FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband signed the hated EU treaty - hours before Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived in Lisbon.

Due to the PM's delayed arrival, Mr Miliband was the only foreign minister to attend the televised ceremony alone, amid a stream of prime ministers and presidents from the other 26 EU states.

Mr Brown also later signed the document in a low key ceremony.

The news will be a blow to the country's voters - The Sun's EU petition has received 28,000 votes saying no to the Treaty.

Today’s ceremony took place in the beautiful surroundings of Lisbon's 500-year-old Jeronimos Monastery.

The warning was issued to the PM last night as he prepared to wave the white flag over our right to make our own laws.

It emerged tens of thousands of foreigners facing the boot from the UK will be winners.

They will get new rights to overturn decisions by Britain’s Immigration and Asylum Tribunal.

It means failed asylum seekers will be free to take their cases to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg — giving the final say to unelected EU judges.

Labels: England, EU treaty, Europe

Swiss Troops Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein

Friday, March 02, 2007

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ZURICH, Switzerland — What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story, but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

"We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem," Daniel Reist told The Associated Press on Friday.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior Ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. "It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something," he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington, D.C., does not have an army. (link)

Labels: Europe, humor

World News

ETA supporters back Chaos

ETA Man Wants Peace Talks Updated: 15:35, Monday February 05, 2007 A convicted ETA killer has called on the Spanish government to reopen talks with the Basque separatist group, it has been reported. Inaki de Juana Chaos is appealing against a 12-year jail sentence for making terrorist threats in a Basque newspaper. He has already served a 20-year term for murdering 25 people in a series of attacks.

Chaos told The Times: "I am completely in agreement with the democratic process of dialogue and negotiation."

The government called off talks after ETA bombed Madrid's Barajas International Airport in December, killing two people.

The militant group says it did not mean to kill anyone in the attack, and still regards the peace process as ongoing.

Spain's socialist government has rejected talks, and 200,000 anti-ETA protestors marched in Madrid on Saturday, in support of that stance. (link)

Labels: Europe, terrorists

Muslims in police will rise up, Bakri insists
By Mike Hirst and Adam Lusher, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:02am GMT 21/01/2007

Moderate British Muslims in the police, Armed Forces and Civil Service will one day revolt against the system to "crush it from within", according to Omar Bakri Mohammed, the notorious Islamic extremist.

	Omar Bakri Mohammed claimed that the world was a better place after the July 7 bombings in London

In claims condemned as a cynical attempt to create division, the co-founder of the extremist al-Muhajiroun group said that Britain was "digging a deep hole" for itself by allowing Muslims into the Services and Whitehall.

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Telegraph in Lebanon, where he moved in August 2005 — at about the time it emerged the British authorities might charge him with incitement to treason — he claimed police officers, soldiers and civil servants would one day become radicalised.

"When you start to ask Muslims to join your Army and your police you are making a grave mistake. That British Muslim who joins the police today will one day read the Koran and will have an awakening," he said.

"Those moderates are one day going to be practising Muslims. Now what happens if they are British police or in the Army and they have weapons? How much information do they have about you that they will use to serve the global struggle? (link)

Labels: Europe, islamists, terrorists

Zapatero admits 'clear mistake' in trying to negotiate with Eta

By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid

Published: 16 January 2007

Spain's Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has issued a remarkable apology for putting his faith in the peace process with Basque separatists, after a deadly car bombing that has caused outrage.

With Spain divided as never before over how to deal with armed Basque separatists following a bomb that killed two people in Madrid, shattering immediate hopes for peace, Mr Zapatero faced hostile opposition in his first parliamentary appearance since the blast. The premier admitted that he had made a "clear mistake" in his policy towards Eta.

"I want to recognise the clear mistake I made before the Spanish people, " he said in apparent recognition that he is now fighting for his political future. He was referring to his statement 24 hours before the bombing on 30 December that within a year Spain would be nearer an end to terrorism. "Eta, with its brutal attack, broke negotiations ... it chose the path of terror."

In 40 years of fighting Basque terrorism, no Spanish government has been harmed so badly by Eta's armed action as Mr Zapatero's since the attack at Madrid's Barajas airport. Yesterday's confrontation may signal the start of his political decline.

Mr Zapatero recognised the strength of feeling against him by proposing to establish a "great democratic national consensus ... to confront together the challenge of terrorism". He did not rule out future talks with Eta, but stressed: "There'll be no dialogue with violence: never, never."(link)

Labels: Europe, terrorists

Spanish bishops fear rebirth of Islamic kingdom

Posted By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton @ 2:03 pm. Filed under Politics, Middle East/Terrorism

Courtesy of Dhimmi Watch:

And they have every reason to, since after all, Spain is part of dar al-Islam. By Elizabeth Nash in the Independent, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:

Spain’s bishops are alarmed by ambitious plans to recreate the city of Cordoba - once the heart of the ancient Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus - as a pilgrimage site for Muslims throughout Europe.

Plans include the construction of a half-size replica of Cordoba’s eighth century great mosque, according to the head of Cordoba’s Muslim Association. Funds for the project are being sought from the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and Muslim organisations in Morocco and Egypt.Other big mosques are reportedly planned for Medina Azahara near Cordoba, Seville and Granada.

The bishops of those cities are alarmed at the construction of ostentatious mosques, fearing that the church’s waning influence may be further eclipsed by resurgent Islam financed from abroad. Up to one million Muslims are estimated to live in Spain. Many are drawn by a romantic nostalgia for the lost paradise of Al-Andalus, the caliphate that ruled Spain for more than five centuries.

Click the link

Labels: Europe, muslim, Spain

200 kgs of explosive used in ETA blast: Spain

Agence France-Presse

Madrid, December 30, 2006

Spanish police said some 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of explosive were used in Saturday's car bomb at Madrid airport which ended a nine-month ceasefire by armed Basque separatist group ETA.

Police based their estimate on the extent of the damage caused at a carpark at the brand new terminal four of the airport and the power of the explosion, which generated a huge pall of black smoke and shattered windows, the Europa Press news agency reported.

Investigators were checking hours of closed-circuit video to try to glean clues as to the identity of the bombers, who blew up a burgundy-coloured Renault van. (link)

Not a shot was fired yet the Somali jihad was suddenly over...

Xan Rice, in Nairobi
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer

Their fortress fell without a shot. After just nine days of clashes in Somalia's hinterland, the Islamists who had vowed to fight to the death abandoned Mogadishu, the city they had governed since June. From having controlled most of southern and central Somalia, they were holed up yesterday in the southern port city of Kismaayo, facing annihilation by Ethiopian troops.

Ali Mohamed Ghedi, Prime Minister in Somalia's transitional government - an irrelevance until last week - rode triumphantly into Mogadishu on Friday, announcing the end of 'terrorism' in the country. Ethiopia, which together with the US has stoked fears about the rise of a terrorist state {emp mine: LN} in the Horn of Africa, was basking in the success of a campaign that was swifter and more successful than anyone had predicted. (link)

Labels: Africa, Europe, MSM, terrorists

Basque terrorists strike in Madrid: ETA car bomb in Madrid breaks ceasefire.

MADRID (Reuters) - A car bomb wrecked a car park at Madrid's international airport on Saturday, injuring at least 19 people in an attack the government said smashed a nine-month-old ceasefire by ETA Basque guerrillas.

Labels: Europe, terrorists

The Jihadist Dream to Liberate Spain

By Aaron Hanscom
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 22, 2006

Earlier this year a jihadist document calling for the liberation of so-called occupied territories and issued by the al-Qaeda-linked group Nadim al-Magrebi was posted on the Islamic extremist website Alansar. In most European capitals, where the cult of Palestinianism reins supreme, such demands are often met with approval since the occupied land in question is usually Israeli. But this time the statement addressed Spain—not Israel. It warned of a “holy war against the infidel Spanish state which has occupied the two cities.”

The two cities in question are Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves on the North African coast which Spain gained control of nearly 500 years ago. Melilla, with a population of 64,400, is home to 26,400 Muslims; Ceuta’s Muslims number 27,000 out of a population of 71,500. The Spanish newspaper El Pais reports that Muslims will become the majority in the next decade.

Demographics, however, don’t pose the only threat to Spain’s future. This month 11 Islamist radicals, ten Spaniards and a Moroccan, were arrested in Ceuta for planning to stage terrorist attacks in the country. (Two of the brothers of Hamed Abderrahaman Ahmed, the one-time Guantanamo prisoner who was eventually exonerated by a Spanish court, were among those arrested.) The seven suspects later detained by Judge Baltasar Garzon were charged with belonging to the Salafia Yihadia terrorist group which forms part of the al-Qaeda network in North Africa. In a statement Garzon said that the group had considered stealing weapons and explosives from a military base and carrying out an attack during Ceuta's annual fiesta. Sources claim that at least one member had already written a suicide note. The investigation of the group which began in March of 2005 also revealed that the individuals detained were in contact with two Spanish soldiers of Moroccan origin from whom they hoped to obtain explosives and strategic information. (link)

Filed under: Dhimmitude by Chad Evans at 3:24 pm EDT

From The Brussels Journal:

Spain will no longer burn effigies of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslim armies occupied Spain from 711 to 1492. For the past five centuries the Spanish have traditionally celebrated the 1492 liberation from the Moors (as the Muslims were locally called) with local village festivals during which the battles against the Moors were reenacted and effigies of the Muslim prophet – the so-called “la Mahoma” – were mocked, thrown from the windows, and burned.

Last year the town of Bocairent near Valencia decided to discontinue the tradition of centuries. The town did not want to risk becoming the target of Islamic suicide bombers. On Monday the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that this year the other Valencian towns are also abolishing ancient traditions which are perceived to be offensive to Muslims. The people of Beneixama used to stuff the head of the Mahoma with firecrackers which went off as the onlookers applauded. This year Beneixama decided to abolish this part of the celebration. Antonio Valdés, the local mayor, told El Pais: “This was not an essential part of the festivities. It could hurt the sensitivities of some. We decided to avoid that.” The reconquista will still be commemmorated, but without “aggression” towards Muhammad.

The former Moorish provinces of Spain, or “Al-Andalus” as Islamists call it, are the only part of the world besides Israel which was once Muslim territory but was lost to Islam. Osama bin Laden dreams of recapturing it. By renouncing their ancient traditions the Spanish seem to indicate that they deserve the return of the Moors.

That, like the German theater closing down a three year-old play, is Islamophobia. (link via IntheBullpen blog)

Labels: Europe, muslim, Spain, TWoT