Islamistas radicais ‘infiltraram-se‘ no Partido Trabalhista britânico in Telegraph

The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) — which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation” of voters.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Environment Minister, said the IFE had become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties.

“They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,” he said.

“They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.”

Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, said the IFE had infiltrated and “corrupted” his party in east London in the same way that the far-Left Militant Tendency did in the 1980s. Leaked Labour lists show a 110 per cent rise in party membership in one constituency in two years.

In a six-month investigation by this newspaper and Channel 4’s Dispatches, involving weeks of covert filming by the programme’s reporters:

• IFE activists boasted to the undercover reporters that they had already “consolidated … a lot of influence and power” over Tower Hamlets, a London borough council with a £1 billion budget.
• We have established that the group and its allies were awarded more than £10 million of taxpayers’ money, much of it from government funds designed to “prevent violent extremism”.
• IFE leaders were recorded expressing opposition to democracy, support for sharia law or mocking black people. The IFE organised meetings with extremists, including Taliban allies, a man named by the US government as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a man under investigation by the FBI for his links to the September 11 attacks.
• Moderate Muslims in London told how the IFE and its allies were enforcing their hardline views on the rest of the local community, curbing behaviour they deemed “un-Islamic”. The owner of a dating agency received a threatening email from an IFE activist, warning her to close it.
• George Galloway, a London MP, admitted in recordings obtained by this newspaper that his surprise victory in the 2005 election owed more to the IFE “than it would be wise – for them – for me to say, adding that they played a “decisive role” in his triumph at the polls.

Mr Galloway now says they were one of many groups which supported his anti-war stance and had never sought to influence him.

The IFE has particularly close links to Tower Hamlets council. Seven serving and former councillors said Lutfur Rahman, the current council leader, gained his post with the group’s help.

Some said they were canvassed by a senior IFE official on his behalf. After Mr Rahman was elected, a man with close links to the group, Lutfur Ali, was appointed assistant chief executive of the council with responsibility for grant funding.

This was despite a chequered employment record, a misleading CV and a negative report from the headhunters appointed to consider the candidates. The council’s white chief executive was subsequently forced from his post.

Since Mr Rahman became leader, more council grants have been paid to a number of organisations which our investigation established are closely linked to the IFE.

Funding for other, secular groups was ended or cut. In the borough’s well-known Brick Lane area, council funds were switched from a largely secular heritage trail to a highly controversial “hijab sculpture”, angering many residents who accused the council of “religious triumphalism”.

Schools in Tower Hamlets are told by the council should close for the Muslim festival of Eid, even where most of their pupils are not Muslim.

Mr Rahman refused to deny that an IFE activist had canvassed councillors on his behalf. He said: “There are various people across Tower Hamlets who get excited, who get involved.”

He would not comment on concerns about infiltration, saying they were “party matters”. He said: “If you look at our flagship policies, like investing £20 million to tackle overcrowding, you can see that we are working for everyone.”

The IFE said it did not seek to influence the council and had not lobbied for Mr Rahman. “If anything, existing members of the Labour Party have joined the IFE, rather than the other way round,” it said.

The group insisted it was not a fundamentalist or extremist organisation and did not support violence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/7333420/Islamic-radicals-infiltrate-the-Labour-Party.html

‘Os mártires modernos do Cristianismo‘ in Der Spiegel

The rise of Islamic extremism is putting increasing pressure on Christians in Muslim countries, who are the victims of murder, violence and discrimination. Christians are now considered the most persecuted religious group around the world. Paradoxically, their greatest hope could come from moderate political Islam.

Kevin Ang is cautious these days. He glances around, taking a look to the left down the long row of stores, then to the right toward the square, to check that no one is nearby. Only then does the church caretaker dig out his key, unlock the gate, and enter the Metro Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.

The draft of air stirs charred Bible pages. The walls are sooty and the building smells of scorched plastic. Metro Tabernacle Church was the first of 11 churches set on fire by angry Muslims -- all because of one word. "Allah," Kevin Ang whispers.

It began with a question -- should Christians here, like Muslims, be allowed to call their god "Allah," since they don't have any other word or language at their disposal? The Muslims claim Allah for themselves, both the word and the god, and fear that if Christians are allowed to use the same word for their own god, it could lead pious Muslims astray.

For three years there was a ban in place and the government confiscated Bibles that mentioned "Allah." Then on Dec. 31 last year, Malaysia's highest court reached a decision: The Christian God could also be called Allah.

Imams protested and disgruntled citizens threw Molotov cocktails at churches. Then, on top of everything, Prime Minister Najib Razak stated that he couldn't stop people who might protest against specific developments in the country -- and some took that as an invitation to violent action. First churches burned, then the other side retaliated with pigs' heads placed in front of two mosques. Sixty percent of Malaysians are Muslims and 9 percent Christians, with the rest made up by Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs. They managed to live together well, until now.

It's a battle over a single word, but it's also about much more than that. The conflict has to do with the question of what rights the Christian minority in Malaysia is entitled to. Even more than that, it's a question of politics. The ruling United Malays National Organization is losing supporters to Islamist hardliners -- and wants to win them back with religious policies.

Those policies are receiving a receptive welcome. Some of Malaysia's states interpret Sharia, the Islamic system of law and order, particularly strictly. The once liberal country is on the way to giving up freedom of religion -- and what constitutes order is being defined ever more rigidly. If a Muslim woman drinks beer, she can be punished with six cane strokes. Some regions similarly forbid such things as brightly colored lipstick, thick make-up, or shoes with clattering high heels.

Expelled, Abducted and Murdered

Not only in Malaysia, but in many countries through the Muslim world, religion has gained influence over governmental policy in the last two decades. The militant Islamist group Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, while Islamist militias are fighting the governments of Nigeria and the Philippines. Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen have fallen to a large extent into the hands of Islamists. And where Islamists are not yet in power, secular governing parties are trying to outstrip the more religious groups in a rush to the right.

This can be seen in Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Indonesia to some extent, and also Malaysia. Even though this Islamization often has more to do with politics than with religion, and even though it doesn't necessarily lead to the persecution of Christians, it can still be said that where Islam gains importance, freedoms for members of other faiths shrink.

There are 2.2 billion Christians around the world. The Christian non-governmental organization Open Doors calculates that 100 million of them are being threatened or persecuted. They aren't allowed to build churches, buy Bibles or obtain jobs. That's the more harmless form of discrimination and it affects the majority of these 100 million Christians. The more brutal version sees them blackmailed, robbed, expelled, abducted or even murdered.

Bishop Margot Kässmann, who was head of the Protestant Church in Germany before stepping down on Feb. 24, believes Christians are "the most frequently persecuted religious group globally." Germany's 22 regional churches have proclaimed this coming Sunday to be the first commemoration day for persecuted Christians. Kässmann said she wanted to show solidarity with fellow Christians who "have great difficulty living out their beliefs freely in countries such as Indonesia, India, Iraq or Turkey."

There are counterexamples as well, of course. In Lebanon and Syria, Christians are not discriminated against, and in fact play an important role in politics and society. And the persecution of Christian is by no means the domain of fanatical Muslims alone -- Christians are also imprisoned, abused and murdered in countries such as Laos, Vietnam, China and Eritrea.

'Creeping Genocide' against Christians

Open Doors compiles a global "persecution index." North Korea, where tens of thousands of Christians are serving time in work camps, has topped the list for many years. North Korea is followed, though, by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Maldives and Afghanistan. Of the first 10 countries on the list, eight are Islamic, and almost all have Islam as their state religion.

The systematic persecution of Christians in the 20th century -- by Communists in the Soviet Union and China, but also by Nazis -- claimed far more lives than anything that has happened so far in the 21st century. Now, however, it is not only totalitarian regimes persecuting Christians, but also residents of Islamic states, fanatical fundamentalists, and religious sects -- and often simply supposedly pious citizens.

Gone is the era of tolerance, when Christians enjoyed a large degree of religious freedom under the protection of Muslim sultans as so-called "People of the Book" while at the same time medieval Europe was banishing its Jews and Muslims from the continent or even burning them at the stake. Also gone is the heyday of Arab secularism following World War II, when Christian Arabs advanced through the ranks of politics.

As political Islam grew stronger, devout believers' aggression focused not only on corrupt local regimes, but also more and more on the ostensibly corrupting influence of Western Christians, for which local Christian minorities were held accountable. A new trend began, this time with Christians as the victims.

In Iraq, for example, Sunni terrorist groups prey specifically on people of other religions. The last Iraqi census in 1987 showed 1.4 million Christians living in the country. At the start of the American invasion in 2003, it was 550,000, and at present it is just under 400,000. Experts speak of a "creeping genocide."

'People Are Scared Out of Their Minds'

The situation in the region around the city of Mosul in northern Iraq is especially dramatic. The town of Alqosh lies high in the mountains above Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. Bassam Bashir, 41, can see his old hometown when he looks out his window there. Mosul is only 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, but inaccessible. The city is more dangerous than Baghdad, especially for men like Bassam Bashir, a Chaldean Catholic, teacher and fugitive within his own country.

Since the day in August 2008 when a militia abducted his father from his shop, Bashir has had to fear for his and his family's lives. Police found his father's corpse two days later in the Sinaa neighborhood on the Tigris River, the body perforated with bullet holes. There was no demand for ransom. Bashir's father died for the simple reason that he was Christian.

And no one claims to have seen anything. "Of course they saw something," Bashir says. "But people in Mosul are scared out of their minds."

One week later, militiamen slit the throat of Bashir's brother Tarik like a sacrificial lamb. "I buried my brother myself," Bashir explains. Together with his wife Nafa and their two daughters, he fled to Alqosh the same day. The city is surrounded by vineyards and an armed Christian militia guards the entrance.

Tacit State Approval

Bashir's family members aren't the only ones who came to Alqosh as the series of murders in Mosul continued. Sixteen Christians were killed the next week, and bombs exploded in front of churches. Men in passing cars shouted at Christians that they had a choice -- leave Mosul or convert to Islam. Out of over 1,500 Christian families in the city, only 50 stayed. Bassam Bashir says he won't return until he can mourn for his father and brother in peace. Others who gave up hope entirely fled to neighboring countries like Jordan and even more to Syria.

In many Islamic countries, Christians are persecuted less brutally than in Iraq, but often no less effectively. In many cases, the persecution has the tacit approval of the government. In Algeria, for example, it takes the form of newspapers reporting that a priest tried to convert Muslims or insulted the Prophet Mohammed -- and publishing the cleric's address, in a clear call to vigilante justice. Or a public television station might broadcast programs with titles like "In the Clutches of Ignorance," which describe Christians as Satanists who convert Muslims with the help of drugs. This happened in Uzbekistan, which ranks tenth on Open Doors' "persecution index."

Blasphemy is another frequently used allegation. Insulting the core values of Islam is a punishable offense in many Islamic countries. The allegation is often used against the opposition, whether that means journalists, dissidents or Christians. Imran Masih, for example, a Christian shopkeeper in Faisalabad, Pakistan, was given a life sentence on Jan. 11, according to sections 295 A and B of Pakistan's legal code, which covers the crime of outraging religious feelings by desecrating the Koran. A neighboring shopkeeper had accused him of burning pages from the Koran. Masih says that he only burned old business records.

It's a typical case for Pakistan, where the law against blasphemy seems to invite abuse -- it's an easy way for anyone to get rid of an enemy. Last year, 125 Christians were charged with blasphemy in Pakistan. Dozens of those already sentenced are on death row.

'We Don't Feel Safe Here'

Government-tolerated persecution occurs even in Turkey, the most secular and modern country in the Muslim world, where around 110,000 Christians make up less than a quarter of 1 percent of the population -- but are discriminated against nonetheless. The persecution is not as open or as brutal as what happens in neighboring Iraq, but the consequences are similar. Christians in Turkey, who numbered well over 2 million people in the 19th century, are fighting for their continued existence.

It's happening in the southeast of the country, for example, in Tur Abdin, whose name means "mountain of God's servants." It's a hilly region full of fields, chalk cliffs, and centuries-old monasteries many. It's home to the Syrian Orthodox Assyrians, or Aramaeans as they call themselves, members of one of the oldest Christian groups in the world. According to legend, the Three Wise Men brought the Christian belief system here from Bethlehem. The inhabitants of Tur Abdin still speak Aramaic, the language used by Jesus of Nazareth.

The world is much more familiar with the genocide committed against the Armenians by Ottoman troops in 1915 and 1916, but tens of thousands of Assyrians were also murdered during World War I. Half a million Assyrians are said to have lived in Tur Abdin at the beginning of the 20th century. Today there are barely 3,000. A Turkish district court threatened last year to appropriate the Assyrians' spiritual center, the 1,600-year-old Mor Gabriel monastery, because the monks were believed to have acquired land unlawfully. Three neighboring Muslim villages had complained they felt discriminated against by the monastery, which houses four monks, 14 nuns, and 40 students behind its walls.

"Even if it doesn't want to admit it, Turkey has a problem with people of other faiths," says Ishok Demir, a young Swiss man with Aramaean roots, who lives with his parents near Mor Gabriel. "We don't feel safe here."

More than anything, that has to do with the permanent place Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Catholics and Protestants have in the country's nationalistic conspiracy theories. Those groups have always been seen as traitors, nonbelievers, spies and people who insult the Turkish nation. According to a survey carried out by the US-based Pew Research Center, 46 percent of Turks see Christianity as a violent religion. In a more recent Turkish study, 42 percent of those surveyed wouldn't accept Christians as neighbors.

The repeated murders of Christians come, then, as no surprise. In 2006, for example, a Catholic priest was shot in Trabzon on the Black Sea coast. In 2007, three Christian missionaries were murdered in Malatya, a city in eastern Turkey. The perpetrators were radical nationalists, whose ideology was a mixture of exaggerated patriotism, racism and Islam.

Converts in Grave Danger

In even graver danger than traditional Christians, however, are Muslims who have converted to Christianity. Apostasy, or the renunciation of Islam, is punishable by death according to Islamic law -- and the death penalty still applies in Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Even in Egypt, a secular country, converts draw the government's wrath. The religion minister defended the legality of the death penalty for converts -- although Egypt doesn't even have such a law -- with the argument that renunciation of Islam amounts to high treason. Such sentiments drove Mohammed Hegazy, 27, a convert to the Coptic Orthodox Church, into hiding two years ago. He was the first convert in Egypt to try to have his new religion entered officially onto his state-issued identity card. When he was refused, he went public. Numerous clerics called for his death in response.

Copts make up the largest Christian community in the Arab world and around 8 million Egyptians belong to the Coptic Church. They're barred from high government positions, diplomatic service and the military, as well as from many state benefits. Universities have quotas for Coptic students considerably lower than their actual percentage within the population.

Building new churches isn't allowed, and the old ones are falling into disrepair thanks to a lack both of money and authorization to renovate. When girls are kidnapped and forcibly converted, the police don't intervene. Thousands of pigs were also slaughtered under the pretense of confining swine flu. Naturally all were owned by Christians.

The Christian Virus

Six Copts were massacred on Jan. 6 -- when Coptic celebrate Christmas Eve -- in Nag Hammadi, a small city 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Valley of the Kings. Predictably, the speaker of the People's Assembly, the lower house of the Egyptian parliament, called it an "individual criminal act." When he added that the perpetrators wanted to revenge the rape of a Muslim girl by a Copt, it almost sounded like an excuse. The government seems ready to admit to crime in Egypt, but not to religious tension. Whenever clashes between religious groups occur, the government finds very secular causes behind them, such as arguments over land, revenge for crimes or personal disputes.

Nag Hammadi, with 30,000 residents, is a dusty trading town on the Nile. Even before the murders, it was a place where Christians and Muslims mistrusted one another. The two groups work together and have houses near each other, but they live, marry and die separately. Superstition is widespread and the Muslims, for example, fear they could catch the "Christian virus" by eating together with a Copt. It comes as no surprise that these murders occurred in Nag Hammadi, nor that they were followed by the country's worst religious riots in years. Christian shops and Muslim houses were set on fire, and 28 Christians and 14 Muslims were arrested.

Nag Hammadi is now sealed off, with armed security forces in black uniforms guarding roads in and out of the city. They make sure no residents leave the city and no journalists enter it.

Three presumed perpetrators have since been arrested. All of them have prior criminal records. One admitted to the crime, but then recanted, saying he had been coerced by the intelligence service. The government seems to want the affair to disappear as quickly as possible. The alleged murderers will likely be set free again as soon as the furor has blown over.

More Rights for Christians?

But there are also a few small indications that the situation of embattled Christians in Islamic countries could improve -- depending on the extent that nationalism and the radicalization of political Islam subsides again.

One of the contradictions of the Islamic world is that the best chances for Christians seem to crop up precisely where a major player actually comes from the political Islam camp. In Turkey it is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Islamist and now the country's prime minister, who has promised Turkey's few remaining Christians more rights. He points to the history of the Ottoman Empire, in which Christians and Jews long had to pay a special tax, but in exchange, were granted freedom of religion and lived as respected fellow citizens.

A more relaxed attitude to its minorities would certainly signify progress for Turkey.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-680349,00.html

Líder líbio Khadafi pede ‘Guerra Santa‘ (Jihad) contra a Suíça in BBC

O líder líbio, Muamar Khadafi, convocou nesta quinta-feira uma "Guerra Santa", ou Jihad, contra a Suíça.

Khadafi justificou o pedido afirmando que o país é "infiel" e está “destruindo mesquitas”, em alusão ao resultado de um referendo do ano passado em que os suíços se colocaram a favor de proibir a construção de minaretes.

"Qualquer muçulmano em qualquer parte do mundo que trabalhe com a Suíça é um apóstata (pessoa que abandonou as fé em uma religião), é contra o profeta Maomé, Deus e o Corão", disse.

"As massas de muçulmanos devem ir a aeroportos do mundo islâmico e impedir a aterrissagem de aviões suíços, aos portos e impedir a chegada de navio suíços e inspecionar lojas e mercados para impedir que produtos suíços sejam vendidos."

"Vamos combater a Suíça, o sionismo e a agressão estrangeira", completou.

O líder líbio ressaltou que "existe uma grande diferença entre terrorismo e o direito à jihad, ou resistência armada".

Referendo

No referendo de 29 de novembro, a maioria dos suíços votou a favor de uma lei que proíbe a construção de minaretes.

O governo suíço havia aconselhado a população a votar contra a proposta, argumentando que ela violaria a liberdade religiosa.

O Ministério das Relações Exteriores suíço disse que não comentaria as declarações de Khadafi.

A Líbia rompeu relações com a Suíça em 2008 após a prisão de um filho de Khadafi em um hotel suíço, acusado de maltratar empregados.

Ele foi libertado pouco depois da detenção, e as acusações foram retiradas, mas a Líbia cortou a venda de petróleo para a Suíça, retirou bilhões de dólares depositados em bancos suíços e prendeu dois empresários suíços que trabalhavam em território líbio.

A Líbia afirma que as prisões dos empresários e a do filho de Khadafi não têm ligação.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2010/02/100225_libia_rc.shtml

‘Espanha, o próximo campo de batalha do Euro‘ in Wall Street Journal

Greece set off the crisis rattling the euro zone. Spain could determine whether the 16-nation currency stands or falls.

The euro zone's No. 4 economy, Spain has an unemployment rate of 19%, a deflating housing bubble, big debts and a gaping budget deficit. Its gross domestic product contracted 3.6% in 2009 and is expected to shrink again this year, leaving Spain in its deepest and longest recession in a half-century.

At the center of the crisis are millions of Spaniards like Olga Espejo. The 41-year-old lost her administrative job at a laboratory in Madrid, then found a temporary post replacing someone on sick leave—until that job was abolished. Her husband and her sister have also been laid off—all among the one in nine working Spaniards who have lost jobs in the past two years.

Each gets an unemployment check of at least €1,000 a month, or about $1,350, part of a generous social safety net that Madrid says it won't cut. But Ms. Espejo's benefit runs out in July and her husband's in May.

"What prospects do any of us have now?" Ms. Espejo asks.

That question haunts Spain and the entire euro zone as the Continent faces its biggest economic crisis since the common currency launched in 1999. Worries over Greece's ability to finance its huge debts have spread to other, weaker members of the euro zone, but these same fears are now nipping at Spain's heels. The problem is that, thanks largely to its membership in the euro, Spain lacks tried-and-true means to heal its economy.

Spain can't devalue its currency to make its exports more attractive and its sunny beach resorts cheaper because the euro's value is driven by Germany's bigger, competitive industrial economy. Madrid can't slash interest rates or print money to spur borrowing and spending, because those decisions are now made in Frankfurt by the European Central Bank.

Spain could still try to stimulate growth through tax cuts and spending increases. But it has already mounted enormous stimulus spending that swelled its budget deficit to 11.4% of GDP last year, and it would need to sell more bonds to raise fresh cash. Buyers of Spanish government bonds, spooked by the prospect of a Greek default, have already demanded higher interest rates from Madrid.

"Spain is the real test case for the euro," says Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "If Spain is in deep trouble, it will be difficult to hold the euro together...and my own view is that Spain is in deep trouble."

The government rejects talk of crisis. "The fundamentals of our economy are solid," Elena Salgado, Spain's economy minister, said in an interview. Ms. Salgado said the country's big banks are sound, its economic statistics credible and its companies dynamic enough to maintain their share of export markets. She pointed out that Spain was running budget surpluses until the financial crisis struck, and its government debt has grown from a very low base.

Euro-zone heavyweights Germany and France have pledged to support Greece if necessary. But any bailout for Spain—whose $1.6 trillion economy is nearly double those of troubled euro-zone partners Greece, Portugal and Ireland combined—would be far costlier.

A "shock and awe" infusion aimed at renewing faith in Spain's finances, should it be necessary, would take roughly $270 billion, according to an estimate by BNP Paribas. It estimates similar confidence-restoring moves in Greece, Ireland or Portugal would require $68 billion, $47 billion and $41 billion, respectively.

Some observers, to be sure, believe Spain will ride out the troubles. Emilio Ontiveros, president of AFI, a financial analysis firm in Madrid, says recovery is in sight in the second half of the year. "We've had some luck. France and Germany, our biggest markets, are beginning to grow," he said. This should be enough to stop unemployment rising much beyond 20%, a level Spain has coped with as recently as the late 1990s.

Most economists see three options for Spain.

The first is for the government to do nothing, leaving the economy to wallow through years of high unemployment and debt defaults. The second is for the government to take a more active role, slashing its spending while taking unpopular measures to boost the supply side of the economy, including overhauling a rigid labor market.

On Tuesday, Spain's top central banker strongly urged this path, calling in a speech for swift government action to reduce the budget deficit and reform the labor market.

"If the reforms come late or are insufficient, our future is undoubtedly worrying," Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Angel Fernández Ordoñez said.

Mr. Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute is among the pessimists who doubt the government will take this course. He thinks Spain's chronic inability to restart growth will lead it to contemplate a third option: splitting the euro zone asunder by withdrawing from the common currency. That would permit a devaluation that would, at a stroke, increase Spain's competitiveness and allow the economy to grow again.

A more mainstream view holds that no government, Spain's included, would dare to brave the financial chaos such a move would unleash.

"It's extremely costly to leave the euro," said Jean Pisani-Ferry of Bruegel, a pro-European think tank in Brussels. The moment a government hinted at a possible devaluation, there would be a run on the banks and an effective default on every euro financial contract with that country. "The day you start to admit that you're thinking about it, you're in a financial mess."

The government has announced plans, starting with tax rises and spending cuts this year, to slice the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2013, a program financial analysts have described as credible. It forecasts that public debt will crest at around 74% of GDP in 2012, compared with 113% today in Greece and Italy.

Still, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero has drawn criticism from economists for saying he will deal with the crisis without hurting the country's social programs.

"That's not a plan, but an announcement," said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós, president of Freemarket International Consulting in Madrid. As a result, he said, Spaniards don't yet understand that their comfortable way of life, cushioned by the state, is about to change. Spaniards still "think like Cubans and live like Yankees," he said.

Spain's troubles are a mirror of the boom years after it and 10 other countries entered the monetary union in 1999. The euro was meant to cement a single market across Europe, reducing cross-border costs for trade, investment and travel.

In close to a decade of good times, Spaniards overtook the Italians and approached the French in terms of what their salaries could buy. Spanish energy, infrastructure, utility and banking companies spread world-wide.

But seeds of trouble were being planted. Spain's wages grew fast, making its economy less and less competitive. Low euro interest rates, set with low-inflation Germany in mind, began generating a housing bubble.

Spanish house prices more than doubled in real terms in the decade ending in 2008. At the peak, the country of 45 million people was building more houses than Germany, France and Italy—combined population 200 million—put together.

Spain's housing market has been slow to adjust, likely delaying recovery. The Bank of Spain estimates prices have fallen 15% from their highs, about half the U.S. peak-to-trough decline. "In the U.S. market, the day of reckoning came quickly. In Spain, it's been postponed," said Mr. Ontiveros of AFI.

The housing bust shows how Spain differs from Greece in the current crisis. Economists say Greece's troubles stem from its profligate government. Madrid ran budget surpluses for years— but Spain's private sector went on a debt-fueled spending binge.

Spanish private and public debt rose an average of 14.5% a year from 2000 to 2008, according to McKinsey Global Institute. Total debt peaked at the end of 2008 at $4.9 trillion, or 342% of GDP—a higher percentage than the level in the U.S. and most major economies except Britain and Japan. Six-sevenths of that is owed by the private sector.

McKinsey expects households, indebted companies and real-estate developers to shed debt, a widespread "deleveraging" that is likely to trigger defaults and harm the banking system. Most analysts say Spain's banking problems are concentrated in the country's 45 cajas, regional savings banks usually run by local politicians that often went deep into real-estate lending.

Nonperforming loans in Spain's banks and regional savings institutions are now estimated at 5% of the total, up from 3.2% a year ago. Santiago López Díaz, a bank analyst at Credit Suisse in London, estimates this may underestimate the total by 30% to 40%.

Roughly half of Spain's estimated 1.3 million unsold houses are now on the books of cajas and banks, which have been slow to sell them because they don't want to realize losses. Financial institutions "have become the biggest realtors in Spain," said Fernando Encinar, co-founder of Idealista.com, Spain's largest property Web site.

The government has tried to force cajas to merge into stronger institutions, and has set up a fund to encourage them to restructure and bolster capital. Analysts expect cajas to post big losses this year that will likely force the government to raise more money to boost the fund.

Massive joblessness could further slow Spain's climb out of debt. Even in good times, unemployment never got below about 8%. Now the rate is nudging 20% overall and close to 45% among young people—statistics that reveal to economists a deeply flawed employment market.

Wages are set through a complicated system of bargaining with trade unions that imposes wage increases on firms even if their business can't afford it. Because wages are inflexible, Spanish companies can cut labor costs only by firing workers. Yet some workers, hired on so-called indefinite contracts, are deeply entrenched, not least because they are entitled to 45 days' severance pay per year of service.

So, when the economy turns down, those on temporary contracts bear the brunt. When prospects brighten, companies think long and hard before inking more indefinite contracts.

That bodes poorly for Eduardo García, 55, who was huddling in line outside a job center recently in Madrid's Santa Eugenia neighborhood. Unemployed for the first time, Mr. García worked for 25 years at a book-and-magazine distributor that closed in November. His wife and 20-year-old daughter are also unemployed. Mr. Garcia said he has had no work offers. "At my age, it will be difficult."

Madrid has vowed to reform the labor market. One proposal would reduce the severance-pay entitlement for new workers by 12 days, to 33 days.

Fernando Eguidazu, director-general of the Circulo de Empresarios, a business association, said Madrid has avoided locking horns with labor. Demonstrations against a proposal to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 took place in several Spanish cities Tuesday and Wednesday.

Unions could resist new labor proposals, he said, but it's a needed step: "If they [the government] try to keep being nice to everybody, we are wasting time and the people and the markets are losing confidence."

That sentiment is already apparent in the market for insurance against a Spanish default. The price to insure €10 million in Spanish bonds for five years— just €2,350 three years ago— rose this month to €171,750 before falling to €125,000, said data firm Markit Group Ltd.

That translates into increased borrowing costs for Spain, which now pays about 0.8 percentage points more than Germany to borrow money for 10 years.

For years to come, Spain will largely be at the mercy of wary bond investors to finance its governments, banks and companies. The national government says it will have to raise €76.8 billion this year and pay back an additional €35 billion of maturing bonds.

Amid it all, Mr. Bernaldo de Quirós predicts, investors' worries will ebb and flow over what he calls "a real risk of default" as they await decisive government action. "They more time you lose," he said of the government, "the more devastating the adjustment has to be."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704454304575081481536661858.html

Ilhas Malvinas: aliança sul-americana contra a ‘ameaça colonial‘ britânica à região in Times

It has been a good few days for Latin American unity and rhetoric against the evils of Western imperialism, and yesterday was no exception.

At centre stage was the row over oil rights in the South Atlantic as a British oil rig began drilling 60 miles north of the Falkland Islands. As 32 regional leaders gathered in Mexico yesterday, however, the talk turned to a diplomatic onslaught against the “old colonialism” and a new formal alliance, words that reopened historic wounds left over from the days of conquest, empire and slavery.

“The question of Las Malvinas is not only a question about a sovereignty dispute,” President Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, using the Spanish name for the Falklands, said. “It has to do with the history of the region and the world over the last two or three centuries.”

Mrs Kirchner got the approval she wanted, with the rest of the Rio Group signing a declaration affirming their backing “for the legitimate rights of the republic of Argentina in the sovereignty dispute with Great Britain”. She did more than rally support for its cause over drilling for oil in the South Atlantic — she framed the dispute in terms of a colonial threat to the entire region.

Argentina’s claim to oil rights was an “exercise in self-defence” of the continent, she said. After the meeting, the President said that winning such strong backing in the territorial dispute was an important development but warned that “even more important will be to achieve a change of attitude in the big powers, in this case those which have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council”.

Mrs Kirchner has made the recovery of the islands a key theme of her presidency. At home the arrival of the Ocean Guardian oil rig has revived long-simmering resentment at what is perceived as a foreign occupation.

Furthermore, current estimates put Falklands reserves at anywhere between 8 billion and 60 billion barrels, meaning a potential bonanza for whoever claims ownership of the oil.

The regional leaders insisted on negotiations between Britain and Argentina, flagging up UN resolutions that require both parties to abstain from unilateral actions with respect to the islands while they remain under contention.

“We have approved a declaration in which leaders of countries and governments present here reaffirm their support for Argentina’s legitimate rights in its sovereignty dispute with the United Kingdom,” President Calderón of Mexico said.

Last week Mrs Kirchner moved to obstruct supplies to the oil operations, imposing shipping controls requiring all maritime traffic moving through Argentine-claimed waters to the Falklands to seek its authorisation. She sought to dispel speculation yesterday over the potential for conflict, insisting that Argentina would not blockade the islands but instead pursue legal options to halt the exploration.

However, she kept up the war of words. In the 21st century “the great challenge is going to be the management of natural resources, renewable and non-renewable — in this case oil — and fundamentally also the behaviour of the big powers of the world, who systematically break UN resolutions but impose on other countries compliance with those same resolutions referring to other issues when it affects their interests”.

This double standard was one of “principal sources of tension” in international relations, she added.

It was a theme leapt upon by the staunchly anti-imperialist President Chávez of Venezuela, who decried Britain’s presence in the Falklands as “the most gross expression of the old colonial era, allied to neocolonialism”.

The day before, he had addressed his remarks to the Queen, saying: “Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then.” British control of the islands was “anti-historic and irrational”, he continued, adding: “Why do the English speak of democracy but still have a queen?”

He did not waste the opportunity to raise his own colonial complaint — Dutch control of the Caribbean territories of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire “in the noses of Venezuela”, their closest neighbour.

Yesterday, at a meeting in Cancún between the Rio Group and the Caribbean Community (Caricom), leaders discussed plans for a pan-American alliance that would exclude Canada and the United States — a move backed by the continent’s vocal left-wing governments.

This could serve as an alternative to the Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes the North American neighbours and has been the main forum for regional affairs in the past 50 years.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, rejected accusations that Britain was acting illegally. “British sovereignty in respect of the Falklands is absolutely clear in international law ... There is no question about it,” he said. “The exploration that is going on off the Falklands ... is fully within international law, fully based on precedent.” The islanders had the right to a decent life and to build their own economic future, he added.

Chris Bryant, the junior foreign minister, said that the Rio Group’s position was nothing new and that it was not unexpected that Latin American countries would throw their weight behind one of their own.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7038490.ece

‘Olhar para além das modas na geopolítica‘ in Financial Times

Beware fashions in geopolitics. They change as often as the hemlines on Paris catwalks.

The fast-shifting distribution of power in the world is feeding a burgeoning community of geopolitical seers. Change sharpens our appetite for certainty about the future. By and large, though, the myriad maps of a new global order are turning out to be as ephemeral as the couturiers’ spring collections.

Not so long ago, the competing ambitions of autocracies and democracies were set to shape the future. China and Russia would square up against the west. Washington rang with calls from pundits and policymakers for a global league of liberal democracies. As I recall, France’s Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder were mustard keen to side with the autocrats.

The predicted collision was always fanciful, not least because Beijing and Moscow are more plausible strategic rivals than allies. Nor is India, the world’s largest democracy, ever likely to join a US-dominated club of political pluralists.

Never mind. The great thing about fashion is that it moves on. Soon enough, we were told that democracy and autocracy would make their peace; the US and China would jointly rule the global roost. Europe, Russia and the rest would trail quaking in the wake of this all-powerful G2.

This theory had a fair run. It held sway until quite recently. Then came Barack Obama’s so-so visit to Beijing last autumn. There followed a series of Sino-American spats about everything from climate change and the renminbi to Google, the Dalai Lama and arms sales to Taiwan.

Fortunately this provided a seamless segue to the latest grand theory of the world, the future and the universe. Forget about the G2; the geopolitical landscape will be marked out in coming decades by competition rather than co-operation. For an aggressive Germany in the second half of the 19th century substitute an assertive China in the first half of the 21st. The international order will again be held in thrall to a struggle between a mature and a rising power.

The above, of course, is an abbreviated list. I might have mentioned also the fleeting but sure belief around the turn of the millennium that the US would be a permanent global hegemon. This was followed, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2001, by the dismal certainty of an epoch-defining clash between the west and Islam.

I often wonder what happened to those predictions that the 21st century would belong to the soft power of a postmodern Europe? It seems only yesterday that the euro was being hailed as the currency to oust a feeble dollar. Now, or so it seems, the eurozone is breaking apart, courtesy of some dodgy book-keeping in Greece.

You will have seen by now what I am getting at. The greater the conviction of the soothsayers, the more likely they are to be wrong. If we should have learnt anything from the tumultuous changes of the post-cold war era, it is how hard it is to predict the way things will turn out. Sad to say, the economists who failed so dismally to spot any flaws in the financial system are not alone in their myopia.

Understanding present trends is not the same as knowing where they will lead. We know the world is changing faster than at any time in modern history – hence the pervasive sense of insecurity in western societies that have so long taken for granted their privileged status in the hierarchy of nations.

The biggest shifts – the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest, and a shift in the centre of geopolitical gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific – speak for themselves. So do the mega-trends: climate change, population growth, intensifying competition for resources and the ubiquity of modern communications technologies among them.

Much harder to fathom is how these changes will fit together: will they promote collisions or co-operation? Most likely both. But in what proportions? An optimist might see the planet’s rising temperature as a catalyst for the refurbishment of an outdated system of global governance. A pessimist – even a realist – might look instead to the prospect of new conflicts driven by resource scarcity.

The best in the crystal-ball gazing business understand all this. They eschew primary colours and prefer to paint the future in subtler hues. They delineate the direction of travel – from the changing balance of power between states to the worldwide trends mentioned above – but draw only tentative conclusions.

The US National Intelligence Council has done this well for many years. Its latest survey, Global Trends 2025, was published more than a year ago. It has weathered well the fads and fashions since.

A study published last month by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (spooks and the military pay close attention to all this stuff) peers further into the future. Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040 declares that it wants to inform “without being constrained by the latest good idea, fashionable trend or received wisdom”.

True to its word, its analysis usefully measures the implications of the way the world is going against the potential for dislocations. Thus it is quite possible China will boast the world’s largest economy by 2030 or so; it is also plausible, as its leaders never stop telling themselves, that China’s progress will hit the buffers of political and social unrest. It is often forgotten that China is in a race to get rich before it gets old.

The US does not look quite the waning power of fashionable fancy. It has geography and demography on its side – a friendly neighbourhood and a growing population that is ageing less fast than that of rivals. It has a big technological edge, a culture of enterprise and innovation, first-rate universities and a stable, if infuriating, political system.

It is not at all hard to paint a picture of the future that has the US and China fighting it out for the title of superpower-in-chief. It is equally true that the biggest losers would be, yes, the US and China. Their interdependence is inescapable. Both need the preservation of a relatively stable international order.

Human nature being what it is, competition may indeed triumph over self-interested co-operation. If so, the really big struggles in coming decades will be between order and disorder and between governance and anarchy. On the other hand, Beijing and Washington might just end up on the same side after all.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/efaccb08-1cc9-11df-8d8e-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

A UE e a Grécia: ‘É para o teu bem‘ cartoon in Público

‘Wall Street ajudou a camuflar dívida da Grécia‘ in New York Times

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.

The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.

It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.

Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street’s role in the world’s latest financial drama.

As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.

In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.

Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country’s liabilities.

Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.

The crisis in Greece poses the most significant challenge yet to Europe’s common currency, the euro, and the Continent’s goal of economic unity. The country is, in the argot of banking, too big to be allowed to fail. Greece owes the world $300 billion, and major banks are on the hook for much of that debt. A default would reverberate around the globe.

A spokeswoman for the Greek finance ministry said the government had met with many banks in recent months and had not committed to any bank’s offers. All debt financings “are conducted in an effort of transparency,” she said. Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.

While Wall Street’s handiwork in Europe has received little attention on this side of the Atlantic, it has been sharply criticized in Greece and in magazines like Der Spiegel in Germany.

“Politicians want to pass the ball forward, and if a banker can show them a way to pass a problem to the future, they will fall for it,” said Gikas A. Hardouvelis, an economist and former government official who helped write a recent report on Greece’s accounting policies.

Wall Street did not create Europe’s debt problem. But bankers enabled Greece and others to borrow beyond their means, in deals that were perfectly legal. Few rules govern how nations can borrow the money they need for expenses like the military and health care. The market for sovereign debt — the Wall Street term for loans to governments — is as unfettered as it is vast.

“If a government wants to cheat, it can cheat,” said Garry Schinasi, a veteran of the International Monetary Fund’s capital markets surveillance unit, which monitors vulnerability in global capital markets.

Banks eagerly exploited what was, for them, a highly lucrative symbiosis with free-spending governments. While Greece did not take advantage of Goldman’s proposal in November 2009, it had paid the bank about $300 million in fees for arranging the 2001 transaction, according to several bankers familiar with the deal.

Such derivatives, which are not openly documented or disclosed, add to the uncertainty over how deep the troubles go in Greece and which other governments might have used similar off-balance sheet accounting.

The tide of fear is now washing over other economically troubled countries on the periphery of Europe, making it more expensive for Italy, Spain and Portugal to borrow.

For all the benefits of uniting Europe with one currency, the birth of the euro came with an original sin: countries like Italy and Greece entered the monetary union with bigger deficits than the ones permitted under the treaty that created the currency. Rather than raise taxes or reduce spending, however, these governments artificially reduced their deficits with derivatives.

Derivatives do not have to be sinister. The 2001 transaction involved a type of derivative known as a swap. One such instrument, called an interest-rate swap, can help companies and countries cope with swings in their borrowing costs by exchanging fixed-rate payments for floating-rate ones, or vice versa. Another kind, a currency swap, can minimize the impact of volatile foreign exchange rates.

But with the help of JPMorgan, Italy was able to do more than that. Despite persistently high deficits, a 1996 derivative helped bring Italy’s budget into line by swapping currency with JPMorgan at a favorable exchange rate, effectively putting more money in the government’s hands. In return, Italy committed to future payments that were not booked as liabilities.

“Derivatives are a very useful instrument,” said Gustavo Piga, an economics professor who wrote a report for the Council on Foreign Relations on the Italian transaction. “They just become bad if they’re used to window-dress accounts.”

In Greece, the financial wizardry went even further. In what amounted to a garage sale on a national scale, Greek officials essentially mortgaged the country’s airports and highways to raise much-needed money.

Aeolos, a legal entity created in 2001, helped Greece reduce the debt on its balance sheet that year. As part of the deal, Greece got cash upfront in return for pledging future landing fees at the country’s airports. A similar deal in 2000 called Ariadne devoured the revenue that the government collected from its national lottery. Greece, however, classified those transactions as sales, not loans, despite doubts by many critics.

These kinds of deals have been controversial within government circles for years. As far back as 2000, European finance ministers fiercely debated whether derivative deals used for creative accounting should be disclosed.

The answer was no. But in 2002, accounting disclosure was required for many entities like Aeolos and Ariadne that did not appear on nations’ balance sheets, prompting governments to restate such deals as loans rather than sales.

Still, as recently as 2008, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, reported that “in a number of instances, the observed securitization operations seem to have been purportedly designed to achieve a given accounting result, irrespective of the economic merit of the operation.”

While such accounting gimmicks may be beneficial in the short run, over time they can prove disastrous.

George Alogoskoufis, who became Greece’s finance minister in a political party shift after the Goldman deal, criticized the transaction in the Parliament in 2005. The deal, Mr. Alogoskoufis argued, would saddle the government with big payments to Goldman until 2019.

Mr. Alogoskoufis, who stepped down a year ago, said in an e-mail message last week that Goldman later agreed to reconfigure the deal “to restore its good will with the republic.” He said the new design was better for Greece than the old one.

In 2005, Goldman sold the interest rate swap to the National Bank of Greece, the country’s largest bank, according to two people briefed on the transaction.

In 2008, Goldman helped the bank put the swap into a legal entity called Titlos. But the bank retained the bonds that Titlos issued, according to Dealogic, a financial research firm, for use as collateral to borrow even more from the European Central Bank.

Edward Manchester, a senior vice president at the Moody’s credit rating agency, said the deal would ultimately be a money-loser for Greece because of its long-term payment obligations.

Referring to the Titlos swap with the government of Greece, he said: “This swap is always going to be unprofitable for the Greek government.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html

Noruega: Publicação de cartoon de Maomé pelo jornal ‘Dagbladet‘ leva a protestos e ameaças in The Foreigner

Tensions are mounting in advance of today’s planned demonstration by Muslims against Dagbladet and the Prophet Mohammed cartoon. Though several media editors have defended the paper’s right to free expression, many think it acted unwisely.

Background

The trouble started after Arfan Qadir Bhatti, a suspected terrorist, approached Dagbladet, after discovering a link to the offending cartoon on the PST’s (Police Security Service) Facebook group. PST removed comments by the most aggressive debaters, including Bhatti’s.

When the paper broke the story on 03 February, Bhatti – an active participant in the debate in the group – claims he was censored, whilst profane comments directed against several groups were allowed to stay.

Dagbladet chose to print the drawing on its front page to illustrate its grossness. Lars Helle, the paper’s acting Editor in Chief, refused to apologise, despite the upset it caused.

Yesterday, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, the Centre Party’s (Sp) Parliamentary leader, told NTB he believes Dagbladet has allowed itself to be used by individuals who just want to stir up trouble. Helle denies this.

Unwise

Eight newspaper editors NRK asked criticised Dagbladet’s decision to reproduce the cartoon.

“When we see how some Muslims react to this type of drawing, one should at least think twice before plastering this all over the front page,” says Tom Hetland, Editor in Chief of Stavanger Aftenblad.

Aftenbladet has previously published Kurt Westergaard’s Prophet Mohammed caricatures.

Arne Strand, Dagsavisen’s acting Editor in Chief, defends Dagbladet, however.

“An editor can’t think about whether it’s wise or not; he/she should always consider what’s right, journalistically. In this case, it was.”

Violence

Though no details have been given about today’s protest, police and demonstrators are holding their cards close to their chest. Muslim organisations and the police are concerned things could turn ugly.

“I’m worried about which direction it could take. Even though people say it will be peaceful, I’m anxious about the risk it will go wrong,” Shaoaib Sultan, secretary general of Islamisk Råd (IRN) told Aftenposten.

Calls to attend have also been published on Bhatti’s Facebook group. This has made Johan Fredriksen, chief of staff for the Oslo police, anxious. According to VG, Bhatti hasn’t taken responsibility for the arrangement, but has appointed himself as administrator for the arrangement.

Calls for peace

But Bhatti says he only wants a peaceful march.

“I’m not behind the demonstration. As a Muslim, I’m also extremely upset by the caricatures; they mock Islam and Muslims. I’m duty-bound to defend our dear Prophet Mohammed’s honour. But Muslims will only benefit by a peaceful demonstration, and we’re going to prove it,” he tells VG.

IRN, an umbrella organisation for the Islamic religious community and organisations in Norway, has recommended Muslims to stay away from today’s demonstration, for fears that it may become violent.

“It is our opinion that the current demonstrations can be easily exploited by unruly forces for their own purposes, and thus will not be beneficial for either Muslims or society at large,” it writes in a press release.

The organisation encourages Norway’s Muslims to show their support for the Prophet Mohammed by being good ambassadors for Islam, and protesting using other, peaceful means.

"Up to Allah"

Meanwhile, Mohyeldeen Mohammed, spokesman for a group of young Muslims called “The Volunteers”, says peace is up to Allah.

“The crusade is about the war on Islam, Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan, and the mockery of our prophet. It’s also a demonstration against Dagbladet, all those who have printed and supported printing the caricatures.

“It’s also a protest against the authorities who allow it to happen. I can try my best, but it’s up to Allah to decide if it will be peaceful,” he tells NRK.

Dagbladet’s Internet site was brought down by Turkish hackers in a targeted Denial of Service (DDOS) attack on Wednesday evening, and says it will be asking the police to prosecute those responsible.

"We carried out the attack because Dagbladet didn't respect our values, history, or the Prophet Mohammed," they told the Turkish newspaper Beyazgazete News.

Niall Ferguson: ‘uma crise grega está a chegar à América‘ in Financial Times

It began in Athens. It is spreading to Lisbon and Madrid. But it would be a grave mistake to assume that the sovereign debt crisis that is unfolding will remain confined to the weaker eurozone economies. For this is more than just a Mediterranean problem with a farmyard acronym. It is a fiscal crisis of the western world. Its ramifications are far more profound than most investors currently appreciate.

There is of course a distinctive feature to the eurozone crisis. Because of the way the European Monetary Union was designed, there is in fact no mechanism for a bail-out of the Greek government by the European Union, other member states or the European Central Bank (articles 123 and 125 of the Lisbon treaty). True, Article 122 may be invoked by the European Council to assist a member state that is “seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control”, but at this point nobody wants to pretend that Greece’s yawning deficit was an act of God. Nor is there a way for Greece to devalue its currency, as it would have done in the pre-EMU days of the drachma. There is not even a mechanism for Greece to leave the eurozone.

That leaves just three possibilities: one of the most excruciating fiscal squeezes in modern European history – reducing the deficit from 13 per cent to 3 per cent of gross domestic product within just three years; outright default on all or part of the Greek government’s debt; or (most likely, as signalled by German officials on Wednesday) some kind of bail-out led by Berlin. Because none of these options is very appealing, and because any decision about Greece will have implications for Portugal, Spain and possibly others, it may take much horse-trading before one can be reached.

Yet the idiosyncrasies of the eurozone should not distract us from the general nature of the fiscal crisis that is now afflicting most western economies. Call it the fractal geometry of debt: the problem is essentially the same from Iceland to Ireland to Britain to the US. It just comes in widely differing sizes.

What we in the western world are about to learn is that there is no such thing as a Keynesian free lunch. Deficits did not “save” us half so much as monetary policy – zero interest rates plus quantitative easing – did. First, the impact of government spending (the hallowed “multiplier”) has been much less than the proponents of stimulus hoped. Second, there is a good deal of “leakage” from open economies in a globalised world. Last, crucially, explosions of public debt incur bills that fall due much sooner than we expect

For the world’s biggest economy, the US, the day of reckoning still seems reassuringly remote. The worse things get in the eurozone, the more the US dollar rallies as nervous investors park their cash in the “safe haven” of American government debt. This effect may persist for some months, just as the dollar and Treasuries rallied in the depths of the banking panic in late 2008.

Yet even a casual look at the fiscal position of the federal government (not to mention the states) makes a nonsense of the phrase “safe haven”. US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941.

Even according to the White House’s new budget projections, the gross federal debt in public hands will exceed 100 per cent of GDP in just two years’ time. This year, like last year, the federal deficit will be around 10 per cent of GDP. The long-run projections of the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the US will never again run a balanced budget. That’s right, never.

The International Monetary Fund recently published estimates of the fiscal adjustments developed economies would need to make to restore fiscal stability over the decade ahead. Worst were Japan and the UK (a fiscal tightening of 13 per cent of GDP). Then came Ireland, Spain and Greece (9 per cent). And in sixth place? Step forward America, which would need to tighten fiscal policy by 8.8 per cent of GDP to satisfy the IMF.

Explosions of public debt hurt economies in the following way, as numerous empirical studies have shown. By raising fears of default and/or currency depreciation ahead of actual inflation, they push up real interest rates. Higher real rates, in turn, act as drag on growth, especially when the private sector is also heavily indebted – as is the case in most western economies, not least the US.

Although the US household savings rate has risen since the Great Recession began, it has not risen enough to absorb a trillion dollars of net Treasury issuance a year. Only two things have thus far stood between the US and higher bond yields: purchases of Treasuries (and mortgage-backed securities, which many sellers essentially swapped for Treasuries) by the Federal Reserve and reserve accumulation by the Chinese monetary authorities.

But now the Fed is phasing out such purchases and is expected to wind up quantitative easing. Meanwhile, the Chinese have sharply reduced their purchases of Treasuries from around 47 per cent of new issuance in 2006 to 20 per cent in 2008 to an estimated 5 per cent last year. Small wonder Morgan Stanley assumes that 10-year yields will rise from around 3.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent this year. On a gross federal debt fast approaching $1,500bn, that implies up to $300bn of extra interest payments – and you get up there pretty quickly with the average maturity of the debt now below 50 months.

The Obama administration’s new budget blithely assumes real GDP growth of 3.6 per cent over the next five years, with inflation averaging 1.4 per cent. But with rising real rates, growth might well be lower. Under those circumstances, interest payments could soar as a share of federal revenue – from a tenth to a fifth to a quarter.

Last week Moody’s Investors Service warned that the triple A credit rating of the US should not be taken for granted. That warning recalls Larry Summers’ killer question (posed before he returned to government): “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”

On reflection, it is appropriate that the fiscal crisis of the west has begun in Greece, the birthplace of western civilization. Soon it will cross the channel to Britain. But the key question is when that crisis will reach the last bastion of western power, on the other side of the Atlantic.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f90bca10-1679-11df-bf44-00144feab49a.html

‘A Ucrânia está num limbo pós-eleitoral‘ in EU Observer

Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is continuing to keep her silence two days after her apparent defeat in presidential elections, as the clock slowly ticks to another potential gas crisis in Europe.

Ms Tymoshenko on Tuesday (9 February) again declined to make any public statement on the vote, which saw her lose to rival candidate Viktor Yanukovych by a narrow margin, according to the Central Election Commission.

The ODIHR (an international monitoring mission), the EU, the US and Russia have all said the election was free and fair.

Rumblings from Ms Tymoshenko's circle indicate that Ukraine's iron lady plans to accuse Mr Yanukovych of fraud in the courts: "Yesterday evening we took the decision to challenge the legality of the voting process," Elena Shustik, the deputy head of Ms Tymoshenko's party, the BYuT, said on Tuesday.

And her public relations machine continues to work as if the election was still in full swing.

"If Yanukovych becomes president, you will have the photograph of a convicted criminal in most school classrooms and police stations across the country," Neil Pattle, from Ms Tymoshenko's UK-based PR firm, Ridge Consult, told EUobserver.

Other BYuT insiders, such as MP Nikola Tomenko, are saying she should step down and go into opposition, however. Rumours are even doing the rounds that the outgoing president, Viktor Yushchenko, will be reincarnated as the new prime minister in a deal with Mr Yanukovych.

Meanwhile, a wintry Kiev is going about its business as normal on Wednesday, with no protesters visible or expected at Independence Square, the scene of Mr Yushchenko's peaceful revolution in 2004.

Oleksandr Sushko, the director of the Institute of Euro-Atlantic Co-operation in the Ukrainian capital, said that the current political 'crisis' is no worse than the several others seen in the country over the past five years.

But it does come at a dangerous time for its economy and its capacity to keep Russian gas flowing to EU states through transit pipelines.

"It's not a total political crisis. The state institutions are functioning. But we do have a budget crisis: We have a huge deficit, which is comparable to the situation in Greece," Mr Sushko told this website.

Bohdan Sokolovsky, President Yushchenko's top aide on energy, spelled out the potential consequences for EU gas supplies if Ukraine cannot balance its books: "The situation at Naftogaz [Ukraine's gas distribution company] is very negative. If it defaults, it means Gazprom [Russian gas supply firm] could not pump gas to Europe," he said.

"Naftogaz can pay Gazprom in March but in April it does not have the money. And it cannot get credit from international institutions or from Ukrainian banks."

http://euobserver.com/9/29444

Cartoon ‘A crise e a solidariedade na zona euro‘

‘A Rússia aprovou nova doutrina nuclear que permite ataques preventivos‘ in ABC

El presidente ruso, Dimitri Medvedev, ha aprobado la nueva doctrina militar de Rusia, que permite realizar ataques nucleares preventivos contra agresores potenciales, anunció este viernes la secretaria de prensa del Kremlin, Natalia Timakova.

"El presidente ha informado este viernes a los miembros del Consejo de Seguridad de Rusia de que ha aprobado dos documentos: la doctrina militar y los fundamentos de la política estatal sobre disuasión nuclear hasta 2020", precisó Timakova, citada por la agencia de noticias RIA Novosti.

Según fuentes oficiales rusas, las amenazas y los desafíos reales que afronta el país han motivado los cambios en la doctrina militar.

La tríada nuclear de Rusia está compuesta por sistemas de misiles balísticos, submarinos nucleares equipados con misiles balísticos y bombarderos estratégicos con bombas atómicas y misiles de crucero capaces de llevar cabezas nucleares. En virtud de la nueva doctrina, Rusia seguirá desarrollando y modernizando esta tríada, aumentando su capacidad para superar los sistemas antimisiles de un posible enemigo.

La nueva doctrina también tiene el objetivo de transformar el Ejército en una fuerza más eficaz y con más movilidad. Así, sus estructuras serán "optimizadas" mediante el uso de unidades de armas combinadas que sirven para tareas distintas.

El anterior documento, que se aprobó en el año 2000, esbozaba el papel de las Fuerzas Armadas para garantizar la defensa del país y, en caso necesario, prepararse para la guerra y llevarla a cabo, aunque subrayaba que la doctrina militar era estrictamente defensiva.

El gasto militar de Rusia ha estado creciendo de forma constante y el país pretende incrementar el actual presupuesto de defensa, que asciende a más de 29. 360 millones de euros, en un 50 por ciento durante los próximos tres años.

http://www.abc.es/20100205/internacional-europa/medvedev-aprueba-doctrina-militar-201002051937.html

‘EUA culpam Tratado de Lisboa pelo fiasco da cimeira europeia‘ sob a presidência espanhola in EU Observer

The US State Department has said that President Barack Obama's decision not to come to an EU summit in Madrid in May is partly due to confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty.

State department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told press in Washington on Tuesday (2 February) that the treaty has made it unclear who the US leader should meet and when.

"Up until recently, they [summits] would occur on six-month intervals, as I recall, with one meeting in Europe and one meeting here. And that was part of – the foundation of that was the rotating presidency within the EU. Now you have a new structure regarding not only the rotating EU presidency, you've got an EU Council president, you've got a European Commission president," he said.

"We are working through this just as Europeans themselves are working through this: When you have a future EU-US summit meeting, who will host it and where will it be held?" he added. "All of this is kind of being reassessed in light of architectural changes in Europe."

The Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December. It created the post of a new EU Council president and EU foreign relations chief in order to give the union a stronger voice abroad.

It kept the institution of the six-month rotating EU presidency as well, with the member state holding the chairmanship to do the bulk of behind-the-scenes policy work in Brussels.

The Spanish EU presidency is being closely watched to see how the EU manages the transition to the new power structure. The EU Council president has so far taken charge of summits in the EU capital. But Madrid was to share the limelight with a few top-level events at home.

The state department's Mr Crowley said the US and Spain have been in touch "directly" to discuss Mr Obama's decision after Madrid learned about it through the media on Monday.

"Obviously, there's been some disappointment expressed by the government of Spain, and we understand that and we'll be working with them on that," he said.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero and Mr Obama are both expected to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday. But no bilateral meeting has been announced so far.

The informal event sees some 3,500 celebrities, businessmen, politicians and religious leaders get together in the US capital each year. It is organised by the Fellowship Foundation, a Christian fundamentalist pressure group.

Mr Zapatero, a centre-left secularist, has taken flak for his trip in Spanish media, with the El Pais daily calling his decision to attend the prayer event "shocking."

http://euobserver.com/9/29398