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Croatians voted on Sunday to becomes the 28th member country of the European Union.
The voter turn-out was low at 44% but the decision emphatic, with 66% saying yes to ac cession, which is to take place in July next year, once the existing member governments have ratified it.
A coordinated pre-Christmas swoop by European police saw 112 arrests in connection with child abuse material on the Internet.
The operation was based on intensive work, breaking into a file sharing network, a kind of set-up highly resistant to surveillance. … Read More »
Christmas celebrations in 2011 were marked with calls for the protection of innocents, love of family, and salvaging of the Earth itself.
Pope Benedict XVI in Rome said the earth was “stained with blood”, praying for the victims of war in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and for victims of natural disasters.
The Christian festival, as sometimes will happen, saw the creation of martyrs. More than forty people were killed in a round of bigotry and religious hysteria in Nigeria, by bombs set off while they were in church, on Christmas Day (25.12.11). Blasts were recorded in the capital, Abuja, Jos in the centre of the country, and other places, in the North-east. Friction between Christian and Islamic communities in Nigeria has got worse in recent years. … Read More »
The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy (picture), is facing some daunting tasks to restore his position six months away from the presidential elections.
His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, faced a corruption trial this week - absent from court due to illness.
… Read More »
Along with the triumphal shouts and celebratory bursts of gunfire in the streets of Tripoli; unease still ruled in certain parts of town; the search for Muamar al-Gaddafi heated up, with offers of a bounty; and international gatherings began, aimed at funding the beginnings of a new order, and promoting a turn to democracy. … Read More »
OPINION: British police turned out in force late on Tuesday intending to smother the outbreak of rioting and arson in many parts of London.
Violent activities did ease off, but flared up in other major cities. … Read More »
COMMENTARY: The murder of innocents in Norway by a zealot identifying with the extreme right, called Anders Breivik, has caused some disassociation and position-taking by the so-called “new nationalist” parties in several European countries. These, like the Wilders party, PVV, in the Netherlands, or the Sweden Democrats, have made sudden electoral gains, on the back of campaigns against mass immigration, especially if Islamic. (See EUAustralia Online: “Finland vote latest in Euro-nationalist trend”, 22.4.11; “Voting: tense count in Sweden, 22.9.10; “Wilders, horse-trading …”, 5.9.10).
They have been at pains to point out that the Norwegian gunman, if singing from some pages in their songbook, was an isolate; that they concentrate on legal parliamentary politics; that they have broken their links with a fascist past, or, in cases like the Netherlands, never had such a past; and that they do not sympathise with, let alone provide any infrastructure for terrorist activities. While police in Europe have been taking a prudent look at some of the rhetoricians and associations on the radical right, few accusations have actually been made that these new parties condone egregious violent crimes. (Criticism in the liberal press is rather that extreme ideas will feed into the fantasies of weak types, and the insane).
Haydn Rippon, a doctoral researcher studying the new nationalist movement, prepared this appraisal. … Read More »