Serving the People : Father and Son

"I would ask him [his father] how we would continue in his absence. He would say: 'I have put up the building. Now you have to paint and decorate it'."
"The staff [of his father's humanitarian organization] is sometimes hesitant when they don't know how to use a computer. We're trying to train them. It's a slow process."
"Now I'm alone [after his father's death]. I don't feel like leaving his room empty. I still sleep on a cot near his, because that's where I'd slept for the last few years."
"He wanted to make Pakistan a social welfare state without participating in politics. That was his dream, and this will be my aim as well; to go from village to village, to make a parallel setup that can help improve people's lives."
"In smaller districts, you can find advanced weaponry at local police stations, but when you go to the local hospitals, there's no advanced equipment."
"Our ruling class is not ready to give services to the people."
Faisal Edhi, Edhi Foundation, Karachi, Pakistan

"He carries this huge responsibility on his shoulders."
"He is upbeat, and with a lot of public support, he can do it."
Dr. Seemin Jamali, head of emergency services, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi

Abdul Sattar Edhi’s foundation provides hundreds of ambulances and medical centres across Pakistan. Photograph: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images

Faisal Edhi is 40, half of his adult life has been spent working for the Edhi Foundation, founded by his father, Abdul Sattar Edhi. Mr. Faisal administers the affairs of the foundation. His father was the foundation. The elder Mr. Edhi died in the past summer but his philanthropic network to which he dedicated his life is a vital part of Pakistani society, outside government. It is the foundation that provides badly needed emergency services and welfare services to the population.

It provides what the government makes no effort to do.

Pakistan's largest free ambulance service is operated by the Edhi Foundation through a network that also includes shelters, nursing homes, orphanages and morgues. All of which are run by volunteers who appear at disaster zones and crime scenes, hauling along stretchers and shrouds. The cities of Pakistan depend on the functions of the Edhi Foundation. "Without the Edhi Trust one does not know how Karachi would cope with its victims of violence", noted urban planner Arif Hasan, in the 1990s.

Now, the massive job inherited from his father has become Faisal Edhi's problem. He is attempting to transition the foundation from a voluntary and antiquated organization into a more efficient, modern one, using updated technology to expedite services and maintain record-keeping. The younger Edhi cannot possibly match his father's pace, where he personally met with people requiring assistance with issues from adoptions to ambulances. "I'm stretched", the struggling Faisal Edhi admits.

But it is the personal, intimate grief he experiences at the loss of his father, that haunts him. Even so, there are things that excite him in enlarging the scope of the foundation's services, among them a new project to train midwives, nurses and paramedic staff at a hospital. That's the anticipatory part, the other part of his concerns relates to raising operating funds, entirely through voluntary donations from individuals.

The foundation is struggling with a new challenge whereby Islamic charities have been undercutting individual donations. Additionally, Faisal Edhi accuses the government of interfering with the importation of ambulance vehicles.

The foundation does have its critics, those who were dissatisfied that the elder Mr. Edhi took in abandoned babies, and saw no difference between aiding Muslims and non-Muslims, leading them to accuse him of apostasy. His own tribal community, the Bantva Memon ethnic group, refused often to greet his father. But he is determined to continue his father's policies including his refusal to accept donations from donor agencies, let alone any government.

"It [the foundation] has always been supported by ordinary Pakistanis", Faisal Edhi insists.

"I will not go to paradise where these type of people [religious and political groups] go. I will go to heaven where the poor and miserable people live", declared Adul Sattar Edhi before his death.

An Edhi Foundation ambulance outside the Edhi Free Kitchen. Photograph: Majority World/Getty Images

Labels: Charity, Human Relations, Pakistan

posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 27, 2017

Seeking Asylum in Penurious Greece

"I saw today children of six or seven years of age who had walked 55 kilometres across the island to get here."
"When I see them I want to cry, I feel so sorry for them."
Dimitra Kritikou, 17, Mytilene, Greece

"There was so much difficulty. We were afraid to die every time in the sea."
"We are young people and we are in good order. The first thing we want in Europe is jobs so that we can save money to send home."
Rashid Bashir, South Asian Refugee, Mytilene, Greece

"What can we do for them? There are thousands of them [Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan, Somalian refugees] and three [Greek Coast Guard sailor, social worker, policeman] of us."
"Where is the European Union?"
Greek police officer, Lesbos Island, Greece

They flooded the edge of Italy, arriving in uncountable droves, desperate for haven from chaos, from privation, from war, from religious persecution, and now they are converging in ever greater numbers on Greece, a country struggling with the imperative of its own economic failure and its peoples' need to find stability and rescue from financial straits and massive unemployment.

With a Greek government incapable of providing welfare and assurances for its own citizens, how can it respond to the needs of refugees requiring food, shelter, medical attention?

Asylum seekers wash ashore nightly from boats launched helpfully from nearby Turkey. Three government officials suffer the distinction of representing their country's attempts to welcome and provide the barest of meagre daily rations to the new arrivals washing in from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Grappling with human suffering on such a scale of need is not morally uplifting nor soul-elevating, it is pure unadulterated frustration.

How to feed the hungry, offer them places to stay in a country resentful that their own failed economy leaves them unable to help Greek citizens. But the migrants, despite their grim outlook, remain hopeful that their long journey that succeeded and the holy month of Ramadan will somehow converge to convince that tender higher power looking down on their plight to recall commitment to their welfare.

Without formal papers young men pay bribes and their passage from Turkey to Lesbos. A trade in human smuggling attributed to Turkish, Russian and Chechen gangsters. Over 68,000 migrants from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia reached Greece this year crossing the Mediterranean, representing about half of the refugees that managed to reach Europe in the year. Most others reached Italy, Malta or Spain.

Under the European Union agreement on refugees, Greece is meant to care for those seeking asylum, to settle those who manage to qualify, though it has scant facilities to help the 200 to 300 refugees arriving daily on Lesbos, let alone the hundreds of others arriving on a daily basis on Greek neighbouring islands. After a thousand migrants drowned earlier in the year attempting the journey across the Mediterranean from Libya and Tunisia, Greece via Turkey became the preferred destination.

"This is the best way because it is the safest way", Reem Hassoun, a Syrian from Damascus said. The Syrians who arrived on Lesbos spoke of their hatred in equal measure for both their tyrant Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State. They recall those who had perished on their European journey. The EU determined its member states should share about 40,000 immigrants this year. Ireland, Britain and Lithuania had other ideas, opting out of the EU scheme. The EU has a blank slate of intention to aid in settling the 220,000 migrants who flooded Italy and Greece last year.

"The Bible says we should help them and the police try to stop us from even giving them a glass of water", taxi driver Soteres Petrakos commented,himself a refugee with his family, expelled by Turkey ridding itself in 1922 of its Greek minority. "Our lives were in danger at home", said Suhail Bayat, who had worked with Australian and US. forces in Afghanistan. "If they [Taliban] found me anywhere in Afghanistan they would kill me and my family."

Labels: Charity, Greece, Refugees

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, July 04, 2015

Although the Disasters Emergency Committee claims that its member bodies only work with "carefully vetted" local partners, it does not oversee these partnerships, and could not even provide a list of those "local partners" that will benefit from the money raised and transferred through Islamic Relief.
One of the "partners" in Gaza used by Islamic Relief's branches appears to be the Al-Falah Benevolent Society, which, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, is one of "Hamas's charitable societies."
Al-Falah is run by Ramadan Tamboura, whom the Ha'aretz newspaper describes as a "well-known Hamas figure".

In early August, most of Britain's broadsheet newspapers published a full-page advertisement for a "Gaza crisis" appeal launched by the Disasters Emergency Committee [DEC], a British charity that serves as a fundraising body for its 13-member bodies, each one itself a prominent British charity.
Broadcast versions were also aired on major television channels, including the taxpayer-funded BBC television and radio stations. On August 15^th, DEC announced the appeal had raised over £9 million.

British celebrity Martin Freeman appears on a BBC broadcast of the DEC's "Gaza Crisis Appeal". (Image source: DEC YouTube video screenshot)

Although DEC claims to use the appeal's funds "to reach hundreds of thousands of people with urgently needed food and safe drinking water," DEC does not provide these charitable services itself; it simply raises the funds. The money is then handed over to its 13 member-bodies, which are tasked with actually providing the humanitarian help.
One of DEC's leading members is Islamic Relief UK, the British branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide [IRW], an enormous British Islamic charity with branches all over the world. In 2012, this Islamic charity raised over £100 million.
As in much of the Middle East, critics suspect humanitarian aid to Gaza does not always end up helping the people for whom it is reportedly intended. Who is raising this money and where is it going?
This very question, debated publicly among sections of Britain's Jewish community and a number of counter-extremism groups, appears to have led Islamic Relief UK to take the unusual step of declaring a temporary freeze on income from the appeal, and to launch an "internal investigation" into its work in the Gaza Strip.
A spokesman for Islamic Relief UK, speaking to Third Sector magazine, stated, "As a responsible organisation we are looking into this matter thoroughly to ensure that our processes for aid delivery have been followed. Islamic Relief decided independently that it will not draw down any funds from the DEC Gaza Crisis Appeal until our review is completed."
There is good reason to be sceptical of the thoroughness of an "internal investigation."
IRW's present and past officials are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the worldwide Islamist group described by the former head of the MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, as being, "at heart, a terrorist organization."
Islamic Relief trustees and officials have included:

• Essam El-Haddad, who was the national security advisor to President Mohamed Morsi, the former Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt;
• Ahmed Al-Rawi, the former President of the Muslim Brotherhood's chief lobby group in Britain. In 2004, he signed a declaration that supported jihad against British and American forces in Iraq;
• Issam Al-Bashir, who was a leading official within the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and remains a leading member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a group of fundamentalist clerics led by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi; and
• Ibrahim El-Zayat, a German Islamist activist identified by German intelligence services as a key part of the Muslim Brotherhood network in Germany.

IRW also maintains financial relationships with a number of terror-linked charities across the world.
In 2004, 2007 and 2009, for instance, IRW accounts revealed donations of tens of thousands of pounds from the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, a charity founded by Al Qaeda terrorist and "Bin Laden loyalist" Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani. During a terrorism trial in 2004 in the USA, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Brian Murphy testified that the Charitable Society for Social Welfare was a "front organization to funnel money to terrorists."
In 2008, IRW's accounts revealed a donation of £13,437 from the Yemeni Al-Eslah organization, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood the leaders of which include Sheikh al-Zindani, mentioned above, whom the US government has designated a "Global Terrorist."
In Gaza, IRW is a key supporter of the Islamic University of Gaza, where, during 2008, rockets and explosives were produced for use by Hamas. One of the founders of Hamas and its "spiritual leader", the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founded the University in 1978, and sixteen of the University's lecturers and teachers are elected Hamas members of the Palestinian legislature.
IRW has been "designated in Israel recently as an unlawful association, for providing support and funnelling funds to Hamas, a terror group designated in the UK," according to the Israeli embassy in London.
Despite these connections, IRW's UK branch is not, however, simply just a member body of DEC. The chief executive of DEC, in fact, is Saleh Saeed, who was formerly chief executive of Islamic Relief Worldwide.
In addition, the current chief executive of Islamic Relief UK, Mohamed Ashmawey, is a member of DEC's board of directors. Ashmawey previously served on the board of Mercy International and the Islamic Society of North America, and in the late 1990s, he was President of the Muslim Arab Youth Association. All three of these charities have been accused of funding terrorism:

• Mercy International was originally named Human Concern International. Its Pakistan branch was headed by Osama bin Laden associate and al-Qaeda financier Ahmed Khadr, and its Kenya branch was implicated in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa. In 1999, Bin Laden told an Egyptian interviewer that Human Concern International's Canadian branch, which today still provides funds to Islamic Relief, was providing funds to Al Qaeda front groups.[1]
• The Islamic Society of North America is a Muslim Brotherhood front group, and was named as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the 2007 Hamas-funding trial of the Holy Land Foundation.
• The Muslim Arab Youth Association was an organisation founded by Osama bin Laden's nephew, which described itself as "opposed to those [principles] of Western civilisation." In the mid-1990s, the Association held a conference in which the keynote speaker was a Hamas military leader who urged the audience to "finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them!" $200,000 was raised for Hamas at the conference.

While President of the Muslim Arab Youth Association, Mohamed Ashmawey expressed support for Egyptian cleric and Hamas financier Wagdy Abd el-Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, after he was denied entry to Canada in 1998, and, reportedly, Ashmawey even let Ghoneim stay at his house.[2] Ghoneim has also been banned from the US, Britain and Switzerland, and is described by the British Home Office as someone who is "considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glory terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to commit terrorist acts."
Clearly, there is much about IRW's connections and its officials within DEC that causes concern.
Once IRW's "internal review" is finished, will the money raised only help those in need of humanitarian help? Or will the terror group Hamas benefit?
The most obvious problem is that the money DEC raises for Islamic Relief UK is fungible – that is, funds provided for bona fide humanitarian reasons helps potentially free up Islamic Relief monies for its habit of promoting extremist preachers or of funding organizations linked to terrorism, such as the Islamic University of Gaza.
The bigger problem, however, is the question of where the specific funds end up. As DEC admits, its member bodies work with "local partners." Who are these partners?
In Gaza, Hamas operates a system of da'wah -- a type of outreach program that involves providing various social services, such as education, healthcare and welfare payments.
Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas "insider," notes in his book, Hamas: A History from Within, that Hamas was established using this da'wah system -- capitalizing on the support from the Palestinian people acquired through the mosques, schools, and medical clinics built by the Gazan Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas was established by the Brotherhood). Tamimi writes: "Ikhwan [Brotherhood] medical specialists... would provide free medical consultations... Ikhwan pharmacists would dispense medicine at cost or lower."[3]
To fund these da'wah efforts, Tamimi reveals, "zakat [charitable] committees" were established "across the territories ... These same zakat committees later became the principal recipients and dispensers of donations sent from abroad by Ikhwan branches that had set up their own fundraising networks." [4]
Today, counter-terrorism expert Matthew Levitt writes, the social infrastructure produced by da'wah activities "are crucial to Hamas' terrorist activity: they provide cover for raising, laundering, and transferring funds, facilitate the group's propaganda and recruitment efforts, provide employment to its operatives, and serve as a logistical support network for its terrorist operations."[5]
In response to enquiries about how member bodies spend the money raised by DEC, a spokesman for DEC told Gatestone Institute that, "DEC has extensive systems to ensure funds are spent appropriately and effectively." The spokesman added that DEC's member bodies "work with carefully vetted and monitored local partners... No funds are turned over to Government, political organizations or armed groups."
Although DEC claims that its members only work with "carefully vetted" local partners, it does not oversee these partnerships. DEC could not, in fact, actually provide a list of those "local partners" that will benefit from the money raised by DEC and transferred through Islamic Relief and DEC's other member bodies.
One such "partner" in Gaza used by IRW's branches, though, appears to be the Al-Falah Benevolent Society, which, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, is one of "Hamas's charitable societies". Al-Falah is run by Ramadan Tamboura, whom Ha'aretz newspaper describes as a "well-known Hamas figure". In addition, one of Al-Falah's Directors, Jamal Hamdi al-Haddad, runs one of Hamas' Hebrew-language education programmes, entitled "Know Your Enemy".
IRW's activities have already alarmed other charities. In late August, the Charities Aid Foundation, a charitable fundraising organization and provider of financial services to charities, shut down Islamic Relief's accounts.
Of course, IRW is not the only DEC member body of concern. Christian Aid, for instance, is an "international development charity" that has provided funds to Ul Haq and DCI Palestine, two Palestinian charities, the officials of which are members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist terror group. Another example is Oxfam, also a DEC member, which has previously organized events with trustees of Interpal, a British charity accused of links to Hamas.
It is a fine thing to help others. But in giving money to the DEC appeal, which offers donors no information on how their money is spent, it seems there is a real chance that funds raised to ease suffering might contribute towards its very cause.

---

[1] Burnett, et al. v. al Baraka Investment and Development Corp., et al., Jan. 18, 2005
[2] "Muslim cleric's jailing in Canada angers followers," Toronto Star, 11 January 1998
[3] Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: A History from Within, Olive Branch Press, 2007. 38.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Matthew Levitt, Hamas, London: Yale University Press, 2006. 23-24
Related Topics:  Palestinian Authority, United Kingdom  |  Samuel Westrop

Labels: Britain, Charity, Hamas, Islam, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Resolving Questions Into Action

"Questions need to be raised about the accreditation, public funding and charity status of the organizations involved."
"[The report is] intended to focus public attention on the requirement to have a national level discussion on the Muslim Brotherhood and its role in Canada."
"The government of Canada may wish to pursue a wider investigation into the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood with a particular focus on its activities in Canada and the U.S.A. Co-operation or information sharing with the proposed investigation in the United Kingdom may be useful."
report authored by Tom Quiggin, expert in terrorism; former Privy Council intelligence analyst

"We are aware that the U.K. is doing a review on the MB [Muslim Brotherhood]. We will be determining any possible next steps in short order."
Adam Hodge, spokesman, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird

The newly-released study suggests the Government of Canada might wish to follow the initiative of the United Kingdom to launch an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood which has established a "significant presence" in Canada. Describing the Brotherhood values as the "antithesis" of Canadian laws and values, the study goes on to recommend strongly that Ottawa deny public support and charitable status to organizations affiliated with the Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood's raison d'etre is the promotion of political Islam. Founded in Egypt in the 1920s by Sunni Muslim cleric Hassan Al-Banna, it aspires to create a "world living under the tranquility of Islam". Which would require the domination of the West under a global Caliphate. Mandatory memorization of the Koran would be taught in special schools to ignite "the spirit of Islamic jihad" in youths.

Alas, most people in the West have become familiar with Islamist tranquility. It merits a failing grade.

Al-Banna was welcomed in Saudi Arabia, when Egypt was less than enamoured with his message, honoured as a great Islamic scholar there, and his writings fit in very well with Saudi religious fanaticism, the Wahhabi school of religious Islamism. His thesis inspired the Saudi financing of madrasses all over the Middle East and the near SouthEast as well North Africa and in countries of the West, where impressionable young Muslims are taught to recite the Koran, and little else.

And from whose ranks sprang today's Islamist jihadis. Pakistan an outstanding metaphor for the production of Wahhabi-inspired jihad. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in revenge for his signing a peace treaty with Israel. The terrorist group Hamas, on Canada's outlawed terrorist group, is another offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas and the Muslin Brotherhood enjoy support within certain groups of Canadian Muslims.

Most countries of the Middle East have attempted to diminish the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its established branches all over the MidEast and North Africa. The Brotherhood appeals to the huge numbers of disenfranchised and indigent poor within the regions. It has gained their support through its expressed sympathy with their plight, offering social assistance and welfare to those in need, and spiritual guidance toward its Islamist vision. Hence, a passionate following.

British prime minister David Cameron ordered an investigation into the Brotherhood's activities in his country, and its links to violence and extremism. A month ago Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney publicly announced the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy -- Canada (IRFAN) was placed on Ottawa's list of banned terrorist groups. IRFAN brought attention to itself by merging with the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services a Muslim Brotherhood unit.

IRFAN had funnelled funding to Hamas-linked groups. A registered charity at the time of this declaration, its charitable status has been revoked, with the RCMP investigating its activities, despite IRFAN's denial of involvement in funding Hamas. Writing in the Winnipeg Free Press, Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, stated that Mr. Quiggan has written a "conspiracy-laden diatribe that, in a sweeping stroke, smeared our long-standing Canadian organization as 'terrorists' and despicably suggested we intend to destroy Canada from within".

The report lists other Canadian organizations, some of which are also federally regulated charities, he claims are also aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact some of their executives have departed Canada to take up positions with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria. He suggests a probe should be mounted to examine which Canadian groups with Muslim Brotherhood affiliation have charitable status and access to government.

Additionally, the Canada Border Services Agency may also want to screen foreign nationals to ascertain whether they have membership in the Brotherhood. Those advocating the spread of Muslim Brotherhood ideology should be required to register as lobbyists.

Better yet, why not outlaw them entirely? And do all of that forthwith.

Labels: Canada, Charity, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Charitable Bullying

"[Soda Stream] is not only committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine, supporting neighbours working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights."
Scarlett Johansson, American Actor

SodaStream unveils Scarlett Johansson as its first-ever Global Brand Ambassador at the Gramercy Park Hotel on January 10, 2014 in New York City.(AFP Photo / Mike Coppola)

Oxfam doesn't agree. It, along with the European Union, and the Liberal-left in unions, academia, and anywhere that Israel is held to a standard according to high-minded values that no other nation on Earth obeys, insists that Israel must conform to their vision of how it should manage its affairs, not how Israel believes it views its priorities and needs.

The Palestinians may do as they wish, whatever they wish, however they might decide to express themselves. If violence is the order of their day, then so be it, for no one, it appears, has expectations that they must accord their behaviour in reflection of what any outside sources views normally as civil and responsible. They march to a different drummer, one of institutionalized victimhood in never-ending refugee-ism.

They have a mantra that repeats they have been the hapless victim of a grave injustice. That they were offered equal opportunity to the Jewish contingent in the area in 1948, and their judgement ordered them to angrily reject partition of Palestine, while Israel grasped at the nation-building opportunity is simply what one might expect of Arab Palestinians. The Jewish Palestinians reacted with joy, their counterparts with venomous denial.

After countless efforts at conciliation, and countless rebuffs, and a final collective Arab nation attack in 1967, Israel was reunited at long last with its sacred heritage in East Jerusalem. As an ancient people who managed against all odds to survive every effort of a hostile world to destroy them, Jews have a right and an obligation to themselves and posterity to cling to what is rightfully theirs.

What makes East Jerusalem a candidate for a future Palestinian state capital, as a people who entered the territory a century ago, while Jews remained living there for three millennia?

SodaStream, representing yet another successful Israeli enterprise, has 25 factories in operation around the world. There is one located in the West Bank, close to a settlement in an area captured by Israel during the 1967 war. But the worldwide Boycott-Divestment movement embarked upon by sympathizers of the Palestinian 'cause', orchestrated by a compassion-savvy manipulating PA, seeks to sanction and bring to ruin any company existing in the West Bank.

How hoping to disrupt and even destroy the Israeli economy can be of use to the Palestinians when those companies generally employ Palestinian labour where no other employment is available to them is beyond imagination. The 500 Palestinians who work at the Ma'ale Adumim factory receive similar wages to the Jewish and Arab Israelis who work at that factory. On site at the factory is a synagogue and a mosque.

All workers at the factory share a dining hall, as well as other common areas adding to the quality of the working experience there. Palestinian workers employed by SodaStream receive three times the working wage of typical West Bank employment, if they can find those jobs. Closing the factory would obviously impact negatively on those Palestinians who work there.

That, aside from the leverage that the Israel-condemning Liberal-left is attempting to exert on Israel to force it to see the situation from their perspective, not from Israel's. That coercion is inclusive of the general insistence that it is Israel that must accede to Palestinian demands before both will agree to a peace process resulting in two side-by-side states. With no one questioning the Palestinian commitment to consummating a peace agreement.

That commitment appears elusive. From all indications, including interior propaganda inclusive of school curricula for Palestinian children, television programs using cartoons to instruct Palestinian children that Israel is their enemy and it will become their duty as mature Palestinians to continue to reject any manner of acceptance of a Jewish presence in what they must consider Palestinian land, the insistence of 'right of return', and the outright refusal to permit 'even one Jew' to pollute with their presence the new state, speaks volumes about Palestinian commitment to peace.

Charitable organizations such as Oxfam like the recipients of their charity to be properly grateful, and no doubt they are. Acquiring the altruistic usefulness of public celebrities to advance their message sometimes comes up hard against the reality that some of those who agree to work on their behalf as goodwill ambassadors cannot find it in themselves to agree with their political intervention intent on bullying a nation at risk of terrorist attacks from the very factions that Oxfam considers victims.

And people looking in from afar can decide for themselves whether they would prefer to offer their charitable dollars to organizations doing good who focus on doing just that, and not using their global reach to victimize another victim of world opprobrium.

Labels: Charity, Heritage, Israel, Palestinian Authority

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, February 01, 2014

Baby and Infant Care

"When we suggested the baby shelter in June, there was a lot of criticism that I was teaching people how to commit a crime.
"There have been a lot of wild accusations. Some have suggested that the number of abandonments will shoot up, others that baby traffickers will lie in wait outside the shelter and steal infants."
Tang Rongsheng, former head of Shenzhen, China's social welfare centre

"Abandoning a baby is a crime. But during the process of committing this crime, babies are the victims. Since the root of the crime ... cannot be solved in the blink of an eye, it is a good option to shift our focus to protecting those victims."
Peng Xizhe, Fudan University, professor specializing in public policy and social development

Labels: Charity, Child Welfare, China, Human Relations, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Trapped

"When the water first came, I was pushed into a room or compartment and then everything went black.  Suddenly I saw a little light. I swam until it got closer and bigger and I noticed it was a window. I climbed through it.
"When we were in the water, I saw people clinging on to dead bodies. I saw men trying to take life jackets from women.
"The reason only half the people had life jackets was because you had to buy them in Libya, and the smuggler told us it wasn't worth it because the boat was safe.
"We are a big family. I was travelling with my mum, brother, cousins, my cousin’s husband and his family. I have no idea where they are.
"I was detained in Malta for three days. I was throwing up blood but still they took me to detention. Their main priority was getting my fingerprints." 
Anas, 17-year-old Palestinian Syrian boy, Lampedusa, October 2013

Hundreds of migrants have died on boats from Libya to Europe. © UNHCR/F. Noy

Italy's overcrowded refugee holding centres have gained the country notoriety, their reputation slumped suddenly from heroic to downright ugly. Europe has seen itself overrun with refugees from the brutal sectarian civil war in Syria, where the regime and the rebel militias are both engaging in horrendous atrocities against one another and most particularly against the civilian population. Human smugglers have been making a killing on the plight of desperate North Africans and Syrians.

The tiny Italian rock strip of Lampedusa, the nearest European port that refugees can hope to reach to find themselves, as they imagine, welcome with open arms of comforting haven, has been inundated with the detritus of human desperation. Fearful refugees take passage out of Libya or Turkey in the hopes of reaching a rescuing destination that will embrace their need and allow them to reach their potential aspirations to live in peace and security. Waves of the desperate fleeing war and oppression from Syria to Somalia.

At a detention centre in Rome the past weekend, a group of migrants expressed their indignation and dismay at their reception by using thread to sew their mouths shut. They have few other means to gather attention to their plight that fortune has imposed upon them and which, having escaped, have then been forced to live in squalid refugee camps devoid of basic amenities and hope. Others seek to convey their humiliation and misery by refusing to eat.

Italian Premier Enrico Letta has pledged, in the face of international scrutiny and condemnation, to change Italy's citizenship law from bloodlines to birthplace. A change championed by Italy's first black cabinet minister, Congolese-born Cecile Kyenge. Honourary citizenship had been granted in the full-blown publicity of the October tragedy that saw 360 attempting to find refuge drowning off the island of Lampedusa. Less honour is being proffered to the living.

It is hard to be a refugee in a world where countries are all struggling to meet the challenges of their own needs, finding themselves burdened with the miseries and needs of citizens of other countries. Italy has seen a three-fold increase in the number of migrants, over 2012; its holding centres overflow with 16,000 people hoping against hope that the magic of Europe will promise them a future free of oppression and fear of closely-impending death.

Their welcome, alas, has been far from heart-warming anywhere they land. The millions of Syrians who fled their country's poisonous civil war finding refuge with neighbours in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey find scant comfort there, too, as those countries struggle to cope with their needs and the additional problems the presence of the refugees cause internally. Winter is miserable for the homeless and the insecure in Turkey, Jordan, Italy or Greece.

And it was in a small Greek village that 150 Syrian refugees, shivering in the miserable cold, found themselves lately.  Arriving in the village of Praggi situated high on the highlands of north-eastern Greece they huddled in the courtyard of the local church, others under trees in a nearby forest. They were exhausted from their dangerous journey from Turkey, crossing the Evros river, fleeing Syria through Turkey.

Soon after their arrival white police vans appeared and then there were no more Syrian men, women and children present. "Ever since we have lost all trace of them. They just disappeared. Our firm belief is that they were pushed back into Turkey", said Vasillis Papadopolous, a lawyer specializing in the defence of migrants and refugees.

Labels: Charity, Europe, Human Relations, North Africa, Refugees, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Don't Have To Like It: It's Reality!

"I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth. Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2% have an IQ above 130,. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top."
"And for one reason or another -- boardroom greed or, as I am assured, the natural and God-given talent of boardroom inhabitants -- the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider than ever. I stress: I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed, some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity."
Boris Johnson, Mayor, London, England

The truth is, simply put, the morally elevating statement raised to the pinnacle of devotion to equality and in referred to hallowed in hushed tones as an "immortal declaration: that "all men are created equal" is all too often misunderstood. The American Declaration of Independence is a lovely document of high-minded assurance, but it is one that states simply that all men are equal under the law of the land and that they are free to engage in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, but there are no assurances that any of these aspirations will be achieved.

Nor does it mean that all of humankind is created with an equal endowment of genetic traits that would result in an even distribution of intelligence and capability among all persons. It is undeniable that within any society there are dullards incapable of grasping simple concepts, and there is the large middling group of individuals able to fend for themselves adequately, while beyond them exist those endowed with what might be considered more than their share of grey matter, enabling them to rise to the top of any society through their sense of curiosity, inventiveness and competence.

That rise does not necessarily result in people who assume power and more than their share of the goods of the world being outstanding citizens as human beings; many obviously are not, but they were capable of achieving office and riches by whatever means they employed, using their superior capabilities to attain what they set out to do. But to admit in polite company that we have more than our share of village dolts, and too few individuals interested in the world around them is to risk being labelled as indulging in "unpleasant elitism".

Mr. Johnson's speech which he addressed to the British Centre for Policy Studies as part of the Margaret Thatcher Lecture series, was as much and perhaps more, a cheering chorus for a free market economy and capitalism opening up the global economy to benefit as wide a range of populations as possible. Socialism and Communism were contrary ideologies attempting to counter capitalism and the end result was failure.

Individuals with disparate levels of intelligence and capabilities were to be treated as equal in the workforce, and they received, whether they were successful or failed at their enterprises, equal recompense. A kind of one-for-all and all-for-one. It didn't work. It is engrained in human nature that one is rewarded for the level of effort put into an economic-deriving activity. Those who were rewarded despite their lack of effort were complacently accepting, those who saw scant reward for prodigious effort were demoralized and stopped making the effort.

And lecturing them all, encouraging them on to perform and prove the thesis behind Marxism were the party faithful who used their hypocritical cunning -- in fact typical human behaviour --  to live in a manner nowhere near resembling that of the uncompetitive, unrewarding, dismal life of toil and scant self-respect they imposed on the great unwashed. To pave the way and ensure that no nuisance protests upset the apple cart as it was pulling into the town square, the intellectuals, the wealthy and the professionals were simply expunged from the scene.

There are two telling results from the experiment that took millions of lives and failed so spectacularly, an experiment in human and market manipulation that went gratingly against the grain that has been instilled in human nature from time immemorial. The Soviet Union eventually imploded. In North Korea, the old Marxist system prevails, the result being a grim police state, a shuttered kingdom as it were, an enforced misery of unfulfilled lives and malnutrition being the hallmarks, along with nuclear belligerence.

In China, North Korea's mentor-state, the elite were somewhat more discerning, but then they also had the burden of brutally manipulating infinitely greater numbers of people. The Chinese bureaucracy of Marxist ideology experimented just as the Soviet Union did, exhorting and exploiting their human capital and despite the deaths of millions of disposable people, who understood they must adore their tyrants or risk even greater numbers of people sacrificed to the prickly demands of their tormentors, finally surrendered to reality.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union led the remaining leadership to understand the depth of their dictatorial failure in a wholesale human-nature-manipulation experiment. Which hasn't stopped the current leadership from exerting a brutal autocracy that might be recognized as a kissing cousin to the former totalitarian rule; bullying and threatening and generally endearing itself to its former satellites who shudder uncontrollably at the very idea of having to resume that old union, frantically aligning themselves toward the West to fend off Eastern overtures.

China has recognized, just as Russia has, the advances to be made in the financial sphere through the relaxation of the old Communist ideals and the embrace of global capitalism. Their version is capitalism no matter the cause; unfettered and regulated only by the urge to grow itself into a giant of greedy entitlement, little different in fact from what is practised where the capitalist template was invented. And they have succeeded, perhaps beyond their wildest expectations. Hungering for even greater control of world trade.

Black Friday is becoming a universal event, to be celebrated not merely annually; but far more frequently. Capitalism makes a small percentage of those whose responding to its higher orders exemplifying success, rogues of immense wealth, social standing and power. Among them all or at least most of them there is a niggling sense of embarrassment at their own success. And this is the wretched little emotion that breeds philanthropy.

Apart from governments exerting the power of the state to exact a toll on such untold wealth in the manner of taxes so that a certain amount of those winnings can be redistributed at the state's will as it sees fit, grudging respect, as Mr. Johnson would have it, should be spared for the wealthy and no small amount of admiration at their success; they have earned it, in essence. By their determination, their enterprise, their capability, their intelligent manoeuvring.

"When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, they faced a top marginal tax rate of 98%, and the top 1% of earners contributed 11% of the government's total revenues from income tax. Today, when taxes have been cut substantially, the top 1% contributes almost 30% of income tax, and indeed the top 0.1% -- just 29,000 people -- contribute fully 14% of all taxation."
"That is an awful lot of schools and roads and hospitals that are being paid for by the super-rich. So why, I asked, innocently, are they so despicable in the eyes of all decent British people? Surely they should be hailed, like the Stakhanovites of Stalin's Russia, who half-killed themselves, in the name of the people, by mining record tonnages of coal?"

Envy, jealousy, two of the nastier emotions that humans are given to expressing when confronted by the good fortune of those who have managed to advance their aspirations into reality by sheer intent to succeed. But of course Mr. Johnson, a highly intelligent man and an accomplished one as well, knows that very well. Mr. Johnson is more than capable of not only describing and understanding a situation, and pointing out to others how that situation arose and why it should be accepted. But he also -- a rarity -- is able to offer a solution to those who begrudge others their earnings.

"It seems to me therefore that though it would be wrong to persecute the rich, and madness to try and stifle wealth creation, and futile to try to stamp out inequality, that we should only tolerate this wealth gap on two conditions: one, that we help those who genuinely cannot compete; and two, that we provide opportunity for those who can."

"Putin's Palace"

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Biology, Britain, Charity, Controversy, Custom, Economics, Human Relations, Industry, Innovation, Intelligence

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 30, 2013

Settling In Of Necessity

"We have been abandoned by the international community, and by the Arab world, just as Bashar al-Assad has abandoned the Syrian people, too.
"For 43 years the Assad family has been in power. This is longer even than the Prophet Muhammad was alive. This is enough. He should be made to leave."
Abdul Mujid Mohammad, Dara'a patriarch, Za'atari refugee camp, Jordan

"People are angry with the international community. People are furious because the world hasn't done anything, and then there is a sense we are about to do something, then we didn't do anything."
"The people here were saying, 'Where are your missiles? The money you are spending here is peanuts. You should be firing tomahawk missiles at Damascus, but you are not."
"We have saved lives. We have achieved all our standards, and that is something for the UN that is very rare. Za'atari is a success story, and yet we have had thousands of refugees screaming at us every day telling us we haven't achieved anything."
"Everybody came here to stay for a few months because Bashar was going to go, and the revolutionaries were going to win -- this was the psychology of the people. But it didn't happen."
Kilian Tobias Kleinschmidt, UN-German Za'atari commandant

Abdul Mujid Mohammad lives in the sprawling Jordanian camp. Among the over hundred-thousand refugees from Syria who have flooded into Jordan. And whose presence is breaking Jordan's spirit, its resourcefulness, its ability to cope, to host the refugees and still maintain their facade of neighbourly concern. Its ability to cope has been strained beyond its most miserable imagination; funding is scarce, unemployment is up, house rentals have increased, and Jordanians are beginning to stridently resent the presence of Syrians who appear to feel more entitled than the Jordanians.

Not that the Syrians want to be there. No people want to be away from their homes, their towns and villages, the country of their birth, where they are comfortable, familiar, confident that they are where they belong. Now they belong nowhere. They thought they would settle temporarily in Jordan until all the unpleasantness was finally solved and the conflict apprehended. Then they would return to their homes, their farms, their employment, the comfort of the familiar Now, they have had to re-adjust their assumptions.

Now they look about them and think: this place, this vast, flat desert with no green, no solid buildings, this is our home. For now. And so, just as Palestinian refugees flooded into Lebanon in 1948, complacently and bitterly making a place for themselves among the initially tolerant Lebanese, until they too became entitled and thought of Lebanon as their home, and Palestine as the dream of their past they yearned to return to, so too are the Syrians coming to terms with their unpleasant reality.

Work is hard to find. They had fled the fear, the torment, the violence, the oppression, and the ongoing assaults. Many of the refugees brought little with them, they are destitute. Others, choosing not to live in the camps because they were people of substance bringing their money with them, are also now facing destitution, since their money has finally run out. Just as rental prices are rising and they have been living on a bare minimum, no furniture, little clothing, scant employment opportunities, they find themselves beggars.

The UNHCR food packages represent bare necessity. For the Syrian refugees every day brings the new torture of uncertainty and fear for the future. They are angry with the international community, rage against their country's leader, feel fury against their Arab neighbours who scorn and detest what Bashar al-Assad has inflicted on his population, but do nothing on their own, waiting for the West to make decisions and take the action that they themselves decline to commit to.

And they take out their anger on the United Nations representatives. A riot broke out in the refugee camp when a platoon of the Jordanian police was ambushed and severely beaten, requiring hospitalization, accused by the refugees of taking part in a human trafficking operation involving young Syrian refugee woman. Two women had claimed to have been molested while they were in the custody of police. Relations are understandably strained.

On another plane, the refugees are settling down to assume a ghostly semblance of normalcy, perhaps to ensure that they can remain sane through their ordeal. An underground economy has seeped into the camp, with people making do for themselves, attempting to establish order and enterprise to energize themselves. Self-employed Syrians in the service trades have launched themselves under the authority of unofficial 'ministries'. Electricians tap into the UNHCR electrical grid, selling hookups to households living in tents and trailers.

Reuters

Shops have opened in the camp's new 'business district'. There are beauty parlours, appliance shops, video game rental stores, grocery stores and shawarma joints and Internet cafes. Life is being normalized. A wide variety of goods and services can be traded. Some refugees are suspected of fraud in multiple claims from the World Food Program ration system. Items meant for the use of the camp refugees can be found, including tents, being sold and used outside the camps in private enterprise.

Confoundingly, most of the children in the camp still don't attend the schools set up in the camps, on the negative side. Also negative is the appearance of episodes of vandalism and stealing. And there have been incidents of families "selling" their pubescent and adolescent daughers into marriage with wealthy Jordanians.  Pilfered or illegally traded goods are sold at a markup.

"Supporting initiative is something that is very important. These are not traditional refugees, sitting and waiting for assistance. These people are moving. They are very energetic and innovative. The problem is to channel the energy in a good way, otherwise it becomes, vandalism, stealing, whatever."
Lucio Melandri, UNICEF humanitarian affairs specialist, Syria

Labels: Charity, Conflict, Human Relations, Jordan, Poverty, Refugees, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 04, 2013

Errant Turn

"I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States. At the time of my decision, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continue to affect me.
"Although a considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions. I understood what I was doing and the decisions I made. However, I did not fully appreciate the broader effects of my actions. Those factors are clear to me now."
U.S. Private Bradley Manning

Not his fault, poor young man. He was struggling with his sexual identity. A situation made far more complex by US military law that wanted to know nothing about the sexual orientation of its military members. Clearly the fault lies with society, with the confusion that it foists upon those considered not mainstream-gendered, and with a military apparatus that preferred not to complicate already complex relations between administration and human relations.

And then again, there is always childhood trauma to go back to; a mother who was raising a son while in a constant alcoholic stupor, and the very real possibility his "negative" personality traits represented a hallmark of fetal alcohol syndrome and Asperger's syndrome. That fairly well targets a full spectrum of social disadvantage and inherited misery. So, really -- not his fault.

The vulnerable state of this young man's persona came head-to-head with the "hyper-masculine" atmosphere prevailing in the military. His gender-identity disorder came full circle; a woman trapped in a man's body. And nowhere to turn. No release from pent-up confused emotions, no relief from the pressure, no one to confide to, nowhere to hide.

But it was within his capabilities, given his position, to take what others hid and reveal them. That might be construed as personal revenge against a system that made a mockery of the man uncertain of his malehood, feeling that nature and nurture had conspired to turn him inside out and upside down and spit him out a miserable hybrid whom society would despise.

Releasing diplomatic cables, war-zone logs and videos represented to someone who now claims to fully understand what he constructed in a monstrous lapse of intelligent judgement, a blueprint for emotional release, getting back at the system and at the society that made him something he was not and would not accept just what he was

He would prefer, at this juncture, not to be sentenced for life in prison, for the very thought of such a dread ending to a life deserving of some kind of break after serving a quarter of a century as a confused and vulnerable being, he would appreciate an life-saving alternative. Yes, he still disagrees about the choices his government made and the war its military fought.

But he realizes now that other alternatives were open to him, less spectacular and certainly far less punishing both to the country and to himself, as hapless victim of circumstances beyond his paltry control. He would like, please, to be permitted to attend college. Which would give him the opportunity to become a more "productive member of society".

In any event, his commanding officers should bear the brunt of responsibility for what poor Bradley Manning committed in betraying the trust of his country. Their oversight of the mentally-distressed young man should have yielded the realization that he was in no condition to be trusted and to be entrusted with the vital data he was permitted to manipulate.

So there, y'all.

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Biology, Charity, Crimes, Discrimination, United States

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 17, 2013

Having a Ball of Piety

"You'd think they could at least put their garbage in all the bins. I'm also pretty surprised that people who call themselves Christians would throw away all this food."
Jose da Silva, Rio De Janeiro, Copacabana beach

Well, this was a Papal celebration for Catholic youth, after all. And Mr. da Silva is a crotchety 75-year old who has seen much of life. A retired farm worker, he hasn't the means to live if he 'retires' completely from work. So he supplements his income through performing a huge favour for society and the environment that just incidentally also benefits him financially, although in a meagre fashion. He collects empty cans for recycling.

And he felt fairly disgusted seeing Copacabana's mosaic sidewalks piled with trampled cardboard, plastic bags, empty water bottles, cookie wrappers and other food waste as orange-uniform-clad trash collectors did their best to restore a semblance of tidy order out of the remains of a crowd estimated at three million people assembled to hear Pope Francis speak in person at his final mass in Brazil.

Clearly the youth, whom Pope Francis enjoined to spread their faith "to the fringes of society, even to those who seem farthest away, most indifferent...The church needs you, your enthusiasm, your creativity and the joy that is so characteristic of you", have not quite subscribed to that old adage that cleanliness is next to Godliness. Slovenliness is far more 'characteristic', obviously, of youth. And joie de vivre becomes them.



They are young, after all, and youth are not particularly driven to tidiness and respect. Their sheer numbers was amazing, crowding themselves within an entire four kilometre crescent of the broad beach. Flag-waving faithful. Some of them seizing the moment by taking an early morning swim in the Atlantic. While others bequeathed Pope Francis with their very best regards, tossing T-shirts, flags and soccer jerseys at him as he drove by in his open-sided car.

For his part, the pontiff was clearly delighted with the lively scene. He did the religio-political thing of kissing babies, graciously accepting gifts, waving to the crowd, partaking of a mate tea handed to him. Perhaps even instinctively holding his breath at the miasmic stench of garbage and human waste in the humid environment which must have helped enormously to give the beach the atmosphere of a squalid refugee camp.


That a good time was had by all -- youth, that is -- was attested to by the young people who spent the night on the beach -- the enjoyment of an all-night slumber party ending the Catholic youth fest -- wrapped in flags and sleeping bags as protection against the night-time frigid air. "We were dying of cold, but it was worth it. It was a tiring day, but it was a great experience", enthused Lucrecia Grillera, 18, from Argentina, approvingly.

Labels: Celebrity, Charity, Christianity, Communication, Entertainment, Fidelity, Heritage Human Relations

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Swedish Multiculturalism Goes Awry

"Sweden is the best Islamic State." — Adly Abu Hajar, Imam based in Malmö

Hundreds of Muslim immigrants have rampaged through parts of the Swedish capital of Stockholm, torching cars and buses, setting fires, and hurling rocks at police.

The unrest -- a predictable consequence of Sweden's failed model of multiculturalism, which does not encourage Muslim immigrants to assimilate or integrate into Swedish society -- is an ominous sign of things to come.

The trouble began after police fatally shot an elderly man brandishing a machete in a Muslim-majority neighborhood. Although the exact circumstances of the May 13 incident remain unclear, police say they shot the 69-year-old man (his nationality has not been disclosed) in self-defense after he allegedly threatened them with the weapon.

Two days later, on May 15, a Muslim youth organization called Megafonen arranged a protest against alleged police brutality and demanded an independent investigation and a public apology.

On May 19, Muslim youths initiated a riot in Husby, a heavily Muslim suburb in the western part of Stockholm where more than 80% of the residents originate from Africa and the Middle East.

At least 100 masked Muslim youths set fire to cars and buildings, smashed windows, vandalized property and hurled rocks and bottles at police and rescue services in Husby. The riots quickly spread to at least 15 other parts of Stockholm, including the districts of Fittja, Hagsätra, Kista, Jakobsberg, Norsborg, Skaerholmen, Skogås and Vaarberg.

After two nights of spiraling violence, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt appealed for calm, condemning the riots as hooliganism. But his plea ("Everyone must pitch in to restore calm -- parents, adults") failed to prevent more nights of unrest, during which Muslim youth set fire to two schools, a police station, a restaurant, and a cultural center, and burned more than 50 cars and buses.

The unrest -- which has many parallels to the Muslim riots that occurred in France in 2005 -- has shocked Swedes who have long turned a blind eye to immigration policies that have encouraged the establishment of a parallel Muslim society in Sweden.

Although there are no official statistics of Muslims in Sweden, the US State Department reported in 2011 that there are now between 450,000 and 500,000 Muslims in the country, or about 5% of the total population of 9.5 million.

Muslim immigration to Sweden has been fostered by open-door asylum policies that are among the most generous in the world.

During the early 1990s, for example, Sweden granted asylum to nearly 100,000 refugees fleeing the wars in the Balkans. Sweden has also been a magnet for refugees from Iraq; as a result of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the Iraq War (2003-2011), there are now more than 120,000 Iraqis living in Sweden. In fact, Iraqis (both Christians and Muslims) now make up the second-largest ethnic minority group in Sweden, second only to ethnic Finns.

More recently, Sweden has granted asylum to thousands of refugees from Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, as well as from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Sweden is forecast to receive some 54,000 asylum seekers in 2013, according to the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket), the highest level since the 1990s. In 2012, Sweden accepted 44,000 asylum seekers, up by nearly a half from 2011.

Sweden is expected to receive at least 18,000 Syrians in 2013 alone. Since September 2012, asylum seekers have arrived in Sweden at the rate of 1,250 per week, far more than the Migration Board's capacity of between 500 and 700.

Sweden is a prime destination for asylum seekers because the country offers new immigrants free housing and social welfare benefits upon arrival. But many immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are poorly educated and have great difficulty finding a job in Sweden.

As a result, many immigrants are segregated from Swedish society and often live in areas where much of the population comes from countries other than Sweden. This in turn has encouraged the creation of parallel societies and the establishment of so-called no-go zones, parts of Sweden that are off limits to non-Muslims.

In some areas, no-go zones function as microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law where Swedish authorities have effectively lost control and are unable to provide even basic public aid such as police, fire fighting and ambulance services.

In the southern city of Malmö -- where Muslims make up more than 25% of the population -- fire and emergency workers refuse to enter Malmö's mostly Muslim Rosengaard district without police escorts. The male unemployment rate in Rosengaard is estimated to be above 80%. When fire fighters attempted to put out a fire at Malmö's main mosque, they were attacked by stone throwers.

In the Swedish city of Gothenburg, Muslim youth have hurled petrol bombs at police cars. In the city's Angered district, where more than 15 police cars were recently destroyed, teenagers have been pointing green lasers at the eyes of police officers, some of whom have been temporarily blinded.
In Gothenburg's Backa district, youth have been throwing stones at patrolling officers. Gothenburg police have also been struggling to deal with the problem of Muslim teenagers burning cars and attacking emergency services in several areas of the city.

At the same time, Muslim immigrants are becoming increasing assertive in demanding special rights and privileges for Islam in Sweden.

In February, for example, a mosque in Stockholm received final approval from the mayor's office to begin sounding public prayer calls from its minaret, the first time such permission has ever been granted in Sweden.

A majority of the members of the city planning committee in the southern Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka voted to repeal a 1994 prohibition on such prayer calls, thereby opening the way for a muezzin to begin calling Muslims to prayer from the top of a 32-meter (104-foot) minaret at a Turkish mosque in the Fittja district of the city.

The issue was put to a vote after Ismail Okur, the chairman of the Botkyrka Islamic Association (Islamiska föreningen i Botkyrka), filed a petition with the city in January 2012 demanding permission to allow public prayer calls at the mosque.

In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagen, Okur said earlier generations of Muslim immigrants "did not dare" to press the issue, but that he represents the "new guys" who are determined to "exercise their right to religious freedom" in Sweden.

When told that Sweden has historically been a Christian country, Okur responded: "So it was perhaps before, during the 1930s and 1940s. Now it is a new era. We are more than 100,000 [sic] Muslims in Sweden. Should we not have our religion as well, especially here in Botkyrka, where we are so many?"

Swedish multiculturalists agree. The Multicultural Center (Mångkulturellt centrum) in Botkyrka recently called on Swedes to "separate whiteness from Swedishness in order to be a socially sustainable future Swedishness."

On the other hand, a growing number of Swedes are beginning to have second thoughts about the long-term sustainability of multiculturalism and mass immigration.

Immigration Minister Tobias Billström recently marked a turning point in the debate when he told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Sweden needs to tighten rules for asylum seekers and other would-be immigrants to reduce the number of people coming into the country.

"Today Sweden is one of the countries that receives the most immigrants in the EU. That's not sustainable," Billström said. "Today, people are coming to households where the only income is support from the municipality. Is that reasonable?" he added.

Reflecting the unease about immigrants among many voters, an anti-immigrant party, the conservative Sweden Democrats, have risen to third-place in the polls ahead of a general election set to take place in September 2014.

But the riots in Stockholm imply that the damage has already been done. The fatal flaw of Swedish multiculturalism has been to grant asylum to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have no prospect of ever finding a job or making a meaningful contribution to Swedish society. Many immigrants are, and will remain, wards of the state.

The Malmö-based Imam Adly Abu Hajar, in an interview with the newspaper Skånska Dagbladet, recently summed it up this way: "Sweden is the best Islamic state."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Labels: Charity, Immigration, Islam, Islamism, Social-Cultural Deviations, Societal Failures, Sweden

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 25, 2013