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Immigrants in Italy ’struggle’.
I suppose the EU will just have to pay even more money to Libya (some of which will be ploughed back into Europe anyway) in order to deal with immigrants crossing the Mediterranean. The advantage for the EU is, of course, the Libyans won’t have the sort of internal pressure European nations might in dealing with immigrants:
Aziz has been pondering what countries that become home to al-Qaeda. However, according to Soner Cagaptay, Aziz has overlooked one major country on the brink of actively singing up to this terrorist organisation’s “vision”:
What a load of rubbish.
And why are there scare quotes around “Muslim world” and none around “the West”?
(Via Haroon.)
Geopolitics meets energy demands meets engineering challenges:
News from morally superior and culturally sophisticated Europe:
Geert Wilders and his far-Right anti-Islamic immigrant party shot to second place behind the ruling Christian Democrats by taking 17 per cent of the vote in the Netherlands.
In Austria too, two anti-immigrant far-Right parties took an unprecedented 17.7 per cent of the vote.
The far-Right Danish People’s Party won two seats and took 14.4 per cent of Denmark’s vote.
In Slovakia a low turnout of just 19.4 per cent propelled an anti-gipsy extremist ultra-nationalist into the parliament and Hungary’s far-Right Jobbik took three seats for the first time.
The leader of the BNP and a former head of the National Front have been elected as Members of European Parliament. Thankfully, this seems to have been due largely to the collapse in the Labour vote, rather than some increase in BNP sympathies, in an election most people probably think is meaningless (it isn’t, but that is another argument).
A new report by the Open Society Institute finds ‘[p]ervasive use of ethnic and religious stereotypes by law enforcement across Europe’ and goes onto criticise this as harmful to Europe’s ability to combat crime and terrorism.
The report seems to focus on details of widespread profiling in France, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands.
(Via Martijn de Koning, who discusses the report in more detail.)
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has published the second of its reports on the experiences of discrimination by immigrants and ethnic minorities across the European Union. This report concentrates on Muslim ethnic groups living within the EU. An interesting note in the summary of the findings:
Of those Muslim respondents who experienced discrimination in the past 12 months, the majority believed that this was mainly due to their ethnic background. Only 10% stated that they thought the discrimination they experienced was based solely on their religion. In fact, wearing traditional or religious clothing (such as a headscarf) does not appear to increase the likelihood of being discriminated against.
The full report can be downloaded from the FRA website (pdf).
Superior Sophisticated Civilisation Watch:
New evidence of CIA ‘rendition’ (kidnapping) flights and secret ‘imprisonment’ (torture and detention without charge) in Poland.
It looks like the Swedes had been watching these ‘rendition’ (kidnapping) flights for sometime.
The European Union Fundamental Rights Agency has completed its first ever EU-wide survey of immigrant and ethnic minority groups’ experiences of discrimination and victimisation in everyday life.
Based on a quick skim read of their survey methodology (pdf), only groups considered most at risk of discrimination were surveyed (see pages 11 and 12).
The results will be published in detail throughout 2009, culminating in the Fundamental Rights Conference in December, although a summary of sorts has been made available (pdf). (The first of the detailed reports is about the Roma, who reported he highest levels of discrimination.)
The results indicate that most people who had suffered some kind of discrimination did not report their experience because they did not believe anything would happen.
Islam in Europe has compiled some of the results from Muslim-majority ethnic groups considered by the survey (North Africans, Somalis and Turks, plus Iraqis in Sweden and Albanians in Italy).
I think the score is now something like 13-2 to Russia against the EU/US in the ‘hydrocarbon wars’ across Central Asia and Europe.
Barack Obama visits Turkey, after stating his desire to see a nuclear-free world.
Obama has no doubt upset the French and Germans with his call for the EU to accept Turkey as a full member.
Gideon Rachman also notes that while Europeans may have loved Obama during the US presidential election campaign, they are prepared to give him very little support on crucial issues.
European pressure forces Hamid Karzai to reconsider the so-called ‘rape law’*.
*See these comments from Ikram.
A group of Dutch Protestants from the Netherlands’ ‘Bible Belt’ say the 12-star European Union flag is offensive, because it symbolises Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary.
More at Faith Central.
(I was more surprised to read that the Dutch still have and wear biblical belts.)
3 million take to the streets in France, targetting Nicholas Sarkozy.
The Economist’s Intelligence Unit says Britain is at ‘moderate risk’ of serious social unrest and public disorder (if someone has read the EIU report, please do let us know how alarmist the media coverage is… or not…).
The EU has warned the US about the ‘new Guantanamo’ in Bagram.
Louis Michel reflects the confused position of the EU over Palestine-Israel, by acknowledging that the destruction of Gaza was “abominable”, but blaming Hamas for the violence and humanitarian crisis.
Michel said Hamas needs to recognise Israel. Fine. That’s an easy thing to say.
But why didn’t he, like so many other politicians and pundits, ask if Israel recognises Palestine?
I ask this as a serious question since I don’t know: has there ever been an official pronouncement from the Knesset that acknowledged the rights of Palestinians or a Palestinian state?
According to Norman Finkelstein’s website, an EU spokesman has offered to resign over comments released from the Czech Republic in their capacity as holders of the EU presidency about Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Speigel Online calls for the EU to help Ukraine in its row over gas supplies from Russia, which is now starting affect other countries in Europe.
This might have been possible if the Germans weren’t so busy at undermining the EU’s efforts at a joint energy approach to Russia.
Superior Sophisticated Civilisation Watch: Absurd proclamation from the new EU presidency:
Belgium, man, BELGIUM!
Steve Clemons asks, can Turkey be a bridge for Europe to the muslim world?
The EU has concluded blogging is an “anti-establishment activity”.
Next week, the EU will conclude that breathing is good for human rights.*
*I do concede there is a more serious point here.
Ireland’s most senior Catholic leader has said “loss of Christian values” led to the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum earlier this summer.
Russia wants “regime change” in Georgia, says US.
Steve LeVine puts this conflict into context — it is all part of the ongoing ‘pipeline wars’.
The EU’s security problems in the face of a confident and assertive Russia are highlighted by The Economist.