President Barack Obama Wednesday warned the United States could not afford the 700-billion-dollar bill to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, picking a populist fight with Republicans.
Obama staked out a political position which will reverberate through the campaign ahead of mid-term elections in November in which his Democrats fear heavy losses.
"We are ready for this week, to give tax cuts to every American making 250,000 dollars or less," Obama said in a major economic speech in Cleveland, Ohio.
"For any income over this amount, the tax rates would go up to what they were under President (Bill) Clinton.
"This is not to punish folks who are better off -- it's because we can't afford the 700-billion-dollar price tag."
Republicans want all the tax cuts passed by ex-president George W. Bush to be renewed before the expire at the end of his year.
They argue that Obama will slow growth by hiking taxes on the rich, and deter some small business owners from creating jobs.
"Americans want jobs, not more government, more debt and more taxes," said Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell.
"Let’s start today with a declarative statement against tax hikes on the small businesses that are critical to expand and create jobs."
miércoles, 8 de septiembre de 2010
Gypsy leader compares Sarkozy to Romania's pro-Nazi wartime leader
A Romanian Gypsy leader on Wednesday compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Romania’s pro-Nazi wartime leader, following the expulsion of hundreds of Gypsies from France.
Speaking during an annual Gypsy feast held on a hill at the foots of the Carpathian Mountains, Iulian Radulescu told the Associated Press that Gypsies - also known as Roma - are being unfairly expelled from France.
France has sent back about 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria in recent weeks as part of its crime fighting measures. Sarkozy has linked Roma to crime, calling the camps in which some of them live, sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.
There are between 10 million and 12 million Gypsies in the EU, most living in dire circumstances, victims of poverty, discrimination, violence, unemployment, poverty and bad housing. An estimated 1.5 million of them live in Romania, a country of 22 million, which has the largest population of Gypsies in Europe.
Both France and Romania are members of European Union, and under the rules governing the 27-member bloc its citizens can travel freely within the union, but the governments are also legally permitted to send citizens of other EU countries home if they can’t find work or support themselves.
The expulsions have been criticized from several quarters including the Roman Catholic Church and the United Nations, and even some members of Sarkozy’s government.
Dressed in a gray suit and sitting inside a white marquee tent, Radulescu said that hundreds of Gypsies are paying the price “for the crimes of the few.”
“It is not right to be expelled if you are a law-abiding citizen,” the 71-year-old Radulescu said.
Radulescu compared the expulsions to the ones carried out by Romania’s pro-Nazi dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu, who ruled the country during the World War II.
Antonescu deported 25,000 Gypsies from Romania to the Soviet region of Trans-Dniester in 1942. Some 11,000 Gypsies died from exposure, typhus, starvation and thirst after they were deported from Romania. A lack of wartime records makes it difficult to determine the overall number of Gypsies killed during the Holocaust, but according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it is between 220,000 and 500,000.
“Sarkozy is doing what Antonescu did,” Radulescu said. He also urged Gypsy leaders to try and stop crime within their communities.
A French foreign ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, dismissed the comments, saying he declined to enter into “fruitless debates.”
“We consider that it is an European problem that should be solved with an European solution,” Valero said.
The issue of expulsion will top the agenda of planned talks between French Immigration Minister Eric Besson and the Minister for European Affairs, Pierre Lelouche, who will visit Romania on Thursday, Valero said.
Romania’s President Traian Basescu sent his adviser Peter Eckstein to tell the revelers that he supports their freedom of movement within the European Union, but also urged them to send their children to school.
At the festival, Gypsies roasted pigs and chicken on open spits, while children played on merry go rounds and listened to Gypsy pop and French rap music.
Another Gypsy leader Florin Cioaba told hundreds gathered that they are being discriminated in Europe.
“There is one set of laws for European citizens and different laws for the Roma,” Cioaba said.
FRANCE 24
Speaking during an annual Gypsy feast held on a hill at the foots of the Carpathian Mountains, Iulian Radulescu told the Associated Press that Gypsies - also known as Roma - are being unfairly expelled from France.
France has sent back about 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria in recent weeks as part of its crime fighting measures. Sarkozy has linked Roma to crime, calling the camps in which some of them live, sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.
There are between 10 million and 12 million Gypsies in the EU, most living in dire circumstances, victims of poverty, discrimination, violence, unemployment, poverty and bad housing. An estimated 1.5 million of them live in Romania, a country of 22 million, which has the largest population of Gypsies in Europe.
Both France and Romania are members of European Union, and under the rules governing the 27-member bloc its citizens can travel freely within the union, but the governments are also legally permitted to send citizens of other EU countries home if they can’t find work or support themselves.
The expulsions have been criticized from several quarters including the Roman Catholic Church and the United Nations, and even some members of Sarkozy’s government.
Dressed in a gray suit and sitting inside a white marquee tent, Radulescu said that hundreds of Gypsies are paying the price “for the crimes of the few.”
“It is not right to be expelled if you are a law-abiding citizen,” the 71-year-old Radulescu said.
Radulescu compared the expulsions to the ones carried out by Romania’s pro-Nazi dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu, who ruled the country during the World War II.
Antonescu deported 25,000 Gypsies from Romania to the Soviet region of Trans-Dniester in 1942. Some 11,000 Gypsies died from exposure, typhus, starvation and thirst after they were deported from Romania. A lack of wartime records makes it difficult to determine the overall number of Gypsies killed during the Holocaust, but according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it is between 220,000 and 500,000.
“Sarkozy is doing what Antonescu did,” Radulescu said. He also urged Gypsy leaders to try and stop crime within their communities.
A French foreign ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, dismissed the comments, saying he declined to enter into “fruitless debates.”
“We consider that it is an European problem that should be solved with an European solution,” Valero said.
The issue of expulsion will top the agenda of planned talks between French Immigration Minister Eric Besson and the Minister for European Affairs, Pierre Lelouche, who will visit Romania on Thursday, Valero said.
Romania’s President Traian Basescu sent his adviser Peter Eckstein to tell the revelers that he supports their freedom of movement within the European Union, but also urged them to send their children to school.
At the festival, Gypsies roasted pigs and chicken on open spits, while children played on merry go rounds and listened to Gypsy pop and French rap music.
Another Gypsy leader Florin Cioaba told hundreds gathered that they are being discriminated in Europe.
“There is one set of laws for European citizens and different laws for the Roma,” Cioaba said.
FRANCE 24
Three Times Square bomb suspects held by Islamabad police
AFP - Pakistan's police have arrested three suspects linked to a Pakistani-American accused in New York of the attempted car bombing of Times Square, a senior police official said Wednesday.
The three were detained in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, two weeks ago and had been interrogated for several days, police said.
"It has been proved that they had links with Faisal Shehzad (the car-bombing suspect arrested in New York) and had transferred money to him," Bani Amin, operations police chief in Islamabad, told AFP.
"Today we have lodged a formal case against them," said Amin, who named the three suspects as Shoaib Mughal, Mohammad Shahid and Hanbal Akhtar.
He said the three suspects also had close links with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain, whose organisation has claimed responsibility for Shehzad's May 1 plot to bomb Times Square.
Mehsud is the chief of the TTP and Hussain is a militant commander of a TTP faction known as "Ustad-e-Fidaeen," which trains suicide bombers.
The TTP is based in Pakistan's tribal badlands on the Afghan border and has been blamed for some of the deadliest suicide attacks in the nuclear-armed country.
Pakistan acknowledged on July 26 that Shehzad had met the country's Taliban commander and several other people.
In June Shehzad pleaded guilty in a New York court to the Times Square car bombing attempt and warned that the United States faced similar attacks until it left Muslim lands.
Sky News broadcast a video in July, showing Shehzad and Mehsud shaking hands, smiling and hugging some time before the failed May 1 attack.
At the request of the United States Pakistan has opened an investigation into possible links between Shehzad and militant groups.
Pakistani-born Shehzad was pulled off a flight to Dubai two days after parking a car containing a bomb in Times Square.
He told a judge that he had undergone bomb-making training during a 40-day stay with the TTP in Pakistan, between December 9 and January 25.
On returning to the United States, Shehzad said, he had planned the bombing and had acted alone, telling the judge: "Nobody helped me."
By News Wires
The three were detained in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, two weeks ago and had been interrogated for several days, police said.
"It has been proved that they had links with Faisal Shehzad (the car-bombing suspect arrested in New York) and had transferred money to him," Bani Amin, operations police chief in Islamabad, told AFP.
"Today we have lodged a formal case against them," said Amin, who named the three suspects as Shoaib Mughal, Mohammad Shahid and Hanbal Akhtar.
He said the three suspects also had close links with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain, whose organisation has claimed responsibility for Shehzad's May 1 plot to bomb Times Square.
Mehsud is the chief of the TTP and Hussain is a militant commander of a TTP faction known as "Ustad-e-Fidaeen," which trains suicide bombers.
The TTP is based in Pakistan's tribal badlands on the Afghan border and has been blamed for some of the deadliest suicide attacks in the nuclear-armed country.
Pakistan acknowledged on July 26 that Shehzad had met the country's Taliban commander and several other people.
In June Shehzad pleaded guilty in a New York court to the Times Square car bombing attempt and warned that the United States faced similar attacks until it left Muslim lands.
Sky News broadcast a video in July, showing Shehzad and Mehsud shaking hands, smiling and hugging some time before the failed May 1 attack.
At the request of the United States Pakistan has opened an investigation into possible links between Shehzad and militant groups.
Pakistani-born Shehzad was pulled off a flight to Dubai two days after parking a car containing a bomb in Times Square.
He told a judge that he had undergone bomb-making training during a 40-day stay with the TTP in Pakistan, between December 9 and January 25.
On returning to the United States, Shehzad said, he had planned the bombing and had acted alone, telling the judge: "Nobody helped me."
By News Wires
Gainesville united in opposition to Koran-burning pastor
This dispute has bought the city and its religious communities together,” says Rev. Larry Reimer of Gainesville’s United Church. “We are coming to realise that we have much more in common with each other than we thought.”
Rev. Reimer insists the overwhelming majority of the Florida city’s population stands against the Islamophobic antics of the fringe pastor who wants to burn the Koran on Saturday’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Terry Jones – whose “Dove World Outreach Center” congregation musters barely 50 members – has caused international uproar after announcing plans to burn the Muslim holy text as a “stand” against the spread of radical Islam.
But despite the international attention, Rev. Reimer insists that Jones, an evangelical pastor who is also a second-hand furniture salesman, remains what he has always been – a fringe figure who does not represent the feelings of the local community.
‘We tried to ignore him’
Rev. Reimer said that until the story exploded the town’s various religious groups had hoped it was enough simply to ignore the bellicose Pastor Jones, who campaigned unsuccessfully against the election of an openly gay mayor last year.
“It’s a quirk of the modern media that his message has gone around the world,” he told FRANCE 24. “We tried to ignore him but he has just got so much attention.”
Rev. Reimer said some 25 clergy from the city’s Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities have come together for a series of inter-faith services and events ahead of Saturday’s 9/11 anniversary. These have included visits to the mosque, where his group will be attending Friday prays.
On Saturday, hundreds of people are expected to attend a candlelit vigil organised by the group in downtown Gainesville.
The national voice
The people of Gainesville are not the only ones to have expressed their dismay at the pastor's plans. Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the US National Council of Churches, rejected the idea that the majority of Americans were fearful of the presence of the Islamic faith in the country.
“It’s wrong to assume there is a wave of Islamophobia sweeping across the United States,” he told FRANCE 24. “And we feel it is important that the government speaks out and expresses the moral disgust felt by the majority of the population [at Pastor Jones’s planned burning of the Koran].
“We believe religious tolerance can be strengthened through this tragedy in Florida.”
Rev. Reimer insists the overwhelming majority of the Florida city’s population stands against the Islamophobic antics of the fringe pastor who wants to burn the Koran on Saturday’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Terry Jones – whose “Dove World Outreach Center” congregation musters barely 50 members – has caused international uproar after announcing plans to burn the Muslim holy text as a “stand” against the spread of radical Islam.
But despite the international attention, Rev. Reimer insists that Jones, an evangelical pastor who is also a second-hand furniture salesman, remains what he has always been – a fringe figure who does not represent the feelings of the local community.
‘We tried to ignore him’
Rev. Reimer said that until the story exploded the town’s various religious groups had hoped it was enough simply to ignore the bellicose Pastor Jones, who campaigned unsuccessfully against the election of an openly gay mayor last year.
“It’s a quirk of the modern media that his message has gone around the world,” he told FRANCE 24. “We tried to ignore him but he has just got so much attention.”
Rev. Reimer said some 25 clergy from the city’s Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities have come together for a series of inter-faith services and events ahead of Saturday’s 9/11 anniversary. These have included visits to the mosque, where his group will be attending Friday prays.
On Saturday, hundreds of people are expected to attend a candlelit vigil organised by the group in downtown Gainesville.
The national voice
The people of Gainesville are not the only ones to have expressed their dismay at the pastor's plans. Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the US National Council of Churches, rejected the idea that the majority of Americans were fearful of the presence of the Islamic faith in the country.
“It’s wrong to assume there is a wave of Islamophobia sweeping across the United States,” he told FRANCE 24. “And we feel it is important that the government speaks out and expresses the moral disgust felt by the majority of the population [at Pastor Jones’s planned burning of the Koran].
“We believe religious tolerance can be strengthened through this tragedy in Florida.”
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