EJP: Switzerland’s biggest Jewish groups said Wednesday that a far-right push to ban the construction of minarets here was a “threat” to religious harmony and hindered the integration of Muslims.
“The referendum infringes religious freedom, a concept enshrined in the constitution,” said the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities and the Platform of Liberal Jews in Switzerland in a statement.
It “also poses a threat to peaceful relations between the religions and inhibits the integration endeavours of Muslims in Switzerland,” they added.

Swiss voters are to decide during a referendum on November 29 whether to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland, a proposal launched by right-wing groups and backed by the country’s biggest political party, the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP).
The two Jewish groups said they “take seriously the fears of the population that extremist ideas could be disseminated in Switzerland.”

“But banning minarets is no solution — it only creates in Muslims in Switzerland a sense of alienation and discrimination,” they said.
The Swiss government and all the other major political parties are recommending a ‘no’ vote. In a historic move, local Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have also joined forces to reject a ban on minarets.
In September, the Roman Catholic community joined in the call urging voters
to reject the ban.

Islam is the second largest religion in Switzerland after Christianity with 310,000 followers out of a population of 7.5 million. Four minarets have been built and the construction of a fifth is planned.

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EUObserver: Czech President Vaclav Klaus has finally signed the Lisbon Treaty, ending a highly drawn out ratification process that left many wondering whether the document’s provisions would ever see the light of day.

“I signed the Lisbon Treaty today at 15.00 (CET),” Klaus told reporters on Tuesday (3 November).

His signature, the last of EU leaders, follows on from a Czech constitutional court decision early on Tuesday morning that ruled in favour of the Lisbon Treaty’s compatibility with the Czech constitution.

“It’s now absolutely clear that the Lisbon Treaty will enter into force soon,” said European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso upon hearing the news.

Swedish prime minister and current EU president Fredrik Reinfeldt also sought to draw a line under the process.

“His signature ends a far too long period of institutional focus within the EU. It opens up for a more democratic, transparent and efficient Union,” he said.

Welcoming the news, European parliament president Jerzy Buzek said his institution was now ready to swing into action to get a new commission up and running.

“We need a new and strong European Commission in place as soon as possible. The European Parliament will be ready as of the 25 November to start the hearings of the new commissioners- designate,” he said.

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Commodity Online: Best-selling author Daniel Estulin states that the key issue to be discussed this week at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, being held in St. Andrews, Scotland, is how to bring down the present world financial system through dumping the US dollar. Estulin first reported on this initiative as being deliberated at the most recent Bilderberg meeting held in Greece in May 2009. Estulin says that the success or failure of this callous plan hinges on the ability of the US and UK representatives to convince the Russian, the Chinese and other national governments to go along with their scheme.

Estulin maintains that if the co-conspirators succeed, such sudden devaluation of the US dollar would result in the sinking of the world economy through a chain-reaction collapse of the entire world’s financial system. As discussed during the Bilderberg Group’s super-secret conclave back in May, this breakdown would then be used as an excuse to launch a new world monetary system. G20 leaders are aware that those who run the monetary markets, the monetary system, control the world. That is why today, the world is run through a dominant one-currency monetary system and not by national credit systems.

A severe breakdown crisis would affect every corner of the world and be a prelude to instability, wars and general hostility along financial, geographical and geopolitical lines, affecting not only particular countries but also societies, cultures and whole continents. Such a breakdown could result in a consolidation of the world’s monetary system.

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The Local: Being billed as the most comprehensive exhibition about the Vandal civilisation ever, a new show about the notorious Germanic tribe opens on Friday at Baden’s state museum in Karlsruhe.

The word “vandal” these days is associated with acts of senseless violence and destruction. However, this new exhibition explores the history behind the actual Vandals, a Germanic civilisation that stretched across Eastern Europe to North Africa in the 5th century. “The Vandal Kingdom” hopes to offer visitors a new perspective on this unfamiliar culture and infamous word.

Curator Astrid Wenzel said the show in Karlsruhe is the first of its kind. “Throughout the world, there has never been such an exhibition about the Vandals,” said Wenzel, who is an archaeologist. The museum employed a ten-strong team to prepare the unique items sent from Tunisia, Algeria, Italy, Spain and the United States.

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Forskning.no: En gang for drøyt 50 millioner år siden vokste det palmer i Arktis, viser ny forskning. Funnet avslører samtidig at klimamodellene kan ha alvorlige mangler.

– Arktis må ha hatt en vegetasjon som er svært lik den vi ser i delstaten Florida i USA nå, sier Appy Sluijs ved Universiteit Utrecht i Nederland.

Han har stått i spissen for et lag med forskere som har undersøkt sedimenter fra havbunnen i Arktis om lag 500 kilometer fra Nordpolen. I sedimentene fant de spor av palmer som må ha levd for 53,5 millioner år siden.

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Italia skal kaste på skraphaugen 1679 år av sin kultur ifølge den guddommelige Europeiske menneskerettighets- domstol.

Dagbladet: Den europeiske menneskerettighetsdomstolen mener Italia bryter menneskerettighetene ved å ha krusifikser hengende i klasserommene. Dommen har skapt furore i Italia.

Ifølge en lov fra 1920-årene skal det henge krusifikser på italienske skoler, men Den europeiske menneskerettighetsdomstolen (EMD) har nå avsagt sin dom over praksisen.
- Tradisjoner

EMD mener krusifiksene på klasseromsveggene innebærer et brudd med skolebarnas religionsfrihet.

Italienske myndigheter sier på sin side at krusifikset ikke er et tegn på katolsk tro, men noe som representerer italienske tradisjoner.

- Ingen, og i hvert fall ikke en ideologisk europeisk domstol, vil lykkes med å utslette vår identitet, sier utdanningsminister Mariastella Gelmini. Italia vil anke dommen fra EMD.

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The Occidental Observer: Morphine is said to be good for people subject to severe depressions, or even pessimism. Although the drug first surfaced in a laboratory at the end of the 19th century, its basis, opium, had been used earlier by many aristocratic and revolutionary nationalist thinkers. A young and secretive German romantic, Novalis, enjoyed eating and smoking opium juice, probably because he had always yearned to alleviate his nostalgia for death. Probably in order to write his poem Sehnsucht nach dem Tode (“Nostalgia of Death”). Early poets of Romanticism turned inward to their irrational feelings, shrouding themselves in the pensive loneliness which opiates endlessly offer.

Revolutionary-Conservative, Anarcho–Nationalist Aesthetics
Once upon a distant time we met Homer’s Odysseus, who was frequently nagged by the childish behavior of his pesky sailors. Somewhere along the shores of northern Africa, Odysseus had strayed away into the mythical land of the lotus flower. As soon as his sailors began to eat the lotus plant, they sank into forgetfulness, and immediately forgot their history and their homeland. It was with great pain that Odysseus succeeded in extracting them from artificial paradises. What can be worse for White race or than to erase its past and lose its collective memory?

The escape from industrial reality and the maddening crowd was one of the main motives for drug use among some revolutionary conservative poets and thinkers, who could not face the onset of liberal mass society. The advent of early liberalism and socialism was accompanied not only by factory chimneys, but also by loneliness, decay, and decadence. The young English Tory Thomas De Quincey, in his essay Confessions of an English Opium Eater, relates his Soho escapades with a poor prostitute Anna, as well as his spiritual journeys in the aftertaste of opium. De Quincey has a feeling that one life-minute lasts a century, finally putting an end to the reckless flow of time.

The mystique of opium was also grasped by the mid-19th-century French symbolist and greatest poet of all time, Charles Baudelaire. He continued the aristo-nihilistic-revolutionary-conservative tradition of dope indulgence via the water pipe, i.e., the Pakistani hookah. Similar to the lonely albatross, Baudelaire observes the decaying France in which the steamroller of coming liberalism mercilessly crushes all aesthetics and all poetics.

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U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Outpouring of Skeptical Scientists Continues as 59 Scientists Added to Senate Report

Fifty-nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists – a dramatic increase from the original 650 scientists featured in the initial December 11, 2008 release. The 59 additional scientists added to the 255-page Senate Minority report since the initial release 13 ½ weeks ago represents an average of over four skeptical scientists a week. This updated report – which includes yet another former UN IPCC scientist – represents an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial report’s release in December 2007.

The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. The 59 additional scientists hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, Canada, Netherlands, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA.

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Euroactiv: On Saturday (24 October) an ‘Alliance of European Nationalist Movements’ was established in Budapest, during the 6th Congress of Jobbik, a Hungarian extreme-right party. Five other extreme-right parties signed a common declaration: France’s Front National, Italy’s Fiamma Tricolore, Sweden’s National Democrats and Belgium’s Walloon National Front. The British National Party (BNP), which did not attend the launch, also supports the new grouping, Jobbik representatives said.

The main objectives of the new group, according to its representatives, are the preservation of indigenous traditional values and the protection of Europe from immigrants, as well as from “religious, political, economic and financial imperialism”.

In the nine-point declaration, extreme-right parties emphasised that for them, Euroscepticism does not necessarily mean the rejection of the EU. However, they state that they cannot accept the Lisbon Treaty, because it aims to establish a “United States of Europe”.

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The Local: Stockholm-area police arrested nine left-wing activists on Wednesday in connection with a string of disturbances in the southern suburb of Fittja in Botkyrka.

For several nights earlier in the week, Fittja Centrum was plagued by several car fires and other acts of vandalism. Police who responded to the violence were then met with a barrage of stones when arriving on the scene.

But when police responded to calls about continued unrest in the predominantly immigrant area on Wednesday night, they recognized a 20-year-old woman who is wanted on suspicion of rioting from an earlier case.

Police then tracked her to a nearby apartment where they found the woman along with eight other people, all of whom had ties to Antifascist Action (AFA), a militant left-wing anti-fascist organization.

In the apartment police also discovered rocks and other objects indicating that the activists intended to target police in additional attacks and then flee, Sveriges Radio reports.

Members of AFA were also involved in a number of disturbances over the past year in the Rosengård neighbourhood in Malmö, another predominantly immigrant district plagued by ongoing tensions between law enforcement and local residents.

“This is a group of demonstrators who appear to show up at different times in different places to protest against different things,” Södertörn police spokesperson Mats Nylén told The Local.

“I guess you could call them general troublemakers.”

AFA activists were involved in arranging a demonstration in Rosengård in August which was also plagued by violence. At the time local residents voiced their displeasure at the group’s presence in the area, blaming the left-wing activists for adding to tensions between locals and the police.

The group was also blamed for stepping up violence in conjunction with Rosengård disturbances which took place in December 2008 and went a long way toward cementing public perceptions of the area as a dangerous immigrant neighbourhood.

“If the troublemakers from AFA hadn’t shown up ‘to help out’, there never would have been any fighting,” Rosengård resident Andreas Konstantinides told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper at the time.

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