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Germany Prepares to Open Doors to Foreign Professionals


The Local
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:24 UTC
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© unknown
German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan said on Tuesday the government would soon ease restrictions on foreign doctors, engineers and other professionals in a bid to plug a yawning gap in the labour market of Europe's top economy.

Schavan told the daily Passauer Neue Presse that the centre-right coalition would this week approve a draft law aimed at attracting thousands of professionals from abroad.

"We agree that the complicated rules of preference (stipulating that jobs must go to Germans first) for engineers as well as doctors must be eliminated," said Schavan, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats.

"In future, it will no longer have to be proved that no applicant from Germany or the European Union could be found."

Currently employers seeking to hire foreign professionals must undergo a review by the local labour office to determine whether a German was available to fill the job.

Schavan said Berlin would hack away at red tape for sectors in particular need of qualified employees and improve opportunities for foreigners already living in Germany.
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Vader

Obama Orders Rapid Drawdown of U.S. Troops from Afghanistan

David S. Cloud and Christi Parsons
Los Angeles Times
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 11:21 UTC
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© Pablo Martinez Monsivais / BloombergPresident Obama announces his plan for winding down U.S. involvement in Afghanistan during a nationally televised speech at the White House.
Citing success in the war against insurgents over the last two years, he calls for 33,000 'surge' troops to begin coming home and says it's time for America to take a more 'pragmatic' approach to military intervention.

Declaring that the "tide of war is receding," President Obama ordered a rapid withdrawal of the 33,000 "surge" troops he sent to Afghanistan and charted a path toward ending large-scale U.S. combat operations in Central Asia.

In a nationally televised address Wednesday evening, Obama took care to emphasize what he sees as the successes of the last two years in Afghanistan, saying he was beginning to draw down the number of U.S. troops "from a position of strength" after an intensive counterinsurgency effort.

"We have put Al Qaeda on a path to defeat," he said, prominently citing the killing of the terrorist network's leader, Osama bin Laden.

And while he briefly acknowledged the reality that U.S. troops would be fighting in Afghanistan for at least another three years and that "huge challenges remain," Obama's emphasis was on a door closing on a decade of war.

"It is time to focus on nation-building here at home," the president said. "These long wars will come to a responsible end."

Obama also sought to draw a larger lesson from the last 10 years of U.S. warfare in the Middle East and Central Asia, saying the country needs to "chart a more centered course" between "an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face" and the urge to "overextend ourselves, confronting every evil that can be found abroad."
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Shoe

Julian Assange's New Legal Strategy

Tom Hayden
The Nation
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
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© APWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen at the house where he is required to stay in, near Bungay, England, Wednesday, June 15, 2011. Assange says his house arrest over sex allegations is hampering the work of the secret-spilling site, and his supporters accuse Britain of spying on him. The 39-year-old Australian has spent six months at a supporter's rural estate as he fights extradition to Sweden, where he is accused of the rape and sexual assault of two women.
Julian Assange has chosen a new legal team to represent him in his quest to prevent extradition from London to Sweden, where authorities are seeking to interview him in a sexual assault case involving two Swedish women.

Until now, the Assange defense team has disparaged the Swedish assault charges and suggested that once in Swedish hands, the WikiLeaks founder might face extradition to the United States on conspiracy charges carrying a life sentence.

Extensive interviews I conducted last week revealed that the previous Assange legal team had created puzzlement, loss of confidence and even antagonism in Sweden by their attacks on Swedish justice. Though a reasonable paranoia is understandable from the Assange team and from Assange himself, given the calls for the death penalty (by Mike Huckabee) or that he be "hunted down like al Qaeda" (Sarah Palin), not to mention previous renditions of two terrorism suspects from Sweden by the CIA in 2004, the legal strategy has backfired by alienating not only mainstream Swedish opinion but also some among the left and in the peace movement.

The new solicitor on the case is Gareth Peirce, a renowned British human rights advocate who has defended Guantánamo detainees and Irish republicans in previous decades. The barrister who will present Assange's case in the appellate hearing set for July 12 is Ben Emmerson, also a respected human rights attorney who has served as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism.
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Handcuffs

US: Woman Arrested for Filming Police from Home


RT.com
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:35 UTC
A Rochester, NY woman is facing misdemeanor charges after police arrested her for filming a routine traffic stop from her front lawn.

Emily Good began recording officers on her iPhone outside her home after they pulled a man over shortly before 10 p.m. on May 12. Ryan Acuff, a friend of Good, writes that cops stopped a young black male, handcuffed him and detained him in their cruiser while they searched his car for drugs. While the suspect was released, Good wasn't quite as fortunate.

A police report says Officer Mario Masic of the Rochester Police Department is the individual that told Good she had to retreat into her house after he noticed her filming.

Masic asks, "You guys need something?" to which Good responds, "I'm just - this is my front yard - I'm just recording what you're doing. It's my right."

"Actually, not from the sidewalk," replies Masic.

While Good tells the officer that she has the right to record from her front yard, Masic tells her that he doesn't "feel safe" with her there. The woman responds by pointing out that she is nowhere near him and clearly doesn't have a weapon.

Masic alleges on tape that Good and her friend made an "anti-cop" statement before the recording began, but Good, her friend and their neighbors have since disputed that.

"I think, uh, you need to go stay in your house, guys," says Masic.

Good and Masic argue over if she is actually doing anything wrong - or threatening her safety - until the officer comes onto her property and says, "You know what, you're gonna go to jail. That's just not right."
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Attention

Germany: Women Playing Bigger Role Among Far-Right Extremists


The Local
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 02:45 UTC
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© unknown
What does a Neo-Nazi look like? One's typical stereotype might be of a jackbooted skinhead. But increasing numbers of active right-wing extremists in Germany are actually women, experts say.

Although there are no definitive numbers, up to one-fifth of participants in the far-right scene are female, said Andrea Röpke, who recently released the book Mädelsache! (Girl Thing!) on the topic.

"You can assume that the proportion of women in the right-wing extremist scene is rising," said. "In Berlin and Brandenburg the proportion of women is very, very high."

Röpke said women were valued because they provide stability and a sense of calm to an often violent and virulently xenophobic scene. Often they play the role of organizing less threatening events such as football tournaments of children's parties.

In politics they often try to project a sense of reasonableness by concentrating on social or green issues.

"The women stabilize the scene in the background," she said. "They call themselves the 'community anchor.'"

But though women play a valuable role, it doesn't mean they seen as equal with men. In fact, the opposite is often true and women must hold their tongues in order to be accepted.
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Camera

Mysteries of a Nazi Photo Album

David W. Dunlap
The New York Times
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:00 UTC
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© private collection via The New York TimesPage 12: Adolf Hitler, persumably waiting for the arrival of Adm. Miklos Horthy, the regent of Hungary.
Readers of Lens and EinesTages quickly figured out that the photographer was Franz Krieger. ("World War II Mystery Solved in a Few Hours.") And that his wife and children did not survive the war.

There are certainly many photo albums of Nazi leaders and many photo albums of the Nazis' victims. But it's hard to imagine many albums depicting both, just a few pages apart.

At least one does, however, and it has surfaced in New York City. Its creator was able - apparently within weeks - to photograph Hitler as he warred on Russia and also to photograph some of the earliest victims of that brutal campaign, known as Operation Barbarossa, which began 70 years ago Wednesday.

Two pages in this album, on the Eastern Front in 1941, are devoted to prisoners. Some are dressed in rags, some dressed in uniforms of the Red Army, some wearing jackets with Star of David patches. They stand before what might be freshly dug graves. (Their own? Their landsmen?) In six almost intimate pictures, verging on portraiture, men gaze hollowly or defiantly at the camera.

Four pages later, there is Hitler himself, waiting at a train station for the arrival of Adm. Miklos Horthy, the regent of Hungary, with whom he will shortly be bargaining at the East Prussian war headquarters known as the Wolf's Lair. The photographer stands just a few feet from Hitler, almost as close to the Führer as he stood to the Führer's prisoners.

Clearly, this photographer had a lot of access - and not a little talent.
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Evil Rays

SOTT Focus: Wikileaks and the War for your Mind

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:27 UTC
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In November 2008, current advisor to President Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, described to a group of British political and corporate elite two very basic transforming developments that he believes are occurring on the world scene:

"The first change concerns the surfacing of global issues pertaining to human well being as critical international issues such as climate, environment, starvation, health and social inequality. The second change concerns a global political awakening."

Brezezinski described this second change as "a truly transformative event on the global scene". He said that: "for the first time in all of human history, almost all of mankind is politically awake, activated, politically conscious and interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity here or there in the remotest corners of the world which are not politically alert and interacted with the political turmoil and stirrings and aspirations around the world. And all of that is creating a world wide surge for the worldwide surge for personal dignity and cultural respect in a diversified world."

To an audience in the US he described the global 'terror threat' in this way:
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Bad Guys

Israeli undercover agents boast of killing Palestinians on TV


Ma'an News Agency
Sun, 19 Jun 2011 08:38 UTC
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© Unknown
Undercover Israeli intelligence officers appeared on national television Saturday to talk about assassinating Palestinians in a program broadcast on Israel's Channel 10.

Oren Beaton presented a photo album of Palestinians he killed during his time as a commander of an undercover Israeli unit operating in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Beaton explained that he kept photos of his victims.

"This is a photo of a Palestinian young man called Basim Subeih who I killed. This is another young man. I shredded his body, and the photo shows the remnants of his body," he said.
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Health

US: Millions of Middle-Class People Could Get Medicaid

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
MSNBC
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 03:35 UTC
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© Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty ImagesU.S. President Barack Obama, surrounded by lawmakers, signs the healthcare insurance reform legislation during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 23, 2010.

'The fact that this is being discovered now tells you, what else is baked into this law?' former GOP governor says

President Barack Obama's health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.

The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.

After initially downplaying any concern, the Obama administration said late Tuesday it would look for a fix.

Up to 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That's because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility.

It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps.
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Cell Phone

Israel Asks Apple to Remove Intifada Phone App


Reuters
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:55 UTC
iphone
© Unknown
  • App gives details of protests, links to news
  • Facebook removed similar page-minister
An Israeli minister has asked Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to remove an Arabic-language application from its iTunes store that calls for a Palestinian uprising.

In a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli-Yoel Edelstein said the application "ThirdIntifada" -- a reference to a future Palestinian uprising

-- passed on information about protests, some violent, planned -- passed on information about protests, some violent, planned against Israel.

"I am convinced that you are aware of this type of application's ability to unite many toward an objective that could be disastrous," Edelstein wrote in the letter seen by Reuters.
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