French ban on Islamic face coverings ruled constitutional

So, is it merely nervy or something worse that France has made it a crime for women to wear Islamic face coverings in public? The county's top legal authority, the French Constitutional Council, decided Thursday that the so-called burqa ban, approved overwhelmingly by the legislature earlier this year, was legal under the country's constitution. Councilmembers ruled that the ban, which makes the wearing of the burqa full-body covering or the nigab face-covering punishable by a fine, was constitutional because it did not prevent the free practice of religion in a place of worship, according to Cable News Network (CNN). How could this happen in a place as modern and aware as France, which had the wisdom to oppose the United States' occupation of Iraq from the outset? Easily, it turns out. More than 80 percent of the country supported the ban in a poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project earlier this year, CNN said. Residents of Germany, England and Spain also backed the ban by large majorities but those countries have not imposed one, CNN said. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. residents oppose such a ban. The French government, which backed the ban, called the wearing of Islamic head coverings by women "a new form of enslavement that the republic cannot accept on its soil." France barred the wearing of all overt religious symbols, including Islamic headscarves, in the nation's public schools in 2004. CNN said 3.5 million Muslims -- 6 percent of the population -- live in France.

Refusing to sell fuel would be step toward war

Has it become the official position of the United States that war with Iran is considered the best way to move beyond the current stalemate over Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons development? That's how it seemed Monday after Iran complained that three U.S. allies had refused to permit Iranian planes to refuel at airports in their countries. If it's true, it's an extremely hostile and provocative act -- especially since it comes just days after the United States and European Union imposed a wide-ranging array of sanctions against Iranian business and government interests. "Since last week, our planes have been refused fuel at airports in Britain, Germany and UAE because of the sanctions imposed by America," the secretary of the Iranian Airlines Union, Mehdi Aliyari, told Iran's ISNA news agency, according to the Reuters international news service. "Refusing to provide fuel to Iranian passenger planes by these countries is a violation of international conventions." The governments in Britain, Germany and the United Arab Emirates immediately denied the allegation and said they were complying with worldwide agreements and fulfilling contracts with Iranian airlines. But will they when current contracts expire, and how much pressure will Iran endure before lashing out against its neighbors or against Israel? The new sanctions are aimed at restricting Iran's ability to import refined oil products, like gasoline, that it does not produce on its own, even though it is the world's fifth-largest exporter of petroleum. An Iranian lawmaker, Hesmatollah Falahatpisheh, told ISNA that his country would retaliate against any country refusing to service its airplanes, Reuters said. "Iran will do the same to ships and planes of those countries that cause problems for us," he said. But more countries and companies are agreeing to comply with the new sanctions regime. This summer, United Arab Emirates froze more than 40 accounts of Iranian individuals and companies suspected of helping Iran evade current U.N. sanctions, which are not as strict. Western countries think Iran is trying to use its civilian nuclear power program to advance its development of nuclear weapons, but Iran denies the allegation.

Pope Benedict's apology for clergy abuses of children draws fire

OK, it's a virtually impossible situation for the guy. He's the head of the largest denomination of Christianity, the world's largest religion -- he's the head of state of his own country, the Vatican -- and now he's being forced to apologize for inexcusable misconduct committed by scores of his top officials. But having been forced into this clearly unenviable position, wouldn't you expect Pope Benedict XVI to try to answer the obvious questions and address the most grievous wrongdoing, so he won't be back here, apologizing again, in another six months? Yet the pope, in an eight-page apology letter to the people of Ireland, apologized for suffering caused by pedophile priests at Catholic dioceses and seminaries and called for an official inquiry, but failed to call on bishops to resign or address the still-unfolding abuse scandal in countries across Europe, according to the Reuters international news service. "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry ... I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel," Benedict's letter said. "I can only share in the dismay and sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way the Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them." The letter is a response to an Irish government report on widespread abuse of children by priests in Ireland between 1979 and 2004, which said the church there had tried "obsessively" to conceal the truth, Reuters said. "Grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness," Benedict's report said. "Only decisive action carried out with complete honesty and transparency will restore the respect and goodwill of the Irish people toward the Church." Abuse cases have also been reported in Germany, the pope's native country, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, France, England and Poland in Europe, as well as earlier in the United States, Australia and Canada, Reuters said. Similar scandals in the United States did serious damage to the reputation of the Catholic Church, which paid $2 billion in settlements. "I had high hopes for this pastoral letter," San Bartley, president of Voice of the Faithful, a group formed in 2002 in response to abuse cases in Boston, told Reuters. "I see now the Church still refuses to hold accountable bishops who endanger children."

General Motors signals improving financial situation with bigger investments

Tuesday's announcement by General Motors of more than a billion dollars in increased investment in its European operations could be a signal that the worst is over for U.S. automakers in the global economic slowdown. GM said it would pump the additional money into its ailing Opel operation in Germany and its Vauxhall subsidiary in Great Britain, according to the New York Times. The added investment more than triples the automaker's previously announced investment in the European brands, and appears designed to leverage promised subsidies from European governments. GM has asked for $2 billion in loan guarantees in addition to a $2.7 billion package of subsidies from Britain, France, Spain and other countries with Opel factories, the Times said. Those governments and unions in Europe had demanded that GM pay for 50 percent of the cost of restructuring its operations, the Times said. The United States government has paid billions of dollars to rescue General Motors, once the world's largest automaker and still the largest in the United States, and will own half of the legendary U.S. automaker when it emerges from bankruptcy reorganization. GM released a statement calling the increased investment “a vote of confidence in Opel/Vauxhall’s long-term business strength.” But the head of Opel/Vauxhall's European works council, Klaus Franz, said the new money meets the demands of the countries and unions in Europe. "They saw we were running out of cash and running out of time," Franz said. "I think they saw that there was no alternative if they wanted to get aid from European governments." British business minister Ian Lucas and Kurt Beck, premier of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, welcomed GM's announcement. "After a long period of uncertainty, it's high time to offer the Opel factories and employees reliable prospects for the future," Lucas and Beck said in a joint statement. GM's increased investment actually was signaled Monday by Nick Reilly, the president of GM Europe, who said in Geneva that GM believed it could not continue to be a global automaker without a major presence in Europe. Reilly said that was the explanation for GM's decision in November to back out of a deal to sell a majority of Opel to Magna International, a Canadian-Austrian auto parts company, and a Russian partner. Opel still plans to close a factory in Belgium and to cut 8,300 jobs in Europe, the Times said.

European summit on bank secrecy looks like more empty rhetoric

All the talk in Europe about ending decades of bizarre bank secrecy rules aimed at protecting trillions of dollars hoarded by the world's richest families is only that -- more talk. Sunday's international conference in Luxembourg is designed to create the impression of progress, even though the holders of all that wealth have no intention of being exposed nor of paying taxes on more than a tiny portion of it. The conference brings together the finance ministers of Switzerland, the world's leader in secret offshore accounts, and Luxembourg and Austria, the European Union secrecy leaders, according to the Reuters international news service. Ministers from Lichtenstein, a longtime money secrecy haven that recently embraced transparency, and Germany also are expected to attend. "This meeting will chiefly be about tax evasion and how to tackle it cross-border," a person with knowledge of the agenda told Reuters. "It will be about bank secrecy, but there is no common position as yet." Germany has joined with the United States in efforts to crack the bank secrecy wall to increase government tax receipts. Of course, it would be a lot more reassuring if the countries could agree on bank transparency because it's the proper thing to do, and regard the increased tax collections as a secondary -- although substantial -- benefit. If ordinary people have to pay taxes every year on their holdings, why should the super-rich be able to hide behind archaic secrecy rules to escape their share? They are, after all, the largest beneficiaries of laws and traditions protecting private ownership. Then again, doing away with these secrecy regimes will by implication peel away the senseless protection enjoyed by the perpetrators of one of modern society's greatest evils -- the confiscation of wealth from countries all over the world by the Nazis in World War II. Until the banks are willing or are forced to reveal what happened to all of that wealth -- or, if it's gone, who made off with it -- protestations about reining in secrecy laws won't amount to anything worthwhile.

Iran puts into writing what everyone knew all along

Well, it's finally put up or shut up time for the West on Iran's nuclear program, as if what happened wasn't obvious all along. We're discussing, of course, Tehran's formal rejection of a United Nations proposal to send most of the country's enriched uranium abroad for processing. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that it had received a letter from Iran rejecting parts of the proposed deal, designed to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons, according to the Reuters international news service. Western nations had backed the plan offered by former IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei but Iran allowed the proposal's Dec. 31 deadline to pass despite threats of economic penalties for noncompliance. The plan would have required Iran to transfer at least 70 percent of its nuclear fuel to a European nation for enrichment to levels suitable for power but not for weaponry. Iran reportedly agreed to the deal in principle in October at six-party talks in Geneva, but has raised objections to its provisions ever since. Now, it's up to the United States, European Union and other Western nations to either come up with a sanctions regime that will force Iran's capitulation or raise the stakes and put some threat of force on the table. Parties to the October talks -- the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China -- have started to discuss future actions, Reuters said. Of course, that only makes sense if the six powers really thought Iran would comply with the terms of the deal -- a considerable reach given Iran's behavior in the past. The six powers, and the West, surely already have plans in place for what to do now -- hopefully, they'll let the rest of us know soon, because the security of the entire world would seem to be at risk.

Hypocrisy's new name -- Benedict defends the indefensible

One way to tell it's Christmas time in Rome is when Vatican leaders start overdoing the eggnog! How else to explain Pope Benedict XVI's decision to push Pope Pius XII toward sainthood before opening the records of his papacy to scrutiny, and with the pope's World War II-era participation in the Hitler Youth in Germany still a matter of controversy? Of course, this issue comes up because of statements today from a Vatican spokesman defending Benedict's decision, according to the New York Times. Benedict spoke of the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, the next step in advancing both men to sainthood if it is found that they performed miracles. The spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, responded to criticism from Jewish groups who allege that Pius XII, who was the Vatican's ambassador to Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, did not try to prevent or stop the Holocaust before or after he became pope and helped many former Nazis escape to South America after the war, the Times said. Pius XII was pope from 1939 to 1958. Advancing Pius toward sainthood "should not in any way be read as a hostile act against the Jewish people, and we hope it will not be considered an obstacle in the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church," Lombardi said. But how could it be seen as anything but? And how else to see the decision to beatify Pius XII before opening the church's extensive document archive from his papacy than a blatant attempt at obfuscation? Let's not forget that Benedict, the first pope with a Nazi background, still has a lot of explaining to do about his decisions to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop and to not mention the Nazis or Germany in remarks he gave at a visit to Israel's Holocaust memorial earlier this year.

Concerns over cybercrime bring United States back to Internet talks

News from Geneva that the United States has agreed to discuss Internet security with Russia and the United Nations raises hopes of a new treaty between the world powers to demilitarize cyberspace. The very existence of the talks represents a huge shift in U.S. policy since a new president took office in January, since the previous government in Washington had refused to discuss the subject with Russia for years, according to the New York Times. The negotiations also are further evidence of friendlier relations between Moscow and Washington since Barack Obama became president of the United States in January, as they are proceeding in tandem with talks expected to lead to a new round of cuts in the two countries' nuclear weapons arsenals. Talks with UN disarmament negotiators are expected to resume in January along with informal discussions at an Internet security conference in Germany. The renewed efforts apparently mean the Obama administration is taking the issue of computer security seriously despite differences with the Russians on enforcement issues, the Times said. Some experts say the two superpowers are trying to avoid an Internet arms race in which countries develop increasingly powerful cyberweapons to disrupt computer systems that control weapons and security in other nations, which is why UN arms control negotiators are becoming part of the talks. The United States had previously considered the negotiations as a purely economic matter. But last month, high-ranking Russian security officials met in Washington with representatives of the National Security Council and the U.S. departments of state, defense and homeland security, the Times said, setting up the January dates for serious negotiations.

Amnesty offer on overseas bank accounts attracts nearly 15,000 takers

U.S. tax authorities say publicity about a settlement with a giant European bank has at least helped inspire nearly 15,000 U.S. owners of overseas bank accounts that have been off the books for years to come forward and pay taxes on their holdings. Tuesday's announcement by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, reported by the New York Times, attributes the response to the Oct. 15 end of an amnesty program under which U.S. taxpayers who declared their holdings were eligible for reduced penalties and avoid tax evasion charges. The catalyst was the future release of the identifies of more than 4,000 U.S. residents with offshore accounts with UBS, a Swiss megabank that offered anonymity to depositors. But UBS agreed in February to reveal names of 4,500 depositors with accounts totalling more than $18 billion as part of a settlement of a U.S. government lawsuit charging the bank with selling offshore financial products intended to enable tax evasion, the Times said. Under the terms of the deal, UBS also must admit criminal wrongdoing and pay $780 million in fines. and admit to criminal wrongdoing. “We are talking about billions of dollars coming into the U.S. Treasury,” said IRS chief Douglas Shulman, the Times said. head of the Mr. Shulman said. “We have now gained access to thousands of taxpayers and bank accounts that we have never had before.” More than half of the depositors revealed their holdings in the month before the deadline. "We had a flood at the end," Shulman said. Many of the accounts belonged to UBS customers but many did not, the Times said. The IRS said it was expanding its investigation of offshore tax havens around the world. But not a word was said about holding the Swiss banking industry to account for the billions of dollars stolen from Europeans during World War II by the Nazi government of Germany and deposited in Switzerland, where it presumably remains.

Why does Iran need more time to decide if it will fulfill its nuclear obligations?

Monday's report from Vienna that a top U.S. diplomat said Iran should get more time to decide whether to fulfill the obligation to give up most of its nuclear fuel under a deal negotiated in Geneva in September does not make sense unless something else is going on that has been left out of the public record. Iran agreed to the deal to secure enriched uranium for its nuclear medicine facility and avoid stepped-up economic sanctions by the United States and other world powers; if Tehran wants out of the agreement, it should drop pretending and continue on the road to pariah statehood. "There have been communications back and forth. We are in extra innings in these negotiations. That's sometimes the way these things go," said Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations-sponsored entity that monitors on nuclear activity worldwide. "We want to give some space to Iran to work through this," Davies said. "It's a tough issue for them, quite obviously, and we're hoping for an early, positive answer from the Iranians." But the Iranians have a history of stalling for time to continue developing their offensive capacities, and not to contribute to peaceful resolution of ongoing disputes. Iran contends its nuclear development is intended for peaceful purposes, despite its huge oil reserves and the revelation in September that it was building a secret enrichment plant at a military base near Qom. U.S. experts say the plant could not have enriched enough uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant and was almost surely designed for nuclear weaponry. Turkey has offered to mediate the international dispute, but it is apparent that Tehran is not willing to halt its activities despite the risk of sanctions. That's why Iran has not yet offered a formal reply to international demands that it comply with the agreement, and why it doesn't make sense to give the Islamic republic even more time to stall. If the international community's patience is "not infinite," as Germany's chief negotiator said the other day, it's time to bring on the "consequences" that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of in Berlin. There is no reason to wait until the end of the year. Iran can continue to protest diplomatically all it wants, but it should do so without its stash of nuclear fuel and without its ability to threaten nearby countries.

Italy demonstrates to United States how to handle government wrongdoing

The democracy wasting disease that was the Bush administration until this year got its latest comeuppance on Wednesday when a court in Italy sentenced 23 U.S. residents, including at least 22 CIA agents, to prison terms of at least five years each for abducting a Muslim cleric in 2003 and secreting him to Egypt for interrogation. The case, which has been ongoing since 2007, is the first judicial reckoning of the practice of extraordinary rendition, a constitutional perversion under which U.S. agents abducted suspects in other countries and took them to a third country that permitted harsh interrogations, according to the Reuters international news service. The U.S. citizens were tried in absentia because Washington refused to allow them to be extradited to Italy to face trial. Two members of Italy's spy service, Sisma, were sentenced to three-year prison terms for participating in the renditions, suggesting that Italy was aware of the U.S. operation that took the cleric, Abu Omar, off a street in Milan and flew him to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and then to Egypt. Abu Omar claimed he was held without charge and mistreated in Egyptian custody until his release in 2007. U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said today that the Obama administration was "disappointed" in the convictions and would probably appeal, but refused to comment further. But human rights groups opposed to the practices of the Bush administration showed no such reluctance. Joan Sunderland of Human Rights Watch called the verdict "historic," Reuters said. Amnesty International admonished the United States for having gone to court at all. "The United States shouldn't need a foreign court to distinguish right from wrong," the group said in a statement. "The Obama administration must repudiate the unlawful practice of extraordinary rendition -- and hold accountable those responsible for having put the system in place -- or his administration will end up as tarnished as his predecessor's." The United States has never acknowledged any rendition flights from Italy, Reuters said.

IAEA plans inspection of Iran's formerly secret uranium enrichment facility

News that Iran has actually scheduled a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect a formerly secret uranium enrichment facility being built near Qom appears to be a clear signal that the Islamic republic has changed course and decided to cooperate with the world community on nuclear proliferation. Iran agreed last week to permit inspectors to tour the underground facility, which previously had been kept secret in violation of IAEA notification requirements, according to the Reuters international news service. "IAEA inspectors will visit Iran's new enrichment facility, under construction in Qom, on 25th of October," said Mohammad ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency said at a news conference with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's nuclear effort. "It is important for us to have comprehensive cooperation over the Qom site. It is important for us to send our inspectors to assure ourselves that this facility is for peaceful purposes." Details of the inspection will be worked out at a meeting on Oct. 19, Reuters said. Western nations believe Iran is covertly developing nuclear weapons and has imposed a series of international trade sanctions against the country to force it to end or curtail its program. Tehran insists its nuclear work is aimed at the peaceful development of nuclear power for electricity, even though Iran's underground oil reserves are among the world's largest. But Iran has not exactly been truthful over the years, probably because of suspicions about the United States, which it regards, along with Israel, as its enemy. So, the disclosure of the secret facility caused an international furor culminating in last week's meeting in Geneva between Iran and the world's six strongest military and economic powers -- the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. The plant is not expected to be operational for 18 months. The Geneva meeting, at which Iran also agreed to send most of its nuclear material to France and Russia for processing, was the highest-level diplomatic contact between the United States and Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah and brought religious leaders to power. U.S. President Barack Obama's top adviser on national security, James Jones, said Iran did not appear to be closer to having a nuclear weapon, contradicting a New York Times report on Saturday that a separate IAEA assessment had concluded Iran's program had advanced sufficiently to begin building a nuclear weapon.

Israeli leader Netanyahu flies into week of contentious talks with U.S., Europe

Maybe the leaders of England and Germany will be able to understand what U.S. leaders seem to be unable to grasp during talks this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Europe. A freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank is reportedly the top of the agenda for Netanyahu's meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, and with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, according to the Reuters international news service. The Palestinian Authority insists on such a freeze before it will agree to negotiate with Israel on a peace deal, and Israel actually is committed to a freeze under the George W. Bush-era road map peace framework. But as readers of this blog realize, the settlement issue is merely a distraction from the real issue -- do Israel's neighbors, particularly the Palestinian Authority, want to live in peace and cooperation with Israel. The louder Palestinian leaders insist on making a freeze a condition of talks, the louder they are answering that question with "no." New towns with homes for hundreds of thousands of people are a material asset to a poor country -- why wouldn't any country want that? The issue for Palestinian leaders is that they don't think their people will accept Jewish people being their neighbors and will vote them out of office if peace happens. The failure to prepare their people for peace with Israel is is an utter dereliction of their duty as leaders. They are still funding school curricula that teach Palestinian children to distrust and hate Jewish people -- people who will be their neighbors whenever peace finally comes to the region. There is no reason why settlements built by Israel on land destined to be part of a Palestinian state can't be part of that state -- unless the Palestinian government is planning a country with no Jewish people allowed. If that's the case, then Palestinian leaders have no desire to live in peace with Israel, because peace necessarily involves people living side-by-side in understood cooperation. If the leaders do not want peace with Israel, then all they are doing is buying time until they can resume warfare against the Jewish state. And that is what Netanyahu needs to explain to England, Germany and the U.S. envoy during his trip to Europe.

World's richest nations plan economic recovery

Maybe the worldwide recession actually is over. The world's eight richest nations ended two days of talks Saturday in Italy to plan for the expected worldwide economic recovery, according to the Reuters international news service. Or maybe the recession is about to be over for them. Meeting in Lecce, finance ministers of the world's eight richest nations began getting ready for the end of stimulus programs propping up their economies. "The force of the economic storm is receding," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said as the Group of Eight meeting concluded. "There are encouraging signs of stabilization across many economies." Ministers agreed that the stimulus programs would not be ending anytime soon, however, and also agreed to ask the International Monetary Fund to help them figure out the best way to bring the programs to a conclusion. But there appeared to be sharp disagreement on how to roll back stimulus spending plans and how to stress-test each country's banks, Reuters said. In fact, Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin called the meeting "stormy" since there were major arguments about what stage the crisis had reached. Conservative nations like Germany and Canada are pressuring other G8 nations to end stimulus programs to keep interest rates from rising too rapidly once the recovery takes hold. But Geithner said the United States would probably not be tightening monetary policy anytime soon. "It is too early to shift toward policy restraint," he told the ministers. Reuters said a G8 source who did not want to be named said the IMF report would likely be presented in October at the fund's annual meeting in Istanbul. Private sector economists do not expect tightening of fiscal and monetary policy before next year, Reuters said. The other G8 nations are Japan, Britain, France and Italy.