Written on 06 July 2015.

   Ausgerechnet in der Locris Kalabriens, im schlimmsten Herrschaftsgebiet der N'drine, der kalabrischen Mafia, beweist der Ort Riace, wie sich 400 Migranten bestens integrieren lassen und einen Bonus für die Entwicklung darstellen. Ein Video der Zeitung Il Fatto Quotidiano zeigt, wie die Zuwanderer arbeiten, verlassene Häuser restaurieren, Handwerke erlernen und die Wirtschaft beleben. 

   Übrigens, Riace ist der Ort, bei dem im Meer die berühmten Bronzekrieger aus dem 5. Jahrhundert v. C. gefunden wurden

  "Ci sono posti dove l’accoglienza dei migranti non solo funziona, ma è anche unarisorsaperilterritorio. Paesini “fantasma” se non ci fossero i “disperati” arrivati inItalia sui barconi . È il caso di Riace, nella Locride in provincia di Reggio Calabria, dove da anni i cittadini convivono con circa 400 migranti ai quali sono stati date le case abbandonate dagli italiani che si sono trasferiti al Nord."

Written on 05 July 2015.

   In an article in Breitbart, Amra Bone - the UK's only female sharia 'judge' - has stated that Muslims "cannot" be asked to have only one wife.  In other words, the law of the land should not apply to Muslims. 

   Bone goes on to say that "people have a right to decide for themselves" and in doing so, evokes the language of freedom that is so manipulated by Islamists.  One does, and should, have personal freedom in Britain, but what Islamists like Bone don't appear to understand is that this doesn't include the freedom to break or live outside of the law of the land. 

   Sharia Watch has stated many times that a parallel system of family law is alive and kicking in Britain - and much of it is at odds with the UK's laws.  Domestic violence is permitted, women have no unilateral right to divorce, and child custody is to fathers only - regardless of circumstances or the well-being of the child.  The British Government must start taking this seriously.  The sharia system in this country is being run by jihadists and Islamists, and if the Government is serious about fighting extremism, this is the place to start.  A clear message that all who live in the UK must live by the UK's laws is long overdue.

   Here is the article in full:

"Britain’s first female sharia law judge has issued a brazen warning that flies in the face of UK law, stating that the “government cannot ask Muslims not to have more than one wife”.

   The news comes on the back of a report by the Times newspaper which claims that Britain is experiencing a “surge” in Sharia marriages, as young British Muslims adopt a more hardline religious stance than their parents.

   The Times reports:

“As many as 100,000 couples are living in such marriages, which are not valid under UK law, experts said. Ministers have raised fears that women can be left without the right to a fair share of assets if the relationship ends, while others are forced to return to abusive “husbands”.”

A leading Islamic family lawyer warned that the increase in Sharia ceremonies among the 2.7 million-strong Muslim population in Britain was also behind a growth in “secret polygamy”.

“Probably a quarter of all couples I see involve polygamy issues,” Aina Khan told The Times. “There has been a huge rise in recent years because people can have a secret nikah [Islamic marriage] and no one will know about it.”

The growth in a parallel marriage system that bypassed the register office was being driven by Muslims aged below 30, who were becoming more religious, she said. Other factors include finding a way around the expectation of no sex before marriage and a fear of British family courts, which presume that assets should be split equally.

   Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, colloquially known as Sharia courts, have existed in the United Kingdom since 1996, when the Arbitration Act began to allow for different religious laws to be applied in cases such as divorce.

   While the tribunals are supposed to work within UK law, recent reports suggest that young Muslims are not registering their marriages with the government under UK civil law, instead simply using nikha ceremonies, which can lead to men having a number of wives, and none of the legal responsibility towards them usually afforded to spouses under the 1949 Marriage Act.

   Now, Amra Bone, who is the UK’s first female Sharia council judge, has said that “the government cannot — ask Muslims not to have more than one wife. People have a right to decide for themselves,” implying that British Muslims are free to operate outside UK law, as a rule unto themselves and the Sharia courts they feel are legitimate.

   Muslim women who enter into marriage in Islamic ceremonies are often duped into thinking that the marriage under Islamic law is enough to protect them under UK law. As such, they receive none of the usual protections under UK law, such as assets being divided in cases of divorce.

Sharia Watch

Written on 05 July 2015.

   Wir danken Alexis Tsipras und seinen kampfesfreudigen Genossen dafür, dass sie uns vor dem Sturz ins Sommerloch bewahrten. Was der IS nicht schaffte, Boko Haram und die Saudis in Jemen verfehlten, das gelang Tsipras mühelos: Seiten und Seiten deutscher Gazetten und Stunden deutscher TVs mit Hellenischem zu füllen. Selbst Lord Byron und den Heerscharen der Philhellenen war es nie gelungen, Hellas so tief in die deutsche Seele einzubringen. Jeder Michel weiss jetzt etwas darüber und hat eine Meinung zu der Athener Tragikomödie.

   Ein enormes Kapital für den künftigen Hellas-Tourismus. Nun will Schäuble im Einklang mit Brüssel den Frischverarmten humanitäre Hilfe (statt, wie bisher, Geldtransfers) schicken. Ein CARE-Paket für die vor Bankschaltern wartenden Rentner? 

    Der Ruf  "Adoptiere einen Griechen!" könnte die Massen der gutmenschlichen NGOs zu neuen Spendenrekorden beflügeln. Ein Wohltätigkeitsdinner mit ex-Finanzminister Varoufakis erlaubt einen direkten Blick in den Hades der trotzkistisch-anarchistischen Wirtschaftspolitik. Schauder! Ach ja, und was war mit dem Grexit?  Der ist doch längst schon passiert, am Tag, als Tsipras das Referendum ankündigte. Das war der Grexit, und keiner hat's gemerkt. Nun ist der Euro für Hellas, was der Dollar in Kuba ist: das Zahlungsmittel der Wohlhabenden. Für das Volk gilt in Kuba der Peso, in Hellas heisst die Hilfswährung erst mal "Warten!", beziehungsweise "Schlange stehen!".

   In der fernen Vergangenheit von 2010 erkannte Deutschlands führender Ökonom Hans-Werner Sinn bereits, dass für Griechenland ein Verbleib im Korsett des Euro (statt der von ihm empfohlenen Rückkehr zur Drachme) eine schreckliche Abwärtsspirale der Wirtschaft mit Massenverarmung und Unruhen auslösen würde. Prophetisch: denn genau so kam es. Damals schrieb german,pages.de, dass rund 40 Prozent des Umfangs der griechischen Wirtschaft durch das hemmungslose deficit spending griechischer Regierungen entstanden sei und abgebaut werden müsse, bevor Hellas wieder auf eigenen Beinen stehen könne.

    Seither schrumpfte das griechische  Sozialprodukt um ein ganzes Viertel. Was passiert mit den anderen 15 Prozent, die zu den gedachten 40 Prozent noch fehlen?  Ganz einfach: die hat O Kyrios Tsipras in den wenigen Monaten seiner Regierung bereits beseitigt. Schneller als Brüssel hoffen durfte, hat er die Hellenen der wohlverdienten Armut ausgesetzt, hat den riesigen Importsektor an den Abgrund des Ruins geführt, so dass von bulgarischem Käse bis zu australischem Gefrierfleisch ernste Versorgungsengpässe drohen, von Lebenswichtigem wie Medikamenten ganz zu schweigen..

   Die Griechen hätten sich einen anderen Sommer gewünscht. Noch sieht es so aus, als ob es weiter abwärts gehen werde, bevor es wieder aufwärts gehen kann. Noch stornieren viele deutsche Touristen ihre Reisepläne. Aber irgendwann werden sie dieses verrückte Land im Südosten sehen wollen. Millionen potentieller Philhellenen.

-- editor

Written on 02 July 2015.

Even as the group has publicly celebrated its work, insider accounts detail a string of failures 

   The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.

   In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.

   Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.

   The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.

   The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.

   The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

   After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern unveiled ambitious plans to “develop brand-new communities.” None has ever been built.

   Aid organizations from around the world have struggled after the earthquake in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. But ProPublica and NPR’s investigation shows that many of the Red Cross’s failings in Haiti are of its own making. They are also part of a larger pattern in which the organization has botched delivery of aid after disasters such as Superstorm Sandy. Despite its difficulties, the Red Cross remains the charity of choice for ordinary Americans and corporations alike after natural disasters.

   One issue that has hindered the Red Cross’ work in Haiti is an overreliance on foreigners who could not speak French or Creole, current and former employees say.

   In a blistering 2011 memo, the then-director of the Haiti program, Judith St. Fort, wrote that the group was failing in Haiti and that senior managers had made “very disturbing” remarks disparaging Haitian employees. St. Fort, who is Haitian American, wrote that the comments included, “he is the only hard working one among them” and “the ones that we have hired are not strong so we probably should not pay close attention to Haitian CVs.”

   The Red Cross won’t disclose details of how it has spent the hundreds of millions of dollars donated for Haiti. But our reporting shows that less money reached those in need than the Red Cross has said.

   Lacking the expertise to mount its own projects, the Red Cross ended up giving much of the money to other groups to do the work. Those groups took out a piece of every dollar to cover overhead and management. Even on the projects done by others, the Red Cross had its own significant expenses – in one case, adding up to a third of the project’s budget.

Where did the half billion raised for Haiti go? The Red Cross won’t say.

 

In statements, the Red Cross cited the challenges all groups have faced in post-quake Haiti, including the country’s dysfunctional land title system.

   “Like many humanitarian organizations responding in Haiti, the American Red Cross met complications in relation to government coordination delays, disputes over land ownership, delays at Haitian customs, challenges finding qualified staff who were in short supply and high demand, and the cholera outbreak, among other challenges,” the charity said.

   The group said it responded quickly to internal concerns, including hiring an expert to train staff on cultural competency after St. Fort’s memo. While the group won’t provide a breakdown of its projects, the Red Cross said it has done more than 100. The projects include repairing 4,000 homes, giving several thousand families temporary shelters, donating $44 million for food after the earthquake, and helping fund the construction of a hospital.

   “Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross,” McGovern wrote in a recent report marking the fifth anniversary of the earthquake.

   In other promotional materials, the Red Cross said it has helped “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet.”

   It has not provided details to back up the claim. And Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister at the time of the earthquake, doubts the figure, pointing out the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.

   “No, no,” Bellerive said of the Red Cross’ claim, “it’s not possible.”

Justin Elliott -- ProPublica,  Laura Sullivan -- NPR

See the full report here

Update

Sen. Charles Grassley is demanding the American Red Cross explain how it spent nearly half a billion dollars raised after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. In a letter to Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern, the Iowa Republican gave the venerated charity until July 22 to answer 17 detailed questions, many of which it has never addressed publicly.

by Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Laura Sullivan, NPR