DDMA Headline Animator

Sunday, June 17, 2012

40,000 protest austerity cuts in Sydney

Thu Sep 8, 2011

Over 40,000 New South Wales (NSW) public sector workers have staged rallies in Australia's largest city of Sydney against what they say is an attack on their jobs and wages, Press TV reports.

Carrying flags and holding placards, more than 40,000 Australian teachers, nurses, police and firefighters and bus and ferry drivers took to the streets on Thursday to challenge NSW government's plans to cut 5000 public sector jobs and impose a 2.5-percent wage cap for public sector workers.

The government says dozens of fire stations and hundreds of schools have closed because of the strike as teachers were the biggest group in the crowd.

Unions NSW Secretary, Mark Lennon said the rally highlights the deep concerns about the Government's unwarranted and unjustified cutbacks.

"Yesterday's budget demonstrated just how little respect the NSW Government has for public sector workers and the services they deliver," Lennon said.

However, Barry O'Farrell, premier of the state, ignored the calls, describing the demonstration as "pointless".

"It's just chaos for the sake of chaos," he told reporters.

Unions said similar smaller-scale rallies also took place across the state.

Australians in 2011 are under more pressure than ever before, working longer hours than they are paid for and increasingly having to take their work home, a new national survey of 42,000 workers has found.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198045.html.

Bahraini youth defies protest ban

Thu Sep 8, 2011

A young anti-government protester has defied tight security in the Bahraini capital of Manama in a symbolic move against the regime's persisting brutal crackdown on popular protests in the kingdom, Press TV reports.

The young boy ran to the iconic Pearl Square carrying Bahraini flags and continued to protest even when he was arrested.

The Saudi-backed Bahraini forces finally detained the young man and took him away.

Protests against the despotic rule of Al Khalifa regime in the Persian Gulf kingdom have recently flared up in different parts of the tiny state despite the continuing crackdown on any dissent by the regime's forces.

The Bahraini king has recently admitted that security forces have indeed abused anti-regime protesters, saying that compensation would be paid to abuse victims as well as the families of those killed during demonstrations.

Bahrainis, however, have rejected the monarch's apparent concession, insisting that he was personally responsible for ordering the brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.

Massive protests broke out in Bahrain in February, with people taking to the streets and calling for a constitutional monarchy -- a demand that later turned into calls for the ouster of the monarchy.

Scores of protesters have been killed -- many under torture -- and numerous others have been detained and transferred to unknown locations during the regime's crackdown.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198014.html.

'Prostitution rife in US-occupied Iraq'

Thu Sep 8, 2011

Reports indicate a rise in sexual abuse of Iraqi women following the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, saying female trafficking has become a growing business.

In her article, published by Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency on August 27, Rebecca Murray noted how prostitution and sex trafficking have become “epidemic in Iraq” during the post-invasion military occupation of the country by US-led forces.

In the past eight years, the country has been witnessing unrelenting violence and deadly terror attacks which smashed “national institutions, impoverished the population and torn apart families and neighborhoods.”

"Wars and conflicts, wherever they are fought, invariably usher in sickeningly high level of violence against women and girls," Murray cited an Amnesty International statement as saying.

The article told the story of Rania, who fell victim of Iraqi officials' sexual assault at 16, during a 1991 brutal crackdown on Iraq's Shia south by executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Outcast Rania escaped to Baghdad and ended up as a sex trafficker's deputy after living and working in Baghdad's brothels for a while.

She describes female trafficking a lucrative business in Iraq, saying many virgin teenage girls are sold for around 5,000 dollars, and trafficked to destinations like northern Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates.

After being arrested six years ago by US forces on charges of abetting terrorism, Rania was sent to jail in Baghdad's al-Kadimiyah detention and finally ended up as an undercover researcher for a women support group she got to know in prison.

In one of her harrowing findings, Rania and two other girls discovered a house in Baghdad's al-Jihad district, where girls as young as 16 were held to cater exclusively to the US military personnel.

The brothel's owner told Rania that an Iraqi interpreter employed by the Americans served as the dealer, transporting girls to and from the US airport base.

Before the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraq enjoyed the highest female literacy rate across the Middle East, and more Iraqi women were employed in skilled professions, like medicine and education, than in any other country in the region.

Norwegian Church Aid report last year highlighted “the US-led war and the chaos it has generated” among other factors giving rise to mounting prostitution in Iraq.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198078.html.

Anti-regime protests rage on in Yemen

Thu Sep 8, 2011

Thousands of people in Yemen have staged yet more anti-regime demonstrations in the southern flashpoint city of Taizz and the central city of Bayda, Press TV reports.

The protesters took to the streets on Thursday to renew the call for the downfall of the regime of Yemen's embattled ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.

They were chanting slogans in support of the popular revolution in the country, vowing to continue their peaceful protest gatherings until they braced victory.

The rallies come latest in the months-long popular revolt against the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh since January.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for regular demonstrations in Yemen's major cities, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment and demanding Saleh's ouster.

Hundreds of people have been killed and many more injured during the unrest as a result of the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests by military forces and loosely-organized individuals loyal to Saleh.

On Thursday, media reports said the Yemeni opposition called for massive protests against Saleh's rule after Friday Prayers, urging people to pour into the streets of the capital, Sana'a and other cities across the country to protest "lies by the Yemeni regime."

Saleh has been receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia since early in June for the wounds he sustained in a rocket attack on his palace by tribal fighters siding with the opposition.

Meanwhile, there have been ongoing talks with the Saleh regime to negotiate a power-transfer plan in a bid to end months of anti-regime protests. But a defiant Saleh, who has been in power in Yemen over the past 33 years, has refused calls to give in to popular demands.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198087.html.

Palestinians launch statehood campaign

Thu Sep 8, 2011

Palestinians have launched their campaign to join the United Nations as a full member state by marching on the United Nations office in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Scores of Palestinian officials and activists gathered at the UN building on Thursday, saying they would stage peaceful events ahead of the UN General Assembly's annual meeting later this month, the Associated Press reported.

They also handed a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to add his “moral voice in support of the Palestinian people.”

The document was delivered by Latifa Abu Hmeid, a 70-year-old woman who Palestinian officials said symbolizes the plight of oppressed Palestinians.

Abu Hmeid has lost a son to Israeli aggression and has seven others held in Israeli prisons. A resident of a West Bank refugee camp, she has seen her house demolished twice by Israeli forces.

“Families of the tens of thousands of victims of Israeli occupation, including those martyred, wounded and imprisoned, and countless others who were expelled from their homes or lost their homes and their property, hope that you will exert all possible efforts toward the achievement of the Palestinian people's just demands,” the letter read.

Meanwhile, the executive committee of the Palestinian Authority has met for the last time before going to the UN for a vote on full sovereignty.

The Palestinian Authority decided to seek recognition of an independent state after Israel refused negotiations.

A round of US-brokered talks between the two sides also broke down in 2010, after Tel Aviv refused to halt settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198095.html.

Turkey vows to challenge Israel at sea

Thu Sep 8, 2011

Turkey has announced that last year's Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid convoy would not be repeated since Ankara intends to deploy navy patrols and warships in the Mediterranean to accompany and protect next Gaza-bound aid vessels.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday in an interview with the Al Jazeera TV network that Turkey has taken steps to stop the Israeli regime from unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the Mediterranean, Reuters reported.

"Turkish warships, in the first place, are authorized to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza," Erdogan said.

He added, "From now on, we will not let these ships to be attacked by Israel, as what happened with the Freedom Flotilla."

Relations between Turkey and Israel have been at their lowest ebb since Israeli forces attacked the Mavi Marmara, the flagship of the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla in May 2010 in international waters, leaving nine Turkish activists dead.

Last week, Ankara suspended its military ties with the Israeli regime and downgraded its diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to apologize to Turkey over the killing of its citizens.

In addition to an apology, Turkey has demanded that Israel end the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, where Tel Aviv has besieged 1.6 million Palestinians in a 360-square-kilometer coastal territory.

Erdogan said that Turkey will boost its naval presence in eastern Mediterranean to challenge Israel's domination in the sea.

In a reference to Israeli plans to exploit huge gas and oil reserves found beneath the Mediterranean Sea that are claimed by Lebanon, Erdogan said Turkish forces will stop Israel from exploiting natural resources in the area.

On July 26, Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah also warned Israel to keep its hands off Lebanon's offshore gas and oil reserves in its territorial waters.

“We warn Israel against extending its hands to this area to steal Lebanon's resources from Lebanese waters,” he said. “Until Lebanon decides to exploit this area, Israel must be warned against extending its hands to it.”

The Turkish prime minister stated, "You know that Israel has begun to declare that it has the right to act in exclusive economic areas in the Mediterranean."

"You will see that it will not be the owner of this right, because Turkey, as a guarantor of the Turkish republic of north Cyprus, has taken steps in the area, and it will be decisive and holding fast to the right to monitor international waters in the east Mediterranean," he added.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198145.html.

US reconnaissance plane under jamming attack: aide

Seoul (AFP)
Sept 9, 2011

A US military reconnaissance plane came under electronic attack from North Korea and had to make an emergency landing during a major military exercise in March, an aide to a lawmaker said Friday.

The aide said the plane suffered disturbance to its global positioning system (GPS) by jamming signals from the North's southwestern cities of Haeju and Kaesong as it was taking part in the annual US-South Korea drill, Key Resolve.

The incident was disclosed in a report that Seoul's defense ministry submitted Thursday to opposition lawmaker Ahn Kyu-Baek of parliament's defense committee, the aide to Ahn told AFP.

Spokesmen for the defense ministry and US Forces Korea declined to comment.

Jamming signals, sent at intervals of five to 10 minutes in the afternoon on March 4, forced the plane to make an emergency landing 45 minutes after it was airborne, the aide quoted the report as saying.

They also affected South Korean naval patrol boats and speedboats as well as several civilian flights near Seoul's Gimpo area, according to the report.

Seoul mobile users also complained of bad connections and the military reported GPS navigational devices malfunctioning as the South and the US were staging the drill, which was harshly criticized by the North.

The communist state has about 20 types of jamming devices mostly imported from Russia and it has been developing a new device with a range of more than 100 km (62 miles) near the heavily fortified border, Yonhap news agency has said.

The North is also believed to have been responsible for the intermittent failure of GPS receivers on naval and civilian vessels along the west coast in August 2010.

South Korea's then-defense minister Kim Tae-Young said at the time that the devices could disrupt guided weapons and posed "a fresh security threat" to Seoul.

The UN's International Telecommunication Union in April urged the North to stop disrupting signals in the South.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_reconnaissance_plane_under_jamming_attack_aide_999.html.

Iraqi died after 'gratuitous violence' by UK soldiers

London (AFP)
Sept 9, 2011

Britain's army chief said the death of an Iraqi detainee in Basra had cast a "dark shadow" over its reputation, after an inquiry found he had suffered "gratuitous violence" at the hands of soldiers.

Hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, 26, was hooded, beaten and held in stress positions along with nine other Iraqis following their detention by 1st Battalion the Queen's Lancashire Regiment (1QLR) in September 2003, the inquiry found Thursday.

Mousa, a father of two, died 36 hours after he was arrested, having sustained 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

The three-year inquiry, led by retired judge William Gage, said numerous soldiers were involved in the abuse and he accused others of a "lack of moral courage" in failing to report what was happening.

It also said the the Ministry of Defense was guilty of a "corporate failure" to prevent such mistreatment, saying it had no proper doctrine on interrogation methods when Britain joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

General Peter Wall, the head of the army, offered an unreserved apology.

"The shameful circumstances of Baha Mousa's death have cast a dark shadow on that reputation and this must not happen again," he said.

Some soldiers had already been suspended from operational duty and military service, he told Friday's Guardian newspaper.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the inquiry detailed a "truly shocking and appalling incident" and he raised the possibility of further prosecutions in the case, something Mousa's family have called for.

Seven soldiers were charged over the abuse in 2005, but six were cleared in a court martial. Cameron said: "If there is further evidence that comes out of this inquiry that enables further action to be taken, it should be taken."

However, he stressed that the abuse "is not in any way typical of the British army that upholds the highest standards".

Defense Secretary Liam Fox promised the government would use the inquiry's findings "to see whether more can be done to bring those responsible to justice."

The inquiry found Mousa's death had been caused by a combination of his injuries -- many of them inflicted by one soldier, Donald Payne -- and his weakened physical state caused by his mistreatment, the extreme heat and a lack of food and water.

Payne had a "particularly unpleasant" method of assault which included punching or kicking detainees to make them groan in an orchestrated "choir", Gage said.

The soldier pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians and was jailed for a year in 2007, becoming the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime.

A year later, the Ministry of Defense agreed to pay Mousa's family and the other detainees a total of 2.83 million pounds ($4.5 million, 3.2 million euros).

Although Britain banned the use of hooding and painful stress positions in 1972, Gage found a lack of knowledge of this prohibition, which he blamed on "corporate failure" by the Ministry of Defense.

While such practices were "standard operating procedure" among Payne's regiment in Iraq, they were "wholly unacceptable", he added.

Gage concluded that the abuse "constituted an appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence on civilians", adding that "they represent a very serious breach of discipline by a number of members of 1QLR".

Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International's Europe and central Asia director, called for those responsible to be "held accountable for their actions and brought swiftly to justice, including in criminal proceedings."

The inquiry strongly criticized the regiment's former commanding officer, Colonel Jorge Mendonca, one of those cleared at the court martial.

While accepting Mendonca's claim that he did not know about the abuse, Gage said: "As commanding officer, he ought to have known what was going on in that building long before Baha Mousa died."

About 46,000 British troops were deployed to Iraq at the height of the conflict, with the vast majority withdrawn in 2009.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iraqi_died_after_gratuitous_violence_by_UK_soldiers_999.html.

NASA postpones launch of Moon-bound spacecraft

Washington (AFP)
Sept 8, 2011

NASA will try again Friday to launch a $500 million pair of unmanned spacecraft that will use gravity tools to map the Moon's inner core for the first time, after high winds delayed a first attempt.

The GRAIL (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) mission, aims to launch on a single Delta II rocket as early as 8:33 am (1237 GMT). A second launch window opens at 9:12 am (1316 GMT).

Weather conditions for Friday are the same as Thursday -- 40 percent favorable -- though upper level winds were deemed too strong to try it on the first day of the launch window.

If Friday's bid is also pushed back, plenty more opportunities will arise over the next 41 days.

Scientists hope the satellites will shed light on how the Moon formed and whether there was once another Moon that melded with it, forming lunar mountains.

Despite 109 past missions to study the Moon since 1959, and the fact that 12 humans have walked on its surface, GRAIL program scientist Bobby Fogel said there has never been a serious attempt to peer inside.

"GRAIL will be the first mission to determine the internal structure of the Moon," he told reporters this week.

"We have used gravity science before to try to gain some insight as to what is going on inside the Moon, however these have been very primitive attempts.

"If those previous attempts could be likened to a magnifying glass, GRAIL by contrast would be a high-powered microscope."

Scientists believe that the Moon was formed when a planet-sized object crashed into the Earth, throwing off a load of material that eventually became what we now recognize as our planet's airless, desolate satellite.

How it heated up over time, creating a magma ocean that later crystallized, remains a mystery.

A recent hypothesis that there may have been two Moons that slowly merged into each other can also be tested with this mission, said principal investigator Maria Zuber.

"If we want to reconstruct the evolution of the Moon over time, we certainly need to reconstruct the temperature structure of the Moon right now," she said.

Little is known for certain about what lies inside the Moon. The widely held belief that there is a small solid iron core surrounded by a liquid iron core is unproven, said Zuber.

"It is actually quite possible that deep inside the Moon the core could be titanium oxide which is a material that would have fallen out or would have crystallized out of the magma ocean and sunk to the deep interior of the Moon," she said.

The GRAIL twins will journey for more than three months, both entering orbit around New Year's Day.

Once there, they will line up with each other and "essentially chase each other around in a polar orbit as the Moon rotates slowly underneath them," said Zuber.

They will hover about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above the lunar surface, with the distance between them ranging from 37 to 140 miles (60 to 225 kilometers), collecting measurements of the terrain beneath.

The duo will accomplish the mission's primary aim of understanding the Moon's inner character by performing a series of low-altitude gravity field measurements using what is known as a Ka-band ranging instrument.

The mission itself is relatively short in duration, just 90 days once the two spacecraft reach orbit.

About 40 days after their work is done, the pair will plunge into the lunar surface, NASA said. Scientific analysis of their data is expected to continue for a year.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_postpones_launch_of_Moon-bound_spacecraft_999.html.

Invisible World Discovered

Cambridge, MA (SPX)
Sep 09, 2011

Usually, running five minutes late is a bad thing since you might lose your dinner reservation or miss out on tickets to the latest show. But when a planet runs five minutes late, astronomers get excited because it suggests that another world is nearby.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted a planet that alternately runs late and early in its orbit because a second, "invisible" world is tugging on it. This is the first definite detection of a previously unknown planet using this method. No other technique could have found the unseen companion.

"This invisible planet makes itself known by its influence on the planet we can see," said astronomer Sarah Ballard of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Ballard is lead author on the study, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

"It's like having someone play a prank on you by ringing your doorbell and running away. You know someone was there, even if you don't see them when you get outside," she added.

Both the seen and unseen worlds orbit the Sun-like star Kepler-19, which is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The 12th-magnitude star is well placed for viewing by backyard telescopes on September evenings.

Kepler locates planets by looking for a star that dims slightly as a planet transits the star, passing across the star's face from our point of view. Transits give one crucial piece of information - the planet's physical size. The greater the dip in light, the larger the planet relative to its star. However, the planet and star must line up exactly for us to see a transit.

The first planet, Kepler-19b, transits its star every 9 days and 7 hours. It orbits the star at a distance of 8.4 million miles, where it is heated to a temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Kepler-19b has a diameter of 18,000 miles, making it slightly more than twice the size of Earth. It may resemble a "mini-Neptune," however its mass and composition remain unknown.

If Kepler-19b were alone, each transit would follow the next like clockwork. Instead, the transits come up to five minutes early or five minutes late. Such transit timing variations show that another world's gravity is pulling on Kepler-19b, alternately speeding it up or slowing it down.

Historically, the planet Neptune was discovered similarly. Astronomers tracking Uranus noticed that its orbit didn't match predictions. They realized that a more distant planet might be nudging Uranus and calculated the expected location of the unseen world. Telescopes soon observed Neptune near its predicted position.

"This method holds great promise for finding planets that can't be found otherwise," stated Harvard astronomer and co-author David Charbonneau.

So far, astronomers don't know anything about the invisible world Kepler-19c, other than that it exists. It weighs too little to gravitationally tug the star enough for them to measure its mass. And Kepler hasn't detected it transiting the star, suggesting that its orbit is tilted relative to Kepler-19b.

"Kepler-19c has multiple personalities consistent with our data. For instance, it could be a rocky planet on a circular 5-day orbit, or a gas-giant planet on an oblong 100-day orbit," said co-author Daniel Fabrycky of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

The Kepler spacecraft will continue to monitor Kepler-19 throughout its mission. Those additional data will help nail down the orbit of Kepler-19c. Future ground-based instruments like HARPS-North will attempt to measure the mass of Kepler-19c. Only then will we have a clue to the nature of this invisible world.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Invisible_World_Discovered_999.html.

Syria rebels more organized as insurgency grows

By Serene Assir | AFP
(17th of June 2012, Sunday)

The rebel Free Syrian Army has grown from a rag-tag force into a popular guerrilla insurgency buoyed by civilian fighters who still lack weapons and structure to defeat the regime, experts and rebels say.

Over the past months more and more civilians have volunteered to take up arms alongside army deserters against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as deadly violence escalates across the country.

"The Syrian army has one million men in reserve, civilians with military training, and many of them are joining the revolt now," said Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA).

According to the Dubai-based Kahwaji, the FSA has "thousands" of members across Syria and is growing in both capacity and coordination. "They have become more organized," he told AFP.

The FSA announced in March the formation of a military council grouping rebel chiefs and chaired by Syria's most senior army deserter, General Mustafa al-Sheikh.

While Turkey-based Colonel Riad al-Assaad, one of the first officers to defect, officially leads the FSA, in practice operations are planned and executed at a grassroots level, independently from any exiled leaders, Kahwaji said.

Over the past months more efforts has been made to shore up the rag-tag rebel army into a more cohesive force, activists say.

"Small groups of armed rebels with no communication with other units are being replaced by larger umbrella squadrons to better organize the insurgency," said Damascus-based activist Ahmad al-Khatib.

Thus fighters from key rebel bastions have been grouped together under one commander each, added Khatib, who participates in efforts to unite the FSA and encourage defections.

"There is no unified leadership, but now units in different parts of Syria are communicating with each other," he told AFP via Skype.

"The more coordinated the FSA, the more effective it becomes, and the better the support its fighters are given by civilian opponents to the regime."

For Kahwaji the FSA is a "popular army, which enjoys the increasingly broad support of the Syrian population."

But he admitted that the rebel fighters are ill-equipped with only medium and light weapons that are no match for the firepower, tanks and helicopters available to the Syrian army.

"The FSA fighters are not well armed, but the population feeds them and gives them cover," he said. The rebels are "operating in a hospitable environment" unlike the regular army which is faced with "hostility."

Support from the civilian population may help keep morale up for the rebels but they, too, recognize their shortcomings.

"Every day of resistance is a success, but Assad's army remains superior," said Nasser Nahhar, a rebel unit commander operating around the restive Baba Amr neighborhood of the flashpoint central city of Homs.

"The Syrian army has tanks and helicopters, whereas we have light weapons. If it weren't for that, we would have won already," he told AFP via Skype.

According to Nahhar, what begun as a peaceful uprising against a ruthless dictatorship turned into an armed struggle with "the majority of anti-regime fighters now being civilians."

"We wanted to take down the regime peacefully, but it was impossible," said the well-spoken civilian-turned-rebel commander in his late 20s. "The only way to defeat the regime now is militarily."

As deadly violence escalates across Syria, the FSA has opted for new tactics drawing from a history of guerrilla warfare to make up for its equipment shortcomings.

"The FSA's main goal right how is to try and harass the army to the point of fatigue," said Elias Hanna, a Lebanese ex-military officer and professor of geopolitics at the American University of Beirut.

"The more we exhaust the regular troops, the more we weaken their morale and force defections," he added.

But Hanna warned that the rebels "cannot go on like this much longer" and described them "an army on the run."

"Without a clear regional decision to provide the FSA with the means it needs to continue fighting -- such as safe routes and a base -- the rebels cannot take fighting onto the next level," Hanna said.

Energy-rich Arab nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly called for arming the Syrian rebels but Western powers are still resisting any military intervention in the 16-month crisis.

And while the rebels initially hoped for a speedy intervention, Nahhar explained that the prime choice now is to rely on hit-and-run tactics. "We don't need to win, we just need the army to lose," he said.

Greek MPs approve first Athens mosque

Wed Sep 7, 2011

Greece's parliament has approved the construction of the first official Mosque in Athens, as demanded by thousands of its Muslim residents, after 35 years of debate.

The project to build a place of worship for its Muslim population in the Greek capital had 198 votes in favor, and only 16 against.

The measure was voted for by MPs of all political parties except for those belonging to Laos, the small far right-wing party.

Giorgos Karatzaferis, who leads the party, accused the government of creating “a laboratory for the production of terrorists in the center of Athens.”

Athens is the only European capital city that does not have any mosques for its 200,000 Muslim residents.

The mosque construction plan calls for the renovation of an existing state building which is a disused military base, in the run-down Athens industrial district of Elaionas.

Despite the Greek governments' promises, thousands of Muslims who live and work in Athens do not have an official prayer site or a cemetery.

Muslims have built mosques in rented flats and disused warehouses, all of which are regularly targeted in racist attacks.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/197953.html.

Greeks vote in critical election

June 17, 2012

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greeks voted Sunday for the second time in six weeks in what was arguably their country's most critical election in 40 years, with the country's treasured place within the European Union's joint currency in the balance.

The political turmoil sparked by a two-year financial crisis has roiled markets across the world, with fears that victory by parties that have vowed to cancel the country's international bailout agreements and accompanying austerity measures could see Greece forced out of the euro.

That in turn would likely drag down other financially troubled countries and rip apart the euro itself. The last opinion polls published before a two-week pre-election ban showed the radical left Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras running neck-and-neck with the conservative New Democracy party of Antonis Samaras. But no party is likely to win enough votes to form a government on its own, meaning a coalition will have to be formed to avoid yet another election.

Inconclusive elections on May 6 resulted in no party winning enough votes to form a government, and coalition talks collapsed after 10 days. The vote, which also sent the formerly governing socialist PASOK party plunging to historic lows, sent a very clear message that Greeks have lost patience with the deep austerity imposed in return for the country receiving billions of euros (dollars) in rescue loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

"I'd like to see something change for the country in general, including regarding the bailout," said Vassilis Stergiou, an early-morning voter at an Athens polling station. "But at least for us to get organized and at the very least do something."

Tsipras, a 37-year-old former student activist, has vowed to rip up Greece's bailout agreements and repeal the austerity measures, which have included deep spending cuts on everything from health care to education and infrastructure, as well as tax hikes and reductions of salaries and pensions.

But his pledges, which include canceling planned privatizations, nationalizing banks and rolling back cuts to minimum wages and pensions, have horrified European leaders, as well as many Greeks. Tsipras' opponents argue that the inexperienced young politician is out of touch with reality, and that his policies will force the country out of the euro and lead to poverty for years to come.

Virtually unknown outside of Greece four months ago, Tsipras' pledges and his party's strong showing in the May 6 elections, where he came a surprise second place and quadrupled his support since the 2009 election, has put him in the international spotlight.

Scores of journalists and television news crews from across the world jostled for space to cover Tsipras casting his ballot in an Athens polling center. "We have beaten fear. Today we open a road to hope," he said after voting, adding that he was confident of victory.

"Today we open a road to a better tomorrow, with our people united, dignified and proud. In a Greece of social justice and prosperity, an equal member of a Europe that is changing. A Europe of the peoples and of solidarity."

The young left-wing leader has accused his rivals of attempting to terrorize the population by casting him as the man who will ruin the country, and insists he will keep Greece within the euro — something that repeated opinion polls have shown about 80 percent of Greeks want.

Greece has been dependent on the rescue loans since May 2010, after sky-high borrowing rates left it locked out of the international markets following years of profligate spending and falsifying financial data.

The spending cuts made in return have left the country mired in a fifth year of recession, with unemployment spiraling to above 22 percent and tens of thousands of businesses shutting down. For his part, Samaras has cast Sunday's choice as one between the euro and returning to the country's old currency, the drachma. Although he voted against Greece's first bailout in 2010, when his party was in opposition, he backed the second bailout agreed on late last year. He has vowed to renegotiate some of the terms of the accompanying austerity, but insists the top priority is for the country to remain in Europe's joint currency.

"The main thing we will decide on is the dilemma, euro or drachma," he said during his final pre-election rally in central Athens on Friday. European leaders have cautioned that Greece could be left outside the 17-nation eurozone if it pulls out of its bailout commitments.

Newly elected French President Francois Hollande warned in a Greek television interview earlier this week that "if the impression is given that the Greeks want to move away from the commitments that were taken and abandon all prospects of revival, then there will be countries in the Eurozone that will want to end the presence of Greece in the eurozone."

Nearly 10 million people are eligible to vote in the country of about 11 million people. Polls close at 7pm (1600 GMT), with official results expected a few hours later. "Today the Greek people speak. Tomorrow a new era for Greece begins," Samaras said after casting his ballot in a small town in southern Greece, the first of the main politicians to do so.

As Greeks went to the polls, more than 250 firefighters and soldiers battled a fire raging south of the Greek capital since Saturday afternoon. Local authorities said several houses were burned. Gale-force winds were hampering the efforts to extinguish the blaze, and Greece asked for help in water-dropping planes from Italy, France and Croatia.

Three firefighters suffered burns on Saturday, while four people were arrested for allegedly starting the fire by accident during welding work at a construction site.

Greek, Spanish savings flee eurozone crisis

June 16, 2012

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — In Europe's most economically stricken countries, people are taking their money out of banks as a way to protect their savings from the growing financial storm.

People are worried that their savings could be devalued if their country stops using the euro, or that banks are on the verge of collapse and that governments cannot make good on deposit insurance. So in Greece, Spain and beyond they are withdrawing euros by the billions — behavior that is magnifying their countries' financial stresses.

The money is being hoarded at home or deposited in banks in more stable economies. It's a steady bank "jog" at the moment, not a full-bore run. But it threatens to undermine the finances of those countries' already-stressed lenders. And if it does turn into a full bank run after Greece's crucial election on Sunday, it could hasten financial disaster in Europe and help spread turmoil around the world.

Since the Greek debt crisis broke in late 2009, deposits have fallen by 30 percent. Savers have slowly pulled some €72 billion ($90.24 billion) from local lenders, with total household and corporate deposits standing at €165.9 billion ($207.94 billion) in April, according to the latest data from the Bank of Greece.

Spanish deposits have fallen about six percent over the past year. They dipped suddenly in April by about €3.1 billion, or 1.8 percent, to €1.624 trillion as problems with the country's troubled banks started to grow to alarming proportions.

This is despite the fact that deposits are guaranteed by the government up to €100,000 across the eurozone. Spain's financial turmoil quickly worsened in late May, when Bankia, the country's second-largest lender, announced it needed capital of €19 billion to stay afloat. Bankia denied reports of a rush by its customers to withdraw, but the bailout scared Spaniards who assumed their money was safe.

Bankia client Rosa Monsivais panicked and decided she had to move her savings from Bankia to a bank she thought would be safer. She chose a foreign bank with Spanish operations, the Dutch owned ING bank.

It took longer than she thought, leading to anxious days until she knew her money was in her new account. "It scared me a little. I took all my money out and put it in ING," said Monsivais, a 41-year-old graphic artist who would not say how much money she moved. "But it took a full week to do this kind of transaction. I was reading the newspaper each day and it worried me."

The money across Europe is headed different places. Some has simply been withdrawn and spent out of urgent need as people lose their jobs due to recessions. Some is winding up in bank accounts or invested in countries that are more stable such as Germany. The rest is being invested in property or bonds being issued by other countries that use the euro.

The flight of money from other countries was seen as one factor pushing up central London house prices, according to Knight Frank, a real estate agency dealing in high-end property. "While it looks very much that the surge in Greek buyers has fallen off sharply since the beginning of the year — those who had the funds to buy have done so — we are now seeing a noticeable uptick in interest from France, Italy, Spain and even German-based purchasers looking at the prime London market," the company said in its Prime Central London Index report.

Meanwhile, some money appears to be simply hoarded at home, despite the risk of theft. Last month, police in Athens arrested a gang that specialized in breaking into basement storage spaces under apartment blocks, netting a rich haul in stashed cash and valuables.

"What the average Greek has in mind is to secure the euros they currently hold," said Theodore Krintas, managing director at Attica Wealth Management. "That has been going on for a long time, and will continue as long as the uncertainty increases concerning Greece's position in the near future in the eurozone and the European Union."

Sunday's vote could determine whether Greece stays in the euro or leaves in chaos. Since 2010, Greece has been dependent on two bailouts totaling €240 billion in loans to pay its bills. In return, the government had to promise to make deep spending cuts to lower its deficit. That has helped put the country in a deep recession. Leading political figures have called for renegotiating or rejecting the bailout deal, which could lead to a payment cutoff from mistrustful eurozone governments and the IMF.

If Greece reneges on the strict austerity measures that come with its rescue package, it could be forced to abandon the euro. Greece's departure from the eurozone would likely cause financial chaos across Europe: Greek debts would go from being denominated in sturdy euros to being denominated in Greek drachmas of dubious value.

A large-scale bank run in Greece could further wreck government finances and push the country closer to leaving the euro. So far it's been a trickle rather than a flood in Greece, underlining its slow-motion nature. Many have kept their deposits because they don't believe Greece will leave the euro.

Wealthy Germans also are concerned that inflation will surge if Europe's central bank has to step in and spend huge amounts of money propping up the single currency. So they are putting more money into their own country's high-end real-estate in hope it will keep its value.

Well-heeled Spaniards have been moving money to Switzerland and the U.S. for months amid mounting worries about Spain and the safety of the eurozone, said Bruce Goslin, managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for K2 Intelligence consulting group.

"As we are circulating and talking to people, some things are becoming clear. Everyone says 'There is nothing going on in Spain, the economy is contracting so fast we're going to have to go out of Spain," said Goslin.

Spain's banking problems come from the collapse of a real estate boom. Banks that made reckless loans are not being paid back and are seeing the value of the properties they invested in tumbling. This is making the country's banking system increasingly financially insecure — heightening savers' fears that their money is not safe.

Fernando Encinar, head of research at real estate website Idealista.com, said some wealthy people who didn't have money to buy during the boom are now taking advantage of prices that have fallen 26 percent in four years.

Many Spaniards can't move money abroad because times are so tough, said Vincent Forest at the Economist Intelligence Unit. With unemployment now at nearly 25 percent, Spaniards with jobs and savings are increasingly helping out less fortunate relatives.

"Most Spaniards have huge savings, but they have someone in the family who needs money and isn't earning anything," Forest said. Many Italians — some of Europe's most devoted savers — are also moving money. They are worried their government will be the next victim of the crisis through its heavy debt load, even though Italy's banks, government finances and economy are in better shape than Spain's.

Some 60,000 to 70,000 small investors have bought property abroad, mostly in Germany but also on the Spanish islands, in the last three months, for a total investment of €400 million on an annual basis, said Paolo Righi, president of the Italian Federation of Real Estate Professionals.

Ruth Stirati, who runs a business helping Italians buy property in Berlin, said she gets about 10 emails a day asking about properties. "Over the last two or three weeks, there has been a new panic," she said. "They have a thousand fears: That the banks won't have money, that the euro will fail. It is without substance, their doubts. But they worry there will be one strong euro in Germany, and one that is weak.'

Wealthy Germans aren't worried about seeing their money disappear due to collapsing banks, but they are concerned that their savings will be eaten away through inflation. As a result, they are putting money into real estate — at home.

Even though inflation currently is moderate at 2.2 percent in May, there is concern about the risk of rising prices in Germany's media. There is speculation that inflation could jump if the European Central Bank has to take drastic measures to keep the eurozone from breaking up — such as printing large amounts of money to buy government bonds and cover bankrupt governments' financing needs.

The current EU treaty bars that. But that hasn't stopped German newspaper headlines warning about possible inflation to come. According to the Europace real estate financing platform, German home prices rose 5.46 percent in the first quarter over a year ago.

__ Paphitis contributed from Athens, McHugh from Frankfurt, and Barry from Milan. Also contributing were Harold Heckle in Madrid and Robert Barr and Cassandra Vinograd in London.

Greeks to vote with a global audience

June 16, 2012

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Elections are supposed to determine the will of the people, to set a nation on a new course with a government that enjoys the mandate of the majority. In splintered Greece, the vote on Sunday is shaping up as a challenge to this time-honored rule of democracy.

For Greeks are in a collective state of depression, burdened not just by the shriveling of their finances, but also political divisions with deep roots in history and confusion over their identity and the very concept of statehood. And yet an anxious world is looking to this tiny actor on the international stage for clues to whether the global economy will cling to a path of gradual recovery, or veer toward another destructive scenario like the one that followed the 2008 collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in the United States.

A street scene in Athens on Saturday symbolized the sense of despair, tinged with defiance, which pervades a country battered by five years of recession after years of easy credit and consumption. A homeless man slept in a doorway, a cardboard box beside him, a slit cut in its top in hopes that passers-by would drop in a few coins. "We don't need the euro," read a slogan on the campaign posters of a small far-left party, plastered on an adjacent wall. Polls indicate that most Greeks want to stay in Europe's monetary union, but years of austerity with few signs of improvement have deepened their sense of isolation.

"People are in agony about their savings; their jobs, their safety, their future (and their children's future)," Stathis Psillos, a philosophy professor at the University of Athens, wrote in an email.

Sunday's election is seen as pivotal in determining whether Greece pitches deeper into economic chaos, and is forced to return to its old currency, the drachma — an eventuality that amounts to, at least in the short term, a journey into an economic and social void — and whether Europe fragments or eventually becomes more unified. The frontrunners are a traditional party, New Democracy, that wants to modify an international bailout plan that has kept Greek finances afloat, and a left-wing party, Syriza, that surged in popularity because it opposes the old political order and wants to tear up the bailout deal in protest over the cutbacks it requires.

Abroad, there is concern that a victory for Syriza could trigger market panic and drag down other economically vulnerable countries such as Spain and Italy, and then ripple across other continents. The Greek outcome will be watched closely by leaders of the world's 20 most important economies, who are meeting this weekend in Mexico. However, neither Syriza nor New Democracy are projected to win enough votes to form a government alone, meaning Greece will have to form a coalition if it wants to avoid another election.

Elena Athanassopoulou, a political science professor at the American College of Greece, predicted "painful negotiations" among parties that would lead to a government after the vote, and said political stability was vital to prevent Greece going "any further down the slope."

An earlier round of elections in May failed to deliver a clear winner, and coalition talks collapsed. Even if New Democracy, led by Antonis Samaras, emerges on top, there is no guarantee that Greece's creditors, including other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, will accede to his desire to dilute the multi-billion dollar bailout terms, or that Greece can stick to austerity measures imposed by creditors. Also, the strong showing in the last elections of a far-right party, Golden Dawn, and accusations that its supporters have attacked immigrants encapsulate the wider mood of alienation and uncertainty.

"Right now in Greece, everybody gets to say everything, you get to listen to many opinions," said Paris Mexis, a designer for Beetroot, an award-winning firm based in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-biggest city. "We have a community that doesn't work as a community. We have renegade units, we have random units, we have people who produce and the production doesn't go anywhere. Everybody is alone. We need to go back to philosophy."

He said Greeks need to recover the basic principles that hold a society together and help it flourish, including organization, creativity and communication. Right now, the reality defies such ideals. Unemployment is about 22 percent, crime is up and public services are failing. Greece is not in full-blown disintegration — that assessment might apply to the civil war between its Western-backed government and communists in the 1940s — but even the idea of a state, in which a social contract exists between a government and its citizenry, is under strain today.

Widespread tax evasion, for example, was one of the failings that got Greece into its current financial mess. The government has sought to tighten up on the crime, but many Greeks, once accustomed to generous state handouts and public sector salaries, bridle at the idea because their daily circumstances are deteriorating.

"People are losing faith in the institutions," said Reto Foellmi, professor of international economics at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. He said Greeks need to see a link between revenue collection and spending, and suggested that the decentralization of control over finances, whereby local authorities have more say in how funds are raised and spent in their districts, could benefit the country in the long term.

Psillos, the philosophy professor, said European leaders fail to see that Greece's "real problem" is that the traditional parties, dominant for generations, are no longer capable of creating consensus. He noted that Syriza, while untainted by association with austerity measures and past policy failures, offers a somewhat contradictory narrative that seeks balance "between an old left tradition and a need to accommodate within it tens of thousands of new voters who pin their hopes on it."

Many of Syriza's new supporters are civil servants who lost benefits under the former socialist government, that struggled to impose wage cuts and structural reforms and suffered as a result at the May polls. At present, many Greeks, disillusioned with politics, think their society has reached a dead end, but feel they don't have the tools to overhaul it, or recover what they once had. Psillos, who believes Syriza offers hope but needs time to hone its platform, summarized this ominous state of limbo by citing Alexander Herzen, a 19th century Russian intellectual.

"The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul," Herzen wrote after the failure of European revolutionary movements in 1848. "Yet what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it, not an heir, but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass."