Free Republic

AMSTERDAM Paul Hiltemann had already noticed a darkening mood in the Netherlands. He runs an agency for people wanting to emigrate and his client list had surged. But he was still taken aback in November when a Dutch filmmaker was fatally shot and his throat slit on an Amsterdam street. In the weeks that followed, Hiltemann was inundated by e-mail messages and telephone calls. "There was a big panic," he said, "a flood of people saying they wanted to leave the country." In 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutch moved elsewhere, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. For 2004, the...

Here, the World Bank saw opportunity. One leaked document exposed World Bank plans to profit handsomely by charging a 5% commission on carbon transactions in a self-appointed role as a broker between Northern and Southern governments and industries. (The commission - which the Bank now claims is merely to cover costs - will be closer to 8-10%.) With a potential market in carbon dioxide that could reach $2 billion by 2005, the World Bank noted in the leaked memo, it could quickly earn $100 million in one year - and that was just for starters. Why is there so much...

Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003. That is an average of 160 per day. That marks an increase of nearly 15 percent over 2002 and was eight times as high as the number recorded a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control. China does not have a Polish-style Solidarity movement. Protests may be so numerous in part because they are small, localized expressions of discontent over layoffs, land seizures, use of natural resources, ethnic tensions, misspent state funds, forced immigration, unpaid wages...

Ilya Klebanov, the presidential envoy in the North-West of Russia, stated last Friday that the Kaliningrad enclave would have to be granted the official status of a foreign territory. "The position on the matter is final," the official added. The special status of the Russian western enclave implies an adaptation of the regional law to the laws of the European Union. Furthermore, citizens of Western Europe will have a right to visit the region, which will eventually be included in the euro zone. However, making any final decisions regarding the fate of the Kaliningrad region is a matter of distant...

1) The currency of the People's Republic of China , known as the yuan or renminbi, is artificially pegged at a level significantly below its market value. Economists estimate the yuan to be undervalued by between 15 percent and 40 percent or an average of 27.5 percent. (2) The undervaluation of the yuan provides the People's Republic of China with a significant trade advantage by making exports less expensive for foreign consumers and by making foreign products more expensive for Chinese consumers. The effective result is a significant subsidization of China's exports and a virtual tariff on foreign imports. (3)...

European leaders say Asian states must let their currencies rise against the US dollar to ease pressure on the euro. Tacit approval from the White House for the weaker greenback, which could help counteract huge deficits, has helped trigger the move. But now Europe says the euro has had enough, and Asia must now share some of the burden. China is seen as the main culprit, with exports soaring up 35% in 2004 partly on the back of a currency pegged to the dollar. "Asia should engage in greater currency flexibility," said French finance minister Herve Gaymard, after a meeting...

SHANGHAI - Everywhere in developed, urban China - Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou - the message was the same. The next "counterrevolutionary rebellion" - as the Communist Party defined the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989 - if it happens, will be a peasant revolution. Foreign diplomats and Chinese scholars in Beijing or young, urban, 'Net-connected professionals in Guangzhou have told Asia Times Online in unmistakable terms: nobody from the party's "fourth generation" leadership wants to go back to the Maoist model of economic autarky and foreign-policy isolation. A constant pattern emerges: if a villager, for instance, accuses a local party...

One is the emerging "fault-lines" between maritime (Japan, US, and Taiwan) and continental powers (China, Russia, and possibly India and the two Koreas). The year 2004 witnessed large-scale military exercises by both Russia and the United States. Russia's "Security-2004" exercise in February was the largest drill since 1982 and the US' "Summer Pulse-2004" between June and August involved 150,000 troops, 600 warplanes, and more than 50 warships, including seven of a total 12 aircraft carriers. While the Washington-Tokyo-Taipei axis, formal or informal, is hardening, the Beijing-Moscow-New Delhi connection remains at the level of brainstorming. Nonetheless, Russians and Chinese are getting...

"A top aide to Viktor Yushchenko, confident the Western-leaning reformer will be inaugurated as president within days, said Wednesday that Yushchenko next week will begin a push to bring the country into the European Union."

Tensions between Christians and Muslims in Egypt have flared in recent weeks. The protests began after rumours spread that a priest's wife, Wafa Constantine, had been abducted and forced to convert to Islam. Government officials had said Mrs Constantine, 48, wanted to convert to Islam but was being prevented from doing so by her family. The clashes at the cathedral ended when protesters were told that Mrs Constantine was back under the Church's protection. Last week, Egypt's prosecutor-general said that Mrs Constantine had gone to police saying she wanted to change her religion, but had decided to remain a Christian...

Indeed after decades of Muslim migrations — mostly from former colonies — Muslim representation in European parliaments is still low, with only two practicing Muslim members of Parliament in Britain, one in Germany and none in the French parliament. Certainly, the existence of the Hamburg, Germany, terror cell — which planned the 9/11 attacks — as well as growing evidence that the March 11 Madrid train bombings were masterminded by Islamic extremists in Spain have increased security concerns in Europe. But Muslim community leaders say it's unfair to castigate all of Western Europe's estimated 12.5 million Muslims for the actions...

I am not an optimist but this seems way too pessimistic even for me: "Muslims, China to Carve Russia? It is calculated that Russia, already in a terminal population crisis, will, by 2050, be driven out of Central Asia by Islamic invaders and lose huge slices of its Far East to China, 15 times as populous. That would push Russia back over the Urals to its European borders and fulfill Putin’s warning of "a threat to the survival of the nation.” Demographers have calculated that by the end of this century, the British people will be a minority in their...

European leaders gathering in Brussels are expected to agree to start EU accession talks with Turkey, at a summit which opens on Thursday. European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso has urged them to reject any half measures when they discuss the Turkish membership bid. Mr Barroso said if the EU was to start talks, it should be on full membership, with no last-minute conditions. But he urged Turkey to "go the extra mile" and recognise EU member Cyprus. Mr Barroso asked what kind of message Turkey was sending if it did not recognise all the members of the club it...

France has said it will ask Turkey to acknowledge the mass killing of Armenians from 1915 as genocide when it begins EU accession talks. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Turkey had "a duty to remember". Armenians say 1.5 million of their people died or were deported from their homelands under Turkish Ottoman rule. France is among a group of nations that class the killings as genocide. Turkey denies any organised genocide, claiming they were quelling a civil uprising. Mr Barnier said France did not consider Turkish acknowledgement a condition of EU entry, but insisted his country would raise the...

(This is one sick read I read something similar at BBC but nowhere near the detail here) "The accelerating speed of that environmental change is most evident in the Yellow River, the heart of Han Chinese civilization. The river has virtually disappeared." "The first big dam-construction projects of the communist era, such as the Sanmen Xia Dam, concentrated partly on the Yellow River, where a cascade of 46 dams was started. Yet the more engineering took place, the worse the river became. It now exists only in name, except for a couple of months during the rainy season, causing a...

http://www.ukrnow.com/content/view/2311/2/

Europe's leading economies have expressed fears that the weak dollar could seriously impair their exporters. EU finance ministers want the US to take action to rein in its widening current account shortfall. On Monday, French Finance Minister Herve Gaymard, said the slide in the dollar against the euro "should not continue". "It is unacceptable that Europe should pay the bill for major imbalances in the world economy, especially in the (deficits) in the US," Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser was quoted as saying by the Agence France Presse news agency.

Title: China plans renewed bank bailout http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4064987.stm excrept: "China looks set for a fresh bail-out of state banks ahead of privatisation." (personal opinion: the last few that went public were a bit dissapointing especially with curbs on foreign investment rights and corp governence) "Although no bailout has been announced, talks last year with Bank of China and China Construction Bank produced a $45bn bailout package." (personal opinion: 45 bil was about 10% of their reserves so it was a big chunk. I wonder how much it will be this time. I m assuming its around the same.) "China's banks are...

A few years ago, a friend of mine was sent to Kiev by the British government to teach Ukrainians about the Western democratic system. His pupils were young reformers from western Ukraine, affiliated to the Conservative party. When they produced a manifesto containing 15 pages of impenetrable waffle, he gently suggested boiling their electoral message down to one salient point. What was it, he wondered? A moment of furrowed brows produced the lapidary and nonchalant reply, 'To expel all Jews from our country.' It is in the west of Ukraine that support is strongest for the man who is being...

Muslims in Britain want greater recognition of their faith with the introduction of Islamic law for civil cases and time off for prayers during the working day, but are equally committed to greater participation in British life. A special Guardian/ICM poll based on a survey of 500 British Muslims found that a clear majority want Islamic law introduced into this country in civil cases relating to their own community. Some 61% wanted Islamic courts - operating on sharia principles - "so long as the penalties did not contravene British law".