Research News: COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.
Robert Davis
In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.
Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Les mer researchnews.osu.edu
Telegraph: Led by an orchestra, the first-ever blonde parade featured women dressed in pink and white, some accompanied by lapdogs, in a charity fund-raising event that organisers hope will become an annual event.
“I’m not stupid. I’m beautiful and I’ll prove it,” Ilona Zigure, a participant, said.
Organisers said they were determined to bring positive energy to their country, expected to see its economy contract by 16 per cent this year.
The parade was part of a “Blonde Weekend”
Read more telegraph.co.uk
Kent News: MPs have welcomed a move by the United Nations set up an office in Calias in an attempt to cut the number of illegal immigrants trying to get into Britain.
Thousands of migrants are living in makeshift accommodation in the French town before trying to get onto lorries entering the UK via Kent, mainly through Dover.
The undocumented immigrants will be told that if they wish, they can attempt to claim refugee status in France instead.
Read more kentnews.co.uk
Guardian: Most 18-24-year-olds believe their living standards will not return to pre-recession levels for more than a decade, a report has revealed, forcing the next generation to rethink their spending habits.
The Post Office Financial Services report found that nearly 50% of the young people surveyed believe they will reduce their use of credit as a result of the crunch.
More then 500 blondes will participate in a parade in Latvia’s capital Riga on Sunday the 31st of May 2009. Women want to cheer up the residents of Latvia, depressed because of the financial crisis in the country.
- Our economical situation is so bad now that we need this type of parades, said Marika Gidere, the leader of Latvian Blondes Association.
- People are depressed and we need more positive feelings. Such parade is nice and pleasing to the eye. We are quite sure that blondes put everybody in a cheerful mood - said Gidere.
The parade starts series of events in the first in Latvia’s history Week of the Blondes, which has as an aim to venerate a unique beauty of blondes.
EuropeanVoice: Ethnic or religious profiling has increased sharply since 2001 but has failed to lead to any conviction for terrorism.
The EU should outlaw the police practice of stopping and searching people based on their ethnicity or religion, says a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human-rights group.
Ethnic profiling, as the practice is known, has grown “sharply” since the 11 September attacks on the US but has been ineffective in stopping crime or preventing terrorism, the report says.
In the UK, police conducted three times as many stops and searches of British Asians after 2001 and five times as many after the July 2005 London attacks. In Germany, police have carried out mass identity checks outside mosques in major cities, while raids on homes, businesses and mosques in France and Italy have targeted Muslims.
Although President Obama has spent much of his time in office moving away from the policies of his predecessor, on immigration enforcement, he has embraced several Bush administration initiatives, and the changes he has promised to make are couched in nuance.
In recent days, for example, the administration has announced it will expand a $1.1 billion program begun under President George W. Bush to check the immigration status of virtually all people booked into local jails over the next four years.
Read more washingtonpost.com
July 4th, 2009
Spiegiel: Cattle cloning has long been standard practice in the United States. Now EU agriculture ministers have decided that cloned meat and milk should be allowed onto the European market. Not everyone is pleased.
Anyone who considers creation sacred should make sure they never talk to a cattle breeder. In-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and embryo transfer [...]
July 3rd, 2009
Daily Mail: Britain’s violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today.
Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
The figures comes on [...]
July 2nd, 2009
“Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and other countries have so far resisted giving restitution of heirless property, citing laws stating it belongs to the state. But Jewish delegates said the Holocaust was a unique occurrence beyond normal legal provisions.”
Haaretz: East European nations yesterday stated for the first time that heirless Jewish property should be used to aid [...]
July 1st, 2009
The Jerusalem Post: In a sign of growing concern in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government over US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies, Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled proposed Israeli sanctions on the US in a letter to cabinet ministers on Sunday.
In the 11-page letter, obtained by The Jerusalem Post from a minister on Monday, Peled recommends [...]
June 30th, 2009
Guardian: Senior prosecutors are calling for the laws on race hate crimes to be strengthened to counter the threat posed by the British National party.
The threshold for securing a conviction is so high that far-right activists are able to evade prosecution for material that many people would consider to be threatening and racist, according to [...]
June 29th, 2009
Telegraph: Britain is no longer a Christian nation and the Church of England could die out within a generation, an Anglican bishop has warned.
The Rt Rev Paul Richardson said declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that “Christian Britain is dead“.
He criticised his fellow bishops for failing to appreciate the scale of the [...]
June 28th, 2009
EJP: Lithuania is to delay payments froms a compensation fund for Jewish property seized by the Nazis during World War II and kept by the state in the Soviet era, a government spokesman said Monday.
“The government has decided that compensation payouts will begin in 2012, because of the economic crisis, and will continue for 10 [...]
June 27th, 2009
EUObserver: The Czech social democrat party is discussing the possibility of suspending president Vaclav Klaus’ powers if he does not sign the EU’s Lisbon treaty.
The temporary suspension would require a simple majority of 41 votes in the country’s 81-seat senate and would allow caretaker prime minister Jan Fischer to sign the document instead.
Social democrat senator [...]
June 25th, 2009
Haaretz: A sad fate awaits a towering tree believed to have been Adolf Hitler’s gift to the occupied town of Jaslo - planted to the sound of a Nazi band during World War II.
Town authorities now want it cut down and burned to make way for a new roundabout. But some residents have become attached [...]
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Harvest of Despair - Hungerholocaust in Ukraine
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Research News: COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.
Kent News: MPs have welcomed a move by the United Nations set up an office in Calias in an attempt to cut the number of illegal immigrants trying to get into Britain.
Guardian: Most 18-24-year-olds believe their living standards will not return to pre-recession levels for more than a decade, a report has revealed, forcing the next generation to rethink their spending habits.
More then 500 blondes will participate in a parade in Latvia’s capital Riga on Sunday the 31st of May 2009. Women want to cheer up the residents of Latvia, depressed because of the financial crisis in the country.
EuropeanVoice: Ethnic or religious profiling has increased sharply since 2001 but has failed to lead to any conviction for terrorism.
The Washington Post: By Spencer S. Hsu