Now that the Norwegian killer is being tried, a sociologist brought in to comment on the sanity of Anders Behring-Breivik at his trial says the killer cannot tell life from computer games. Report by Sam Datta-Paulin.
In partnership with the Pulitzer Center and National Geographic, the NewsHour explores how the composition of our society is changing as the world population reaches 7 billion people. Hari Sreenivasan has the details (27 Oct 2011).
Does the increasing human population of the earth create problems??? Does the continuous growth of humanity represent a sustainable strategy for tackling climate change and resource scarcity??? Here is comedian Doug Stanhope telling us why he thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
And putting his money where his mouth is, Stanhope created ‘www.savingbristol.com, a web site dedicated to raising money to pay for an abortion for Bristol Palin, daughter of staunchly pro-life Alaskan governor and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’ on 11 September 2008, declaring “Rather than sit back and impotently bemoan Bristol’s tragic, lonely circumstance, it is time for us — the silent majority — to unite behind this poor, imprisoned woman and save her from both a tyrannical household as well as the horrible nightmare of a forced childbirth”. On the site, Stanhope pledged: “Even if you cannot take my offer, I will still use my money or money donated through this page to pay for at least one abortion for a disadvantaged teenage girl each year for the rest of my life in the name of your mother. And in my will, I shall have a good portion of my estate turned into the Sarah J. Palin Abortion Fund that will help girls from all walks of life from destroying their lives and our natural resources by having children”. Now this initiative is run through the Lilith Fund, a Texas-based organization dedicated to helping women pay for abortions if they are unable to afford them themselves, lilithfund.org.[1]
In the above clip the Turkish Prime Minister criticizes the opposition in Turkey for remaining “spectators” while world history is being made in their surroundings. He also pronounced some choice words regarding the UN: he asked whether the world was nothing but a slave of the UN’s five permanent members . . .
The Time reporter Ishaan Tharoor, reporting an interview with the Turkish PM – ‘Erdogan sat down with TIME’s Jim Frederick, Bobby Ghosh, Tony Karon, Matt McAllester and Ishaan Tharoor on the sidelines of U.N. meetings in New York City’ – writes in his preamble that “Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the international statesman of the moment. Greeted as a rock star in Egypt and other countries transformed by the Arab Spring, the Turkish Premier looms like a colossus over the Middle East”.[1]
On the UN, Tayyip had this to say: “First and foremost, what is required is for the U.N. Security Council to say yes to the legitimate demands of the people in Palestine. If anything else should be discussed at this moment, it should be between two states. And there’s another fact we need to consider, primarily the borders of 1967. Israel first seems to have accepted going back to the borders of 1967, but somehow seemed to have got distanced from this ideal. They need to get closer back to it. Palestine is in a form of a maze right now. Through TIME, I’d like to make a call out to humanity: [The Palestinians] are there to exist. They are not there to be condemned to struggle in an open-air penitentiary. Israel’s cruelty in that regard cannot be continued any longer. And, of course, the legitimate demands for Palestine to be a recognized state should be catered to and considered both in the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly. Those who approach these demands negatively will never be able to settle their accounts with history”, going on talk about Turkey’s relationship with the Jewish state: “Our mutual relations with Israel would have been reinforced even further only if Israel hadn’t victimized the positive relations of two countries with [its 2010 raid] on the Mavi Marmara, which was navigating in international waters. The flotillas in question were bearing nothing but humanitarian aid, including toys, food and other sorts of materials. They were holding over 450 citizens from 32 countries. One of the casualties is an American citizen of Turkish descent. And right now the Israeli Prime Minister still alleges that the flotillas were actually loaded with weapons. Had they possessed the weapons that were alleged, why didn’t they fire back? There are reports issued by both the U.N. Security Council and U.N. agencies in Geneva about this incident, and you never see the slightest trace that the flotillas were carrying guns. The Israeli government is not being honest at all. Right now, as long as they refuse to apologize for the nine people of Turkish descent who lost their lives on the flotilla, so long as they refuse to pay compensation to the families, and of course as long as the embargo on Gaza has not been lifted, the relations between the two countries will never become normalized”.[2]
As for his trip of the Arab Awakening in Turkey’s hinterland, the PM declared: “Unlike others, I didn’t just go there to see a few people on the streets. I intentionally wanted to talk to the candidate presidents, the new political parties there, and I had the opportunity to get together with lots of people in order to grasp the situation. At my meetings, I said, all right, Turkey is a model of democracy, a secular state, a social state with the rule of law upheld. We are not intentionally trying to export a regime — we couldn’t care less. But if they want our help, we’ll provide any assistance they need. But we do not have a mentality of exporting our system”, switching to the special relationship between Turkey and America: “In the last nine years, relations between the U.S. and Turkey have never recessed, never gone back, but they have not improved as much as we’d like. The relationship especially between Obama and us has always been very positive. Whenever we speak to each other, we talk about negotiations of certain processes whether in the region or more globally — we always talk about matters quite frankly. But of course what we want to see is relations getting reinforced at the upmost extent possible, particularly in the realms of the economy and commerce. Because Turkey has great potential to take advantage of. We’re really willing to see more and more U.S. entrepreneurs conducting investments in Turkey. I’m optimistic for the future. I should tell you honestly, there are no tensions between us”, ending with a quasi-realistic appraisal of Turkey’s road to Brussels: “When [former French President Jacques] Chirac or [former German Chancellor Gerhard] Schroder were there, Turkey would be involved in all of the European leaders’ summits. But when [current Chancellor Angela] Merkel or [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy took over their offices, the ambience changed dramatically. Despite their attitudes, we were determined to continue this path toward E.U. membership. But unfortunately the trust among my people in E.U. membership started to shake and turn. We’re still determined, because no leader in the E.U. will be there forever. They’ll be replaced one day. We might be replaced one day. But Turkey is getting stronger as time goes by, and the situation of
many European states is quite obvious”.[3]
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is remaining steadfast to her opinion that Turkish immigrants living in Germany must learn the language of their adopted land. Opening an international technology expo in Hanover, Merkel forced home the point knowing that her Turkish counter part was attending the same event.
During his visit, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a Turkish crowd in Düsseldorf: “You must integrate, but I am against assimilation . . . no one may ignore the rights of minorities . . . Our children must learn German but they must learn Turkish first”, adding “I want you to learn German, that your children learn German – they should study, get degrees. I want you to become doctors, professors and politicians in Germany”.[1] But Germany’s integration commissioner, Maria Böhmer objected vehemently: “The language of the country in which you’re going to live in the long run has to be the priority”.[2] As such, Böhmer seems to have reacted in a rather knee-jerk fashion given that the Turkish PM actually encouraged local Turks to learn German while not neglecting their own tongue: “No one should be able to rip us away from our culture. Our children must learn German, but, first, they must learn Turkish”.[3] Germany houses about 2.7 million people of Turkish origin.
There are those who are now saying that Turkey should not even attempt to join the EU anymore . . . In September 1959, Ankara applied for associate membership of the then-European Economic Community (EEC). Four years later, the Ankara Agreement was signed to take Turkey into a customs union and finally full EEC membership. In 1967, the EEC was renamed the European Community (EC). On 14 April 1987 Turkey applied for full EC membership. On 1 November 1993, the Treaty on European Union, commonly referred to as the Maastricht Treaty, came into force formally establishing the EU. A customs union finally came into effect under Tansu Çiller in 1996 (during the Refah-Yol Coallition). At the Helsinki summit in December 1999, Turkey was finally given the status of a candidate country. And then, on 17 December 2004, the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 3 October 2005. And basically, that is still the state of Turkey-EU relations today. Negotiations are ongoing, stalled, and arduous. On 9 November 2010, Erdoğan told the Reuters news agency that “We have been kept waiting at the gates of the EU for 50 years. We are still waiting and waiting and still in the negotiating process”. Erdoğan added that public opinion in Turkey was becoming “offended with the situation”, and that “[s]ince the game [of accession negotiations] started, new rules have been brought into the game”.[4] And now, Merkel has recently come out that the “Multi-Kulti” experiment had failed, arguably primarily directing her scorn at the local Turks as well as other Muslim immigrants.[5]
The multi-source news broadcaster Newsy’s Adnan Khan opines that “Merkel has become somewhat infamous for saying multiculturalism has failed in Germany. France and Germany have been the loudest opponents of Turkey’s bid to assimilate into [or rather join] the EU. According to Euronews, Turkey resents German and French resistance to its EU membership. “I have no secret agenda. I am explicit in everything I say. If the reality among the Europeans is ‘We don’t want Turkey among us,’ then they should say it clearly. I will accept it, with pleasure!” Mr. Erdogan told the crowd to learn Turkish before German. Predictably, Germany isn’t happy about that. Der Spiegel Online says the Erdogan speech offers little help to the cultural tension gripping Germany. “It was a speech that did nothing to reinforce any feeling of belonging to Germany — Erdogan steadfastly appealed to the Turkish national pride of people who have been at home in Germany for four generations.” Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News says the prime minister’s remarks come from mounting frustration over not just the EU bid — but also increasing xenophobia in Germany. Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Ali Babacan, complained that the EU was becoming an inward-looking ‘Christian club,’ slamming a lack of progress in Turkish-EU talks. But in Erdogan’s case, it is not just his frustration with EU membership that is driving his pro-Turkey commentary. The Guardian reports Erdogan is up for general election in June and for the first time Turks living abroad will be able to vote. “Germany, with almost two million eligible voters, will be the fourth largest constituency after Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.” The Guardian quotes Germany’s foreign minister as saying the reason German language is given priority is because all professional level jobs require residents to know German”.
In of my op-eds in Today’s Zaman, I posited that “Islamophobia is nothing but a new name given to the age-old reflex of racism”.[1] And here is Iran’s Press TV taking an in-depth look at the ugly beast that has raised its head again all over the European continent: ‘Europe has witnessed a recent surge in right wing xenophobic political parties leading many in the media and the public as well to question whether racism in Europe is on the rise. In this episode of Press TV’s A Simple Question, Ed Augustin goes to the streets to find out what the British public think about racism in Europe today’.
[1] C. Erimtan, “The end of multiculturalism, Islamophobia and the role of NATO” Today’s Zaman (23 November 2010). http://tiny.cc/e0crj.
I heard about this on the radio . . . and in the Turkish newspaper Milliyet, Taki Berberakis indeed writes that Greece is planning to build a wall of separation between Turkey and Greece in order to stop illegal immigrants from entering the hallowed ground of the EU. Berberakis makes a comparison with the wall that some people in the U.S. want to build in order to dissuade illegals from entering the States via Mexico.[1] From London, VOA’s Henry Ridgwell adds that ‘Greek authorities say more than 100,000 illegal immigrants arrived in the country last year. Most crossed the Evros River [Meriç in Turkish] that separates Greece and Turkey, and the European Union from the outside world. The Greek government says those numbers can no longer be tolerated and has announced plans to construct an eight-mile long fence along the most vulnerable part of the border’.[2] In Israel, people have been playing similar semantic games for some time now: not a wall, but a separation barrier . . .
The Oslo Massacre: Anders Behring-Breivik and World of Warcraft
Now that the Norwegian killer is being tried, a sociologist brought in to comment on the sanity of Anders Behring-Breivik at his trial says the killer cannot tell life from computer games. Report by Sam Datta-Paulin.
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Current Affairs, Democracy, Europe, Immigration, Interwebz, Islam, Islamophobia, Political Commentary, Uncategorized