Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Soeren Kern: Britain: Muslim Polygamists to Get More Welfare Benefits, and more


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Britain: Muslim Polygamists to Get More Welfare Benefits

by Soeren Kern
August 1, 2012 at 5:00 am
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"Treating second and subsequent partners in polygamous relationships as separate claimants could mean that polygamous households receive more under Universal Credit than under the current rules for means-tested benefits and tax credits." — House of Commons legal brief, July 19, 2012
Muslim immigrants with more than one wife will see an increase in their social welfare benefits beginning in 2013, when reforms to the British welfare system come into effect.
Although polygamy is illegal in Britain, the state effectively recognizes the practice for Muslim men, who often have up to four wives (and in some instances five or more) in a harem.
Currently the state pays extra wives in polygamous households reduced amounts of individual income support, in addition to the normal amount received by the husband and his first spouse.
Under the new rules, however, the extra wives will be eligible to claim a full single person's allowance (despite being married), while the original married couple will still receive the standard married person's allowance.
The changes are part of wide-ranging reforms to the welfare system that are being implemented by Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government, which admits that it wants to treat extra wives as single so that the state will not officially be recognizing polygamy as it is under the current system.
Critics who had hoped the government reforms would do away with benefits for polygamy altogether say the so-called Welfare Reform Bill is simply opening up a loophole for polygamous families to claim more money from the state.
Details of the changes were revealed in a 13-page legal brief dated July 19, and published by the library of the House of Commons. The document states: "Treating second and subsequent partners in polygamous relationships as separate claimants could mean that polygamous households receive more under Universal Credit than under the current rules for means-tested benefits and tax credits."
The issue of Muslims with multiple wives claiming extra welfare payments has been steeped in controversy for years.
In September 2011, a British newspaper exposé on the subject found that the phenomenon of bigamy and polygamy -- permitted by Islamic Sharia law -- is far more widespread in Britain than previously believed. The rapid growth in multiple marriages is being fuelled by multicultural policies that grant special rights to Muslim immigrants, who demand that Sharia law be reflected in British law and the social welfare benefits system.
The exposé quotes two senior social welfare experts and is based on least 20,000 bigamous or polygamous Muslim unions in England and Wales. If the average size of such a "family" is 15 people, these numbers would imply that around 300,000 people in Britain are living in polygamous families.
The multiple marriages have been encouraged by changes made to the British welfare system by the previous Labour government, which allowed Muslim immigrants to have a second, third or fourth wife (and in some cases five or more) treated as a single mother who can get a house and an array of other state payments for herself and her children.
The exposé shows how Muslim men can take a new spouse from anywhere in the world, father any number of children with her, and have British taxpayers assume responsibility for this family's upkeep and care.
Although all marriages that take place in the United Kingdom must be monogamous, Muslim immigrants can and do employ countless evasions to practice polygamy without running afoul of British matrimony laws.
Muslim men, for example, can marry their extra "wives" in an Islamic Nikah ceremony (temporary marriage), either in their own homes or in a mosque. Because these marriages are not officially recognized, they do not appear in government statistics, nor do they have any status under the law. As a result, the "single mothers" involved in these marriages are entitled to receive welfare benefits from the British state.
Another technique is for a Muslim couple to marry legally under British law but then divorce, leaving them then to have a Nikah ceremony and continue living together. The woman will then be entitled to welfare payments as a single mother and the man can then bring another woman from abroad and legally marry her in Britain.
Muslim men also cheat the system by bringing brides from abroad as nannies for their children, or as nurses for a sick relative. After the bride's one year visitors' visa expires, she then disappears into a tight-knit local Muslim community and is then entitled to receive welfare handouts.
Apart from the "nanny ruse," new female partners enter the country using tourist visas, student visas or work permits. They simply overstay the visas, which are normally for six months, and then remain in Britain, often hiding away in their husband's home.
The United Kingdom also recognizes polygamous marriages in which both parties, before they moved to Britain, were resident in a country where the practice is legal. Since the 2008 change the former Labour government made to British law, a Muslim man with four wives is entitled to receive £10,000 ($15,000) a year in income support alone. He could also be entitled to more generous housing and council tax benefits to reflect the fact that his household needs a bigger property.
The result is that the more children produced by Muslim polygamists, the more state welfare money pours in for their wives and them. By having a string of wives living in separate homes, thousands of Muslim immigrants are squeezing tens of millions of British pounds from the state by claiming benefits intended for single mothers and their children.
Those women are eligible for full housing benefits – which reach £106,000 ($250,000) a year in some parts of London -- and child benefits paid at £1,000 ($1,500) a year for a first child, and nearly £700 ($1,000) for each subsequent one.
The exposé describes, by way of example, a street in a Yorkshire town on which all the residents are Pakistani women with children living on social security. There is not one man living in the street.
The report says: "The men find second wives in the UK as well as any Muslim country abroad. The new favorite places to find women are Turkey and Morocco, because the men can drive there by car to meet them and bring them back."
The report also interviews a Muslim woman who was deserted by her husband of 20 years when he went on holiday to Bangladesh and returned to say he was about to marry, in a Nikah ceremony, a girl of 19 whom wanted to bring to Britain as his second wife.
"All over the place, in London's East End, in Yorkshire towns, down the road, across the street, I see Muslim men taking second or third wives. I cannot count the number of times I have been approached to be a second wife myself by Bangladeshi men who know I am now on my own," she said.
A separate investigative report describes how Muslim women suffer as a result of polygamy. It quotes a government social worker who is active in Muslim neighborhoods as saying: "The first wives get depressed because they are so ashamed of their husband taking a second or third wife. Many wives have been here for years, but have never been allowed to learn English or even go out of the house alone. They have no one to turn to for help."
The controversy over multiple marriages in Britain became a national issue in September 2011 with the publication of a hard-hitting essay entitled, "Polygamy, Welfare Benefits and an Insidious Silence." It was written by Baroness Shreela Flather, Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead, who was born in Lahore (now part of Pakistan) and was the first Asian woman member of the British House of Lords.
Baroness Flather wrote: "Under Islamic Sharia law, polygamy is permissible. So a man can return to Pakistan, take another bride and then, in a repetition of the process, bring her to England where they also have children together -- obtaining yet more money from the state. We cannot continue like this."
More recently she said: "Why are they allowed to have more than one wife? We should prosecute one or two people for bigamy…that would sort it out."
Soeren Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics:  United Kingdom  |  Soeren Kern

British Allow Anti-Semitic Iranian Propaganda in the UK

by Lee Kaplan
August 1, 2012 at 4:45 am
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Despite these convictions for "hate crimes" against Islam, the British government is apparently perfectly willing to overlook the converse: anti-Semitic attacks by Iranian front groups against Jews. The deeper question for the British government is this: If British citizens can be fined or incarcerated or fined for expressing unsavory opinions about Islam, how come Lady Renouf and Philip Bree are not being charged with "hate crimes" as well for doing exactly the same thing against the Jewish people?
"The Heritage and Destiny Channel," on You Tube, run by Iran, currently features a video with two British subjects: an actress and film producer named Michelle Renouf, whose real name is Michelle Mainwaring, 62, a former Australian television model, now a British citizen, and a barrister named Philip Bree, who lives in London. Both star in mock interviews by Iranian TV, and try to lend an air of rational authority in their interviews as they methodically explain that the Olympic logo being used at this week's Olympic Games in London is in fact a conspiratorial "subliminal Zion race-supremacy logo," and part of an international conspiracy conducted by the Jews. According to Lady Renouf, the zigzag design of the logo's lettering spells out the word "Zion," and refers to Jews and Israel. The video can be seen in the UK as well as on You Tube.
The Iranians have boycotted the Olympic Games this week; this broadcast is intended to encourage the member states of the European Union to do the same. Citing the names of two New York advertising executives involved in the design and promotion of the logo as proof of her Jewish conspiracy theory, Lady Renouf then yields the floor to Barrister Bree, who explains that the traditional Olympics rings found in the new logo are representative of black witchcraft and Satanism of the bloodthirstiest kind, practiced by Jews.
For those up on British history, Renouf and Bree are reincarnations of World War II's Lord Haw-Haw. Like the pro-German propagandist who spoke by radio urging British troops to desert the army and blaming the Jews for the war, Lady Renouf (she gives herself the title of "Lady" after having been briefly married to a British aristocrat) speaks in a very posh upper class British accent as she tells her audience that pro-Jewish conspirators, notably even the British founder of the World Olympic Community in the 19th century, "a non-Jew, but a Free Mason," were involved in creating the Olympics logo "when the Jews under Theodor Herzl were planning to conquer Palestine."
Free Masons have long been included as part of the world Jewish conspiracy as outlined in the fraudulent Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, responsible for countless pogroms and other attacks worldwide against Jews. The Protocols are part of a successful TV mini-series played all over the Arab world, but in particular in Iran, retitled Horseman Without A Horse, that dramatizes anti-Jewish blood libels. One scene even has religious Jews murdering a gentile child to use his blood to prepare Passover matzoh.
On the surface, to the uninitiated, these two speakers sound like extremely well-educated rational people, but if one visits the You Tube website for the Heritage and Destiny Channel, they are obviously in the service of the anti-Semitic Iranian government.
The website reveals that Lady Renouf is listed as the owner and producer of a company called Telling Films, which produces pro-Khomeinist propaganda videos for the Iranian government, and anti-Semitic trailers for foreign audiences. On the Heritage and Destiny YouTube channel are other videos of her being interviewed, warning the world of a Jewish conspiracy and denying the Holocaust. According to one source, "She has become known in recent years for her defense of Holocaust deniers such as David Irving, Robert Faurisson, Richard Williamson, Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel, and Fredrick Töben in both broadcasts and her Telling Films documentaries. Though not a revisionist author or researcher herself, she has been frequently characterized by opponents as a Holocaust denier. "
In her interview, Lady Renouf praises the Iranian government for alerting the European Union to the international Jewish conspiracy that started with the Rothschilds allegedly controlling world banking; she explains that "World Jewry has the greatest outreach in the World," but that they [Jews] like "to do it by hidden hand." She urges the rest of Europe to boycott the Olympics as Iran has chosen to do.
Philip Bree, the London barrister then follows up in a similar interview, in which he explains that the Olympic symbol for 2012, displaying a pentagram and the five rings emblem for the Committee, represents the black arts of Satanism. Bree's background is more nebulous than that of Lady Renouf, who appears to be an actress and socialite who found attention and easy money working for the Iranians. Bree appears to be just a garden variety anti-Semite. It makes sense, however, that the Iranian mullahs would see his ranting about Jews and Satanism credible to disseminate as they do the same in their sermons in Iran. Bree even suggests that the Masonic emblem of a compass is based on the Jewish Star of David.
The British have been in the news lately for their stretched-to-the-limit political correctness concerning militant Islamists, and have even been jailing British subjects or fining them for allegedly making insulting remarks about Islam. Despite these convictions for "hate crimes" against Islam – one British police official referred to them as a "zero tolerance policy" – the British government seems perfectly willing to overlook the converse: anti-Semitic attacks by Iranian front groups against the Jewish community.
At issue here is more than some paid Jew-haters attempting to fan the flames of anti-Semitism at the 2012 Olympics in London. In addition, the Olympics Committee also refused to allow one minute of silence as a memorial for Israelis murdered at Munich Olympics of 1972 simply for being Jews. It is not clear if no Jewish names were submitted when the British read out other names, or whether these Jewish names had been officially submitted, as requested, but were the expunged before they could publicly be read.
The deeper question for the British Government is this: If British citizens can be fined or incarcerated for expressing unsavory opinions about Islam, how come Lady Renouf and Philip Bree are not being charged with "hate crimes" as well for doing the exactly the same against the Jewish people?
Related Topics:  Iran, United Kingdom

Where is Prince Bandar?

by Pepe Escobar  •  Jul 31, 2012 at 11:02 pm
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Was Bandar Bush, 63, son of Prince Sultan (perennial Saudi Defense Minister,1963-2001), semi-perennial ambassador to Washington (1983-2005), and secretive jihad financier, killed by a Syrian intelligence death squad?
Thunderous silence prevails on Syrian, Iranian and Arab media (most of it controlled by the Saudis). The same applies for al-Jazeera. This is DEBKA's somewhat fanciful take. http://www.debka.com/article/22225/Saudi-silence-on-intelligence-chief-Bandar's-fate-denotes-panic
Dates are crucial. Prince Bandar may have pulled off "Damascus volcano" on July 18. He was definitely promoted to head of Saudi intelligence on July 19. And he might have been killed in a bomb attack on the Saudi General Intelligence HQ in Riyadh on July 22.
One Syrian rumor mill version rules that "Damascus volcano" came from Saudi intel – with logistics provided by the CIA. Highly unlikely; the CIA is clueless on how to penetrate Assad's inner sanctum. The predominant Damascus-based rumor mill version is this was a white coup.
"Damascus volcano", by the way, was a flop; the swarm of mercenaries – infiltrated via Jordan – who were supposed to take over the capital had to retreat up north. Now the news cycle is fixated on another faux game-changer - the "Battle of Aleppo".
There are serious problems with all the spin around "Damascus volcano". None of the Assad regime's four heads of military intelligence were killed – as we have already discussed in this blog; they are actually running the (ghastly) show in Aleppo.
There are also problems with a Syrian death squad being able to strike Riyadh's inner sanctum. But Iranian intelligence could certainly pull this off. As for Debka's assumption that Tehran may have hired al-Qaeda jihadis for an inside job against the House of Saud, that is rubbish.
The bottom line; no one knows, because no one is talking.
What is certain is that Bandar as head of Saudi intelligence was part of King Abdullah's hardcore response to the Arab Spring.
In Syria, the House of Saud strategy boils down to regime change – and a fragile, fragmented, Sunni government in Damascus not aligned with Tehran.
Internally, the strategy is to smash any peaceful Shi'ite-majority protest in the eastern provinces. Essentially, there's no Arab Spring in Saudi Arabia because the House of Saud either bribes or intimidates its subjects.
So what happened in Riyadh? A graphic Tehran message to the House of Saud? A rogue suicide bomber? An internal Saudi war? The House of Saud is not talking. And Bandar is not moving.
Related Topics:  Pepe Escobar

A Russian-Saudi-Turkish-Chinese alliance to contain the Muslim Brotherhood and Obama?

by David P. Goldman  •  Jul 31, 2012 at 8:35 pm
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I suggested during our conference call yesterday that the only friend the Muslim Brotherhood has in high places is Barack Obama. I didn't mean that facetiously.
Turkey's application to join the SIno-Russian Shanghai Cooperation Organization following Prime Minister Erdogan's July 19 pilgrimage to Russia is a diplomatic humiliation for the United States, and of the first order. Just when Washington is demanding that Russia withdraw support for the Assad regime in Syria, and when Turkey is the linch-pin for American logistics in support of the Syrian opposition, Erdogan has proposed in effect to joint the Russian-Chinese club (without being compelled to hand in his NATO credentials). As AL Monitor wrote July 19:
The Erdogan government speaks with confidence when it says that the Syrian issue will have no negative impact on bilateral ties with Russia. In fact, there is an expectation in Turkey that Russia will come to understand that it has erred in its Syria policy and that it is time to abandon its support for a dying regime.
That may be so, but Turkey stands to lose if it continues to portray Russia as a wrong-doer. The bilateral relationship is lopsided in Russia's favor because of Turkey's dependence on Russian natural gas.
Moscow, meanwhile, has quietly signaled that it can use its economic leverage over Turkey.
After the Syrians downed a Turkish jet on June 22, Turkey called on NATO member countries to show solidarity and expressed its intention to intercept Russian vessels delivering cargo to Syria. Six days later, the Russian government's food-safety and quarantine service Rosselkhoznadzor issued an announcement disclosing that it had detected 33 cases of infestation in Turkish exports to Russia of fruits and vegetables.Turkish exports of fresh produce to Russia amounted to $2.6 billion by May and are projected to reach $6.2 billion by year's end.
There is more to it than economics (and much more than Russian economics: the cash-strapped Turks, who are financing most of their enormous current account deficit on the interbank market, probably hope for more Chinese investment).
The fact is that the Muslim Brotherhood and its various offshoots represent a threat to everyone in the region:
The Saudi monarchy fears that the Brotherood will overthrow it (not an idle threat, since the Brotherhood doesn't look like a bad choice for Saudis who aren't one of the few thousand beneficaries of the royal family's largesse;
The Russians fear that Islamic radicalism will get out of control in the Caucasus and perhaps elsewhere as Russia evolves into a Muslim-majority country;
The Chinese fear the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people who comprise half the population of China's western Xinjiang province.
But the Obama administration (and establishment Republicans like John McCain) insist that America must support democratically-elected Islamist governments. That is deeply misguided. The Muslim Brotherhood is about as democratic as the Nazi Party, which also won a plebiscite confirming Adolf Hitler as leader of Germany. Tribal countries with high illiteracy rates are not a benchmark for democratic decision-making.
It appears that the Russians, the Turks and the Saudis will keep Syria at a low boil, making it difficult for either side to fully impose its will on the other, and impossible for a Sunni Islamist regime to emerge. What is remarkable, though, is the success of Russian diplomacy: despite all of the Obama administration's courtship, the Erdogan government has decided to signal its dependence on Moscow in the most visible (and, for Washington) humiliating way possible. It may be that the Turks were compelled to apply for membership in the SCO by the utter fecklessness and stupidity of American policy, both of the administration and of the Senate leadership. As long as the United States declares its support for the humbug of Muslim democracy in Egypt and Syria, the rest of the world will treat us as hapless lunatics and go about the business of securing their own interests without us.
Related Topics:  David P. Goldman

Egypt's Trade Deficit is Now $35 billion a Year

by David P Goldman  •  Jul 31, 2012 at 7:25 pm
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Egypt's trade deficit nearly doubled in the year through April as demand for its exports fell 14% but import costs rose:
Egypt's trade deficit soared to LE17.5billion ($2.9 billion) in April, 79.6 per cent higher than the same month the previous year, the state statistics agency CAPMAS said on Monday. The total value of Egyptian exports shed an annual 14 per cent, down to LE15.1 billion from LE17.6 billion in April 2011. CAPMAS attributed the drop to the decrease in international demand for Egypt's petroleum products, garments, fertilisers, fruit and dairy products.
On the other hand, the value of imported goods to Egypt, saw an increase, from LE27.3 billion in April last year to LE32.6 billion in the same month 2012, which suugests potential economic recovery because these imports feed into further economic activity. Egypt's main imports are petroleum products, steel, raw materials and wheat.
With the jump in wheat and other grain prices due to the American drought, Egypt's import costs will rise substantially. Given the collapse of tourism and the sharp reduction of worker's remittances after the Libyan revolution, Egypt's current account deficit will be almost as large as its trade deficit. That means Egypt will have its hand out for some $30 billion a year -- much larger than the most pessimistic estimates (including mine) just a few months ago. Egypt has $15 billion in total reserves but only $7 billion in liquid reserves.
I'd say they are in big trouble. My suspicion is that SCAF will let the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi strut around just enough to attract blame for the disaster now in the works.

Addendum on Turkey's External Debt Bubble

by David P. Goldman  •  Jul 31, 2012 at 12:38 pm
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Turkey's short-term external debt is rising rapidly as the country runs a current account deficit equal to 9%-10% of GDP (about the same level as Greece before it blew up). Virtually all the growth in short-term debt (blue line) is in bank debt (red line).
We can see from the Bank for International Settlements data that Turkish banks are borrowing heavily on the interbank market, but we can't see who is lending to them. Turkish sources believe that the bulk of the interbank financing is coming from the Gulf (that's almost certainly true by process of elimination -- the Europeans are cutting back their interbank lending). I conclude that the Saudis and other Gulf states are keeping Turkey in business, but on a short leash.
Original Frequency
Related Topics:  David P. Goldman
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