America’s becoming a Babylon tower – breaking down into ethnic, religious, political and even racial enclaves

 http://rt.com/usa/news/usa-immigration-hispanic-ethnic/

America’s becoming a Babylon tower – Pat Buchanan

Published: 02 June, 2010, 07:45
Edited: 28 September, 2010, 12:23

America is breaking down into ethnic, religious, political and even racial enclaves and risks the same thing that happened to the Soviet Union in 1991, according to political commentator and author Pat Buchanan.

“Native born Americans of European descent are the ones who are really angriest at the enormous numbers of illegal aliens marching into the country, many if not most of them from the third world, changing the character and composition of their country and eventually voting them out of power,” states Buchanan.

With about 100-135 million Hispanic citizens in the US and heavily concentrated in the American southwest by 2050, “politically it will probably remain the US, ethnically, culturally and linguistically it could very well be a part of Mexico as of the US.”

“Native born white and African Americans are leaving California,” Buchanan points out, adding “we are going to cease to be a nation and become more of an internal empire like the old Roman Empire.”

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Further, the fastest growing TV and radio stations in the US are Hispanic, which enables the newcomers not to assimilate into American society and learn the English language.

“They do not immerse themselves into American culture, they bring their own culture and maintain it. How can you say we are fellow citizens if we can’t even talk to each other?” asks Buchanan.

Buchanan accused President Obama of refusing to enforce immigration laws in the US and that made authorities in Arizona take the initiative on their own.

Back in 2004 Pat Buchanan predicted that America would greatly change and eventually become a “giant Brazil of the north”.

Today he says that America is “developing a society of a war of all against all”.

Privileged Europeans' Hatred Against Under-Privileged Gypsies

http://rt.com/news/roma-gypsies-eu-crime/

EU turns its back on gypsies, pushing them to crime for survival

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Published: 18 November, 2010, 09:23

A crisis over the plight of Roma gypsies is spreading across the European Union, resulting in growing dissatisfaction from all sides.

Some EU countries blame the Roma for rising crime and are trying to tackle the problem by deporting them back to where they came from, making it worse.

The mayor of one Bulgarian town had to tear down a block of flats, turned into a slum by Roma residents. Infested with rats, cockroaches and fleas, it was called “a health hazard” by authorities.

It is possible that solutions like these could become common across Europe in the future.

That people will be left on the streets does not worry Bulgarian authorities. Some gypsies had to move to a wasteland, where there is no shelter, healthcare, or education for the children. With winter approaching, they will be sleeping in the cold.

Not surprisingly, the Roma are far from satisfied with their living conditions, and their anger is turning into accusations of discrimination. They wonder why the EU treats its citizens that way.
Bulgaria is left to solve the gypsy problem on its own, believes Tsvetelin Kanchev, president of the Euroroma party.

“EU politicians bury their heads in the sand,” he stated.

France has sent tens of thousands of Roma back to Bulgaria. Sweden, Italy, Denmark and Germany had similar policies. The EU’s Justice Commissioner said it reminded her of World War II.

However, campaigners warn that most Roma sent back by France and other states cannot integrate, as there are not enough jobs for them in Bulgaria.

As Roma gypsies are left with nothing but despair, they turn to crime as a way to feed their families. Those that can, go straight back to richer EU states. Member countries report the number of Roma offences is shooting up.

This lawlessness is in turn pushing more and more people into angry, anti-gypsy groups. They claim that the Roma steal even train tracks, risking the lives of many people.

Europe’s 10 million Roma are the elephant in the corner. The EU community usually freezes them out, in all ways but one. With education opportunities limited, music remains one of their few paths to success.

However, anti-gypsy groups claim that ethnic conflicts will surge until the EU learns to live and work with Roma, not just enjoy their music in the nightclubs.

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http://rt.com/news/a-one-way-ticket-for-italy-s-gypsies/

A one-way ticket for Italy’s gypsies

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Published: 11 June, 2009, 17:07

The central Italian city of Pisa has found a new way to help curb Italy’s much-disputed “Roma-gypsy problem” – by shipping them all the way back to Romania if they agree to do so.

This latest initiative, called “voluntary repatriation” by local authorities, is completely legal, says Pisa mayor, Marco Filippeschi.

Nomadic gypsies living in shantytowns on the outskirts of Pisa are being offered €500 and a bus ticket back to Romania, as long as they accept the terms of the deal: to stay out of Italy for at least one year.

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The new policy launched by the city council of Pisa, home of Italy’s world famous leaning tower, has kicked up a storm of controversy among both local welfare and Roma advocacy groups, though it does not seem to break any constitutional laws. Filippeschi says that, thus far, 42 Roma gypsies of Romanian origin and with European citizenship have already agreed to the deal and have been sent back to the southwestern Romanian city of Craiova. During their one-way trip, they were escorted by the Red Cross and given approximately €512 each – enough cash to get them back on their feet in their new country.

“The initiative has been coming for a long time,” says Filippeschi, “Everything was done respecting the law, informing the prefecture, police headquarters and the relevant foreign ministries. It is called ‘voluntary repatriation’.” Following accusations of deportation and racism, Filippeschi, who is from Italy’s largest centre-left party the Democratic Party, steadfastly denied that the initiative was a deportation, but instead a “soft” return to home.

The gypsies would not have any home in Pisa to return to anyway, says Filippeschi, because some of Pisa’s gypsy camps have already been demolished by the city administration. According to local authorities, there are about 1,000 Roma-gypsies in Pisa, half of which reside in shantytowns outside the city limits.

City officials want to make the same offer to other Roma-gypsies and eventually demolish all of the illegal encampments in the city because, as Filippeschi states, they pose both security and health risks to inhabitants.
However, many of the Roma-gypsies living in these camps now consider Italy their home and they don’t want to leave. A young, newly-married factory worker, Laurentiu, said the initiative is ineffective and can only work in the short-term:

“That 500 euro will only help you squat for a few days. Life in Romania is expensive. Whoever has accepted the deal and left Pisa will be back in a few months, I can swear on it.”

Instead of being given money to move back to Romania, the Roma in Pisa would like the city to help them find work and homes to rent. “The city is willing to help us move back to Romania, but why not help us to live better here? When we go to rental agencies they turn us away, telling us that no one wants to rent their property to gypsies,” Laurentiu explained.

Earlier actions

In May 2008, the Italian government launched a controversial profiling campaign of Roma-gypsy communities and shantytowns present in Italy. More recently, Italian officials released the data that was collected during the profiling scheme. According to the police checks carried out over a period of 12 months, authorities recorded a total of 12,346 inhabitants, who live in the 167 shantytowns throughout Italy (124 are unauthorized and 43 are authorized), among which 5,436 are minors. Now authorities say they will construct legal, hygienic and safe camps, as well as enroll the children in state schools.

Pisa is not the first Italian city to consider repatriation as a possible solution to Italy’s years-long “gypsy problem”. In recent years, similar pilot projects have been launched in the Italian capital of Rome and in the northern Italian city of Pavia. However, there is no data to suggest that these initiatives were successful in helping reintegrate gypsies into Romanian society. “Without social services and reintegration policies in place in Romania to track their movements, how can we know what really happens to these ‘volunteer repatriates’?” said a social worker from Pisa.

The city administration is also trying to strike the same deal with members of the local Senegalese community. However, Mbaye Diop, president of the Senegalese association of Tuscany, says that to accept such a deal, there would have to be a network set up to ensure jobs and homes for those who decide to move back to their native land. “We don’t want a bonus to get us out of Italians’ way, we want a real project that ensures assisted and productive repatriation,” says Diop.

Brenda Dionisi for RT

 

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http://rt.com/news/hungarian-neo-nazi-lead-war-on-gypsies/

Hungarian Neo-Nazi lead war on gypsies

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Published: 22 April, 2009, 09:30

In Hungary, fascist groups are targeting Roma gypsies, but the government seems to turn a blind eye on the problem of ethnic minorities, and offers no protection for them.

A cold and brutal crime has torn a young family apart. Robert and his five-year-old son were shot dead, and his two other children seriously injured when their home was attacked. A homemade bomb was thrown through the front door and immediately sent the entire house up in flames. The young family had just finished building their small but modern house.

Their only crime was being Roma gypsies.

Robert’s family lives next door, and are reminded daily of the terror of the tragedy, but what haunts them more is the way the criminal investigation is being carried out.

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“They pretended not to see 18 bullet holes in the small boy’s body. How is it possible that an experienced police official could not see this? Then it was reported that the fire was electrical. But there are remnants of a bomb everywhere,” says Robert’s mother Erzsebet Csorba.

The European Roma rights centre strongly supports the family’s claims.

“The police were not acknowledging that a murder had taken place. I’m not aware that there has been any progress,” said Rob Kushen from the European Roma Rights Centre in the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

Fighting for their rights, activists also fear that the economic crisis will lead to an increase in hate crimes against Roma in poorer EU countries.

“So far they have done a good job in keeping the peace – which is a recipe for disaster,” Kushen believes.

Attacks on Roma haven’t only increased since the onset of the crisis, but a neo-Nazi trend is also growing in Hungary. The far-right Jobbik party, said to be affiliated with a banned fascist group called the Magyar Guarda, is growing in popularity. They often hold protests against Roma, insisting they are criminals.
Bela Kovacs, President of the Jobbik Party for a Better Hungary is unequivocal in his views:

“Gypsy crimes are growing every day, and it's getting so bad that people are afraid to go out at night,” he said.

But the party refused to comment on its connection with the extremist group which often attends their protests.

Robert’s family believes the Magyar Guarda brutally attacked their loved ones, and will never be punished, especially under the wing of a growing political party.

In the past year alone in Hungary, there have been 18 attacks on Roma homes, and six people have been killed. No one has been caught.

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http://rt.com/news/prime-time/gypsies-face-new-battles-in-russia/

Gypsies face new battles in Russia

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Published: 27 October, 2008, 06:34

A recent report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance shows Russian attitudes to Roma gypsies have become more hostile in recent years. Many Russians perceive them as criminals and drug dealers, but there are some who are interested in

The Tomovich family have lived in their house in north-western Russia for 20 years, but they don't know how much longer they'll be staying. It might be made of bricks and mortar, but on the city map it doesn't exist. By Russian law it could be demolished at anytime.

Around 2,000 other people in the same gypsy community in the town of Chudovo are in the same boat.
“They tore down eight houses built by young people who’d separated from their parents, and the authorities say they'll be pulling down our houses as well,” says middle-aged Elizaveta Tomovich.

Gypsies came to the town of Chudovo in the 1980s. Soviet law prohibited them from roaming and local authorities allowed them to stay. At that time the land was not needed. Now a new construction development plan is being worked out for the town and the region.

There have been over a dozen similar cases throughout Russia, but the issue of land ownership is just one of the problems facing the country's gypsies. According to the latest census, there are 200,000 gypsies in the country, but there are estimates the number could be up to a million.

Twenty per cent go on to higher education, but the majority hardly make it through middle school, often because they do not speak Russian.

Many find themselves unemployed, especially as their traditional crafts like tinplating are no longer valued.
Ethnologist Nadezhda Demeter says that now gypsies are only perceived as drug sellers – nothing more. 

“However, the percentage of those involved in criminal business is the same as with other nationalities,” she says. “Russia used to be friendly to gypsies, and Russian literature and music were influenced by gypsy culture”.

Gypsies say their nation is alive as long as their songs are alive, but the lack of interest in gypsy folk music in modern Russia represents an additional challenge to the community.

The Buzylev family has been performing gypsy folk songs around the country since the 1940s. In Soviet times gypsy culture was embraced.

Mikhail Buzylev has launched a gypsy music project to help aspiring musicians get on stage. If people hear more gypsy songs and not only criminal reports, he says, attitudes will improve and young Roma perhaps will have a better chance of finding their place in society.

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http://rt.com/news/russias-roma-minority-struggle-for-tolerance/

Russia’s Roma minority struggle for tolerance

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Published: 15 May, 2007, 08:55

A middle-class Roma community is a rare sight in Russia since most of the country’s 1.5 million Roma population live in extremes of either far below the poverty line or way above it.

In the Zubchaninovka settlement those Roma who have managed to amass wealth have built lavish buildings, and even shopping malls. Locals call them “Gypsy Palaces”.

But just 20 kilometres away is another extreme. In a camp gypsies live without electricity, running water, or gas. They don’t have a legal permit for the land they occupy, so they have trouble getting passports, and without them they can’t apply for jobs, because officially they don’t exist.

Children complete an average of only three years of schooling. Many never learn how to read or write.

Instead they spend their days begging and pickpocketing on the streets while their parents are often caught up in a life of crime.

Police raids are common. There have been several attempts to have the camp burned down. Local residents want them deported. But unlike other Russian minorities, the Roma don't have a state to return to. Their families have lived in Russia for centuries.

“Its like we are not humans, we lived here like this for seven years. No one pays attention to us, its like we don’t live in Russia, we are Russians, and we are raising our children to be Russians,” says one of the residents.

Roma people experience discrimination daily as they have been feared and mistrusted internationally for thousands of years. But the local government says the gypsies have to help themselves.

“The problem is that gypsies are poorly socialized, poorly integrated. It helps them preserve their culture but on the other hand it fuels negative perception from the society. Gypsies won’t listen to us, they would listen to their community leaders,” says Nadeshda Osipova, Samara government ethnicity specialist.

One man trying to make a difference is Victor Karbanenko. He heads the Roma Life organization that fights stereotyping and assists the poor to obtain documents.

“People don’t know what tolerance is, they know ‘blacks’ are enemies – gypsies mean drugs, Tajiks took over the markets. People are here to live and work. We are trying to change the stereotype by educating your youth and sharing our culture,” he says.

Roma remain one of Russia’s minorities that are simply overlooked and they feel they have to change their ways in order to change the established perception.

 

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http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=195036

Anti-Semitic themes found in mainstream British circles

By JONNY PAUL 
11/12/2010 03:59

Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany are becoming increasingly common anti-Semitic conspiracies are used more freely in conversation.

LONDON – A report published by a Jewish community organization on Thursday highlights how old anti-Semitic themes to depict Israel and Zionism have become more widespread in mainstream British circles during the past year.

Comparisons of Israel and its supporters to Nazi Germany have become increasingly common among the public, and anti-Semitic conspiracy themes are being used more freely in conversation, the “Anti-Semitic Discourse in Britain in 2009” indicated.


The 57-page report was published by the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti- Semitism and provides security for the Jewish community in Britain.

“As in previous years, the report examines public discussion of anti-Semitism, Jews and Jewish issues in mainstream media and politics,” CST communications director Mark Gardner said.

“It is not the report’s intention to brand those who feature in it as being anti-Semites. Nevertheless, old anti-Semitic motifs remain remarkably persistent, especially in relation to Zionism and Israel, and it is hoped that this report will help explain why CST, the Jewish community and many other observers note and fear the ongoing development of this trend.”

At the heart of revived anti- Jewish sentiments, according to the study, is the “corruption and debasement” of the word “Zionism,” which is found not only in extremist discourse but more commonly in mainstream circles. The overlap of the words “Zionist” and “Jew” also manifests such corruption and reflects modern-day anti-Semitism, according to the CST report.

“When mainstream journalists and politicians use the word ‘Zionism’ in a pejorative way, it can be very difficult to distinguish their words from those of actual anti-Semites who conceal their anti-Semitism by swapping the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew,’” the document states.

While the report emphasizes that the anti-Israel and anti- Zionist campaigns that exists in certain media outlets, liberal-left discourse and trade unions is not inspired by anti-Semitism, it says that such discourse often inadvertently has anti-Semitic effects.

“Depicting the Jewish state as a uniquely racist or imperialist enterprise serves to threaten, isolate and demonize all those who believe that Jews have a right to statehood,” the document reads. “Indeed, anyone who shows support for Israel or Zionism risks being defined and castigated for this behavior, rather than gauged by any of their other actions and beliefs.

“The use of “Zionist” as a pejorative description of any organized Jewish (or Jewish related) activity, such as the ‘Zionist Jewish Chronicle’ or the ‘Zionist CST.’ These bodies are then maltreated for being allegedly Zionist, rather than properly engaged with in their own right.”

The comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany became more popular during and in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, according to the report. This, it says, represents “the deliberate abuse of diminishing the tragedy of the Holocaust and playing upon Jewish sensitivities in order to provoke.”

The Nazi comparisons were seen during the often violent demonstrations that took place in London during the 22-day Gaza conflict. One of the main organizers, the British Muslim Initiative, produced placards saying “STOP the Holocaust in Gaza.”

The placard of another organizing group, the Palestinian Forum in Britain, featured a swastika joined to a Magen David with the words, “History seems to be repeating itself.”

Because of groups’ connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, the report questions the alliance with far-left fringe groups such as the Socialist Workers Party.

Richard Seymour, a spokesman for the party, asserted that those attending a Jewish community rally for peace “ought to be shunned and treated as the moral and political degenerates that they are.”

Meanwhile, anti-Israel activist and former MP George Galloway said at a demonstration, “Today the people in Gaza are the new Warsaw Ghetto, and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw.”

The publication also denounces the play Seven Jewish Children, written by British anti-Israel playwright Caryl Churchill, which it says typified the emerging trend to depict Israel and Zionism as a mass Jewish psychological reaction to the trauma of the Holocaust.

Citing a number of examples, the community report shows how Jewish conspiracy theories and secret-Jewish lobby charges have increasingly slipped into mainstream conversation. In 2009, two stories in The Independent newspaper assumed a Jewish conspiracy charge was valid. The suspected scheme surrounded the appointment of two Jewish academics to the British government’s Iraq War Inquiry – Sir Martin Gilbert and Prof. Lawrence Freedman.

Commenting on the makeup of the panel, Independent columnist Richard Ingrams censured its inclusion of “ two Jewish historians thought to have been in favor of the war” and who were “no military or legal experts.”

“The association of ‘Jewish’ and supposedly ‘in favor of the war’ was a singling out of the Jews on the panel,” the report says. “This followed the same pattern seen in other public controversies: where the religion of Jews is pointed out, but that of others goes unmentioned.”

Former ambassador to Libya Sir Oliver Miles also wrote in The Independent, “Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but The Jewish Chronicle and Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind.”

The most insidious example used in the report is the Channel Four Dispatches program “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby” screened last year, in which presenter Peter Oborne said he had not identified any conspiracies while making the program.

“We haven’t found anything even faintly resembling a conspiracy, but we found a worrying lack of transparency, and the influence of a pro-Israel lobby continues to be felt,” Oborne said at the time.

Channel Four’s website alluded to what the report sums up as “shady characters, with financial influence, underhand tactics and treacherous goals.”

This message was repeated, the report shows, in The Guardian’s news story about the program – titled “Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Conservatives, film claims.”

The report also highlights how a medieval accusation, claiming that Jews steal children in order to use their blood, was also revived and frequently used last year in accusations that Jews and Israelis steal body parts. The London-based but Iranian-run Press TV revived the blood libel charge, according to the CST document.

One of the Press TV stories begins with the sentence: “An international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shock story divulges Israeli plot to harvest organs from Algerian children.”

British media watchdogs, like Adam Levick of CiF Watch, praised the report for bringing to the surface rampant bias against Jews in daily publications.

“The CST report is a shocking indictment of how so-called progressive news outlets such as The Guardian are mainstreaming the type of anti-Jewish hate speech that was once the province of the far-right,” said Levick, whose organization particularly monitors The Guardian’s “Comment is Free” blog.

CST is the only organization in the UK that collects, analyzes and publishes statistics and incidents relating to anti- Semitism, including an annual Anti-Semitic Incidents Report.

CST’s publishes an annual Anti-Semitic Incidents Report. The 2009 report, published in February, showed a record high number of incidents in one year since records began in 1984.

First Crusade : Massacres of Jews in France and Germany (1096–1349)

Jews (identifiable by the Judenhut they were required to wear) were killed by Christian knights during the First Crusade in France and Germany. French Bible illustration from 1250.

The First Crusade began an era of massacres of Jews in Germany. The wild excitement of Crusading, to which the Germans had been driven by exhortations to take the cross, first broke upon the Jews, the nearest representatives of an execrated opposition faith. Entire communities, like those of Trier, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were slain, except where the slayers were anticipated by the deliberate self-destruction of their intended victims. The Jewish community of Speyer was saved by the bishop. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhenish cities alone between May and July 1096. These outbreaks of popular passion during the First Crusade influenced the status of the Jews for the next few centuries, and perhaps beyond. The Christians brought accusations against the Jews to argue that the Jews had deserved their fate. Alleged crimes, like desecration of the host, ritual murder, poisoning of wells, and treason, brought hundreds to the stake and drove thousands into exile. Jews were alleged to have caused the inroads of the Mongols, even though they suffered equally with the Christians. When the Black Death swept over Europe in 1348–49, Christians accused Jews of poisoning wells. In the wake of this accusation, a general slaughter began throughout the empire, which triggered a massive exodus east to Poland. Nonrestrictive government policies and public attitudes towards Jews helped the Jewish immigrants to Poland to form the foundations of what would become the largest Jewish community in Europe.

Courtesy : Wikipedia

Britain's The Telegraph's Latest Hate Campaign Against Islam and Muslims

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8071101/Theresa-May-should-sack-top-terrorism-adviser.html

Theresa May under pressure to sack top adviser in row over ban on Muslim preacher

Home Secretary Theresa May is under pressure to fire her most senior counter terrorism adviser in a row over the banning of a radical Muslim preacher.

 

By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 19 Oct 2010
27 Comments

...There is no such thing as a moderate islamist, given that their goal is to make the entire world Islamic. Our great leader needs to stand at the dispatch box and announce in unequivocal terms that islamism is not a legitimate aspiration for anyone living in these islands, and that anyone professing or supporting it faces a repeal of their British nationality and deportation.

The French lower house last week approved just such a bill to strip foreign-born criminals of their French nationality, news that was barely mentioned in the UK press.

I don't want a single penny of my taxes spent on supporting or encouraging islamists, other than to keep them out of this country and to encourage the ones already here to leave.

It's time to pull the welcome mat out from under their feet.
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...You can't just ban all the ones who don't fit the profile of those blinkered wishful-thinking folk in the West who want only to see the benign side of Islam – the problem is with Islam as a whole. It is time this was properly acknowledged.

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-09-11/911-terror-fight-results.html

“9/11 didn’t lead to split between Islamic and Christian civilizations”- analyst

Published 11 September, 2010, 12:12

Edited 12 September, 2010, 02:41

9/11 attack had a radical effect on global policies but did not lead to the split of Islamic and Christian civilization, political expert Dmitry Polikanov told RT.

”There was a global understanding that terrorism threat is number one, and it should be on top of the agenda and that consolidated efforts are needed to overcome this terrible security challenge,” he said.

“Today, significant efforts of the international community and of the leading nations, of the Special Services, has actually resulted in serious progress in fighting terrorism.”

“Al Qaeda is slightly disappearing from the global agenda,” Polikanov added. “If you look at the number of terrorist attacks in the recent years, it has diminished and I think significant work has been done to ruin the grass roots of Al-Qaeda.”

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”Of course, one of the most positive outcomes is that the world has managed to prevent the split between the Islamic civilization and the Christian civilization, and the attacks in New York in 2001 did not lead to the global divide between the two civilizations.”

However, according to 9/11 medical responder and Muslim American activist, Rudina Odeh-Ramadan, says that after the tragedy Islam is being used for political gain in the US.

”We are assigning collective guilt on one billion Muslims that practice this faith on the acts of 19 villains that basically defiled Islam and practiced a perverted version of Islam for political agenda,” she said.

“I think the great majority fear Islam because they do not understand it,” Rudina Odeh-Ramadan added. ”They do not understand the faith, they do not understand that Islam is a religion of peace. Islam does not condone suicide, Islam does not condone murder.”

Watch the full interview with Rudina Odeh-Ramadan

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Meanwhile, American officials say that Al-Qaeda has been seriously weakened since it carried out the 9/11 attacks.

But in recent times, much international attention has shifted to the terror network's capacity to help other militant groups around the world.

Dennis Sammut, from the London Information Network on Conflicts and State-Building, sees Al-Qaeda's hand in the recent violence in the North Caucasus region of Russia.

“There are clearly connections between terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the attacks that have taken place in 9/11 and in the US, as well as in other parts of the world, including the North Caucasus,” he told RT.

Watch the full interview with Dennis Sammut

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-10-06/xenophobia-america.html

Xenophobia in America

Published 06 October, 2010, 02:35

Edited 06 October, 2010, 10:58

America is supposed to be a nation of tolerance. These days however, rising anger and resentment seems to be bleeding through her stars and stripes.

new mosques, illegal immigration, and economic reform, point to a fear and frustration that has some warning of a US public increasingly swapping patriotism for nationalism.


“It definitely is Xenophobia. It’s a fear of the other,” said Curt Goering, Amnesty International Senior Deputy Executive Director.

Xenophobia is defined as an unreasonable fear or hatred of the unfamiliar, especially people of other race or religion. Discrimination in the US has various labels including Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, or racism.

Arye Sachs created what he calls mobile art aviation. A missile decorated with signs equating Islam to terrorism. At the front, a mannequin dressed as an Arab. Sachs drives the missile all over New York aiming to garner opposition against the proposed development for an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero.

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“Muslims are associated with terror. That everybody knows. The no fly list has ninety nine percent of Muslims," said Sachs.

Executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New York, Zead Ramadan, said his office has received demeaning pictures of a burning Koran through the mail from anonymous senders.

"There’s been an obvious spike of hate crimes and Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks on mosques throughout the country from California to Wisconsin to Tennessee, to the planned Koran burning on 9/11 in Gainesville, Florida," said Ramadan.

Amnesty international believes the rage is being exploited, not tempered by US politicians or candidates running for office.

“These are crimes that are motivated by hate, intolerance, or bigotry,” said Goering.

At Tea Party rallies around the country, frustrations over taxes and joblessness are aimed more directly at US President Barack Obama and the nation’s broken immigration system.

According to the FBI, Obama has garnered more death threats than any other American president.
Undocumented immigrants are also feeling a backlash from the American public.

Arrested and detained in Arizona. Beaten and bruised in New York where racial tensions have erupted in some low-income neighborhoods between African Americans and Mexicans. Many attribute the violence to economic hardship.

"If you’re a Mexican immigrant and people think you’re a threat to a job or something like that. They’re going to throw us all in one basket. Anyone who looks different all of a sudden becomes bad," said Ramadan.

An alarming downturn in America’s mood and discourse has created a public frustrated and divided. A new landscape that has some asking if the land founded on freedom is becoming a land consumed by hate.

Rev. Graylan Hagler minister at the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ said racism and intolerance have been around since the beginning of the United States. At one point in time only land owners had a say in the functions of society, he explained.

“When we look at the Founding Fathers with having folks who were enslaved, it was always to make sure that you had somehow an exploited population and those who exploited that population so that you had workers,” he said.

There is a history in the US of making sure there were people who were less-of-citizens than others to continually exploit them in the economic process.

“Racism really has a lot to do with economics as much as it has to do with skin color,” said Hagler.

He explained that every immigrant group has had problems coming to America and assimilating.

The demographics are changing today in America. Groups of immigrants are coming to the US from Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

“Happen to be people with darker skin, that are coming in and that’s what people are seeing and that’s a part of the angst and the fear and the xenophobia that is playing out is because people are looking up and in spite of all the accolades about being a diverse nation, it was still considered to be a white nations, a white protestant nation,” said Hagler.

Hagler further said that the fact America has now elected its first non-white president only exasperates the situation.

“Those who felt this was a white protestant nation are fearful that the rug is being pulled out from under them,” Hagler added.

 

http://rt.com/Politics/2010-09-15/europe-immigration-muslims-wilders.html

Europe’s alter ego begins to rear its ugly head

Published 15 September, 2010, 16:24

Edited 22 September, 2010, 02:20

As France struggles to contain the fallout from its decision to expatriate 1,000 Roma, other European capitals are being forced to deal with the ghost of resurgent intolerance.

The European Commission on Tuesday rebuked France’s decision to expel about 1,000 Roma, more often referred to as Gypsies, calling it a “disgrace” while threatening legal action against the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, claiming it was breaking European law.

Read more

Sarkozy, who has always taken a tough stance when it comes to law and order, has called Roma the source of the evils now haunting France, like crime and prostitution. His government’s move to expatriate this minority back to Romania, however, has been slammed by human rights groups, as well as the upper ranks of the European Union.

Acting upon leaked information that the Roma were singled out by the French government by an internal directive, EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding called it “shocking” that Paris bureaucrats were deliberately misleading Brussels.

French immigration minister Éric Besson had assured the European Parliament just last week that “France has taken no specific measure regarding the Roma.” Discriminating on ethnic grounds contravenes European Union laws, as well as the French Constitution.

“My patience is wearing thin. Enough is enough,” Reding said at a news conference on Tuesday in Brussels. “No member state can expect special treatment when fundamental values and European laws are at stake.”

The EU minister than drew allusions to the darker days of European history, describing the scenario as something “that I had thought that Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War.”

The threat of legal action against the French government was also mentioned as a possibility.
On Monday, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux authorized a replacement directive that left out any reference to “Roma”.

This latest incident underscores something much deeper happening in France, as well as other parts of Europe as people and politicians struggle to adjust their attitudes and platforms to increasing concerns over immigration policy.

At the beginning of the year, Sarkozy’s government launched a national debate centered on the question: “What does it mean to be French in the 21st century?” The liberals and other leftist groups immediately pounced on the juicy bait, decrying the rise of nationalism and a return to the sort of thinking that made Europe the bloody stage for WWI and WWII.

Despite the opposition’s hand–wringing over the debate, the majority of French polled agreed that it was time to question the direction that France is heading in these days of turbulent globalization.

“Nothing is worse and more damaging than things unspoken and stigmas that we know have always played into the hands of extremists,” said Prime Minister Francois Fillon at the close of the discussion.
The national debate, which attracted hundreds of town hall discussions across the country, came shortly after Sarkozy introduced a ban on religious objects – Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and Christian crosses.

Things are getting Wilders

Next to the subdued, conservative strain of European modern-day intolerance personified by French President Sarkozy, there is the more electrified, in-your-face style exemplified by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who certainly ranks as the most threatened politician in Europe due to his anti-Islamic ideas.
Now, the 47-year old, bleach-blond head of the Freedom Party is busy forging a minority coalition with other Dutch parties. In June, Wilders’ Freedom Party increased its number of seats in the 150-seat Parliament to 24, from 9, attracting 1.5 million votes.

For many observers, an anti-immigration party winning so many votes in a country previously known for its tolerance was a sign of bad winds blowing.

As the Independent summarized, “Wilders' electoral triumph sent shock waves through the country's large immigrant communities and sounded the death knell for the image of the Netherlands as a bastion of tolerance.”

The Freedom Party’s message of anti-immigration laws, specifically against Muslims, has touched a chord with a broad swath of the Dutch constituency, many of whom report frustration at the cultural transformation of their country due to loose immigration policies.

Although Wilders’ platform resembles a page pulled from Sarkozy’s political playbook (he is calling for a ban on headscarves in public places, as well as an immediate halt to immigration), it is his work beyond the realm of politics that has contributed to his notoriety.

In 2008, Wilders unleashed “Fitna” – a 17-minute film that attempts to make the case that the teachings of the Koran incite people to violence. In the words of the film’s creator, the film is “a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamization.”

In response to the “hate film,” the Arab European League released a film one day after Wilders’ entitled “Al Mouftinoun”, which makes the case that the Dutch politician is a simple racist who is only good at inciting hatred.

In his latest political move, Wilders was in New York on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 where about 5,000 people came out to hear him speak in favor of the “Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero” effort that has split Americans down the middle.

Intolerance tide moving east

The anti-immigration Swedish Democrats may have to thank the late Stieg Larsson, Sweden’s best-selling writer if they win parliamentary seats in upcoming elections: the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo predicted exactly such a turnout one decade ago.

Self-fulfilling prophecy or not, the rise of anti-immigration party, which regularly polls above the four percent threshold it needs to break into the 349-member parliament, is yet another example of shifting political winds in Europe.

The Social Democrats, taking advantage of record-high unemployment rates in the Scandinavian country, have promised to slash immigration by as much as 90%, as well as reduce financial assistance to third-world countries.

Meanwhile, establishment leaders accuse the Social Democrats of pandering to national tensions at a time when the winds of the economic crisis can still be felt.

“They must create turmoil, otherwise they are not interesting,” Finance Minister Anders Borg said in an interview on September 8. “Given that they are an anti-establishment party, there’s a big risk they will create a situation where we would have a weaker government.”

But Sweden may soon learn the lesson already experienced by their Nordic neighbors, Norway and Denmark, which experienced the rise of their own anti-immigration parties years ago.

The question for Europe now is: Is the inclination towards ethnic isolationism a temporary political trend, or a long-term problem?

Robert Bridge, RT

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-07-22/trial-alleged-neo-nazis.html

Thirteen alleged neo-Nazis on trial in Moscow

Published 22 July, 2010, 10:21

Edited 23 July, 2010, 14:51

A group of alleged Neo-Nazis is on trial in Moscow accused of killing dozens of people in ethnically-motivated crimes. Other charges they face include attempted terrorism and inciting ethnic dissension.

During the trial the prosecutors will state the indictment, while the accused will respond with their plea.
Possible sentences should the accused be found guilty range from years in jail to a life sentence.

Investigators claim the gang was part of the National-Socialist Society, an ultra-nationalist movement that was banned for its extremist activities.

Four of the defendants have been ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination.

Read more

Slowly getting better

Veronica Koroleva is a self-professed, deeply religious woman who is full of hate for those who are different. She despises immigrants and accuses them of occupying, disrespecting and contaminating her nation.

Russians she insists are fighting a race war motivated by love.

“Love for our homeland and our nation, love for our god. Pure families where people don't just date and then break up; but, rather, they get married in church; they don't practice abortions; they don't support inter-ethnic marriages,” Koroleva said.

“I believe everyone should live in their own homeland where they belong,” she reacted when seeing RT’s Staci Bivens.

Armed with this belief and inspired by racist bloggings, her husband Nikolay Korolev and two fellow students bombed Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market in 2006. They targeted it because of the number of traders that come from Central Asia and China. The blast killed 14.

Veronica’s husband is serving a life sentence for actions neither of them regrets and for a cause they both support.

Attacks against non-Slavic looking people are often brutal and, in cases like in Cherkizovsky market, they are deadly.

The deeds of angry mobs pummeling outnumbered victims are recorded by racists and then posted on nationalist websites.

Activists call the situation out of control, but Galina Kozhevnikova from SOVA Center for Information Analysis – a local, non-profit crime watchdog – does acknowledge it is slowly getting better.

“They started seizing the most odious groups that had been involved in systematic violence and terrorism. During the last two years, the largest formations in Moscow were dispelled, and the key activists and murderers were detained,” Kozhevnikova said.

She says 19 people have been killed due to hate crimes in 2010, which is down from 50 for the same time period last year.

However, that math does little to satisfy migrants, who feel self reliance is better than police protection.

“They won’t any longer walk alone, they will walk in crowds. People take care of their own safety. Law enforcement comes into action after a crime is committed, not before,” migrant labor rights activist Karomat Sharipov said.

http://rt.com/prime-time/2010-06-29/ultra-nationalist-group-banned.html

Russian ultra-nationalist group banned by Supreme Court 

Published 29 June, 2010, 21:13

The Supreme Court of Russia has banned the Slavic Union organization due to their extremism.

This follows the Moscow city Court's decision which called the organisation extremist in April.

Read more

Further, a probe by Russian prosecutors found evidence that the Union promotes nationalism and its ideas are similar to those of Nazi Germany.

Beginning immediately, anyone proven to belong to the Slavic Union will face one year in prison, while the organizers could be sentenced to four-year terms.

The Union's leader, Dmitry Demushkin, agreed with the court decision but claimed that he was ready to appeal the decision to the European Court of Human Rights.

“We are promoting the revival of Russian culture and thinking,” Demushkin said. “We have branches in Bulgaria, Poland, and Ukraine. The movement has been functioning for 11 years, and there have never been any problems.” 

Demushkin added that the Supreme Court had banned only the movement itself, not its symbols or its web site.

However, human rights activists believe that the Court’s decision will not affect the functioning of other radical nationalist movements in Russia.

“The ban of this very popular but not really powerful organization is just symbolic. It will have no influence on the country’s ultra right movements at all,” the head of SOVA analytical center, Galina Kozhevnikova, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. “But the ban is still very important for Russian society.”

Expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain by Isabella and Ferdinand

Courtesy : Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edict of Expulsion 
 
Edict of Expulsion (Alhamra Decree) issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.^[1]

The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968,^[2] following the Second Vatican Council. Today, the number of Jews in Spain is estimated at 50,000^[3].


Background

Beginning in the 8th century, Muslims had occupied and settled most of the Iberian Peninsula. Jews who had lived in these regions were considered 'People of the Book' and were given special status, thus they often thrived under Muslim rule. 

The Jews supported and sometimes even assisted the Muslim invaders due to the harsh treatment of the Jews by the Visigothic rulers of the Iberian Peninsula.

The tolerance of the Muslim Moorish rulers of al-Andalus attracted Jewish immigration, and Jewish enclaves in Muslim Iberian cities flourished as places of learning and commerce.

The Reconquista was the gradual reconquest of Islamic Iberia by the Catholic kingdoms with a powerful religious motivation: Iberia was being reclaimed for Christendom. By the 14th century, most of the Iberian Peninsula, present day Spain and Portugal, had been regained from the Muslims.

Overt hostility against Jews became more pronounced, finding expression in brutal episodes of violence and oppression. Thousands of Jews sought to escape these attacks by converting to Catholicism; they were commonly called conversos, New Christians, or marranos. At first these conversions seemed an effective solution to the cultural conflict: many converso families met with social and commercial success. But eventually their success made these New Christians unpopular with the church and royal hierarchies.
Many of the ruling Spanish, both secular and religious, viewed Jews with deep suspicion. The Jews were also seen as being collaborators with the Muslims.

These suspicions on the part of Christians were only heightened by the fact that some of the coerced conversions were undoubtedly insincere. Some, but not all, conversos had understandably chosen to salvage their social and commercial prestige by the only option open to them - baptism and embrace of Christianity - while privately adhering to their Jewish practice and faith. These secret practitioners are commonly referred to as crypto-Jews or marranos.

The existence of crypto-Jews was an irresistible provocation for secular and church leaders who were already hostile toward Spain's Jewry. The uncertainty over the sincerity of Jewish converts added explosive fuel to the fire of anti-semitism in 15th-century Spain.

 Ferdinand and Isabella

The hostility toward Jews was brought to a climax by "The Catholic Monarchs" - Ferdinand II and Isabella I, whose marriage in 1469 formed a familial union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, with coordinated policies between their distinct Kingdoms. These were two of the three consolidated kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula then. The eventual result, under their great-grandson, King Philip II, was the unification of Spanish Iberia into one Kingdom of Spain, the precursor of the modern state now known as Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella took seriously the reports that some crypto-Jews were not only privately practicing their former faith, but were secretly trying to draw other conversos back into the Jewish fold. In 1480 King Ferdinand devised, and with the queen established the Spanish Inquisition in both Castile and Aragon to investigate these and other suspicions. It is not known how many had not truly converted, had lapsed from their new Christianity, or were attempting to persuade others to revert.

The independent Islamic Emirate of Granada had been a tributary state to Castile since 1238. In 1491, in preparation for an imminent transition to Castilian territory, the Treaty of Granada was signed by Emir Muhammad XII and the Queen of Castile, protecting the religious freedoms of the Jews and Muslims there. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Catholic Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic al-Andalus by victory in the Battle of Granada. In acquiring the city of Granada a large Jewish and Muslim population came under her rule. Soon Isabella and Ferdinand chose to replace the Treaty of Granada's Jewish protection terms with the Alhambra Decree's Inquisitional Castilian and Aragonite persecution.

The Decree

The king and queen issued the Alhambra Decree less than three months after the surrender of Granada. In it, Jews were accused of trying "to subvert their holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs." These measures were not new in Europe.^[4]

Some Jews were even only given four months and ordered to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Under the edict, Jews were promised royal "protection and security" for the effective three-month window before the deadline. They were permitted to take their belongings with them - except "gold or silver or minted money".

The punishment for any Jew who did not convert or leave by the deadline was death. The punishment for a non-Jew who sheltered or hid Jews was the confiscation of all belongings and hereditary privileges.

Dispersal

The Spanish Jews who chose to leave Spain dispersed throughout the region of North Africa known as the Maghreb. They also fled to south-eastern Europe where they were granted safety and formed flourishing local Jewish communities, the largest being those of Salonica and Sarajevo. In those regions, they often intermingled with the already existing Mizrachi (Eastern Jewish) communities.

Scholars disagree about how many Jews left Spain as a result of the decree; the numbers vary between 130,000 and 800,000. Many (likely more than half) went to Portugal, where they only eluded persecution for a few years (see Portuguese Inquisition). The Jewish community in Portugal (perhaps then some 10% of that country's population ^[5]) were then declared Christians by Royal decree unless they left, but since their departure was severely hindered by the King (who needed their expertise for Portugal's overseas enterprises), the vast majority was forced to stay as nominal Christians.

See also

• History of the Jews in Spain
• Jewish refugees
• Jewish diaspora
• Edict of Expulsion
• Expulsion of the Moriscos
• Edict of Fontainebleau
• 1731 Expulsion of Protestants from Salzburg

References

1. ^ Decree-translation
2. ^ 1492 Ban on Jews Is Voided by Spain - THe New York Times, 17 Dec 1968
3. ^ http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/information/being_jewish_in_spain/
4. ^ Edward I of England#Finances, Parliament and the Persecution of Jews
5. ^ Kayserling, Meyer. "História dos Judeus em Portugal". Editora Pioneira, São Paulo, 1971
6. ^ http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v12/n10/full/5201225a.html
7. ^ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12627534?dopt=Abstract
8. ^ http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/439/2004/00000115/00000005/art00001
9. ^ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500815?dopt=Abstract
10. ^ http://www.cell.com/AJHG/retrieve/pii/S0002929708005478
11. ^ "Despite alternative possible sources for lineages ascribed a Sephardic Jewish origin", [1]
12. ^ "La cifra de los sefardíes puede estar sobreestimada, ya que en estos genes hay mucha diversidad y quizá absorbieron otros genes de Oriente Medio" ("The Sephardic result may be overestimated, since there is much diversity in those genes and maybe absorbed other genes from the Middle East"). ¿Pone en duda Calafell la validez de los tests de ancestros? “Están bien para los americanos, nosotros ya sabemos de dónde venimos” (Puts Calafell in doubt the validity of ancestry tests? "They can be good for the Americans, we already know from where we come from). " [2]
13. ^ “We think it might be an over estimate" "The genetic makeup of Sephardic Jews is probably common to other Middle Eastern populations, such as the Phoenicians, that also settled the Iberian Peninsula, Calafell says. “In our study, that would have all fallen under the Jewish label.”” http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39056/title/Spanish_Inquisition_couldn%E2%80%99t_quash_Moorish,_Jewish_genes
14. ^ "El doctor Calafell matiza que (...) los marcadores genéticos usados para distinguir a la población con ancestros sefardíes pueden producir distorsiones". "ese 20% de españoles que el estudio señala como descendientes de sefardíes podrían haber heredado ese rasgo de movimiento más antiguos, como el de los fenicios o, incluso, primeros pobladores neolíticos hace miles de años." "Dr. Calafell clarifies that (...) the genetic markers used to distinguish the population with Sephardim ancestry may produce distorsions. The 20% of Spaniards that are identified as having Sephardim ancestry in the study could have inherited that same marker from older movements like the Phoenicians, or even the first Neolithic settlers thousands of years ago" http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/12/04/ciencia/1228409780.html
15. ^ http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16200-spanish-inquisition-left-genetic-legacy-in-iberia.html
16. ^ http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=153&letter=R
17. ^ The Edict of Expulsion of the Jews - 1492 Spain