(source)Narnia's Christian theme worries some Jewish viewers

A potential mega-blockbuster film, financed by a fervent Christian and bursting with Christian overtones, is being mass-marketed to - guess who? - Christians.

"E' spaventoso!"

Church groups are buying up whole theater showings just like Daddy Warbucks did for Annie. Advance screenings are being held for pastors and ministers, who have given the film their blessing, literally. Catholic publishing companies are putting out companion guides.

And the Jewish community is... well, no one knows quite what to think.

Allora abbiamo un problema molto urgente che richiede la nostra immediata attenzione!

That's because the film in question isn't Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. It's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the special-effects laden adaptation of British author C.S. Lewis' classic 1950 children's book.

?!

The $250 million film, which opens Dec. 9, was produced by the owner of the San Francisco Examiner, the right-wing evangelical billionaire Philip Anschutz, who also owns Walden Media. Walt Disney Co. also helped, especially on the distribution end. In fact, many of the same firms that so successfully recruited whole congregations to attend showings of The Passion have been contracted again for Lion.

The re-oiling and firing up of the machinery that pulled Christians into theaters and made The Passion a huge hit, as well as Lion's Christian overtones, have given some Jews reservations.

"Oh no!"

Rabbi Judah Dardik was hooked on Lion when he read it years ago as a day-school student. He borrowed the entire series from his older sister and devoured them.

It was only years later that he was told it was steeped in Christian allegories. He was "surprised and embarrassed I hadn't realized. I felt duped," Dardik said.

Oh no! E' stato ingannato dal libro perverso!

Rereading the series, he saw more and more allegories and could never appreciate the books as mere fiction again. Now he sees them as theology - beautifully written theology.

"Should Jewish children see this movie or read the books? I'm unsure.

Ma come, non c'è la società multiculturale?

My personal jury is still out," said Dardik, the spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland, Calif. "I read them... clearly it didn't affect my personal theology."

Quindi?

He added, "I haven't seen the movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if they fleshed out the Christianity a bit more to be satisfying to the Christian audience. That's the part that's most disconcerting to me. I also have concerns about the marketing. Hollywood has a way of being very in-your-face."

Like Gibson, Anschutz is a figure who makes many wary. Walden Media in recent years began creating Christian-friendly films short on sexual content or profanity - drug abuse and philandering were trimmed from last year's Ray Charles biopic Ray, for example.

Anschutz also is an outspoken evangelical, who was attracted to the Narnia tales for the same reason others in the business were repelled - its Christian messages.

But Lion is no Passion. Compared to the extremely negative reaction Passion garnered from Jewish organizations before, during and after its release, the marketing of Christian allegory as popular entertainment in Lion has created hardly a ripple.

The story is based on a book many people read as children, only to learn later that Lion and the six other books in Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series were full of Christian allegories.

The latent nature of Lion's Christian message, and the fact that one can be completely oblivious yet still enjoy the story, allows the film's producers to promote Lion on two levels: one method for avowedly Christian audiences and one for everyone else.

While the uplifting Christian message is pitched to pastors and church groups, the theatrical trailer features a dazzling array of special effects created by Peter Jackson's WETA - the company the New Zealand-based director founded to tackle Lord of the Rings - and huge battle scenes.

Disney is allocating about 5 percent of its promotional budget to wooing Christian groups. Peter Sealey, a marketing professor at the University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the former president of marketing and distribution for Columbia Pictures, describes this as "a very effective use of that money... that audience does not have as many films as it wants."

Sealey, however, saw "duplicity" in the way Disney is shying away from mentioning Lewis' Christian message in its general publicity materials. In a 16-page "Narnia Educator Guide" that Sealey found on the film's Web site, religion and Christianity aren't mentioned even once.

"The issue is secular audiences. Will they appreciate seeing a religious message without knowing it?" he asked. Disney "should make a statement, they should let people know. The lion is resurrected.... It's a great piece of entertainment and you can enjoy it if you're Christian or not. However, the underpinnings of the work reflect the New Testament."

Once it's known that Lewis was a theologian who wrote with a Christian message in mind, the parallels between the Narnia tales and the New Testament easily fall into place.

For starters:

* Narnia is a magical kingdom created by the divine King Aslan, but currently in a state of perpetual winter due to a curse of the evil White Witch. The four children (two "Sons of Adam," two "Daughters of Eve") stumble in via the enchanted, eponymous wardrobe and become the disciples of Aslan.

The child Edmund betrays his siblings and Aslan, Judas-style, to aid the White Witch, and is saved when Aslan allows himself to be sacrificed, not unlike Jesus.

* Aslan is resurrected and the White Witch is vanquished. The four children are crowned kings and queens of Narnia. Peter - not a coincidental choice of names - becomes High King.

* In the last of the Chronicles of Narnia, fittingly titled The Last Battle, an army of people described in a manner recalling the medieval Turks and aligned with a donkey in a lion costume (a false god, if you will) invades Narnia.

Those who believe in Aslan pass through a gate into another realm. After a terrifying moment passing through the gate, a beautiful kingdom is revealed. Aslan decrees that he has ended Narnia just as he began it, and the four children, who died in the world of postwar Great Britain, can now live with him forever in paradise along with other believers.

You figure it out.

Pastor Earl Palmer, co-founder of Berkeley's New College and a scholar on Lewis, said Lewis always saw his tales as "stories of the marvelous," but Palmer admits that Aslan is a loosely veiled Christ figure. But Lewis wasn't trying to fool anyone, Palmer says: Before turning to children's books, he wrote Christian religious tracts.

"Lewis said you can take a rock out of your shoe, but you can't take an idea out of your mind. His faith is in everything he writes," said Palmer, senior minister at Seattle's University Presbyterian Church.

"I always say that you should let the story flow over you. Don't try to interpret it," he said. "Later, when you look back, you'll see certain biblical allusions. There are theological themes, just like in Lord of the Rings."

Lewis, however, denied he was writing allegorically. Instead, he claimed to simply be imagining the concepts of good, evil and the ultimate redeemer in a mystical world of his own creation.

But he never went so far as to claim the obvious Christian parallels were a coincidence.

"There's one funny line he put in a letter. He said children know who Aslan is," Palmer said. "The great golden lion, son of the emperor from beyond the sea, is a Christ reference."

And the golden lion is the sole redeemer.

Altrove...

The other 'Munich': Israeli spies tell their side

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A pocketful of receipts helped blow the lid off Israel's most notorious intelligence bungle.

It was in 1973, after spies dispatched to Norway killed a waiter mistaken for the Palestinian mastermind of a raid on the previous year's Munich Olympics where 11 Israeli athletes died.

The assassins might have got away, except that one of them was not a trained member of Israel's spy agency Mossad but a Danish-born volunteer brought aboard for his language skills.

Hoping to recoup expenses, he had kept his receipts. Once detained by Norwegian police, he provided a paper trail that led to the capture and prosecution for murder of the rest of team.

So when director Steven Spielberg, in his new film on the post-Munich reprisals, showed a Mossad case officer ordering agents to hoard receipts while in deep cover abroad, eyebrows were raised among veterans of the intelligence service.

"It's an absurd version of the modus operandi," former field agent Gad Shimron said when asked about the thriller "Munich."

"Agents are expected to account for their expenses, but not if it means incurring the risk of discovery. They can just as easily declare their expenses from memory when they return home, and it's accepted on trust," he told Reuters.

That is just one of a list of complaints made about "Munich" by those with direct knowledge of the Israeli reprisal campaign.

Spielberg's version paints a grim picture of what befell five men sent by Israel to track and kill members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) blamed for the Olympics raid.

The film is based on "Vengeance," a 1984 book purporting to chronicle the confessions of an assassin who broke ranks in protest at Israel's two-fisted tactics. It portrays a hit-team unleashed on Europe and the Middle East with little supervision, torn by self-doubt and on the run from Palestinian gunmen.

Spielberg was careful to add the disclaimer that the film was merely "inspired" by real events, but many Israelis say they are disappointed in the Hollywood director famed for his fastidiously researched Holocaust epic "Schindler's List."

"I think it is a tragedy that a person of the stature of Steven Spielberg, who has made such fantastic films, should have based this film on a book that is a falsehood," said David Kimche, a senior Mossad official in the 1970s.

Siamo passati dal libro che inganna al libro basato su falsità!

Badombe> "Oh no!"

Ne prendiamo nota, per le prossime allegre puntate con la divertente rassegna di libri.

(source)Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Booga!

A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth rates. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like CO2 are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.

Global Warming Implies Global Planning

Like all other political institutions, the European Union has also used global warming as a way to increase its own relevance. Since, climate change is something global, the EU can make a wonderful case for its own existence by saying that this problem requires both global and regional cooperation. Furthermore, global warming fits perfectly into today’s paradigm of outrageous anti-Americanism. The United States can be blamed for not cooperating and for not signing the Kyoto agreement whereas the EU improves its image by appearing as caring, visionary and idealistic.

Though there is no scientific consensus about the dangers of global warming, the debate has been reduced into doomsday scenarios that are spread out through all branches of the government. Hence, global warming implies global planning, and when the great government plan is going to be implemented, propaganda and flawed information follows consequently.

Il solito vago ricordo.

(source)Death Before Dishonor

The latest Iraq war urban legend:

Several female service members have died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day due to fear of being raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

This is absurd for countless reasons - the most obvious being that death by dehydration takes a little longer than a couple hours without fluids, even in the hottest conditions.

But this fabrication has an interesting source: Col. Janis Karpinski, former commander of the unit responsible for torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. And she's found a sympathetic forum in which to tell the story: The "Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration" - a mock trial sponsored by "Not in Our Name", a group originally founded by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party to protest the US-led war in Afghanistan.

Tutti contro tutti: evviva!

(source)Hidden history of US germ testing

Prendere nota:

Fifty years ago, American scientists were in a frantic race to counter what they saw as the Soviet threat from germ warfare. Biological pathogens they developed were tested on volunteers from a pacifist church and were also released in public places.

The remarkable story is told in a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Hotel Anthrax.

In the 1950s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church struck an extraordinary deal with the US Army. It would provide test subjects for experiments on biological weapons at the Fort Detrick research centre near Washington DC.

Quello dell'antrace?

The volunteers were conscientious objectors who agreed to be infected with debilitating pathogens. In return, they were exempted from frontline warfare.

Fort Detrick was working on weapons it could use in an offensive capacity as well as ways of defending its troops and citizens.

Hotel Anthrax uses declassified documents, evidence from Senate investigations and personal testimony to trace the American bio-weapon programme during this period.

The research involved anthrax, other lethal bacteria and biological poisons. The scientists also conducted tests on an unsuspecting American public.

Rabbit fever

More than 2,000 volunteers, nicknamed the "white coats", passed through Fort Detrick between 1954 and 1973, where they worked as lab technicians, as well as offering up their bodies for science.

One white coat, George Shores, tells of how he was infected with tularaemia or rabbit fever.

A giant metal sphere, known as the Eight Ball because of its resemblance to a snooker ball, was used in the experiment. Technicians exploded prototype bio-weapons inside the structure.

"They had like telephone booths all the way around the outside of the Eight Ball and you went into the telephone booth and shut the door and put on a mask like a gas mask.

"It was hooked up to the material that was inside the Eight Ball and you breathed it in," explained Mr Shores.

He began to feel ill before too long.

"Even my gums hurt. I don't think I have ever been so sick in all my life. First it started as a headache and achy feelings and it just kept progressing.

"I just wanted to breathe enough to keep alive. I would just take little gasps of breath and I would hold it for as long as I could because it hurt so bad.

"I can imagine if someone was using that agent in the battlefield the soldier would just have to lie down - he would not be able to function."

The white coat volunteers were not infected with the most lethal microbes. Their role was to test the effectiveness of new vaccines and antibiotics and as soon as they became ill, they were given medical treatment. Within a few days, George Shores began to recover.

But America's Institute of Medicine is conducting a study of more than 6,000 veterans who say their health has been compromised by secret tests in the Cold War years.

Some of these were veteran sailors who were involved in tests known as SHAD - Shipborne Hazard and Defense - which involved spraying lethal chemicals such as sarin and nerve gases in the open sea.

The BBC programme makers also obtained declassified documents prepared by the US Department of Veterans Affairs which refer to a study of nearly 100 SHAD veterans who have since died.

It found the veterans were three times more likely to have developed one of a group of killer diseases as a sample group in the general population.

It concludes: "This study does suggest that veterans who participated in Project SHAD may be at increased risk for cerebrovascular and respiratory diseases."

Subway experiment

But it wasn't just the white coat volunteers and sailors who were subject to experiments. Scientists used what they thought was a harmless simulant in major bio-weapon tests across US cities and on public transport.

It was a bacteria which they believed was harmless but which would mimic the dispersal of deadly biological agents such as anthrax.

But later research showed that the strain of Bacillus globigii, or BG, did pose a risk to people who were ill or whose immune system was failing.

The programme hears from a retired scientist whose job in 1966 was to drop light bulbs carrying BG on the New York subway. He would then measure how the simulant might spread in the event of a real attack, using a motorised vacuum devise concealed inside a suitcase.

Wally Pannier, 82, recalls: "We'd just drop light bulbs with the powdered stimulant inside.

"I think it spread pretty good because you had a natural aerosol developed every few minutes from every train that went past."

In 1994, the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs conducted what it described as a comprehensive analysis stretching back 50 years of the extent to which veterans were exposed to potentially dangerous substances without knowledge or consent.

It was chaired by John D Rockefeller.

In a damning report, it concluded that the Department of Defense (DoD) repeatedly failed to comply with required ethical standards when using human subjects in military research - and that the DoD demonstrated a pattern of misrepresenting the danger of various exposures and continued to do so.

Dr Michael Kilpatrick, a medical adviser to the DoD, claims the concerns which SHAD veterans have been raising may, finally, be changing that behaviour.

"It's very hard to try and put today's ethics on standards 20, 30, 40 years ago. That's not to excuse it. I think they were trying to protect people using the medical science that was available at that time.

"We're taking a look at any current tests that require consent of our military personnel.

"We're making sure that there is an archive, a registry, a way to get back to all of the information."

(source)Cover-up, conspiracy and the Lockerbie bomb connection

By Eddie Barnes

If there is a day when the seemingly inconsequential case involving DC Shirley McKie morphed into the crisis which today is threatening the reputation of Scotland's judicial and political system, it is Thursday, August 3, 2000.

It was already more than three years since McKie (pictured left) had visited a house in Kilmarnock where a woman called Marion Ross had been brutally murdered. Since then McKie had been accused of entering that house unauthorised, and leaving her fingerprint on the crime scene. She had been charged with perjury, after claiming in court she had never set foot in there. She had been humiliated at the hands of her former colleagues.

Now, on that August day, a group set up by the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland (ACPOS) to examine the McKie case, was faced with a stunning report. It had already been established that the fingerprint experts at the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) had got it wrong and that the print was not McKie's. Now, the document in front of the group - an interim update from James Mackay, the man they had asked to investigate the case - claimed the SCRO officers had acted criminally to cover up their mistakes. The consequences were immense: if Scotland's forensic service was both guilty of errors and of attempting to conceal those errors, what confidence could anyone have in the entire justice system?

Last week, Scotland on Sunday revealed the contents of Mackay's final report, which had been kept secret for six years, and which was never acted upon by Scotland's chief prosecutor, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd. This week, we can reveal that it was not just police and prosecutors who knew its contents; the devastating findings of the interim version were passed on to ministers as well.

Mackay, a much respected former Deputy Chief Constable of Tayside police, had been commissioned to investigate the McKie case after a separate report by HM Inspectors of Constabulary had found that - despite the SCRO's claims - McKie's prints had never been at the crime scene. Mackay now probed deeper. As this newspaper revealed last week, his final report found that a mistake had been made, yet had not then been owned up to. "The fact that it was not so dealt with," he reported, "led to 'cover up' and criminality."

Now Scotland on Sunday has been passed documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation which show that on the same day that Mackay's interim findings were being given to police chiefs, the then Justice Minister Jim Wallace was also informed of the results. The language used to describe Mackay's findings to Wallace was even starker than that used in the report itself.

The proof comes in an e-mail written by a senior official in the Scottish Executive Justice Department, Sheena Maclaren, to another senior Justice Department official, John Rafferty. Maclaren, who was the secretary of the Department's second police division, handled the correspondence of Wallace.

On September 20, 2001, Maclaren wrote: "James Mackay, then DCC Tayside police, was appointed to lead the investigation of the issues relating to fingerprint evidence. On 3 August 2000, we were informed that investigations so far suggested that the evidence given in court by... SCRO fingerprint personnel was 'so significantly distorted that without further explanation, the SCRO identification likely amounts to collective manipulation and collective collusion'."

She added: "Mr W Rae, then President of ACPOS and President of SCRO's Executive Committee, decided that given the circumstances, all Chief Constables concluded that there was no alternative but to 'precautionary suspend' the 4 SCRO personnel. This was done on 3 August by the Director of SCRO. Ministers, copied to Richard Henderson and others, were informed of this decision in a minute from John Rowell on 3 August 2000."

Rowell, another head of police in the Scottish Executive's Justice Department, sat on the executive committee of the SCRO. A minute of the committee meeting on October 27, 2000, attended by Rowell, confirmed that he too saw Mackay's findings. "Mr Rae [the chairman] had made available copies of [Mackay's] Interim Report," the minute declares.

Last week, before being confronted with today's revelations, the Scottish Executive confirmed it had never been given sight of Mackay's report. A spokesman for the Justice Department said: "It would not have been appropriate for Scottish Ministers to have seen the report. It remains a confidential report between the police and the Crown Office and Scottish Ministers (except for the Lord Advocate in his capacity as head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal's office) have never been passed a copy of the report." Asked whether the First Minister had seen the report, his spokesman replied: "No - and neither have any other Ministers past or present as this was a confidential report between the police and the Crown Office."

After being told about the e-mails yesterday, a spokesman for the Executive insisted that they only referred to Mackay's interim findings, not to his full report which was published some months later. The spokesman said: "This e-mail exchange simply confirms that the Executive was made aware of the rationale for that action [suspension of the SCRO officers]. As the e-mail makes clear, this was interim information provided to the Executive in the year 2000 around the time of the suspension decision." The spokesman said that a civil service note had been sent to Wallace after the August 2000 meeting which "would have confirmed the reasons why there were going to be suspensions". The spokesman added that it was for the Lord Advocate, not his fellow ministers, to act on the findings of the Mackay report.

Last night there were further questions from the McKie family and their supporters over why, when faced with such staggering allegations, ministers failed to do more to address the SCRO's failings.

Iain McKie, Shirley McKie's father, said: "This reveals that at that time in August 2000, the Mackay report was being discussed within Jim Wallace's department. The whole case has now reached staggering proportions and if ever a public inquiry was required it is required now."

Wallace was unavailable for comment yesterday - and with his successor Cathy Jamieson remaining silent about the scandal, it has been left to Boyd to explain the inaction. On Friday, he declared that he had seen the full Mackay report and decided that there was still insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone from the SCRO. This decision, taken in September 2001, astonished Mackay. He is understood to have expressed his "surprise" and "disappointment" to the Crown Office and to have relayed his concerns to the then deputy crown agent, Bill Gilchrist. Indeed, so curious is the Lord Advocate's decision not to prosecute, that many are reaching their own conclusions as to why he didn't press ahead with a prosecution.

One is the theory that such a prosecution would undermine the case against David Asbury, the man jailed for the murder of Marion Ross. Such a fear was misguided: Asbury's conviction was quashed anyway in August 2002 on the back of the McKie revelations.

A second theory brings in the shadow of the Lockerbie bombing. Mackay's explosive report into the McKie case that August came three months after Boyd began the prosecution of Libyan suspects Abdelbaset Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. The eyes of the world were focused on Scottish justice. What would it have said of that system if - just as the Crown was trying to convict the bombers - it emerged that fingerprint officials had been involved in "criminality and cover-up"?

Boyd strenuously denies that Lockerbie has any relevance to his judgments regarding the McKie case. When Iain McKie first raised the issue in 2000, Crown Office officials declared that Lockerbie "had not affected in any way the response from this or indeed any other department of the Scottish Executive to the issues raised by you."

But there is clear proof that senior justice chiefs had a stake in both cases; SCRO director Harry Bell, for example - whose agency was coming under such scrutiny - was a central figure in the Lockerbie investigation, having been given the key role in the crucial Maltese wing of the investigation, and given evidence in court.

Today's revelation that two American fingerprint experts who savaged the SCRO over the McKie case were asked by the FBI to "back off" suggests that plenty of people were aware of the danger that the case could undermine the Lockerbie trial.

Former MP Tam Dalyell - who has long campaigned on the Lockerbie case - said: "I have always felt that there was something deeply wrong with both the McKie case and the Lockerbie judgment. It is deeply dismaying for those of us who were believers in Scottish justice. The Crown Office regard the Lockerbie case as their flagship case and they will go to any lengths to defend their position."

The pressure for a full public inquiry is now growing day by day.

It is understood that, this week, the Scottish Parliament's Justice 1 Committee will consider launching a full parliamentary inquiry. One thing is sure: this murky affair looks set to rock the foundations of Scotland's criminal justice system.

* SCOTLAND on Sunday revealed last week that justice officials were warned six years ago by police of "cover-up and criminality" in the Shirley McKie fingerprint case. Our story was picked up across Scotland, leading to calls for a judicial inquiry from MSPs.

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson is now under growing pressure to act over the scandal but - nearly two weeks on - has so far refused to talk once about why ministers decided to offer £750,000 to Shirley McKie, just as she was about to take her case to court.

Lord Advocate Colin Boyd is also in the firing line, over his decision not to press charges against fingerprint experts, despite the allegations of criminality. Jim Wallace, Justice Minister when the McKie scandal broke, is also under fire. He was aware of the allegations but failed to act. First Minister Jack McConnell is under pressure to call a public inquiry.

* TWO American fingerprint experts were warned by the FBI to back off from the Shirley McKie case for fear it would scupper the trial of the Lockerbie bombers.

David Grieve, the senior fingerprint expert at Illinois State police, said that FBI agents pleaded with him to stay silent, fearing the case "would taint the people involved in Lockerbie".

Campaigners for the McKie family last night claimed that the plea to "let everything drop" shed new light on why the former policewoman was denied justice. They believe that the Crown was determined to protect the reputation of the Scottish justice system at a time when it was coming under international scrutiny.

The astonishing claims come as Scotland on Sunday reveals that:

* former justice minister Jim Wallace was aware six years ago that fingerprint experts at the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) were accused of "collective manipulation and collective collusion", yet they were allowed to return to work two years later;

* MSPs are preparing to launch their own parliamentary inquiry into the scandal to get to the truth of the allegations.

Wertheim and Grieve, both internationally respected fingerprint experts, were central in clearing McKie in 1999 when she was accused of having left her fingerprint at a crime scene. The case left the Scottish justice system open to claims its fingerprint evidence was unsafe. FBI officers took both aside before the Lockerbie trial in the Hague began in February 2000.

Grieve, the senior fingerprint expert at Illinois State Police, said: "I was asked not to mention anything about the case and not to publicise it because we had to think about the higher goal, which was Lockerbie."

He also claims that the FBI had been visited weeks earlier by an official from the SCRO.

"I was pulled aside and given a lecture on the importance of not embarrassing a 'sister agency' which had 'very important and high profile' cases pending of an international significance. I knew the reference was to the Pan-Am bombing," he said.

Wertheim, a fingerprint expert of 20 years' experience, added: "I was at the FBI for a meeting and one of their people approached me and made the suggestion that I let everything drop."

Iain McKie, Shirley McKie's father, said yesterday that he believed Lockerbie provided a motive for the 'cover up' over his daughter's case.

He said: "I have always suspected the Lockerbie connection, but when I put it to the Lord Advocate, I got nothing from them. I could never understand why they treated my daughter like that. Lockerbie would give them that motivation."

Former MSP Mike Russell, who has campaigned for the McKie family, said: "This new information suggests the context for the Shirley McKie miscarriage of justice. It suggests that this context is much bigger than previously thought.

"It places the Lord Advocate in a completely untenable position and he too must now be considering his future. If he was influenced by this [Lockerbie] then he cannot continue as Lord Advocate."

SNP MSP Alex Neil, another campaigner for the McKies, said: "A lot of people think that there was pressure put on the FBI by the Scottish law authorities which maybe explains some of the bizarre decisions taken by the Lord Advocate."

The link between Lockerbie and the McKie case goes deeper as several police chiefs and prosecutors were involved in both. The director of the SCRO at the time of the allegations of criminality, Harry Bell, was one of the key police officers whose evidence led to the conviction of Abdel-baset Al Megrahi.

Lord Advocate Colin Boyd led the Lockerbie trial, securing a conviction in January 2001. In September of that year, despite the evidence presented by the Mackay report, he decided not to prosecute the SCRO officers over the McKie case.

The SCRO admitted yesterday that its officials had visited the FBI in 1999 and 2000, but insisted the trips had nothing to do with the McKie case.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Crown Office strongly denied that the decision not to prosecute the SCRO officers had been taken with Lockerbie in mind. She said: "SCRO was not involved in any way with fingerprinting in the Lockerbie case, the evidence of which was never disputed at all."

Boyd declared on Friday that he had decided not to prosecute the four SCRO officials because of "conflicting" evidence from fingerprint experts. He added that a prosecution would have to prove criminal intent.

Wilful blindness to the truth threatens to erode justice

It should worry us all that after more than six years of embarrassment about the quality of fingerprint evidence in Scotland and the calibre of work done by the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO), the senior prosecutor in the land appears to have learnt nothing.

At the very least, we can say with confidence that the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, has failed to grasp a critical issue at the heart of this debate.

In a letter Boyd sent on Friday to the presiding officer George Reid to explain his decisions to prosecute Shirley McKie for perjury and not to prosecute the four SCRO experts who misidentified a print at a murder scene as hers, he writes: "Since the time the issue arose in the trial of Shirley McKie, there have always been, and there remain, conflicting expert views on the issue of identification of the relevant fingerprints.

"I concluded in 2001 that the conflict in expert evidence was such that there could be no question of criminal proceedings."

In the earlier days of the debate, Willie Rae, then Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway and now the top man at Strathclyde, said in front of TV cameras that fingerprinting was not an exact science, and that the McKie case was simply a difference of opinion between experts.

More recently, Jim Wallace, while still Justice Minister, reached a similar conclusion. Boyd has now revealed he too remains unenlightened.

Fingerprinting, properly administered, is an exact science. Ask any of the genuine experts, such as Allan Bayle, formerly of Scotland Yard, or Pat Wertheim, the American expert who testified so brilliantly at McKie's trial in 1999. But even common sense should tell us, given the fact that people have been executed - and still are in some parts of the world - on the strength of a fingerprint, that it has to be precise.

There is a stubborn refusal by the SCRO to admit even that an error was made, far less something more sinister, even though the Crown Office and the Executive have long since conceded that point. This pig-headedness ensures that changes that are crying out to be made are kept in check.

The SCRO still makes an identification based on establishing 16 points of similarity. In more advanced centres around the world, experts examine the whole mark and don't work to a numerical, and fallible, standard.

Better practices and training are available, but despite making another major error in a mark left at a bank robbery in Ayrshire two years ago, SCRO continues to spurn them. The result is that Scottish fingerprinting has become a laughing stock around the world.

Independent experts have also been highly critical about SCRO's crime-scene investigation work, described by Bayle as the worst he's ever seen. The organisation must be forced to acknowledge its many flaws.

There is also a pressing need to break the strong link between the SCRO and the police service, especially Strathclyde Police. The current director, John McLean, was an Assistant Chief Constable with the force. His predecessor, Harry Bell, was a Det Chief Superintendent there.

Agencies involved in detecting and solving crime, the police, forensic examiners, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, tend to form bonds and pull together. But that has to be resisted as it undermines the necessary independence of each of those bodies.

Scientists and analysts who examine crime scenes for fingerprints, traces of DNA and any other clues should simply be concerned with finding the best evidence and passing it on. They should not become part of the drive to secure the conviction of an accused person. It has been suggested to Scotland on Sunday that SCRO experts have in the past been given targets to meet in making positive identifications. That should never happen. A print either matches a crime scene mark or it does not.

International experts have proved the mark in Marion Ross's home was not left by McKie; five colleagues of the four who insisted it was refused to support their identification; an independent inquiry by senior police officers found evidence of criminality on the part of the SCRO. Yet the organisation, with no dissent from the Executive or the Crown Office, continues to stand by its discredited experts. It does not bode well for Scottish justice.

(source)Gaia Goes Nuclear

The British biologist James Lovelock is one the most revered gurus of the environmentalist movement. Nevertheless, he caused uproar when he spoke out last year to encourage greens to adopt nuclear energy as the most practical option for powering our societies without adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. In his new book, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity, he lays out his argument for nuclear power in more detail, as well as providing a biting insider's critique of the Green movement he has done so much to inspire, arguing "they must drop their wrong-headed objection to nuclear energy".

E tutti gli ambientalisti zitti e muti, altrimenti lo scheletrino esce dall'armadio e Lovelock si sputtana.

(source)Vatican 'dispels Inquisition myths'

By Verity Murphy

The Vatican has published a new study on the abuses committed by the medieval Inquisition and come to a rather surprising conclusion - that in fact the much feared judges of heresy were not as brutal as previously believed.

According to the 800-page report, the Inquisition that spread fear throughout Europe throughout the Middle Ages did not use execution or torture to anything like the extent history would have us believe.

Ah, un revisionista!

Macina> Lo devo accoppare?

Prima lasciagli finire l'articolo.

In fact the book's editor, Professor Agostino Borromeo, claims that in Spain only 1.8% of those investigated by the notorious Spanish Inquisition were killed.

Nonetheless, as the report was published, Pope John Paul II apologised once more for the interrogators' excesses, expressing sorrow for "the errors committed in the service of the truth by the recourse to non-Christian methods".

But the Pope stopped short of breaking the age-old Vatican rule on not condemning your predecessors. Pope Gregory IX created the Inquisition in 1233 to curb heresy, or denial of truths of the Catholic faith, but he was not mentioned in the Pope's statement.

Hunting heretics

After the Roman Catholic Church consolidated its power across Europe in the 12th and 13th Century, it set up the Inquisition to ensure that heretics did not undermine that authority.

Un po' come le leggi speciali in Europa, stessa roba.

It took the form of a network of ecclesiastical tribunals equipped with judges and investigators.

The punishments meted out for wrongdoers ranged from being forced to visit churches and make pilgrimages, to life imprisonment or execution by burning at the stake.

Ora invece abbiamo il memoriale, però almeno nessuno è stato ancora bruciato.

Macina> Aspetta e spera!

A key component of the Inquisition was that it did not wait for complaints and accusations to be made, but actively sought out so-called heretics, who included witches, diviners, blasphemers and members of other sects.

Blasphemers...

The accused did not have the right to face and question their accuser and it was acceptable to take testimony from criminals and excommunicated people.

"Did not have the right to question..."

The Inquisition reached its peak in the 16th Century as it battled the Reformation, but its most famous trial was that of Galileo in 1633, condemned for claiming the earth revolved around the sun.

Death by burning

The Spanish Inquisition which became independent from the Vatican in the 15th Century, carried out some of the most infamous abuses under its "autos da fé" or act of faith, shorthand for death by burning.

They zealously tortured victims, held summary trials, forced conversions and passed death sentences.

"There is no doubt that at the start, the planned procedures were applied with an excessive rigour, which in some cases degenerated into true abuses," the Vatican study simply says of this dark period.

But the Vatican report, the product of a six-year investigation, insists that the Inquisition was not as bad as often believed.

Professor Borromeo says for example that for 125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, less than 2% were executed.

He says that often mannequins were burned to represent those tried in absentia and condemned to death and heretics and witches who repented at the last minute were given some sort of relief when they were strangled before being burnt.

Little comfort

But for those connected with victims of the Inquisition, Vatican claims that it was not as bad as thought carry little weight.

Among those targeted by the interrogators were the Waldensians, members of a Protestant sect declared heretical in the 12th Century.

"If there are many or few cases, it doesn't matter. What's important is you don't say, 'I am right and you are wrong and I burn you'," said Thomas Noffke, a US-born Waldensian pastor in Rome.

According to the study, in the Inquisition's heyday Germany killed more male and female witches than anywhere else, with some 25,000 people being put to death.

In Lichtenstein just 300 people were executed for witchcraft, but this amounted to 10% of the tiny state's population.

Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who was at the news conference where the study was presented, said that the lessons of history never come to an end.

Never come to an end...

Acknowledging the past was all the more relevant given the continued use of torture in the 21st Century, most notably by US troops against prisoners held in Iraq, he said.

Badombe> Never come to an end...

(source)"Abu Ghraib, anche italiani"

ROMA - C'erano anche degli italiani a condurre gli interrogatori nel carcere della vergogna di Abu Ghraib. Lo rivela Ali Shalal al Kaisi, il detenuto incappucciato con gli elettrodi della foto che ha fatto il giro del mondo. Riferendo la confidenza raccolta da un ex diplomatico iracheno, Haitham Abu Ghaith, "l'incappucciato" parla ai microfoni di RaiNews24 e sostiene che a condurre i tremendi interrogatori nel carcere iracheno c'erano anche contractors italiani ingaggiati da ditte americane. Il servizio con l'intervista andrà in onda domani alle 7.40 su RaiNews24. Palazzo Chigi ha intanto diffuso una nota in cui si afferma che "al governo non risulta la presenza di cittadini italiani ad Abu Grahib. E comunque il governo esclude in maniera tassativa che possa trattarsi di militari o di pubblici funzionari".

Saranno stati profughi armeni. Oppure è un complotto dei comunisti.

La testimonianza. Ali Shalal al Kaisi ha 42 anni; fu arrestato nell'ottobre 2003 a Bagdad con l'accusa di far parte della guerriglia. Studioso e insegnante di religione era un mokhtar, un'autorità amministrativa e religiosa in uno dei distretti della capitale irachena.

"Dopo quindici giorni di prigionia - ricorda l'ex detenuto - mi hanno tolto dalla cella, mi hanno messo una coperta con dei buchi, come se fosse un vestito tradizionale arabo. Mi hanno legato con del filo elettrico e messo su una scatola di cartone. Poi mi hanno detto che mi avrebbero elettrizzato se non avessi collaborato. Per tre giorni mi hanno colpito con scosse elettriche". "Ogni volta che usavano gli elettrodi - prosegue - sentivo gli occhi che fuoriuscivano dalle orbite. Una scossa è stata talmente forte che mi sono morso la lingua e ho cominciato a sanguinare. Sono quasi svenuto. Hanno chiamato un dottore, che ha aperto la mia bocca con gli stivali, ha visto che il sangue non veniva dallo stomaco ma dalla lingua e ha detto: 'Continuate pure'".

"Mi chiamavano uomo uncino". Ad Abu Ghraib, Ali Shalal veniva chiamato in gergo sprezzante Clawman, uomo uncino, per una tremenda ferita alla mano. "Prima di essere arrestato avevo subito un'operazione chirurgica alla mano. Ma quando sono entrato in prigione, gli americani hanno usato questa ferita come strumento di pressione. Mi dicevano: Se collabori ti possiamo aiutare a far diventare la mano come prima con un intervento chirurgico". Invece "con gli stivali calpestavano continuamente la mia mano ferita".

Ali si è rifugiato ad Amman, in Giordania, e ha fondato l'Associazione delle vittime delle prigioni americane. E' stato intervistato mentre seguiva un corso per Non violent action for Iraq tenuto da alcune Ong europee.

Violenze sessuali in carcere. Ai microfoni di Sigfrido Ranucci inviato di Rai News24, Ali Shalal dice di aver assistito personalmente ad abusi sessuali su uomini e donne: "Una soldatessa ha interrogato un religioso e gli ha chiesto di fare sesso con lei. Lui si è opposto; allora la donna è tornata, indossava un fallo finto e lo ha violentato. Abbiamo pure sentito delle donne portate in prigione che venivano violentate, che strillavano e chiedevano il nostro aiuto ma l'unica cosa che potevamo fare è gridare: Dio è grande e vincerà".

Era atteso in Italia Al Kaisi: sarebbe dovuto venire a Roma per raccontare la sua storia ma gli è stato negato il visto.

(source)The New Counterculture

Rod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, "the Democrats act like the Party of Lust."

But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism, an anti-sprawl movement aimed at making residential neighborhoods more like pre-suburban small towns. He dislikes industrial agriculture, shopping malls, television, McMansions and mass consumerism. Efficiency--the guiding principle of free markets--is an "idol," he says, that must be "smashed." Too often, he claims, Republicans act like "the Party of Greed."

L'amico imbecille di Schietti.

(source)FBI memos reveal allegations of abusive interrogation techniques

WASHINGTON - Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.

Che idea originale!

FBI agents working at the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques in e-mails to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union showed. The agents tried to get the military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions of terrorists because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of the prison at the time, overrode the FBI agents' protests, according to the documents.

The memos offer some of the clearest proof yet that the abuses and torture of prisoners in U.S. military custody weren't the isolated actions of low-ranking soldiers but a result of policies approved by senior officials, the ACLU said.

"These documents show that the abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was not caused by rogue elements but rather it was the consequence of policies that were deliberately adopted by senior military and Pentagon officials," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer. "We think this should provide further reason to hold senior officials, not just low-ranking soldiers, accountable for the torture of prisoners."

One of the memos said: "Although MGEN (Maj. Gen.) Miller acknowledged positive aspects of (the FBI's) approach, it was apparent that he favored (military) interrogation methods, despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information," said one memo from May 2003, by an agent with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Miller later left Guantanamo and was sent to Iraq under orders to find better ways of extracting intelligence from prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other American detention facilities. He advocated that guards help set the conditions for interrogations. Photos taken in Abu Ghraib in 2003 showed guards physically abusing and sexually humiliating prisoners.

Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, called the ACLU's release of the documents "another example of recycling old information." The Pentagon has conducted 12 major investigations and reviews and has never found a "DoD policy that ever encouraged or condoned abuse of detainees at Guantanamo," he said.

The FBI memos originally were released in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act as part of a lawsuit by the ACLU, but were largely censored. The latest batch contained extensive information that had been blocked out originally.

According to the memos, the FBI favored a law-enforcement approach geared toward collecting evidence that could be used later in prosecutions, while military officials preferred a more psychologically and physically aggressive approach derived from counterinterrogation methods taught at the Army's survival school.

In one e-mail, an FBI agent, whose name was blocked out, described observing interrogation that used pornography and strobe lights. The agent wrote, "We've heard that DHS (defense human intelligence service, part of the Defense Intelligence Agency) interrogators routinely identify themselves as FBI agents and then interrogate a detainee for 16-18 hours using tactics as described above and others (wrapping in Israeli flag, constant loud music, cranking the A/C down, etc). The next time a real agent tries to talk to that guy, you can imagine the result."

Military interrogators "were being encouraged at times to use aggressive interrogation tactics in GTMO (Guantanamo), which are of questionable effectiveness and subject to uncertain interpretation based on law and regulation," said a separate e-mail, dated May 30, 2003. "Not only are these tactics at odds with legally permissible interviewing techniques used by U.S. law enforcement agencies in the United States but they are being employed by personnel in GTMO who appear to have little, if any, experience eliciting information for judicial purposes."

Military interrogators "are adamant that their interrogation strategies are the best ones to use despite a lack of evidence of their success," it said.

The same e-mail complained that the military officer overseeing interrogations, a lieutenant colonel whose name was blocked out, "blatantly misled the Pentagon into believing that the (FBI's behavioral-analysis team) had endorsed the (military's) aggressive and controversial interrogation plan" during a teleconference with Pentagon officials.

That misrepresentation led the FBI agent in charge to take up the interrogation issue with Miller. The agent explained why his team's approach should be used, but Miller remained "biased" in favor of the military's way, the memo said.

Another e-mail, dated May 5, 2004, said detainees were hooded, threatened with violence and humiliated, and that Defense Department employees had portrayed themselves as FBI agents.

The Sanitized Horrors of Guantánamo Bay

The U.S. has adopted the practice of force-feeding detainees who hunger strike

Per combattere la fame nel mondo?

Ma visto che oggi facciamo il pieno...

Secrets Of Unit 1391

By Dan Ephron

Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares

Non mi dire.

June 28 issue - Sometimes a country's darkest secrets have a way of surfacing in the most offhanded manner. Gad Kroizer, an Israeli historian, was researching old British police buildings when he stumbled on a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect. The map showed the location of 62 police compounds built by the British in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where both Arabs and Jews who agitated against Britain's occupation were interrogated. What caught Kroizer's eye was a camp called Meretz, which he had not seen on any contemporary Israeli map or read about in any modern writing on security compounds in the Jewish state. "There was a discrepancy between the map I had and the lists I'd been looking at," says Kroizer, who lives in Jerusalem and teaches at Bar-Ilan University. "I started putting two and two together."

E sei riuscito a non finire in carcere? Strano!

What Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper (published in the March 2004 issue of Cathedra, circulation: 1,500) was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years, barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates.

Known as 1391, the facility is used as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel's military intelligence, whose members-all Arabic speakers-are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. According to Arabs who've been imprisoned in 1391, some of the methods are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel's own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as "moderate physical pressure."

But the nightmare for those in 1391 is the isolation and the fear that no one knows where you are, say Arabs who've been held there as well as an Israeli who's been inside the prison. The location of the compound is so hush-hush that a court this year banned a visit by an Israeli legislator. Prisoners describe being hooded everywhere at the facility except in their cells. Jailers often tell them they're on the moon or in another country (in fact, the compound is less than an hour's drive from Tel Aviv). "This can be devastating emotionally," says Dalia Kerstein, whose Israeli human-rights group, HaMoked, has petitioned the High Court of Justice to close down 1391. "We've seen that psychological pressure in certain instances can be even harder on inmates than physical pressure."

Hassan Rawajbeh would be the first to agree. A member of the nearly disbanded Palestinian Preventive Security force suspected of taking part in a shooting attack on Israelis, Rawajbeh was picked up by soldiers in Nablus 18 months ago. After stops at two other detention centers, he was hooded, handcuffed and thrown on the floor of a van. When the hood was removed, he was in a tiny, windowless cell with black walls and almost no light. The chamber contained no toilet, only a bucket in the corner, which the 39-year-old Rawajbeh says his jailers would empty once every few weeks. A low buzzing droned constantly. Rawajbeh, who denies shooting at Israelis, was never beaten, but he says he was on the verge of a breakdown. "I was jailed six times before," he said earlier this month at his office in Nablus, where other Palestinians, some armed with pistols, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. "But those experiences were like five-star hotels compared to 1391."

For nearly four months, Rawajbeh saw no-one but his interrogators, who kept him naked for days at a time and prevented him from going to the bathroom. "You begin to feel like the jail exists only for you, that no one else is there," he says.

Israeli officials deny torturing inmates at 1391 or any other facility. But Gideon Ezra, the former deputy head of Israel's Shabak security service, says psychological pressure is one of the most effective tools interrogators have in the war against terrorism. Ezra, now a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party and his cabinet, says 1391 was actually set up as an interrogation center for non-Palestinian Arabs who entered Israel illegally. (Ezra says the number 1391 corresponds to the adjacent military base and has no particular significance.) "In cases like that, you need to find out very quickly who this person is and how he might harm you."

L'hai imparato da Dershowitz oppure ci sei arrivato da solo?

But at least one former inmate at 1391 says the comparison to Abu Ghraib is fitting. Mustapha Dirani was brought to the facility after being abducted by Israeli commandos from his home in Lebanon in 1994. Israel believed Dirani knew the whereabouts of a missing airman, Ron Arad, and wanted to glean information quickly, while he was still stunned from the kidnapping. Dirani, who returned to Lebanon five months ago in a prisoner swap, said in a phone interview that he was raped by a soldier in those first days at 1391 and sodomized by an interrogator he identified as George. His civil suit against the state for more than $1 million in damages is scheduled to start in January. "It's the same style as in Abu Ghraib. They take advantage of the fact that Arabs and Muslims are culturally conservative," says Dirani, who spent eight years at 1391 but was never tried for a crime. In what might look to some people like a foreshadowing of Abu Ghraib, Dirani said in an affidavit four years ago that he was interrogated naked for days and photographed repeatedly.

George has since left the intelligence unit that operates at 1391, according to Kerstein of HaMoked. She believes the Army might be worried the interrogator will divulge other scandals if the Dirani case ever goes to trial. In an interview with Israel's Channel Two television four months ago, George said Dirani invented the rape story to avoid retribution back in Lebanon for information he divulged to the Israelis.

Kroizer, the academic who stumbled on 1391, is still surprised by the attention his footnote received. Days after his paper was published, his editor got a call from Israel's military censor, who wanted to know why the article had not been submitted for inspection.

"We publish an historical journal. We usually deal with issues that are at least 30 years old," says the editor, Benjamin Zeev Wexler.

E questo ti dovrebbe tenere fuori dal carcere?

"But I thought it was interesting to note that this old British interrogation center was still operating today." For a few hundred Arabs held there over the years, it was no news at all.

Tira, tira la corda, vedi se suona la campana?

Former Abu Ghraib commander says she met Israeli interrogator in Iraq

*din-don!*

The American general formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib prison says there are signs Israelis were involved in interrogating Iraqi detainees at another facility.

E non me lo dovevi proprio dire, perché ci sono rimasto veramente male.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, suspended in May over allegations of prisoner abuse, said she met a man who told her he was Israeli during a visit to a Baghdad intelligence center with a senior coalition general.

"I saw an individual there that I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he an interpreter -- he was clearly from the Middle East," Karpinski told British Broadcasting Corp. radio in an interview broadcast Saturday. "He said, 'Well I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic but I'm not an Arab; I'm from Israel.'

"I was really kind of surprised by that ... He didn't elaborate any more than to say he was working with them and there were people from lots of different places that were involved in the operation," Karpinski added.

Israel's Foreign Ministry told the BBC that reports of Israeli troops or interrogators in Iraq were "completely untrue." The allegations were also denied in a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office.

"The prime minister's office declares this evening that there is no basis and no foundation to the reports regarding supposed involvement of Israeli interrogators in investigating Iraqi hostages or prisoners," it said in a statement. "These reports are vehemently denied."

The U.S. military has used private contract workers in the interrogations along with military personnel. The presence of Israeli forces in Iraq would inflame opinion in the Muslim world, where many compare the abuse of prisoners by U.S. forces to Israel's treatment of Palestinian detainees.

Until a 1999 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court, Israeli secret service interrogators were allowed to use "moderate physical pressure" -- a euphemism, critics said, for torture.

Among the practices allowed prior to 1999 were sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners in uncomfortable positions for long periods and covering their heads with filthy sacks. Former prisoners say some of those techniques also were used by U.S. forces in Iraq.

Karpinski was suspended from command of the 800th Military Police Brigade after the publication in April of photos showing soldiers abusing and humiliating naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. She has said she did not know about the abuse and is being made a scapegoat in the scandal.

Ancora:

The Israeli Torture Template

By Wayne Madsen

With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, "if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse."

According to a political appointee within the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence sources, the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped U.S. interrogators develop the "R2I" (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself.

Clues about worse photos and videos of abuse may be found in Israeli files about similar abuse of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners. In March 2000, a lawyer for a Lebanese prisoner kidnapped in 1994 by the Israelis in Lebanon claimed that his client had been subjected to torture, including rape. The type of compensation offered by Rumsfeld in his testimony has its roots in cases of Israeli torture of Arabs. In the case of the Lebanese man, said to have been raped by his Israeli captors, his lawyer demanded compensation of $1.47 million. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel documented the types of torture meted out on Arab prisoners. Many of the tactics coincide with those contained in the Taguba report: beatings and prolonged periods handcuffed to furniture. In an article in the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb reported on the treatment given to a 23-year old Palestinian held on "administrative detention." The prisoner was "cuffed behind a chair 17 hours a day for 120 days . . . [he] had his head covered with a sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards played loud music right next to his ears and frequently taunted him with threats of physical and sexual violence." If additional photos and videos document such practices, the Bush administration and the American people have, indeed, "seen nothing yet."

Although it is still largely undocumented if any of the contractor named in the report of General Antonio Taguba were associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services, it is noteworthy that one, John Israel, who was identified in the report as being employed by both CACI International of Arlington, Virginia, and Titan, Inc., of San Diego, may not have even been a U.S. citizen. The Taguba report states that Israel did not have a security clearance, a requirement for employment as an interrogator for CACI. According to CACI's web site, "a Top Secret Clearance (TS) that is current and US citizenship" are required for CACI interrogators working in Iraq. In addition, CACI requires that its interrogators "have at least two years experience as a military policeman or similar type of law enforcement/intelligence agency whereby the individual utilized interviewing techniques."

Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report "is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence "carve out" subcontracts such confusion is often the case with "plausible deniability" being a foremost concern.

In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib."

The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon's angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.

The leak of the Taguba report was so radioactive, Daniel R. Dunn, the Information Assurance Officer for Douglas Feith's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Policy (Policy Automation Services Security Team), sent a May 6, 2004, For Official Use Only Urgent E-mail to Pentagon staffers stating, "THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY." Considering Feith's close ties to the Israelis, such a reaction by his top computer security officer, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), is understandable, although considering the fact that CISSPs are to act on behalf of the public good, it is also regrettable..

The reference to "third country nationals" in a report that restricts its dissemination to U.S. coalition partners (Great Britain, Poland, Italy, etc.) is another indication of the possible involvement of Israelis in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. Knowledge that the U.S. may have been using Israeli interrogators could have severely fractured the Bush administration's tenuous "coalition of the willing' in Iraq. General Taguba's findings were transmitted to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command on March 9, 2004, just six days before the Spanish general election, one that the opposition anti-Iraq war Socialists won. The Spanish ultimately withdrew their forces from Iraq.

During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, ". . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?"

When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain's question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI's President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah's Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.

Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America's Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld's neo-conservative "cabal" within the Pentagon.

Another person considered by Pentagon insiders to have been knowledgeable about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners is U.S. Army Col. Steven Bucci, a Green Beret and Rumsfeld's military assistant and chief traffic cop for the information flow to the Defense Secretary. According to Pentagon insiders, Bucci was involved in the direction of a special covert operations unit composed of former U.S. special operations personnel who answered to the Pentagon rather than the CIA's Special Activities Division, the agency's own paramilitary group. The Pentagon group included Arabic linguists and former members of the Green Berets and Delta Force who operated covertly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Titan also uses linguists trained in the languages (Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, and Tajik) of those same countries. It is not known if a link exists between Rumsfeld's covert operations unit and Titan's covert operations linguists.

Another Titan employee named in the Taguba report is Adel L. Nakhla. Nakhla is a name common among Egypt's Coptic Christian community, however, it is not known if Adel Nakhla is either an Egyptian-American or a national of Egypt. A CACI employee identified in the report, Steven Stephanowicz, is referred to as "Stefanowicz" in a number of articles on the prison abuse. Stefanowicz is the spelling used by Joe Ryan, another CACI employee assigned with Stefanowicz to Abu Ghraib. Ryan is a radio personality on KSTP, a conservative radio station in Minneapolis, who maintained a daily log of his activities in Iraq on the radio's web site before it was taken down. Ryan indicated that Stefanowicz (or Stephanowicz) continued to hold his interrogation job in Iraq even though General Taguba recommended he lose his security clearance and be terminated for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

In an even more bizarre twist, the Philadelphia Daily News identified a former expatriate public relations specialist for the government of South Australia in Adelaide named Steve Stefanowicz as possibly being the same person identified in the Taguba report. In 2000, Stefanowicz, who grew up in the Philadelphia and Allentown areas, left for Australia. On September 16, 2001, he was quoted by the Sunday Mail of Adelaide on the 911 attacks. He said of the attacks, "It was one of the most incredible and most devastating things I have ever seen. I have been in constant contact with my family and friends in the US and the mood was very solemn and quiet. But this is progressing into anger." Stefanowicz returned to the United States and volunteered for the Navy in a reserve status. His mother told the Allentown Morning Call in April 2002 that Stefanowicz was stationed somewhere in the Middle East but did not know where because of what Stefanowicz said was "security concerns." His mother told the Philadelphia Daily News that her son was in Iraq but she knew nothing about his current status.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates."

(source)Britain secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during Wilson Government

Nelle puntate precedenti...

UK helped Israel get nuclear bomb
UK 'covered up' Israeli nuke deal
Nixon Papers Show Worry Over Israel Nukes

L'avventura continua...

Britain secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during Wilson Government

Britain secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during Harold Wilson's Government, despite a warning from British intelligence that the material could help Israel get the atom bomb, concludes a Newsnight investigation.

The investigation - broadcast tonight (Thursday 9 March 2006) on BBC TWO at 10.30pm - used material obtained under the Freedom of Information act.

And top secret documents, obtained by Newsnight under freedom of information, also show how Britain made hundreds of shipments to Israel of restricted materials which could have helped their nuclear weapons programme.

The Wilson Government also sold them lithium compounds which would have enabled Israel to make weapons ten times as powerful as the bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

Yet Tony Benn - who was Minister of Technology and in charge of exporting nuclear material - has told Newsnight that Government officials and civil servants in his own department kept all these deals totally secret from him, and from his predecessor Frank Cousins.

Benn says he always suspected civil servants were doing deals behind his back but he never thought they would sell plutonium to Israel.

He tells Newsnight: "I'm not only surprised I'm shocked."

He later adds: "It never occurred to me they would authorise something so totally against the policy of the Government."

Benn thinks the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, may not even have known that the UK was helping Israel get the bomb.

In 1966 Israel asked Britain to supply ten mg of plutonium.

Although this was a small amount and Israel would have required almost five kilos of plutonium to build an atom bomb, British officials were warned this had "significant military value" and could enable Israel to carry out vital experimental work to speed up the development of nuclear weapons.

Documents obtained by Newsnight show the decision to sell plutonium to Israel in 1966 was blocked by officials in both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office who said "It is HMG's policy not to do anything which would assist Israel in the production of nuclear weapons".

But it was forced through by a Jewish civil servant in Tony Benn's Ministry of Technology, Michael Israel Michaels.

Non me lo dovevi dire, ci sono rimasto male!

Peter Kelly, who was British intelligence's top expert on the Israeli nuclear weapons programme, knew Michaels.

He told Newsnight he believed Michaels knew Israel was trying to build the bomb but had dual loyalties - to both Britain and Israel.

Dai?

On seeing the evidence gathered by Newsnight Tony Benn says: "Michaels lied to me, I learned by bitter experience that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again."

Last year Newsnight revealed how in the late Fifties Harold MacMillan's Government had provided Israel with 20 tonnes of heavy water which they needed to start up their Dimona reactor.

The Foreign Office responded to the programme by telling the International Atomic Energy Agency that the UK had only sold the heavy water to Norway but papers obtained by Newsnight show Britain shipped it directly to Israel.

Newsnight has now learnt that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has admitted to Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell that Britain did know the heavy water was going to Israel and that in 1961 Harold Macmillan even made a failed attempt to get it back.

Britain gave Israel plutonium, files show

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday March 10, 2006
The Guardian

Britain secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during the 1960s despite a warning from military intelligence that it could help the Israelis to develop a nuclear bomb, it was disclosed last night. The deal, made during Harold Wilson's Labour government, is revealed in classified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained by BBC2's Newsnight programme.

The documents also show how Britain made hundreds of shipments to Israel of material which could have helped in its nuclear weapons programme, including compounds of uranium, lithium, beryllium and tritium, as well as heavy water.

Israel asked Britain in 1966 to supply 10mg of plutonium. Israel would have required almost 5kg of plutonium to build an atomic bomb, but British defence intelligence officials warned that 10mg had "significant military value" and could enable the Jewish state to carry out important experimental work to speed up its nuclear weapons programme.

Documents show that the decision to sell plutonium to Israel in 1966 was blocked by officials in both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, who said: "It is HMG's policy not to do anything which would assist Israel in the production of nuclear weapons." But the deal was forced through by a Jewish civil servant, Michael Michaels, in Tony Benn's Ministry of Technology, which was responsible for trade in nuclear material, according to Newsnight.

Peter Kelly, who was British defence intelligence's expert on the Israeli nuclear weapons programme, knew Mr Michaels. He told Newsnight he believed Mr Michaels knew that Israel was trying to build an atomic bomb, but that he had dual loyalties to Britain and Israel.

Mr Benn told the programme that civil servants in his department kept the deals secret from him and his predecessor, Frank Cousins.

He had always suspected that civil servants were doing deals behind his back, but he never thought they would sell plutonium to Israel. He told Newsnight: "I'm not only surprised, I'm shocked. It never occurred to me they would authorise something so totally against the policy of the government.

"Michaels lied to me, I learned by bitter experience that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again." He thought Wilson may not have known that Britain was helping Israel to get the bomb.

Last year Newsnight showed that in the late 1950s Harold Macmillan's Conservative government provided Israel with 20 tonnes of heavy water to start up its Dimona reactor. Newsnight said it learned that Jack Straw had admitted to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, that Britain knew the heavy water was destined for Israel, and that in 1961, Macmillan even made a failed attempt to get it back.

Ma la presa per il culo non finisce qui.

Ricordate?

Germany to deliver 2 submarines to Israel capable of carrying nuke warheads

German Defense Minister Peter Struck has finally given green light for the delivery of two submarines to Israel which are also capable of carrying nuclear warheads, IRNA reported from Berlin. "We are certainly prepared to help Israel in the acquisition," the minister said Thursday in an interview with the economic daily Handelsblatt.

Berlin halted unexpectedly last November the delivery of two German-made 'Dolphin' submarines to Israel, citing fears of a new arms race in the Mideast region. The center-leftist German government coalition also expressed deep concerns after Israel modified three other German submarines with nuclear warheads.

Germany built and delivered at no cost the three submarines for Israel in 1999 and 2000. Although Berlin is legally banned from exporting arms to crisis regions, Germany has become one of Israel's major arms supplier. German arms exports to Israel reached some 900 million dollars between 1998 and 2001.

"At no cost" vuol dire che sono stati pagati dal contribuente tedesco, che vince l'Oscar Globale per la coglioneria.

Ancora, altri regali:

Germany to sell Israel two more subs at major discount

Germany will provide Israel with two more Dolphin class submarines, the German weeklies Der Spiegel and Focus reported yesterday.

According to the magazine reports, the outgoing government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder acceded to the Israeli government's requests, and even agreed to pay about a third of the cost of the submarines. Construction of the submarines, which will take place at the shipyards in Kiel, will cost around 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion), of which a third will be financed by the German government.

Prodotti su misura per tutte le esigenze:

If these reports are correct, then the two submarines would join three Dolphin class submarines supplied to the Israeli navy in the past. Two of the three submarines, built to Israeli specifications, were given to Israel gratis following the Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War after it turned out that German companies had aided Saddam Hussein's weapons program.

In recent years, Israel tried to persuade the German government to provide additional submarines, but the Germans were hesitant. German media reports said the reason was concern that Israel would outfit the submarines for missiles with nuclear warheads. However, Israeli sources said the primary dispute was over whether Germany should charge the full price. Der Spiegel and Focus said yesterday that Germany had indeed long resisted Israel's request to help finance the cost of the submarines.

According to foreign media reports, the growing concern over Iran acquiring nuclear weapons has led Israel to develop nuclear "second-strike capability," and submarines, which cannot be detected and targeted, constitute an effective means to that end. That conclusion, according to foreign media reports, was also drawn from the fact that the torpedo hatches on the Dolphin submarines supplied to Israel have been substantially widened - which ostensibly indicate they are intended for launching nuclear missiles.

Second-strike capability is a country's ability to respond with nuclear weapons even after a nuclear attack. Second-strike capability requires nuclear missiles concealed underground or installed on submarines.

Mancava un pezzo della storia:

Israel deploys nuclear arms in submarines

Peter Beaumont in London and Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
Sunday October 12, 2003

Israeli and American officials have admitted collaborating to deploy US-supplied Harpoon cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Israel's fleet of Dolphin-class submarines, giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to strike at any of its Arab neighbours.

The unprecedented disclosure came as Israel announced that states 'harbouring terrorists' are legitimate targets, responding to Syria's declaration of its right to self-defence should Israel bomb its territory again.

According to Israeli and Bush administration officials interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the sea-launch capability gives Israel the ability to target Iran more easily should the Iranians develop their own nuclear weapons.

Although it has been long suspected that Israel bought three German diesel-electric submarines with the specific aim of arming them with nuclear cruise missiles, the admission that the two countries had collaborated in arming the fleet with a nuclear-capable weapons system is significant at a time of growing crisis between Israel and its neighbours.

According to the paper, the disclosure by two US officials is designed to discourage Israel's enemies from against launching an attack amid rapidly escalating tensions in the region following a raid by Israeli jets on an alleged terrorist training camp near the Syrian capital, Damascus.

In a clear echo of the Bush doctrine of pre-emption, the Foreign Ministry's senior spokesman, Gideon Meir, insisted: 'Israel views every state that is harbouring terrorist organisations and the leaders of those terrorist organisations who are attacking innocent citizens of the state of Israel as legitimate targets out of self defence.'

The disclosure, is certain to complicate UN-led efforts to persuade Iran to make a full disclosure of its nuclear programme. It will also complicate the Bush administration's efforts to reach out to moderate Arab states when they are pressing for an equal disclosure of Israel's nuclear weapons programme.

Although Israel has long been known to possess nuclear weapons, in the past it has abided by a deal struck with President Richard Nixon in 1969 that it would maintain 'ambiguity' about its retention of weapons in exchange for the US turning a blind eye. According to reliable estimates, Israel has around 200 nuclear warheads.

It acquired the three Dolphin class submarines, which can remain at sea for a month, in the late Nineties. They are equipped with six torpedo tubes suitable for the 21-inch torpedoes that are normally used on most submarines.

It had been understood they would carry a version of the 'Popeye Turbo' cruise missiles being developed by Rafael Armament Development Authority of Israel.

Israel's seaborne nuclear doctrine is designed to place one submarine in the Persian Gulf, the other in the Mediterranean, with a third on standby. Secret test launches of the cruise missile systems were understood to have been undertaken in May 2000 when Israel carried out tests in the Indian Ocean.

'We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain and France,' one of the LA Times' sources told the paper. 'We don't regard Israel as a threat.'

Despite the anonymity of the source, the sentiment is almost identical to that of the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, John Bolton, who told British journalists last week that America was not interested in taking Israel to task for its continuing development of nuclear weapons because it was not a 'threat' to the United States.

Even if Bolton was not one of the sources for the story, his comments, coming on top of that of the two other sources, suggest the degree to which senior members of the Bush administration can now not even be bothered to hide America's assistance and encouragement for Israel's nuclear programme.

Tempo dopo...

Sub fleet chief: We can hit targets overseas

By Hanan Greenberg

Submarines may be used for hitting strategic targets outside Israel's territory, chief commander of the IDF's submarine fleet, Colonel Yoni, stated. "The submarine task force is preparing for any scenario the State of Israel has defined as plausible for the army," he added.

In an interview with Ynet, Colonel Yoni revealed some of the capabilities of the Israeli army's most hi-tech and secret war machine, and hinted to the possible role of subs in future military disputes.

According to him, "hitting strategic targets is not always a task the Air Force or the infantry can carry out... a submarine can perform the mission, and it can also be used only for collecting intelligence and securing the forces about to carry out such a mission."

Dozens of security operations, maybe even more, were made possible due to the IDF's sub fleet. However, these offensive and defensive missions will remain in the shadow for years to come, in order to enable the force to carry out similar actions in the future.

Nuclear capabilities?

While Colonel Yoni's statements are shrouded in mystery, publications in the foreign press have already hinted Israel's Dolphin submarines have the ability to carry and launch nuclear weapons, a capability that will be put to use should the country's nuclear ground bases are hit in a surprise attack.

The fleet commander naturally refused to comment on the subject, but said such publications abroad in themselves contribute to Israel's deterrence capacity.

"The fact that foreign reports refer to the submarines as a deterring factor says something. In matters having to do with existential threats we must remain vague," he said, adding the IDF has recently avoided holding joint drills with foreign armies, in a bid to maintain the secrecy of its weapons.

No girls allowed

Colonel Yoni, who is personally involved in selecting each and every soldier in his unit, speaks of the people under his command with admiration and appreciation. Nevertheless, when it comes to the service of women on submarines, he is not a bearer of news.

"The submarine was not built to accommodate both men and women. We are unable to allocate a special zone on the vessel for women dormitories. Why should we venture into something that has failed in a large part of the fleets in the world, where there is even more lenience on these issues?" he asked.

"Is it worth breaking the fabric created between combatants on the submarine? They are under a lot of pressure as it is," he concluded.

(source)U.S. panel objects to software handover to Israeli company

The same Bush administration review panel that approved a ports deal involving the United Arab Emirates has notified a leading Israeli software company that it faces a rare, full-blown investigation over its plans to buy a smaller rival.

The company was told U.S. officials feared the transaction could endanger some of government's most sensitive computer systems.

The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.

Snort's author is a senior executive at Sourcefire Inc., which would be sold to publicly traded Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel. Sourcefire is based in Columbia, Maryland.

The contrast between the administration's handling of the $6.8 billion Dubai ports deal and the Israeli company's $225 million technology purchase offers an uncommon glimpse into the U.S. government's choices to permit some deals but raise deep security concerns over others.

Senate hearings over the ports deal were expected to continue Thursday.

The ongoing 45-day investigation into the Israeli deal is only the 26th of its type conducted among 1,600 business transactions reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. The panel, facing criticism by U.S. Congress about its scrutiny of the ports deal, judges the security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.

In private meetings between the panel and Check Point, officials from the FBI and U.S. Defense Department objected forcefully to permitting any foreign company to acquire some sensitive Sourcefire technology for preventing hacker break-ins and monitoring data traffic, an executive familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press. This executive spoke on condition of anonymity because government negotiations are supposed to remain confidential.

Under the sale, publicly announced Oct. 6, Check Point would own all Sourcefire's patents, source-code blueprints for its software and the expertise of employees.

William Reinsch, a former senior U.S. official who participated in reviews under former President Bill Clinton, said the Israeli sale involves more dire security issues than the administration's recent approval for a Dubai-owned company to take over significant operations at six major American ports.

"This raises a lot more important issues," said Reinsch, a former Commerce Department undersecretary. "The most important case is where we're making an irrevocable technology transfer to a foreign party. Port operations raise security issues, but the ports are still in the United States."

The review panel privately notified Check Point on Feb. 6 it intended to fully investigate the transaction's security risks, the executive said. That was days before the furor erupted over the Dubai ports deal. Check Point disclosed the news to investors February 13, but the announcement drew little attention despite escalating scrutiny and interest in Washington over such reviews.

The same panel had approved the ports deal Jan. 17 after a routine, 30-day review. In a highly unusual move, UAE-based DP World offered earlier this week to submit to a broader 45-day investigation to avert an impending political showdown between President George W. Bush and Congress. That formal investigation has not yet started.

Check Point and Sourcefire declined to comment. Officials at the Defense Department, FBI and Justice Department also declined to comment.

A spokesman for the Treasury Department, which manages the review panel, declined to discuss details of the Check Point matter. Under the committee's rules, it launches full investigations when officials were unable to resolve concerns after a routine, 30-day review.

"Each case is different. Each has its own unique factors, entirely based on the merits of the company's case," said Tony Fratto, the Treasury Department's press secretary. "If people have outstanding objections, it would go to the investigation stage."

Sourcefire's protection and monitoring technology builds on the popularity of Snort, which was created by its chief technology officer and is distributed free. Unlike Sourcefire's commercial products, Snort's blueprints are open for inspection to assure it works as advertised. This makes it popular inside the U.S. intelligence community, even alongside more mainstream security products from Cisco Systems Inc. or Juniper Networks Inc.

Still, Sourcefire earned about 10 percent of its estimated $35 million in revenues last year guarding classified U.S. computers, according to Jeffrey W. Englander, a software security analyst at Boston-based America's Growth Capital, a boutique investment bank and research firm.

Englander predicted Check Point would agree to abandon Sourcefire's business inside classified government agencies rather than cancel the deal, if the government demands it. He dismissed the government's concern the sale may threaten U.S. security.

"I don't think it has a tremendous amount of weight," Englander said. "I'm not good with conspiracy theories."

Badombe> "Now, in a chilling real life version of the plotline from "The Net", it turns out that the majority of the firewalls on US corporate and government computer systems are provided by just one company, Checkpoint Systems, which like Amdocs, Comverse Infosys, and Odigo, is headquartered in Israel."

Rileggi con cura.

(source)Austrian prosecutors: We'll have to react to new Irving remarks

Con un po' di fortuna riusciremo a sdoganare la pena di morte ooops volevo dire l'eutanasia involontaria.

Vienna - Austrian prosecutors said Wednesday they would have to act over a fresh denial of the Nazi Holocaust by jailed British historian David Irving.

The new denial came in interviews with several British journalists in his Austrian prison cell, where he is beginning a three-year sentence.

A spokesman of the state prosecution said: 'We're going to have to react to that. We can't overlook it.' It was possible that Irving had again broken Austrian laws banning Nazi 'revivalism.'

In a British BBC interview, Irving cast doubt on the number of victims in Auschwitz. He described the organized annihilation of the Jews under the eyes of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler as 'absolutely wrong.'

In the immediate future, said observers, the 67-year-old historian's latest remarks would not improve his chances of lowering his prison sentence on appeal.

But more than that, they could result in new charges being raised against him under Austrian law.

Fammi indovinare: durante il processo la difesa non può presentare le prove altrimenti l'avvocato incorre in una fresh charge. Ho indovinato?

Critics also questioned whether the Austrian justice system had been put in a good light by allowing Irving to 'hold court' to journalists in his prison cell.

On February 20, Irving was jailed for three years in a one-day trial in which he was accused of falsifying history and claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

The charges carry prison sentences of one to ten years.

Irving pleaded guilty to the charges relating from remarks he made in Austria 17 years ago, but told the court that in the meantime he had changed his views.

He was arrested in November last year after entering Austria at the invitation of a rightist-nationalist student fraternity.

Domanda: perché il governo acquista i libri di Irving per la biblioteca del suo stesso carcere?

Badombe> ?

(source)Clima: prove del cambiamento 8 mila anni fa

Colpa delle piccole industrie degli alieni venuti da Vega:

Il clima subì un rapido cambiamento 8.200 anni fa quando, dopo la fine dell'ultima era glaciale, un periodo più freddo (Younger Dryas) fece temere il ritorno dei ghiacci. Ora ci sono le prove sperimentali di quanto era già emerso dallo studio delle calotte polari e dagli anelli di accrescimento degli alberi. Scienziati della Nasa e della Columbia University di New York hanno realizzato una simulazione al computer che ha riprodotto con successo le modifiche climatiche avvenute circa nel 6.200 a. C., quando un massiccio e improvviso afflusso di acqua dolce e gelata invase il nord Atlantico. "Abbiamo ottenuto un buon esempio di come il clima reagisce ai cambiamenti", ha detto il coautore dello studio Gavin A. Schmidt, dell'Istituto Goddard di studi spaziali della Nasa. I risultati sono stati pubblicati nel numero di gennaio del Pnas (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

LAGHI AGASSIZ-OJIBWAY - Il ritiro dei ghiacciai al termine della glaciazione (12-15 mila anni fa) aprì la strada a due enormi laghi in Nord America alimentati dai ghiacci in scioglimento: i due laghi sono stati nominati dagli scienziati Agassiz e Ojibway. Si trovavano nel Canada centrale, la parte meridionale sconfinava negli attuali Stati Uniti. Nella parte finale della loro esistenza (durata circa 4 mila anni), i due laghi si unirono formando una superficie di 841 mila kmq (oggi il lago più grande, il mar Caspio, copre una superficie di 371 mila kmq) con un volume di 163 mila chilometri cubici di acqua. Gli studiosi stimano che almeno 4-5 volte i due laghi riversarono le proprie acque nel mare Tyrrell (più o meno nell'attuale area della baia di Hudson) tra 10.900 e 7.700 anni fa.

CORRENTI OCEANICHE - Secondo gli scienziati questo enorme afflusso di acqua dolce modificò il percorso delle correnti oceaniche, in modo particolare la corrente del Golfo, che porta calore alle alte latitudini europee. Lo studio della Nasa e della Columbia University ha realizzato dodici modelli in cui l'equivalente da 25 a 50 volte il flusso d'acqua portato ogni anno dal Rio delle Amazzoni finisce in mare. Questo modelli hanno impiegato circa un anno per completare i loro calcoli computerizzati.

EFFETTI GLOBALI MINORI - I risultati sono in accordo con i dati riscontrati nei sedimenti marini del Nord Atlantico e con le carote di ghiaccio estratte in Groenlandia, ma dimostrano che l'afflusso di acqua dolce ha avuto globalmente effetti minori di quanto finora ritenuto. Le temperature in Groenlandia e nel Nord Atlantico sono effettivamente scese di molto (2-3 °C), ma il raffreddamento è stato minore in Europa e nel Nord America, con diminuzioni di temperatura limitate nel resto dell'emisfero settentrionale e praticamente irrilevanti nell'emisfero meridionale. Inoltre, mentre la circolazione oceanica diminuì tra il 30% e il 60% dopo l'afflusso simulato di acqua dolce, questa sarebbe tornata a livelli normali in un periodo abbastanza limitato: 50-150 anni.

"L'afflusso di acqua dolce che abbiamo ipotizzato e studiato è più grande di quanto potrebbe accadere oggi", ha detto Allegra Le Grande, della Columbia University. "È importante infatti studiare gli effetti in un periodo climatico simile a quello che stiamo vivendo".

(source)Phones stolen in Iraq used for sex chatlines

David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Thursday March 2, 2006
The Guardian

Imbecilli:

It certainly was not part of Britain's plans to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. But the Foreign Office has been apparently paying for an adult sex chatline in a Baghdad street for 17 months without knowing it.

The Foreign Office has had to tell MPs that an investigation into how a diplomat lost two satellite phones in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism but more to do with a budding entrepreneur and a telephone porn network.

FO officials had already admitted that the lost phones had cost them £594,000 in unauthorised phone bills but it is now bracing itself for an extremely critical report from the Commons public accounts committee on how it came to pay phone bills, which at one stage hit £212,000 in one month, without asking questions.

Sir Michael Jay, permanent secretary at the FO, told MPs: "All the pattern of usage of these phones... points to some kind of criminal activity... It was almost as though they were taken and used as a kind of mobile phone booth at the end of the street where anybody could come along and use them.

"After that, they appear to have been used for a couple of scams based on what are known as personal numbers and premium numbers."

Sir Michael said the premium rate numbers were used for betting agencies or adult phone lines, and that one of the FO phones had been "on virtually full time with the person who is, as it were, making the call getting some benefit from it."

Sir Michael said initial inquiries had revealed a series of blunders. The phones were already activated when they were sent to Baghdad and they were not properly logged in - so no one realised at first that they had been stolen. None of the bills were initially challenged until people realised the phones had gone missing. The rules at all embassies have now been changed and no phone is sent abroad already activated for use.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the committee, told him: "In terms of this mobile phone being on permanently at the end of a street in Iraq, that gives a whole new meaning to winning hearts and minds in Iraq, but it is quite serious."

Austin Mitchell, Labour MP for Great Grimsby, whose phone had been swiped and used to dial a betting agency, asked if the FO had tried to get its money back.

Since the disclosure, Richard Bacon, Tory MP for Norfolk South, has made further inquiries: "It appears that they haven't been able to find the culprit or trace the phone. You would have thought having spent hundreds of millions of pounds setting up a sophisticated listening centre at GCHQ it would be very easy to trace a satellite phone and who was operating it in Iraq. But it doesn't appear anything was done. It just beggars belief that the FO kept paying the bills."

Sir Michael has promised to try to get the money back. But so far the only thing FO staff appeared to have done is to try to ring the premium rate number. Sir Michael told MPs they did not get a reply.

(source)Baghdad official who exposed executions flees

Jonathan Steele
Thursday March 2, 2006
The Guardian

Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed.

Quanti?

"The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills," said John Pace, the Maltese UN official. The killings had been happening long before the bloodshed after last week's bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra.

Mr Pace, whose contract in Iraq ended last month, said many killings were carried out by Shia militias linked to the interior ministry run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

Mr Pace said records, supported by photographs, came from Baghdad's forensic institute, which passed them to the UN. The Baghdad morgue has been receiving 700 or more bodies a month. The figures peaked at 1,100 last July - many showing signs of torture.

Reports of government-sponsored death squads have sparked fear among many prominent Iraqis, prompting a rise in the number leaving the country. Mr Pace said the morgue's director had received death threats after he reported the murders. "He's out of the country now," said Mr Pace, adding that the attribution of the killings to government-linked militias did not come from Dr Bakir.

"There are other sources for that. Some militias are integrated with the police and wear police uniforms," he said. "The Badr brigade [Sciri's armed wing] are in the police and are mainly the ones doing the killing. They're the most notorious."

Some Iraqis accuse the Mahdi army militia, linked to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, of seizing and killing people. But Mr Pace said: "I'm not as sure of the Mahdi army as I am of the others."

(source)Just Say 'No' to Israel in NATO

Because threats to Israel's security have diminished over time, and Israel is wealthy compared with its immediate neighbors, it does not need NATO protection. NATO membership would obligate the United States-the security guarantor in NATO-and its feckless European allies to help Israel battle Hamas and other radical groups in the streets of Palestine.

AHAHAHAH!! Buona questa!

The United States is already involved in two quagmires in Islamic nations-Iraq and Afghanistan. It doesn't need to further inflame radical Islamist terrorists around the world by also helping Israel occupy Palestine. If you think anti-U.S. Islamist terrorism is bad now, try waving this red flag in front of the bull.

(source)Our High-Wire Act

Like high-wire artists, Americans are teetering on a thin line. They dare not make a false move, or they'll topple over. But unlike high-wire artists, Americans have no net under them. When they tumble, they'll smack into the ground...hard.

If consumers stop consuming, the air goes out of the bubble and the economy falls into a sharp slump. Consumption makes up 70% of the economy. Without rising consumption, there can be no more growth and without growth, there are no new jobs, and no new consumer income. There is nothing for consumers to spend, and no way to boost consumer spending.

But, too much consumption can be fatal, too. If they spend too much, too fast...they set in motion another dreadful scenario. Prices will rise, forcing them to desperately spend even faster to get rid of the depreciating money. Inflation will force the Bernanke Fed to clamp down on interest rates - bam! - pop goes the bubble economy.

Le risate...

(source)Biometria: l'era dell'identità digitale

Le nostre impronte digitali, l’iride, la forma del viso, il nostro odore, saranno presto contenuti in un minuscolo chip in grado di dire, e garantire, chi siamo. E per farci accedere in aree protette, o superare rigidi controlli, anche soltanto con uno sguardo... Tutto questo riguarda la biometria, disciplina che studia come rivoluzionare la nostra vita pubblica. E privata. Ne parla diffusamente l'ultimo numero del mensile Newton, che offre un'ampia trattazione delle nuove tecniche di identificazione.

Non si tratta di fantascienza ma di scienza già disponibile nella vita reale. Qualche esempio? All’aeroporto londinese di Heathrow i viaggiatori assidui evitano le code ai controlli di frontiera grazie a un apparecchio che attraverso il riconoscimento dell’iride identifica le persone senza possibilità di errore.

Lungo la frontiera tra Israele e Gaza ogni giorno migliaia di pendolari varcano i controlli di sicurezza.

Come sono carini, ora li chiamano pendolari.

Molti di questi sono in possesso di una carta elettronica che contiene al suo interno i dati caratteristici del volto e della geometria della mano. In apposite cabine i titolari di questi speciali documenti mostrano la tessera e lasciano che telecamere e sensori rilevino le caratteristiche del proprio corpo. Il sistema, confrontando i dati sulla carta e quelli presi dal vivo, accerta definitivamente che chi mostra il documento ne sia il reale proprietario.

E non c'è solo la biometria «fisica», c'è anche quella comportamentale, che prende in esame altri aspetti, come per esempio la grafia, la voce, l’andatura. Questi ultimi metodi sono più soggetti a errore, in quanto le caratteristiche comportamentali di un essere umano non sono misurabili in maniera univoca, ma sono facilmente soggette a variazioni nel tempo e a modificazioni di stato.

La biometria può semplificarci la vita, eliminando le code e aiutandoci a proteggere meglio i nostri beni e la nostra stessa identità. E può diventare una potente arma contro problemi in crescita esponenziale come il furto di identità. Ma dovrà anche affrontare il problema della privacy e dell'accessibilità dei nostri dati biologici.

Eliminando le code! Proteggendo la nostra identità!

Coro> "Bel pirla!"

(source)Study: Indian Ocean Quake 'Broke Some Of The Rules'

L'avventura continua:

PASADENA, Calif. - Regions of the Earth previously thought to be immune to giant earthquakes might actually be at high risk of experiencing them, according to a Caltech study released Wednesday.

Researchers studied the Dec. 26, 2004, Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in the Indian Ocean, which accounted for last winter's devastating tsunami, and concluded that previous ideas about where giant earthquakes are likely to occur need to be revised. Based on their data, researchers determined that the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake had a magnitude of 9.15, making it the third-largest earthquake in the past 100 years.

"This earthquake didn't just break all the records, it also broke some of the rules," said Kerry Sieh, a Caltech geology professor and one of the study's authors.

The earthquake occurred on the Sunda subduction megathrust, a giant earthquake fault. Previously, researchers believed megathrusts could only produce giant earthquakes if the oceanic plate was young and buoyant.

The oceanic crust at the site of the 2004 earthquake is old and dense, and the relative motion between the plates is slow. "For all these reasons, received wisdom said that the giant 2004 earthquake should not have occurred," said Jean-Philippe Avouac, a Caltech geology professor.

"But it did, so received wisdom must be wrong. It may be, for example, that a slow rate of motion between the plates simply causes the giant earthquakes to occur less often, so we didn't happen to have seen any in recent times -- until 2004," Avouac said.

Other subduction zones that were not previously considered to be a risk, but may need to be reassessed, include the Ryukyu Islands between Taiwan and Japan and the Caribbean from Trinidad to Barbados and Puerto Rico.

Better monitoring systems with continuously recording GPS stations should be installed in some subduction zones to assess their seismic potential, Sieh said.

The report will appear in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

(source)The mysterious transformation of the AIPAC case

Indovina?

Notice how, curiously, what started out as what would have been called an espionage case if the alleged parties had been working on behalf of, say, Iran or Palestine instead of Israel - in which secret information was transferred to an Israeli diplomat - has been mysteriously transformed into a freedom of the press cause celebre even though the indicted parties were not journalists at all. This point, deliberately or not, as been badly muddled by the media and others with the help of a Bush administration that does not seem all that bothered by having this red herring raised.

"Troppo strano!"

(source)Rc auto, troppi evasori sulle strade

Notizia vecchia fa buon brodo:

Roma. Cresce il numero degli automobilisti che in Italia circolano senza l'assicurazione, obbligatoria per legge. Molti hanno sul parabrezza un contrassegno all'apparenza regolare, ma che in realtà è di una compagnia inesistente. L'aggravarsi di questa tendenza è dovuto "al costo delle polizze". L'allarme arriva dall'Istituto per la Vigilanza sulle assicurazioni. Il presidente dell'Isvap, Giancarlo Giannini, ha spiegato ieri che anche la fuga di automobilisti coinvolti in incidenti, anche gravi, a volte ha proprio questa spiegazione: l'automobilista fugge perchè privo di assicurazione.

Giannini ha fornito alcune cifre riguardanti gli aumenti dei premi, che sono stati ingenti soprattutto per alcune categorie maggiormente a rischio. Un diciottenne alla guida di un'auto di piccola cilindrata, per esempio, dal primo gennaio paga una tariffa più alta del 4,9%, "con le solite punte al sud e in particolare a Napoli".

Ma non sono solo i giovani neopatentati a essere tartassati dalle compagnie assicuratrici: anche un 40enne con il massimo sconto nella scala bonus malus, infatti, ha subito un rincaro del 3,2%.

Giannini ha poi spiegato che l'Unione europea "è completamente fuoristrada" sulla procedura di infrazione avviata dalla Commissione Ue nei confronti dell'Italia contro l'obbligo, per le compagnie, di fornire una polizza per qualsiasi tipo di rischio. Ma se quest'obbligo cadesse, ha spiegato il presidente dell'Isvap, in zone dove già le polizze sono molto più care perchè il rischio avvertito dalle compagnie è maggiore, come al sud, si "rischierebbe di finire con una tariffa amministrata". "Ci stiamo battendo - ha concluso - e fornendo al governo tutto il supporto necessario per resistere a questa procedura".

E sull'argomento Rc auto è intervenuto ieri anche il ministro delle Attività Produttive, Claudio Scajola, che ha spiegato che sull'indennizzo diretto dei sinistri si procederà "secondo la tabella di marcia prevista". La riforma dell'indennizzo, ha detto il ministro, ha lo scopo di conciliare due esigenze: "La prima è quella di contenere i costi eccessivi delle polizze" e la seconda è quella di rispondere a quanto denunciato dalle compagnie, che "ritengono che il costo delle polizze sia gravato da chi, sui sinistri, ci marcia". Il fatto che molti non assicurino i veicoli, ha aggiunto Scajola, è "di una gravità assoluta perchè la Rc auto è nata per garantire il cittadino".

Intanto i consumatori hanno approfittato della denuncia dell'Isvap per farla propria e rilanciare: in due anni, affermano Adoc, Adusbef, Codacons e Federconsumatori, gli aumenti delle polizze Rc auto hanno raggiunto anche il 59%. "Non è sufficiente - è la denuncia dei consumatori - che l'incindentalità negli ultimi anni sia decisamente diminuita, anche del 15 - 20%, per la patente a punti. Non è sufficiente che i profitti delle compagnie siano arrivati alle stelle. Le imprese di assicurazione continuano ad aumentare in maniera imperterrita le tariffe dei diciottenni".

Hoppe:

Uncertainty and Its Exigencies: The Critical Role of Insurance in the Free Market

Let me give you some examples of the perversions that have been introduced into the insurance market due to state regulations. Insurance companies in the United States are regulated at both the state and federal level. The number of state regulations alone have risen from a total of 8 mandates in 1965 to close to 1,000 in the early 1990s. I have not looked into the numbers more recently, but I'm sure they go up day by day.

[...]

Now all of these mandates are at best a mixed blessing for the insurance companies. On the one hand, as insurance companies have to cover more and more uninsurable risks, they are continually forced to raise premiums. State regulation lets them get away with these higher prices, because competition from more discriminating insurance providers has been disallowed.

But as prices go up, more and more people drop out of the insurance market altogether. They recognize that most of the risks don't apply to them and they make a rational decision between being "overinsured" at extraordinarily high premiums or uninsured. Keep in mind that in the current discussion about all of these things, there is this constant whining about all the people who are uninsured, without of course emphasizing that to a large extent, this is precisely the effect of the previous interventionist policies.

It is increasingly rational for people to be uninsured.

Of course, dropping out of the insurance market is a risky thing to do, but young healthy people are almost crazy to pay the high premiums that come about from subsidizing all these unhealthy lifestyles and covering risk that they know don't apply to them.

This is a lesson in the logic of interventionism.[3] The first interventionist act brought about a big mess - insurance premiums always go up because insurers are no longer allowed to discriminate correctly and are even forced to include uninsurable risks. So now the problem arises of more and more people dropping out. For those who remain insured, premiums have to be raised to adjust for the fact that so many are dropping out.

Eccetera...

(source)There Are Two Ways To Gain Cooperation

When empire is at long last sent to the elephant burial grounds, it will then be time to focus on the nation-State. This organizational structure is also nearing its end, if we are to believe Jacques Barzun (From Dawn to Decadence) and Martin van Creveld (The Rise and Decline of the State). Both scholars focus on the same factors in their concluding chapters: the astronomically rising costs of the welfare State – looming bankruptcy – and the increasing costs for the nation-State to provide security for its citizens against growing crime, i.e., a looming loss of legitimacy.

It's about time.

(source)Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration's domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

"The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements," Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

"I stand by this president's ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that," Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

"Senator," a smiling Gonzales responded, "the president already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."

In less paranoid times, Graham's comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways -- ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy. Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers," in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Segui la linea...

(source)The Global Warming Bugaboo

Reisman:

The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even to bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one-not even the staunchest supporters of science and technology-had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them is forecast the weather-for the next one hundred years!

Strano, vero?

(source)Did humans devastate Easter Island on arrival?

By Bob Holmes

The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival.

Easter Island has often been cited as the classic example of a human-induced ecological catastrophe. The island - one of the most remote places on Earth - was once richly forested, but settlers cut the forests, partly to use the wood in construction of the massive stone statues and temples for which the island is famous. When Dutch sailors arrived in 1722, they found a starving population on a barren island.

Archaeologists had thought that humans first arrived at the island around 800 AD, based on radiocarbon dating of kitchen scraps and cooking fires. Since the first signs of severe deforestation do not appear until the 13th century, this suggests the Easter Islanders lived several centuries without serious impact on their environment.

Not so, says Terry Hunt, an archaeologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hunt and Carl Lipo of California State University at Long Beach, US, radiocarbon-dated charcoal from the earliest human traces in a new excavation on the island. The site, Anakena, is Easter Island's only sandy beach and has long been regarded as the likeliest spot for first colonists to settle. To their surprise, the wood dated no earlier than 1200 AD - several hundred years more recent than they had expected.

Chop chop

"I got those results back and I was sceptical," says Hunt. "I thought, something's wrong with these." When repeated samples yielded the same date, he and Lipo re-examined the existing evidence. After throwing out any studies that lacked replicate samples or had other methodological problems, the 11 studies that remained all pointed to the same date - roughly 1200 AD.

Such a late arrival date means that the new inhabitants of Easter Island must have begun hacking down trees almost immediately, building the gigantic monuments and stone heads that make the island so distinctive, says Hunt.

And the new civilisation's ecological footprint must have been heavy from the start. "There isn't a period of ecological stability. There was almost immediate impact," says Hunt. "It isn't a two-part story any more. There's really just one chapter."

Broader context

Not everyone is convinced, however. A first arrival on Easter Island around 900 AD would fit well with Polynesians' first arrival on the nearest neighbouring islands of Mangareva, Henderson and Pitcairn, says Patrick Kirch, an archaeologist at the University of California at Berkeley, US.

Kirch thinks Hunt and Lipo may have been too free in discarding studies for minor methodological problems, thus rejecting valid dates in this range. "For me, they don't make a convincing argument that we can eliminate the earlier dates, especially in light of the broader regional context," he says.

And their new excavation may have simply sampled a relatively young settlement while missing nearby, older sites. To resolve the issue, researchers will need to date charcoal from many more excavations to see what pattern emerges. "Then we may be able to say we have the answer," says Kirch.

(source)The Price of Inflation

By Nicholas von Hoffman

It is not a zoo story nor a jungle story nor a circus story, but you would not know it from the way the media deals with the monthly inflation rate numbers. Inflation is presented as a tigerish beast to be handled with a whip and chair.

Maybe because they think the subject is innately boring or maybe because they are prone to spiking their drinks, business journalists routinely use force-of-nature or invading-enemy expressions when they speak of inflation. It's "inflation was held at bay this month" or "inflation was checked this month" or "new figures show inflation was contained again last month" or "inflation receded or surged this month."

Inflation is not a wild animal out there, wherever out there is, looking to pounce. Nor is it a meteorological phenomenon like Hurricane Katrina. Like money itself, inflation is man-made. It does not wax or wane month to month according to the phases of the moon.

Month-to-month inflation numbers don't mean too much anyway. Minute by minute, day by day and week by week prices go up and prices go down, and as they do, the inflation number jiggles along with them. A month is too short a time to tell whether inflation, defined as the general level of all prices, is trending upwards or if it's just another jiggle. Quarterly or annual inflation numbers are another thing. They tell us what is happening.

At the moment what is happening is not good. Compared to what things cost last year, the general price level has gone up. To use one of those wild nature similes, inflation may not be rising as fast as a bat out of hell, but it is gaining altitude fast enough to wreak havoc with your nest egg.

From 2005 to 2006 the dollar in your purse lost 4 percent of its purchasing power. So unless you got a 4 percent raise to compensate, you are working for less than you were a year ago.

A 4 percent rate may not sound like much, but thanks to the "miracle of compound interest," it can postpone your retirement or keep you on the job till you drop dead. It makes the difference between going to a four-year college or a two-year community institution or even no college at all. It can play hob with your health savings account. In ten years a 4 percent inflation rate will wipe out almost half the value of your savings.

There is a big plus side to inflation if you are in debt. Suppose that you overpaid for your house: In ten years, the value of your mortgage will have been cut in half. What holds for private debt holds for public debt, too. Should inflation stay at the present rate or go higher, the gigantic deficits incurred by George Bush will not, after all, have to be paid off by our grandchildren as they keep warning us will happen. The deficits will disappear in a flood tide of cheap money.

The reason is that a dollar borrowed now, if paid back after fifteen years, will be worth about 40 cents. Because employers understand how compound interest shrinks the buying power of a dollar so quickly, you have to hold a gun to their heads to get them to agree to cost-of-living increases. The same knowledge prompts Republicans to do all in their power to decouple Social Security payments from their annual cost of living adjustment.

From time immemorial, inflation is how governments have wiggled out of repaying what they owe. Back in the days when all money was copper, silver or gold, its purchasing power was lessened by minting coins with less precious metal in them. Next came printing more dollar bills. Nowadays debasing the currency is accomplished by a few computer keystrokes.

Economists and finance big shots will sometimes talk about "an acceptable level of inflation." They do not discuss who decides what that level might be. Since inflation, depending on how bad it is, always attacks savings, frustrates financial and personal planning, causes sky-high interest rates, lowered investment, unemployment, recession and, if it's bad enough and goes on long enough, chaos, panic, despair and social disintegration, how can it ever be acceptable?

It was as predictable as spring following winter that the Bush deficits would be followed by the Bush inflation to pay for them. It's his appointees on the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department you may blame. No beasts, no storms, no earthquakes or any other act of nature. When you see your money evaporating in front of your eyes, don't call the weather bureau. Call the politicians.

(source)Drinking May Have Fueled Ala. Church Fires

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Mar 10, 2006 (AP) - Three college students suspected of a string of Alabama church fires may have been out drinking when they began their spree, authorities said.

Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee DeBusk Jr., both 19-year-old theater students at Birmingham-Southern College, were arrested this week along with 20-year-old Matthew Lee Cloyd, who was studying pre-med at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Throughout the monthlong investigation, authorities said alcohol could have led to a warped bravado that sparked the arsons, and initial interviews with the suspects bore out the theory, according to one officer.

However, deputy state fire marshal Ed Paulk, who was involved in the investigation, said he did not know if alcohol was a direct factor.

"We were told by official sources... that seemingly some drinking, some night hunting, was ultimately what led to all of this," said Randy Youngblood, the campus police chief at Birmingham-Southern College.

A federal judge postponed a hearing set for Friday to determine whether to grant bond for three college students accused of setting fires that damaged or destroyed nine rural churches in Alabama on Feb. 3 and Feb. 7.

In a brief docket note, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert R. Armstrong said he was delaying the hearing until Wednesday at the request of defense lawyers.

The move meant the three will remain jailed at least until next week on federal charges of conspiracy and setting fire to one of the churches, Ashby Baptist. If convicted, each count carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. Additional charges are possible, authorities have said.

Federal and state authorities have not commented on a possible motive, beyond evidence that an apparent prank spun out of control. Defense attorneys have not commented either, but say the fires were not crimes of hate.

Cloyd is the son of a doctor, and DeBusk attended college on a theater scholarship after being voted "most dramatic" by his high school classmates in 2004. Moseley was president of his high school's student council, and his father is an elected constable.

Court documents show Cloyd told a witness this week that he and Moseley "had done something stupid" and that they set a church ablaze "as a joke." Accompanied by DeBusk, they eventually torched five churches that night in Bibb County after seeing the first fire trucks, according to the document, a sworn statement by a federal agent.

"After they lit the first two fires, it became spontaneous," said ATF regional head Jim Cavanaugh. "Excitement, thrill was the motive."

Moseley told police he and Cloyd set four more fires in west Alabama four days later "as a diversion to throw investigators off," but the plan didn't work, the agent said in the document.

Friends of the three suspects have described behavior that turned from goofy pranks to vandalism after at least one of the young men, Cloyd, began drinking more heavily last fall. Cloyd mentioned alcohol in a Web message on Facebook.com to Moseley earlier this year when he said it was "time to reconvene the season of evil."

DeBusk reportedly invited a friend to go "demon hunting" last year and claimed to be a Satanist, but the trip did not amount to much other than a night of drinking, friends said.

"All it ended up being was us playing guitar in the woods while a few of them got drunk," Jeremy Burgess, DeBusk's roommate, told The Birmingham News. "I didn't think anything of it."

E se non è un hate crime, non ci resta che chiedere lumi al nostro eroe di sempre...

ADL to Southern Baptist Convention: Stop Efforts To Convert Jews

New York, NY, September 21, 2005...The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned as "insulting, disgraceful and dangerous" plans by leaders of Southern Baptist Convention - the nation's largest Protestant group - to consider forming a partnership with a Messianic Jewish group in order to missionize Jews in the United States and around the world. The League called on the Southern Baptist Convention to stop their efforts to convert Jews.

On September 20, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention approved a proposal to study whether the SBC's North American and international mission boards should formally recognize the Southern Baptists Messianic Fellowship - a Messianic Jewish group - as "an evangelistic mission to Jewish people in the United States and throughout the world."

The executive committee's vote to recommend that the proposal be put on the agenda at next year's SBC annual convention follows the launching last year by the SBC of the Pasche Institute of Jewish Studies at Criswell College in Dallas, whose purpose is to teach Baptists leaders how to minister to Jews.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

The idea of the Southern Baptist Convention using a so-called Jewish messianic group - which misrepresents two faiths - to target Jews for conversion is disgraceful, insulting and dangerous.

Dai? Non mi dire?

We are outraged over the continuing efforts by the Southern Baptist Convention to target Jews for conversion, especially by considering 'deputizing' a Jewish Messianic group, part of a deceptive movement that falsely claims they are interested in Jewish practices when the real goal is to convert Jews to Christianity. These efforts should be stopped once and for all.

Together with the establishment last year of an institute aimed at teaching Baptist leaders how to minister to Jews, the Southern Baptist leadership continues to show its disrespect and disregard for the validity of Judaism and the Jewish people.

Tira, tira la corda, che il cassetto si apre...

(source)Jewish plot to kill Bevin in London

By Peter Day

Jewish terrorists [e con questo ti sei beccato 5 anni di carcere] plotted to assassinate Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, in 1946, as part of their campaign to establish the state of Israel, newly declassified intelligence files have shown. The plan was devised by Irgun, the insurgent group led by Menachem Begin, who went on to become a Nobel peace prize winner and prime minister of Israel.

Begin, whom MI6 believed was backed by the Soviet Union, planned to send five terrorist cells to Britain to carry out bombings and assassinations that would "beat the dog in his own kennel".

Non me lo dovevi proprio dire, ci sono rimasto veramente male!

The Jewish insurgents aimed to force British occupying forces out of Palestine, enabling the founding of the Jewish state. Details of the plot are included in MI5 files released at the National Archives in Kew, London.

Lord Bethell, author of The Palestine Triangle and an expert on Soviet intelligence, said Bevin was detested by Zionist groups. He added, however: "Zionists would be very angry if you compared these people with terrorists now. You have to remember that Irgun were the grandfathers of today's ruling politicians.

"They would say they were at war with the British and behaved well, fighting under Marquess of Queensberry rules. They would say that they didn't target civilians."

Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, Britain governed the whole of Palestine under a mandate from the United Nations. Agitation among the Jewish population for a separate state escalated immediately after the second world war as refugees flooded in from Europe.

It reached its most intense point in July 1946, when the British headquarters at the King David hotel in Jerusalem was bombed by Jewish fighters dressed as Arabs with explosives contained in milk churns. Ninety-one people, 28 of them British, were killed.

Evento unico, raro ed eccezionale, immagino.

Badombe> "What went wrong in the "Lavon Affair" -- after Pinhas Lavon, Israel's defense minister when the plot came to light -- remains a matter of debate in a country more used to tales of espionage coups. The Egyptian Jews were recruited by a fringe unit of Military Intelligence rather than the premier Israeli spy agency Mossad."

Più o meno.

The MI5 files contain a report suggesting that Irgun carried out the attack after drawing lots with two other militant groups, Stern and Hagana. Stern drew the lot to attack British ships in the Mediterranean while Hagana were chosen to attack army camps.

In August 1946, the month after the King David attack, Major James Robertson, head of MI5's Middle East section, warned London that both Begin's group and Stern were sending five terrorist cells to the capital to mirror IRA tactics of bombing and assassination.

Roberston added: "In recent months it has been reported that they have been training selected members for the purpose of assassinating a prominent British personality. Special reference has been several times made to Mr Bevin."

Bevin, the Labour foreign secretary, was an opponent of the creation of a Jewish state and had recommended that Jewish refugees in Europe should be forcibly prevented from emigrating to Palestine.

The planned terrorist campaign ended up being restricted largely to letter bombs. In 1947, 20 were sent to leading figures in Britain including Bevin and Anthony Eden, his Tory predecessor.

After the establishment of Israel, Begin, who died in 1992, dissolved Irgun and turned to politics. He became prime minister in the 1970s and was awarded the Nobel prize in 1978 jointly with Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, for signing the Camp David peace accords.

Strano, vero?

(source)A Milano guerriglia tra autonomi e polizia

Manca solo la Torre Eiffel:

MILANO - È sfociata nella violenza, con 42 persone fermate e diversi feriti anche tra le forze dell'ordine, la manifestazione non autorizzata e organizzata dai centri sociali nel centro di Milano in risposta al corteo della Fiamma Tricolore, partito nel pomeriggio da piazza Oberdan e diretto in San Babila. Il "presidio antifascista" è iniziato alle 12 da Porta Venezia con un fitto lancio di pietre e di petardi da parte degli autonomi verso la polizia. I manifestanti, circa duecento, molti con i caschi e il volto coperto da passamontagna, hanno anche incendiato cataste di legno e bidoni della spazzatura. La polizia in assetto antisommossa: gli agenti sono stati bersagliati da pezzi di pietra e di metallo. Il fumo ha invaso la parte terminale di corso Buenos Aires, un'edicola è andata a fuoco. La manifestazione non era stata autorizzata.

CARICA DELLA POLIZIA - Polizia e carabinieri hanno iniziato la carica di alleggerimento ma sono poi dovuti arretrare e hanno indossato le maschere antigas. Una scena di battaglia, nel centro di Milano. Volute di fumo nerastro si sono innalzando per una trentina di metri in aria, mentre le fiamme si espandevano. Proprio per questo motivo le forze dell'ordine sono dovute arretrare per consentire l'arrivo dei Vigili del fuoco. L'incendio dell'edicola è stato innescato da un motorino a sua volta bruciato, mentre quattro macchine sono state date alle fiamme. I residenti di un palazzo di tre piani prospiciente all'incendio sono stati evacuati per ragioni di sicurezza.

LACRIMOGENI - Le forze dell'ordine hanno quindi cominciato a lanciare lacrimogeni, mentre i pompieri sono riusciti a spegnere il fuoco del motorino e dell'edicola incendiati; i vigili del fuoco non sono invece riusciti ad avvicinarsi ad alcune delle auto a cui si è esteso il rogo. La coltre dei fumogeni, dell'incendio e dei primi lacrimogeni lanciati ha investito anche la folla che si è tenuta sempre più a distanza dalla zona degli incidenti. Alcuni cittadini hanno incitato le forze dell'ordine a caricare i manifestanti.

QUATTRO CARABINIERI FERITI - Quattro carabinieri sono rimasti feriti dalle schegge di una bomba carta lanciata dai manifestanti. Il 118 riferisce che altre due persone sono state soccorse ma non ospedalizzate. La prima si trovava vicino a Mc Donald's nel momento in cui è stata sfondata la vetrina [e quando mai?] , la seconda è una persona che ha respirato il fumo di alcuni lacromogeni e che si era rifugiata all'interno della metropolitana.

CALCI E PUGNI AI MANIFESTANTI - La rabbia della folla sconvolta si è riversata su alcuni manifestanti, quando sono stati fermati dalle forze dell'ordine. A stento gli stessi agenti sono riusciti a salvarli da un vero e proprio linciaggio: gruppi numerosi di persone li prendevano a calci e pugni urlando "ammazzateli", mentre gli uomini delle forze dell'ordine cercavano faticosamente di caricarli sui furgoni. Un signore anziano che ha partecipato all'aggressione ha motivato così la rabbia: "Hai visto che cosa hanno fatto? Stanno distruggendo tutto. Se avessi avuto un coltello l'avrei usato".

Tradotto: sì, ne hanno veramente pieni i coglioni. Ora basta far incazzare anche i cittadini del mondo e poi comincia l'allegra avventura.

SEI PERSONE ALL'OSPEDALE - Sono sei in totale le persone soccorse a trasportate negli ospedali milanesi (di cui due agenti) per ferite e contusioni. Dopo essere stati medicati sono stati dimessi.

DANNI E TRAFFICO IN TILT - Le Forze dell'ordine hanno blindato il passaggio in direzione corso Venezia mentre le linee di superficie dei mezzi pubblici sono completamente bloccate. La Linea 1 della metropolitana ha soppresso le fermate di Porta Venezia e Palestro. I danni lungo corso Buenos Aires sono ingenti: all'altezza del McDonald's in viale Tunisia è stata fatta esplodere dagli autonomi una bomba carta caricata con bulloni che avrebbe avuto serie conseguenze per le persone: diversi agenti, una decina, hanno riportato ferite in via di valutazione.

IL CORTEO DELLA FIAMMA SENZA BANDIERE FASCISTE - Nel pomeriggio un centinaio di militanti della Fiamma Tricolore si sono concentrati in piazza Oberdan per dare il via alla manifestazione, questa autorizzata, diretta in piazza San Babila. Il corteo è partito in ritardo perchè la polizia ha impedito che i manifestanti spiegassero bandiere, con le croci celtiche e il fascio littorio, simboli di apologia del fascismo, che è reato. La trattativa è durata oltre mezz'ora. Alla fine i manifestanti hanno deciso di arrotolare queste bandiere e dare, così, il via alla manifestazione. Al corteo partecipa qualche centinaio di persone della Fiamma Tricolore provenienti da diverse regioni d'Italia. I manifestanti arrivano da Merano, Roma, Vercelli, oltre che da Milano. Gli aderenti alla Fiamma Tricolore scandiscono slogan fascisti e ostentano il saluto romano.

E se questo è l'Occidente da salvare...

(source)Autonomi scatenati a Milano

MILANO - Forte tensione e incidenti alla manifestazione "antifascista" dei centri sociali a Milano. Una manifestazione "non autorizzata", indetta per rispondere a quella della Fiamma Tricolore programmata da tempo e cominciata a metà pomeriggio nel capoluogo lombardo. Circa duecento giovani, molti con i caschi e il volto coperto da passamontagna, si sono scontrati con la polizia lungo Corso Buenos Aires. Una quarantina dei manifestanti sono stati accompagnati in questura a seguito degli incidenti. Tra loro parecchi sono giovanissimi.

Tradotto: prove generali di guerra civile, ooops volevo dire società multiculturale intrisa di tolleranza.

La folla si è scagliata sui fermati. E la rabbia della folla si è riversata su alcuni dei fermati dalle forze dell'ordine. A stento gli stessi agenti sono riusciti a salvarli da un vero e proprio linciaggio: gruppi numerosi di persone li prendevano a calci e pugni urlando 'ammazzateli', mentre gli uomini delle forze dell'ordine cercavano faticosamente di caricarli sui furgoni.

Il corteo della destra. "Ci sarà un corteo di protesta nel pomeriggio, alle ore sedici, con partenza da piazza San Carlo, come forma di protesta civile contro i centri sociali amici di Romano Prodi, che si sono resi protagonisti della devastazione dell'An point di Corso Buenos Aires. Questa sinistra ha bisogno di una lezione di civiltà. L'avrà", ha commentato il presidente dei deputati di Alleanza Nazionale Ignazio La Russa.

Il corteo della Fiamma Tricolore. E' partito da Porta Venezia il corteo della manifestazione indetta oggi da Fiamma Tricolore. I manifestanti, mille secondo gli organizzatori, percorreranno corso Venezia per raggiungere piazza San Babila, dove si potrebbero incontrare con il corteo della manifestazione di An che partire da piazza San Carlo. Il corteo si è fermato per 20 minuti all'altezza di via Palestro e ha potuto proseguire il cammino solo dopo che la questura ha ordinato e ottenuto che venissero eliminati tutti gli striscioni con croci celtiche.

Bertinotti: si individuino i responsabili. "Naturalmente penso molto male di quanto successo. E' un elemento allarmante", ha ammesso il segretario di Rifondazione Comunista Fausto Bertinotti, riferendosi alle violenze della mattinata. Bertinotti ha però subito invitato a non fare generalizzazioni e ad individuare i colpevoli: "Invece di chiamare no global i responsabili degli incidenti, perchè anch'io e altre persone qui presenti siamo no global, bisognerà invece individuare con precisione i responsabili di queste azioni che devono essere severamente censurate. Non si può dire nemmeno centri sociali, visto che il più grande di tutti, il Leoncavallo, partecipa nel pomeriggio alla manifestazione a Milano insieme a tutte le forze". Bertinotti si riferisce alla manifestazione promossa dall'Anpi per questo pomeriggio a Brescia, alla quale parteciperà una vasta presenza di forze di sinistra.

Fassino solidale con le forze dell'ordine. Il segretario dei Ds, Piero Fassino, accompagnato dal segretario provinciale di Milano, Franco Mirabelli è andato nel pomeriggio in questura di Milano per portare solidarietà alle forze dell'ordine. "La violenza e il vandalismo - ha detto Mirabelli anche a nome dei Ds milanesi - non appartengono all'antifascismo, quelli sono solo dei delinquenti".

La condanna di Prodi. E' netta anche la condanna del leader dell'Unione Romano Prodi degli incidenti di Milano: "Condanniamo duramente queste forme di violenza, che non appartengono al nostro concetto di democrazia e di civiltà".

Ferrante: "Chi governa non riesce a gestire squilibri". "La mediazione e la ricerca di equilibri sociali - ha rilevato l'ex prefetto e candidato sindaco di Milano dell'Unione, Bruno Ferrante - tanto superficialmente contestate dal centrodestra, hanno per molti anni consentito alla città di vivere senza tensioni e senza problemi di ordine pubblico. Oggi, viceversa, queste tensioni e questi problemi emergono tutti i giorni - da via Padova a via Triboniano a corso Buenos Aires - evidenziando l'incapacità di fare prevenzione da parte di chi ha responsabilità di governo della città". Naturalmente, ha concluso Ferrante, "La violenza va sempre condannata, da qualsiasi parte provenga".

Le prime violenze a piazzale Loreto. Le violenze sono iniziate in piazzale Loreto quando i manifestanti hanno attaccato una macchina dei carabinieri danneggiandola e ferendo due agenti dell'arma che erano a bordo. Poi si sono diretti verso Porta Venezia dove ci sono stati gli scontri più duri. Il bilancio, assolutamente provvisorio, parla di quattro contusi tra le forze dell'ordine. Un carabiniere è stato colpito da un razzo in piena faccia ed è ricoverato in ospedale.

Poi corso Buenos Aires. La zona di Porta Venezia e Corso Buenos Aires è presidiata anche un elicottero della polizia mentre gli agenti danno la caccia ai manifestanti nascosti negli androni dei palazzi e nei bar della zona. Una ventina di persone sono state fermate.

Lanci di pietre. Lungo corso Buenos Aires dal corteo è iniziato un fitto lancio di pietre e di petardi all'indirizzo delle forze dell'ordine. I manifestanti hanno innalzato una sorta di barricata con bidoni della spazzatura e fioriere scardinate.

In fiamme un An-Point. All'angolo con via Melzo è stato dato alle fiamme un An-Point, un punto elettorale di Alleanza Nazionale. All'altezza del McDonald in viale Tunisia è stata fatta esplodere dagli autonomi una bomba carta caricata con bulloni: diversi agenti, una decina, sono rimasti feriti. Infrante anche numerose vetrine.

A fuoco un'edicola. Un'edicola è andata a fuoco e il fumo nerastro ha invaso le case circostanti. L'incendio dell'edicola è stato innescato da un motorino a sua volta bruciato. Date alle fiamme anche alcune auto. Le forze dell'ordine hanno lanciato lacrimogeni mentre i pompieri erano all'opera.

(source)Slobodan Milosevic Dies in Prison Cell

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Slobodan Milosevic, the ousted leader of the former Yugoslavia who was facing charges of war crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars, died today in his prison cell.

Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed at the UN Detention Unit in Scheveningen, the Netherlands today, according to a statement on the Web Site of the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Tribunal President Fausto Pocar has ordered a full inquiry, the statement said.

Milosevic, the first head of state to face an international war crimes trial, was 64.

He was extradited to The Hague in 2001, and his trial had to be adjourned several times because of his deteriorating health. He suffered from high blood pressure and risked heart attacks. In November 2002, judges in the case ordered him to undergo a psychiatric review to assess the strain of the trial.

Milosevic died more than five years after being driven from power in a popular uprising in October 2000. His downfall ended his 13-year rule in Serbia, former Yugoslavia's most populous republic, and brought an end to a decade of wars in the region.

He faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for his role in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, which claimed more than 250,000 lives.

Milosevic was charged with more than 60 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. He didn't recognize the court, and conducted his own defense, denying all charges.

Milosevic rose to power in Serbia during the 1980s as the leadership of the former Yugoslavia disintegrated after the death in 1980 of Josip Broz Tito, who had led the country since World War II. By 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, Milosevic was firmly in power in Serbia.

Immense Popularity

His immense popularity had its roots in a 1987 incident, when he was sent to Kosovo to calm a crowd of protesting Serbs who demonstrated against alleged attacks by ethnic Albanians. He told them that no one would be allowed to beat them. Television cameras caught the moment and the message was spread.

Milosevic's image as the protector of Serb interests enabled him to remain in power for years, taking the country from one losing war to another. That process culminated in the bombing of Serbia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 for Milosevic's attempt at ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the province of Kosovo, while the Serbian economy crumbled.

Earlier, Milosevic had signed the Dayton Peace agreement with the administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1995, ending the war in Bosnia.

As his support dwindled during the 1990s, Milosevic used the police and the army to put down demonstrations and gradually bring the media under state control. Crime and corruption flourished, and only businesses supportive of the regime were rewarded.

Serbia in Ruins

He left Serbia in ruins. By the time of his downfall, the country's gross domestic product had shrunk by two-thirds, central bank reserves were about $300 million, the banking system was non-existent, and industry was damaged by years of international sanctions. Many roads, bridges and power plants were bombed by NATO in 1999.

Even as Serbia charged Milosevic in September 2003 with ordering the murder and attempted murder of two political opponents, the former leader was planning his return to politics, according to officials from his Socialist Party of Serbia.

The ousted leader, known in Serbia as "Slobo," headed his party's list in the December 2003 parliamentary elections.

Milosevic was overthrown in 2000 after losing a presidential election to Vojislav Kostunica, who led a group of opposition parties.

Family of a Priest

Milosevic was born Aug. 20, 1941, in the Serbian town of Pozarevac to a family of a priest and a teacher. Both his parents committed suicide during his youth.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law at the Belgrade University in 1964, Milosevic joined the Communist Party.

He later pursued a career in Yugoslav state companies, rising to director of a state-owned natural gas company and later joined Beobanka, one of the country's largest banks. He became the leader of the Serbian Communist Party in 1987.

In his opening statement at the United Nations trial on Aug. 31, 2004, he called the accusations against him "unscrupulous lies," according to Agence France-Presse.

"In the international public for a long time an untruthful and distorted picture was created about what happened in Yugoslavia," AFP cited Milosevic as saying in court.

During the trial, wearing a tie with Serbian flag colors, Milosevic passionately defended his politics. He also argued with prosecution's witnesses, including Wesley Clark, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's commander during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Clark later said that there was no change in Milosevic's stubbornness. Milosevic had accused NATO of committing war crimes against Serbia.

(source)Structuring Financial Transactions

Many people are aware that the U.S. Government requires that certain types of information be reported when large quantities of cash are moved in or out of financial institutions (e.g., banks, savings and loans, credit unions, etc). Often people conducting high-value financial transactions will ask the bank teller "What is the dollar amount required to file a report with the government?" The response is a Cash Transaction Report, CTR, (IRS Form 4789 / FinCEN Form 104) is required to be filed for any amounts cumulatively exceeding $10,000 for a single day.

Once informed, customers often lower the amount of the transaction to less than $10,000. Generally, the new amounts deposited or withdrawn reflect values such as $9,900, $9,800, or $9,500. However, once the change in amount is made, the financial institution is obligated to file a Suspicious Activity Report, SAR, (TD F 90-22.47) without alerting or notifying the customer of this fact. The reason why this happens is because "structuring" deposits or withdraws to avoid detection is a money laundering technique.

Saluti a Pera e all'Occidente.

(source)No Evidence al-Qaida Planned Madrid Attacks

Ricordate l'allegra favoletta di Madrid?

Londra 7 luglio 2005
Spain suspects 'were informants'
London Bombs Likely Simple and Homemade

Indovina un po'?

By PAUL HAVEN, AP

Davvero, tirate ad indovinare...

MADRID, Spain (March 10) - A two-year probe into the Madrid train bombings concludes the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting on their own rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, two senior intelligence officials said.

Radicals, informers, sono tutti una grande famiglia.

Spain still remains home to a web of radical Algerian, Moroccan and Syrian groups bent on carrying out attacks - and aiding the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq - a Spanish intelligence chief and a Western official intimately involved in counterterrorism measures in Spain told The Associated Press.

The intelligence chief said there were no phone calls between the Madrid bombers and al-Qaida and no money transfers. The Western official said the plotters had links to other Islamic radicals in Western Europe, but the plan was hatched and organized in Spain. "This was not an al-Qaida operation," he said. "It was homegrown."

Both men spoke on condition of anonymity, the first because Spanish security officials are not allowed to discuss details of an ongoing investigation and the second due to the sensitive nature of his job.

The attack has been frequently described as al-Qaida-linked since a man who identified himself as Abu Dujan al-Afghani and said he was al-Qaida's "European military spokesman," claimed responsibility in a video released two days later.

Ahead of Saturday's anniversary of the March 11, 2004 blasts - which killed 191 people and wounded 1,500 - victims' groups have been clamoring for more progress in the investigation.

Gabriel Moris, whose 30-year-old son died in the bombings, said: "These past two years have done nothing to clear up what happened. My questions are simple: Who ordered the massacre? Who killed my son and the other innocent victims?"

I serbi?

The intelligence official said authorities know more than they have revealed, including the suspected ideological and operational masterminds of the attack.

Dai? Fammi indovinare ancora?

"We haven't explained it well enough to the victims because we can't reveal judicial secrets," he said, adding the investigation is nearly complete.

Certo. Come quella di Londra.

Authorities believe the ideological mastermind was Serhan Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, a Tunisian who blew himself up along with six other suspects when police surrounded their apartment three weeks after the bombings, and that Jamal Ahmidan, a Moroccan who also died that day, was the "military planner."

Quello con i quadri intatti dentro l'appartamento, e la parete esterna demolita?

Law enforcement had focused on another man, Allekema Lamari, as the head of the group. But the official said evidence, particularly from wiretapped phone conversations, indicated it was Ahmidan who gave the military orders. Lamari also died in the apartment blast in a Madrid suburb as authorities closed in.

Some 116 people have been arrested in the bombings, and 24 remain jailed. At least three others - Said Berraj, Mohammed Belhadj and Daoud Ouhane - are sought by authorities, though all are believed to have fled Spain long ago. The intelligence official said the top planners are all either dead or in jail.

While the plotters of the Madrid attack were likely motivated by bin Laden's October 2003 call for attacks on European countries that supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there is no evidence they were in contact with the al-Qaida leader's inner circle, the intelligence official said.

Most of the plotters were Moroccan and Syrian immigrants, many with criminal records in Spain for drug trafficking and other crimes. They paid for explosives used in the attack with hashish.

Come no?

That is a far cry from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - allegedly planned by al-Qaida leaders like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh and funded directly by the terror network through international wire transfers and Islamic banking schemes.

Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, said the model used in Madrid, and likely for the July 7 London transport bombings fits in well with al-Qaida's business plan.

"Al-Qaida is not and never was a topdown organization that did everything in terms of attacks around the world. They have a key role in ideological terms ... but they rely on local cells and those that are inspired to carry out these attacks," he said.

Badombe> "Al Qaeda is not an organization. Al Qaeda is a way of working." -- Ian Blair

After the fact, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri are happy to claim responsibility because they recognize the carnage as inspired by their movement.

Dai?

Still, Wilkinson cautioned that just because no direct link has been established between the Madrid plotters and al-Qaida, it doesn't mean none exists. "If security officials knew everything that was going on, we would have caught Osama bin Laden by now," he said.

Both the Spanish intelligence chief and the Western official said there is reason for concern despite the lack of a direct al-Qaida connection.

"There were a lot of moving parts to the March 11 plot, but we were still not able to detect it, and that is scary because a similar thing could happen again," said the Western counterterrorism official. "Since March 11, there have been plans for other significant attacks that the Spanish have disrupted."

Those plans include a scheme in late 2004 to bomb buildings in Barcelona, including the 1992 Olympic village and office towers known as the city's World Trade Center complex. Police also thwarted a 2004 plot by Moroccan and Algerian militants to level Madrid's National Court - a hub for anti-terror investigations - with a 1,100-pound truck bomb.

And agents specializing in Islamic terrorism have arrested dozens of suspects - all allegedly working to recruit potential suicide bombers for the Iraq insurgency.

At least two Spanish citizens - including March 11 suspect Mohammed Afalah - are believed to have blown themselves up in Iraq, and an investigation by the respected El Pais daily revealed some 80 others have traveled to the country in recent months intending to do the same.

The intelligence official said the March 11 attacks were a wakeup call, and authorities are much better prepared now to stop Islamic terrorism.

Certo.

But he said the bombings show how easy it is for those bent on terrorism to carry out attacks.

Strano, vero?

He said authorities believe the Madrid bombers learned how to construct the bombs - all connected to Mitsubishi Trium T110 mobile phones - from Internet sites linked to radical Islamic groups. The devices were similar to ones used in the 2002 Bali bombing, he said, evidence that militants in both countries got information on the same radical Web sites.

Ma è chiaro! Hanno imparato a fare la bomba col cratere su Internet, con il sito islamico.

Badombe> "And second, because of the SIM card inside the phone. But, if the cables had been connected, the bomb would have gone off not by a phone call or another electronic trigger, but by the internal's alarm clock which was programmed to turn the phone on and vibrate. Most phones don't need a SIM card for that, but the model chosen by guys who were alleged phone experts (since they owned a phone shop) was the Mitsubishi Trium, precisely one of the few ones who need a SIM card inserted to function as a mere alarm clock. And it was the analysis of the SIM card which, less than 48 hours after the blasts, allowed the police to arrest the alleged perpetrators."

Aspetta, che mi scrivo imbecille sulla fronte con il pennarello.

Spanish authorities were monitoring several of the bombers in the months before the attack - and actually stopped Ahmidan's car on a highway in late February, unaware he was leading a caravan of other terrorists transporting the explosives used in the blasts.

The intelligence official said authorities had never imagined a group of petty drug traffickers were capable of planning such a massive attack.

"Had we been told a day before (the bombing) that this is what was going on, we would have dismissed it," he said.

Rileggete con cura i link all'inizio, che male non fa.

(source)'US not doing enough to stop Iran'

The United States has until now not done enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, a senior Defense Ministry official has told The Jerusalem Post while expressing hope that Wednesday's referral of the Iranian issue to the United Nations Security Council would prove to be effective.

"America needs to get its act together," the official said. "Until now the US administration has just been talking tough but the time has come for the Americans to begin to take tough action."

The only real way to stop Teheran's race to obtain the bomb apart from military action was through tough economic sanctions that caused the Iranian people to suffer. "Once the people understand that their government is bringing upon them a disaster will they realize that the [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's regime needs to be replaced," the official said.

Iran, the official said, was doing all it could to stall for time, including holding "pointless" talks with Russia concerning the enrichment of its uranium. "They are just trying to get more time and they will continue lying and deceiving the international community while simultaneously trying to obtain nuclear power," he said.

Mi ricorda vagamente qualcosa.

While it was complicated to overthrow the current regime in Teheran, "it is not impossible," the official said. If the world stopped refining Iranian oil, the official said as an example, the country would not have gas for its cars.

Saluti da Beijing!

"If the people start to suffer then they will understand that a change in government is needed." But if the diplomatic course failed, Israel and the US needed to be prepared, the official said, to take military action against Teheran. "This option may be needed but it should only be used as a last resort," he said.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters in Germany on Wednesday that Israel had all it needed to defend itself against Iran.

Tradotto: però se ci vanno gli americani è meglio.

Asked by reporters if Israel had a military plan handy in a desk drawer to strike Iran, Mofaz said: "Israel has many drawers containing everything it needs to defend its citizens."

Ce l'ho anch'io un bel cassetto, testa di cazzo...

Israel, Mofaz told senior German officials, would not stand by idly while its very existence was at risk.

Il ritornello...

"We do not plan to turn a blind eye to these threats and we will do everything possible to make sure they do not materialize."

Sempre il solito ritornello, since 1919.

(source)Israeli PM: Jewish State to Set Borders

JERUSALEM - Israel expects to draw its permanent borders by 2010 and build a controversial settlement outside Jerusalem as part of the effort, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published Thursday.

Ricordati anche di scrivere la Costituzione, magari per il 2050 siamo a posto.

Olmert, whose Kadima Party is the clear front-runner in March 28 elections, told The Jerusalem Post daily that within four years he intended to "get to Israel's permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population and preserve a large and stable Jewish majority in Israel."

Proviamo a riscrivere la frase cambiando i nomi, vediamo che effetto fa?

Badombe> Calderoli, whose Northern League party is the clear front-runner in April 9 elections, told La Padania daily that within four years he intended to "get to Italy's permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Muslim population and preserve a large and stable White/Christian majority in Padania."

E' il solito effetto di sempre: società multiculturale per molti, ma non per tutti.

Badombe> Strano!

Olmert's chief security adviser, Avi Dichter, had disclosed the time frame earlier this week, but it was the first time the acting Israeli leader publicly discussed it.

Olmert said Israel would act unilaterally to set its borders if Hamas militants - poised to take control of the Palestinian Authority - don't renounce their violent campaign against Israel and accept the guidelines of an internationally backed peace plan within a "reasonable time."

Olmert said his broad guidelines for Israel's borders included its three major settlement blocs - Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion outside Jerusalem, and Ariel, deep inside the West Bank. Borders would also include Jerusalem and its immediate environs, and the Jordan River Valley, which Olmert characterized as a "security border."

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat urged Olmert to return to talks with the Palestinians. "Unilateralism and dictation will only add to the complexities and will not solve problems," Erekat said.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a political moderate, has stated his interest in resuming long-stalled negotiations. But Olmert told The Jerusalem Post he had no intention of meeting Abbas after Israel's elections because he sees him as part of a Palestinian Authority dominated by Hamas.

The militant group, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January, expects to install a Cabinet within the next few weeks. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Mushir al-Masri, said the group would take over the key ministries - finance, foreign affairs and the interior, which oversees some of the security forces.

Last year, Olmert confirmed Israel had frozen plans to build 3,650 housing units on land between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, Israel's largest West Bank settlement, because of pressure from Washington, which sees the construction as an impediment to peacemaking efforts.

But in the interview Olmert said the project would go ahead as part of Israel's border-setting.

Declaring plans to build the settlement could help Olmert rebuff attacks from his main political rival, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, ahead of the elections. Netanyahu has repeatedly said the construction freeze calls into question the government's resolve to strengthen Jerusalem and major settlement blocs.

A senior government official said Israel had never given up plans to build in the so-called E1 area between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, even though construction could take years, in part because of permitting issues.

"It is inconceivable that Israel would relinquish control of the... area and drive a wedge between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because construction hasn't begun.

Palestinians say the satellite settlement would cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank and kill their dreams to set up a capital there.

Construction "absolutely undermines any prospects for a future peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis," Erekat said.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman had no immediate comment on Olmert's remarks.

Several new polls, meanwhile, showed continued erosion of Kadima's big lead in the run-up to elections, though it still had roughly double the support of its nearest rival, the dovish Labor Party.

Kadima has lost ground over corruption allegations, including one against Olmert that has since been discredited.

One poll, conducted Wednesday by the Dahaf Research, gave Kadima 37 of parliament's 120 seats - down one from the previous survey, and down six from a Feb. 10 peak of 43. Labor remained stable at 20, and Likud, which takes a hard line against the Palestinians, lost one seat, to 14.

Despite the slippage, Olmert spoke confidently of victory Wednesday evening.

"The question of who will win the election has already been decided," Olmert told Kadima activists. "Now the question is whether we will be strong enough to do everything we want to do."

Also Thursday, Israel reopened the vital Karni cargo crossing between Gaza and Israel after a two-week closure. Karni is critical for the Palestinian economy because it is the only conduit for Palestinian exports and the main gateway for goods entering Gaza. Its closure caused hardships for farmers, merchants and ordinary Palestinians, who reported food shortages.

Israel said it shut the passage because of warnings of attacks by Palestinian militants there. Palestinians believe the closure is retribution for Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections.

(source)La Bce: Pil in crescita, l'inflazione non cala

Strano, vero?

FRANCOFORTE (Germania) - La Banca centrale europea (Bce) rivede leggermente verso l'alto le stime di crescita per il 2006 e 2007: per l'anno in corso - si legge nell'ultimo bollettino della banca centrale - si prevede un tasso di crescita medio tra l'1,7% e il 2,5% e tra l' 1,5% e il 2,5% nel 2007. La revisione è dovuta "a prospettive in qualche misura più favorevoli per gli investimenti privati". Il rischio rimane sempre legato all'andamento dei corsi petroliferi.

L'INFLAZIONE - Nel bollettino l'istituto di credito europeo rileva come l'inflazione nell'area dell'euro rimarrà nel breve periodo sopra il 2%: considerazione, questa, basata sul fatto che a febbraio l'Eurostat ha misurato un'inflazione del 2,3% a fronte del 2,4% di gennaio. Il dato è influenzato anche dagli "effetti indiretti degli scorsi rincari del petrolio" che potrebbero esercitare "spinte al rialzo".

Ovviamente.

Più in generale nel 2006 la stima è di un'inflazione compresa tra l'1,9 e il 2,5% e tra l'1,6% e il 2,8% nel 2007. Anche in questo caso "le prospettive per l'andamento dei prezzi restano soggette a rischi al rialzo derivanti da ulteriori rincari del petrolio e da una trasmissione ai prezzi al consumo maggiore del previsto".

Sicuramente.

I TASSI - Nonostante la decisione dello scorso 2 marzo di aumentare il costo del denaro la Bce afferma che i tassi rimangono ancora "su livelli contenuti" e la politica monetaria "permane accomodante".

Prova a tradurre.

Nel bollettino si spiega che l'adeguamento dei tassi contribuirà ad "assicurare le aspettative di inflazione a breve-medio termine" e questo è "un presupposto affinchè la politica monetaria fornisca un apporto duraturo al sostegno della crescita economica e della creazione di posti di lavoro nell'area".

Ne sono sicuro.

SQUILIBRI TRA GLI STATI MEMBRI - Il bilancio complessivo dell'area euro, secondo Francoforte, "riflette il persistere di squilibri di bilancio significativi o addirittura gravi in molti paesi membri". Nel mirino in particolare sono i Paesi con deficit superiore al 3%: Germania, Grecia, Italia e Portogallo. Inoltre - secondo la Banca centrale - il debito è "aumentato in alcuni dei paesi con un rapporto superiore al 60%". Insomma, secondo la Bce "I progressi verso finanze pubbliche solide rimangono lenti".

Provate a rubare ancora, magari funziona.

Inoltre gli interventi messi in atto da vari paesi dell'area euro "soddisfano appena i requisiti minimi richiesti dal Patto di stabilità rivisto malgrado il miglioramento dello scenario per l'espansione economica". Nel frattempo, inoltre, gli oneri legati all'invecchiamento della popolazione "gettano un'ombra sulle prospettive a lungo termine per i conti pubblici".

Fammi indovinare...

Pertanto "è essenziale perseguire obiettivi di risanamento incisivi anche grazie a "un programma di riforma organico". Un'indicazione arriva dunque verso "un contesto favorevole e concorrenziale per le imprese" che è "indispensabile per sostenere la crescita potenziale e far aumentare il tasso di occupazione".

Ma vaffanculo...

(source)Rubavano elenchi e tabulati

Pubblici ufficiali al lavoro:

MILANO - Un mercato parallelo dove le informazioni sulla vita privata dei cittadini vengono vendute per pochi euro, un universo dove gli affari sporchi e puliti degli investigatori privati fioriscono grazie alla corruzione tra funzionari dello Stato e delle compagnie telefoniche. Alle sei di ieri mattina scatta tra Milano, Roma, Firenze, Padova e Novara l'operazione che per la prima volta dà un taglio a un malaffare che da anni permette alla privacy di ogni italiano di venire violata senza difficoltà: finiscono in manette undici investigatori privati, due marescialli della Guardia di finanza, un ispettore di polizia, due uomini di Telecom Italia. E viene perquisito l'ufficio di Nicolò Accame, braccio destro del ministro della Sanità Francesco Storace: che dei servizi degli spregiudicati private eyes si sarebbe avvalso contro la camerata-rivale Alessandra Mussolini e contro Piero Marrazzo, avversario nelle elezioni per la presidenza della Regione Lazio.

Le accuse sono di corruzione, violazione di segreto d'ufficio e falso. Trecento pagine di ordinanza di custodia, sostenute da una gran mole di intercettazioni telefoniche, raccontano come i segreti delle banche dati venissero venduti al network degli investigatori.

Almeno cinque le agenzie coinvolte dagli arresti, ma molte altre sono indagate e vengono perquisite nella giornata di ieri. La principale è la Ssi di Milano guidata da un giovane energico: Pierpaolo Pasqua, 35 anni, istruttore subacqueo, specialista della sicurezza privata. È lui, secondo intercettazioni e pedinamenti, l'uomo di contatto con lo staff di Storace. Ed è lui a tenere buona parte dei rapporti con i corrotti nel settore pubblico e privato, ognuno dei quali vendeva i segreti di sua competenza. I dipendenti di Telecom fornivano tabulati con gli elenchi delle conversazioni e identificavano i titolari delle utenze. Il poliziotto forniva certificati penali, carichi pendenti, denunce recenti e remote, e altri dati contenuti nel cervellone centrale del Viminale. I finanzieri, oltre ai dati sulle pendenze fiscali dei "bersagli", si spingevano più in là: organizzavano finte verifiche fiscali per fare incursioni negli uffici e rastrellare materiale.

Pierpaolo Pasqua è arrestato a Roma, nella sede capitolina della Ssi, insieme a lui finiscono in carcere i capi delle divisioni "security" e "information" della stessa Ssi, Gaspare Gallo e Luca Garbelli. Tra Milano e Varese vengono catturati Laura Danani, titolare di una agenzia a cinquecento metri da palazzo di giustizia, il collega Vittorio Meroni e Corrado Nembrini della C. Enne detective. A Roma tocca a un ex segugio della Tom Ponzi. Non ci sono, negli elenchi dei "casi" seguiti dagli investigatori arrestati, nomi eccellenti (a parte quello di Storace). La grande parte delle indagini svolte utilizzando le "soffiate" a pagamento riguardano faccende di affari: concorrenza tra aziende, inchieste interne su dirigenti infedeli o presunti tali, inchieste esplorative prima di accordi commerciali. Non ci sono, per il momento, provvedimenti a carico dei clienti dei private eyes, perché non è detto che conoscessero i metodi usati dai segugi che avevano assoldato: anche se, quando si vedevano consegnare documenti teoricamente segreti come certificati penali, estratti bancari, tabulati telefonici qualche domanda avrebbero potuto farsela. Abbiamo colpito, dicono i carabinieri milanesi, "una complessa rete di corruttela diffusa su tutto il territorio nazionale". Ma c'è chi giura che la caccia ai venditori di segreti sia solo all'inizio.

(source)Vaticano, nelle scuole sì all'ora di religione islamica

ROMA - "L'Italia non faccia marcia indietro. Il rispetto non deve essere selezionato". Con queste parole il caridnale Raffaele Renato Martino, presidente del Pontificio Consiglio Giustizia e Pace ha dato un sostanziale via libera del Vaticano all'ora di religione nelle scuole italiane per insegnare il corano agli studenti musulmani.

"Se ci sono delle necessità, se in una scuola ci sono cento bambini di religione musulmana, non vedo perché non si possa insegnare loro la religione - ha aggiunto il porporato -. Questo è il rispetto dell'essere umano, un rispetto che non deve essere selezionato".

Nel 2006 siamo ancora con l'ora di religione tra i coglioni?

(source)U.S. Criticizes Arab Allies on Rights

By ANNE GEARAN

AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department called the human rights records of key Arab allies poor or problematic on Wednesday, citing flawed elections and torture of prisoners in Egypt, beatings, arbitrary arrest and a lack of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, and floggings as punishment for adultery or drug abuse in the United Arab Emirates.

Dobbiamo ridere, vero?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited all three of those nations last month, calling each a strategic partner or stalwart ally that wields regional influence or helps in such areas as anti-terror investigations.

The relationship between the United States and the UAE is at the center of a political fracas over a Dubai company's plans to take over operations at several U.S. ports.

On Iraq, the report said the government's performance was "handicapped" by insurgency and terrorism that impacted every aspect of life.

"The ongoing insurgency, coupled with sectarian and criminal violence, seriously affected the government's human rights performance," the report said. It cited increased reports of killings that may have been politically motivated.

"Additionally, common criminals, insurgents, and terrorists undermined public confidence in the security apparatus by sometimes masking their identity in police and army uniforms," it said.

The study, which has been published each year since 1977, offers a comprehensive analysis of all countries in the world. It calls records in Saudi Arabia and Egypt poor, and the UAE record problematic.

The introduction calls particular attention to six countries where restrictions on rights were said to be severe: North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Zimbabwe and Cuba, in addition to China. Repression in China increased in 2005, with a trend toward "increased harassment, detention, and imprisonment" of people seen as threats to the government, the State Department said in its annual report on human rights worldwide.

The full account on the situation in China, running more than 35,000 words, said the government's human rights record "remained poor, and the government continued to commit numerous and serious abuses."

(source)3.6 Billion Degrees in Lab

By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer

Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.

This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.

They don't know how they did it.

The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories.

"At first, we were disbelieving," said project leader Chris Deeney. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."

Thermonuclear explosions are estimated to reach only tens to hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin; other nuclear fusion experiments have achieved temperatures of about 500 million degrees Kelvin, said a spokesperson at the lab.

The achievement was detailed in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The Z machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world. It's designed to test materials under extreme temperatures and pressures. It works by releasing 20 million amps of electricity into a vertical array of very fine tungsten wires. The wires dissolve into a cloud of charged particles, a superheated gas called plasma.

A very strong magnetic field compresses the plasma into the thickness of a pencil lead. This causes the plasma to release energy in the form of X-rays, but the X-rays are usually only several million degrees.

Sandia researchers still aren't sure how the machine achieved the new record. Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures.

One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma's ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.

Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines theorizes that some unknown energy source is involved, which is providing the machine with an extra jolt of energy just as the plasma ions are beginning to slow down.

Sandia National Laboratories is located by Albuquerque New Mexico and is part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

(source)High property taxes driving a new revolt

ATLANTA - In Orford, N.H., a tin-roofed hunting cabin worth $10,000 was recently assessed at $200,000, just for its mountain view. Taxes on the cabin and its outhouse skyrocketed.

Around Lake Tahoe, along the California-Nevada border, property taxes have shot up 135 percent in the past four years.

Residents of Beaufort, S.C., pay $17 million more in property taxes today than in 2000.

Welcome to the flip side of the real estate boom. Years of rising home values have boosted property taxes steadily. Now, homeowners across the United States are fighting back.

"Real estate growth and real estate boom seem to be happening all over the country and [property-tax revolt] is an inevitable consequence," says Roger Sherman, a property tax expert in Boise, Idaho.

This year, legislative proposals, citizen initiatives, and lawsuits are on the agenda in at least 20 states. These new efforts reflect both residents' distrust of how their property tax dollars are being spent and concerns that rising assessments are driving working-class people out of popular towns and cities.

Tax caps are not new. California's Prop. 13 initiative in 1978 capped annual tax assessment increases at 2 percent until a property is sold, a law that is still on the books. Nevertheless, the steady rise in home values has meant that local and state governments are increasingly reliant on property taxes as their No. 1 revenue stream. Last year, those governments collected $339 billion, according to the Census Bureau, some $2,750 for every home in America.

This perceived shift of the tax burden onto residential properties is behind the various tax revolts. It also doesn't help that often tax bills reflecting double-digit increases are mailed out at Christmastime - notices that affect older and long-term homeowners the most.

"The intensity of outrage has not been this high since Prop. 13's heyday," says Pete Sepp, spokesman for the director of the National Taxpayers Union in Alexandria, Va.

Reducing property taxes, however, may curtail local governments' ability to raise money for schools and services, some critics say.

Ah beh! Allora...

Others don't see what all the fuss is about. Since the property tax is determined and spent locally, it is the fairest of all taxes, experts say.

E allora siamo a posto così!

"You think [the property tax is] where the revolt should not come, but it does," says Helen Ladd, a property tax expert at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Property tax expert...

Revolt is in full swing in Incline Village, Nev., on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

There, Maryanne Ingemanson's tax bill is now $80,000 a year for a 5,000-square-foot house. She and a group of residents raised $400,000 to fund a lawsuit claiming recent assessments are unfair. Last week, 17 residents won a battle against the tax assessor when an elected county board threw out the new assessments.

Of course, many believe homeowners should be glad that their homes are worth more, says Ms. Ingemanson. But many people - especially the working class and those on fixed incomes - can't always afford the new taxes and have to leave. "This runaway taxes situation is driving people from their homes," she adds.

South Carolina last week passed a law that caps the increase in property assessments at 3 percent per year.

Many Georgia lawmakers are backing a measure to put a similar cap in the state constitution. The bill's sponsor, first-term state Rep. Edward Lindsey (R) from Atlanta, argues that it's unfair to hit homeowners with a big tax boost years before they sell their home and profit from its increased value.

"Not even the IRS is so bold as to tax people on unrealized gain," says Mr. Lindsey. "These are essentially backdoor tax increases that give government no incentive to be efficient or responsive."

Georgia school superintendents say the measure would make it more difficult to raise needed cash for the state's schools since schools would have to go to the voters for additional funds.

"The fervor for doing something about property taxes seems to be unusually high," says Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association.

Should you get taxed for a view?

Assessments can vary according to a community's affluence and aesthetics, such as views of mountains or lakes. Tom Thomson, leader of the "Ax the View Tax" movement in New Hampshire, objects to taxing people on intangible qualities such as a view. "It's another process of dipping into taxpayers' pockets without any legislative process, and that is taxation without representation," says Mr. Thomson, son of the late Gov. Meldrim Thomson Jr.

To be sure, higher assessments alone don't mean higher taxes. But the total tax burden on homeowners rises when local governments do not decrease the tax, or millage, rate when property values spike.

"Reassessment has been so big in many communities that local schools and governments have gotten huge revenue increases without ever having to vote on it, so they sit back and take advantage of the largesse," says South Carolina state Sen. Scott Richardson (R) of Beaufort.

But government should move carefully and try to "smooth out the bumps" of rising property values rather than initiate dramatic reform of a tax that is "basically fair," says Bill Fox, an economist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

"You don't want to strangle government, but you want to make sure that government is not unduly benefiting from unique circumstances in housing prices," he says.

Tax revolt in the states

In the wake of the real estate boom, lawmakers in several states are pushing to keep property taxes from skyrocketing. Among the initiatives:

* Idaho: Lawmakers are mulling over eight bills limiting property taxes. One would revise the "homestead exemption," which now keeps the first $50,000 of a home's value off the tax rolls. The bill boosts that to $100,000.

* South Carolina: Having capped the rise in property tax assessments at 3 percent per year until a home is sold or improved, the legislature is now considering a rollback of property taxes, replacing them with a hike in the sales tax.

* Georgia: Many lawmakers are backing legislation that would put a similar 3 percent cap into the state constitution.

* Nevada: Protesters are gathering signatures for a citizen initiative that would require the state to refund taxpayers if state revenues rise faster than inflation. They also want to cap the growth in property tax bills at 1 percent per year.

* Connecticut: After an uproar over massive assessment hikes for lakefront properties around the state, state officials have ordered cities and towns that have seen property tax spikes to calibrate disputed assessments to "comparable" properties, based on records of recent sales.

(source)U.S. Setting Up Special Ops in Embassies

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military command in charge of counterterrorism campaigns is putting small teams of special operations troops in U.S. embassies to support the global war on terror, officials said Wednesday.

Sottotitolo: silenzio, che dobbiamo sentire se suona il telefono di Netanyahu!

The presence of these teams, which began at least two years ago but has not been publicly announced by U.S. Special Operations Command, was first reported in Wednesday's editions of The New York Times.

The special operations troops do not operate under cover. They are present with the knowledge of both the U.S. ambassador and the host government, officials said.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Steve Mavica, a spokesman for Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., said the teams are known as "military liaison elements" and operate as single individuals or small groups. They work for the U.S. commander responsible for the region in which they are located. That would mean any based in U.S. embassies in the Middle East would report to Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command.

The teams "play a key role" in coordination and planning in connection with security efforts and counterterrorism, Mavica said. He declined to answer a reporter's additional questions such as how many countries the teams operate in and whether the Pentagon is expanding their presence globally, as the Times reported.

Mavica also declined to say when the program began.

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said the program was started "a couple of years ago" but was not more specific. He said these liaisons are the only military personnel inside U.S. embassies who work for the regional military commander rather than for the ambassador.

Whitman described the liaisons' duties as complementary to those of an embassy's defense attache, which is the military officer who works for the ambassador to coordinate with the host country's armed forces.

The Times reported that the move is opposed by some in the Central Intelligence Agency who view it as treading on their turf.

The newspaper said the liaison teams gather intelligence on terrorists. Whitman would say only that they help provide a regional military commander with improved "situational awareness," a term generally synonymous with intelligence.

The Times reported that the liaison teams have been sent to more than a dozen embassies in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America.

(source)G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SCOTT SHANE
Published: March 8, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 7 - Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

The agreement, hashed out in weeks of negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and Republicans critical of the program, dashes Democratic hopes of starting a full committee investigation because the proposal won the support of Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. The two, both Republicans, had threatened to support a fuller inquiry if the White House did not disclose more about the program to Congress.

"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," Ms. Snowe said.

The proposed legislation would create a seven-member "terrorist surveillance subcommittee" and require the administration to give it full access to the details of the program's operations.

Ms. Snowe said the panel would start work on Wednesday, and called it "the beginning, not the end of the process."

"We have to get the facts in order to weigh in," she said. "We will do more if we learn there is more to do."

The agreement would reinforce the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in 1978 to issue special warrants for spying but was sidestepped by the administration. The measure would require the administration to seek a warrant from the court whenever possible.

If the administration elects not to do so after 45 days, the attorney general must certify that the surveillance is necessary to protect the country and explain to the subcommittee why the administration has not sought a warrant. The attorney general would be required to give an update to the subcommittee every 45 days.

Democrats called the deal an abdication of the special bipartisan committee's role as a watchdog, saying the Republicans had in effect blessed the program before learning how it worked or what it entailed.

"The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House," said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the panel.

The House Intelligence Committee said last week that it would seek limited briefings for some panel members so that they could weigh changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but the Republican leaders of the House committee stopped far short of proposing the kind of continuing oversight and rules changes that the Senate committee has settled on. A spokeswoman for the White House, Dana Perino, called the Republican senators' proposal "a generally sound approach."

"We're eager to work with Congress on legislation that would further codify the president's authority," Ms. Perino said. "We remain committed to our principle, that we will not do anything that undermines the program's capabilities or the president's authority."

Republicans on the committee, however, emphasized the administration's resistance to the accord. Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee and helped broker the deal, called it "the agreement we insisted upon."

Ms. Snowe said the proposal had met "considerable reluctance" from the White House in negotiations.

The committee had scheduled a vote on a full investigation for Tuesday afternoon if there was no accord with the White House to disclose more about the program. As of midday, no resolution had been reached.

Mr. Hagel said the group worked out the last-minute deal in long telephone calls with Mr. Cheney; the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers; and Stephen J. Hadley, the assistant to the president for national security.

The proposed bill would allow the president to authorize wiretapping without seeking a warrant for up to 45 days if the communication under surveillance involved someone suspected of being a member of or a collaborator with a specified list of terrorist groups and if at least one party to the conversation was outside the United States.

The administration has provided some information in confidential briefings to a "Gang of Eight" lawmakers made up of the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate, as well as their respective Intelligence Committees. Republican sponsors of the proposal said the new subcommittees would greatly improve lawmakers' ability to obtain digest information because the staffs for the first time would have access to it.

Senator Mike DeWine, the Ohio Republican who helped draft the proposal, said it would bring the program "into the normal oversight of the Senate intelligence committee."

But Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, compared the proposed bill to a doctor's diagnosis of an unexamined patient.

"Congress doesn't have that great a history in reforming programs it knows a lot about," Mr. Wyden said. "Here Congress is trying to legislate in the dark."

Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader, issued a statement supporting the proposal.

It is not clear whether all the Republican critics will back the deal. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said Congress should seek a court ruling on the legitimacy of the program in addition to new oversight.

In a separate Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Specter said, "We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program."

He said he put the administration "on notice" he might seek to block its financing if Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not give more information.

Mr. Specter said in statement later that he hoped for a solution that would avoid resorting to such an extreme action.

(source)Israel will have to act on Iran if UN can't

By Louis Charbonneau

BERLIN (Reuters) - If the U.N. Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself, Israel's defense minister said on Wednesday.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was asked whether Israel was ready to use military action if the Security Council proved unable to act against what Israel and the West believe is a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program.

"My answer to this question is that the state of Israel has the right give all the security that is needed to the people in Israel. We have to defend ourselves," Mofaz told Reuters after a meeting with his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung.

Iran denies wanting nuclear weapons and says it is only interested in the peaceful generation of electricity. It has also threatened to retaliate if Israel or the United States were to bomb any of its nuclear facilities.

In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor to prevent Saddam Hussein from getting nuclear weapons. Saddam's covert atom bomb program continued until U.N. inspectors dismantled it after the 1991 Gulf War, but the Israeli strike set progress back many years.

"The Israeli approach is that the U.S. and the European countries should lead the issue of the Iranian nuclear program to the table of the U.N. Security Council, asking for sanctions. And I hope the sanctions will be effective," Mofaz said.

Mofaz, who was born in Iran, added that Israel believed the 15-nation Security Council should grant the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, sweeping inspection powers so that it can smoke out any secret nuclear arms-related activities in Iran.

"We need to have very deep and large inspections within all the nuclear locations in Iran because Iran has two nuclear programs -- one is a covered one and the second is uncovered," he said.

The Iranian delegation to an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna issued a statement earlier warning that the United States could feel "harm and pain" if the Security Council took up the issue of Tehran's nuclear fuel research and vowed never to abandon its atomic program.

At a news conference with Mofaz, Jung told reporters Germany was already discussing with the five permanent Security Council members -- Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France -- what the council could do to prevent Tehran getting the bomb.

"Everything must be done to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons," Jung said.

A senior diplomat from one of the "EU3" said earlier that the Security Council would probably begin discussing Iran next week and hoped to issue a "presidential statement" urging Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program and cooperate with the IAEA.

(source)Israel slaps the U.S. - and slaps again

Israel has in recent days delivered not one but two slaps to its closest ally.

Finché un bel giorno qualcuno s'incazza e te le mette in conto tutte insieme?

The first came in remarks by ex-Shin Bet chief and senior Kadima candidate Avi Dichter, speaking of negating the road map and moving on to a policy of unilateralism - in contrast to statements by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in her joint news conference with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

The second was delivered via a USAID report, which corroborated the claims of Palestinians that Israel was failing to keep promises it had made to Rice, a situation which according to the study could bring about economic catastrophe, beginning with the destruction of the Gaza hothouses project, which Washington had so strongly supported.

Since her return from her first visit as foreign minister to Washington last month, Tzipi Livni has been boasting of her tight cooperation and ties of coordination with her counterpart Rice. However, it appears that she has no similar relations with Dichter, who is placed a few slots after her on Kadima's Knesset candidate list, because the former Shin Bet chief's plan to replace the road map peace plan with unilateral moves amounts to a slap in the face to Livni's new friend in the American State Department.

Here are the main points in Rice's answer to a question that came up during a joint Livni and Rice press conference, regarding the no-partner approach and the option of unilateral acts:

"We certainly hope that over the next period of time that there will be a partner for Israel to deal with," Rice replied. "That is everyone's hope for the roadmap. That depends on what happens in the Palestinian territories. The United States position on this is very clear and remains the same. No one should try and unilaterally predetermine the outcome of a final status agreement. That's to be done at final status," Rice said.

Rice made it clear that President George Bush's letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon regarding the need to take into consideration the demographic reality created in the West Bank since 1967 does not pave the way for anyone to "try and do that in a preemptive or predetermined way, because these are issues for negotiation at final status."

Perhaps Dichter is not the only Israeli politician who is not impressed by America's No. 1 diplomat. Bassem Jaber, CEO of the Palestine Economic Development Company (PED) is learning this from his own experience. The company he heads bought the Gush Katif hothouses, and because Israel closed the Karni crossing, it throws away thousands of vegetable crates every day and is sending its employees home.

U.S. envoy James Wolfensohn, Secretary of State Rice and the European Union "they all promised that the crossings would not be an obstacle," he says, and notes the millions of dollars invested in rehabilitating the hothouses, including donations from Israelis and American Jews.

According to Jaber, sleepless nights and determination bore fruit, mainly strawberries. The hothouses provide jobs for some 6,000 workers. All this is going down the drain because of Israel's decision to close the crossing. The direct losses amount to $70,000-$100,000 a day, and the total damage is much greater. Jaber expects that if Rice and other involved parties continue to ignore their obligations, he would have to close shop.

A recent World Bank report, which states that Israel is not carrying out the agreement regarding the crossing between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Haaretz, March 6), confirms that Rice is not making any impression on Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

Dai? Niente biscottone per Condoglianza Rice?

(source)Iran will be stopped, Cheney vows to Israeli lobbyists

Vice President Dick Cheney has vowed unshakeable solidarity with Israel, and condemned the new Palestinian government.

Cheney made it clear Iran would not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, described the Iranian regime as "irresponsible," and warned the United States had "all options on the table."

"The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences," he said.

Cheney was addresing 5,000 pro-Israel activists from all 50 states Monday who gathered in Washington, D.C., to attend the two-day Annual Policy Conference of AIPAC, America's pro-Israel lobbyist organization, which began Sunday. The focus of the conference was "the urgency of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons and isolating the Palestinian government, which is now controlled by the terrorist group Hamas." Additionally, AIPAC delegates had 400 lobbying appointments with members of the House and Senate who were in attendance.

The American vice president joined U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, in condemning the new Hamas-led Palestinian government. Bolton too echoed the vice-president's "unshakeable" commitment to the U.S.-Israel alliance.

"While Mr. Ahmadi-nejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has clearly failed his lessons in history, indulge me a moment if you will to offer him up at least one lesson on current events: our commitment to Israel's security and the alliance between the United States and Israel are unshakeable," Bolton told the conference.

Si potrebbe avere un minimo di decenza? Grazie!

(source)Russia gold and currency reserves increased to record-high.

MOSCOW, March 7 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves increased by 13, 691 billon dollars (by 7.5 percent) for February-January to 195.931 billion dollars, Prime-Tass said Tuesday with reference to the Central Bank.

The size of gold and currency reserves is another record for the whole period of regular publication of this information by the Central Bank.

As compared to January 1, 2006, when the figure was 182.2 billion dollars, the reserves also have grown by about 3.5 percent.

(source)No reason for optimism in Iraq

By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor

Last Friday afternoon my BBC colleagues and I filmed at the Baghdad city mortuary.

A few months ago we would have done it as a matter of course. But now the security situation in Baghdad is so bad that we had to plan our trip with some care.

The mortuary has been the subject of a good deal of controversy.

The Washington Post reported that 1,300 bodies had been taken there since the upsurge in sectarian violence which followed the bombing of the Shia shrine at Samarra on 22 February.

A former UN official said that many of these bodies showed signs of torture and summary execution.

By contrast the US commander in Iraq, Gen George W Casey Jr, insisted that there had been no great increase in the amount of communal violence and that the number of deaths was probably around 350.

'More bodies'

At the mortuary itself, the guards showed us a large refrigerator truck, parked alongside the building, which they said had been provided by the Americans because of the overflow of bodies from the mortuary itself.

And during the 20 minutes we filmed there, three more bodies were brought in.

This is purely anecdotal evidence, of course. Journalism is an art, not a science, and everyone knows how inaccurate it can often be.

Yet the big advantage of being a journalist is that you can go out and see things for yourself.

That's not easy in Baghdad nowadays - though this in itself is evidence of the way things are deteriorating here. But experience has encouraged me to believe the journalists, not government officials, at times of trouble like this.

Doom and gloom

In 1978, as the revolution in Iran unfolded, it was clear to those of us who spent our days out in the streets, seeing the mounting violence for ourselves, that the demonstrators were losing their fear of the Shah and his forces.

At the time I often used to visit the highly intelligent and generous British ambassador in Tehran at the time, Sir Anthony Parsons. He insisted that the Shah would survive, and he assured the British government that this would happen.

Afterwards, with characteristic honesty, he wrote a book about why he got it wrong. The main reason was that his information came from the Shah's own ministers. It was too dangerous for his own diplomats to spend much time in the streets, finding out what was happening.

But the journalists could see for themselves that the revolutionaries were building up an unstoppable momentum.

It gives me no pleasure today to forecast further doom and gloom here in Iraq. But, as in Iran in 1978, the facts on the street contradict the assertions of the generals, the politicians and the diplomats.

Slow progress

Ever since the invasion in 2003, you have been more likely to turn out right if you were pessimistic than if you were an optimist. At the end of 2003 a well-known columnist wrote with immense assurance that there might be a spike of violence until early 2004, but that afterwards the trouble would die away. He could not have been more wrong.

Coalition officials assured us that the elections in January and December last year would result in a down-turn in the number of killings and bombings. They were wrong, too. Today the situation in Iraq is worse than at any time since the fall of Saddam.

It might be different if the politicians who were elected in the December election could agree to form a government. So far, though, they haven't made much progress.

The caretaker prime minister, Dr Jaafari, is increasingly unacceptable to the Kurds and to most of the Sunnis, as well as to the Americans. So far, though, no likely candidate has emerged from the Shia majority to take his place.

Now some senior Iraqi politicians are saying it could be June or July before a government is formed.

It matters, because the absence of effective government is a real encouragement to the insurgency.

Worshippers targeted

Just over a year ago, in the wake of the January election, the level of violence dropped noticeably, and the generals and politicians in London and Washington allowed themselves to think that the insurgency might have been defeated.

Not so: the insurgent leaders were worried that the Iraqi people had been mobilised against them by the success of the election, and they were waiting to see what was going to happen.

But it took three months before a government was formed. Public opinion was alienated, and the insurgency was soon more effective than ever.

This time, the politicians are taking even longer to get their act together. And in the meantime the worst of the violence is directed, not at the Americans or the British, nor even at the Iraqi police and army, but at ordinary worshippers at Sunni and Shia mosques.

The level of sectarian violence has dropped off a little in recent days. But Iraq hasn't turned a corner, and it doesn't even look like turning one.

If there is a good reason to be a bit more optimistic, I haven't spotted it yet.

(source)Gonzales defends conditions at Guantanamo

By Gideon Long

LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's leading lawyer defended the Guantanamo Bay prison camp on Tuesday, saying detainees there were granted state-of-the-art health care, good food and [...rullo di tamburi...] "unprecedented legal protection."

Responding to complaints by the United Nations, human rights groups, religious leaders and some national governments, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the camp was entirely lawful and essential to the protection of the United States.

"We operate Guantanamo because there's a necessity, a need, for the United States to detain enemy combatants somewhere," he said in a speech in London. "That was the genesis of Guantanamo. This need continues today."

Gonzales said all detainees at the camp in eastern Cuba were granted an assessment by U.S. authorities, a right of reply and a separate, formal hearing of their case before a three-member tribunal with a right to appeal.

"We are aware of no other nation in history that has afforded such protection for enemy combatants," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Included among the 500 detainees at the camp are terrorist trainers, bomb makers, former bodyguards of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and potential suicide bombers, he said.

"Detainees are permitted access to state-of-the-art medical care, healthy meals consistent with their cultural and religious requirements and an opportunity to observe religious beliefs."

Organizations across the world, from the United Nations to the Vatican, have decried U.S. use of indefinite detentions without charge at Guantanamo. In four years, only 10 detainees from the camp have been formally charged with a crime.

"Gonzales appears to be missing the point completely. He completely fails to acknowledge the numerous allegations of ill treatment coming from Guantanamo," human rights group Amnesty International said.

"If the conditions of detention for detainees are as great as he claims then why not allow the U.N. and human rights Organizations such as Amnesty to visit Guantanamo and speak directly to the detainees themselves," it added.

Former detainees have also accused U.S. authorities of using torture at Guantanamo, a charge denied by the Pentagon.

"Some say that in pursuing the war on terror, America has failed to respect human rights and the rule of law," Gonzales said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

He said around 265 detainees had been either freed or transferred from Guantanamo since it opened in the wake of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Of those, 15 had since been recaptured or killed.

(source)Palazzo del Quirinale, 8 marzo 2006

Onorevole Ministro,
Gentili e Care Signore,

benvenute al Quirinale.

Benvenute! Insomma, l'avete pagato voi, quindi è anche roba vostra: mettetevi comode!

In questa giornata dedicata alle donne, ho voluto riunire alcune di coloro che, operando con intelligenza e tenacia, hanno saputo raggiungere traguardi importanti. Qui, oggi, Voi non rappresentate soltanto voi stesse. Accanto a voi siedono, idealmente, tutte le donne d'Italia.

Siedono, idealmente, ma pagano, realmente. E' l'affare del secolo: dove si firma?

Donne che con saggezza e fatica si industriano per vivere i molteplici ruoli a cui le chiama il nostro tempo.

?

Colgono le opportunità offerte dalla evoluzione sociale, dalle nuove tecnologie e dalla economia della conoscenza.

!

Lavorano fuori e dentro casa, curano con dedizione profonda la famiglia, i figli ed al tempo stesso svolgono compiti impegnativi nelle professioni che hanno scelto.

Perché in queste occasioni solenni le professioni si scelgono, mentre in altre occasioni ci si deve accontentare di quello che c'è per essere flessibili. Dipende un po' dal calendario.

Tutte cittadine che contribuiscono in maniera ugualmente decisiva al progresso della Nazione, ne meritano la riconoscenza.

Tradotto: rubiamo i soldi anche a voi, non vi preoccupate.

Il cammino per l'affermazione della vostra cittadinanza ha accompagnato quello della rinascita della democrazia italiana.

Purtroppo non potete ancora entrare nell'edificio dei muratori per cercare la stella polare, ma pazienza.

Il 2 giugno 1946, dopo oltre venti anni di dittatura, gli Italiani tornarono alle urne. Le donne arrivarono ai seggi, con l'emozione della prima grande esperienza di partecipazione politica, come elettrici e come candidate. Quel giorno votammo per il referendum istituzionale - monarchia o repubblica - e per l'elezione dei membri dell'Assemblea Costituente. Sulla scheda elettorale, la Repubblica era simboleggiata da un volto femminile, circondato da due rami di quercia e di ulivo intrecciati. Quel simbolo fu scelto, dalla maggioranza delle italiane e degli italiani, come il nostro simbolo.

Invece l'Europa è simboleggiata da non si sa cosa, visto che il referendum per il trattato europeo ve lo siete imboscato firmando solennemente. Però va bene lo stesso.

556 deputati furono eletti con il compito di scrivere la Costituzione Repubblicana. Solo 21 di essi erano donne. 5 di loro, Maria Federici, Angela Gotelli, Nilde Jotti, Tina Merlin e Teresa Noce, furono chiamate a far parte della Commissione dei 75, incaricata dall'Assemblea di redigere il testo del documento fondante della nostra convivenza civile.

Teresa Mattei, un'altra delle madri della Patria che ho avuto il piacere di incontrare qualche giorno fa, ha ancora negli occhi l'entusiasmo, l'orgoglio di tutti i Costituenti, uomini e donne, indipendentemente dal partito di appartenenza.

Possiamo sapere chi è l'orgoglioso che ha scritto l'articolo 52?

Quest'anno celebriamo con solennità i sessanta anni della Repubblica.

Con l'inutile spot in TV, pagato anch'esso dal contribuente.

Guardiamo con soddisfazione i progressi che la nostra democrazia ha saputo compiere. Siamo determinati a rispondere alle sfide a cui essa è chiamata, fiduciosi che saprà migliorarsi e trovare nuova energia, grazie all'impegno delle sue cittadine e dei suoi cittadini.

Tradotto: ci servono altri soldi.

Per assicurare il progresso del Paese occorre riconoscere l'accresciuto ruolo della donna e migliorare i servizi sociali indispensabili per rendere piena e attiva la sua presenza nel lavoro e nella vita civile e politica.

Tradotto: no, davvero, ne servono altri! Che avete da ridere?

Dobbiamo guardare a quel modello sociale che in tanti Paesi d'Europa si è rivelato efficace per promuovere uguali opportunità, garanzie di servizi di sostegno, alti livelli di occupazione femminile.

Ne prendiamo nota per il mega-post.

In questo modo si possono conciliare gli obiettivi di crescita economica con quelli di coesione sociale, realizzare una società più giusta e aperta, capace di "includere" e di tutelare, sempre e dovunque, la dignità della persona.

E perché non realizzare un mondo più pulito e solidale, equo e sostenibile?

Il diritto alle "pari opportunità" tra donne e uomini è conclamato, ma ancora ben lontano dall'essere tradotto in azioni concrete.

Tradotto: per pari opportunità intendiamo pari risultati, per legge, a forza di quote.

Dobbiamo rifuggire dalla retorica delle pari opportunità, guardare la realtà.

Non mi dire.

Le statistiche, le inchieste Istat e Eurispes fotografano un contesto ancora difficile per le donne. In Italia il tasso di occupazione femminile è fermo al 45 per cento circa, un dato lontano dal 60 per cento che rappresenta l'obiettivo europeo fissato per il 2010 a Lisbona.

L'obiettivo europeo?

Il tasso di disoccupazione femminile è assai più alto di quello maschile, ed è preoccupante che in molte aree d'Italia, soprattutto al Sud, le donne rinuncino addirittura a cercare un impiego.

Tradotto: ecco perché ogni tanto il tasso di disoccupazione diminuisce.

Anche dopo l'approvazione della revisione costituzionale dell'art. 51, nel 2003, [per le pari opportunità nell'accesso agli uffici pubblici e alle cariche elettive] non sono stati fatti passi avanti sostanziali. Siete poco presenti nelle posizioni decisionali nel mondo del lavoro, sia pubblico sia privato.

Forse occorrono più quote, che dici?

E' una situazione che non discende da divari di capacità, ma è, in larga parte, il risultato di condizioni più difficili nell'ingresso e, soprattutto, nello sviluppo della carriera professionale.

Nel dubbio, aggiungerei qualche quota.

Laddove ci sono condizioni di partenza paritarie, le donne si affermano. L'ho constatato nel ricevere, il 28 febbraio 2005, 380 nuovi giovani uditori giudiziari: le vincitrici del concorso erano oltre il 60 per cento.

Perché invece non ci parli dei lavori veri, non quelli inventati a forza di concorsi?

Anche nel mondo imprenditoriale le donne italiane si stanno affermando. Alla fine del 2005, il numero delle imprese femminili, pari a un quinto del totale delle imprese, sta crescendo: è oltre 1,2 milioni, con un incremento dell'1,8 per cento rispetto al 2004. Questo sviluppo è addirittura superiore a quello del totale delle imprese italiane, pari all'1,1 per cento.

Speriamo che sia un fenomeno spontaneo, non alimentato da quote, agevolazioni assortite, redistribuzioni e leggi su misura. Ho indovinato?

Più in generale, per "rimuovere gli ostacoli di fatto" alla partecipazione femminile alla vita della società, vanno, ad esempio, migliorati i servizi per l'infanzia, attualmente in grado di soddisfare solo il 7,4 per cento della domanda.

Evidentemente c'è qualcosa che non va. Forse dovremmo far intervenire lo Stato per rispondere al restante 92.6% della domanda, che per qualche strano motivo viene ignorato!

Il rapporto fra uomo e donna nella gestione delle incombenze familiari è ancora sbilanciato.

Io scriverei una legge anche per quello.

Sempre secondo l'ISTAT, le donne dedicano alla cura della casa e della famiglia un tempo circa tre volte superiore rispetto a quello dei loro compagni. Non invoco certo l'applicazione di criteri meramente quantitativi. Auspico che si trovino nuovi equilibri nella vita di coppia; che si abbia una migliore ripartizione dei compiti di ciascuno, massimizzando la complementarità delle qualità personali; che si condivida più pienamente la responsabilità e la gioia di essere genitori.

Certo. Sentite questa:

Blow to machismo as Spain forces men to do housework

Spanish men will have to learn to change nappies and don washing-up gloves under the terms of a new law designed to strike a blow at centuries of Latin machismo.

The law, due to be passed this month, is likely to provoke a revolution in family affairs in a country where 40% of men reportedly do no housework at all. It will oblige men to "share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention" of children and elderly family members, according to the draft approved by the Spanish parliament's justice commission.

This will become part of the marriage contract at civil wedding ceremonies later this year.

"The idea of equality within marriage always stumbles over the problem of work in the house and caring for dependent people," said Margarita Uría, of the Basque Nationalist party, who was behind what is an amendment to a new divorce law.

"This will be a good way of reminding people what their duties are. It is something feminists have been wanting for a long time."

Failure to meet the obligations will be taken into consideration by judges when determining the terms of divorces. Men who refuse to do their part may be given less frequent contact with their children.

Spanish women spend five times longer on housework than their husbands. Even where both have jobs outside the home, Spanish women still do three times as much work in the house.

"It is not just about housework, though. Women also end up doing most of the caring for the elderly," said Ms Uría.

A study five years ago by Spain's Centre for Sociological Investigation concluded that fathers spent an average of 13 minutes each day looking after their children.

Only 19% of Spanish men thought it was right for mothers of school age children to have a full-time job. More than a third thought mothers should not work outside the home at all.

The change to the Spanish legal code will see domestic obligations added to a list of marital duties that currently includes fidelity, living together and helping one another.

The initiative has received the backing of all Spain's political parties, including those of a conservative or traditionally Catholic bent.

Ms Uría said that the Socialists, who run Spain's minority government and voted against the clause when the draft went through the commission, had told her that they, too, were now in favour of it.

That should guarantee that, when the law - which will also make divorce proceedings faster and easier - is voted on in parliament in the next few weeks, the obligation to share domestic chores will be added to the statute books.

Avanti:

Famiglia e lavoro sono il terreno in cui si sviluppa la personalità di ciascuno. Alla base della speranza di progresso c'è il contributo di donne e di uomini che sappiano operare insieme.

Sottotitolo: per pagarmi lo stipendio.

A Torino, in occasione dell'inaugurazione delle Olimpiadi, ho visto tante donne sfilare da protagoniste. La loro presenza sorridente, il loro entusiasmo, il loro impegno rappresentano il volto nuovo di un mondo che avanza.

Auguri a tutte Voi, a tutte le donne d'Italia.

Washing machine fingers lazy male

A Spanish designer has come up with what could be the perfect solution for the woman who feels frustrated that she has to do all the house chores.

It is a washing machine called "Your Turn", which will not let the same person use it twice in a row.

It uses fingerprint recognition technology to ensure the job of loading is not dumped on just one individual.

Pep Torres was approached by a Spanish white goods manufacturer to come up with an innovative Father's Day gift.

"I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn't do anything around the house except drink beers," said Torres, from DeBuenaTinta in Barcelona.

"Spain is changing a lot, and I wanted to come up with an invention to enable men to do more around the home."

Fast fingers

Some men may disagree that it is a good present for Father's Day and argue that it is more of a gift for the lady of the house.

"It was a tongue-in-cheek idea which seemed to catch the imagination," said Torres.

"It's an invention that has a philosophy behind it and I hope both women and men will think it's time for the men to do more around the house."

Your Turn requires both partners to register their fingerprints on the sensor while it is hooked up to their home computer.

When the sensor is then plugged into the washing machine, the software will only allow the wash programme to start if a different finger is placed on it each time.

So what about the cheats - how can you get round it?

Torres has an unusual solution: "I suggest the man can leave his finger at home... we have 10 fingers, so he won't miss one - well, you don't use the little finger a lot.

Io suggerisco di usare la carta d'identità biometrica europea anzi globale.

"Seriously though, the only way to override the system is to crawl around the back of the machine, unplug the sensor, take it back to the home computer and re-programme it - not that easy.

"We have to make it difficult to change otherwise it defeats the object of the exercise."

All thumbs

Your Turn is also childproof. Parents can be confident that young fingers will not be able to operate the washing machine as it is only their fingerprints that can start it.

But there is one bone of contention. The same person can still load the washing time after time. The finger print sensor only controls who starts the programme.

In future designs, Torres hopes to bring the door release mechanism under the thumb of the fingerprint sensor, too.

In the meantime, Your Turn is expected to go on sale in the next couple of weeks.

The one thing it will not do though is something that most guys are notoriously bad at - separating the whites from the coloureds.

Altrove...

Housework? Men do it best

Initial reports from the Nottinghamshire village where the men had to survive without women for a week - for a reality television show, couldn't you guess? - sound rather heartening. Earlier this month, all the wives and girlfriends in the village of Harby were spirited away for a Centreparcs mini-break, courtesy of the BBC. While they cavorted in Sherwood Forest's "sub-tropical paradise", their men were filmed getting to grips with child care, domestic chores and community projects.

Clearly, the BBC was hoping for anarchy: the men would prove comically inept housekeepers, the children would starve and run wild, village life would splutter to a halt. But the experiment does not appear to have gone entirely to plan. Although some of the men struggled with basic house-husbandry, and all of them missed the company of their wives, the longed-for havoc failed to materialise.

Che sfortuna, vero?

Food was put on tables, children were delivered to and from school, pets were fed, and no one actually drowned in domestic squalor. On top of these achievements, the men managed to build a fence around the local playing field, bake welcome-home cakes for their wives, throw a celebratory feast in the village hall, and stage a musical spectacular for the women's entertainment. A pretty impressive week's work.

It should not be surprising to learn that men can be self-sufficient and hard-working. They used to rule the Earth, after all. But, partly for that reason, modern society (and especially the female half) prefers to see men fail. The popularity of reality television programmes such as Wife Swap derives largely from our delight in seeing the stronger sex brought to its knees by the simplest domestic tasks.

This is not just a matter of historical schadenfreude. For all the strides we have made towards freedom and independence, women still feel oppressed - and one of the main reasons for that is housework. By their own admission, men have failed to rise to the challenge of domestic equality: only 12 per cent of British men say they do most of the chores - the same proportion as in 1954.

While women have taken on more and more responsibilities, quietly boiling with resentment as they dash from office to school to supermarket, men have barely budged an inch. No wonder a recent magazine survey found that young women can no longer face combining work with a family life: having it all is just too exhausting.

Instead of berating our menfolk, however, perhaps we should learn from them. The reason most men aren't as house proud as women is that they don't believe it really matters - and they may be right. As bachelors, they often live quite contentedly in a sea of discarded underpants, beer cans and mouldy crockery. Nothing terrible happens as a consequence: they still manage to hold down jobs, make friends - even pull off the occasional seduction.

And that is where the trouble starts. No sooner has a woman slipped between a lover's greasy sheets than she starts fretting about how to housetrain him. Next thing you know, she's ironing his smalls and fluffing his towels, and getting in a rage when he doesn't return the favour. The assumption is always that men need to raise their standards - never that our standards are absurdly high.

In the days when the domestic sphere was the only place where women could excel, it made sense for us to be pathologically house-proud. Now, though, we have bigger stages on which to shine. Women are doing so well academically and at work that we will soon be richer than men: within 20 years, we will own 60 per cent of Britain's wealth, according to a new study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Why, then, do so many of us still live in dread of having an imperfect home - as if it were a failure of femininity?

It seems to me that we are the ones who need retraining. Men could teach us to be less perfectionist; to turn a blind eye to the unplumped cushion or the sticky tablecloth, let the dust settle where it may, and spend our time in more pleasurable pursuits. As the men of Harby have shown, you can get an awful lot done by being a bit slapdash.

I love hearing about have-a-go heroes; especially the young ones. Pensioners such as Jean Collop, who hurled a garden gnome at a burglar and knocked him out, are, I'm afraid less surprising. Old people are more fearless than the young at the best of times, and the generation that lived through the war have especially steely nerves.

The late Denis Hills - a writer and war hero who was a friend of my parents - was apprehending criminals well into his eighties. Once, when he was on the Tube, a gang of yobs started spraying graffiti all over the carriage. Denis charged at them with a mighty roar, waving his walking stick, and the youths scattered in terror.

Postwar milksops such as myself generally lack the courage to do the right thing - but, as Nicola Horlick and Gazanfar Ali demonstrate, there are some very honourable exceptions. Mr Ali, 23, was working in a corner shop in Camberwell last week when a masked gunman burst in and shot him in the groin. The indefatigable Mr Ali sprang straight back up, wrestled the gun off his assailant and beat him unconscious with it. Even Denis, I think, would have been impressed by that.

Women are powering ahead in the race for riches

Female millionaires will outnumber their male counterparts across all age groups within 20 years, says research published today. It describes women as the "financial powerhouses" of Britain.

The study predicts that women will own 60 per cent of the nation's personal wealth by 2025, with many using their professional and personal skills to extraordinary financial effect.

At present, women millionaires between the ages of 18-44, and over the age of 65, outnumber male millionaires, the report says. They own 48 per cent of the nation's personal wealth.

But significant change will occur as a result of the rise in "financially sophisticated younger women", who will swell the numbers of those who inherit their wealth.

Many more women will own property - property ownership has helped to catapult women in business - and girls are performing better than boys at school, obtaining traditionally male, high-powered jobs.

Women are also living longer and are more likely to inherit. Then there are those who marry - and divorce - "well".

Women are increasingly using their business wiles to gain financial rewards from their private lives. In America they are classified as Boomers (those who have inherited their husband's wealth) and Sarahs (Single And Rich And Happy) who have made their cash through clever wrangling in the divorce courts.

Claire Symonds, a spokesman for Coutts Bank, said: "Women are benefiting from enormous divorce settlements, commonly leaving them 50 per cent of all marital assets, and wising up to their financial rights."

The research, carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, for the Liverpool Victoria friendly society said there were 47,355 women millionaires aged between 18 and 44 compared with 37,935 men.

In the over-65 group, women millionaires outnumber their male counterparts by 71,369 to 67,865.

Although men still earn more on average than women, the pattern is changing.

L'avventura continua nei prossimi allegri mega-post...

(source)Two killed, four wounded in Basra shooting

xBASRA, Iraq (AP) Two men were burned to death in their car after a shootout with Iraqi police in this southern city Monday, and security officials said the victims were British citizens.

Non mi dire, altri inglesi a Basra. Sarà un caso oppure una coincidenza?

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said he was aware of unsubstantiated reports of an incident involving non-Arabs.

A third person in the car, also believed to be a British citizen, was wounded and rushed away by police, said police Capt. Mushtaq Kadhim. Two Iraqi policemen and two civilians also were wounded in the shooting, he said.

Britain's Ministry of Defense said it was aware of reports of an incident in Basra and was trying to establish the veracity of the information.

A ministry spokesman said no British military personnel were involved in any incident or injured Monday.

The Foreign Office spokesman said his department was aware of "unsubstantiated reports of an incident involving non-Arabs."

There was no information available to suggest British diplomats were involved, the Foreign office spokesman said.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity, according to British government policy.

According to Kadhim, the attack occurred about 9 p.m. after a police patrol chased two suspicious cars and forced them to stop in the Jazaer neighborhood of central Basra.

As policemen surrounded the cars and asked those inside for identification, one of the vehicles sped away, Kadhim said. As the second car tried to follow, policemen opened fire, setting it on fire and killing two occupants. One person was wounded.

Shortly after the shooting and as the car was still on fire, a British military force in two armored personnel carriers and four armored jeeps appeared at the scene of the conflict, but they quickly left.

British troops are headquartered in Basra.

(source)Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters

La lotta contro il crimine, e contro il terrorismo, con i tuoi tax dollars:

WASHINGTON - In the summer of 1965, Marine Cpl. Jerry Texiero quietly disappeared from his California base, plagued by personal demons and a mounting opposition to the Vietnam War.

Forty years later, in the summer of 2005, Texiero - now known as Gerome Conti - was taken into custody by police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., after the Marine Corps tracked him down.

Thirty years after the war ended, hundreds of Vietnam-era deserters are still on the loose. Conti's attorneys, Louis Font and Tod Ensign, say the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps in particular, are cracking down on long-term cases in an effort to warn current-day troops in Iraq against deserting.

"My view is that the Marines are trying to send a message to people in the ranks today that they, too, will be required to participate in a war, whether they think it's illegal or immoral," Font says.

Badombe> Bastardi disertori, non credono nell'esportazione della democrazia!

Marine spokesman Capt. Jay Delarosa says there was nothing unusual about the treatment of Conti.

However, the Marine official in charge of bringing in deserters said after Conti's arrest that his office was being more aggressive.

Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

"I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," Averhart told the newspaper.

E' straordinario, lo chiama pure lavoro.

Delarosa said Averhart would not answer questions from USA TODAY. Asked whether the Marine Corps stands by Averhart's comments, Delarosa said, "I wasn't involved in that particular interview with CWO Averhart." He added that the Marine Corps has "discouraged most requests for interviews because CWO Averhart has been frequently misquoted."

Will Van Sant, who wrote the Times article, says the Marines never contacted him after it appeared.

Conti, 65, says he was surprised. "I thought they couldn't possibly be looking for me anymore. I would think they would have stopped looking for anybody who had been gone as long as I had."

Conti was held for five months - four in solitary confinement - then given an other-than-honorable discharge in January. If he had been court-martialed and convicted, he could have faced three years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.

Another long-term Marine deserter, Ernest "Buck" McQueen, was arrested in Fort Worth in January. McQueen was Ernest Johnson Jr. when he left Camp Lejeune, N.C., in November 1969 because of concerns about going to Vietnam. McQueen, 55, also was discharged without disciplinary action.

McQueen says he didn't take a new name to hide. His Social Security card says "McQueen." He says he was born Ernest Johnson Jr., but when his biological father left, his mother raised her son by her married name, McQueen. When he joined the Marines, he says, they insisted he go by Ernest Johnson Jr.

The government drafted men for the armed forces during wartime from the Civil War until 1973. Conti and McQueen enlisted.

In 1974, President Ford offered clemency to Vietnam draft resisters and deserters. Only 27,000 of 350,000 eligible applied. The offer expired on April 1, 1975. In 1977, President Carter pardoned those who dodged the war by not registering or fleeing the country. Neither Conti nor McQueen applied for the Ford pardon. Both spent decades hiding their past from families and employers. McQueen kept his military experience from two wives and two children, and even Conti's best friend in Florida, Elaine Smith, knew nothing of his history with the Marines.

McQueen says he had been in the Marines for nearly two years when he learned of the My Lai massacre in 1968, when hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers. "I saw photos of guys with ears on their chains. I lost my desire to be a part of it."

Conti says his decision to desert was a combination of lingering emotional scars from a childhood lived in foster homes and concerns about stories he also was hearing about Vietnam.

Special Agent Tom Lorang of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) says most older desertion cases are filed away after an initial investigation is completed, although some are re-examined.

Except for the Marine Corps, military officials say long-term cases normally are closed when deserters voluntarily come back in or are stopped by civilian law officials, not through efforts to track them down.

That's not Conti's or McQueen's story. Conti says he was told his file was reopened and his fingerprints were run through a national database. He was in the database because he had been convicted of fraud and theft in 1998. He was on probation and paying restitution when the Marines caught up with him.

McQueen, a carpenter, says his former brother-in-law was called by Marine investigators, and he told them where to find him. "This kind of... put me in a financial bind," says McQueen, who had been doing carpentry for a church when he was seized.

Conti has returned to his job selling boats, which his employer kept open for him while he was locked up.

"They just need to declare amnesty for everybody from a certain time back or from certain conflicts," says Elaine Smith, Conti's friend. "These guys... just had issues, as we all did back in the '60s."

Military officials maintain that those who deserted the service are liable under law, no matter how unpopular a war was. "We actively investigate all cases of desertion," says Fred Hall, a spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command. "For each of the active deserters we have on our rolls - 1,190 as of 31 Jan. '06 - there is a federal warrant out for their arrest."

(source)Architects threaten to boycott Israel over 'apartheid' barrier

A group including some of Britain's most prominent architects is considering calling for an economic boycott of Israel's construction industry in protest at the building of Israeli settlements and the separation barrier in the Occupied Territories.

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, whose members include Richard Rogers and the architectural critic Charles Jenckes, met for the first time last week in secret at the London headquarters of Lord Rogers' practice. He introduced the meeting, and the 60 attendees went on to condemn the illegal annexation of Palestinian land and the construction of the vast fence and concrete separation barrier running through the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The group said that architects, planners and engineers working on Israeli projects in the occupied territories were "complicit in social, political and economic oppression", and "in violation of their professional code of ethics".

It said that: "Planning, architecture and other construction disciplines are being used to promote an apartheid system of environmental control."

The meeting discussed a boycott of Israel - targeting Israeli-made construction materials and Israeli architects and construction companies - as well as possibly calling for the expulsion of Israeli architects from the International Union of Architects.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy said: "Whoever supports a just solution should refrain from any manner of boycott. It just puts more obstacles in the way of reconciliation in our region.

"If these people care about the Palestinian cause they should help to build bridges not destroy."

Israeli architects denounced the initiative. Ofer Kolker, a leading, London-trained Israeli architect, said it would target a whole group, whether or not individuals were involved in the occupied territories.

Mi ricorda vagamente qualcosa.

"What will they boycott?" Mr Kolker asked. "British architects have never cooperated with their Israeli colleagues. British architects have always had a preference for the Arabs."

Quindi?

There have been several attempts to organise boycotts of Israel, from the virtually defunct Arab League boycott to the attempts to organise an academic boycott at the height of the Intifada. Amnesty International has campaigned against the Irish cement company CRH, which it claims held a large shareholding in a company supplying cement to build the separation barrier.

Earlier this week, the Church of England's general synod voted to divest church funds from companies profiting from Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. The main target of the plan will be Caterpillar, whose diggers have been used to demolish Palestinian homes. Caterpillar says the US military sold [si dice "sold" adesso?] them to Israel, but the church which sell its £2.5m of shares anyway.

Any boycott would aim to embarrass Israel into halting the building of the barrier and settlements, and the "unrestrained destruction" in historic West Bank cities.

Members said that final tactics were not yet decided but they stressed that all options up to an industry-wide boycott were open.

Eyal Weizman, the Israeli director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmith's College in London, urged action. "A boycott would be totally legitimate," he said. "The wall and the settlements have been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice and we should boycott any company which does business, any architects that participate - anyone facilitating these human rights violations and war crimes."

Charles Jenckes told The Independent: "There reaches a certain point where an architect can't sit on the fence. Not to stand up to it would be to be complicit."

He said the separation barrier built by Israel was "a contorted, crazy, mad, divisive, drunken thing".

"In 10 years' time its builders will see it as a great folly," he said. "Architecturally it is madness. I understand fully that security is the problem for Israel and they have the right to protect themselves. But this is not the solution.

"It is an extremist measure which forments extremism, by incarcerating and intimidating Palestinians." He called for architects to gradually increase pressure on Israeli. George Ferguson, former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who was not at the meeting, said: "It is right that architects should not play a part in building communities and structures that drive people apart."

The biologist Steven Rose, who led the British academic boycott of Israel from 2002, said: "Architecture and planning are an integral part of the racist apartheid state."

(source)Human quadrupeds discovered in Turkey

LONDON (AFP) - The discovery of a Turkish family that walks on all fours could aid research into the evolution of humans.

?!

Researchers believe the five brothers and sisters, who can walk naturally only on all fours, may provide new information on how humans evolved from four-legged hominids to walk upright.

Nicholas Humphrey, evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, told The Times the discovery opened "an extraordinary window on our past".

"I do not think they were designed to be quadrupeds by their genes, but their unique genetic make-up allowed them to be," he said.

"It has produced an extraordinary window on our past. It is physically possible, which noone would have guessed from the [modern] human skeleton."

The siblings, the subject of a new BBC documentary to be aired on March 17, suffer from a genetic abnormality that may prevent them from walking upright.

Instead, they use their palms like heels with their fingers sticking up from the ground.

The BBC said the documentary would contribute to fierce scientific debate and raised profound questions about what it is to be human.

Humphrey, who has contributed to the documentary, believes the style of walking may be a throwback to a form of behaviour abandoned by humans more than three million years ago.

Two sisters and one son have only ever walked on two hands and two feet, while another daughter and son occasionally walk on two feet.

All five are mentally retarded and have problems with language as a result of a form of underdevelopment of the brain known as cerebellar ataxia.

However Humphrey told the Times their behaviour may be partly the result of their parents tolerating the behaviour in childhood.

They are aged between 18 and 34 and live in southern Turkey, athough the makers of the documentary have not disclosed their exact location.

"They walk like animals and that's very disturbing at first. But we were also very moved by this family's tremendous warmth and humanity," Jemima Harrison of Passionate Productions told the Times.

(source)8,000 desert during Iraq war

At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Since fall 2003, 4,387 Army soldiers, 3,454 Navy sailors and 82 Air Force personnel have deserted. The Marine Corps does not track the number of desertions each year but listed 1,455 Marines in desertion status last September, the end of fiscal 2005, says Capt. Jay Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman.

Desertion records are kept by fiscal year, so there are no figures from the beginning of the war in March 2003 until that fall.

Some lawyers who represent deserters say the war in Iraq is driving more soldiers to question their service and that the Pentagon is cracking down on deserters.

"The last thing they want is for people to think... that this is like Vietnam," says Tod Ensign, head of Citizen Soldier, an anti-war group that offers legal aid to deserters. (Related story: Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters)

Desertion numbers have dropped since 9/11. The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marine Corps showed 1,603 Marines in desertion status in 2001. That had declined by 148 in 2005.

The desertion rate was much higher during the Vietnam era. The Army saw a high of 33,094 deserters in 1971 - 3.4% of the Army force. But there was a draft and the active-duty force was 2.7 million.

Desertions in 2005 represent 0.24% of the 1.4 million U.S. forces.

Opposition to the war prompts a small fraction of desertions, says Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins. "People always desert, and most do it because they don't adapt well to the military," she says. The vast majority of desertions happen inside the USA, Robbins says. There is only one known case of desertion in Iraq.

Most deserters return within months, without coercion. Commander Randy Lescault, spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command, says that between 2001 and 2005, 58% of Navy deserters walked back in. Of the rest, the most are apprehended during traffic stops. Penalties range from other-than-honorable discharges to death for desertion during wartime. Few are court-martialed.

(source)Mercato selettivo, prezzi più freddi al Centro-Nord

Non è ancora crisi vera nell'ottavo anno di ciclo immobiliare, ma, sostiene Tecnocasa, si allungano i tempi di vendita, cresciuti dallo scorso luglio a febbraio del 15,2% nelle metropoli, e si fa sempre più faticoso mantenere alle stelle i valori già al top; quanto all'andamento dei valori, a consuntivo il 2005 è andato meglio delle previsioni: nel secondo semestre dell'anno scorso l'aumento delle grandi città è stato in media del 4,7% marcando un rallentamento soltanto lieve, con un colpo di freddo sui prezzi avvertito di più al Centro-Nord.

I tempi di compravendita. "Attualmente per effettuare una compravendita siamo in media sui 117 giorni - sostiene il responsabile dell'Ufficio studi di Tecnocasa, Guido Lodigiani -. Napoli è la città che vanta la maggior velocità nella conclusione delle trattative immobiliari: in media 89 giorni". Nel 2006 "ci aspettiamo un andamento sicuramente riflessivo, acquirenti attenti e selettivi nelle scelte, in un contesto di difesa del valore reale degli immobili".

Dovrebbero comportarsi meglio gli immobili collocati in zone semicentrali e periferiche, con caratteristiche medie ed economiche. "Da non sottovalutare - sottolinea Lodigiani - i piccoli comuni dell'hinterland e i capoluoghi di provincia a misura d'uomo, che hanno sicuramente uno spazio di valorizzazione superiore. Restano comunque sempre validi gli acquisti di piccoli tagli in quartieri e zone che vantano la presenza di facoltà universitarie o in aree anche periferiche, interessate da interventi di recupero urbanistico". Per un buon investimento sono da prendere in considerazione "anche i grandi tagli da ristrutturare e successivamente frazionare, in zone residenziali semicentrali e ben servite".

La tipologia d'appartamento maggiormente richiesta, a livello nazionale, è comunque il trilocale, con il 39%, che vede aumentare nell'ultimo mese la schiera dei potenziali acquirenti. A Milano è il bilocale a concentrare la maggior parte della domanda (47,1%), con un incremento delle preferenze rispetto al mese precedente.

Quotazioni in lieve calo. Il rallentamento nella crescita su base annuale "c'è stato anche se non marcato, soprattutto in alcune metropoli del Centro-nord, come Firenze e Milano. A livello geografico, prosegue la maggior dinamicità dei capoluoghi del Sud (+5,7% medio nel semestre, punta massima del 10,8% a Palermo), rispetto a quelli del Centro (+3,8%) e del Nord (+2,5%)". Ancora stabile il mercato degli affitti, che a livello nazionale si attesta al +1,6% semestrale per i canoni dei bilocali, ridotto al +1.1% nel caso dei trilocali.

L'effetto tassi. Per quel che riguarda i tassi di interesse, il recente rialzo della Banca centrale europea di 25 basis point (+0,25%), "non dovrebbe incidere in misura rilevante sul settore", commenta ancora Lodigiani.

Me lo scrivo sul post-it...

Su un mutuo dell'importo di 150 mila euro, della durata di 25 anni, "l'aumento della rata mensile sarà solo di 20 euro". E qui si tratta, a dire il vero, di punti di vista.

(booga!)

(source)Rifondazione Comunista

Vuoi vedere che l'Italia cambia davvero?

Scrivete anche voi un allegro post-it!

(source)Mutui, il tasso variabile non conviene più

di ROSARIA AMATO

ROMA - I risparmiatori e le associazioni accusano le banche. Le banche rimandano le accuse al mittente, sostenendo di aver prestato doverosamente la propria consulenza. Il problema rimane: in un mercato dove la stragrande maggioranza dei mutui è a tasso variabile, i rialzi già effettuati e quelli attesi da parte della Bce faranno ancora lievitare le rate in misura elevata, non sempre sostenibile dalle fasce più deboli, soprattutto se si pensa al boom del credito al consumo registrato negli ultimi anni.

Non mi dire?

Un tempo si preferiva il tasso fisso. Fino a una ventina d'anni fa nessuno sarebbe riuscito a convincere "il buon padre di famiglia" a fare un mutuo a tasso variabile. La clientela era decisamente orientata verso il tasso fisso. Poi però i tassi sono scesi, è arrivato l'euro, che prometteva una maggiore stabilità. Soprattutto, i prezzi delle case sono lievitati in modo insostenibile, [strano!] e di fronte a un mutuo trentennale, forse quarantennale il tasso variabile è diventato l'unica scelta possibile.

Attese rialziste. Finchè i tassi rimanevano fermi, la scelta del tasso variabile sembrava un buon affare: la differenza con il tasso fisso in qualche caso poteva arrivare anche a due punti percentuali, un risparmio davvero significativo. Poi, però, da dicembre, il vento è cambiato. La Bce ha approvato il primo rialzo di 0,25, a marzo ne è seguito uno analogo. E adesso il mercato attende con il fiato sospeso che i tassi salgano ancora, anche di un punto percentuale nell'arco di un anno.

Il vento è cambiato. Secondo le rilevazioni di Mutuionline (il più importante broker di mutui su Internet) in minima misura il mercato si è reso conto che le cose stavano cambiando, e si è in parte adeguato. Infatti la richiesta di mutui a tasso variabile ha raggiunto un picco nel secondo semestre 2004 (75,3%), per poi ridursi progressivamente (70,6% nel primo semestre 2005, 64,8% nel secondo, 58,8% nel primo semestre 2006).

I dati del Centro Studi Toscano. Tali dati si riferiscono però solo alla clientela di Mutuionline. Se si considerano le singole banche, cambiano: il Monte dei Paschi di Siena, per esempio, registra una prevalenza di mutui a tasso misto (cioè con un tasso composito, o con la possibilitò periodica di passare dal fisso al variabile). "La percentuale che sceglie il mutuo a tasso variabile per la nostra clientela si aggirano tra il 70 e il 75%", dice invece Tito Nocentini, responsabile per il settore retail della Banca di Roma. E secondo un'indagine del Centro Studi Toscano pubblicata all'inizio di marzo, tale percentuale sale decisamente per le categorie più deboli e più esposte ai rischi: gli under35enni (80 per cento dei casi), gli imprenditori (80 per cento), le persone che guadagnano meno di 2.000 euro al mese (fino al 90 per cento dei casi). Le categorie che soffriranno maggiormente i rialzi dei tassi sono proprio quelle che meno potrebbero permetterselo.

(dai?)

Le accuse di consumatori e Uppi. Il presidente di Adusbef Elio Lannutti parla di scelte "indotte dai cattivi consigli delle banche". Accusa ribadita anche dal vicepresidente dell'Uppi (Unione piccoli proprietari), Angelo De Nicola: "Erano le stesse banche che avevano tutto l'interesse a fare mutui a tasso variabile, perchè sapevano che i mutui sarebbero andati al rialzo.

Del resto, in ogni caso con il variabile le banche non rischiano nulla. Noi come Uppi abbiamo sempre consigliato il tasso fisso".

Gli aumenti delle rate. Di quanto è salita al momento una rata media di un mutuo a tasso variabile? Secondo l'Adusbef, di 155 euro l'anno considerando un mutuo di centomila euro. Secondo l'Uppi in media del 10% per un mutuo a dieci anni, e del 20% per uno a 20 anni. "Considerando i due aumenti di mezzo punto effettuati dalla Bce da dicembre a marzo - dice Nocentini - una rata di 457 di un mutuo da 100.000 è salita a 483 euro mensili, dunque è aumentata di circa 25 euro".

Per alcuni i rialzi arriveranno in estate. I rialzi della Bce comunque non si sono tradotti in tutti i casi in analoghi aumenti delle rate. La Banca Nazionale del Lavoro ha comunicato nella stessa giornata di venerdì 3 marzo, poco dopo l'annuncio del rialzo della Bce, che avrebbe tenuto fermi i tassi dei propri prodotti fino al 31 luglio. Non tutte le banche poi ancorano i propri tassi a una rilevazione mensile: Banca Intesa, per esempio, spiega Alberto Gechele, responsabile credito al consumo e immobiliare, fa riferimento all'Euribor a sei mesi (l'Euribor è il tasso di riferimento per i mutui a tasso variabile, l'Eurirs per quelli a tasso fisso). "Per cui per i nostri clienti fino a giugno non cambierà niente - spiega Gechele - mentre a quel punto ci sarà probabilmente un aumento dello 0,40%. L'Euribor comunque varia giornalmente, e non incorpora solo le effettive variazioni, ma anche le aspettative del mercato. Quando la Bce aveva annunciato l'ultimo aumento, si era già allineato tant'è che adesso l'Euribor a sei mesi sta già a 2,82%".

Consulenza carente. Prima o poi, tuttavia, in una o più soluzioni i mutui a tasso variabile dovranno incorporare gli aumenti. Che si andranno a sommare agli aumenti delle rate di automobili, computer o frigoriferi. A fronte di un periodo incerto, le banche, accusa l'associazione Altroconsumo, non riescono ad offrire un'adeguata consulenza: secondo un'indagine di inizio marzo, il 20% degli istituti non dà alcun consiglio. "Non ho la sfera magica: è lei che deve scegliere il tasso più vicino al suo carattere", è una delle frasi "tipo" riportate dagli intervistati.

Le posizioni delle banche. Da una rapida indagine telefonica non emerge un parere univoco su come sarà meglio comportarsi nei prossimi mesi: "Allo stato attuale il livello dei tassi non giustifica valutazioni differenti per una scelta a tasso fisso o variabile", suggerisce una fonte di Unicredit. Molte banche suggeriscono i prodotti fissi, o a rata protetta. Questi ultimi prodotti sono di due tipi: a rata fissa, per cui l'importo del mutuo aumenta all'aumentare dei tassi, ma si spalma su più rate, oppure a tetto massimo, nel senso che si stabilisce un aumento massimo incorporabile dell'Euribor.

Il fisso torna ad avere appeal. C'è da dire che con gli ultimi aumenti della Bce la distanza tra i tassi fissi e i tassi variabili si è molto accorciata: "Da noi la differenza tra un fisso e un variabile a 20 anni è dello 0,75%", spiega Gechele. E quindi, osserva Roberto Anedda, direttore marketing di Mutuionline: "Con un tasso fisso non si andrebbe quindi a spendere molto di più rispetto al variabile, con il più il vantaggio della certezza del valore della rata".

Nel 2006 vendite delle case in calo.

Badombe> "La BCE assicura: niente bolla in Italia!"

Ragionamento calzante per chi potrà ancora permettersi un mutuo. Una buona percentuale verrà bloccata dal rialzo dei tassi: "Per il 2006 noi prevediamo un calo del 5% del numero delle compravendite - dice Mario Breglia, presidente dell'osservatorio Scenari immobiliari - e per i prezzi, crescita zero".

Perché, se dici il contrario si buttano a vendere tutti insieme, così ci possiamo piegare in due dalle risate?

Gli atipici i più penalizzati. I primi a doversi per necessità ritirare dal mercato immobiliare sono anche gli ultimi che, in ordine di tempo, vi si erano affacciati: i lavoratori atipici. "Il reddito medio di un precario secondo l'Inps - ricorda Davide Imola, della segreteria del Nidil, il sindacato degli atipici che fa capo alla Cgil - è di 10.880 euro lordi. Se non interviene la famiglia, non c'è proprio la possibilità di chiedere un mutuo, c'è un'autocensura iniziale. Se i tassi si alzano il problema aumento. Noi chiediamo da tempo agli enti locali l'istituzione di un fondo di garanzia".

E' ancora lui, il fondo di garanzia...

"Nell'arco di un anno abbiamo erogato 400 mutui agli atipici - dice Nocentini - corrispono al 3-4% del nostro erogato globale, poco, certo, però è un mercato nuovo. In effetti da quando abbiamo istituito il Mutuo Giovani sono in molti a informarsi, però poi i più si scoraggiano".

Il mutuo giovani...

(source)"Un grande gesto dall'Italia per chiudere il passato coloniale"

ROMA - Per chiudere definitivamente il capitolo del passato coloniale, la Libia si attende dall'Italia "un grande gesto".

Un cortese vaffanculo è sufficiente?

Un gesto che, evidentemente, dovrebbe consistere nel risarcimento dei danni "provocati dal colonialismo fascista".

Del quale tutti abbiamo colpa (ereditata, ovviamente) quindi orsù! mettiamo mano al portafogli anche per Gheddafi.

Una questione annosa che la Libia agita da tempo e sulla quale si è espresso nei giorni scorsi lo stesso Gheddafi quando attribuì a questo problema (più che alla maglietta di Calderoli) le violente contestazioni di Bengasi.

Una posizione non condivisa da Saadi Ghedafi, figlio del colonnello Muammar e capo delle forze speciali libiche. "Non credo che ci sia alcun nesso tra ciò che è successo a Bengasi e le relazioni italo libiche", ha Saadi Gheddafi in un'intervista su Rai Uno. "Il primo motivo delle proteste", ha spiegato, riguarda "sicuramente le vignette", poi i poliziotti hanno sparato "per sbaglio".

La difesa: "avevamo visto Menezes tra la folla!"

Sul problema dei risarcimenti insiste invece una nota diffusa alla stampa dall'Ufficio popolare della Grande Giamahirya a Roma nella quale si "conferma la piena disponibilità e collaborazione per un ulteriore miglioramento dei già eccellenti rapporti bilaterali - specialmente nel campo di azioni di contrasto al terrorismo, alla criminalità organizzata ed allo sfruttamento dell'immigrazione clandestina - e di un rafforzamento della cooperazione in materia commerciale, energetica ed economico finanziaria". Parole che il ministro degli Esteri Gianfranco Fini giudica con favore: "La nota rimette le cose a posto perchè dà atto al governo di aver mantenuto una posizione equilibrata". Il governo italiano è "disponibile ad avere un rapporto di amicizia a condizione che la Libia si faccia carico dei debiti che ha nei confronti di imprese italiane e dei cittadini italiani espulsi nel 1970".

La nota ufficiale libica replica poi duramente alle dichiarazioni rese nei giorni scorsi da Alessandra Mussolini. "Risultano del tutto inaccettabili e da censurare - si legge nel comunicato - le affermazioni disgustose di chi ha elogiato la criminale politica coloniale di Mussolini e l'occupazione militare della Libia, infliggendo al popolo libico sofferenze così grandi che qualsiasi presunta opera del passato che avrebbe apportato benefici alla Libia non può materialmente e moralmente compensare la perdita di neanche una delle settecentomila vittime del passato coloniale".

"E fu così che, mettendosi a discutere di numeri, Gheddafi finì in cella insieme ad Irving."

Nei giorni scorsi la nipote del Duce aveva attribuito al nonno il merito di aver permesso ai libici di non dover più viaggiare in cammello.

Cosa che a forza di trattati internazionali prima o poi faremo tutti, quindi tanto vale prepararsi.

La Libia promuove invece il profilo mantenuto nel corso della "crisi delle vignette" dal ministro degli esteri Gianfranco Fini. La nota esprime infatti "apprezzamento per l'equilibrio" con il quale, a nome il vicepremier si è "recentemente espresso sulle relazioni bilaterali".

(source)Warning! Financial responsibility can lead to terrorism

By BOB KERR

Providence Journal

Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was "madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail."

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that "everything changed after 9/11" thing.

But not Walter.

"We're a product of the '60s," he said. "We believe government should be way away from us in that regard."

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

"The more I'm on, the scarier it gets," he said. "It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."

Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.

But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.

"If it can happen to me, it can happen to others," he said.

(source)Treasury Dept. Moves to Avoid Debt Limit

WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary John Snow notified Congress on Monday that the administration has now taken "all prudent and legal actions," including tapping certain government retirement funds, to keep from hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit.

In a letter to Congress, Snow urged lawmakers to pass a new debt ceiling immediately to avoid the nation's first-ever default on its obligations.

"I know that you share the president's and my commitment to maintaining the full faith and credit of the U.S. government," Snow said in his letter to leaders in the House and Senate.

Bohohohohoho!!

Treasury officials, briefing congressional aides last week, said that the government will run out of maneuvering room to keep from exceeding the current limit sometime during the week of March 20.

Snow in his letter notified lawmakers that Treasury would begin tapping the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, which Treasury officials said would provide a "few billion" dollars in extra borrowing ability.

Treasury officials also announced that on Friday they had used the $15 billion in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, a reserve that the Treasury secretary has that is normally used to smooth out volatile movements in the value of the dollar in currency markets.

Treasury has also been taking investments out of a $65.3 billion government pension fund known as the G-fund.

Officials have said that once the debt limit is raised, the investments taken out of the pension funds would be replaced and any lost interest payments would be made up. The formal title for the G-fund is the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System.

Democrats hope to use the upcoming congressional debate over raising the debt limit to highlight what they see as the failings of the administration's economic program with its emphasis on sweeping tax cuts.

Perché il problema sono ovviamente i tax cuts, non i miliardi in foreign aid e l'esportazione della democrazia.

An actual default on the debt, a situation when the government misses making payments to current bondholders, is a doomsday scenario considered highly unlikely given what it would do to the government's credit rating.

It is expected that after intense debate, Congress will approve an increase in the current $8.18 trillion debt limit by perhaps $781 billion.

But Rep. Charles Rangel, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said Monday that any further increase in the debt limit should be tied to legislation that would get future deficits under control.

"Simply raising the limit on George W. Bush's credit card and crossing our fingers won't solve anything," Rangel, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "Any long-term debt limit increase must be accompanied by a serious effort to bring our budget back to the balance we achieved under the Clinton administration."

Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto said it was critical for Congress to act before leaving for a spring recess on March 17. He said Snow planned a number of meetings with lawmakers this week to discuss the urgency of taking action.

The administration has sent Congress a budget that on paper would cut the deficit in half by 2009, the year President Bush leaves office.

But Democrats contend the administration met its deficit-reduction goal only by leaving out major spending items such as the full costs of the Iraq war. They say the deficit will not improve unless Bush abandons his effort to make his first-term tax cuts permanent.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said last week that under President Bush the total of the deficits has increased by $3 trillion, a 40 percent increase from where the national debt - the total of previous deficits - stood when Bush took office in January 2001.

(source)UK: Solution to war crime lawsuits near

La legge speciale del giorno:

Britain has informed Israel it is close to finding a solution that will enable IDF officers to visit the UK without fear of getting arrested due to war crime lawsuits filed against them, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.

The British Foreign Ministry is currently formulating a solution to the problem that will not necessitate legal amendments to the constitution. According to this new procedure, which has already been approved by British legal officials, courts in the kingdom will be prohibited from issuing arrest warrants against foreign citizens without the authorization of the chief prosecutor.

This new regulation will enable the government to supervise over lawsuits and prevent the mass issuing of arrest warrants against IDF officers and other Israeli officials.

The British hope this new procedure will prevent damage to the relations between the two countries.

Solution for Kochavi

Meanwhile, Israel has been pressuring the British to find an immediate solution that would allow Brigadier-General Aviv Kochavi to arrive in the UK as planned for a year of studies at the Kimberly military academy. Kochavi is currently facing an arrest threat in Britain, due to his service as commander of the Israeli army in Gaza.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday reported to the cabinet ministers that in her visit to London last week, her counterparts in the country have also voiced their concern regarding the issue, and said they intend to resolve it as quickly as possible.

(source)5 anni ancora!

Basta la parola, come il confetto Falqui.

Questo sito nasce con l'intento di appoggiare la rielezione di Silvio Berlusconi e per contrastare la dilagante disinformazione che la sinistra - ormai da 5 anni - sta attuando con particolare violenza.

Il Governo di Silvio Berlusconi, nonostante tutto, ha operato per il bene del Paese e merita di governare per un'altra legislatura, così da poter essere valutato in un arco temporale più consono ai grandi cambiamenti introdotti.

Questo sito è particolarmente ricco di una straordinaria sezione video dedicata a Silvio Berlusconi e al suo Governo.

L'Home Page verrà costantemente aggiornata con i temi del giorno.

Forza Italia, e tutti insieme lavoriamo per 5 ANNI ANCORA.

Dino> Da dove hai pescato questa stronzata?

Da qui.

Dino> Leggiamo!

Noi non possiamo stare dalla parte di chi considera il presidente della più grande democrazia del mondo come un uomo "con le mani grondanti di sangue",

E com'è possibile, visto che se le pulisce sulla Costituzione, insieme al culo?

di chi è nemico di Israele,

Che bastardi, vero?

di chi tifa per i terroristi, di chi è amico dei dittatori, di chi rimpiange Saddam,

Ohibò! E chi rimpiange Saddam?

Forse Rumsfeld?

di chi grida nelle piazze 10-10-1000 Nassiriya,

Per non parlare di chi paga i funerali di Stato con applauso finale...

di chi brucia le bandiere,

Quali?

di chi ha ancora dubbi sulla proprietà privata,

"Perché noi non abbiamo dubbio quando si tratta di sequestrarla e distribuire box interattivi, oppure democrazia in giro per il mondo..."

di chi è garantista solo a senso unico e solo per i suoi amici.

"Noi invece..."

Noi siamo amici leali e riconoscenti degli Stati Uniti d'America, la più grande democrazia al mondo.

Insiste. Quale parte di "Stati (plurale) Uniti" fai finta di non capire?

Noi siamo per l'Europa e per gli Stati Uniti insieme, perchè l'Occidente è, e deve restare, uno solo.

Dev'essere per questo che non si è visto uno straccio di referendum.

Noi siamo con Israele.

Bravo, tieni il biscottone. Raccontalo al taxpayer, spiegagli dove vanno a finire i suoi soldi.

Noi siamo contro tutte le dittature.

Però i warrantless wiretaps sono per la lotta contro il terrorismo.

Noi siamo per la democrazia e per la libertà.

Due cose che non c'entrano un cazzo una con l'altra.

Noi siamo contro i terroristi, tutti i terroristi.

Tranne i quattro stronzi di Lavon, altrimenti squilla il telefono.

Noi siamo dalla parte delle nostre forze armate impegnate a portare pace, sicurezza, democrazia e libertà in tutto il mondo,

Perché?

perchè dove c'è pace c'è sicurezza, dove c'è sicurezza c'è libertà, dove c'è libertà c'è democrazia, dove c'è democrazia c'è benessere.

Perché la libertà viene dalla sicurezza, che viene dalla pace, che viene dalle missioni di pace, e ovviamente ci porta alla democrazia, che a sua volta porta il benessere. Perché noi non abbiamo dubbi sulla proprietà privata, no? Ecco perché abbiamo fatto le Grandi Opere con tanto di pubblicità in TV, pagata con i vostri soldi.

Noi siamo garantisti, per tutti.

Ma proprio tutti, anche per la CIA.

Noi siamo contro le usurpazioni delle prerogative del potere legislativo da parte del potere giudiziario.

Però un bacio al culo del governo federale ci sta sempre bene.

Per noi è la persona, è l'individuo e non lo Stato ad essere al centro della storia e della vita pubblica.

Ecco perché esportiamo la democrazia.

Per noi il vero motore della società è la libertà del singolo individuo.

Noto cardine della democrazia.

Infatti quando qualcuno finisce in carcere per qualche legge speciale siamo tutti quanti a fare le fiaccolate di fronte alle ambasciate.

Noi siamo per l'Italia, amiamo il nostro paese e siamo fieri di essere italiani.

Siamo per l'Italia e pure per Israele, ma cosa ne facciamo della Tanzania? Avanza posto? C'è spazio? Posso spedirvi un assegno extra?

La sinistra italiana non è presentabile, non è in grado di offrire una seria proposta di governo.

Siete in buona compagnia.

Un eventuale esecutivo guidato dal burocrate Prodi, già unfit per Bruxelles, non riuscirebbe ad assicurare stabilità all'Italia.

L'uomo Bilderberg è unfit per l'Europa. Invece noi sì che vi portiamo in Europa con stile, firmando solennemente il trattato. Perché la democrazia è bella, ma qualche volta è meglio non far votare.

L'unico tema che unisce veramente la sinistra è l'antiberlusconismo: tolto questo, non rimane nulla.

E tolti i soldi che vi siete fottuti a forza di democrazia, cosa rimane alla fine del mese? Il box interattivo per votare la coglionata del giorno?

Badombe> Devi collegare il canale di ritorno!

Allora mando un SMS, così faccio prima.

Le 33 riforme del Governo Berlusconi

Badombe> Quante hai detto?

Ha detto 33...

Badombe> Ma vai a cagare...

Ma c'è una notizia sulla home page!

Tremonti: dati Istat falsati da quattro giorni in meno

Nel 2005 sono stati lavorati 4 giorni in meno rispetto al 2004.

Sarà certamente colpa dei comunisti, che dopo aver rubato l'ora del risveglio hanno pure rubato i giorni del calendario.

Con questi giorni in più "il Pil sarebbe cresciuto dello 0,25/ 0,30% che era nelle previsioni del governo, con il consenso europeo": ma l'Istat non ha calcolato questo dato, dunque "sta falsificando la realtà, ingannando gli italiani".

Così il ministro dell'Economia Giulio Tremonti a margine dell'inaugurazione dell'anno accademico della Liuc di Castellanza. Tremonti ritiene che si tratti "di una cosa fondamentale, ma che è sfuggita a tutti".

"Nel 2004 - ha spiegato il ministro ai giornalisti - i giorni lavorati erano 256, nel 2005 sono stati 252, quattro in meno che sono quasi una settimana dovuta ai vari ponti: premesso che i ponti non sono nè di destra nè di sinistra, se si calcola il Pil lo si confronta e si dimentica questo dato. Vuol dire che si sta falsando la realtà, che stai ingannando gli italiani".

A chi gli chiedeva se il governo conferma la stima di crescita dell'1,5% per il 2006, Tremonti ha risposto: "Ne discuteremo la prossima settimana, ma i nostri conti pubblici sono risultati migliori degli impegni presi. Avevamo stimato un 4,3% e siamo al 4,1%. Siamo sulla buona strada, e i nostri conti pubblici non sono allo sfascio, lo dimostra l'ok della Commissione Europea".

Badombe> L'Istat inganna gli italiani!

Peccato che Tremonti non abbia nulla da dire su inflazione ed M3.

E mentre questi quattro mentecatti fanno stime di crescita sul PIL, l'allegra avventura continua...

(source)The State and Its Five Rationales

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

If you say that government is too big and truly overweening, you elicit a surprising degree of agreement among people, even mainstream columnists, economists, and nearly everyone. Even government employees, who famously resent their bosses, might be quick to agree. If you hang outside the offices of the IRS in Washington, D.C., in the park at noontime where its employees take their lunch, you will get an earful of vitriol against the bureaucracy such as you wouldn't hear outside 1990s militia circles.

Incidentally, the government is having a terrible time recruiting employees. Only 16% of college-educated workers say that they are interested in a government job. Among those without a college degree, there is twice the level of interest. Among people currently employed, those with managerial or professional occupations show a low interest level of 17%.

Among those who want work to be challenging and enjoyable, only 9% thought a government job qualified. And, interestingly, among those who say they want to make a contribution to society, 90% said that non-government work in the private sector, with for profit or non-profit, is the way to go.

Now, what this means is that the smart set avoids government. Government work might still be attractive to people with fewer economic opportunities, but they are entering it for reasons that are not ideological. And for that reason too, they are less loyal to the public sector and glad to bail out if something else comes available.

Most people view this as a very bad trend. I would only say that it is a significant trend, especially considering that in the heyday of government central planning, government sought to attract the best and the brightest. Often it did. Now, one might argue that if government were doing what it should be doing, this would be a good thing. But if government is doing many bad things, it is certainly not a bad trend for it to experience a brain drain.

It is always a tragedy to see smart and entrepreneurial men and women be attracted away from productive employment in the private sector toward a position of power in the public sector. It makes us poorer to have the talents drained away from wealth creation toward wealth destruction. As for the very few good people in politics - Ron Paul is the great exception that proves the rule - they are true public servants only insofar as they work to diminish government power rather than increase it.

So long as government is large and overweening, we are better off with a public sector that cannot attract the best and brightest. They should stay put where they can continue to expand the range of goods and services offered within the market framework. It is the market that provides us the means necessary to improve our standard of living, and the tools we need to maintain some degree of independence from the state.

We often rail against incompetence in government. But before we go too far with this language, we need to consider that competence in government may be a far worse fate. We don't need genuinely competent antitrust enforcers, drug and food regulators, tax collectors, money manipulators, labor-law interventionists, gun grabbers, and environmental police. As H.L. Mencken said, we should be thankful that we don't get all the government we pay for.

To be sure, we are paying far more today for government than ever before. Consider the real annual growth rate of total government outlays by presidents. Under Nixon, it was 3%. Under Carter, it was 4.1%. Under Reagan, 2.6%. Under Bush's dad, 1.9%, a figuring owing to the cuts in military spending. Domestic spending soared. Under Clinton, whom we all denounced as a socialist, it was 1.5%, the lowest rate in the postwar period. And under the present Bush, who promised less government? The real annual growth rate of total government outlays has been 5%, which compares to Johnson-era spending.

The old rationales for government growth may have been discredited in the public mind. But they are alive in Washington, among the special interest groups, and among the media. I would like to identify the main ones.

Rationale Number One: The Good Samaritan State. In this view of government, the state should act like the third person to come upon the poor man who had been beaten and robbed. They imagine a population that is divided among three types of people: victims, victimizers, and those who refuse to help.

The victim classes we know all too well, because the litany is said again and again within the structure of labor law: the elderly, the very young, ethnic and racial minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities, the physically and mentally disabled, workers, the underpaid, people in rural areas, those who deal with urban overcrowding, people who breathe dirty air or eat chemically produced products, artists, the manufacturing industry, people with peanut allergies, the dyslexic, short people, fat people, the leisure deprived, and I've probably left out a hundred or so other groups.

Among the victimizers, we similarly have a list: capitalists, racial and ethnic majorities, sexual majorities, the overpaid, managers and CEOs, people who live in gated communities, the well armed, consumers of cell phones, owners of mines, anyone living off a trust fund, fully abled men, and anyone who resents social managers telling them what to do.

In the view of those who advocate the Samaritan State, these two classes of victims and victimizers are constantly at war. There is nothing but conflict between them. The loss of one is the gain of the other. These categories are fixed and unchanging. The lack of harmony of interests is built into the structure of the social and economic world. The remedy requires an institution that is relentlessly engaged in reweighing the power relationships between the two groups. The conflict cannot be finally ended, but justice requires that the victims are given an unending stream of compensation and that the victimizers are treated with disdain and punished for their very existence. Social justice thus requires that victimizers are reduced, disabled, denounced, and spat upon, while the victims must be exalted, fed, clothed, funded, and made whole.

This is how the left, broadly speaking, thinks the world works, and should work. It doesn't matter whether one considers oneself a hard Marxist or a soft social democrat, the intellectual tie that binds them together is the view that conflict and not cooperation characterizes the work of society in the absence of an institution dedicated to bringing about social justice.

The institutional answer is, of course, the State. The State is the Samaritan who lifts up and exalts the meek, and smites the proud and powerful who would otherwise walk right past the poor person on the street, who is the very archetype of the victim in the leftist view of how the world works.

But there are many things wrong with this view of society. In the parable, the victim was beaten and robbed. He was exploited only in a very narrow and old-fashioned sense: his person and property were violated. These are crimes against libertarian ethics, a system of thought that mirrors what every religious and ethical system has taught: do not kill and do not steal. In other words, he was not a victim of some hazy notion of Social Injustice.

He was not discriminated against, exploited by an employer, made to work long hours, or denied a comfy living in his old age. There is a huge difference between being beaten and robbed, and having to pay high prices for prescription drugs. The great error of the left is its inability to distinguish the injustice of violence from the supposed injustice of inequality of material condition.

As for the Samaritan, he was not acting as an agent of the regime. He used his own money to help the victim. He got him back on his feet and paid his bills at the private clinic where he was deposited for care. The Samaritan did not rob someone else to give money to the man on the street. He presumably got his money justly by hard work and investment. He had no desire to keep the man dependent, nor to exercise power over him, tax him, regulate him, nor send him to war.

The state is something very different. It has no income but that which it robs from someone else. It seeks its own gain at others' expense. It protects itself and promotes itself before the interests of everyone else. It is beholden to special interests who create and control its regulatory apparatus. It is not impartial. It sides with its friends over its enemies. Moreover, the state is an exploiter, a murderer, a violator of human rights.

The typical response of the left is to say that they want a state that does only good things such as share and care, and not bad things such as steal and kill. But this cannot be. We might as well wish for a lion that only purrs and cuddles, or a rattlesnake that only provides percussion accompaniment to mariachi music. The very nature of the state is that it exists only through and for compulsion. To imagine otherwise is not to face reality.

Rationale Number Two: The Solomonic State. In the Bible we are told that King Solomon had "understanding exceeding much and largeness of heart, even as the sand that [is] on the sea shore." And his "wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt." He was "wiser than all men" and "his fame was in all nations round about. " He spoke "three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. " He "spake of trees, from the cedar tree that [is] in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom."

Now, I'm not here to dispute the Bible's account of Solomon's wisdom. But I would suggest that these traits are not generalizable to the population of rulers. In fact, it is very dangerous to hope that they may be. If we set out to find such a person, and have fantastic power available to him when we believe he has arrived, we have set up the framework for tyranny. The founders knew that no man can be trusted with power. They attempted to construct a system that presumed that men were corruptible, and that there would be some means to dislodge them when their corruption showed.

Still, today many people long for the Solomonic State as a means of dispensing justice. Unlike the Samaritan model, the goal here is not charity but the just wielding of the sword on behalf of the right and true. Thus should we seek out righteous men of learning and moral character who know what evil is and have the courage to stand up to it and destroy it. This model is what inspires this mentality.

There are many problems with this model. One man might be very wise, even the wisest of all men. But as F.A. Hayek might remind us, all the accumulated knowledge in the head of one person is still infinitesimal as compared with the wisdom that emerges through social cooperation on the marketplace. We can consider the price of any good on the market as it stands right now, and know that this one price results from the accumulated decisions of millions of people across thousands and thousands of sectors of economic activity spread throughout the world. The knowledge is dispersed in a million directions and results from small decisions and actions by economic actors. But the result is a single indicator that assists in allocating resources better than any single mind could ever do.

The model of the Solomonic State also imagines that somehow the social order we see around us cannot possibly have come about without a single will operating in society, some firm hand that has designed the order and keeps it running smoothly. People who think this way imagine that in the absence of this firm hand, there would be nothing but a Hobbesian state of nature, where society is a war of all against all and life is nasty, brutish, and short.

Our age is notably lacking in the likes of Solomon, and so those who fear the Hobbesian state of nature turn to the managerial state to act wisely in the interest of justice and order, at home and abroad. They might not always like what the rulers do, but they consider the alternative to despotism more fearsome. They warn about the dread results of anarchism and liberty, where people senselessly kill and rob without consequence. They fear this liberty more than they fear the abuses of power.

This, I submit, is the mentality of many conservatives and many on the Right. We see it in the affections they have for Bush, the patriot act, the war on terror, and how quickly people fall for any leader who uses Manichean rhetoric in defense of the latest nationalistic crusade.

What these people need more than anything else is a familiarity with the insights of the old liberal tradition as represented by Jefferson, Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. They need to come to see how order is not the mother of liberty but its daughter. They need to see how society is harmonious not because of the state but because of the prevalence of human cooperation in the marketplace, where people work to trade to their own mutual betterment.

People who fail to understand this become the unwitting servants of tyranny, particularly in the modern age when it is so obviously not wise but stupid and violent and presumptuous. They imagine that the state can posses godlike powers and bring justice and order, but they end up only empowering the worst elements in society, bringing injustice, and chaos.

Now, you might say that the old liberal view of society is naïve. It might be in people's interest to learn to trade rather than steal but we live in a fallen world. If not for some overarching controlling force, people would loot each other unrelentingly and kill for fun. Now, to this I can say that it is true that some societies have not learned to make trading and peace significantly more prevalent than violence and killing. History is strewn with examples.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether a society that fails to learn the art of civilization will erect and sustain a state that will impose civilization on the people. I submit that history also teaches that when a people are brutal and uncivilized, the state is even more so. The state is rarely and maybe never better than the people it rules; in fact, it is almost always worse.

Rationale Number Three: Log-Rolling. Given these two very different conceptions of the state, one favoring the welfare state and the other favoring a warfare state, why don't the visions cancel each other out? So intense is the desire of one group to have the state that it wants that it is willing to put up with another group's desire for its conception of the state. The two conceptions decide to cooperate and erect a state that purports to behave both like Solomon and like the Samaritan. That is the origin of the guns-and-butter state, or the welfare-warfare state, or the modern state as we know it, one that purports to meet every need.

We see how this log-rolling works every day on Capitol Hill. One group wants more money for tanks and weaponry, and the other wants more for Medicaid and education. If both agree that politics is the art of compromise, they will put up with the other group's priorities in order that their own vision can be fulfilled.

On the Right, we find that the love for the police power is more intense than the hatred of redistribution. On the Left, we find that the love of redistribution is more intense than the hatred of war and leviathan. They therefore work together to erect a massive and ever-growing executive. They are similarly unwilling to oppose the state in total. They fear that in doing so, the state as an institution will be discredited, and their conception of what the state should do along with it. Neither side particularly loves big government but both sides agree that it is better than the alternative of letting people alone. So they log-roll to support the public sector above all else, even when it means that they must sleep with their ostensible political enemies.

Rationale Number Four: The Inflationary State. Now we come to the reason this system is able to perpetuate itself. And there is something of a mystery to explain here. No people anywhere will put up with a leviathan that grows and grows forever. At some point, the problem of funding state expansion will result in too much violence against property, and the people will revolt. Indeed, if the federal government had to collect all its revenue through a tax of any kind, leveled right now against the public, I submit to you that it would spark a tax revolt on a scale never before seen in modern history.

Thus do we have the central bank to create money for the state. Thus do we have paper money that can be created in unlimited quantities. Thus do we have deposit insurance to make banks failure proof, so that the masses will never doubt that the credit pyramid is immortal. Thus do we have the fed's power to manipulate interest rates and control the flow of credit to the system.

An economist at Lehman Brothers sent us an interesting chart the other day. It compares the level of price increases across many Fed regimes. Under the first Fed governor Charles Hamlin, the dollar declined 8% in value. Under Thomas B. McCabe from the late forties, it declined 7.2%. Under Arthur Burns, wholly owned by Nixon, the dollar declined 42% in value. Under Volcker, Mr. Tight Money, it fell 40%. And under Greenspan, who has a reputation as a great inflation fighter, the value of the dollar in terms of goods and services fell fully 44%!

Inflation serves the cause of the state by giving it room to run up debts without limit and fund its activities without making the people cough up more revenue. Indeed, that is the primary purpose of the inflationary state. People often say to me that a gold standard is impractical. In fact, that is not the case. It is very practical. It is the free-market answer. The state doesn't need to produce money any more than it needs to produce shoes or shirts or clocks. The problem is that we lack the political will to stop the inflation monster.

Rationale Number Five: The Propaganda State. In every society control of educational institutions increases in tandem with the rise of the state. This is because the state needs these institutions to inculcate the civic religion of loving the public enterprise, and also because the less people know about the idea of liberty the more the state is provided the room to grow.

Consider the Department of Education. Ever since its creation, every Republican administration has come to power with an intention to abolish it. But once they get in power, they find that bureaucracy has its uses. Instead of cutting or abolishing it, they increase the agency and give it more to do. The more the state does, the more the state sees the need to control public opinion by controlling the schools.

Now, there is a point of optimism here. If any state could rule without propaganda, it would surely do so. Why then do states find educational control and the propagation of the civic religion in their interest? Because at some level, every state, in all times and places, is required to seek the tacit consent of those it governs. No state can control a society by use of the sword only and alone. It must also seek some degree of ideological conformity with its own goals. Otherwise its rule becomes threatened and destabilized.

The other side of the coin is that states can indeed be destabilized by the ultimate counterrevolutionary tactic of providing alternative sources of education. As Mises said, all of history is a battle of ideas. Where the ideas of freedom are triumphant, liberty prevails. Where the ideas of freedom are buried and suppressed, despotism prevails.

Our pathway is clear. It is a choice of the Mises Institute not to mix in the mire of a political system that is wholly owned or attempt to seek favor from influential opinion makers. Our path is one of education, pursued with high-minded ideals, advanced using the most modern methods, and animated by the spirit of guerilla warfare. There are Misesians and Rothbardians strewn throughout the academic world, financial and banking houses, law firms, and in every walk of life, not only in this country but all over the world.

We have worked for nearly a quarter of a century on a very radical project of advancing economic science and logic. We have pushed to keep the fire of freedom burning brightly. We have sought to teach anyone and everyone about the workings and benefits of liberty. We have come under pressure from the left, right, and center. Yet the attention given to this body of ideas grows by the day.

We can prevail against the Propaganda State. So long as we are free to do so and have the means available, we will continue to do so. This is our weapon against power. It is the most effective weapon anyone could ever possess. If we win this victory, we win all others.

We thank you for supporting education for liberty, for supporting the Mises Institute financially and morally, and for being part of the revolutionary vanguard that sees through the errors of our day and imagines a brighter future of freedom, private property, and peace.

(source)Court Upholds Campus Military Recruiting

Per la serie free and compulsory:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that colleges that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus, despite university objections to the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays.

Perché il problema non sono i recruiter federali, bensì la minoranza oppressa.

Justices rejected a free-speech challenge from law schools and their professors who claimed they should not be forced to associate with military recruiters or promote their campus appearances.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said that the campus visits are an effective military recruiting tool.

"A military recruiter's mere presence on campus does not violate a law school's right to associate, regardless of how repugnant the law school considers the recruiter's message," he wrote.

Law schools had become the latest battleground over the "don't ask, don't tell" policy allowing gay men and women to serve in the military only if they keep their sexual orientation to themselves.

Many universities forbid the participation of recruiters from public agencies and private companies that have discriminatory policies.

The court's decision upholds a law that requires colleges that take federal money to accommodate recruiters.

Roberts, writing his third decision since joining the court last fall, said there are other less drastic options for protesting the policy. "Students and faculty are free to associate to voice their disapproval of the military's message," he wrote.

"Recruiters are, by definition, outsiders who come onto campus for the limited purpose of trying to hire students - not to become members of the school's expressive association," he wrote.

The federal law, known as the Solomon Amendment after its first congressional sponsor, mandates that universities give the military the same access as other recruiters or forfeit federal money.

Per federal money, ricordiamolo rapidamente, s'intende il denaro rubato al taxpayer.

College leaders have said they could not afford to lose federal help, some $35 billion a year.

The court heard arguments in the case in December, and justices signaled then that they had little problem with the law.

Roberts filed the only opinion, which was joined by every justice but Samuel Alito. Alito did not participate because he was not on the bench when the case was argued.

"The Solomon Amendment neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything," Roberts wrote.

The case is Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, 04-1152.

(source)Former Serb Rebel Leader Commits Suicide

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Milan Babic, the Serb leader of a rebel republic in Croatia and one of the key figures in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, committed suicide in prison, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said Monday.

Sarà stato depresso?

Babic, who was serving 13 years for crimes against humanity, was found dead Sunday evening in his c