Video - Mosque in Athens, Full & Related Articles

ꕤ Article SOURCE 'Mosque in Athens'  Debate - Intelligence Squared FULL VERSION 27 Nov 2012 Transcript Douglas Murray Link  |  here Last Updated: Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 11:24 GMT 12:24 UK Athens Muslims to get a mosque By Andrew Burroughs BBC News, Athens Ottoman mosque turned into museum This Ottoman era mosque is now a museum Plans for the first mosque in Athens since Turkish rule under the Ottoman empire have been given the go-ahead by the Greek parliament. Over recent years immigration has brought hundreds of thousands of Muslims to the Greek capital. But while freedom of worship is guaranteed by Greece's constitution as a member of the European Union, proposals for a new mosque have proved controversial in a country whose population is 96% Greek Orthodox. There are mosques dating from Ottoman times in the old part of Athens known as Plaka. The Fethiye or victory mosque dates back to 1458. But today these buildings are for tourists not for Muslim prayers. One is now a museum of Greek folk art. Athens is the only EU capital without a purpose-built place of worship for its Muslim population. The city's 200,000 or so Muslims have been meeting in disused basements and whatever space the community can find. Technically these buildings lack proper legal permission to function as places of worship, though the city authorities, aware of the problem, have allowed meetings to continue while a solution is sought. Demonstrations In the run-up to the Olympics, and under pressure to portray Greece as internationalist and conciliatory, the then socialist government chose a site for a Saudi-sponsored mosque and Islamic centre east of Athens to be visible from the international airport. That provoked demonstrations by nearby residents of the staunchly conservative town of Peannia. Today there's a small Greek Orthodox chapel on site, built to commemorate the protests which thwarted the mosque proposal. On special occasions a bell is rung, and on the hilltop a cross now defiantly looks towards the airport. "We are Orthodox Christians here," says Angelo Kouias, a Peannia resident, involved in the protests. "We believe that when you arrive at the frontier of Greece it would be better to see a church to symbolise our country rather than a mosque." "We don't want another Kosovo here close to Athens," says Dr Athanasius Papagiorgiou, a surgeon and president of the group which opposed the plan, the religiously conservative Association of St John. "Kosovo used to be a centre for the orthodox faith, and today it's nothing." Lost privilege Professor George Moustakis represents a different face of orthodoxy - a campaigner for interfaith understanding who joined a petition in favour of a mosque 17 years ago. "I've always opposed the connection of church and state here in Greece, which has meant the church took the decision about other denominations and other faiths and their buildings for worship," he says.  [But for all his airy-fairy ideals, he is paving the way to connection of Islam to state] "Parliament has now voted and the church lost that privilege. So there is no problem about the mosque, the government supports it, so does the Orthodox Church."  [All sold out to the Saudis?] With the church veto gone and support from the current centre-right government, Naim El Ghandour - who in daily life imports high fashion fabric designs - is the man coordinating plans for a new mosque to be built in the north of Athens. "The Muslims of Athens are Greek tax-payers and we have a right to pray in a respectful building," he says "We're asking the government for financial help. We're not looking for foreign sponsors, this will be a Greek mosque for Greek Muslims." [Solution:  live in Saudi Arabia & pray there.  Greeks are not Muslims.  All taxpayers are not equal.  No such thing as 'Greek Muslims'.  What a scam.  Greeks do not deserve the imposition of Islamic culture, religion and political power upon native Greeks, hundreds of years after fighting off Islamic invasion.] The saga of the Athens mosque finds echoes elsewhere in Europe. The city of Grenada in Spain has just witnessed the opening of its first new mosque since the 15th Century when the Spanish re-conquered the Iberian peninsula from the Moorish Islamic rulers who built the historic mosques and palaces of Andalusia.  [Sacrilege.  I'm not religious, but I see this as a desecration.  A desecration of European territory, history, culture and society.] The new mosque opened for worship only after two decades of objections from the local authorities on planning grounds. And in Italy a mosque planned for seven years in Colle di Val d'Elsa in a picturesque corner of Tuscany has divided the local community. There the local authority supports the need for a mosque but there have been objections from residents. It is a scenario likely to be repeated around the EU as the need for immigrant labour draws into the community those of a different faith, who then naturally wish to take up their equal right to a place of worship. [What, Latin America hasn't a population that would work in Europe?] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5190256.stm Published December 14th 2013 08:51pm Greek neo-Nazi party protests Athens mosque Shouting 'Greece belongs to the Greeks' and 'No mosque in Athens,' Golden Dawn's supporters stage rally Some 700 members and supporters of Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn protested Saturday against the construction of Athens' first official mosque, the state-run Athens News Agency reported. Shouting "Greece belongs to the Greeks" and "No mosque in Athens", protesters gathered in the Eleonas neighborhood in central Athens where the mosque will be constructed, according to the agency. Lawmaker Eleni Zaroulia -- the wife of Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos -- and three more of the party's elected deputies reportedly participated in the protest. Michaloliakos is currently in pre-trial detention, charged with running a criminal organisation following a musician's murder by one of the group's supporters in September. In November, the government announced that a Greek consortium had been chosen to lead the construction of Athens' first mosque, 13 years after plans were first announced. Five previous attempts to find a business group to back the project had failed. Athens is one of the few European capitals without an official mosque, but in recent years several non-official places of worship have appeared in the Greek capital thanks to an increasing numbers of immigrants from countries such as Pakistan. [One of the few European capitals without an official mosque?  No wonder the clerics are issuing victory fatwas.] In 2011, the Greek government was forced to adopt a law ensuring the mosque's construction. But concerns over where to place the mosque and protests from the far right led to the failure of five contract tenders. The only official mosques in Greece are situated in the northeast region of Thrace, where a minority group of Muslim Turks live. http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/131216-greek-neo-nazi-party-protests-athens-mosque Construction of First Mosque in Athens to Start Soon By Philip Chrysopoulos - Aug 5, 2015 Construction of the first mosque in Athens will start as soon as final details of the much-delayed project are ironed out and the building permit is about to be issued. It has been seventy years since it was decided to build a mosque in Athens. The delays have been a constant source of tension with the Muslim world. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has been highly critical of the delays, with the Minister of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs Aristides Baltas stressing that these delays are used to defame Greece. ['seventy years' must be a mistake.  must be 7 years. / So Greece is being *bullied* into mosque building, given 'tensions with the Muslim world'.  Greece, tell them you'll comply when there's a magnificent church of victory erected in Mecca.] In recent years the tender for the construction had been repeated five times and a successful bidder was selected in November 2013. The project has a budget of 964,000 euros and it will be constructed on a plot of land owned by the Greek Navy. It is located in the area of Eleonas in Athens where a former Navy workshop building will be converted into a mosque. The last detail remaining is the settlement of a stream that should not cause any more delays. The building of the Athens mosque is one of the priorities of the SYRIZA government and Alexis Tsipras has promised that he will complete it. The project, however, is met with many reactions from the Greek Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Bishop of Piraeus Seraphim has appealed to stop the construction. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/08/05/construction-of-first-mosque-in-athens-to-start-soon/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT About to watch the full video, having seen a clip of Melanie Phillips speak on the subject.  Initial impression:  Western civilisation is finished.  Europe is finished. The British Council is in the service of Saudi Arabia. Project 'Our Shared Europe' is a joke.  Especially coming from a nation that has allowed this to develop:  Britain White Flight Muslim Enclaves in Britain Sharia Courts / No Go Areas, Britain http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5177/no-go-zones-britain Neocon agenda British Council propaganda serves the interests of  those that do not have to live with the consequences of their demented policies -- yet. Europe permitted itself to be flooded by Muslim immigration and has dutifully permitted construction of mosques, while Athens is the sole remaining European capital that hasn't capitulated to Saudi Arabia -- and that presumably includes even Moscow, which recently opened a mosque. Greece is being bullied into constructing an Islamic edifice, despite the obvious and understandable opposition of the Greek people. Saudi Arabia is behind this mosque project and is most likely behind all the mosque projects in Europe, as radical Islamic clerics issue fatwas declaring victory of Islam over Europe. The EU is an organisation that promotes the interests of foreign entities and the destruction and Islamisation of Europe. Europe needs to reconfigure -- fast. Putin Opens New Mosque in Moscow Amid Lingering Intolerance By NEIL MacFARQUHARSEPT. 23, 2015 President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke on Wednesday about Islam and the war in Syria at the opening of Moscow’s largest mosque. By REUTERS on Publish Date September 23, 2015. Photo by RIA Novosti/Reuters. Watch in Times Video » MOSCOW — Against rather long odds, including a hostile mayor, a vocal constituency irritated by Muslim rituals, and criminal rackets loath to see valuable real estate lost to charitable organizations, Moscow inaugurated a glittering, elaborate new mosque on Wednesday. It took 10 years to come to fruition, in fact. The opening was a singular event in a city where a wave of bombings by Muslim extremists that started around 2000 generated an animosity toward the faith that never entirely abated. Flanked by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, President Vladimir V. Putin used his speech at the inauguration of the mosque, which he called the biggest mosque in Europe, to emphasize that Russia would develop its own system of religious education and training to counter extremism. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/world/europe/putin-opens-moscows-most-elaborate-mosque.html?_r=0 Hey, Vlad, this the same Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey who declared and was convicted & imprisoned in 1998: mosques are our barracks, the domes are helmets, the minarets are bayonets and the faithful are soldiers. What a f*cking sell-out for gas pipes, Russia. And it's destined to blow up in your face spectacularly. Russia thinks it can appease Islam with 'religious education and counter-extremism training'. Just as Europe is finished, Russia is finished. Bibi, nuke the planet.  lol ꕤ

IRAQ - ISLAMIC STATE - ISIS - KURDS - SINJAR

TWITTER New Yorker link - here.

Noticed this appears to be Carnegie Endowment retweeted.

Imagine Carnegie Endowment aren't friends of Palestine.

Carnegie Endowment is a foreign policy 'think tank'.  Would you believe they've got a Moscow centre?

Don't know about these NGOs (or is it a GO ... haven't checked funding).  Who would want foreign influence in their countries?

Sinjar is a town on the Iraq-Syria border.

Like what's happening anywhere else in the world changes what's happened in Gaza!

Gaza's like shooting fish in a bucket.

Sinjar's either Iraq or Kurd.

ISIS has a fair bit of weaponry by the sound of it.  Hey, they've also changed their name, I think.  Now they're the Isamic State, as far as I know.

The New Yorker writes:

Yesterday, a senior U.S. official told me that the Obama Administration is contemplating an airlift, coördinated with the United Nations, of humanitarian supplies by C-130 transport planes to the Yazidis hiding in the Sinjar mountains. There are at least twenty thousand and perhaps as many as a hundred thousand of them, including some peshmerga militiamen providing a thin cover of protection.  The U.N. has reported that dozens of children have died of thirst in the heat. ISIS controls the entrance to the mountains. Iraqi helicopters have dropped some supplies, including food and water, but the refugees are hard to find and hard to reach.

ISIS rolls over local forces and consolidates power. ISIS is not Al Qaeda. It operates like an army, taking territory, creating a state. The aim of the Sinjar operation seems to be control of the Mosul Dam, the largest dam in Iraq, which provides electricity to Mosul, Baghdad, and much of the country. According to one expert, if ISIS takes the dam, which is located on the Tigris River, it would have the means to put Mosul under thirty metres of water, and Baghdad under five.

One way to protect the innocent and hurt those who are terrorizing them would be for the U.S. to launch air strikes on ISIS positions. That option has been discussed within the administration since the fall of Mosul, in June, but it runs against President Obama’s foreign-policy tendencies. “The President’s first instinct is, ‘Let’s help them to do it,’ ” the official told me. “The minute we do something, it changes the game.” This time, unlike in Syria, it isn’t hard to figure out how to “help them to do it”: send arms to the Kurds, America’s only secular-minded, pluralistic Muslim allies in the region, and the only force in the area with the means and the will to protect thousands of lives.  

It seems delusional to imagine that there is such a thing as an Iraqi central government that should be given priority over stopping ISIS and preventing a massacre. That dream of the American project in Iraq is gone. But perhaps the Obama Administration is being more realistic. Yesterday, I also learned that the U.S. is, in fact, sending arms to the Kurds—just not openly. This was even more welcome news, though it’s too bad that the weapons didn’t reach the peshmerga in time to defend Sinjar. The U.S. Joint Operation Center in Erbil is helping peshmerga ground troops and the Iraqi air force to coordinate attacks on ISIS, providing intelligence from the sky. It’s a breakthrough that the Kurds and the Iraqis are cooperating at all. “For the moment,” the senior official said. “And it could all fall apart, because it’s lightning in a bottle.”

*Yazidi is Kurdish people linked to Zoroastrianism.  I think Zoroastrianism was the original faith in Iran (Persia).  How cool's that!  Didn't think there were any beyond India, where they fled to centuries ago, I think it was.  Find them interesting.

That sounds pretty full on.

If ISIS/IS operate as an army, what do al-Qaeda do?

It would seem odd to overtake territory and then to just leave it, which I'm guessing is what happens.

US TROOPS - US provocation & strategic expansion into Europe

POLISH Defence Minister (Tomasz Siemoniak) 

Inspects first US troops to arrive in eastern Europe 

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'A message to Moscow': First of 600 U.S. soldiers arrive in eastern Europe prompting Kremlin to launch its own military drills near the border as death toll rises in Ukraine

Published: 03:35 AEST, 25 April 2014

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2612353/A-message-Moscow-First-600-U-S-soldiers-arrive-eastern-Europe-prompting-Kremlin-launch-military-drills-near-border-death-toll-rises-Ukraine.html

The first of 600 U.S. soldiers have arrived in eastern Europe as a Pentagon spokesman declared the mission was sending a 'message to Moscow'.

But the Nato drills prompted a backlash from Russia, which sent its troops on exercises along the Ukrainian border today and declared: 'We have to react somehow'.

The escalation of east-west tensions comes amid a slowly rising death toll in Ukraine, where the government renewed its crackdown today on pro-Russian militants leaving at least five shot dead.

Around 150 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived yesterday at an air force base in Swidwin, western Poland, as the U.S. stepped up its presence in eastern Europe.

Flying to the region from their previous posting in Italy, they were met by Polish troops in similar red berets and the nation's defence minister.

Within a few days there will be 450 more American Nato troops spread between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The Americans insisted the military exercises will not be a precursor to intervention in Ukraine...
...

But Russia has insisted the build-up may violate the Founding Act, a 1997 agreement between Moscow and Nato.

Today Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reacted by ordering new military exercises in Russia's south and west, along the Ukrainian border.

The latest exercises - which add to the tens of thousands of troops already massed on the border - will involve ground and air forces.

'We have to react to these developments somehow,' he said.

Mr Shoigu quoted unspecified sources claiming Kiev has deployed more than 11,000 troops and 160 tanks against just 2,000 pro-Russian insurgents.

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin added: 'If the Kiev government is using the army against its own people this is clearly a grave crime.'

The U.S. and Nato ...

... are 'temporarily' boosting their presence in eastern Europe in a drive to reassure allies ...

EXTRACTS ONLY:  FULL ARTICLE ABOVE LINK

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TOKYO ROSE:


Clearly 'temporary' is not the case.  

US-NATO now (July 2014) seek to amass more military in Europe.

Obama/US have granted a $1billion fighting fund contribution to NATO.

NATO's is hitting up members for $$ towards more NATO funds.  

So what happened to 'temporary'?  LOL 

Meanwhile:  Russia's done nothing aggressive or provocative. 

Daily Mail's headline's pretty damned provocative.  LOL.

This is very much about US strategic expansion into Europe.



[Excuse the formatting...driving me bananas...feeling my way around :) ]