Magic Statistics

A bombshell front-page story in tomorrow’s Sunday Times of London: Saudi Arabia has threatened to cut diplomatic relations with Britain over an investigation into an alleged slush fund a British company set up to finance profligate spending by the Saudi royal family.

A senior Saudi diplomat in London has delivered an ultimatum to Tony Blair that unless the inquiry into an allegedly corrupt defence deal is dropped, diplomatic links between Britain and Saudi Arabia will be severed, a defence source has disclosed.

The Saudis, key allies in the Middle East, have also threatened to cut intelligence co-operation with Britain over Al-Qaeda.

They have repeated their threat that they will terminate payments on a defence contract that could be worth £40 billion and safeguard at least 10,000 British jobs.

The Saudis are furious about the criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into allegations that BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defence company, set up the “slush fund” to support the extravagant lifestyle of members of the Saudi royal family. 

The slush fund allegedly bankrolled such extravagances as grand holidays and luxury cars to bribe the Saudis to continue buying from BAE.  Five current and former company officials have already been arrested.

The Saudis threatened to sever diplomatic relations in September after the SFO persuaded a Swiss judge to order banks to release information on some of their accounts.  (Details have only now been leaked by "defence sources".)

The sources said the accounts relate to substantial payments between “third party” offshore companies that may have received large sums in previously undisclosed “commissions”. Fraud office sources say they are now trying to get more documents that will tell them who benefited from the accounts. The trail is said to lead to the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Threatening to cut off diplomatic relations and cancel lucrative business deals shows that the inquiry is getting much too close to home for the comfort of the Saudi government.  The Saudis are hopping mad about this investigation and clearly afraid of what information may come to light about their nefarious dealings.  What's hidden away in those Swiss bank account records?

Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith and a spokesperson for Prime Minister Tony Blair both said they had no comment.  Let’s hope they don’t cave in to the intense diplomatic pressure.

Given the slumping fertility rates across Europe, that is really saying something.

Bulgaria’s total fertility rate has fallen to 1.3 (2.1 is the rate needed to maintain a stable population), and the country’s population woes are compounded by massive emigration of young people looking for work.  If present trends persist, Bulgaria stands to lose one-third of its 7.5 million population within a few decades.

There is no morning rush to clock on these days at the Gotse Delchev electronics factory - one of the last bastions of Soviet-era industry in Bulgaria. Once it had 5,000 workers - now there are just 66.
. . .
Gotse Delchev is not alone. As their nation modernises to finally shake off socialism and join the EU in January, Bulgarians are being forced not just from outdated jobs but abroad to find work. Bulgaria's population is falling faster than anywhere else in Europe.

Many Bulgarians blame economic liberalisation for the poor job prospects driving younger people abroad.  They say the country was better off under Communism.

h/t: Bourque

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On 12 November 2005, over 1500 Muslims went on a rampage against the Christian village of Sangla Hill in the Punjab region of Pakistan.  The riot followed rumours that a Christian man had desecrated pages from a Qur'an.  The mob pillaged and torched three churches (Catholic, Presbyterian, and Salvation Army), at least six private homes, schools, and a convent.  Charges against the man accused of blasphemy have now been dropped, but he has gone into hiding for fear of his life.

Pakistani police subsequently arrested 88 Muslim men, but many Christians believe that the real guilty parties were never apprehended.

AsiaNews returned to Sangla Hill on the first anniversary of the attack.

A year after a violent attack against the Christian village of Sangla Hill, Pakistan, people still live in fear. Churches have not yet been rebuilt and the Christian falsely accused of blasphemy is still in hiding whilst the real culprits walk free. But something positive has emerged: Sangla Hill Christians are more united, determined to overcome this trauma.

The attack and the investigation

On November 12, last year, an angry mob of some 2,000 people pillaged and then burnt property owned by Christians in the village of Sangla Hill, in Nankana district (Punjab). Three churches, a nuns' convent, two Catholic schools, the homes of a Protestant and a Catholic clergyman, a girls' hostel, a dispensary run by nuns, some private homes owned by Christians were first vandalised and then set on fire. The violence was triggered when rumours spread that a local Christian had burnt some pages of the Qur'an. Under Pakistan's anti-blasphemy law such action is punished by life in prison.
. . .
Punjab's Chief Minister Chuadhri Pervaiz Elahi ordered a judicial enquiry into the affair, but the report has not yet been made public. He visited Sangla Hill and promised the authorities would take care of reconstruction and vowed stern action against the culprits.

The government is in fact providing only minimal assistance with re-building the churches and houses.  Also, the local Presbyterian congregation whose church building was destroyed says that their own denomination's moderator has been slow to hand over funds donated for re-construction.

Sangla Hill is located about 50 miles west of Lahore.

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Edward Lucas, central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist, foresees a renewed power struggle between Russia and the West, for several reasons.

NATO, the trans-Atlantic alliance of Western democracies, seems to be falling apart on the eve of a summit meeting in Riga, Latvia.  Internal dissension over Iraq has damaged relations between the United States and Europe to such an extent that NATO members are unable to work together in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

America's hamfistedness and European diffidence create a vicious circle. The White House sees most Nato countries as puny and timid, spending too little on defence and unwilling to risk men and matériel where it matters. In Afghanistan, the large German contingent works as traffic wardens and social workers: their government forbids them to fight the Taliban; their attempts to train Afghan police have been disastrously ineffective. For their part, other Nato countries find America bossy and inconsiderate.

One result is that Nato struggles to operate outside Europe, in places such as Darfur, where muscular military intervention is urgently needed. Haggling has even derailed Nato's attempt to have its much-touted response force operational in time for the forthcoming summit.

Even more ominously, Russia has exploited divisions within NATO to frustrate Georgia's hopes of joining the organisation.

[Georgia] is eager to join. But France, Greece and other pro-Russian countries say no. They swallow whole the Kremlin's bogus line that it feels its sphere of influence is being infringed. They never ask why the countries closest to Russia find its embrace so stifling.

Georgia has even been abandoned by its chief ally, America, which is desperate for Kremlin help against Iran and North Korea. It did not defend Georgia against a critical resolution at the United Nations and has dropped all objections to Russia's long-sought membership of the World Trade Organisation.

In 2007, Russia will use its vast resources of oil and natural gas to expand its control over Europe's energy supply.  Parts of eastern Europe are already beginning to fall back into the Russian orbit.

Hungary will increase its dependence on Russian gas; as an austerity programme bites into living standards and employment, cheap gas will be a useful lubricant. It will be a similar story with the leftist-nationalist government in Slovakia, which will face sharp disapproval from its west European neighbours because of its increasingly harsh treatment of minorities and its authoritarian ways. Friendly ties with Russia will be a welcome balance.

Farther east, Russian companies will continue to gobble up the energy infrastructure in chaotic Ukraine.

Not only does Russia already supply one-quarter of Europe's natural gas, but it also possesses monopoly power over pipelines from Central Asian gas fields to Europe.  The Kremlin is already in a position to supply friendly nations and starve unco-operative ones.  Moreover, there are indications that Russia is working on building an OPEC-like cartel with other gas-rich nations, including Algeria, Libya, and Iran.

Two decades after the Kremlin started beating the retreat from the Soviet empire, a new hegemony, based on pipelines rather than tanks, is advancing-and shows every sign of proving durable.

h/t for map: BBC News

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Vietnam used to be one of world’s most notorious violators of religious freedom but, for some, that has changed.  Many Christians have been attending churches openly and without fear for several years.  Although official limitations on religious activity remain, they have been relaxed somewhat for denominations that submit to government approval.

HANOI, Vietnam: They file into St. Anthony's Catholic Church to pray and take communion in the early morning darkness, before the city rumbles with motorbikes and commerce.

Crossing themselves and chanting liturgy, they look completely at ease — even though their homeland, Vietnam, shunned Catholics until not long ago and has come under sustained international criticism for violations of religious freedom.
. . .
While restrictions remain, harassment has eased enough that the United States decided this week to remove Vietnam from a list of the world's worst violators of religious freedom. But for members of Vietnam's six officially sanctioned faiths — including Catholicism — the stigma that communist leaders once attached to their expressions of faith had all but disappeared long before.

The largest of the six recognised faiths is Buddhism, followed by Roman Catholicism.

For denominations that, as a matter of principle, insist on operating outside the government-sanctioned religious structure, however, it’s a different story.  Among these are unapproved Protestant house churches and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which are periodically attacked and persecuted by government authorities.  For this reason, many human rights organisations maintain that Vietnam has a way to go before it can claim an acceptable degree of religious freedom.

Visiting Vietnam for the upcoming APEC summit, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (photo at right) and raised several human rights issues.

Canadian officials told reporters that Harper linked human rights concerns with Vietnam's expanding trade file, telling the prime minister that economic openness went hand in hand with social and political freedoms.

Critics have charged that the Vietnamese government persecutes journalists and harasses some Christians and Buddhists.

Mr Harper mentioned about ten particular individuals who have been harassed in Vietnam on religious or political grounds.

h/t for International Herald Tribune: Religion News Blog
h/t for CTV: Adam Daifallah
h/t for The Toronto Star: National News Watch

Previous related post: China initiates, then cancels, top-level meeting with Canada