Tuesday, March 31, 2015

UKIP's Keith Fraser says British teens who want to join ISIS should get FREE flights

By John Stevens for the Daily Mail 31 March 2015

  • Keith Fraser is standing for Ukip in Hackney North and Stoke Newington
  • He said money should not be spent stopping fanatic fighting with ISIS
  • The Ukip candidate said the Government should 'let them bloody well go'

Keith Fraser, who is standing in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said British teenagers who want to join ISIS should be given free seats on flights

Keith Fraser, who is standing in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said British teenagers who want to join ISIS should be given free seats on flights

British teenagers who want to join ISIS should be given free seats on flights to Iraq and Syria, a Ukip candidate has said.

Keith Fraser, who is standing in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said money should be spent on chartering planes rather than trying to stop them fighting with extremists.

Around 600 Britons are believed to have fled to Syria including a group of three schoolgirls from east London.

Mr Fraser said: ‘We have many young people wanting to join up with their “brothers” in IS. Let them bloody well go.

‘Why are we concerned in wasting our time and resources in assuring these people don’t go to join?

‘Instead let’s find out who wants to go and we can then spend public money in chartering our own planes to take them there. We don’t need these traitors in our beloved country.

‘They can hand over their British passports on the way out and say don’t ever try and come back.’

The Ukip candidate, who currently works as a chartered surveyor, said that the extremists ‘have one aim to convert or murder all “non-believers”.’

He added: ‘They don’t like our freedom, want to destroy our way of life and will not rest until they fly their flag over our shores.’

Mr Fraser’s comments came as Nigel Farage revealed the party’s pledge card, which includes saying no to the EU, controlling the country's borders, an extra £3 billion for the NHS, cuts in foreign aid spending and no tax on the minimum wage.

At the launch in Westminster, the Ukip leader said it is now ‘a party of what modern Britain is’.

He said: ‘The thing about Ukip is we have become the most eclectic, diverse political party.

‘We've got all shades of opinion, we've got people from the left, people from the right, people of all ages, all classes, all races.’

Although the posters include a pledge to control the UK's borders, the word ‘immigration’ does not feature.

Around 600 Britons are believed to have fled to Syria including a group of three schoolgirls from east London

Around 600 Britons are believed to have fled to Syria including a group of three schoolgirls from east London

The leader was joined by Ukip MP Mark Reckless and other senior Ukip figures, but Clacton MP Douglas Carswell did not attend the event as he was campaigning in his constituency.

Mr Farage said a strong showing for Ukip at May's election could boost the calls for electoral reform, which in turn could make his euro sceptics a ‘big party in British politics’.

He said: ‘I've always thought there should be election reform but that is frankly irrelevant in the next 38 days.

‘Yes, this is very hard for us because you find good Ukip support in Labour constituencies and in Conservative constituencies.

‘Yes, that's a challenge but what we have to do is to get over the line in enough seats in this General Election campaign and then you'll see how many seats we've actually come second in, and you'll realise as part of a longer-term strategy this really could become a big party in British politics.’

Mr Fraser’s comments came as Nigel Farage revealed the party’s pledge card, which includes pledges on the EU, immigration, extra spending on the NHS, cuts in foreign aid spending and no tax on the minimum wage

Mr Fraser’s comments came as Nigel Farage revealed the party’s pledge card, which includes pledges on the EU, immigration, extra spending on the NHS, cuts in foreign aid spending and no tax on the minimum wage

At the launch of the party's pledge card in Westminster, the Ukip leader was joined by Ukip MP Mark Reckless and other senior Ukip figures, but Clacton MP Douglas Carswell did not attend the event

At the launch of the party's pledge card in Westminster, the Ukip leader was joined by Ukip MP Mark Reckless and other senior Ukip figures, but Clacton MP Douglas Carswell did not attend the event

Ukip leader Nigel Farage unveils party pledge card poster

On his quest to become an MP in South Thanet, Mr Farage said he was facing a ‘hell of a fight’.

He said: ‘There are easier seats I could have gone for. I am confident but certainly not complacent.’

Asked if his party could get into double figures for seats, he replied: ‘Of course we can.’

When questioned about the significance of the TV debate later this week, Mr Farage replied: ‘It is important for all of us, but yes the stakes are high.’

UKIP's Keith Fraser says British teens who want to join ISIS should get FREE flights | Daily Mail Online

Saudi oil infrastructure at risk as Mid-East conflagration spreads

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 30 March 2015

The war against Yemen further entrenches al-Qaeda in the country and threatens to ignite a sectarian backlash within Saudi Arabia itself

People gather at the site of a drone strike on the road between Yafe and Radfan districts of the southern Yemeni province of Lahj

It may require a full-blown invasion by land forces to secure control in Yemen Photo: Reuters

Saudi Arabia’s escalating intervention in Yemen is a high-stakes gamble that risks back-firing in a series of complex ways, ultimately endangering Saudi oil infrastructure and the security of global energy supply.

Military analysts say there is little chance that air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition of Sunni countries will subjugate the Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. It may require a full-blown invasion by land forces to secure control. Large concentrations of Saudi armour and artillery are already massing near the border, though this may simply be a negotiating ploy.

The longer the conflict goes on, the greater the risks that it will stir up internal hatred in a country that has traditionally been relatively free of sectarian violence. Adam Baron, from the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the inflammatory comments about the Sunni-Shia struggle by politicians across the region are becoming “self-fulfilling prophecies”.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) – thought to be the most lethal of the jihadi franchises, and a redoubt for Saudi jihadis – already controls a swathe of central Yemen and is the chief beneficiary of the power vacuum.

AQAP can plan terrorist strikes against Saudi targets from a deepening strategic hinterland with increasing impunity. All US military advisers have been withdrawn from Yemen, and much of the country’s counter-terror apparatus is disintegrating. It is becoming harder to harry al-Qaeda cells or carry out drone strikes with precision.

The great unknown is whether a protracted Saudi war against Shia forces in Yemen – and possibly a “Vietnam-style” quagmire – might tug at the delicate political fabric within Saudi Arabia itself. The kingdom’s giant Ghawar oil field lies in the Eastern Province, home to an aggrieved Shia minority.

“If the Saudis continue this war – and if they keep killing civilians – this is going to create internal instability in Saudi Arabia itself,” said Ali al-Ahmed, from the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington.

Large numbers of Saudi youth are disaffected. An estimated 6,000 have been recruited by al-Qaeda and a further 3,000 have fought for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. While the Saudis have a formidable security apparatus, with a 30,000-strong force guarding the oil infrastructure, the risk of infiltration is high even among clans linked to the royal family.

Two al-Qaeda suicide bombers in a pipeline attack in 2006 were scions of the ruling elite, one a close relation of a leading Wahhabi cleric and the chief of the religious police.

The Institute for Gulf Affairs said the neuralgic point for the oil infrastructure is “Grand Central Station” at Qateef in the Eastern Province, where a network of 12 pipelines run close together, supplying the great Saudi oil terminals at Ras Tanura and Dharan.

“These lines run close to major highways and population centres, making them an easy target for quick hit-and-run attacks,” he said.

An Al-Qaeda cell arrested in April 2007 was plotting to hijack civilian airliners and crash them into the Saudi oil "crown jewels", the oil facilities at Ras Tanura and Abqaiq. Terrorists revealed under interrogation that engineers from the state oil giant Aramco may have been recruited.

Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority make up 20pc of the population. Though treated as second class citizens, and barred from key positions, they have been quiescent so far. Yet the risks of a clash are growing as the Middle East becomes engulfed in an epic Sunni-Shia struggle, sharpening lines of cleavage.

The terrorist group Saudi Hezbollah – which killed 19 American air force personnel in the Khobar Towers attack in 1996, acting as an arms-length cell for the Iranians – has issued a number of threats against Saudi oil facilities. Tehran has vowed revenge against Saudi Arabia for driving down the oil price and now for the air strikes on Yemen: the clear risk is that it will operate through Hezbollah allies on the ground inside the kingdom.

Oil markets have yet to react to these longer-term political threats. US crude prices have slumped back to $49 a barrel, giving up the $5 spike triggered by the bombing of Yemen last week.

Michael Wittner, a former CIA analyst now at Societe Generale, said the only serious risk is a disruption of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a potential choke-point for 3.8m barrels a day b/d of oil cargoes at the mouth of the Red Sea. The passage is so narrow that only one tanker can pass each way at the same time.

Al-Qaeda has in the past launched suicide attacks against shipping from speedboats around the port of Aden, without doing much damage. A well-armed flotilla of NATO and US naval forces currently patrols the stretch.

Mr Wittner said the greater risk for the oil markets is a further glut as an estimated 1.9m barrels of oil per day flood the world over the second quarter, and as a likely deal with Iran on its nuclear programme opens the way to more supply at the end of the year. “We believe there will be continued downward pressure on oil prices. Any remaining geopolitical risk premium from Yemen should dissipate quickly,” he said.

Michael Lewis, head of commodities at Deutsche Bank, said the conflict in Yemen is reminder that a supply shock remains an ever-present risk, even though US oil inventories have reached record levels and almost everybody in the markets is talking about how low prices could fall. “We think the market could tighten in May or June as lower prices finally bite and the US stops adding supply. It could be an important inflexion point,” he said.

Saudi oil infrastructure at risk as Mid-East conflagration spreads - Telegraph

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Britain mourns a monster – because he was a king. Richard III’s burial was absurd

Polly Toynbee Friday 27 March 2015

He may have been a child-murdering tyrant, but he was a king. So, in a nation where we still think like subjects, not citizens, thousands came to humble themselves before his 500-year-old bones

Leicester prepares for King Richard III reburial

'We are all humbled by monarchy, even by a long-dead despot. Royalty forever drags us back to a feudal state of mind from which we have never quite escaped, a fairyland where people know their place.' Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Pinch yourself, very hard. This must be anti-royalist satire? No, we’re wide awake as the nation mourns its most reviled monster of a king. Never was adulation of monarchy taken to such transcendently absurd heights.

Richard III has been buried with pomp in Leicester cathedral by the archbishop of Canterbury, with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and a black-clad Countess of Wessex as next of kin. Another relative, Benedict Cumberbatch, read a poem by the poet laureate. The Queen’s Division and Royal Signals bands saluted the fallen king. York has its own “commemoration” tonight. As they say, you couldn’t make it up.

It’s comical, but tragic too, as a reminder of the indignity the British accept in their accustomed role as subjects, not citizens. Here are church, royalty and army revering a child-killing, wife-slaughtering tyrant who would be on trial if he weren’t 500 years dead. This is the madness of monarchy, where these bones are honoured for their divine royalty, whether by accident of birth or by brutal seizure of the crown. Richard, whose death ended the tribal Wars of the Roses, is a good symbol of the “bloodline” fantasy. Our island story is one of royal usurpage and regicide, with imported French, Dutch and German monarchs who didn’t speak English. The puzzle is that this fantasy of anointed genes persists, even unto Kate’s unborn babe.

I can see the dilemma: you can’t put even a bad king’s bones on show in a museum when preservation of the idea of monarchy requires holy respect. It matters not that so many have been villains or half-wits. The one benefit of a supremely privileged family is to prove, once and for all, that talent and brains are randomly assigned. Forget a super-race, this royal selective breeding with the very best education and top university tutors has produced the least intellectually curious, least artistic, dullest bunch of polo-playing, hunting, shooting, fishing dullards you could hope not to meet. But then their adherents praise their very “ordinariness” as a quality.

Finding Richard in a Leicester car park was a delight. So was the tourist-bait tussle between York and Leicester as last resting place. That 20,000 watched the cortege today is no surprise – what a spectacle, what an event. But the BBC reported tears and the dean of Leicester, the very reverend David Monteith, called the ceremony an “extraordinary, moving thing”. What? The bishop of Leicester said people stood, “humble and reverent”.

Humble – that’s the word. We are all humbled by monarchy, even by a long-dead despot. Royalty forever drags us back to a feudal state of mind from which we have never quite escaped, a fairyland where people know their place. Royal prerogative is an absolute power that is now grafted on to over-mighty prime ministerial authority. Soon we shall see Prince Charles’s interferences with government. After 10 years of freedom of information legal action by the Guardian, the supreme court at last says we can see his letters – perforce, of course, redacted – but they will arrive before the election.

Royalty costs some £299m according to the Republic campaign, counting all costs. But though they’re richer than Croesus with their Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall and their biscuits, it’s less the money than their grip on public imagination that does the damage. Acceptance, even admiration of their phenomenal riches weakens instinctive indignation against the galloping greed of our swelling kleptocracy. Where’s the outrage at bankers and FTSE 100 CEOs with their 27% pay rise while most people’s incomes fell back? Shielded in a culture that celebrates, or at least tolerates, its head of state’s unearned wealth.

Richard may or may not have been the witty ogre of Shakespeare’s imagining, but that was irrelevant to today’s obsequies. The bishop intoned: “Today we come to give this king and these mortal remains the dignity and honour denied to them in death.” Never mind the nature of the man, kingship itself commands respect, however ill-gotten the crown.

Britain mourns a monster – because he was a king. Richard III’s burial was absurd | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Why tug our forelocks to Richard III, a king who’s such a diva that he needs two funerals?

Charlie Brooker Wednesday 25 March 2015

For somebody who did less for Britain than, say, Olly Murs, we’re making a dreadful fuss of our late monarch

Richard III … he's no Olly Murs.

Richard III … he's no Olly Murs. Photograph: Alamy

Who’s your favourite dead king? For me it’s a toss-up between King Henry VIII (likes: Greensleeves, beheadings) and Nat King Cole (likes: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose). Those are definitely my top two.

Below them, there’s King Kong, King George III, Good King Wenceslas, and about 500 other assorted types of king before you get to Richard III. Never warmed to him. Don’t know why. I’ve just never really been into Richard III. Maybe it’s his Savile-esque haircut, or the fact that his name is widely used as rhyming slang for faecal matter, or just the way he’s routinely depicted as a murderous, scheming cross between Mr Punch and Quasimodo; a panto villain with nephews’ blood on his hands.

But he’s not without his fans. At the time of writing, thousands of citizens are voluntarily queuing for up to four hours outside Leicester Cathedral just to look at a wooden box with his remains in it. They wouldn’t do that for Rihanna.

He’s lying in state until Thursday, when he’ll get buried for the second time. The second time! Because one funeral isn’t good enough for Richard, no. Apparently he needs two, the diva. Even Liberace was content with just one.

Well we can’t be doing with two funerals. Not in Austerity Britain. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the country’s up against it right now. We’re mired in debt, there’s an election on, the cold war’s simmering again, people are running off to Syria, and what are we doing? Burying a king from the middle ages. While A&E units are shut down or shat on, we’re expected to tug our forelocks and gaze at our shoes, whispering King Richard’s name with hushed reverence as the funeral cortege rolls by, accompanied by people dressed as knights and minstrels and giant turnips. No. No. We can hardly slag off Isis for being medieval when we’ve voluntarily turned the news into a bonus episode of Wolf Hall.

What did Richard III ever contribute to Britain? He reigned for two years, had his arse kicked at the battle of Bosworth Field, and spent the next 52 decades in a petulant dead sulk, lounging around doing dick all for anyone. Where was he during the great fire of London? Or the Jack the Ripper murders? Or the second world war? Or the 2007 Celebrity Big Brother race row? When his subjects were crying out for guidance, where was King Richard? Relaxing in the ground, enjoying an indulgent rot in his VIP car park. Just because you qualify for a disabled bay, doesn’t mean you get to hog it for 500 years.

Even the most dedicated historian would agree – would run across a motorway to agree – that Richard III has contributed less to Great Britain than, say, Adam Woodyatt. Or Olly Murs. Where are the statues of Murs? The portraits? The tapestries? OK, so they probably exist, somewhere, in the attic of a demented fan – but that’s not the point. Despite standing accused of nephew murder twice over and being dead for 500 years, King Richard is enjoying way more fawning press than Murs right now, just because he had blue blood in his veins. Not any more. He doesn’t even have veins. Or eyes. Or kneecaps. He’s rubbish. Yet still it’s all, “Ooh, isn’t King Richard brilliant” and, “Ahh, what an honour to witness this moment of history.” Jesus wept. Just climb in the coffin and kiss him, why don’t you?

Surely it’s time to make King Richard pay his dues. We’re often told the royals are good for the country because they raise our international profile and encourage tourism – so we should be wringing every penny out of Richard III. We’re not even burying him during tourist season. We’re missing a trick here. Several tricks in fact.

Why rebury him once? Why not make it a regular event, like the changing of the guard? Dig him up at the start of each month, bury the individual bones at random beauty spots around the country, and turn it into a treasure hunt for tourists. Follow the clues on an accompanying app; see if you can locate his skull. Congratulations! It was hidden in a bin behind Oblivion at Alton Towers. Now track down his elbow. Then his pelvis. First to find six bones receives 20% off their B&B bill and a family-size jar of Marmite.

Actually, why rebury him at all? He’ll only go missing again. We should lace his bones together and turn him into a great big marionette. Have him dance to Uptown Funk on Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, then send him on a tour of the country, where he can perform jigs in market squares. Toss a coin at him to make him dance faster; manage to get one through his eye socket and you’ll win a balloon. All proceeds to the NHS.

That won’t happen of course. We’re far too reverential; even though he died so long ago he basically doesn’t register in the imagination as a real person any more. They might as well be burying the Gruffalo for all I care.

Still, at least maybe this time they’ll be smart enough to bury him with a name badge nailed to his ribs – or maybe a baseball cap with his initials on it – so when some poor sod digs him up again in 500 years’ time, they won’t have to carbon-date his bones in a holographic TV special just to find out who he is. The hoity-toity dead old prick.

Why tug our forelocks to Richard III, a king who’s such a diva that he needs two funerals? | Comment is free | The Guardian

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The abuse of Nigel Farage is disgraceful - and just not British

James Kirkup

By James Kirkup 23 Mar 2015

Disagree with the Ukip leader? Fine. But don't frighten his family, or wish him dead

A man, a woman and two children walk into a bar. Dozens of people surround them, shouting. When they leave the pub, the people surround their car and keep shouting. Not much of a punch line, but then this isn't a joke. It's what happened to an elected politician yesterday.

The fact that the politician is Nigel Farage is irrelevant. What happened yesterday in Downe, Kent, should not happen. This is not how a decent society conducts itself.

Yes, I know Mr Farage and his party hold some views that some (many?) people find repellent. I make no secret of my strong disagreement with Ukip on several of its central arguments, especially immigration. But believing someone is wrong is no excuse for abusing them, verbally, physically or otherwise. And doing so in the presence of their family is wholly beyond the pale.

The George and Dragon in Downe

This isn't an isolated incident either. There's something about Mr Farage that seems to persuade some people that the normal rules of decency and civilised discourse don't apply. This month he published a book, serialised here, recounting the potentially life-threatening cancer he suffered when he was in his 20s. In his account, NHS staff failed to spot the condition, leading him to suggest that NHS "incompetence and negligence" nearly killed him. And when we reported that, countless people on Twitter and elsewhere responded with jokes to the effect of "another NHS failure" and "must try harder next time".

Farage: 'Protesters were a 'feral mob of subsidised students'

Nigel Farage's Scotland trip ends in chaos amid protests

In other words, a man criticised the NHS, and people responded by wishing him dead. Sorry, but I don't care how morally outraged you feel by Ukip's stupid, horrible and misguided views. Your moral indignation doesn't justify the sort of treatment Mr Farage gets.

In pictures: A history of politicians who've been egged

To be fair, this is part of a wider trend towards treating our politicians as if they were less deserving of basic courtesy and respect than the rest of us, a coarsening of political conversation that should worry us all. The celebrity cook Jack Monroe's inexcusable comment about David Cameron's dead child is a good example of the sort of thing that would never be said about someone in any other field.

The internet doesn't help either. Anonymity and immediacy create the perfect environment for stupid, hateful heat-of-the-moment comments by people who in real life are essentially decent and respectful. (I don't just mean the CyberNats either; some Ukippers are just vile online, and of course the other parties have their poison-pen factions too.)

The politicians don't always help either. The way the Tories have pursued questions about the legal status of Ed Miliband's parents' house has brought them unpleasantly close to scoring points from the death of Mr Miliband's father. George Osborne's sneering joke about the subject in the Budget last week left some of his colleagues feeling privately queasy, and rightly so.

But it's Mr Farage who does seem to get the worst abuse. That's wrong and should stop. It's just not British.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage attacked with an egg on campaign trail
Nigel Farage abandons walkabout in Rotherham as protesters blockade him in Ukip office

There's a lot of debate about Britishness, of course. It's become common to define Britishness as tolerance but that's wrong. Being British doesn't mean being tolerant. It means being polite. So polite that when someone stands on your toe or bumps into you on the bus, you're the one who says sorry. So polite that when we're about to call someone an idiot, we start by saying "with all due respect."

And so polite that when someone goes around our country saying things we find stupid and hateful and divisive, we hear him out in respectful silence and then explain that we simply happen to hold a different view.

Anti UKIP campaigners have chased Nigel Farage down the road after a protest was staged in the local pub of the UKIP leader in the village of Downe, Kent (Levi Hinds)

Disagree with Mr Farage? Fine. Call him a fool and a knave and a demagogue offering facile and counterproductive solutions to problems he doesn't really understand. Call him, with all due respect, a nasty man. But do it calmly and politely and without raising your voice, either physically or electronically.

And don't frighten his family, or wish him dead, or otherwise break the basic rules of courtesy and decency that make Britain Britain. Please.

The abuse of Nigel Farage is disgraceful - and just not British - Telegraph

Monday, March 23, 2015

Lee Kuan Yew: Singapore's great pragmatist

By Elliot Brennan Monday 23 arch 2015

Singapore's former prime minister and elder stateman Lee Kuan Yew Photo: Lee Kuan Yew was a remarkable statesman and a much revered thinker on politics, society and state-building. (AFP: Mohd Fyrol)

Singapore's founder and master-builder, Lee Kuan Yew, ran the island-state with a fierce pragmatism that made it unique. Asia is poorer without him, writes Elliot Brennan.

"The mark of a great leader is to take his society from where it is to where it has never been."

So said Henry Kissinger about Singapore's founder and master-builder, Lee Kuan Yew, in 2010. Kissinger went on to say that, "there is no better strategic thinker in the world today".

Kissinger's sentiments have been echoed the world over. Lee, one of Asia's great architects, was a remarkable statesman and a much revered thinker on politics, society and state-building.

Rising to become Singapore's first prime minister at the age of 35 in 1959, Lee was all too aware of his island-state's fragility. Resource poor and under threat from communist forces, he sought a union with the Malaysian Federation. But Malaysia's ethno-centric nation-building was at odds with Lee's vision of a meritocratic, secular state and in 1965 Singapore found itself exiled from the federation.

Lee was a fierce pragmatist who narrowly avoided execution under Japanese occupation and he set about building the impossible nation. His Singapore would become, by the end of the 20th century, a key financial and trade hub of Asia and a centre of innovation and big ideas.

During Lee's prime ministership, lasting from 1959 to 1990, he ran the island-state more like a multinational corporation than a state. Indeed, there were few models in the 20th century or Cold War for the viability (let alone survival) of a city-state. Through his lifetime (both as PM as well as in his advisory roles as senior minister from 1990 to 2004 and minister mentor from 2004 to 2011) he saw GDP per capita rise from $400 to almost $40,000, constructed an unlikely stability and weeded out corruption in Singapore. Today, Singapore is unique in a region prone to developmental teething problems.

Lee was a man of strong convictions. His pragmatism was arrived at through empirical study and driven by expert consultations, earning him the accolade of being a "one-man intelligence agency". He was of course not alone in the building of his big ideas. Sinnathamby Rajaratnam and Goh Keng Swee were just two who played a pivotal role in the creation of Singapore, as Lee would himself attest. (He was known for publicly deriding the idea of statesmanship, once saying that "anyone who thinks they're a statesman should see a psychiatrist".)

Under Japanese occupation in 1942-45, Lee worked as a translator for occupying forces, narrowly escaping execution when upon being asked to board a truck for relocation, sensed something amiss and excused himself to return home to collect a change of clean clothes. He stayed there for two days before returning to work, thus avoiding the massacre of Sook Ching. As he would later say about his escape, it was "a lottery".

After reading law at the University of Cambridge where he obtained a "double starred" honours, he returned to Singapore to work as lawyer before entering politics in 1954. He was elected the first prime minister of Singapore in 1959 after the island was granted self-government from Britain.

Lee's vision for Singapore was of development in phases, and in this sentiment rests the essence of the strongest criticism of Lee, who demanded strong rule (often rule by law rather than rule of law) throughout his tenure. In 1980, on the campaign trial, he declared: "Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him."

He led an illiberal democracy that has often been derided for curbing civil liberties and upholding severe penalties (including death) against offenders. He saw little place for the media in his Singapore, noting that "one value that does not fit Singapore is the theory that the press is the fourth estate".

His irreverence toward media was derived from pragmatism:

I ignore polling as a method of government ... I think that shows a certain weakness of mind, an inability to chart a course whichever way the wind blows, whichever way the media encourages the people to go, you follow. You're not a leader.

His straight-speaking, strong will and foresight in dealing with the big picture rather than what we would today term "inbox issues" earned him the admiration of leaders and reformers the world over.

When asked of the great men he had met, he responded:

I would say the greatest was Deng Xiaoping. At his age, to admit that he was wrong, that all these ideas, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, they are just not working and have to be abandoned, you need a great man to do that.

Lee was a visionary of equal merit, and Deng would thrust on him (and him alone) the mantle of "mentor". China's reformer wasn't the only one who sought Lee's counsel. Lee was the only individual who has been called to give counsel to every US president since Nixon.

In a 2011 interview, when asked how he judged his life's achievements, he responded:

Has the life I've lived been worthwhile? Have I made the world around me and those dependent on my decisions ... [have I] given them a better life? I give myself a B+. That's enough.

Singaporeans both lament the restrictions on liberties under his tenure (which remain in place today) and celebrate the progress and achievement made possible through him. Standing firmly upon his belief in pragmatism, he has long expressed his concerns: "What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work."

As Singapore marks its 50th anniversary of independence this year, time will tell if complacency can corrode the bastion of strength that Lee has constructed. But for today, this man's life achievements as the father of a nation and the adviser to a generation of statesmen should be revered and remembered. Asia is poorer without him.

This article was first published on the Lowy Institute's Interpreter. Read the original.

Elliot Brennan is a non-resident research fellow with the Institute for Security and Development Policy's Asia Program in Sweden.

Lee Kuan Yew: Singapore's great pragmatist - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Monday, March 16, 2015

The woman who faces the wrath of North Korea

Maryanne Vollers Monday 16 March 2015

After her epic escape, Park Yeon-mi devoted herself to revealing the brutal truth about North Korea – but the regime is determined to discredit her and other defectors

Shedding light on the darkest place in the world … Park Yeon-mi. Photograph: Beowulf Sheehan

Shedding light on the darkest place in the world … Park Yeon-mi. Photograph: Beowulf Sheehan

What does a nuclear power with the fifth largest army in the world have to fear from a pint-sized university student in a pink frock? A great deal, apparently. On 31 January 2015, a North Korean government-run website posted an 18-minute video titled The Human Rights Propaganda Puppet, Yeon-mi Park, which denounced the charismatic 21-year-old defector. It was the latest attack in a smear campaign aimed at silencing Yeon-mi, a human rights activist and outspoken critic of the world’s most repressive and secretive regime.

Attacks on prominent North Korean defectors are nothing new. These individuals regularly endure charges that they lie and exaggerate. Occasionally there are death threats. Park Sang-hak, who launches helium balloons laden with USB sticks and anti-regime leaflets into North Korean airspace, has been called “human scum” who will “pay for his crimes in blood”. Sometimes the threats go beyond mere rhetoric: in 2011, a hit man with a poison-tipped needle was intercepted in South Korea on his way to kill Park Sang-hak. In 1997 the nephew of one of Kim Jong-il’s mistresses was gunned down outside Seoul; he had recently published an expose about the dictator’s family. But the regime’s most common weapon against its critics is character assassination.

Journey of a North Korean defector: from escaping by bike to singing at Harvard

“One of the very few growing industries in North Korea is this operation of trying to compromise defectors and witnesses,” says Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The smears and threats have ramped up in the wake of a UN report documenting crimes against humanity in North Korea and recommending that the case be referred to the International Criminal Court. The UN findings were based on the testimony of more than 300 defectors who painted a picture of institutionalised cruelty within the regime, including mass incarceration in forced labour camps. North Korea has tried – unsuccessfully – to discredit the entire report because one of its well-known witnesses, Shin Dong-hyuk, later admitted to changing parts of his biography. “The fundamental building blocks of Shin’s story remain the same,” says Scarlatoiu. “He was still a political prisoner and still tortured.” But the controversy highlights a tragic catch-22: sometimes the traumatic firsthand experiences that make defectors such powerful witnesses also make them vulnerable to assaults on their credibility.

Yeon-mi did not testify before the UN inquiry, but became a YouTube sensation last autumn, following her emotional speech at the One Young World Summit in Dublin. Looking like a fragile porcelain doll dressed in a flowing pink hanbok (traditional Korean dress), Yeon-mi took the podium and, fighting to keep her composure, told a harrowing and heartbreaking story: “North Korea is an unimaginable country,” she began in halting English. “We aren’t free to sing, say, wear or think what we want.”

She said she believed the dictator could hear her thoughts, and she described the hideous punishments meted out to those who broke the rules or expressed doubt about the regime. When she was nine years old she saw her friend’s mother publicly executed for a minor infraction. When she was 13, she fled into China, only to see her mother raped by a human trafficker. Her father later died in China, where she buried his ashes in secret. “I couldn’t even cry,” she said. “I was afraid to be sent back to North Korea.”

Eventually Yeon-mi and her mother escaped into Mongolia by walking and crawling across the frozen Gobi desert, following the stars north to freedom. By the time Yeon-mi had finished with a plea to “shed light on the darkest place in the world”, the whole audience was in tears and on its feet.

Dissenting voice ... Park Sang-hak, releasing a balloon carrying anti-North Korea leaflets, has been branded 'human scum' by the regime. Photograph: Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

Dissenting voice ... Park Sang-hak, releasing a balloon carrying anti-North Korea leaflets, has been branded ‘human scum’ by the regime. Photograph: Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

After her Dublin speech, Yeon-mi became the human face of North Korea’s oppressed. The media clamoured for interviews. A book deal followed, which was where I came into the picture. As Yeon-mi’s “collaborator” – a publishing term for a writer who helps an author find her voice and turn her story into a narrative – I was immediately taken with the power of Yeon-mi’s testimony, as well as the warmth of her personality and her playful sense of humour. It was hard to fathom how this vibrant young woman could have suffered such an ordeal.

As soon as we began working together, I noticed there were some minor discrepancies in the articles written about Yeon-mi, a jumbling of dates and places and some inconsistent details about her family’s escape. Most of these issues could be explained by a language barrier – Yeon-mi was giving interviews in English before she was fully fluent. But Yeon-mi was also protecting a secret, something she had tried to bury and forget from the moment she arrived in South Korea at age 15: like tens of thousands of other refugees, Yeon-mi had been trafficked in China. In South Korea – and many other societies – admitting to such a “shameful” past would destroy her prospects for marriage and any sort of normal life.

She had hoped that by changing a few details about her escape she could avoid revealing the full story. But after she decided to plunge into human rights activism, she realised that without the whole truth, the story of her life would have no real power or meaning. She has apologised for any discrepancies in her public record, and is determined that her book be scrupulously accurate.

With Yeon-mi’s cooperation, I have been able to verify her story through family members and fellow defectors who knew her in North Korea and China. Sometimes Yeon-mi had forgotten or blocked out graphic details from her childhood, only to have the memories return in all their horror as we reviewed her recollections with other witnesses. It seemed that she wasn’t just remembering these things, but actually reliving them.

Countless scientific studies have shown that trauma changes how the brain processes memory. It turns out that scrambling details and confusing time frames is actually a sign that the trauma survivor is being truthful – they honestly can’t remember things in sequence. Dr Judith Herman, clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard and author of Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, tells me: “Traumatised people don’t give you a perfect, complete narrative on the first go-round. You see this all the time with refugees seeking asylum. That doesn’t mean their story isn’t credible, because the gist of their story is consistent.”

'One of the very few growing industries in North Korea is this operation of trying to compromise defectors and witnesses' ... the leader, Kim Yong-un and military chiefs. Photograph: Yao Dawei/AP Photo/Xinhua

‘One of the very few growing industries in North Korea is this operation of trying to compromise defectors and witnesses’ ... the leader, Kim Yong-un and military chiefs. Photograph: Yao Dawei/AP Photo/Xinhua

According to Herman, more and more judges in US asylum hearings understand and accept the impact of trauma on memory. Unfortunately the general public can be less forgiving. Which is why North Korea, its sympathisers and dupes have been able to exploit the discrepancies in some defectors’ stories as a weapon to attack their motives.

A few days before Christmas last year I checked my inbox and found a mysterious email warning me not to write the book with Yeon-mi and help “spread her lies”. Then came the North Korean video. Despite having the production values of a Stalin-era newsreel, the footage was chilling: some of her uncles, aunts and cousins still living in North Korea were paraded in front of the camera to denounce her. The worst they could come up with was that Yeon-mi was an ambitious child. But it was horrifying for her to see them so vulnerable. At least she knew they were still alive.

Yeon-mi continues to work on her book and to speak out for freedom in North Korea. On Human Rights Day last 10 December, Yeon-mi appeared on a panel at the US State Department with another outspoken defector named Joseph Kim. In many public forums, Kim has told how he watched his father wither and die from starvation, how his sister disappeared and his mother left home, and how he survived as a street kid, scrabbling for crusts of bread. “Hunger is humiliation,” he says. “Hunger is helplessness.” But on this day he added something new: his mother had sold his sister to a man in China, thinking it was better than sending her back to North Korea.

“This is an important part of my story,” said Kim, “that I hope illustrates how difficult and desperate the life is, and how many North Korean mothers were forced to make this kind of heartbreaking decision.”

Does this fresh revelation in any way diminish this remarkable young man’s credibility? Absolutely not. It only shows how traumatic narratives sometimes come out in fits and starts. The whole story does not emerge until the survivor finds a way to tell it. But for those who have the patience to listen closely, the stories gather and build to a heroic and truthful testimony of survival that cannot be silenced.

• Author and journalist Maryanne Vollers has collaborated on several memoirs including Living History by Hillary Clinton. In Order To Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, by Yeon-mi Park, will be published by Fig Tree/Penguin in the UK and Penguin Press in the US in September 2015

The woman who faces the wrath of North Korea | World news | The Guardian

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Special report from Libya: How NATO's toppling of Gaddafi has turned to disaster

By Ruth Sherlock Saturday 14 March 2015

The country that fought for freedom is falling back into factionalism and bloodshed

Tears rolled down Khadija’s cheeks as the 17-seater plane – the whirr of its propellers deafening in the cabin – began its descent into the capital of a country crippled by war. The hope she’d felt of a better future for Libya after the ousting of dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi had long soured into resentment and fear. Now she was flying back into her homeland from exile. An uncle had been killed and she needed to attend his funeral.

“It wasn’t meant to be like this,” she said. “We have lost our dignity. We fought Gaddafi so that we could speak freely. Now it’s the same as before, but with less security.”

Many of her countrymen agree with her. Since the end of the 2011 NATO-backed war that toppled Gaddafi, Libya has fragmented – with two rival governments and their allied armed gangs vying for power. Nascent democracy has been supplanted by a system of repression and fear. Militias have become the most powerful players in a country devoid of the rule of law, of a national army or a police force. Anyone opposing them, be they politician or civilian, is silenced – often at gunpoint.

A policeman from the Nawasi brigade questions a motorist in Tripoli's Martyr's Square (Sam Tarling/The Telegraph)

In the new Libya, just as in the old, speaking out against those wielding power is enough see you threatened, or killed. There was, many admit, a “golden age” in the months immediately after the end of Gaddafi’s 40-year-rule. But it was not long before factionalism began to spin out of control. Now that brief, optimistic interregnum is spoken of nostalgically, as thought it were a distant era.

In fact it was only three years ago, in 2012, that Libyans rushed to the polls to vote for their first democratically elected government. Newspapers proliferated. Misrata, Libya’s merchant second city, had 23. In the conference halls of five-star hotels, wise men gathered to debate the finer details of the country’s new constitution. But when the business of governing began in earnest, things began to go wrong.

It had taken a war of eight months to remove a tyrant, but it soon became clear that the mentality of the people subjugated to his rule would need much longer to change. With no established social base for democracy, Libya’s new rulers resorted to the politics of old. Corruption became worse even than during Gaddafi’s regime, as every politician secured his seat with nepotism and patronage. “Every time a new prime minister arrived, he sacked the staff across departments and institutions and brought in his own people,” said Mohsen Derregia, the former head of the Libyan Investment Authority, the body managing the country’s $65 billion sovereign wealth fund. “In four years LIA had six chairmen. Barely had you learnt to do the job than you were moved on.”

Libya’s oil-rich economy began to founder. Under a succession of weak governments, and with few other job opportunities, fighting groups formed to oust Gaddafi refused to disband. Instead, each accused the other of secretly being Gaddafi loyalists, and gunfights broke out once again as they battled for control of key public facilities.

In Tripoli the fighting between militias from Misrata and the mountain town of Zintan, saw hundreds of people killed. Their fight for Tripoli’s international airport ended with the terminal burned to the ground. Rows of planes, some gutted by fire, others riddled with bullet holes and with bits of their wings broken off, stand abandoned on the closed runway, in silent testimony to the chaos.

The wreckage of what was once the departure lounge at Tripoli International Airport, Libya

With everyone keen to stake their claim to wealth and power in the new Libya, and to prove their involvement in the revolution that toppled the old, the number of militiamen burgeoned from the estimated 40,000 fighters during the 2011 war, to 160,000. In their midst, Islamic extremists began to thrive. Ansar Sharia, the hard-line jihadi group accused of killing US ambassador Chris Stevens, grew in strength. Facebook, once a platform for opponents of Gaddafi to arrange protests, became a tool of repression.

“Last year I received death threats after I wrote a public post on Facebook, criticising the fighting between militias,” said one young resident of Misrata, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. “I hate what is happening here. Why are they doing this? How can they raise a weapon against men who were their brothers in the revolution?

The eastern city of Benghazi, the “capital of the revolution”, where the first anti-Gaddafi protests took place in 2011, became a murky, dangerous place. Some estimates suggest 200 people have been assassinated. The dead include liberals and campaigners, as well as victims of federalists who want to separate the east from the west.

Last August, Libya Dawn, a coalition of militias including Islamists, seized control of the capital, Tripoli, sending those in parliament fleeing to Tobruk. There the parliamentarians allied themselves with Khalifa Haftar, a former general in Gaddafi’s army who once worked for the CIA. Gathering up his own broad coalition, which includes a large number of soldiers from the old regime, Haftar has declared war on Libya Dawn – which he dismissed as a band of terrorists. As the anarchy in Libya resolves into these two warring factions, freedom of speech is being pushed ever further underground.

Young men play table football in Martyr Square (Sam Tarling/The Telegraph)

By day, a veneer of normality lacquers the capital. Shops, including international brand names such as Mango, and Marks and Spencer are open. Traffic is gridlocked. Cosmopolitan Libyan girls gossip over cappuccinos in one of the city’s many Costa Coffee shops. Men in plain clothes drive police cars, and soldiers in pick-up trucks wearing mismatched uniforms enforce the law. “We are here for security,” said Captain Murad, 40, the commander of the Nawasi brigade, one of the biggest militias under Libya Dawn in Tripoli. “Our men police the streets. We stop crime.”

Policemen belonging to the Nawasi brigade conduct traffic searches in Tripoli's Martyr's Square (Sam Tarling/The Telegraph)

On one recent Thursday night – the start of the weekend in Libya – I joined the Nawasi brigade on patrol. Wearing green masks to hide their faces, the militiamen set up flying checkpoints. They pulled over cars without licence plates to check if they were stolen. They searched the seats and boots for drugs.

All very unobjectionable. But residents repeatedly told me that, as well as stopping petty crime, militias use their power to destroy opponents. Last month in Tripoli, the body of Intissar Hassairi, a female political activist, was found in the boot of her car. Government prosecutors in Tripoli told me she had been killed in a “simple family dispute”. This may yet be the case. But in the days after her murder, the policeman who took fingerprints at the scene also disappeared. Ms Hassairi’s boyfriend fled the country. A friend told me her family was too afraid to talk.

Women look in the window of a dress shop in Tripoli (Sam Tarling/The Telegraph)

A pervasive sense of fear is barely concealed below the surface in Libya today.

“Are you sure no one followed you?” asked Murad, a civil rights activist, looking nervously around the cafĂ© in Tripoli. Lighting a cigarette, the young man sighed. “Freedom of speech is the big fear for Libyan Dawn. Mind you, if I was on the other side [in east Libya] I’d be scared of the militias there, too.” Murad, who spoke using a pseudonym, explained how he had been part of a pro-democracy group that since 2012 had been encouraging fighting factions to settle debate through the ballot box.

After the outbreak of hostilities between Haftar and Libya Dawn, however, his work became impossible. “If you criticised Dawn they accused you of being with Haftar,” he said. And vice versa.

Such chaos, the ever-present threats, have driven thousands into exile. Looking nervously through the window of the plane bringing her home for her uncle’s funeral, Khadija is one of them. She fled Libya in 2013. Many of Murad’s colleagues have gone too, forced out by the factionalism and gangsterism that has brought their country to the brink of civil war.

“These people, they say they are doing this to keep us safe and to protect the revolution against Gaddafi supporters,” said Murad. “But it’s been four years. Gaddafi is over. This is about everyone getting as much money as they can. The options now are military rule, like before – or chaos. I am at the point where I just want to have a stable country. Democracy just feels too far beyond our reach.”

Video: Special report from Libya: How NATO's toppling of Gaddafi has turned to disaster - Telegraph

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Nigel Farage: UK mosques have been infiltrated by hate preachers

Rowena Mason, political correspondent Friday 27 February 2015

Ukip leader accuses government of appeasing Islamist extremism and warns religious minorities they need to understand the law of the land

Nigel Farage repeated his claim that multiculturalism is to blame for western citizens joining Islamic State.

Nigel Farage repeated his claim that multiculturalism is to blame for western citizens joining Islamic State. Photograph: Patrick Seeger/EPA

Nigel Farage has claimed the mosques of Britain have been infiltrated by criminal hate preachers and warned that religious minorities needed to understand the law of the land.

The Ukip leader was speaking to a US audience about Islamic extremism before his appearance at a hard-right Conservative conference in Washington on Thursday, where he has been given star billing.

Asked about the recruiting of jihadists from the west, Farage said the UK had been “appeasing” Islamic extremists He repeated his belief that multiculturalism was to blame for the phenomenon of western citizens joining Islamic State (Isis).

“What we have done is, we have allowed, through a deliberate policy of multiculturalism, because we want to show the world what lovely people we are, and we have allowed different communities to develop a different culture within what ought to be a Judeo-Christian culture.

“In the case of my country, our constitution makes it perfectly clear. That is what we are as country. And whilst we want to be tolerant of other religions and other minorities, they have got to understand the law of the land in our country. We have lost sight of that.

“Longer term, there’s a cultural issue here. We have got to be more assertive. We have got to be more self-confident about who we are.”

During previous appearances on Fox News, where he has gained a cult following, Farage has talked about Europe allowing big Muslim ghettos to grow up.

Farage claimed “the mosques in Britain have been infiltrated by a series of preachers, funded with big money coming out of parts of the Middle East, and saying things in mosques that, if I said in the streets of London or you said in the streets of New York, we’d be arrested for pretty blooming quickly.”

The Ukip leader said the government had been “turning a blind eye for a very long time”, much like the way people were “frightened of our own shadows” in relation to the grooming of girls in Rotherham by men of Pakistani heritage for fear of being called racist.

Last month, Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, wrote to 1,000 imams asking them to vigilant about radical preachers and to help root out extremism. This angered the Muslim Council of Britain, which objected to their faith being singled out and the suggestions that Muslims were inherently apart from British society.

Following the Fox interview, Farage is expected at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday night, for which he has taken time out from campaigning in his target parliamentary seat of Thanet South in Kent. He will return on Friday to speak at the Ukip spring conference in Margate.

High-profile Republicans due to attend the US conference include Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Farage will speak in between an appearance by Palin and a reception hosted by the National Rifle Association gun lobby.

Unlike a growing number of Republicans, Farage opposes any ground troops to tackle Isis.

“We can provide expertise, we can provide help, but it’s not British and American boots that are going to beat this,” he said.

Nigel Farage: UK mosques have been infiltrated by hate preachers | Politics | The Guardian

Nigel Farage: British Muslim ‘fifth column’ fuels immigration fear

Rowena Mason Political correspondent Thursday 12 March 2015

Ukip leader also says he would get rid of ‘irrelevant’ anti-discrimination laws in interview with former equality commissioner Trevor Phillips

Nigel Farage and Trevor Phillips

Nigel Farage told Trevor Phillips that: ‘When you’ve got British people with British passports, going out to fight for Isis, don’t be surprised if there isn’t an uptick in concern.’ Photograph: Outline Productions

Nigel Farage has warned there is rising public concern about immigration partly because people believe there are some Muslims who want to form “a fifth column and kill us”, and that there has never before been a migrant group that wants to “change who we are and what we are”.

The Ukip leader also said that race and other anti-discrimination legislation should be abolished, arguing that it was no longer needed in the United Kingdom, in an interview with former equality and human rights commissioner Trevor Phillips for Channel 4.

Farage said the emergence of British-born Islamist extremists was an “especial problem”, with some Muslim immigrants who do not want to integrate prompting wider public concern.

During the interview, the Ukip leader said: “I think perhaps one of the reasons the polls show an increasing level of concern is because people do see a fifth column living within our country, who hate us and want to kill us.

There is no previous experience, in our history, of a migrant group that fundamentally wants to change who we are

Nigel Farage

“So don’t be surprised if there isn’t a slight increase in people’s worries and concerns. You know, when you’ve got British, when you’ve got people, born and bred in Cardiff, with British passports, going out to fight for Isis, don’t be surprised if there isn’t an uptick in concern. There has been an uptick in concern, but does it make us a prejudiced people? No.”

In contrast, he said, previous waves of immigration by Huguenots, Jews and Ugandan Asians became integrated in society while often maintaining private observance of their faiths and traditions.

“There is an especial problem with some of the people who’ve come here and who are of the Muslim religion who don’t want to become part of our culture. So there is no previous experience, in our history, of a migrant group that comes to Britain, that fundamentally wants to change who we are and what we are. That is, I think, above everything else, what people are really concerned about.”

He also indicated that anti-discrimination legislation had become irrelevant.

Pressed on which discrimination laws he would get rid of, the Ukip leader said: “Much of it. I think the employer should be much freer to make decisions on who he or she employs.”

Asked whether there would be a law against discrimination on the grounds of race or colour under Ukip, Farage added: “No … because we take the view, we are colour-blind. We as a party are colour-blind.”

Phillips said he made the programme because he had come to the conclusion that, while much of the equality movement in Britain had changed it for the better, it might also have led to serious and unwanted consequences that could undermine what had been achieved.

Farage has previously issued warnings in the wake of the French terror attacks, which Theresa May, the home secretary, called irresponsible and Labour grandee Tessa Jowell said she thought were sickening.

With Ukip polling at around 15% and immigration consistently cited as one of the top concerns of voters, the Channel 4 programme interviewed Farage to explore whether the UK’s “attempt to embrace a multi-ethnic Britain has led directly to the rise of the party”.

During the interview, Farage acknowledged that in all honesty he used to see Phillips as “the enemy” and “very, very much as being part of a new Labour project … the politically correct brigade that wouldn’t want these things discussed.”

Phillips said he had got on well with Farage during the interview and they had a good conversation, but he declined to elaborate at this point on what he thought of the Ukip leader’s position. A Ukip aide also said the two men had got on very well.

In publicity material released before the screening, Channel 4’s head of specialist factual, David Glover, said: “This film contains some very uncomfortable facts about race. Trevor Phillips now strongly believes that it’s important to get them out there, so ultimately we can understand and tackle them.

“Trevor is arguably the best-qualified person in the country to examine these issues. What’s fascinating is that, having thought so deeply about them, he now has a very different approach to the subject than he used to.”

Farage has made immigration a key plank of his election campaign, saying the party would reduce numbers by leaving the European Union, banning unskilled migrants for five years and bringing in an Australian points-style system.

The Ukip leader has been able to exploit David Cameron’s failure to meet his target of bringing down net migration to the tens of thousands from hundreds of thousands, with the current figure running at almost 300,000.

A YouGov poll found last week that 75% of people think immigration has been too high and only 2% think it has been too low. ComRes and ITV research last month found Ukip was more trusted than the other parties on the issue of immigration but 48% said it did not have sensible policies.

Nigel Farage: British Muslim ‘fifth column’ fuels immigration fear | Politics | The Guardian

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

A female Arab TV presenter put a rude male guest in his place. So what?

Nesrine Malik Wednesday 11 March 2015

Rima Karaki’s put-down of Sheikh Hani Al-Siba’i has gone viral – proof that creepy western stereotypes about Muslim women are dismayingly hard to shift

There is a new version of “Dog bites man”, and it is “Arab woman does everyday thing that will amaze you”. The latest example of this occurred last week, when a female Lebanese TV presenter told off a male sheikh guest for insulting her when she urged him to keep his answers short. A video of the incident has gone viral.

While her summary dispatching of him was indeed satisfying and righteous – the man was an irritating windbag – you clearly have never watched Arab television news if you think this is a unique event. It is quite often carnage, with presenters and panellists talking over each other, hurling insults and abuse, sometimes even coming to blows. If anything, this was relatively tame compared to most clashes between anchors and guests.

Moreover, Arabic TV news is predominantly staffed by women. The presenter in question, Rima Karaki, follows a long tradition of formidable female anchors that began at al-Jazeera Arabic and MBC, and it is nothing unusual to be interviewed by a woman on most channels.

I suspect that London-based Sheikh Hani Al-Siba’i’s sexism was ramped up in the reporting of the story, and I daresay he would have been as huffy and pompous if it had been a male presenter who had interrupted and cut him down to size. It didn’t hurt the mythologising of Karaki’s behaviour that she is attractive, and was wearing a headscarf.

Kurdish fighters ‘The images of female Kurdish fighters in their fatigues sent the western media into shivers of orientalist reverie.’

But the headlines that followed in the western press are part of a now established genre that morphs the everyday behaviour of Arab and Muslim women as being something impressive and counterintuitive. The images of female Kurdish fighters in their fatigues sent the western media into shivers of orientalist reverie. The story of the Emirati female pilot who participated in the air strikes against Isis also took on exaggerated proportions – as if she was a mascot rolled out as an additional insult to Isis because she was a woman.

It is however, consistent with a long heritage of the western gaze, spanning everything from misery-porn about Muslim women, to ostensibly serious journalism that shows life “behind the veil”. It is the creepiest of obsessions, hiding behind the pretence of concern, while actually being akin to the behaviour of a peeping tom, both in terms of the smug reaffirmation of the western consumer’s implied superior values, and as a general fixation on Arab women as exotic creatures whose value is derived solely from their imprisonment in a gilded cage. I don’t know how many photo essays from Iran and Saudi Arabia of women shaving their legs in sepia-toned images we need to see before we get it; Arab women are not frozen in 2D behind a burqa.

It could be argued that anything that humanises and shows Arab women not being beaten, enslaved, force married or honour-killed is a good thing. But when everything that is not that is treated as a novelty, one is effectively reinforcing the stereotypes by saying, “Look! Here is a woman NOT being beaten, enslaved, force married or honour killed. How about that?” It is not worthy of reporting because it shows a woman defying the norms and prejudices of Arab society; it is newsworthy because it challenges your views and prejudices about Arab society.

It is undeniable that there are many ways in which women all over the world are trapped in patriarchal societies. But the Arab woman as an emblem of only that is proving a difficult stereotype to shift. Not just because it is not accurate, but because it seems people do not want their world views challenged, only simply reinforced.

A female Arab TV presenter put a rude male guest in his place. So what? | Nesrine Malik | Comment is free | The Guardian

Lebanese TV host Rima Karaki: I don’t feel like a hero, it was self-respect

Kareem Shaheen in Beirut Wednesday 11 March 2015

In Guardian interview, al-Jadeed presenter who cut off Islamist guest says she had a duty to stand up for herself

Rima Karaki

Rima Karaki. Photograph: PR

When Rima Karaki cut off the microphone after her guest, Hani Sibai, an Islamist sheikh, ordered her to “be silent”, little did she expect it would become a viral video sensation in Lebanon and around the world.

Supporters online have hailed her for standing up for women’s rights against a patriarchal religious establishment that sought to subjugate them. But for Karaki herself, it was a simple question of self-respect.

“Had I not answered, I would have hated myself, and I don’t want to hate myself,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “When he said shut up, it was no longer possible to shut up because I would be insulting myself and would lose everything.”

During the television interview, Karaki, donning a veil at Sibai’s request, asked her guest a question about how Islamic State managed to attract Christians to its ranks, after reports emerged that two Christians had joined the militant group. Sibai then launched into a historical monologue that the anchor felt was not relevant to the question.

Rima Karaki was interviewing Hani al-Sebai for Lebanon’s Al Jadeed channel when she ended up asserting her authority as he grew increasingly irate and told her to shut up

“I asked him to focus on the current era so we don’t lose time,” she said. “This caused him to get angry and he thought I was cutting him off, and I tried to calm him down and tell him not to be angry, and that I want to get the most out of your presence in the programme. I told him it’s up to you.”

Sibai got angrier, telling his host that he could say whatever he wanted, and told her to be silent. When she asked him how a “respectable sheikh could tell an anchor to shut up” and said she was in charge of the show, Sibai said he was respectable regardless of her view and that he considered it dishonourable to be interviewed on her programme.

Karaki stopped the interview after three minutes, saying: “Just one second. Either there is mutual respect or the conversation is over.” And she cut off his microphone

“The studio is like a courtroom, someone has to moderate the conversation. The only difference is that it’s not in the core of my profession to judge people,” Karaki told the Guardian. She said she brought Sibai on to the programme because she believed in constructive dialogue regardless of the individual’s background.

“But it’s my job to moderate the conversation, and I felt it was my right to say that I was in charge and I decide what the subject is, and that it could not go on this way.

He decided to speak in a disrespectful manner and I had to cut off the interview,” she said.

A version of the segment with English subtitles, posted a few days before International Women’s Day, has had more than 5m views on YouTube.

Sibai published a letter on his Twitter feed demanding an apology from al-Jadeed, Karaki’s TV station. He said the channel was biased because it attempted to portray him as a fundamentalist and a friend of the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“As if the friendship of Dr Zawahiri is an insult!” he said in the letter. “But I am proud of it and every Muslim is proud of it! But they mentioned it as slander.”

The London-based sheikh said that when he told the anchor to be silent, it was as if “a demon took over her”. He said she spoke “deliriously”.

According to a 2009 Wikileaks cable, Ashraf Mohsen, then Egypt’s coordinator for counterterrorism, said Sibai left Egypt for the UK before 1999, when he was convicted in absentia for “terrorism-related offenses”.

Sibai’s recent sermons suggest he is anti-ISIS, but in a recent commentary on the video of the beheading of Coptic Christians, he also said he believed the footage had been fabricated by intelligence agencies.

Karaki said she did not want to blame Sibai’s behaviour on sexism, saying she could not discern his intent – only that he was being disrespectful to her.

“I can’t go into a person’s inner intent, but what I do know is that the tone was very authoritarian, but maybe this is the way he talks, and his overreaction was inexplicable,” she said. “I don’t know if perhaps if it was a man, he would not have told him to shut up, but I took it as being disrespectful, whether it was with a woman or if he was a sheikh or whatever his background is. To me it has nothing to do with religion, or political line, it has to do with manners and ethics.”

She said she felt insulted when the cleric told her to be quiet, and she felt she had a duty to stand up for herself.

Karaki said she had not expected the video of her standing up to Sibai to cause a furore. But it did, bringing her an avalanche of support online and in the local press. She said she believed it had had a positive impact, particularly in patriarchal societies, where she said female journalists faced many more challenges than their male colleagues.

“Some people think men have a birth right to exert control over women, but there are a lot of women now who are breaking this image and a lot of men who support this, although more so for women because we have a patriarchal society,” she said. “I don’t feel like a hero, I feel like any man or woman with self-respect.

“I don’t think any man would accept that his wife gets insulted and doesn’t respond, or his mother gets insulted and doesn’t respond, or his daughter. He doesn’t have to respond on her behalf, too. She can do that. If he gets out of the way, he would be surprised that she can stand up for herself.”

Karaki said the positive response to the video gave her hope that these patriarchal tendencies could be controlled, and that women in the media in particular could play a strong role in reversing them.

“The media in our countries focuses on appearance, especially for women,” she said. “Men can continue working in the Arab world forever, but most of the time women are judged by their looks.

“I don’t want to say that it felt like a vindication, but it maybe gave a good image, that women are capable, because our nations are full of capable women, and I’m the least among them, but the only difference is that I’m lucky to have a platform and a screen,” she said. “Our women’s dignity is high, and all the difficult times they have gone through are testament to this. They give you this strength.”

She singled out in particular the mothers of Lebanese soldiers, who for the past few years had endured the loss of “our men” in battles against extremism. “Great women are those who raise great men,” she said.

Karaki criticised what she felt was the hypocrisy of some religious guests demanding that she wear the veil in interviews, but speaking to uncovered journalists outside the studio. She said that as a journalist she treated the story as a priority.

“I object out of respect for the veil, because the veil is not a game we put on or take off according to the whims of some religious men,” she said. “God’s will is more important than theirs, and they have no right to give themselves that power.”

Karaki said she would soon raise the issue of female journalists being pressured to wear the veil in interviews. “But because I respect the veil, it pains me,” she said. “I put it on in order to meet them halfway.”

Lebanese TV host Rima Karaki: I don’t feel like a hero, it was self-respect | World news | The Guardian

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Doomed From the Start: Unviable EU is 'Fundamentally Flawed'

09 March 2015

There is ongoing concern about the UK’s place in the EU, with a leading British fund manager describing the Eurozone as "fundamentally flawed" and not viable in it’s current form, while warning the constant uncertainty surrounding a potential Brexit from the EU will hurt the UK economy.

Neil Woodford, head of Woodford Investment Management, raised concerns about the growing "economic disparity" between the richer and poorer countries in the bloc and says he is "very conscious of the stresses and strains" within the EU.

On top of problems within the Eurozone, Mr Woodford said the calls for Britain to leave the bloc would also have an impact on the UK economy.

David Cameron's Conservative party has promised to hold an in-out referendum on the EU if they win May’s general election.

While Mr Cameron has said that he would prefer to remain part of the EU, he believes this is only viable with the renegotiation of Britain’s agreement with the bloc.

"The likelihood of a referendum, I think, will put a brake on external investment, international investment in the UK… it will create uncertainty," Mr Woodford said in an interview with the BBC."

"It’s a gut feel that investors will definitely have to impute a higher level of uncertainty with respect to the future of the economy, [and] the currency. All those things will have an effect on investment," he added.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron (R) accompanies German Chancellor Angela Merkel

© REUTERS/ Facundo Arrizabalaga

Cameron: UK to Reform the EU and Remain a Member

The fund manager has joined a growing list of financial figures who have raised concern about the ongoing uncertainty of Britain’s position in the EU, saying the country will have to make a decision about whether it joins the euro and becomes a fully fledged member, or exits.

"Ultimately, this country will have to make a choice about whether it is a fully signed-up member of a Eurozone project or not and, I think, sort of being half in as we are at the moment was never really a long-term viable position to be in."

On top of Britain’s position, Mr Woodford said there were some "fundamental" errors with the EU’s current operation, which have been brought to a head by the victory of the anti-austerity party Syriza in the Greek elections.

"I am very conscious of the stresses and strains that will continue to increase, I think, in the Eurozone.

"The debt problems, the economic disparity – in a very simple sense pretending that Greece was Germany is a fundamental error."

"Pretending that Portugal was Germany… having the same interest rate, the same monetary policy for two economies that are so different seems to be a fundamentally flawed assumption," he said.

Greek Prime Minister Alex Tsipras has accused the European Central Bank of 'holding a noose around the neck' of his country, through a series of harsh austerity measures implemented on Greece’s public spending as a result of the country’s EU bailout.

Greece negotiated a four-month extension of its loans with the EU last month, but has warned it may leave the Eurozone if the pressures of austerity can’t be lifted.

Doomed From the Start: Unviable EU is 'Fundamentally Flawed' / Sputnik International

The Falling Tower of Europe: Greece is the Tipping Point

20 March 2015

The dreams of the Central Planners who thought they could build a pan-European utopia will soon be shattered by the upcoming exit of Greece.

Double trouble

Andre Alessandro — In a few days, the first cracks in the Euro will break open and will soon bring the whole system crashing down.

And so they built a tower into the sky, reaching for the heavens…

The birth of the European Union and the Euro was the culmination of many lofty dreams of professors, politicians, and other technocrats. It was a grand design, uniting numerous cultures, races, and peoples under one flag. The representative bodies were planned to subsume under the rule of the central unified parliament and a new era of European history would unfold.

The former currencies left behind, lira, mark, franc, are now historical remnants of a time past, when wars raged across Europe and nationalism drove politics. In its wake, Europe was eager to leave behind the bloody events of the 20th century. Two world wars nearly destroyed the entire continent and the scars still feature prominently today.

…And the people were bound together and unified, nothing was impossible for them.

The last 50 years of Western European history was a central planners dream, a blank slate upon which a new Europe was forged. War powers were shifted from militaristic to economic goals. Germany was rebuilt into the great manufacturing power it is today. France, Italy, Spain all enjoyed multi-decade years of growth. From the wreckage of war, a new era of European power was born.

The hubris of these planners culminated in the creation of the EU and the Euro. Their shining example of what cooperation between nation-states could achieve.

Now, almost 22 years have passed since the introduction of the Masstricht treaty's Euro and the entire system is on the verge of collapse. Brussels and the ECB are scrambling to try and undo years of corrupt deals and agreements that stripped Greece of its dignity and fostered the ruling leftist Syriza and the growing right wing Golden Dawn parties. Both have proclaimed they will not further suffer the cannibalistic policies of the Troika any longer. The dream of a unified Europe is on the ropes and there may only be days left to save it.

The root cause of the cracks driving Greece away are misallocated and corrupt power, money, and influence. The institutions of the EU and ECB were built with high ideals, but the individuals who run them are political animals whose primary duty was to corporations, the wealthy and minimizing the appearance of exploding sovereign debt.

Politicians live to be re-elected and to do so they have to keep their constituent base happy. Thus, subsidies, loans and grants were dished out in ever greater numbers to lure a complacent public into casting their vote for whomever provided for them most. Greece's technocrats mis-used billions of dollars of EU loans to placate their populace for years and to entrench an elite class of bankers, businessmen and other power hungry individuals into power. By doing this, they left the country in economic shambles, unable to provide its own citizens jobs and opportunities and devoid of any meaningful competition.

In a non-unified market economy, FX rates punish governments who spend into excess and print untold amounts of money. Currency devaluation leads to rising prices for food and other basic amenities, especially imports. Once prices reach exuberant levels, revolutions tend to sweep out the corrupt elites and a new system can be drawn up.

In the case of Greece, they will never be able to pay down their debts by the current agreements. Its citizens will starve first before they ever pay down their debt. Current EU debt stands at €12 trillion dollars, with the Greek portion making up more than €300 billion. Recent comments by Greek FinMin Yanis Varoufakis were uncomfortably true when he said that his country is “insolvent” and “bankrupt.” He is correct is his understanding that the house of cards the Euro was built on can easily come crashing down if any one country decides to pull out.

Their debt is not owed to their populace, but the to creditors of Europe, the all-powerful Troika, who declared there will be no negotiations. So, Alexis Tsipras has demanded the Troika listen to the will of his people, rather than the planners in Brussels. Neither side can let the other win.

The tower fell and they were scattered

But they cannot repress the voice of those Greeks who are tired of mass unemployment, of little hope for the future, and of seeing their country waste away. It is time for Greece to reclaim its sovereignty. It is time for Greece to stop bowing to the wishes of the Central Planning elite who have condemned them to an impossible debt burden. Athens needs to split the cracks of the Euro and leave, bringing down walls for debt restructuring or exit for Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and Spain.

The Central Planners have failed in their European experiment. The pain they have wrought is finally starting to outweigh their lofty ideals. Soon, if and when Greece leaves, they will be the brick pulled out that brings down the Euro and liberates the continent for market driven growth again.

The Falling Tower of Europe: Greece is the Tipping Point / Sputnik International