Tag Archives: Global: Miscellaneous

Dutch News: “A Christian cannot vote for Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration party PVV, say 75% of church leaders in a poll of 1,200 ministers and church workers in the Nederlands Dagblad.”

EU Observer: “Herman Van Rompuy was subjected to a series of personal insults on Wednesday (24 February) spoiling his maiden appearance in the European Parliament as president of the European Council. Mid-way through a fairly tame exchange of views on EU policy, Mr Van Rompuy was visibly shocked and uncomfortable when comments by British eurosceptic MEP Nigel Farage took a personal turn.”

Business Daily: “China extended its position as the world’s leading food producer in 2008, when its agricultural production jumped 30%, measured by value, World Trade Organization data show. Chinese farm production rose to $759,94 billion in 2008 . . . US agricultural production was $311,23 billion in 2007, the latest year for which data are available . . . ”

InterFax: “The Russian Justice Ministry has rejected an application to register Marriage Equality, a nonprofit organization set up to provide legal assistance and information services to sexual minorities.”

Christian Post: ‘We drew a circle around a 30 minute travel distance from our central meeting place, and asked what would happen if we drew another 30 minute distance around the outside of that,’ ND Strupler, coach for ICF Team and
Start-Up’s, says in the report. ‘Zurich is the biggest city in Switzerland, with not even 400,000 people, but if we plant seven campuses each 30 minutes travel distance from the centre we could reach a population of around 1.5 million people.’”

The Christian Institute: “Children are being sexualised by computer games, easily accessible pornography and sexual slogans at an increasingly early age, according to a report due to be issued later this month. The report, written by Dr Linda Papadopolous, will reveal that girls feel pressurised to please boys, while boys feel pressurised to sleep with multiple girls.”

The Christian Institute: “Lap-dancing clubs, casinos and betting shops are increasing in number in the UK, while the number of libraries and schools is falling, new figures show. The statistics have been called a modern day Domesday Book, with critics saying it shows the ‘decline of traditional Britain.’”

Wall Street Journal(paid subscription only): “Advisers to Europe’s highest court delivered different responses Tuesday in conflicts over gambling restrictions in European Union countries.”

New York Times: “Three months after the European Union introduced a new rule book that was supposed to elevate its status on the global stage, an awkward question is unavoidably being asked within the bloc: Has the Lisbon Treaty actually made things worse?”

Daily Mail: “A confidential blueprint for David Cameron’s controversial bid to impose more women, gays and ethnic candidates on reluctant party activists has come to light.”

Mark Durie writing at First Things, On The Square: “It would be inconceivable for nations with Christian majorities to band together to form an intergovernmental organization devoted to advancing Christianity and the global interests of the Christian Church. The existence of the OIC is testimony to the reality that mainstream Islam recognizes no distinction between politics and religion.”

Telegraph: “The council of EU finance ministers said Athens must comply with austerity demands by March 16 or lose control over its own tax and spend policies altogether. It if fails to do so, the EU will itself impose cuts under the draconian Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty in what would amount to economic suzerainty.”

Paul Belien writing at Hudson New York: “With the euro in crisis, the British are currently counting their blessings while the Germans are trying to cut their losses. The near bankruptcy of Greece is dragging the euro down, but bailing out the Greeks is probably illegal under the EU Treaties, while ejecting Greece from the eurozone is illegal as well . . . Legally, however, it is impossible to eject a country from the eurozone without ejecting it from the EU altogether – which is legally impossible as well. This creates a catch 22 situation, which the Germans can only solve with a very radical solution: leaving the eurozone themselves. If Berlin were to do this, it would be able to create a new eurozone without the PIIGS countries – a euromarkzone of sorts, with France, the Benelux countries, Finland, Austria and Slovenia. Though no-one is admitting it in public, various economists do not rule out such a scenario.”

AP: “Police in Malawi say they have arrested a man in what they describe as a sweep against homosexuals. There is a debate over gay rights in this conservative southern African country, sparked by the trial of a gay couple charged with unnatural acts and gross indecency, felonies for which they could be imprisoned for up to 14 years . . . ”

International Council on Human Rights Policy, ICHRP, Sexuality and Human Rights (2009). SEXUALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS, ICHRP, Geneva, Switzerland, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1551221

“In early 2008, the Council decided to begin work on the subject of sexuality and human rights. The theme is both vast and controversial, and the Council’s initial aim is to clarify the essential elements of a policy discussion of sexuality and sexual rights from a human rights perspective, and by doing so perhaps enable discussion to progress.”

Christian Post: “Its optimism is based on the findings of a survey of 18- to 24-year-olds at last summer’s Momentum event by youth ministry Soul Survivor, where 81 percent said they planned to vote, more than double the percentage of people in the same age bracket who voted in the last general election.”

Financial Times: “As Conservatives grasp the real possibility of victory this year, some are asking what degree of power a few evangelical Christians – only 3 per cent of the party members, according to one poll – will wield. The answer will determine the shape and sturdiness of any Conservative government.”

Wall Street Journal: “European Union finance ministers, reluctant to offer Greece immediate financial support, are debating additional steps Greece could take to tame its budget deficit . . . The EU leaders’ declaration on Thursday called for countries that use the euro to take ‘determined and coordinated action, if needed, to safeguard stability in the euro area.’ This briefly appeased nervous investors, but the lack of ready funding help and a murky strategy later caused the euro to slump, trading at about $1.3598 at 1630 GMT Monday.”

Telegraph: “Prof Jones stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s climate change unit in December after leaked emails appeared to show academics were manipulating data to bolster claims that global warming is caused by humans. Now the academic has admitted he may have lost track of some of the data used to produce the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, which uses climate readings from worldwide weather stations to show a sharp rise in global temperatures.”

NY Times: “In the view of both political analysts and technology experts here and in the United States, China’s attempts to tighten its grip on Internet use are driven in part by the conviction that the West — and particularly the United States — is wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally.”

BBC News: “The Church of England’s general synod has voted to back a motion expressing ‘deep concern’ at what it believes is a cut in religious TV programming. But the synod drew back from singling out the BBC, instead backing a motion aimed at all mainstream broadcasters.”

Brussels Journal: “At this point Europe is not even halfway its 100-day political ‘honeymoon’ since the Treaty of Lisbon, which transformed the EU into a state in its own right, came into force. So far the honeymoon has been a nightmare. Since the beginning of the year, the EU’s currency, the euro, is on the brink of collapse; Greece has been placed under EU financial supervision to prevent it from going bankrupt. Now U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he will not attend next May’s EU summit in Madrid. It was to have been Obama’s first visit to post-Lisbon Europe – the consecration of the new political order.”

LifeSiteNews: “Lech Walesa, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former president of Poland, has warned that the world has ‘lost that hope’ with which it once turned to America as a moral leader.”

Ruth Gledhill writing at Times Online: “Tory leader David Cameron has launched an astonishing attack on the Church of England over its attitudes to homosexuality. In an interview with the gay magazine Attitude, Cameron tells award-winning journalist Johann Hari that ‘our Lord Jesus’ would back equality and gay rights if he were around today.”

AP: “Attorney Edwin Coq said Laura Silsby knew the group couldn’t remove the youngsters without proper paperwork, while he characterized the other nine missionaries as unknowingly being caught up in actions they didn’t understand.”

TheLocal.se: “The European Court of Justice has told Sweden that it must implement a 2006 measure requiring telecom operators to store information about their customers’ phone calls and emails.”

“A defense of all that is best, and of all the achievement, in U.S. history is necessary. That is why the outcome of the so-called culture wars in America is so important to its future.”

Findlaw (AP): “A group of U.S. Baptist missionaries arrested trying to leave Haiti with a busload of children faced more questioning by a local judge, while an orphanage director said many of the children had parents.”

AP: “A man has been arrested for putting up posters championing gay rights, police said Tuesday, adding they were searching for other Malawians they believe are working with foreigners in the campaign.”

One News Now: “An Idaho pastor has condemned child trafficking as a ‘wicked and evil practice.’ He is defending members of his congregation detained in Haiti after they tried to bus 33 children into the Dominican Republic.”

NY Times: “France wants to use its presidency of the Group of 20 next year to create a new international monetary system, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday, adding that he believed the dollar should no longer be the primary reserve currency in the global economy.”

Paul Belien writing at Hudson New York: “With Greece facing bankruptcy, the fears about Greece’s financial situation have led to a drop in value for the euro. Last week, the finance ministers of Germany and the Netherlands – the two eurozone countries which in pre-euro days had the strongest currencies in the EU: the German mark and the Dutch guilder – announced that they will not help Greece solve its problems . . . British Eurosceptics fear that if Greece, which represents 3% of EU GDP, is bailed out, other eurozone countries facing financial difficulties (Spain, Portugal, Italy) might claim the same treatment. This, they say, would saddle Britain with a bill of £50 billion to save a currency in which the Brits have never believed.”

London Evening Standard: “Bankers stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the Swiss ski resort of Davos to try to prevent a scatter-gun approach to new financial regulation by different countries.”

Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione, Democracy by Delegation? Who Represents Whom and How in European Governance (January 25, 2010). Government and Opposition, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541843

“The democratic legitimacy of European governance is often said to rest on its ‘output’. However, such arguments also make the implicit ‘input’ claim that the Community Method and New Modes of Governance offer a more participatory and deliberative style of democratic politics, that are best suited to ‘represent’ the European interest. We test such claims by analysing them from three different perspectives: functional, societal and delegative. We conclude that they are grounded on a ‘substantive’ conception of representation, in which the agents of European governance ‘stand’ or ‘act’ for the European public. However, such claims are empty without formal processes of authorisation and accountability that ensure European governance effectively promotes the democratic values of political equality and responsiveness.”

National Post: “[T]he Canadian Centre for Child Protection has launched a website and pilot program, to be used in 100 schools, to warn young people off sexting . . . I suppose if sexting is wreaking havoc with teens’ lives, one can say that TextEd.ca is necessary, and that I shouldn’t be making fun of it . . . Sexting is just the silent canary in the coal mine . . . ”

HeraldSun.com.au: “A DAILY aid handout in front of the collapsed National Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti turned into a chaotic scramble yesterday as some 18 Uruguayan UN peacekeepers attempted to contain a 4000-strong mass of desperately hungry Haitians.”

The Straits Times: “McDonald’s this month started selling cartoon character miniatures depicting the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac calendar, but the pig was replaced by love god Cupid as McDonald’s said it did not want to offend Muslims.”

Robert Louis Wilken reviews The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland at First Things: “Although Gregory VII is not as well known as the reformers of the sixteenth century or the philosophes of the eighteenth century, a case can be made that Gregory’s studied rebuff of royal power in ecclesiastical affairs worked far greater changes in European political and religious life than did the upheavals of the Reformation or the Enlightenment . . . Holland’s central point is well taken. Something genuinely novel did come out of the medieval conflict between pope and king, and the initiative came from the Church’s leaders and thinkers, not Europe’s temporal rulers. Gregory VII was the bearer of a tradition that reached back to the gospels (‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’), to Ambrose and Augustine, and to Pope Gelasius, who said that the ‘two principles’ that give order to the world—political authority and spiritual authority—were distinct.”

The Economist: “Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology. Britain’s public spending is set to exceed 50% of GDP (see chart 1). America’s financial capital has shifted from New York to Washington, DC, and the government has been trying to extend its control over the health-care industry. Huge state-run companies such as Gazprom and PetroChina are on the march. Nicolas Sarkozy, having run for office as a French Margaret Thatcher, now argues that the main feature of the credit crisis is ‘the return of the state, the end of the ideology of public powerlessness.’”

Vancouver Sun: “Call it the mystery of the missing thermometers. Two months after ‘climategate’ cast doubt on some of the science behind global warming, new questions are being raised about the reliability of a key temperature database, used by the United Nations and climate change scientists as proof of recent planetary warming.”

CBC News: “A former Vancouver sex-trade worker was at the B.C. Court of Appeal Thursday fighting for the right to challenge the constitutionality of Canada’s prostitution laws.”

Time: “Hot on the heels of the Google vs. China censorship dispute, a new front in the showdown between state power and Internet freedom is opening in Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government is pushing through new measures that would give the state control over online video content and force anyone who regularly uploads videos to obtain a license from the Ministry of Communications. The move is seen as yet another challenge to Google — owner of YouTube — which says the new rules would in effect force Internet service providers to police their own content.”

BBC: “The BBC has commissioned a wide-ranging investigation into how lesbian, gay and bisexual people are portrayed on TV, radio and online. The research will ask a variety of people across the country what they think about subjects such as jokes, dramatic storylines and stereotyping.”

BBC: “A Ugandan MP who proposed introducing the death penalty for some gay people has told a newspaper he is willing to change his draft legislation.”

Business Week: “Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government is backing new media rules that forbid pay-per-view pornography and other adult programming during daylight hours, a measure that would hurt revenue at News Corp.’s Sky Italia SpA.”

Henrik Raeder Clausen reviews Marta Andreasen’s Brussels Laid Bare at The Brussels Journal: “Marta Andreasen was hired to put the required reforms into effect. However, she was dismissed after less than five months in office, a dismissal that led to a lengthy legal process, but no reform. This book is her account of what happened . . . The main upside of the book is that it provides a candid view of a world not frequently exposed to scrutiny or criticism, a view with a long sequence of disturbing events of neglect and miuse of power. This is not a healthy situation for the organisation that, more or less visibly, runs things throughout Europe.”

Breitbart (AP): “The International Olympic Committee is recommending the establishment of special medical centers to deal with cases of athletes with ambiguous sexual characteristics.”

Times of Malta: “The Opposition has called on the government to set up a committee – already provided for in the Criminal Code – to advise the minister responsible for culture on definitions of obscenities and pornography.”

Alan Wilson writing in The Guardian: “[T]he fact that a whole range of religious leaders representing every major tradition in the UK feel chronically misunderstood must mean something . . . But it’s almost impossible for central figures in the media establishment to take such phenomena seriously, perhaps because when they were at public school many of them had religion all sewn up around about the fourth year. The kind of people they dine with just don’t do that sort of thing. It’s obvious that sneering is a suitable substitute for analysis. That’s all there is to it.”

Virtue Online: “The Church of England is poised to give greater recognition to homosexual clergy in relationships, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.”

Reuters: “Dumping the dead in hurriedly excavated mass graves without proper rites is seen as desecration in a country where many believe in zombies — dead bodies brought back to life by supernatural forces who could persecute the living”

The Christian Institute: “Political parties should do more to get gay MPs into Parliament, according to a report from a conference chaired by Commons Speaker John Bercow. In a bid to increase the number of women MPs the report contains controversial plans to impose legal quotas for female parliamentary candidates on parties. The report falls short of imposing the same radical requirement for homosexual candidates, but it calls on parties to work harder so that more homosexuals will stand as MPs.”

Newt Gingrich and Andrew McCarthy, writing at The Daily Caller: “Since the President’s executive order, if Interpol were to act in violation of U.S. law, there is no law we can invoke to hold them accountable. And to add insult to injury, if an American citizen or official wants to find out what Interpol is up to, they can no longer do so. The Obama administration order makes Interpol’s files unreachable by search warrant, subpoena or FOIA request.”

Richard Bellamy, Democracy Without Democracy? Can the EU’s Democratic ‘Outputs’ be Separated from the Democratic ‘Inputs’ Provided by Competitive Parties and Majority Rule? (January 11, 2010). Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 17, pp. 2-19, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1534958

“Various European Union (EU) analysts suggest that although a democratic deficit exists from the perspective of ‘input’ democracy, democratic processes such as competitive parties and majority rule are neither necessary nor suitable to secure democratic ‘outputs’ of the kind the EU delivers. This article disputes this claim. ‘Input’ arguments are vital to the legitimacy of decision-making in the EU’s policy areas, and the non- and counter-majoritarian mechanisms these analysts advocate have perverse rather than beneficial effects on the quality of ‘outputs’.”

Asia Times: “After the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Ankara, many in the West referred to a new Turkish foreign policy called ‘neo-Ottomanism,’ suggesting a revival of the intellectual, political and social influence of the Ottoman Empire, which departed the scene 92 years ago.”

Washington Post: “Google said Tuesday that it may pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating there and targeting its e-mail service and corporate infrastructure, a threat that could rattle U.S.-China relations, as well as China’s business community.”

UKPA: “Police stop and search powers under UK terrorism laws have been declared illegal by human rights judges after two Londoners questioned their legality. The right to question people without grounds for suspicion – granted by the Terrorism Act of 2000 – violates the Human Rights Convention, said the European Court of Human Rights.”

EurActiv: “Opposition Social Democrat Ivo Josipovic convincingly won the presidential election yesterday (10 January), promising to help the government’s efforts to complete European Union membership talks and join the bloc in 2012.”

The Volokh Conspiracy links to this report in the Local.

AP: “Bukhsh says a witch doctor advised them to kill the girl after telling them it would make them rich.”

MyWay.com (AP): “Already the biggest auto market and steel maker, China edged past Germany in 2009 to become the top exporter, yet another sign of its rapid rise and the spread of economic power from West to East.”

FT.com: “Chinese banks have cemented their position as the most highly valued financial institutions, taking four of the top five slots in a ranking of banks’ share prices as a multiple of their book values.”

Bloomberg: “China supplanted the U.S. as the world’s largest auto market after its 2009 vehicle sales jumped 46 percent, ending more than a century of American dominance that started with the Model T Ford . . . In the U.S., sales slumped 21 percent to 10.4 million, the fewest since 1982, according to Autodata Corp.”

Andrew C. McCarthy writing at National Review Online: “This is surely another reckless gesture designed to eviscerate America’s special status and self-determinism — to make us just one of 192 other countries, no better, no different, no superpower. The president knows that Americans don’t share his view of America, which is a big reason behind his tumbling approval ratings. Saying out loud that we need to immunize Interpol — to put it above the U.S. Constitution — in order to be more like Kenya, Thailand, Zimbabwe, etc., would not go over well. That would bode ill for the administration’s agenda to subjugate the U.S. to such transnationalist schemes as the Law of the Sea Treaty and the International Criminal Court. Better to say nothing.”

Wall Street Journal: “Shortly after he tried to bring down flight 253 to Detroit on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab became the fourth former head of a British university Islamic Society (ISOC) to have been charged with a serious terrorism offense. This is only the tip of the problem. Shaming as it is, during his time studying at University College London (UCL), Abdulmutallab was in the most conducive environment an Islamic extremist could inhabit outside Waziristan.”

AZ Republic: “In a move to crack down on weapons from the U.S. that are funneled to drug cartels, police in Latin America will soon be able to track American gun sales in their own language, despite privacy concerns by gun-rights advocates . . . Springfield, Va.-based Gun Owners of America, noted that many Mexican police have been charged with passing other types of sensitive information to criminals in recent years.”

Telegraph: Moses Binoga, the assistant police commissioner who is head of the Ugandan anti-human sacrifice and trafficking task force, said there were 26 murders thought to be part of ritual sacrifice last year compared with three cases in 2007. ‘We also have about 120 children and adults reported missing whose fate we have not traced,’ he added. ‘From the experience of those whom we recovered, we cannot rule out that they may be victims of human sacrifice.’”

The Star: “Travellers under 18 will be exempt from Canada’s peek-a-boo body scanners amid international fears that the resulting images would amount to child pornography.”

CCFON: “Around 400,000 people joined a Facebook group this week to oppose a planned march of a Muslim extremist group through a British town famous for honouring the war dead, including those killed in Afghanistan.”

politics.co.uk: “The scanners create images which reveal the passenger’s body under their clothes, potentially contravening laws which ban ‘indecent’ images of children. Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, told the Guardian the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978.”

Weekend Post: “While the SA National Blood Service is pleading for residents to donate blood this holiday season, members of the gay community in Nelson Mandela Bay say they are battling to donate blood because of strict policies. Eastern Cape Gay and Lesbian Association president Christina Engela said the blood service was discriminating against gay men and trans-gender donors in Nelson Mandela Bay through the use of a ‘six-month rule.’”

Reuters: “Chinese police arrested thousands in a drive against Internet pornography throughout 2009, officials said, vowing a deepening crackdown that critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.”

UPI: “Spain’s assumption of the European Union’s rotating presidency Friday is the first presidency under the EU’s new legal framework in the Lisbon Treaty.”

“Obama has granted Interpol the ability to operate within the territorial limits of the United States without being subject to the same constitutional restraints that apply to all domestic law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.”

Guardian: “The baby’s name and nationality are not known. The child will grow up innocent of having a place in history. But somewhere, this year, that child became the billionth person in Africa, the continent with the fastest growing population in the world.”