Entrepreneurs with foreign roots will likely create 150,000 jobs in Germany this year, according to the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK).
The Berliner Zeitung reported on Monday that the DIHK was seeing a growing number of people from immigrant families willing to start their own business in recent years.
The DIHK last year advised some 11,000 such entrepreneurs – up from 8,300 only two years earlier – meaning 18 percent of those prepared to create a new business had foreign roots.
DIHK President Hans Heinrich Driftmann told the paper immigrants were "making an important entrepreneurial contribution to Germany."
“We will need even more of this sort of economic impulse to overcome the demographic challenges of the future,” he said.
The paper reported that if Germany’s population continues to shrink, the country will have 700,000 fewer self-employed by 2050.
Though immigrants were particularly well-represented in retail and gastronomy, the DIHK said they were starting new enterprises in all important sectors of the German economy.
The Local Germany
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Jobbik MPs want prison for people who deny existence of certain crimes (Hungary)
Deputies of the radical nationalist Jobbik party are calling for people who deny the existence of certain crimes to be imprisoned, national daily Nepszabadsag said on Wednesday.
The paper said that the initiative of the three Jobbik deputies is clearly targeted at Gypsies.
The Jobbik initiative makes use of a term - "Gypsy crime" - which has caused outrage in some sections of the mainstream.
"Public discourse has for several decades prevented the solution of some pressing social problems, the exposition of well-known but officially non-recognised forms of crime, for instance Gypsy crime, and research into its roots," the document says.
It goes on to call for prison terms for anyone who denies that such crimes exists.
"Anyone who publicly denies, doubts or presents as insignificant any generally known fact concerning a criminally relevant social relationship, especially the state of public safety, forms of crime and scope of criminals, shall be punishable by up to three years in prison."
The Jobbik deputies demand five-year prison terms for public officials who do the same.
The three MPs accuse a "narrow but all the more violent" minority of imposing its "off-reality position" on the "silent majority".
Addressing Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said "we reject the politics and ways of thinking that denies reality". But he also made it clear that he protested against the idea of someone being identified as a potential criminal on the basis of their ethnic origin.
A poll conducted by Nezopont Institute two years ago and widely criticised showed that over 90 percent of respondents, irrespective of their political affiliation, considered "Gypsy crime" an existing phenomenon, and 77 percent said that the Roma had a greater tendency towards crime than the mainstream.
politics hu
The paper said that the initiative of the three Jobbik deputies is clearly targeted at Gypsies.
The Jobbik initiative makes use of a term - "Gypsy crime" - which has caused outrage in some sections of the mainstream.
"Public discourse has for several decades prevented the solution of some pressing social problems, the exposition of well-known but officially non-recognised forms of crime, for instance Gypsy crime, and research into its roots," the document says.
It goes on to call for prison terms for anyone who denies that such crimes exists.
"Anyone who publicly denies, doubts or presents as insignificant any generally known fact concerning a criminally relevant social relationship, especially the state of public safety, forms of crime and scope of criminals, shall be punishable by up to three years in prison."
The Jobbik deputies demand five-year prison terms for public officials who do the same.
The three MPs accuse a "narrow but all the more violent" minority of imposing its "off-reality position" on the "silent majority".
Addressing Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said "we reject the politics and ways of thinking that denies reality". But he also made it clear that he protested against the idea of someone being identified as a potential criminal on the basis of their ethnic origin.
A poll conducted by Nezopont Institute two years ago and widely criticised showed that over 90 percent of respondents, irrespective of their political affiliation, considered "Gypsy crime" an existing phenomenon, and 77 percent said that the Roma had a greater tendency towards crime than the mainstream.
politics hu
BNP move into Stroud District (UK)
THE British National Party is setting up a new national communications and publicity department at Salmon Springs Trading Estate between Stroud and Painswick, the SNJ has learned.
Writing in an email sent to supporters, which is also available on the BNP's website, party leader Nick Griffin said that several of the party's top officers met earlier this year to discuss a reorganisation of its press operation.
He writes: "The communications department will soon be based at our new operations centre in Stroud.
"From here, the national team will coordinate our media efforts all under one roof."
It is understood that the operations centre, which will encompass media and communications, the BNP website and publicity and design, will be based at Unit 13 on the trading estate.
According to the email, the department will be run by Paul Golding, a close ally of Mr Griffin.
It is thought that three rooms were rented in the unit in spring 2009, which were originally to be used as a training centre but remained empty.
According to Mr Griffin, the BNP receives a 'huge number' of inquiries from the media.
"In the past the party only operated through two mobile phone lines to handle media inquiries but the new communications department utilises a dedicated 'media inquiries ticketing system'," he writes.
"All media interest in the party is funnelled into this system and inquiries from leftwing, hostile or freelance media sources are filtered out."
Stroud's independent mayor Andy Read said he was puzzled as to why the BNP would want to be based in Stroud.
"Whenever the BNP has put up candidates locally, it has had no support whatsoever," he said.
"However, history shows that censorship only plays into the hands of such groups.
"The best approach is to bring the BNP and their policies out into the open.
"I know many Stroud people feel strongly about the BNP and will relish this opportunity to expose and challenge its policies."
Stroud News Journal
Writing in an email sent to supporters, which is also available on the BNP's website, party leader Nick Griffin said that several of the party's top officers met earlier this year to discuss a reorganisation of its press operation.
He writes: "The communications department will soon be based at our new operations centre in Stroud.
"From here, the national team will coordinate our media efforts all under one roof."
It is understood that the operations centre, which will encompass media and communications, the BNP website and publicity and design, will be based at Unit 13 on the trading estate.
According to the email, the department will be run by Paul Golding, a close ally of Mr Griffin.
It is thought that three rooms were rented in the unit in spring 2009, which were originally to be used as a training centre but remained empty.
According to Mr Griffin, the BNP receives a 'huge number' of inquiries from the media.
"In the past the party only operated through two mobile phone lines to handle media inquiries but the new communications department utilises a dedicated 'media inquiries ticketing system'," he writes.
"All media interest in the party is funnelled into this system and inquiries from leftwing, hostile or freelance media sources are filtered out."
Stroud's independent mayor Andy Read said he was puzzled as to why the BNP would want to be based in Stroud.
"Whenever the BNP has put up candidates locally, it has had no support whatsoever," he said.
"However, history shows that censorship only plays into the hands of such groups.
"The best approach is to bring the BNP and their policies out into the open.
"I know many Stroud people feel strongly about the BNP and will relish this opportunity to expose and challenge its policies."
Stroud News Journal
Cuba's Fidel Castro says Nicolas Sarkozy going crazy
Mr Castro also suggested Mr Sarkozy could not be trusted with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
In the article, Mr Castro denounces Mr Sarkozy for the expulsion of more than 1,000 Roma (Gypsy) migrants, over which France has been widely condemned.
At the weekend, Mr Castro accused Paris of carrying out a "racial holocaust".
In a comment piece published in La Jornada newspaper on Monday, the 84-year-old former leader points out that France is the world's third biggest nuclear power and says Mr Sarkozy carries around a briefcase with the launch codes for an arsenal of more than 300 atomic weapons.
"Suppose that Sarkozy suddenly goes crazy, as appears to be happening. What would the UN Security Council do in that case with Sarkozy and his briefcase?" he says.
In the tirade, entitled The Endless Hypocrisy of the West, Mr Castro adds: "What will happen if the far right forces Sarkozy to hold a racist policy in contradiction with the norms of the European Community?"
He also says: "Does it make any moral or ethical sense to launch an attack on Iran, which is condemned for its supposed intention to make bombs of this type? Where is the sense and logic of this policy?"
"Would the UN Security Council answer those two questions?" he added.
France said the holocaust comments over its expulsion of members of the Roma community were unacceptable and showed Mr Castro's ignorance of history.
On Tuesday, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding urged the European Commission to take legal action against France over the deportations.
BBC News
Russian football is blighted by systematic racism, says FARE network
Russian domestic football is blighted by "systematic" racism that will take several years to root out if it is to host the 2018 World Cup, according to a leading European anti-racism campaign group.
Russia's World Cup bid has been dented by recent incidents including the unveiling of a banner featuring a banana with the words "Thanks West Brom" aimed at West Bromwich Albion striker Peter Odemwingie by fans of his former club Lokomotiv Moscow.
Russia 2018 chief executive Alexei Sorokin initially denied that the incident was racist, claiming that the phrase "to get a banana" meant to fail a test in Russian slang. "There was nothing racial in it," Sorokin said.
Sorokin's view has been challenged however by the FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) Network, a coalition of football anti-racism campaigners that has run campaigns with Fifa and Uefa.
Piara Powar, executive director of FARE, said the banner was clearly racist in intention, and indicated that the Russian game faced wider problems.
"The context in which the banner was used was clearly racist in context, and to suggest otherwise is a nonsense," he told Telegraph Sport.
"Russian domestic football has a problem with racism that is quite systematic and insidious, it is linked to the activities of far-right groups that emerged after the collapse of the eastern bloc and have used football as a vehicle.
"Compared to the work that has been done in England, Russian football is on a different planet, and if it were to stage the World Cup in four years there is no chance racism would have been dealt with.
"But if it were to win the right to host the 2018 tournament there would be time to address the problem and I'm sure that they would do so.
"We are trying to get in touch with the Russian bid to start a dialogue about this."
The Telegraph
Russia's World Cup bid has been dented by recent incidents including the unveiling of a banner featuring a banana with the words "Thanks West Brom" aimed at West Bromwich Albion striker Peter Odemwingie by fans of his former club Lokomotiv Moscow.
Russia 2018 chief executive Alexei Sorokin initially denied that the incident was racist, claiming that the phrase "to get a banana" meant to fail a test in Russian slang. "There was nothing racial in it," Sorokin said.
Sorokin's view has been challenged however by the FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) Network, a coalition of football anti-racism campaigners that has run campaigns with Fifa and Uefa.
Piara Powar, executive director of FARE, said the banner was clearly racist in intention, and indicated that the Russian game faced wider problems.
"The context in which the banner was used was clearly racist in context, and to suggest otherwise is a nonsense," he told Telegraph Sport.
"Russian domestic football has a problem with racism that is quite systematic and insidious, it is linked to the activities of far-right groups that emerged after the collapse of the eastern bloc and have used football as a vehicle.
"Compared to the work that has been done in England, Russian football is on a different planet, and if it were to stage the World Cup in four years there is no chance racism would have been dealt with.
"But if it were to win the right to host the 2018 tournament there would be time to address the problem and I'm sure that they would do so.
"We are trying to get in touch with the Russian bid to start a dialogue about this."
The Telegraph
French Senate votes to ban Islamic full veil in public
The proposed measure was already backed by the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, in July.
The ban will come into force in six months' time if it is not overturned by constitutional judges.
The ban has strong public support, but critics point out that only a tiny minority of French Muslims wear the full veil.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed the ban as part of a wider debate on French identity but opponents say the government is pandering to far-right voters.
Spain and Belgium are debating similar legislation, and with such large-scale immigration in the past 20 or 30 years, identity has become a popular theme across Europe, correspondents say.
Council's warning
On Tuesday, the Senate voted 246 to 1 in favour of the bill.
It will be now sent immediately to France's Constitutional Council watchdog, which has a month to confirm its legality.
Another challenge is possible at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where decisions are binding.
There are estimated to be only about 2,000 women wearing the full veil in France.
The bill makes it illegal to wear garments such as the niqab or burka, which incorporate a full-face veil, anywhere in public.
It envisages fines of 150 euros (£119) for women who break the law and 30,000 euros and a one-year jail term for men who force their wives to wear the burka.
The niqab and burka are widely seen in France as threats to women's rights and the secular nature of the state.
The bill is also seen as a touchstone for the Mr Sarkozy administration's policy of integration. It is grappling with disaffected immigrant communities as it seeks to prevent a repeat of the mass unrest of 2005 on run-down French housing estates.
In March, the Council of State, France's highest administrative body, warned that the law could be found unconstitutional
BBC News
'Mate crime' fears for people with learning disabilities (UK)
Steven Hoskin had strong feelings about his killers. They had abused, exploited and humiliated him over a year, taking his money, treating him as their slave and making him wear his own dog's collar and lead. Eventually, having forced him to swallow 70 painkillers, they took him to the top of a railway viaduct and made him hang from the railings as one member of the gang, a girl aged 16, stamped on his hands until he fell 30 metres to his death.
Yet these were the people the 38-year-old, who had severe learning disabilities, had boasted excitedly of counting as friends. "He thought they were the cat's whiskers," says Morley Richards, who had known Hoskin before he met the group. "He would say, 'They're my mates, I've got my own mates now.'"
Hoskin's case is extreme, but the phenomenon of learning disabled people being groomed by those who pretend to be their friends before being exploited by them financially, physically or sexually – "mate crime", as it is sometimes known – is far from rare, experts say, and appears to be on the increase. As more individuals are given the chance to live independently, the unwelcome side effect is that they are more likely to fall prey to criminals. Hoskin was a case in point: he had left the tiny Cornish village of Maudlin, near Bodmin, where he had grown up, and was thrilled to have his own bedsit in the market town of St Austell, where he made his new "friends".
The Association for Real Change (ARC) has been researching mate crime for the past year in Calderdale, west Yorkshire, and in north Devon, after a groundswell of concern among its members who are service providers for people with learning disabilities. Examples it has been told about range from perpetrators routinely going to a victim's house and clearing their cupboards of food and alcohol before leaving them to clear up the mess, to instances of people being persuaded to part with their benefits.
Women can be sexually exploited by men who claim to be their boyfriend, says David Grundy, who runs the Calderdale project. "They might be told, 'We're a couple and we haven't got any money – if you sleep with my mate he'll pay us.'" In other cases, someone with learning disabilities may be asked to look after a package that contains drugs and end up being beaten up as a result, or go shoplifting with their new-found friends carrying a weapon, only to get caught by police.
The victim may not realise that what is happening is wrong. "There can be a feeling of, 'He's my friend, that's what friends do,'" says Grundy. "People with learning disabilities have fewer friends. For some, any friends is better than no friends, even if they're spending all your money.
"It involves a lot of issues [around] self-belief and self-worth: thinking it's all right for people to walk all over them all the time, because that's what's happened to them the whole of their lives."
Rod Landman, from the north Devon project, likens the situation to domestic violence. "The primacy of the relationship can be more important than what's happening inside it. People are prepared to put up with all sorts of crap to keep a relationship that may be the only one they have apart from with someone who's being paid to be with them." As a result, victims shy away from reporting such hate crime incidents to the police, or indeed anyone. Every service provider that Landman talks to will tell him of cases, he says, but no one with learning disabilities will do the same.
Some families and frontline social care staff are still unaware of what constitutes a disability hate crime and what to do when one happens, says Grundy. Abusive relationships may get flagged up to adult safeguarding teams, but their primary aim is to keep the individual safe by removing them from the situation, rather than report those committing the crimes. This means that perpetrators remain free to target others.
As cuts lead to the closure of day centres and potentially less support for vulnerable people, there are fears that the situation could get worse. Gavin Harding, vice-chair of the National Forum for People with Learning Disabilities, remembers the shock and anger he felt five years ago when he realised that someone he believed to be a friend had taken his cheque book and, together with another man, forged a cheque for £500.
"It was the fact they took advantage of me," he says. "It felt awful. You feel you can't trust people after that."
• Information on ARC's Safety Net project is at arcsafety.net.
The Guardian
CAIR director Dawud Walid: East Lansing Quran burning clearly hate crime not free speech (USA)
Dawud Walid, executive director for the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, takes exception to defenders who say burning a Quran and placing it on the steps of a mosque is an expression of free speech protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
East Lansing police say a burned Quran was found early Saturday on the doorsteps of a local mosque. Authorities initially believed the religious text was covered with feces, but Capt. Kim Johnson tells the Detroit News they no longer believe that to be true.
Regardless, Walid says authorities should treat the case as a hate crime.
Writing on his blog Monday, Walid compared the incident to burning crosses used to intimidate African Americans.
Sept. 13: The Supreme Court ruled in 2003 relating to cross burnings that acts that are meant to intimidate persons (minorities in particular) on their private properties are not protected under the 1st Amendment. Therefore, it is illegal to burn a cross in the yard of a Black man, for instance, or at a Black church because this is a clear act of intimidation. Likewise, to paint a swastika in the parking lot of a Jewish Temple would not be protected speech besides it also being trespassing.
And to burn the foundation of the religion of Islam, the Qur’an, at the entrance of a mosque on mosque property is also an act of religious hatred and intimidation.
...In short, if persons burn a cross or the Qur’an on their own private properties, that’s their right to freely express themselves. However, if persons go to others’ private properties or houses of worship and do such while trespassing, this goes outside the bounds of responsible free speech.
The East Lansing incident occurred shortly after Rev. Terry Jones backed off plans to hold a Koran burning in Florida. Jones' statements and Saturday's discovery of the burned Quran in East Lansing sparked outrage from Muslims around the world.
Here in Metro Detroit, a group of Dearborn Muslims led by attorney Majed Moughni on Friday burned effigies of pastor Jones and Osama bin Laden. Moughni, a Republican who lost his primary bid to take on Rep. John Dingell in November, held the rally on his own lawn and said the event was designed to show that "Islam is against terrorism."
Mlive
East Lansing police say a burned Quran was found early Saturday on the doorsteps of a local mosque. Authorities initially believed the religious text was covered with feces, but Capt. Kim Johnson tells the Detroit News they no longer believe that to be true.
Regardless, Walid says authorities should treat the case as a hate crime.
Writing on his blog Monday, Walid compared the incident to burning crosses used to intimidate African Americans.
Sept. 13: The Supreme Court ruled in 2003 relating to cross burnings that acts that are meant to intimidate persons (minorities in particular) on their private properties are not protected under the 1st Amendment. Therefore, it is illegal to burn a cross in the yard of a Black man, for instance, or at a Black church because this is a clear act of intimidation. Likewise, to paint a swastika in the parking lot of a Jewish Temple would not be protected speech besides it also being trespassing.
And to burn the foundation of the religion of Islam, the Qur’an, at the entrance of a mosque on mosque property is also an act of religious hatred and intimidation.
...In short, if persons burn a cross or the Qur’an on their own private properties, that’s their right to freely express themselves. However, if persons go to others’ private properties or houses of worship and do such while trespassing, this goes outside the bounds of responsible free speech.
The East Lansing incident occurred shortly after Rev. Terry Jones backed off plans to hold a Koran burning in Florida. Jones' statements and Saturday's discovery of the burned Quran in East Lansing sparked outrage from Muslims around the world.
Here in Metro Detroit, a group of Dearborn Muslims led by attorney Majed Moughni on Friday burned effigies of pastor Jones and Osama bin Laden. Moughni, a Republican who lost his primary bid to take on Rep. John Dingell in November, held the rally on his own lawn and said the event was designed to show that "Islam is against terrorism."
Mlive
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