FRANKFURT In what many see as a major setback to Europe’s effort to integrate its booming Muslim population – and a potential boost to right-wing parties throughout the continent – Swiss voters Sunday approved a move to ban the construction of new minarets in the country. The Swiss government had urged voters to reject the ban, saying that it would violate religious freedom and human rights and intensify Islamic radicalism. But in Sunday’s referendum, which was organized by a right-wing political party, more than 57 percent of Swiss residents – a majority in 22 out of the country’s 26’s cantons – approved the proposal. ‘Muslims don’t just practice religion, they increasingly make political and legal demands,’ said Walter Wobmann, who heads the initiative behind the referendum. ‘The vote results shows that the Swiss do not want minarets or Sharia laws in their country.’ DANGEROUS FOR DEMOCRACY? The referendum sought to stop ‘political Islamization’ by amending the Swiss Constitution to add a clause stating ‘the construction of minarets is prohibited,’ a move critics say is dangerous for democracy. ‘Here you have a new phenomenon, attacking the basic tenets of democracy with a referendum,’ says Dieter Oberndörfer, a […]
WASHINGTON – Sen. Maria Cantwell wants to use state gambling laws to regulate parts of Wall Street, saying someone needs to police financial markets where ‘casino capitalism’ involving highly speculative trades she likens to sophisticated betting continue unabated and threaten to create yet another financial crisis. ‘She’s going for their jugular,’ Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor, said of the effort by Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat. Greenberger was a top official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton administration who unsuccessfully fought to regulate such trading. Cantwell wants to repeal parts of a 2000 law that barred states from using their gambling laws to help rein in the nearly $600 trillion derivatives market. The senator’s effort comes as Congress is starting to consider tightening federal regulation of financial markets in the wake of the current economic downturn. Cantwell said she’s not convinced Congress will take strong enough action and, as a backup, wants to give state attorneys general the power to act. ‘They are the last line of defense,’ Cantwell said. ‘I don’t want them neutered.’ Derivatives essentially began as a form of insurance, offering a hedge for such companies […]
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – At most colleges, marijuana is very much an extracurricular matter. But at Med Grow Cannabis College, marijuana is the curriculum: the history, the horticulture and the legal how-to’s of Michigan’s new medical marijuana program. ‘This state needs jobs, and we think medical marijuana can stimulate the state economy with hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars,’ said Nick Tennant, the 24-year-old founder of the college, which is actually a burgeoning business (no baccalaureates here) operating from a few bare-bones rooms in a Detroit suburb. The six-week, $485 primer on medical marijuana is a cross between an agricultural extension class covering the growing cycle, nutrients and light requirements (‘It’s harvest time when half the trichomes have turned amber and half are white’) and a gathering of serious potheads, sharing stories of their best highs (‘Smoke that and you are … medicated!’). The only required reading: ‘Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible’ by Jorge Cervantes. Even though the business of growing medical marijuana is legal under Michigan’s new law, there is enough nervousness about the enterprise that most students at a recent class did not want their names or photographs used. An instructor also […]
NEW YORK — By a wide margin, Americans consider Rush Limbaugh the nation’s most influential conservative voice. Those are the results of a poll conducted by ’60 Minutes’ and Vanity Fair magazine and issued Sunday. The radio host was picked by 26 percent of those who responded, followed by Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck at 11 percent. Actual politicians – former Vice President Dick Cheney and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin – were the choice of 10 percent each. Asked to choose from among seven presidents, Americans tapped John F. Kennedy as the one they’d like to see added to Mount Rushmore. Kennedy polled 29 percent, with Ronald Reagan second at 20 percent. With all the talk on the news about whether Americans should have the choice of a government-run health insurance plan in any health care reform, only 26 percent of those who responded said they felt confident explaining the ‘public option’ to someone who didn’t know about it. Half of Americans chose laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a ceremony in which they’d most like to participate. That swamped the other choices: lighting the Olympic torch, tossing the […]
BEIJING — A clutch of major emerging economies including China and India have forged a united front to put pressure on developed countries at next month’s climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. Over two days of quietly arranged talks in Beijing, the countries said they had reached agreement on major issues, including the need for the West to provide finance and technology to help developing nations combat global warming. The meeting was attended by senior officials from China, India, Brazil and South Africa as well as Sudan, the current chairman of the Group of 77 developing countries. ‘The purpose of the meeting was to prepare for and contribute to a positive, ambitious and equitable outcome in Copenhagen,’ according to a statement released after the talks, which took place on Friday evening and Saturday. ‘We believe that this work represents a good starting point and we will continue to work together over the next few days and weeks as our contribution towards a consensus in Copenhagen,’ the statement said. The meeting in Copenhagen was supposed to yield the outlines of a broader and tougher legally binding climate agreement to expand or replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
