radio while discussing the two-round presidential election ending May 6.
The "ancestral traditions" of ritual slaughter were justified for hygienic reasons in the past but were now outdated, he said. "We live in a modern society."
Mohammad Moussaoui, head of France's Muslim Council, said ritual slaughter was no more painful than modern methods and labelling meat as being prepared "without stunning" would feed resentment against the two minority religions using it.
"It will stigmatize Muslims and Jews as people who don't respect the interests of animals," he said. "That will raise tensions in society."
National Front leader Martine Le Pen launched the debate last month saying abattoirs around Paris only slaughtered meat the Muslim way. It turned out they mostly supplied local Muslim butchers and most meat sold in Paris came from further away.
The issue caught hold and Sarkozy's campaign countered with ever tougher statements on immigration and ringing defenses of French civilization and secularism - code words implying some of the five million Muslims here did not share these values.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant warned last week that giving immigrants the right to vote in municipal elections, as the Socialist want, would lead to Muslims forming majorities on local councils and imposing halal meat in school canteens.
"This is quite possible, given the proportion of foreigners in some areas," he said when challenged on RTL radio on Monday.
Fillon seconded this view but Sarkozy campaign spokeswoman Natalie Kosciusko-Morizet declined to support it.
Sarkozy's former Justice Minister Rachida Dati, a Muslim, told the daily Le Figaro such comments "mix up French Muslims and foreigners. French Muslims are citizens like any other."
Hollande's spokesman Pierre Moscovici said Sarkozy "is branding French Muslims in a sly way and echoing the National Front's issues."
The debate has also highlighted little-known aspects of the meat industry in France, where producers are mostly opposed to efforts by consumer groups to divulge their slaughter methods.
Halal and kosher slaughter demand that cattle are conscious before their throats are slit and blood drained. Non-religious butchers stun the animal first, saying this lessens pain.
Abattoir operators say killing cattle by both methods in the same slaughterhouse is too costly, so some use only the halal method because they can sell the meat to both Muslim butchers and supermarket chains for the general public.
Clearly labelling meat as "stunned" or "not stunned" would reveal how much religiously prepared food is being sold.
"Every time shoppers go to the meat counter, they'll see meat described as 'not stunned'," Moussaoui said. "That will look as if there was cruelty towards these animals."
If shoppers shun this meat, kosher beef could become very expensive because butchers for the Jewish minority -- at 600,000 the largest in Europe -- offset some of their costs by selling the expensive hind cuts of beef to non-kosher distributors.
Kashrut, or Jewish dietary laws, bans meat that touches the sciatic nerve along the back, buttocks and thighs of mammals. If kosher butchers cannot sell sirloin and filet mignon steaks to non-kosher shops, they will lose a key part of their business.
Continued on Page 47
#1
We're going to see agitation for this in the United States. After all, San Francisco already tried to ban the B'rit Milah, and the Federal Government has claimed the power to force religious institutions and religious people to act against their religions' doctrines.
First the Catholics, then the Jews.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/07/2012 6:35 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The situation is far worse than it sounds because the US has long recognized a whole bunch of Jewish religious-legal practices, which it was able to do because they were not offensive or oppressive as far as the rest of society is concerned.
This includes things such as recognizing Jewish law courts just for Jews; special what could be called "Sabbath zones" marked by publicly placed boundaries, in which Jews could perform *some* mild labor during their Sabbath (by religious exemption), and many other courtesies.
And yet today, even within Judaism there is a huge brawl by animal-rights and vegan Jews against religious animal slaughter.
Yet all of this is contrasted with Muslim and other religious practices, such as Santeria and Voodoo, which other Americans find deeply offensive.
They argue in court that religions have to be treated the same, even if the practices of one religion are deeply offensive to the public. "Either we can be offensive, or the Jews can't have any special exemptions."
I remember legal disputes over Eruvim, those Sabbath zones you mentioned. Thanks for reminding me.
For the uninitiated, the Talmudic rules about how far one may travel and how much one can carry on the Sabbath had always been different for towns versus walled cities. An Eruv is an ancient legal fiction where the authorities can encircle a populated area with a cord, and do a ritual wherever the cord has to be broken to turn that street into a 'gate', to turn that area into the religious equivalent of a walled city.
Shall we rework Martin Niemöller's quotation?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/07/2012 8:35 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Hebrew National hot dogs (Costco) are the only ones I buy anymore. Superior
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/07/2012 17:04 Comments ||
Top||
#5
We're going to see agitation for this in the United States
Laws against kosher slaughter have passed in quite a few Western European countries, Eric. Now they are going for laws banning the import of kosher meat slaughtered elsewhere.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
