Dexia's breakup, three months after it got a clean bill of health in European Union regulators' stress tests, transplants Europe's banking crisis from the continent's periphery to its heartland. The Brussels- and Paris-based bank, which received a bailout in 2008, is being rescued again after its short-term funding evaporated as Europe's sovereign debt crisis worsened. Continued on Page 47
Supporters of Polands Legia team unfurled a huge Jihad banner during a recent game in Warsaw against Hapoel Tel Aviv. The banner was green, and Jihad Legia was written across it in white Arabic-style font. Green is one of Legias team colors, but it is also the color of many Islamist groups and parties.
Some Legia fans have been known for anti-Semitic and extreme-right behavior for years and they had a chance to express their hatred of Jews again when Legia played an Israeli team, this time adopting a pseudo-Islamist guise, Rafal Pankowski, who runs the UEFA-backed Football Against Racism in Europe network, said.
Legias spokesman Michal Kocieba said the club disapproved of the banner, and that the matter is being investigated.
There have been calls for the team to be penalized. A fine is the most likely penalty. And UEFA may even ban Legia fans from the second leg in Tel Aviv [scheduled for December 15], Miroslaw Starczewski, deputy head of security at Polands PZPN football association, stated.
Continued on Page 47
PARIS: La Belle France and Sweden on Tuesday warned Syrian President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... 's regime against attacking or intimidating Syrian opposition in exile, amid reports of assaults and threats in European capitals.
Global rights watchdog Amnesia Amnesty International earlier said Syrian freedom fighters had been harassed in eight countries. La Belle France confirmed it had launched an investigation after thugs attacked a protest in Gay Paree.
A foreign ministry front man said arrests had been made and extra police protection assigned to Syrian opposition protests after the August 26 attack.
"We would not tolerate a foreign state organizing acts of violence or intimidation on our territory, and we have made this known in the clearest possible terms to Syria's ambassador in Gay Paree," Bernard Valero said. "The right to protest freely and peacefully in safety is fully guaranteed by the French constitution, and it is also obvious that La Belle France supports the Syrian people's hopes for freedom," he said.
According to the French daily Le Monde, a small group of Syrian protesters that gathers regularly in a square in central Gay Paree has been insulted, filmed and on at least one occasion violently attacked by thugs.
Valero confirmed that there had been arrests after one such incident on August 26, but denied a report No, no! Certainly not! in the Le Monde that suggested that two of the suspects were carrying Syrian diplomatic papers.
Amnesia Amnesty International earlier said it had documented cases of attacks and intimidation against 30 activists in eight countries: Britannia, Canada, Chile, La Belle France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the US.
It urged countries hosting Syrians, like La Belle France and Sweden which have become hubs of opposition activity, to "take stronger action against Syrian embassies accused of orchestrating this kind of harassment and intimidation."
Amnesty's Syria researcher Neil Sammonds said Syrians living abroad are becoming increasingly vocal in their support of the growing protest movement back home that has been demanding Assad step down. "In response the regime appears to have waged a systematic - sometimes violent - campaign to intimidate Syrians overseas into silence," he said.
Amnesty said protesters outside Syrian embassies are initially filmed or photographed by officials then subjected to harassment, including phone calls, e-mails and Facebook messages warning them to stop.
Some activists say they were directly threatened by embassy officials.
Naima Darwish, who set up a Facebook page to call for protests outside the Syrian embassy in Santiago, Chile, told the rights group she was contacted directly by a bigwig who asked to meet her in person. "He told me that I should not to do such things," she told Amnesty. "He said I would lose the right to return to Syria if I continued."
A number of Syrians said their families back home were targeted by security forces, apparently to deter them from their activities overseas. After Malek Jandali, a 38-year-old pianist, performed at a demonstration in front of the White House in July, his mother and father, aged 66 and 73, were attacked in their home in the central city of Homs and have since decamped Syria.
"We look to host governments to act on credible allegations of abuses," said Sammonds, adding many dissidents were often "too scared of what could happen to them to make formal complaints with the police."
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.
President-for-Life Bashir 
