Merkel : multicultural society has failed:..[ 1887 ]

Merkel says German multicultural society has failed

 

Chancellor Angela Merkel

BBC., 16 October 2010 Last updated at 20:51 GMT

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "lmmigrants should learn to speak German"

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

In a speech in Potsdam, she said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work.

Mrs Merkel's comments come amid recent outpourings of strong anti-immigrant feeling from mainstream politicians.

A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was "overrun by foreigners".

The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for the social benefits.

Foreign workers

Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country... We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality.

"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

In her speech, the chancellor specifically referred to recent comments by German President Christian Wulff who said that Islam was "part of Germany" like Christianity and Judaism.

Mrs Merkel says Islam is part of Germany but more must be done on integration

While acknowledging that this was the case, Mrs Merkel stressed that immigrants living in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.

"Anyone who does not immediately speak German", she said, "is not welcome".

By speaking now, Mrs Merkel has now joined the increasingly hot debate on multiculturalism, coming down on the side of those who are uneasy about immigration, says the BBC's correspondent in Berlin, Stephen Evans.

Her comments come a week after she held talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which the two leaders pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's estimated 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.

Earlier this week, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, said about integration that it was "obvious that immigrants from different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, find it harder".

"'Multikulti' is dead," Mr Seehofer said.

In August, Thilo Sarrazin, a senior official at Germany's central bank, said that "no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime". Mr Sarrazin has since resigned.

Such recent strong anti-immigrant feelings from mainstream politicians come amid an anger in Germany about high unemployment, even if the economy is growing faster than those of its rivals, our correspondent says.

He adds that there also seems to be a new strident tone in the country, perhaps leading to less reticence about no-go-areas of the past.

Obama's half brother is a polygamist Muslim..[ 1886 ]

Barack Obama's half brother in Kenya marries teenager

President Barack Obama's polygamist half brother in Kenya has married a woman who is more than 30 years younger than him.

 

Telegraph co. uk.,Published: 10:40PM BST 15 Oct 2010

Malik Obama, who is Muslim, has two other wives. Polygamy is legal in Kenya if it falls under religious or cultural traditions Photo: AP

The 19-year-old's mother told The Associated Press on Friday she is furious that her daughter quit high school and married the 52-year-old.

Mary Aoko Ouma says her daughter tried to marry Malik Obama two years ago, but the mother says she would not give permission.

 

Malik Obama, who is Muslim, has two other wives. Polygamy is legal in Kenya if it falls under religious or cultural traditions.

In an interview broadcast by Kenya's NTV that was filmed without his knowledge, Malik Obama says he married the 19-year-old but didn't say when.

Communist China's elite calling for democratic reforms [ 1885 ]

China Dissidents Call for Reform 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(Asia News) OCT 15,2010.,,9:45 A.M. ET

By JEREMY PAGE

BEIJING—As China's Communist Party elite began an annual meeting Friday, more than 100 Chinese dissidents and rights advocates issued a statement calling for democratic reforms and hailing the Nobel Peace Prize for jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo as a "splendid choice."

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European Pressphoto Agency

A 2009 photo shows a pro-democracy activist holding a placard of Liu Xiaobo during a protest demanding China's government release the dissident .

The statement is the latest contribution to an unusual public debate that has been raging since Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a surprise call for political reform in a speech in the southern city of Shenzhen in August.

The statement, circulating on several websites Friday, urged Chinese authorities to "immediately release the people who have been illegally detained" since Mr Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December for "subversion," won the prize on Oct. 8.

It asked the Party's leaders to respond "with realism and reason" to the award, which the Chinese government has denounced as a "desecration" of the prize and part of a Western conspiracy to undermine a rising China.

Chinese authorities have also placed Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, under effective house arrest. They also have heavily censored online discussion of the award and detained or increased surveillance of fellow dissidents across the country.

"Liu Xiaobo is a splendid choice for the Nobel Peace Prize," said Friday's statement. "He has persevered in pursuing the goals of democracy and constitutional government and has set aside anger even toward those who persecute him."

"In a recent series of speeches, Premier Wen Jiabao has intimated a strong desire to promote political reform," the statement said. "We are ready to engage actively in such an effort."

The statement comes after a group of 23 reformist Communist Party elders and retired academics made a bold appeal, in another open letter published online earlier this week, for the government to lift restrictions on freedom of expression.

Neither appeal is expected to have much direct impact on the Party leadership since both come from known critics of the political system who have spoken out many times before.

Combined with Mr Liu's prize, however, the letters are throwing a spotlight on the sensitive issue just as the Party's 371-member Central Committee begins a four-day meeting to set policy for the next five years.

They are also raising Mr. Wen's profile, at home and overseas, as top Party leaders start to jockey for position—to secure their own promotions, or those of their proteges—ahead of an expected leadership change in 2012.

Those who signed Friday's appeal included constitutional scholar Zhang Zuhua, one of the people who worked with Mr. Liu to draft Charter 08, the call for political freedom for which Mr Liu was sent to prison.

Other signatories included activist lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and Li Datong, a veteran state newspaper journalist who was forced from a top editing job for reporting on sensitive subjects.

NASA Image of the Day, Oct 15th..[ 1884 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Hubble's Lagoon

Like brush strokes on a canvas, ridges of color seem to flow across the Lagoon Nebula, a canvas nearly 3 light-years wide. 

The colors map emission from ionized gas in the nebula were recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. 

Also known as M8, the nebula is a star-forming region in the constellation Sagittarius. 

Hubble's remarkably sharp, close-up view reveals undulating shapes sculpted by the energetic light and winds from the region's new born stars. 

Of course, the Lagoon Nebula is a popular target for earthbound skygazers, too. 

Image Credit: NASA

Παρασκευή, 15 Οκτώβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Switzerland, the Zurich-Lugano Tunnel and Rail Route..[ 1883 ]

The work for the Longest Tunnel completed

Unprecedented

The area already has the 34km Loetschberg rail tunnel, which opened in 2007, but this latest engineering feat is being hailed by leading members of the Swiss government as being of unprecedented significance. 

Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger said that the Gotthard Tunnel would become a spectacular and grandiose monument with which all tunnels would be compared.

Two other transalpine tunnels are planned to exceed 50km but are unlikely to be complete until the 2020s. One tunnel will connect Lyon in France to Turin in Italy and another is due to replace the Brenner road tunnel between Austria and Italy.

The head of the Swiss Federal Transport Office, Peter Fueglistaler, said he was very happy with the achievement: "In Switzerland we are not a very emotional people, but if we have the longest tunnel in the world that's... very, very emotional."