Titles: 

•  French police fine Muslim driver for wearing veil   
• Greece bailout will cost €120billion - three times original estimate, claim German MPs
• Israel, Hamas held 120 rounds of talks
• Iran has no military presence in Venezuela: US general
• U.S. forces in Afghanistan will soon outnumber those in Iraq
• Musharraf to form political party

News Details:

French police fine Muslim driver for wearing veil 

A French Muslim woman has been fined for wearing a full-face veil while driving a car. Police in the western city of Nantes said the veil - which showed only her eyes - restricted her vision and could have caused an accident.  The woman's lawyer says they will appeal against the decision, which he described as a breach of human rights.  The incident follows months of intense debate in France about whether the veils should be banned.  Earlier this week, President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered parliament to debate a law banning women from wearing full-face Islamic veils in public. President Sarkozy said last year that full-face veils oppressed women and were not welcome in France. Plans to ban them by law have provoked intense debate about religious freedom in a secular society, as well as the position of Muslims in France. France has Europe's largest Muslim minority population, estimated at about five million. The French interior ministry estimates that only about 1,900 women wear full veils in the country.

Greece bailout will cost €120billion - three times original estimate, claim German MPs

German MPs today claimed that bailing out the crisis-hit Greek economy is likely to cost  €120billion - around three times the original estimate. Officials said that the €45billion figure covered just the first year of a rescue package which is in fact likely to run for three. Germany was already dragging its feet over moves to help Greece, which had misled Europe about the dire state of its finances. The precarious state of its economy has plunged the Eurozone into renewed crisis just as it stumbles out of the worst recession in living memory. Spain became the latest victim of the financial turmoil as Standard & Poor downgraded its credit rating one notch to double-A with a negative outlook. The agency had downgraded Greece and Spain earlier in the week. German MPs made their claims about the true cost of the loans after a meeting with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank.

Israel, Hamas held 120 rounds of talks

Hamas senior figure Mahmoud al-Zahar said his organization held 120 rounds of talks with Israel, mediated by Egypt and Germany, vis-à-vis kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. During a speech, al-Zahar said Hamas will continue to hold Shalit captive until Israel complies with all its demands.

Iran has no military presence in Venezuela: US general

Iran is expanding its diplomatic and economic ties with Venezuela but has no military presence in the South American country, a US general said on Tuesday. The comments came as Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez denied allegations from the Pentagon that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force were stationed in his country. The leftist leader, who often heaps scorn on the United States, called a recent report "absolutely false" at a military ceremony. The head of US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, said Iran was bolstering its relations with Venezuela."We see a growing Iranian engagement with Venezuela," Fraser told reporters. Iran has a "diplomatic, commercial presence" but, "I haven't seen any evidence of a military presence," he said. There was no indication that Iran had sent arms to Venezuela, he added. The general's comments came after a Pentagon report last week said Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps had stepped up its presence in Latin America, especially in Venezuela.Apart from its military might, the elite force -- which serves under the authority of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei -- also wields substantial economic power and runs numerous large enterprises.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan will soon outnumber those in Iraq

According to Brookings, by late May or early June, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will outnumber those in Iraq--a shift that's symbolic of the Obama administration's focus on Afghanistan. Currently, there are 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan and 100,000 in Iraq. Forces are being withdrawn from Iraq at a pace of around 5,000 a month, while the U.S. builds up a presence ahead of a major offensive in Afghanistan, increasing troops by a couple thousand a month.

Musharraf to form political party

Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf is planning to launch a political party in a comeback bid two years after he was unseated in elections, officials said Wednesday. Musharraf, who has been abroad since ending his nine-year stint in power, could face a criminal trial if he returns home and he is wanted for questioning by the government over the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto. An aide and election official confirmed to AFP that the retired general had applied to register a new political party with the electoral authorities in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Mohammad Ali Saif, a former cabinet minister and now a legal adviser to Musharraf, said election authorities would hear the application on May 10. "I have formally applied for a new political party called All Pakistan Muslim League. Pervez Musharraf is the head of this party and we will formally announce it after getting registered," he told AFP

    The government of Sheikh Hasina, agents of US-India-Britain, is spreading false accusations against Hizb ut-Tahrir that the party was planning to undertake destructive activities. And the media which follow the government and serve the imperialists are publishing news of these baseless accusations as confessions made under interrogation by the party's spokesmen, Mohiuddin Ahmed and Kazi Murhsedul Hoque. The truth of the matter is that the agents of the imperialist hyenas, the treacherous Awami League government, similar to the governments which preceded it, is engaged in destructive activities against the country and the Muslims. They are busy hatching and implementing conspiracies against the country and its people, one after another. They are the ones plotted to kill the army officers and destroy the defence forces of the country. They have created a fake energy crisis in the country to make way for the imperialists and the capitalist corporations to take over the country's energy sector. They are the ones who are planning to establish and consolidate the presence of crusader America's murderous soldiers in the country. As for the accusation that Hizb ut-Tahrir has links with war criminals, the people of the country know very well that it is the so-called democratic parties who have formed alliances at various times with those whom they accuse of war crimes.

The disbelievers, the polytheists and their agents should know that Allah (SWT) foiled the plots of the disbelievers and polytheists against Muhammad (SAW) and the Sahabah (RA) and made Islam victorious over all other deens. In the same manner He (SWT) will destroy the conspiracies of the imperialists and their agents; fulfill His promise of the re-establishment of the Khilafah "Caliphate" and the Muslim Ummah will be liberated from the domination the disbelievers, polytheists, and the Jews.

They wish to extinguish Allah's light with their mouths, but Allah will not allow but that His light should be perfected, even though the disbelievers may detest (it). [TMQ 9: 32]

    As Greece edges closer to accepting a 45 billion Euros  EU/IMF aid package to restructure its external debts totaling  300 billion Euros[i], the role of Germany in exacerbating the crisis has not gone unnoticed. Speaking to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the billionaire financier George Soros said,"The Germans have always made the concessions needed to advance the European Union, when people were looking for a deal. Not anymore. That's why the European project is stalled. And if it can't go ahead from here, it will go backwards. It's important to understand that if you don't make the next steps forward for the euro, the euro will go to pieces and the European Union too."[ii] Soros's view was shared by Germany's Finance Minster who said in an interview with Spiegel," We cannot allow the bankruptcy of a euro member state like Greece to turn into a second Lehman Brothers."[iii] So despite understanding the gravity of Greece's debt situation and its impact on the Euro, why has Germany allowed problem to fester and cause wide-spread uncertainty. What can Germany do to avert the crisis?

The conventional explanation advocated by most respected analysts usually revolves around three reasons. First, the German public opinion is deeply opposed to bailing out fellow EU countries- especially those countries that have failed to abide by the strict rules of Europe's monetary union. The countries accused of profligate spending that undermines the economic longevity of the union are commonly referred to as PIIGS i.e. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Furthermore, the German chancellor Angela Merkel faces elections in North Rhine-Westphalia on May 9 in which the centre-right government's upper house majority is at stake. Her government fears that any move to help Greece and the public will punish the incumbent government. Second, there is a constitutional hurdle that must be overcome before Germany can participate in any bail-out of Greece. Some German professors are preparing to challenge the EU-IMF rescue package for Greece at Germany's constitutional court claiming that it violates the 'no-bail-out' clause of the EU Treaties. Dr Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider, law professor at Nuremberg and author of the complaint will argue that the rescue contains an illegal rate subsidy, threatens monetary stability as encoded in the Maastricht Treaty, and breaches the 'no bail-out' clause. The professor and others staunchly believe that Greece is clearly responsible for its own mess.[iv] Third and more importantly, many in Berlin and a few outside the country view that Germany-Europe's strongest economy- is stuck between a hard rock and the deep blue sea. If Germany helps to bail-out Greece, then a dangerous precedence will be set, Germany will asked to bail-out other PIIGS countries. On the other hand, if Germany does nothing then the international markets will continue to punish Greece and render it difficult for the Greek government to finance its debts. Both scenarios are likely to put an unbearable strain on EU member states and probably cause it to collapse. It is precisely for this reason that Germany continues to pile pressure on Greece to become more transparent and demonstrate that it can meet its long-term debt commitments. Speaking on this matter recently, Merkel insisted that Greece "must play its part in ensuring that Greece's finances return to a solid path ... The stability of our currency is the first priority."[v]

The aforementioned factors have created uncertainty amongst Germany's political elite and this in turn has caused turmoil in Europe. Some like Morgan and Stanley are predicting that Germany will cede from the European Monetary. The US bank said a bail-out for Greece may be necessary to avoid a crisis for Europe's financial system, but warned that it also "sows the seeds for potentially even bigger problems further down the road".[vi]

With regards to the second question-what can be done-, Germany once again faces a unique opportunity to break free from the clutches of the major powers that have tried to contain and subjugate her for the past 140 years.

Prior to Germany's defeat in World War II, Russia, France and Britain struggled to restrain German militarism. After 1945, Germany was contained by a combination of America and the Soviet Union endeavors. America diverted German ingenuity towards economic pursuits and exploited NATO to suppress German militarism. Additionally, US and USSR divided Germany into two East and West Germany respectively. In the late nineties, the euro was introduced to further contain a united Germany.

 What was originally conceived by the architects of the Marshall plan and the Maastricht Treaty as a means of preventing Germany from attaining major power status has been turned on its head. Today, Germany through its economic might rather than its military prowess, stands at the cross roads to becoming a major power once more.

Muslims should also take heed of Europe's predicament and work to re-establish the Caliphate. The Caliphate will not only provide a sound economic system as an alternative to the degenerative capitalist system. But the Islamic state will adroitly exploit the differences between the major powers in Europe by giving encouragement to Germany to ascend and break away from union. Allah says in the Quran: "You would think they were united, but their hearts are divided" [59:14]

24-4-2010