Europe – Page 38 – praag.org

A truly awful British BBC presenter

Jimmy Savile sounds like a prison guard from the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War where Afrikaner women and children were subjected to extreme abuse.

Investigators were given “macabre accounts” of disgraced British BBC presenter Jimmy Savile “acting unacceptably” with dead bodies in the mortuary of a hospital.

An investigation into Savile’s abuse at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) heard the now-dead entertainer claimed to have “interfered with the bodies of deceased patients”, including performing sex acts on them.

Investigators concluded that “it is evident his interest in the mortuary was not within accepted boundaries”.

Dr Sue Proctor, who led the investigation into Savile’s abuse at the LGI, told a press conference a student nurse reported having had a conversation with Savile in which he claimed he performed sex acts on the dead.

Savile’s professed interest in the dead was described by Dr Proctor as “pretty unwholesome”.

Savile visited the mortuary in his role as voluntary porter.

Investigators said he publicly acknowledged his fascination with the dead and there were a lack of stringent procedures surrounding the mortuary.

A series of chilling reports have revealed Savile subjected patients in hospitals across the country to “truly awful” sexual abuse for more than four decades.

Savile’s victims at the LGI ranged from five-years-old to pensioners and included men, women, boys and girls.

Savile, a Radio 1 DJ who also presented the BBC’s Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It, died aged 84 in October 2011 – a year before allegations that he had sexually abused children were broadcast in ITV documentary Exposure: The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile.

The documentary ultimately led to a joint review by the Metropolitan Police and NSPCC into allegations that the television presenter abused women, girls and boys.

The findings of the review, published in January last year, saw 214 criminal offences, including 34 rapes, recorded against Savile’s name across the UK between 1955 and 2009.

Claims that some of the abuse happened in hospital settings triggered separate NHS investigations published today.

Source: Western Daily Press

Five EU countries to ban economic activity in Occupied Territories

France has warned its citizens against taking part in any economic activity in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying this may entail legal risks because the Jewish settlements are illegal under international law.

The warning is part of a joint act drafted by the five largest EU countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain, Haaretz cited a French diplomat as saying.

Italy and Spain are expected to issue similar warnings over the next few days, while the UK and Germany did so a few months ago.

The move comes after the failure of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and also following massive protests against the construction of settlements across the EU.

The notice by the French Foreign Ministry advises against investing, purchasing land, or engaging in economic activity in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights. It was published as part of recommendations for French people traveling to Israel.

“Due to the fact that the settlements are illegal in international law, the performance of financial activity in the settlements such as money transfers, investments, acquisition of property, provision of supplies or the performance of any other economic activities that benefit the settlements involves risks,” the statement reads in French.

The document also stated that the international community does not recognize the settlements as part of Israel, which could lead to “land disputes or disagreements regarding water, quarries or other natural resources.”

“We call upon citizens or businesspeople who are considering becoming involved in economic activity in the settlements to seek appropriate legal advice before going ahead,” the statement adds.

The warning from the French government is non-binding, so a French national who conducts financial activities in the settlements would not be breaking the law in France. However, over the last year, Europe’s private sector and Israeli businesses that work in the settlements have seen boycotts of their goods and services.

The Dutch government has recently issued a similar warning to its citizens, with recommendations that products from the settlements on sale in supermarkets are to be marked. Shortly afterwards, the largest water company in The Netherlands declared that it was canceling a contract with Mekorot, Israel’s national water company.

About a week ago, the Israeli Foreign Ministry asked its ambassadors across the EU to contact European foreign ministries, asking them to refrain from issuing the warnings.

Source: RT

Black French singer loses appeal against Marine Le Pen

Black French singer and celebrity Yannick Noah lost his diffamation case against Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National. Noah sued Le Pen because she had called him a “tax fugitive” on television. According to Marine Le Pen, he had “stashed” his money abroad. She made that allegedly defamatory statement on 9 March 2012 during a discussion programme on the pay TV channel Canal+. The talk show was on the contribution made by French immigrants such as Yannick Noah, Zinedine Zidane and Omar Sy.

Answering the question whether immigration was an opportunity for France, Marine Le Pen responded: “Two tax fugitives out of three, that’s not bad,” before referring specifically to Yannick Noah. “That means, instead of paying his taxes in France, well, this gentleman sees fit to give us moral lessons… giving us lessons on charity and sharing while he shares nothing, his money is stashed abroad and does not benefit the unfortunate French,” she declared. At the time she was a French presidential candidate.

As opposed to the argument advanced by the singer, “the statement does not imply any punishable fiscal fraud committed by him”, according to the judges of the 17th chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris in their judgement delivered on 25 June 2013. Yannick Noah then appealed against the judgement.

After participating in a political gathering with François Hollande, the current French president, Yannick Noah was criticised by Valérie Rosso-Debord and Pierre Charon of the UMP party, then by Marine Le Pen, for his tax evasion. From 1992 to 1994 he was a Swiss resident and is still involved in litigation with the French authorities in a case pending before the Constitutional Court of France.

The ex-tennis champion has also sued the UMP senator Pierre Charon for defamation for calling him a “tax criminal”. During the first hearing the politician was fined 1 000 euros, but suspended, as well as a symbolic one euro of damages and interest, including judicial publication. The case on appeal will be heard on 16 October.

Marine Le Pen fails to form conservative group in EU parliament

Marine Le Pen has failed to find support in the minimum of seven European Union countries for her conservative group, the European Alliance for Freedom.

Le Pen and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party did not gain enough allies to qualify as a single caucus in the new European parliament, which now denies them access to funding and extra speaking time. They would also not be able to serve on committees.

Following European parliamentary elections last month, won by Le Pen’s Front National, the various parties had until Monday midnights to form a group comprising at least 25 MEPs from at least seven countries.

The Le Pen-led grouping includes Wilders’ Freedom party, the Austrian Freedom Party, Italy’s Liga Nord and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang. Le Pen and Wilders easily easily exceeded the minimum seats required, the European Alliance for Freedom was two countries short of the required seven.

Wilders and Le Pen said they refused to collaborate with a new party of the extreme right in Poland, viewed as antisemitic but also certain to clash with Wilders’ and Le Pen’s views on immigration to their countries from eastern Europe.

The Polish New Right Congress – which advocates abolishing women’s voting rights – and the Lithuanian Order and Justice parties said they refused to join the Le Pen group.

The Lithuanian party preferred to join British Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy parliamentary group.

Yesterday, the Front National declared that it failed to muster a full-sized European parliamentary group as it had not wanted to ally itself with parties demonstrating incompatible values.

Florian Philippot, the party’s vice-president, told the French radio station Europe 1: “We were several parties, but we needed to come from seven countries and this time it didn’t work.”

Philippot also said to Reuters: “We have no group, for the time being at least. But our deputies, who are more numerous than any other party in the French delegation, will be there to defend France under any circumstances, with or without a group.”

Ludovic de Danne, Le Pen’s European spokesman, tweeted: “Never mind the betrayals and media agitation. We and our allies will build a solid and coherent political group later.”

The new 751-seat European assembly sits for the first time next week.

Subsidies for political groups in the European parliament are substantial. The European Alliance for Freedom could have received up to €22m for operational expenses.

In its media release yesterday, the Front National stated:

“We regret it in the short term, but we take responsibility for our moral and political choice in the long term.

Convinced that it will be possible for us to form this group shortly, we are committed from the very first session in Strasbourg on 1 July to our struggle as patriots for our sovereignty, our identity and our liberty. We shall continue in parallel and with the greatest determination, our negotiations with several parties in Europe so as to constitute this greater formation in favour of sovereignty in the European parliament.”

German aid for deadly US drone attacks

The BND offers ‘language assistance’ in African languages.

The filtering system the German spy agency, the BND reportedly uses does not reliably prevent German targets with .com and .org domain names from being monitored by the US.

In response to questioning about the close cooperation in Bad Aibling, the BND said that the Joint SIGINT Activity and the Joint Analytical Center were discontinued “in 2012 and 2011, respectively.” In addition, the BND noted in a statement, no joint surveillance took place prior to the facility’s discontinuation: “Even before, signals intelligence was performed exclusively by the BND.”

The NSA documents, though, tell a different tale.

A map from the spy program Boundless Informant, published by SPIEGEL in the summer of 2013, indicates that the NSA collects vast amounts of data in Germany.

One document, which explains the program, says that data is collected “against” a target country.

In the Wharpdrive program, BND specialists are even taking the lead. According to one document from the Edward Snowden archive, Germany’s cooperation with the NSA’s Special Source Operations is meant to provide “unconventional special access” to fiber-optic cables.

As far back as 2006, the BND was working in Schöningen on algorithms that could detect patterns or anomalies and thus enable it to exploit social networks for intelligence purposes.

BND surveillance could very well contribute to guiding the deadly drones to their targets. Indeed, the former head of NSA and CIA Michael Hayden recently confirmed, “We kill people based on metadata.”

Other documents state that the BND offers “language assistance” in African languages. It is also clear that the BND shares the results of its monitoring of two foreign ministries as well as Internet telephony originating from a crisis-plagued country in the Middle East.

These days, tensions between the upper echelons of government in Germany and the United States are at their highest in years, but these documents suggest a smooth relationship between the eager BND and the covetous NSA.

There was only one point on which the United States expressed reserve: A request by the Germans to use information from NSA surveillance in “open court.” The document, from April 2013, said there were concerns that the disclosure of surveillance capabilities in a German court could have ramifications and that the “desired and planned level of cooperation” could not be maintained.

In this instance, Germany’s adherence to its own constitution seems bothersome to the Americans.

Source: Der Spiegel

Gazprom, Austria sign gas agreement

Russia’s Gazprom and Austria’s OMV oil and gas companies on Tuesday signed an agreement on the creation of a joint-stock company, South Stream Austria, outlining the principles for the construction and exploitation of the Austrian stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline.

The agreement was signed during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Vienna.

Gazprom and OMV will own a 50 percent stake each in the joint venture.

The agreement specifies the duties and responsibilities of the shareholders as well as the funding and profit-sharing principles.

In April, the sides sealed a memorandum on the construction of South Stream in Austria with annual gas supplies to that country through the future pipeline estimated at 32 billion cubic meters. Construction permit is expected to be issued in 2015 and the first supplies were initially set for 2017. The pipeline is due to reach its full operational capacity by 2018.

However, OMV hopes that Austria may get its first gas through South Stream earlier than planned – in late 2016.

Austria’s FM voices support for South Stream gas pipeline project
The pipeline with a total annual capacity of 63 billion cbm will connect the Russian port of Novorossiisk and the Bulgarian coast through the Black Sea and branch out towards Austria’s Baumgarten via Serbia and Hungary.

The agreement defines their specific rights and obligations and lays out the principles for financing and distribution of earnings among the shareholders.

The agreement signing was accompanied by approval of the final investment decision on construction of the Austrian segment of the pipeline under the previously agreed criteria, Gazprom said in a statement.

Source: Voice of Russia

German Eurofighter and Learjet collide

A German air force Eurofighter and a civilian Learjet carrying two people collided in mid-air in Germany, crashing the Learjet.

The Learjet crashed in woodland near the town of Olsberg. The fate of the two people on board is not yet known.

The Eurofighter returned safely to its base near Cologne. The incident happened during an exercise with another Eurofighter, German media say.

Die Welt news website says the Learjet was also taking part in the exercise.

Firefighters have found wreckage of the Learjet. Witnesses quoted by the German broadcaster WDR say the Learjet came down just 80m (264ft) from a block of flats.

Olsberg lies in the Ruhr Valley, in North-Rhine Westphalia state.

Prince William gets $11m heli for his birthday

Prince William received an $11-million helicopter from his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, for his 32nd birthday today.

William, heir to the throne behind his father Prince Charles, received a 2008 Agusta A109S Grand helicopter from the British monarch. Local media identified the helicopter model.

The new helicopter will help William and his wife, Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, zip between home and official engagements, and be used to ferry other members of the Royal Family around, the Daily Mirror reports.

It says the helicopter costs will be covered by the sovereign grant, which is a sum of money the government gives to the Royal Family to help support the Queen’s official duties.

CBC News

‘Negro slaves giving America a blowjob’

A Polish news magazine has obtained a secret recording of Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski saying that Poland’s relationship with the United States was worthless.

The Wprost news magazine said the recording was of a private conversation between Sikorski and Jacek Rostowski, finance minister.

Headlines appeared, blaring: “You know that the Polish-US alliance isn’t worth anything”, also describing Warsaw’s attitude towards the United States using the Polish word “murzynskosc”.

This roughly translates as “Negro slave”.

The leak went on: “It is downright harmful, because it creates a false sense of security … Complete bullshit. We’ll get in conflict with the Germans, Russians and we’ll think that everything is super, because we gave the Americans a b***j** Losers. Complete losers.”

As The Guardian reports:

The word “murzyn,” denotes a dark-skinned person and someone who does the work for somebody else, according to the PWN Polish language dictionary.

Asked by Reuters to comment on the transcript of Sikorski’s conversation with Rostowski, foreign ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski said: “We do not comment on media speculation”.

Entire class in Sweden victims of genital mutilation

School health services in the small Swedish city of Norrköping have found 60 cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) among schoolgirls since March, with evidence of mutilation found in all 30 girls in one class, 28 of the most severe form.

In Sweden, where the EU’s Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) says that FGM “is considered to be a serious problem,” the law enables genital examination of children to be carried out without parents’ consent.

FGM has been a crime in Sweden since 1982 and can be punished by up to four years in prison, increased to 10 years if judged to be an aggravated offence.

According to EIGE, concerns about FGM became widespread in Sweden in the early and mid-1990s with the influx of Somali migrants: “The first national action taken in the field…was initiated after alarming testimonies from the healthcare sector indicating the existence of FGM among many — if not all — women that originated from FGM-practising countries.”

Now the daughters of immigrants are in danger of undergoing FGM. According to the Local, the risk of becoming a victim of the procedure increases in the summer when many schoolgirls visit their parents’ home country: “We’re working to inform parents that they could face prison if they come back and their children have undergone female genital mutilation,” said Petra Blom Andersson, student health coordinator in Norrköping.

Mutilation carried out abroad has been a crime in Sweden since 1999.
In 2013, Somalis were the third largest group granted asylum in the EU countries, according to a Eurostat figures reported yesterday by Breitbart London, with almost 10,000 granted protection. Sweden gave refugee status to 26,400 people last year, more than any other EU country. The third largest group arriving in Sweden came from Eritrea, a country in which according to a UN report FGM is illegal but widely practised, with the rate estimated at 94 per cent.

FGM is carried out in 28 countries in the world. It involves the cutting and/or the removal of the clitoris and other vaginal tissue, often under unsanitary conditions.

Source: breitbart.com

According to the European Commission, “while all EU member states have legal provisions in place to prosecute the perpetrators of FGM, either under general or specific criminal laws, prosecutions are very rare. This is due to difficulties detecting cases, gathering sufficient evidence, a reluctance to report a crime and, above all, a lack of knowledge about female genital mutilation.”

NATO: Russia funding anti-fracking groups

Russian intelligence agencies are covertly funding and working with European environmental groups to campaign against fracking and maintain EU dependence on Russian gas, the head of Nato has claimed.

Answering questions after a speech in London, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato secretary-general, said improving European energy security was of the “utmost importance” and accused Moscow of “blackmail” in its dealings with Europe.

“I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” Mr Rasmussen, former Danish prime minister, told an audience at Chatham House, the international affairs think-tank.

Mr Rasmussen did not detail the nature of his suspicions about Russian involvement with environmental groups.

The 28-nation EU bloc depends on Russia for about a third of its oil and gas needs.

Shale gas enthusiasts want curb the EU’s high dependence on Russian imports.

A Nato official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Financial Times that “some allies worry that Russia could try to obstruct possible projects on shale gas exploration in Europe in order to maintain Europe’s reliance on Russian gas.”

Royal Dutch Shell last year struck a production-sharing agreement to develop the Yuzuvska field, which spans 8,000 square kilometres in and around Donetsk.

Denis Pushilin, from the Donetsk People’s Republic organised rallies against shale gas exploration in Donetsk. In May, Mr Pushilin said the Donetsk People’s Republic had banned the extraction of shale gas in territory it controlled in eastern Ukraine.

Protests against fracking have been held in Bulgaria and Romania but green groups in both countries have angrily rejected charges that they are puppets and dismiss the idea of Russia’s influence as a conspiracy theory.

Romania’s president, Traian Basescu, suggested that Russia was playing a role in trying to thwart Chevron’s shale gas development near the village of Pungesti.

Environmentalists reject the charges and accuse the Romanian police of acting as a private security force for Chevron.

Demonstrators have vented their outrage about the danger that shale development would pose to drinking water and geological faults.

Source: FT

Gay security village planned in the Netherlands

The Netherlands ranks as one of the most gay-friendly societies in Europe.

A Dutch scheme to build a utopian gated neighbourhood exclusively for the gay community has met with mixed reactions.

The project dubbed “Gay Village” by developers aims to give members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community a prejudice-free environment with luxuries including tennis courts and a cooking school.

But opponents warn that the plan amounts to the ghettoisation of people who should be able to feel safe without hiding behind locked gates.

Developers propose turning a patch of forested land on the outskirts of Tilburg into a gated community created with input from potential residents. The average price of a home would be €250,000 (£200,000).

“We go further than just housing,” the Gay Village website says.

The motivation for the project was “discrimination and violence against members of the LGBT community”, the website said, creating the “need for a neighbourhood… which gives a greater sense of social cohesion and security”.

The Netherlands ranks as one of the most gay-friendly societies in Europe.

The plan has won the backing of Tilburg’s mayor, Peter Noordanus, who said: “A tolerant city is pleased to have a gay community within its borders.”

The developer proposing the idea has created an online survey to gauge interest from a sector of society often courted for its disposable income.

Amsterdam has a retirement home for the LGBT community and similar projects are underway in France, Spain and Sweden. The United States is already home to several communities aimed at attracting the pink pound.

Source: The Independent

‘It’s punch a black week’

The company has been systematically “ethnically cleansed” of non-white staff.

One of Britain’s largest military outsourcing contracts might be awarded to company facing charges of racism.

Sodexo, a multinational company, is the frontrunner to win a contract to run six military bases in the Mediterranean. The deal is worth up to £100m over three years.

The winner will be announced next month.

The company’s highly lucrative defence division is facing claims that its personnel department, which is meant to police employees’ behaviour, has been systematically “ethnically cleansed” of non-white staff.

An employee was actually hit by her director who said it was “punch a black week”.

Under public contracts regulations, a public body may exclude a bidder or reject a bid where it is found the organisation has “committed grave misconduct in the course of their business”.

At the defence department’s Colchester offices, one black employee complained she was told that certain rooms and corridors in the personnel department were out of bounds because they were for “whites only”. This she says was dismissed by executives as “banter”.

Black staff felt they were being labeled as “lazy”. The company is also accused, by at least one employee, of “creating and inciting a hostile climate of distrust against difference”.

In one instance, a white male executive allegedly had to remonstrate with a junior colleague who, upon the arrival of a black employee, said: “There is another black one, they are taking over.”

In October 2012 an African-Caribbean female manager was punched by a top executive of the defence division, who was a white man. When she asked why he had done this, he responded: “It’s punch a black week.”

Another two non-white female employees of the human resources department are currently taking the company to court over claims of racism and sexism.

In the first case, a black female personnel adviser claims she was ostracised by members of her team. During an investigation into homophobic bullying in June last year, it is alleged, a colleague bemoaned to her the fact he could not use the “n-word” any more for fear of offending people.

Source: The Guardian

French arms sales rise by 42%

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Lodrian said on Monday that French arms sales increased by 42 per cent or €6.7 billion in 2013 compared to 2012 and are expected to exceed seven billion Euros this year. Lodrian was speaking during the opening of the Eurosatory 2014 arms fair in the Paris suburb of Villepinte.

France recorded a strong comeback in the Middle East market, said Lodrian. The region is responsible for generating 40 per cent of France’s total exports and it has also increased its presence in the Asia and Latin America markets.

In 2013, France’s biggest contract was an agreement to renew the Saudi Arabian navy’s fleet of ships, worth €500 million; a contract to sell a communication satellite to Brazil is worth €300 million.

Source: MEMO