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President of India has difficulty distinguishing between Swiss and Swedish

May 24, 2015

Pranab Mukherjee, the President of India is visiting Sweden next week, the first ever State visit by an Indian Head of State. There have been two Prime Ministerial visits; Nehru in 1957 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. In preparation he was interviewed “in depth” by the Editor-in-Chief of Dagens Nyheter, Peter Wolodarski. The English version of the interview is here.

But there was very little depth to the interview – either in the questions or in Mukerjee’s parrotting of the “official line”. The interviewer was not incompetent precisely, but none of his questions were particularly insightful and some of his questions were considerably less than intelligent.

Imagine asking a serving Head of State what he thinks about another serving Head of State, “You’ve met President Putin several times. How would you describe him?” Would he have thought to ask the Swedish King what he though of Prince Charles, I wonder. Or the profundity on display in his question “Is the Chinese one-party system more effective (than Indian democracy)?” On Bofors, the interviewer tries to get Mukherjee to claim that it was all a “media scandal” but does not quite succeed. The interviewer is of course keen to display his own political correctness for his readers with “What is the most important thing that can be done to strengthen the position of women in India?” The interviewer’s questions regarding why there is a higher rate of female foetuses being aborted in India (and I have written before about the 2,000 abortions of female foetuses every day), seem to suggest that he is asking how the rate of abortion of male foetuses can be increased, as if a higher total rate of abortion is probably a good thing. (Of course Sweden today has abortion on demand and abortion rates today are at the same level as infant mortality rates of 300 years ago). The interviewer dwells on the Nirbhaya, Delhi rape case and tries to get the President to admit to some institutional or ingrained social failing rather than that it was just an isolated and aberrant case. Mukerjee asserts that extreme poverty can be eliminated with 10 years of growth at 8-9%, which the interviewer takes leave to doubt.

Photograph: Lars Lindqvist via Dagens Nyheter

The interviewer’s questions actually reflect “political correctness” (the Swedish version) and his own preconceptions much more than eliciting anything insightful. Of course the readers of Dagens Nyheter will probably be very pleased to get the incredible revelation that Sweden has a population of 9 million to India’s 1.2 billion. I think he only insults the intelligence of his readers while displaying his own shortcomings in this dreadful interview.

Mukerjee’s answers reveal nothing new. He is old Congress. He was nondescript as a Defense Minister. He was a disastrous Finance Minister. He is President because of the Peter Principle and because the possibilities of his doing anything disastrous in that post are low. The only real substance comes in his final statement. “One thing I must correct”, he says. “Two, three times during the interview, I have used the word Swiss. I, of course, meant Swedish”.

Oh Well! And was it Switzerland or Sweden which won the Eurovision song contest last night?

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Posted in Behaviour, India, Media, Sweden | 1 Comment »

US, UK and Canada protect Israel’s nuclear weapons

May 23, 2015

An Egyptian proposal for a nuclear weapons free Middle East as part of the UN nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) was blocked by the US, UK and Canada. The blockage was not unexpected since Israel which is not a signatory to the NPT had already indicated its opposition and on such matters Washington generally obliges Israel. The NPT 2015 conference ended without agreement and the US representative blamed the Egyptians – of course – for making a proposal that had no chance of success. The status quo continues and Israel can maintain all its nuclear warheads. The NPT conference will next be held in 2020.

It is not so surprising that all the western countries which created Israel and now protect its not-so-secret stock of nuclear warheads are the same powers who don’t want any possibility of Iran developing its own nuclear weapons. I can quite accept that Israel will want to protect its own interests. The position of the US and its allies is entirely expected but is also just plain hypocritical. But the myth of Israel not having any nuclear warheads can be put to rest for ever. If they didn’t have any there would be no point in blocking the Egyptian proposal.

Jerusalem Post: After four weeks of negotiations on ways to improve compliance with the pact, there was no consensus among its 191 signatories. US Under Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller announced there was “no agreement” and accused some countries of undermining the negotiations.  Gottemoeller did not name any countries but diplomats said she was referring to Egypt. ……. 

Last month, Egypt, backed by other Arab and non-aligned states, proposed that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convene a regional conference on banning weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as called for at the 2010 NPT review with or without Israel’s participation, without agreement on an agenda and with no discussion of regional security issues.

Those conditions are unacceptable to Israel and Washington.

Decisions at NPT review conferences, which are held every five years, are made by consensus. ……. 

Egypt’s proposals, Western diplomats say, were intended to focus attention on Israel. Washington and Israel say Iran’s nuclear program is the real regional threat. Iran says its program is peaceful. It is negotiating with world powers to curb it in exchange for lifting sanctions. Israel has said it would consider joining the NPT only once at peace with its Arab neighbors and Iran.

There were disagreements on other aspects of the NPT but delegates said the Middle East issue was the most divisive.

And in the meantime ISIS has announced that it is trying to get hold of one of the Pakistani warheads to be able to do something spectacular.

The Israeli nuclear stockpile of nuclear warheads probably lies between 100 and 400.

Estimates for Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. The actual number is probably closer to the lower estimate. Additional weapons could probably be built from inventories of fissile materials. http://fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

Estimates for Israel’s nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. The actual number is probably closer to the lower estimate. Additional weapons could probably be built from inventories of fissile materials.
http://fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

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Stockholm city to provide priority for social services for returning ISIS murderers

May 22, 2015

Even if one didn’t want to accept the case for capital punishment the least that could be contemplated for ISIS murderers would be a chemical castration and incarceration for ever, with an exit only via an assisted suicide. Neither the world nor the human race have any benefit from any ISIS murderers continuing to exist or to have any off-spring. I do have some qualms with capital punishment but these all vanish when confronted by barbarous murderers such as these. Not for “revenge” but because they have nothing positive to contribute and neither do their genetic offspring. They are a contaminating virus which kills the sapience in homo sapiens.

But the Red/Green/Pink (Social Democrats + Environmental party + Feminist party) majority in the Social Services Committee of Stockholm city have now approved and adopted a sanctimonious and monstrous strategy for rewarding any ISIS terrorists of Swedish nationality (and there are many) who return. They and their families are to get adequate support by getting a priority for handouts, housing and jobs.

The same committee, in its wisdom, also provides financial support to Swedish Muslim organisations such as the Islamic Association of Sweden which just happens to be the Swedish “branch” of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is sanctimonious do-gooding gone mad.

The world may someday be destroyed by an asteroid impact or a super-volcano, but the greater risk is that the human race will degenerate into something barbarous because of the behaviour of naive, sanctimonious, well-meaning, self-righteous, politically-correct do-gooders.

Metro:

When the red-green-pink majority of Stockholm’s social services committee on Tuesday adopted a new strategy to counter violent extremism the criticism was not long in coming. The strategy, which proposes that people who want to leave extremist groups or return from fighting abroad should be helped with sustenance, employment and housing, is being attacked for providing the “cream” for criminals, and because it does not give any concrete proposals on how people should de-radicalised-

“I think that is extremely naive and completely lacking any realization that that under Swedish law these people are serious criminals. They have committed genocide, and it is one of the worst crimes one can commit. They should be prosecuted and put in prison” says Lotta Edholm (FP), opposition member of the City Council of Stockholm to Metro.

The City of Stockholm has a system for social preference, where people with strong medical or social needs can be given priority in the housing queue. According to Lotta Edholm, the new strategy will lead to, for example, the returning ISIS murderers getting priority in Stockholm’s housing queue.

“The strategy contains a lot of fuzz and the majority probably mean well. But if this strategy means anything it must mean that these IS-murderers should get a social priority. It’s so stupid”, says Lotta Edholm.

Stupid is an understatement.

Per Gudmundson on his blog has this picture uploaded by a barbarian, “Abu Ikrema”,  from Stockholm who writes ” It is impossible to describe the joy one feels….”

The new social strategy will apply to people like him.

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The fall of Ramadi: Is it “very serious” or just a “tactical setback”?

May 22, 2015

What is clear is that 2,500 soldiers of the Iraqi “army” entrenched in Ramadi ran away when faced by 200 ISIS fighters. They left their heavy weapons behind. They did not even make any sustained effort to evacuate the city.They left the civilian population to flee as best they could. Today there are reports that virtually all those left behind have been slaughtered by ISIS.

But the spin doctors are in full flow. The Iraqi forces were not driven out. They drove away – of their own free will.

They were just tired of being in Ramadi.

Bloomberg: Obama Dismisses Fall of Ramadi in Iraq as ‘Tactical Setback’

The fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to Islamic State was only a “tactical setback” and not a sign the U.S. and its allies are failing in the fight against extremists, President Barack Obama said in an interview published Thursday in the Atlantic magazine.

“I don’t think we’re losing,” Obama said in the interview conducted by Jeffrey Goldberg Tuesday at the White House. “There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time, primarily because these are not Iraqi security forces that we have trained or reinforced.”

Nothing to worry about then. Obama the brave has all under control.

CNN: U.S. calls fall of Ramadi ‘very serious’

A senior State Department official acknowledged Wednesday that ISIS’s seizure of Ramadi, Iraq, over the weekend was major blow in the fight against the terror organization.

His comments came, however, on the very same day that the Chairman of the Joint Chief Staffs Gen. Martin Dempsey insisted Iraqi forces chose on their own to leave.

“The ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) was not driven out of Ramadi. They drove out of Ramadi,” he told reporters while on a trip to Brussels.

Just as with Tikrit, Obama will do little beyond making token gestures about retaking Ramadi. He is waiting for the Iran -backed Shiite cavalry to come riding in to redress the situation

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German Greens apologise for their paedophiles and abuse of over 1000 children

May 22, 2015

The German Greens have long been advocates of paedophilia as being one of the basic human rights. The Lib Dems in the UK also have a long history of condoning the abuse of children (Cyril Smith for example). Even The Times has picked up this expose of the German Greens but it is not being reported (yet) by other “environmentalist” media.

The Times: A paedophile network was active in the Berlin branch of the Green party until the mid-1990s, with potentially hundreds of victims, the party revealed yesterday after a lengthy investigation.

There was a “misunderstood tolerance” of paedophiles within the Green movement for many years, party leaders admitted, as they invited victims to come forward and share in a compensation fund. The figure of “up to 1,000” victims of paedophiles was suggested before yesterday’s report.

Pierre L. Gosselin has the story:

Berlin’s leftist daily Online Tagesspiegel here reports comprehensively on the German Green Party’s troubled past involving it’s earlier advocacy of pedophilia and practice by some of its former leading members, see background here, here, here and here.

Green Party Chairwoman Bettina Jarasch has just publicly apologized for what she calls an “institutional failure,” ….. 

….. The Greens’ advocacy of pedophilia rights was part of the party’s platform in the 1980s and early 1990s as it pushed neo-liberal ideas like “free and open relationships”. It still remains unclear as to why the Germany’s top environmental party took so long to issue an apology. 

…… The number of victims is not known. However one Green Party Berlin parliamentarian and author of the report, Thomas Birk, in March mentioned “up to 1000 victims”, though he said the figure was “speculative”. The report itself gives releases no figure.

Current Green party official Daniel Wesener said that there were at least two repeat offenders who were tolerated within the party, one was convicted in 13 cases.

Currently the child sex abuse within the Green party is now under investigation by a special commission. The Green Party leaders pledge their full cooperation and to provide compensation to victims who step forward.

According to the Tagesspiegel, the investigation shed light into an “abuse network” within the forerunner of the Green party, Alternativen Liste, which included at least three leading figures who set up a “youth center” in Kreuzberg recreational center.

….. Though some media outlets such as the Tagesspiegel reported on the story, much of the German media has been pretty mute on the topic.

I am afraid that the term “liberal” – which once stood for something fine – has been degraded and despoiled by the extremists to now come to mean “no limits, no ethics”. Liberalism is no longer about humanism but all about permissiveness. And if all is permitted and anything goes and any kind of ethical standards or limits are “evil”, then it follows that paedophiles and ISIS should be given free reign.

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Israel demands its monetary “pound of flesh” for any US-Iran deal

May 20, 2015

It would seem that much of the Israeli objections to any US-Iran deal regarding Iran’s nuclear programme may be more of a negotiating ploy than driven by any real concern about their own security. Everything has its price and Israel also seems to have a price for swallowing their public objections. The price for acquiescing to any US-Iran deal seems to be the “purchase” of additional military aircraft and weapons systems from the US. Israel’s “purchases” of US equipment are paid for from moneys received as “US Defense Aid”. Currently Israel gets a recurring grant of around $4 billion every year augmented by many additional “one-off” grants.

From this Haaretz article it would seem that Israel has determined the monetary value of the “pound of flesh” it requires to swallow its objections to any US-Iran deal. Israel has not failed to note that “According to Stockholm’s International Peace Research Institute, in 2014 Saudi Arabia bought $80 billion worth of weapons while the emirates bought $23 billion worth of arms.” It stands to reason that Israel’s total “price” will be something in excess of $100 billion. The US will not have missed in their calculation either that this will “enable” fresh, real sales of military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States of at least twice that amount.

Haaretz:

….. However, the Israeli defense establishment and the Pentagon have already begun preliminary contact on the type of defense package Israel would receive. Another incentive for these talks is the arms deals between the United States and the Gulf states, which have not waited for the final deal before acquiring defense systems designed to deter Iran. A well-placed source said that both countries have begun their “homework” ahead of such a deal. ….. 

The Israeli defense establishment estimates that the future weapons deal between Israel and the United States will include more F-35s. So far, the sides have agreed that Israel would buy 33 of these combat aircraft using U.S. defense aid. The first two planes are scheduled to arrive in late 2016. The first operational squadron of the planes will begin operations about two years later, with the last of the planes arriving in 2021. However the defense establishment believes this is not enough and hopes to acquire at least 50 of these fighter planes so the Israel Air Force will have two fully operational squadrons. Each plane in the current deal is priced at $110 million.

Another key component in any future arms deal with Washington will be an anti-missile system. So far Israel has acquired an Arrow 2 system to intercept long-range missiles and nine Iron Dome batteries against short-range missiles. Next year, the David’s Sling system for medium-range threats is slated to go into operation. All these systems were funded with American defense aid and the United States has invested about $1 billion in developing interception missiles, above and beyond the $3.1 billion annual aid.

Israel is also likely to request additional aid to finance an improved Arrow 3 battery and to acquire some more Iran Dome batteries. According to an analysis by the Knesset Foreign and Defense Committee from three year ago, which is also accepted by the army, Israel requires at least 12 or 13 batteries in order to effectively defend the country. Israel is also expected to ask the U.S. to allow it to buy advanced precision-guided munition, especially for the Air Force. The sides may also discuss the acquisition of technological systems for intelligence-gathering purposes. 

The defense industry in the US must be quite pleased.

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In Argentina, judges believe crimes deserve lower sentences if victim has been abused before

May 20, 2015

Judges are privileged and protected in all societies. Of course each has his own foibles and is subject to pressure. In many countries they are subject to political agendas and their decisions can be seen to have political dimensions. Often they are just part of a corrupt system where “justice” is for sale. Their ivory towers are meant to help isolate them from undue influence so that they can dispense justice objectively and evenly. But lately, whether in India or in the US or in the EU or in Egypt I perceive a reduction of “common sense”. Maybe it is the privileges and protection itself which warps their minds?

In this case – from Argentina – it is the judges – not in this case the law – who appear to be asses.

BBC:

Two Argentine judges are facing calls for their impeachment after reducing the sentence of a paedophile on the grounds that his six-year-old victim had been abused before. The ruling was made last year but only came to light this week.

Mario Tolosa, a sports club official, was originally given a six-year sentence, but the judges halved it.

Among the arguments they used to justify this was a claim that the boy showed signs of transvestite conduct. The Interior Minister, Florencio Randazzo, said the ruling was “an embarrassment”. He said: “It’s repugnant to say that the presumed sexual orientation of an abused six-year-old boy is a reason to reduce the sentence of the abuser.”

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s cabinet chief, Anibal Fernandez said the two judges, Horacio Piombo and Benjamin Sal Llargues should be “hauled before an impeachment hearing”. he said the country was “in the hands of morons” and that it was “one of the biggest disgraces we’ve ever seen in this country.”

Tolosa had been vice-president of a neighbourhood football club in Buenos Aires. He was convicted of abusing the boy in the club’s bathrooms in 2011. ………

The Argentinian judges have been defending their decision and claim they are being politically attacked. Maybe so, but they are certainly lacking in common sense.  Just as with some EU judges who put greater weight to protecting the “right to family life” of criminals than in prosecuting their actions. Or Indian judges who are blinded by the aura surrounding Bollywood stars.

I note in passing that the “sanctity of the law” is an entirely false concept. The law is just a tool which is shaped to suit the dispensing society. The laws of man (or god) are only as “good” as those men who formulated them. Whenever the “sanctity of the law” is invoked, I suspect the supposed “principle” is being used to defend a lack of common sense. If there is any sanctity associated with a law, it lies in the law’s own ability to ensure compliance. The law of gravity, I note, needs no police force or judges or priests to ensure compliance.

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Iran to the rescue as Obama’s moribund ISIS “strategy” stalls

May 19, 2015

Back in September last year, Barack Obama first admitted he had no strategy “yet” for ISIS and then announced his “hands-off” air-strike strategy

“Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy,”

But what his strategy has achieved so far is an ISIS which hunkers down during air-strikes and then rolls over new strategic targets whenever the opposition is the Iraqi army or other Sunni opponents. Resistance and attrition only occurs when ISIS faces Assad or Iran-backed Shiite groups. If and when ISIS is stopped it may be enabled by US led air-strikes, but it will actually be achieved only by Iranian-supported boots on the ground. ISIS will not be stopped by a Sunni force. And that does not make Saudi Arabia very happy. I have a hypothesis that Barack Obama’s strategies both in domestic and foreign policy are driven primarily by the avoiding of his fears. In Iraq and Syria his strategy plays into Iran’s hands.

Foreign Policy: To date, the Obama administration’s claims of progress in the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) have been accompanied by qualifications and caveats. In January, the Pentagon claimed to have killed 6,000 IS fighters since the September start of “Operation Inherent Resolve,” a statistic that became less impressive when later that month it was reported that roughly 5,000 foreign fighters had joined IS since October. At the Munich Security Conference in February, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the anti-IS coalition had “taken out half” of the terrorist pseudo-state’s senior leadership, a boast that was subsequently discredited as inexact at best. In early April — a month before the Islamic State captured Ramadi — Vice President Joe Biden declared: “ISIL’s momentum in Iraq has halted, and in many places, has been flat-out reversed. Thousands of ISIL fighters have been removed from the battlefield. Their ability to mass and maneuver has been greatly degraded. Leaders have been eliminated.” Add to this the analytical disputes over the Pentagon’s claim that the Islamic State has lost 25 percent of its territory since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve, and it is easy to see why skeptics believe the current strategy is insufficient to achieve the president’s stated goals of degrading and defeating the terrorist proto-state.

Now Ramadi has fallen to ISIS after it was abandoned without resistance by Iraqi Sunni forces. The US has been sending very confused messages with, on the one hand, increased air sorties against Ramadi while, on the other, sending diplomats (including John Kerry) to spin the story that Ramadi was not very important anyway. In the meanwhile Iran, through its Shiite Prime Minister, has called in the Shiite militia to retake Ramadi. The Shiite militias will now probably succeed in retaking Ramadi – as ISIS melts away to open another front, somewhere else, against the Iraqi Army.

Reuters:

Thousands of Shi’ite militiamen on Monday prepared to fight Islamic State insurgents who seized the Iraqi provincial capital Ramadi at the weekend in the biggest defeat for government forces in nearly a year.

A column of 3,000 Shi’ite militia fighters assembled at a military base near Ramadi, preparing to take on Islamic State militants advancing in armored vehicles from the captured city northwest of Baghdad, witnesses and a military officer said.

The decision by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is a Shi’ite, to send in the militias to try to retake the predominantly Sunni city could add to sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq.

Washington, which is leading a campaign of air strikes to roll back Islamic State advances and struggling to rebuild Baghdad’s shattered army, played down the significance of the loss of Ramadi, the capital of the vast western Anbar province.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was a “target of opportunity,” that could be retaken in a matter of days, and U.S. officials insisted there would be no change in strategy despite a failure to make major advances against Islamic State.

Warplanes in the U.S.-led coalition had conducted 19 strikes near Ramadi over the past 72 hours at the request of the Iraqi security forces, a coalition spokesman said.

The Shi’ite militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilization, “reached the Habbaniya base and are now on standby,” said the head of the Anbar provincial council, Sabah Karhout.

It may only be a temporary alliance between the US and Iran for retaking Ramadi, but it will only reinforce my view that Iranian strategy is a relatively low-cost, proxy strategy which has succeeded in absorbing and diverting Obama’s strategy to its own advantage.

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The all white, all Oxbridge, representatives of the British “working class”

May 19, 2015

I hear that the Union “Unite” and its leader Len McCluskey have effectively taken over the Labour Party leadership contest. So whoever is elected leader will have little choice but to lead the party into a decade of oblivion.

But interestingly the qualifications of the contenders for leadership to represent the British “working class” are very revealing as to how the “working-class” can be defined today:

All white, all Oxbridge and all bar one even have the same haircut!

And I don’t suppose that any one of them has ever worked in a factory that actually manufactures wealth.

This from Guido:

Guido Labour party contenders

All of the Labour Party leadership candidates are scions of privilege:

Andy Burnham:
English, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Yvette Cooper:
PPE, Balliol College, Oxford.

Mary Creagh:
Languages, Pembroke College, Oxford.

Liz Kendall:
History, Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Doctor the Honourable Tristram Julian William Hunt:
History, Trinity College, Cambridge.

The British “working class” that I first came across, 50 years ago, as a green apprentice on the shop-floor of a factory in the Midlands, seems to have changed considerably – but not in the manner I would have expected. Maybe the people who actually work and make things no longer qualify as the “working-class”.

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Norway forcibly “kidnaps” half of all Roma children

May 18, 2015

There is something very peculiar going on in the State of Norway and it is the Child Welfare Agency which is arousing great suspicion. It may just be cultural ignorance or it may be a deep-seated racism or – and this is much more worrying – it may be a social experiment which has some political backing.

Norway has a very dark history in the treatment of its Roma population. Forced sterilisations of Roma women were taking place as late as 1977. Norway denied reentry to many of its Roma citizens if they left the country during WW2. Inevitably those denied reentry ended up in Nazi concentration camps. Many died. The Norwegian State’s Child Welfare Agency has a reputation for cultural ignorance and racism in their very frequent “kidnapping” or “confiscation” of children of parents they don’t understand. Now, it seems they are being accused by the European Commission of forcibly taking half of all Roma children in Norway away from their parents.

UPDATE! The report is available here.

“Serious concerns have been raised by civil society representatives about extremely frequent placements of Roma children in child welfare services, including foster care. It is estimated that over 60 Roma children are in foster care currently and that a further 60 children may be vulnerable to such interventions in the future; this represents about half of the total number of (non-immigrant) Roma children in Norway”.

Swedish Radio:

Around 120 Roma children in Norway have either been forcibly placed in foster care or are at risk of it, which is equivalent to half of those who are counted as Norwegian Roma children, according to the  Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe in a report to be published later today.

They Council of Europe gives no details on how it has arrived at this previously unknown total. However the report says that Norwegian NGOs are very concerned that the so-called Barnevernet is forcing taking so many Roma children away from their parents.

Most of the children end up in foster families and some in institutions. According to the Council of Europe sources many Roma women in Norway avoid giving birth to their children at hospitals for fear that the authorities will take away their newborn babies.

The Norwegian government said in a response to the Council of Europe that the country does not register people based on ethnicity and that the government therefore can not comment on this new information that such a large proportion of Roma children are being forcibly taken away.

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, is said to be seriously concerned about the situation of the Roma in Norway. He claims that there has been an increase in violent and discriminatory statements in Norway against Roma. The Commissioner also points to the lack of education for Roma children. In 2012 data from Oslo shows that just over half of the city’s Roma children of school age were registered in a school class.

This is not the first time that Norway’s child services have been the subject of very disturbing reports. The Nordic Page reports:

The recent conflict over the Norwegian authorities putting two children of an Indian couple in foster care gets resolved with political intervention. But there are still questions that will not go away about the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency (Barnevernet).

One of the best illustrating examples of this problem is the latest barnevern crisis between India and Norway. Two kids of the NRI couple were taken under protective care last May by Barnevernet, which claimed emotional disconnect with the parents, and placed them in foster parental care as per the local Norwegian court’s directive. The family had accused the Norwegian authorities with cultural misunderstandings and prejudice as they were taken for being fed by hand and sleeping in the same bed as their parents in addition to insufficient toys to play in the house. After Indian Foreign Ministry intervened the investigation, the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre helped children to be handed to children’s uncles.

But the stories of Russian children being forcibly taken by the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency are even more disturbing. There is a hint of some of the children being “trafficked” to paedophiles posing as foster parents and being abused.

Russian media have recently run a series of issues about how more and more Russian women living in Norway are deprived of their children. Especially two cases on Russian media were strong enough to mobilize the protestors. One of these news stories featured a Russian citizen, who lives in Norway, whose name is Maya Kasayeva. Her shocking statements took many newspapers’ front pages: “During the court hearings, the judge told me: ‘We give you residence permit, and you give us your son.’ I refused, and then the repressions started.”

Irina Bergseth Frolova, a Russian woman living in Norway, had found out that her ex-husband, a Norwegian citizen, as well as his friends and relatives, had been raping their four-year-old son. The reports also remind another foster father who was previously been found guilty for child pornography and child sexual abuse in Stavanger.

In fact, the practices of Barnevern do not only worry Russians and Indians. There is a deep rooted skepticism among local groups towards an increased use of home based measures. A report prepared by Gruppen til Familiens Selvstendige Rett (GFSR), Redd Våre Barn (RVB) and BarnasRett concludes that current practices in the Norwegian Child Protection system are not compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Kidnapping children is often driven by a very lucrative adoption industry. And a small but significant part of the adoption industry is to satisfy the desires of paedophiles. But 50% of all Roma children being forcibly taken away suggests some political motive. It is not plausible – as the Norwegian government claims – that these numbers come as a surprise. It could well be that Norway is trying out a new policy to integrate Roma children — by taking them away from their Roma parents and brainwashing them to be something else.

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