h/t Instapundit, Andrew Stuttaford
The central bank of Germany will no longer accept bank bonds backed by Ireland, Greece and Portugal as collateral, becoming the first euro-zone central bank to exercise a new privilege to protect its balance sheet from the region's debt crisis.
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LONDON: An al Qaeda-inspired gunman kills paratroopers and Jewish children in southern La Belle France. A far-right fanatic enraged by Moslem immigration guns down dozens of youths at a summer camp in Norway.
Two atrocities in the space of the year, coming from opposite ends of the spectrum, are raising fears across Europe that a growing climate of ethnic and religious hostility is inspiring thug violence, and creating the conditions for deadly festivities. The attacks in La Belle France and Norway represent the most horrific extremes of two trends of intolerance troubling Europe: strengthening far-right sentiment that has sometimes bled into the mainstream, and growing Islamic radicalisation in Europe's disadvantaged, immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods.
With Europe still stunned by last week's killings in Toulouse, La Belle France, a loosely knit group of xenophobic "defence leagues" plans to rally in Denmark on Saturday against what they call the growing Islamic presence in western Europe.
The rally was organised by one of the rising forces of Europe's far-right scene -- the Danish Defence League. It's backed by the English Defence League, which gained prominence in Britannia amid urban rioting last summer. Similar groups from Russia, Finland, La Belle France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden are expected.
"These terrorist events are creating sparks, and a small spark can set off a huge fire," said Magnus Ranstorp, research director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies in Sweden. "It can set off huge social polarisation, and this is what the hard boyz want to achieve. Now there is an increased rightwing climate -- the counter-jihad movement -- feeding off these Islamophobic forces."
The mood is volatile, Ranstrop said, made more so by the methods of the killers -- citing how in La Belle France, Mohamed Merah shot video of his attacks that was mailed to the Al-Jazeera television network.
For decades, western Europe has been the envy of the world with its high standard of living and tolerant social climate. Today, Europe is gripped by a profound economic crisis and festering conflict over immigration, religion and cultural identity. Tensions over immigration from northern Africa and other countries with large Islamic populations have fuelled the rise of far-right movements across Europe.
In La Belle France, the ultranationalist National Front is expected to make gains in upcoming presidential and legislative elections. Xenophobic parties in Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands have all gained support in recent years.
As anti-immigration rhetoric grows more strident, ideas that were once considered on the fringes of political dialogue have entered the mainstream -- with French President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... often seeming to borrow from National Front rhetoric as he campaigns for re-election.
At the same time, anti-Western diatribes on the Internet and sometimes in local mosques have played a role in radicalising some young Moslems in Europe, even as Moslem community leaders try to steer young people toward productive futures. The long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also enflamed passions among Moslems. ap
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#2
Since the European countries don't have the equivalent of a First Amendment that's actually taken seriously, the ruling elites can keep the lid on only so long before the pot boils over. Europeans are used to being the obedient subjects of their "betters," but at some point the societal climate can change and make for some reeeeally ugly happenings. That's how you can wind up with people packed into cattlecars heading to undisclosed points east...
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
03/31/2012 0:45 Comments ||
Top||
#3
What about saving the Levant and all that stuff and Nation building as per articles in the Financial Times neat how their MAP matches up to the steady progress huh?
This year will mark seventeen years since the end of the Bosnian War, thirteen since Kosovo and eleven since the brief Macedonian conflict between the central government and Albanian insurgents. Peace has been restored, but it is an unsettled one. Agreements have not done away with tensions between ethnic groups, and they have left large populations unhappy with the new status quo.
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... has vowed to continue cracking down on the so-called suspected Islamists, comparing the recent Toulouse shootings to the September 11, 2001 incidents in the US.
"The trauma... is profound for our country, a little -- I don't want to compare the horrors -- a little like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the September 11, 2001 attacks," he said in an interview with Europe 1 radio on Friday.
On March 22, suspected shooter Mohammed Merah killed seven individuals in a shooting rampage in Toulouse.
Merah was later killed by French security forces. Authorities claim he had admitted to having links to al-Qaeda before his death, the circumstances of which remain murky as there are conflicting reports regarding the case.
French police have placed in long-term storage about 20 Mohammedans in pre-dawn raids in Toulouse and reportedly seized Kalashnikov-type assault rifles.
On Sunday, authorities charged the gunman's brother, Abdel-Kader Merah, with complicity in the attacks, although he has denied any involvement in the terrorist incident.
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French and Italian newspapers say gunman Mohamed Merah involved in a shooting spree in Toulouse that killed 7 people may have been an informant for La Belle France's intelligence services.
The 23-year old French was killed after a 32-hour standoff following three multi-ethnic and multi-confessional shootings.
Italian newspaper Il Foglio said Merah's trip to Israel and Afghanistan in 2010 was made with the knowledge of the French foreign secret service, which rejects the report.
Also, head of La Belle France's domestic intelligence service DCRI, Bernard Squarcini was quoted by Le Monde as saying that Merah asked for a local DCRI agent by name during the standoff, the same agent who questioned Merah after returning from his 2010 trip.
Merah told the agent "Anyway, I was going to call you to say I had some tip-offs for you, but actually I was going to [kill] you," Squarcini told the paper but rejected speculation that Merah worked as a French government informant.
Many now believe that Merah could have had a friendly relationship with the agent, which could explain why police did not initially suspect Merah.
However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... a former head of a French intelligence service Yves Bonnet said it was "striking" that Merah appeared to have a DCRI "handler" adding, "Having a handler, that is not an innocent thing. I don't know how far his relationship, or collaboration, with the service went but it is a question worth raising" the Toulouse newspaper La Depeche du Midi quoted Bonnet as saying.
Mohamed was suspected of killing a rabbi and his 3 and 6-year-old sons in a shooting spree at a Jewish school in Toulouse. The school principal's 10-year-old daughter was also killed in the incident that left a fifth person injured.
The French police have linked the attack to two other shootings days before Mohamed's death, in which three soldiers of North African or Caribbean descent were killed.
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Amnesty International issued a condemnation of what it termed Israel's "excessive use of force" on Land Day protesters on Friday.
The organization's deputy director of Middle East and North Africa program said in a press statement that the human-rights group was "extremely worried" by reports that the IDF was using live ammunition on protesters, "particularly in the light of frequent and persistent use of excessive force against Palestinian protesters."
Amnesty also condemned the PA for preventing protests and Hamas for beating up protesters, calling on both to respect freedom of assembly.
Amnesia Amnesty International issued a condemnation of what it termed Israel's "excessive use of force" on Land Day protesters on Friday.
The organization's deputy director of Middle East and North Africa program said in a press statement that the human-rights group was "extremely worried" by reports that the IDF was using live ammunition on protesters, "particularly in the light of frequent and persistent use of excessive force against Paleostinian protesters."
Amnesty also condemned the PA for preventing protests and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, for beating up protesters, calling on both to respect freedom of assembly.
Paleostinian Germans staged a scarcely attended rally in the heart of the government district on Friday to call for the expulsion of Israel from its capital Jerusalem
Police officials told the Post that roughly 50 protesters appeared at the anti-Israel rally across from the chancellery, the seat of Merkels administration.
Several pro-Israel activists appeared at the event, including one man who stood in front of the pro-Paleostinian red banner with the words Global March to Jerusalem 2012: Jerusalem for everybody! The police intervened to separate the two pro-Israel supporters from the largely Paleostinian group..
The United States on Friday urged restraint by both Israel and the Paleostinians after dozens were maimed in festivities during Land Day protests.
"We certainly don't want to see any violence by either side," State Department spokesperson Mark Toner told news hounds. "We certainly, as you well know, support the rights of people everywhere to protest peacefully. And so we would just call for restraint," he said.
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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.
