Written by Police in London have been accused of excessive force in their efforts to clear out Occupy demonstrators. Protesters stood together last night as officers broke down the doors to their camps. RT’s Laura Smith has more on the London based battle between occupiers and officers.
Posts in category UK & Europe
‘I’m going to destroy America and dig up Marilyn Monroe’: British pair arrested in U.S. on terror charges over Twitter jokes
Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.
The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America’.
EU Imposes Oil Embargo In Iran Nuclear Row
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — European Union foreign ministers agreed to ban oil imports from Iran starting July 1 as part of measures to ratchet up the pressure on the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear program, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said.
“As of July 1, we have a ban on the import of oil and oil products from Iran,” Rosenthal said in Brussels today. He said the EU was looking at ways to help limit damage from the ban on countries like Greece that are dependent on the oil imports from Iran and that possible “compensation” would have to be decided before the full ban comes into force.
Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf passageway for about 20 percent of globally traded oil, if the EU and the U.S. impose stricter sanctions. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait ship crude and liquefied natural gas through the strait.
“We can keep the Strait of Hormuz open and we will do what is necessary to achieve that,” Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in a BBC Radio 4 interview today.
Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ coming back to Germany
BERLIN – Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” banned from German bookstores, will soon be available from newspaper kiosks after a British publisher said he would print excerpts from the text in Germany.
But the state of Bavaria, which owns the copyrights to the Nazi vision of Aryan racial supremacy, said it was considering legal steps to block publication.
Reprinting the Nazi dictator’s autobiography, which outlines his ambitions to seize vast areas of land in eastern Europe to provide living space for the so-called master race, is outlawed in Germany except for academic study.
The first of three 16-page extracts from the book, accompanied by a critical commentary, will be published later this month with a print run of 100,000 each, Peter McGee, head of London-based publishing firm Albertas Ltd told Reuters.
“It is a sensitive subject in Germany but the incredible thing is most Germans don’t have access to ‘Mein Kampf’ because it has this taboo, this ‘black magic’ surrounding it,” he said.
“We want ‘Mein Kampf’ to be accessible so people can see it for what it is, and then discard it. Once exposed, it can be consigned to the dustbin of literature,” he said.
Nazi-hunters mount ‘Operation Last Chance’ to round up surviving war criminals before they all die
Nazi hunters have embarked upon one final swoop for remaining Third Reich criminals who worked as extermination camp guards or as executioners in mobile death squads during WW2.
Israel’s Simon Wiesenthal Centre – bouyed by the conviction in Germany this year of S.S. volunteer John Demjanjuk for his role in the murders of nearly 29,000 Dutch Jews – believes there is now a will among nations to call the guilty still living free to account.
‘Operation Last Chance 2′ will be formally launched in Germany next week.
Speaking from Israel Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, said: ‘We will offer rewards for clues to persons who worked in either the extermination camps or in the Action Squads.’
The Action Squads, or einsatzgruppen, were responsible for the shooting deaths of some 1.5 million Russian and and Baltic Jews before the static murder factories like Treblinka and Auschwitz were built in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Mr Zuroff said it was the conviction of Demjanjuk which had spurred his organisation into the last appeal for help in bringing those mass killers still alive to justice.
Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who became an American citizen in the 1950′s, was found guilty of being a guard at the Sobibor death camp, where 250,000 Jews were put to death.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2074088/Last-chance-bid-famous-nazi-hunting-centre-round-surviving-war-criminals.html#ixzz1gY4tf6kG
Deadly attack rocks central Liege in Belgium
A gun and grenade attack in the centre of the Belgian city of Liege has killed at least two people and wounded about 25 including a toddler, media say.
Witnesses say a man in his 40s threw grenades at a bus stop in Place Saint Lambert, a busy square. At least one other man is thought to be involved.
Reports say one of the attackers is among the dead.
Local media said one man had been seized by police, while another took refuge in the nearby Palace of Justice.
Stalin’s daughter Lana Peters dies in US of cancer
The only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has died of colon cancer in a US care home, aged 85.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, also known as Lana Peters, passed away in the state of Wisconsin on 22 November, US officials have confirmed to BBC Russian.
Her defection from the Soviet Union in 1967 was a propaganda coup for the US. She wrote four books, including two best-selling memoirs.
But she said she could not escape the shadow of her father.
Russian newsreader Tatyana Limanova makes insulting gesture at Obama
Online footage of the incident, which occurred earlier this month during an afternoon news bulletin on the privately held REN TV channel, is being avidly viewed in both Russia and the United States.
In the footage, Tatyana Limanova, an award-winning senior newsreader at the channel, can be seen briskly reading out an item about how Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has just assumed the rotating chairmanship of the Asia Pacific Cooperation organisation.
She is then heard to say that the post “has (previously) been held by Barack Obama” before mechanically and unambiguously raising her left arm and showing the camera her raised middle finger in an offensive gesture that is sometimes known as “flipping the bird.”
The channel, which goes out to 120 million people across Russia, has declined to comment. But sources close to it have tried to defuse the row by claiming that the newsreader had believed she was off camera at the time and merely providing a voice-over for a report. According to the same storyline, the rude gesture was intended for studio technicians who had been trying to put her off her stride.
REN TV has traditionally been perceived as a more liberal channel in a country where TV content is tightly controlled by the state. But it is now controlled by structures owned by a close ally of Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and has been criticised for allegedly becoming more slavish to the Kremlin.
Met accused of trying to scare off protesters with warning letter
Police have sent hundreds of letters to anti-cuts activists warning them of the consequences of attending a 10,000-strong student demonstration in central London on Wednesday.
The letters have been sent to anyone arrested in connection with previous public disorder offences even if they were later cleared or charges were dropped.
The police have admitted the names and addresses come from a database of those arrested during anti-austerity protests. They include protesters aged 17.
At a briefing on Monday, Metropolitan police officials said letters would only be sent to those who had been convicted of offences. But on Tuesday the force confirmed that anyone who had been arrested in the past year in relation to an “austerity related” protest had been sent the warning.
The letter, which arrived on Tuesday, reads: “It is in the public and your own interest that you do not involve yourself in any type of criminal or antisocial behaviour. We have a responsibility to deliver a safe protest which protects residents, tourists, commuters, protesters and the wider community. Should you do so we will at the earliest opportunity arrest and place you before the court.”
Signed by Simon Pountain, the Met commander leading Wednesday’s operations, the letter goes on to warn of the detrimental effects of conviction on their chances of employment and says that if people find themselves near disorder they should move away at the earliest opportunity.
Sausage The Crazy Rioting Dog
Sausage the dog likes to be in on the action.
Festering anger, Nazi war crimes and the £60bn the Greeks believe the Germans owe them
The SS indulged their bloodlust on men, women and children alike. While homes and shops blazed around them like some hellish inferno, women were violated and those who were pregnant were stabbed in the guts. Small babies were bayoneted in their cribs. The village priest was beheaded.
By the time Hitler’s men had left the Greek village of Distomo near the ancient town of Delphi on that bloody day in June 1944, 218 people were dead.
The Waffen-SS was pleased with its work: the local partisans who had dared to attack a German unit had been taught a bitter lesson in revenge.
The slaughter at Distomo was such an outrage that, in 2003, even a German Federal Court judge described it as ‘one of the most despicable crimes of World War II’.
But he refused to grant the families of the victims any compensation for their suffering, and not a single German soldier was ever punished for what he and his comrades had done.
The Distomo massacre is just one example of the terrible suffering endured by the people of Greece during World War II and, some would say, of the German government’s reluctance to pay for the crimes committed against the Greeks in their nation’s name.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056400/Greece-debt-crisis-Greeks-believe-Germans-owe-60bn.html#ixzz1cYMa3hnh
Assange loses fight against extradition
London (CNN) — WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange lost a court battle to stay in the United Kingdom Wednesday and will be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over sex charges, a court ruled.
Appeals court judges Lord Justice John Thomas and Justice Duncan Ouseley rejected all four of the arguments Assange’s defense team used to fight the extradition.
They will hold another hearing later this month to determine whether he can appeal.
Assange, who has been under house arrest for nearly a year while waiting to find out the results, said Wednesday he will now consider his next steps.
“I have not been charged with any crime in any country,” he said on the steps of the High Court in London. “Despite this, the European arrest warrant is so restrictive that it prevents UK courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today.”
US taxpayers could be on hook for Europe bailout
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer
The U.S. is coming to Europe’s financial rescue.
So far, America’s role is fairly limited. But if the crisis continues to grow and the U.S. takes on a wider role, U.S. consumers and taxpayers could feel a bigger impact. The biggest exposure could come from America’s status as the single largest source of money for the International Monetary Fund.
The latest round of American financial assistance came Thursday with a promise by the Federal Reserve to swap as many dollars for euros as European bankers need. In the short run, those transactions won’t have much impact because the central banks are simply swapping currencies of equal value. If the move helps avert a wider crisis, it could help spare the global economy from another recession.
But over the long term, consumers could feel the impact of central bankers flooding the financial system with cash, according to John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics.
“This is a lender of last resort function,” he told CNBC. “With the dollar injections that the Fed has done, it’s like giving a patient medicine with really bad side effects.” Ryding said the bad side effect in the U.S. has been inflation, which has picked up to 3.8 percent year over year.
Turkish PM Erdogan pushes Palestinian statehood
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that recognition of a Palestinian state is an obligation not an option.
He told the Arab League that before the year’s end “we will see Palestine in a very different situation”.
Mr Erdogan made a new attack on Israel, saying its government’s mentality was a barrier to peace in the Middle East.
The Palestinians are currently preparing a bid for United Nations membership despite Israeli and US opposition.
Mr Erdogan is in Egypt as part of a tour of three Arab states that recently ousted their leaders, in an attempt to improve Turkey’s standing in the region.
Turkey’s relations with Israel have worsened since Israeli forces boarded an aid ship in May last year as it was heading for Gaza.
Nine Turkish activists were killed during the raid. Israel has refused to apologise and said its troops acted in self-defence.
