Proposal for Muslim elementary school

Islam in Europe January 15 2009
By Esther

Oslo. As far as I can find out the School of Peace is a Russian-founded NGO, with a Muslim elementary school in Denmark. The "School of Peace" will start its own religious school in Oslo to prevent Muslim children from being turned into extremists aboard.

After Urtehagen closed in 2004 after intense internal conflicts there has been no Muslim elementary school in Norway. Now the School of Peace association is applying to manage a private school in Oslo which will be Muslim religious.

According to the organization's objects clause, the Peace of School is an alternative for parents who today send their children to Koran school aboard, out of a feeling of obligation towards Islamic upbringing. this puts the children at risk - again, according to the objects clause - of being trained in a radical of extreme interpretation of the Koran and losing the feeling of belonging to Norwegian society.

City councilor for schools and education Torger Ødegaard will recommend the application, if the school would fulfill the formal requirements.

"It's because we think that private schools are a positive supplement to the public school," says Ødegaard.

"The parents must weigh what is best for their children. We work very hard so that the public schools in Oslo will be the best possible. I think that the public school is as good at that it can compete with, and it can compete with and which is a wholly different school. But private schools which adapt to the kunnskapsløftet [the Norwegian educational reform] and to Norwegian law and whose education has the students reach the goals in the teaching plan, I'm in favor of," says Ødegaard.

School of Peace wants to have a grade 1-10 school with 200 students - according to the plans, the first 100 will start in the fall.

It's not clear according to the initiators where the school will be in Oslo. The Ministry of Education will have to approve the application.

SV (Socialists) leader in the Oslo council, Knut Even Lindsjørn, thinks that the authorities should reject a private Muslim elementary school in Oslo. He's against religious schools, though the SV approved such schools in the new private school law.

"I think it's unacceptable to set up more religious school in Oslo. It reinforces the split city and maintains a type of division between us and them. We now have a very good KRL class [ie, religion class] in the school that takes care of all religions. I am very involved in having the Oslo school be common for everybody and being an including and diverse school," says Lindsjørn.

Source: NRK (Norwegian)

Gaza aid arrives in Israel from Scandinavia

Israel has been harshly criticised for the humanitarian impact of its campaign against Hamas, being suffered by the general population of Gaza. Officials promised that a load of UNICEF relief supplies which arrived on board an Israeli cargo jet from Denmark would be distributed in in the Strip over the coming days. Israel’s minister in charge of aid for Gaza Isaac Hertzog said that he would do everything possible to help the people of Gaza “get over the crisis.”

International agencies said Israel’s three-hour break in fighting each day was “woefully insufficient” to distribute aid properly.

Palestinian health officials say more than a thousand people have been killed in the 20 day campaign. Relief workers say nine out of ten of the survivors are relying on handouts.

Iran, Sweden review humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Safari held talks in Stockholm on Tuesday with his Swedish counterpart Frank Belfrage on the Gaza crisis and mutual ties. The Swedish State Secretary for foreign affairs said in the meeting that Tehran-Stockholm have great potentials for fostering bilateral ties.

Belfrage said that his country is concerned about war and aggression that caused killing of innocent civilians in the City of Gaza.

He hoped that ceasefire will be established in Gaza soon and the war-stricken people in Gaza would be provided with foodstuffs and medical care.

Referring to Iran's nuclear issue, the Swedish official acknowledged the Iranian nation's right to produce nuclear energy, hoping that the nuclear dispute will be solved by holding talks to remove ambiguities.

Safari said for his part that Iran and Sweden have widescale potentials to boost economic cooperation. He said that Iran is willing to develop ties with Sweden.

About Iran's nuclear program, Safari said that the western countries and US have adopted double-standard policy on the nuclear issue but Iranian nation insist on its rights to use peaceful nuclear energy.

Talking about the appalling atrocities in Gaza being committed by Israel, he said that the European countries' stand on closing eyes on violation of human rights in Gaza is inexcusable.

He called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and sending humanitarian aid to people there as well as withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area.

The two officials discussed the regional developments in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Caucasus.

Earlier, Iranian deputy foreign minister submitted Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's message on Gaza to Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt.

http://www5.irna.ir/En/View/FullStory/?NewsId=303275&idLanguage=3

Gaza: Immediate & Final Cease-Fire!

by Yacov I. Claude
2009-01-13 09:49:35

What should we wait for? A thousand killed? We're almost there. Ten thousand wounded? Obama's speech on January 20th?

« The acts of Hamas cannot justify Israel's cruel war against Palestinian civilians » was the title of the Israeli daily Haaretz's editorial on January 10th.

Nothing can justify the murder of a child, the maiming of a defenceless being, the terror to which people are exposed, hostages of circumstances, caught between cross-fires, under uncontrollable storms of missiles and shells, as in this United-Nations school filled with refugees, where 45 persons were killed, more than 50 mangled, in the Jabaliya Camp.

On January 8th, French media director and essayist Jean Daniel, "sickened with indignation and revolt", denounced what he calls "a shameful regression" in the currently escalating military operation, "in the name of one conception of collective responsibility". "When you decide upon using means a thousand times superior to the enemy's, then you jeopardize your own ends." he warned.

We all want a safe world, a free world for our children. Who does not? In Ashkelon, Gaza, Beersheba, as in Beit Lahiya. Do they not deserve exactly the same rights, the same protection?

Throughout the world, from Jerusalem to Sakhnin, from Jakarta to Ankara, Berlin to Belfast, Oslo to Nairobi, Alexandria to Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Washington even… tension is rising, in a swelling wave of stupor and anger. What is left of "Annapolis"? What will be left of the Arab countries' offers of peace?

For months now, a dozen plus Nobel laureates and some thirty Members of the European Parliament have been campaigning for the opening of prison doors, the opening of the Gaza Strip, besieged for eighteen months. We urge you to join in this campaign, and all demonstrations, initiatives to stop the present madness in the "Holy Land". This Land is so much more than the land of "Israel" or "Palestine": it is the hinge between continents and civilizations.

For the sake of the fabric of Humankind, we cannot allow it to fall apart, and propagate its hell on Earth. Half of the people in Gaza are children, witnesses to the 2008-2009 massacres, stunted by the siege and malnutrition. Who has an interest in the explosion of ethnical conflicts? Who needs to fuel to the flames of anti-Semitic hatred?

More than 900 human beings have lost their lives since December 27, 2008; more than 4,000 remain horribly injured physically. "Let's stop the fighting, not only for three hours a day, but 24 hours a day," has been pleading the U.N. representative in Gaza, vainly. "Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized."

This 11th of January, eight Members of the European Parliament managed to reach Gaza through Egypt, among them five signatories of our Open the Doors Campaign. Beyond any political obedience, any identity reflex, let us unite against the logics of the worse, against the logics of terror, for sheer common sense and humanity!

"Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks." Martin Luther King

Open the Doors Campaign

Israel must end the Gaza blockade, end all killings, and enable Gaza to open to the world, so as to guarantee the possibility of a viable economy, and improve the humanitarian situation.

The Palestinians must end all rocket attacks against Israel and the Israelis.

Human beings are not bargaining chips.

Accordingly: the Palestinians must free Corporal Gilad Shalit, that they have held prisoner for two years now.

The Israelis, who hold more than ten thousand Palestinian prisoners in their jails, must urgently release a significant group of women prisoners, sick persons, the eldest and longest-serving among them, along with those held under administrative detention and other arbitrary procedures – including all the elected members of Palestinian legislature.

Supported by:

36 Members of European Parliament

John Bowis, Sharon Bowles, Chris Davies, Jill Evans, Jean Lambert, Caroline Lucas, Elizabeth Lynne, Claude Moraes, John Purvis, Diana Wallis (Vice-President of the European Parliament) (UK)
Kader Arif, Jean-Luc Bennahmias, Catherine Boursier, Jean-Marie Cavada, General Philippe Morillon, Béatrice Patrie, Michel Rocard (former Prime Minister) (France).
Giovanna Corda, Anne Van Lancker, Véronique de Keyser (Head of the Observers' Mission for Legislative Elections in Palestine & Vice-President of the Work Task on the Middle-East), Alain Hutchinson, Frieda Brepoels (Belgium)
Anna Hedh, Jens Holm, Eva-Britt Svensson (Sweden)
Edite Estrela, Ana Maria Gomes, Ilda Figueiredo (Portugal)
Luisa Morgantini (Vice-President of the EP), Umberto Guidoni (astronaut, Italy)
Marios Matsakis, Kyriacos Triantaphyllides (President, Delegation for Relations with the Palestinian Parliament, Cyprus)
Margrete Auken, Soren Sondergaard (Denmark)
Piia-Noora Kauppi (Finland)
Angelika Beer (Germany)

22 Nobel Laureates

Peace Nobel Laureates Bishop Carlos Belo, Mairead Maguire, Desmond Tutu, Betty Williams, Jody Williams
Medicine Nobel Laureates Arvid Carlsson, Roger Guillemin, Richard Roberts
Chemistry Nobel Laureates Elias Corey, Edmond Fischer, Dudley Herschbach, Roald Hoffmann, Sir Harold Kroto, Yuan T. Lee, Jens Skou,
Physics Nobel Laureates Alan Heeger, Jack Steinberger, Donald Glaser, Tony Leggett, Martinus Veltman
Literature Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka
Economics Nobel Laureate James Mirrlees

Authors: Noam Chomsky, David Grossman, Amos Oz

http://www.ovimagazine.com/art/3961

Finland tops Freedom House ranking

Freedom House, a Washington-based thinktank that receives the bulk of its funding from the US government, said in its annual Freedom in the World report on Tuesday that the Finnish public enjoyed the greatest degree of political freedom among the 193 countries and regions included in the survey.

North Korea languishes at the bottom of the Freedom in the World table.

/STT/