Europe continues to sink into the abyss. Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy ... amazing they have not been bought up by the Chinese
July 12, 2011 9:10 pm
Financial Times
By Guy Dinmore in Rome and Joshua Chaffin in Brussels
Italy’s borrowing costs soar
Italy’s borrowing costs soared to their highest level in over a decade amid highly volatile trading as market contagion from Greece forced Silvio Berlusconi to appeal for national unity and “sacrifices” to cut the nation’s debt mountain.
“We are in the front line of this battle,” Mr Berlusconi said, describing a crisis that threatened all of Europe and the future of its common currency.
The Italian prime minister’s appeal – the most sombre in his three years in charge of his centre-right government – was intended to rebut widespread criticism in the Italian media and the markets that his coalition was rudderless and divided by disputes between him and Giulio Tremonti, finance minister.
“We have to eliminate any doubts over the efficacy and credibility of our budget,” Mr Berlusconi said, insisting that the €40bn package would eliminate Italy’s budget deficit by 2014.
Opposition party leaders in Rome pledged their co-operation in parliament to pass the government’s three-year austerity programme by Friday in time for a possible emergency summit of EU leaders in Brussels that day.
“This would be a record in Italian history,” Enrico Letta of the opposition Democrats told the Financial Times. “Never before has a budget been passed in five days.”
Italian banking sector shares plummeted further at the opening of trading on Tuesday and its benchmark 10-year bond yields hit a euro-era high of 6.09 per cent before markets recovered substantially on news that Mr Tremonti was returning early to Rome from Brussels for emergency talks with the opposition.
Under media fire for spending too much time on dealing with his media empire’s own financial woes, Mr Berlusconi also rushed back to Rome after cancelling a trip to watch his AC Milan football club in training.
A relatively successful sale by the Italian Treasury of €6.75bn of 12-month bills – albeit at the highest yield for three years – calmed markets. Some traders said they believed China had stepped in.
France is also being affected by the market volatility as the premium it pays for debt over Germany hit a new euro-era high on Tuesday. French 10-year yields were 0.7 percentage points higher than equivalent German ones.
And Irish debt was downgraded to junk by Moody’s, which lowered its rating on the embattled country one notch to Ba1, saying it was likely to need a second bail-out.
Mark Schofield, head of interest rate strategy at Citi, said: “France is now trading like Spain and Italy did [before this week].”
In Brussels, finance ministers agreed late Monday night to enhance the flexibility of eurozone’s €440bn temporary bail-out fund – a move that was widely interpreted as a signal that the fund would be allowed to begin buying distressed government bonds in secondary markets.
That approach – long rejected by Germany – would allow Greece to erase part of its sizable debt burden. In hopes of bringing further relief, finance ministers also pledged to lower interest rates and extend debt maturities.
Hopes were raised that a new and more comprehensive bailout package for Greece was at hand after Herman Van Rompuy, European council president, sounded out member states about holding an emergency summit on Friday.
But in spite of the progress, diplomats said that it was not clear if a detailed package could be readied in time.
Italy
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Monday, July 18, 2011
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Italy: Art and Trash
Rubbish crisis making us ill, say Naples residents
October 23, 2010
Silvia Aloisi
Reuters
Clutching her sickly 1-1/2-year-old son, Anna Langella says the family doctor had this simple prescription for her: move somewhere else. Skip related content
Langella says her toddler often vomits and she blames this on the foul smell and toxic waste piling up in a rubbish dump near her house in Terzigno, on the outskirts of Naples where the streets are strewn with mounds of garbage.
"We have to keep the children inside, with the doors and windows shut, but even then it's not enough," she told Reuters. "It's terrible. The state has abandoned us."
The dump was opened last year as a stop-gap solution for rubbish from Italy's third largest city, where organised crime, inefficiency and political opportunism have turned waste disposal into a chronic emergency.
It is already full and plans to open a new one have provoked protests.
After days of clashes between police and residents and newspaper headlines dominated by pictures of festering rubbish, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised on Friday to spend 14 million euros (12.5 billion pounds) to upgrade the Terzigno dump and said there was no threat to public health from the site.
Residents of the town on the fringes of a national park at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano overlooking the Bay of Naples, are worried and sceptical.
"The stench is bothering us but that's the lesser evil. The most important thing is that we are dying here, there is leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma, the most horrible diseases," said teacher Anna De Vincenzo.
Medical experts say it can be difficult to assess the extent to which pollution is to blame for illnesses that are also caused by genetic, socio-economic and lifestyle factors.
There is evidence that parts of Naples and its bleak hinterland have been steadily contaminated by decades of illegal waste dumping and burning.
"TRIANGLE OF DEATH"
The medical journal Lancet Oncology in 2004 dubbed part of the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital, "the triangle of death" because the air, soil and water were polluted by high levels of cancer-causing toxins believed to have come from the waste.
Research in 2007 by Italy's National Research Council found that, among people living closest to the least regulated waste disposal sites, where trash is dumped in fields or burnt without controls, the mortality rate was between 9 and 12 percent higher than the norm.
Fatal liver cancers were also more common in the highest risk areas, according to the study, although it said more than half the places studied in the region did not show abnormal health problems.
A state of emergency over Naples' garbage was first declared in 1994 and successive governments appointed a series of "trash tsars" to tackle the problem.
Political ineptitude, corruption and the influence of the Camorra -- the Naples version of the Sicilian mafia -- have prevented the creation of a modern, safe waste disposal system.
Separate waste collection for recycling in Naples accounts for just 15 percent of the total, one of the lowest rates in Italy. People despair of politicians and do not trust government schemes aimed at ending the crisis.
Like many in the region, people in Terzigno say their landfill is not managed properly and has become a dumping ground for hazardous waste, some of it from other parts of Italy.
"We see the garbage trucks coming in at night and dumping everything in the landfill, toxic waste, hospital waste," said Michele Amoruso, a 41-year-old tax lawyer.
Central to the problem is also the role of the Camorra, which makes a fortune from the illegal disposal and burning of industrial waste.
"The Camorra is a crucial player in the whole cycle of industrial waste, particularly in the transport of toxic waste from the north of Italy," said Pasquale Raia of the environmentalist group Legambiente.
trash
October 23, 2010
Silvia Aloisi
Reuters
Clutching her sickly 1-1/2-year-old son, Anna Langella says the family doctor had this simple prescription for her: move somewhere else. Skip related content
Langella says her toddler often vomits and she blames this on the foul smell and toxic waste piling up in a rubbish dump near her house in Terzigno, on the outskirts of Naples where the streets are strewn with mounds of garbage.
"We have to keep the children inside, with the doors and windows shut, but even then it's not enough," she told Reuters. "It's terrible. The state has abandoned us."
The dump was opened last year as a stop-gap solution for rubbish from Italy's third largest city, where organised crime, inefficiency and political opportunism have turned waste disposal into a chronic emergency.
It is already full and plans to open a new one have provoked protests.
After days of clashes between police and residents and newspaper headlines dominated by pictures of festering rubbish, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised on Friday to spend 14 million euros (12.5 billion pounds) to upgrade the Terzigno dump and said there was no threat to public health from the site.
Residents of the town on the fringes of a national park at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano overlooking the Bay of Naples, are worried and sceptical.
"The stench is bothering us but that's the lesser evil. The most important thing is that we are dying here, there is leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma, the most horrible diseases," said teacher Anna De Vincenzo.
Medical experts say it can be difficult to assess the extent to which pollution is to blame for illnesses that are also caused by genetic, socio-economic and lifestyle factors.
There is evidence that parts of Naples and its bleak hinterland have been steadily contaminated by decades of illegal waste dumping and burning.
"TRIANGLE OF DEATH"
The medical journal Lancet Oncology in 2004 dubbed part of the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital, "the triangle of death" because the air, soil and water were polluted by high levels of cancer-causing toxins believed to have come from the waste.
Research in 2007 by Italy's National Research Council found that, among people living closest to the least regulated waste disposal sites, where trash is dumped in fields or burnt without controls, the mortality rate was between 9 and 12 percent higher than the norm.
Fatal liver cancers were also more common in the highest risk areas, according to the study, although it said more than half the places studied in the region did not show abnormal health problems.
A state of emergency over Naples' garbage was first declared in 1994 and successive governments appointed a series of "trash tsars" to tackle the problem.
Political ineptitude, corruption and the influence of the Camorra -- the Naples version of the Sicilian mafia -- have prevented the creation of a modern, safe waste disposal system.
Separate waste collection for recycling in Naples accounts for just 15 percent of the total, one of the lowest rates in Italy. People despair of politicians and do not trust government schemes aimed at ending the crisis.
Like many in the region, people in Terzigno say their landfill is not managed properly and has become a dumping ground for hazardous waste, some of it from other parts of Italy.
"We see the garbage trucks coming in at night and dumping everything in the landfill, toxic waste, hospital waste," said Michele Amoruso, a 41-year-old tax lawyer.
Central to the problem is also the role of the Camorra, which makes a fortune from the illegal disposal and burning of industrial waste.
"The Camorra is a crucial player in the whole cycle of industrial waste, particularly in the transport of toxic waste from the north of Italy," said Pasquale Raia of the environmentalist group Legambiente.
trash
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Paranormal Activity
The film, cost $15,000 to make, followed the Blair Witch model, and has made over $100,000,000 ... considering the cost versus the grosses, has made more than Avatar. Avatar would need to make about $3.5 billion to equal the gross from Paranormal Activity.
In any case, the film has just opened in Italy, and is pulling in more money than Avatar did , in Italy.
The film is also having an effect ...
"Several panic attacks lasting more than half an hour took place," an emergency response worker said.
"The most serious case is that of a 14-year-old girl who was brought to the hospital in a state of paralysis."
The Italian parents' association noted that admission to the movie is restricted in the United States, Britain, Germany and The Netherlands and asked for an age limit of 18 in Italy.
Defence minister Ignazio La Russa said: "For the past two weeks a trailer has been shown obsessively on TV, and is terrifying thousands of children."
The Defense Minister spoke out ... that must be a serious issue when the man responsible for the security of the nation, from invasions and such, comments on a film!!
ghosts
In any case, the film has just opened in Italy, and is pulling in more money than Avatar did , in Italy.
The film is also having an effect ...
"Several panic attacks lasting more than half an hour took place," an emergency response worker said.
"The most serious case is that of a 14-year-old girl who was brought to the hospital in a state of paralysis."
The Italian parents' association noted that admission to the movie is restricted in the United States, Britain, Germany and The Netherlands and asked for an age limit of 18 in Italy.
Defence minister Ignazio La Russa said: "For the past two weeks a trailer has been shown obsessively on TV, and is terrifying thousands of children."
The Defense Minister spoke out ... that must be a serious issue when the man responsible for the security of the nation, from invasions and such, comments on a film!!
ghosts
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Italy: Stands up to the EU
Who'd ha thunk it? Italian Constitutional Court tells ECHR to take a hike, asserts national sovereignty
By Gerald Warner
December 19th, 2009
The Telegraph
The first blow has been struck against the encroaching tyranny of the European Union and it is a significant one. In fact, one member state has defiantly drawn a line in the sand and signalled that it will not tolerate erosion of its sovereignty. Although it attracted little attention when it was published last month, now that commentators have had an opportunity to analyse Sentenza N. 311 by the Italian Constitutional Court, its monumental significance in rolling back the Lisbon Treaty is now being appreciated. (Hat tip, as they say, to Dr Piero Tozzi.)
The Constitutional Court ruled baldly that, where rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) conflict with provisions of the Italian Constitution, such decrees “lack legitimacy”. In other words, they will not be enforced in Italy. Although this judgement related to issues concerning the civil service, the universal interpretation is that the ECHR’s aggressive ruling in Lautsi v Italy, seeking to ban crucifixes from Italian classrooms, shortly before, was what concentrated the minds of the judges in the Italian Supreme Court.
In fact, sources close to the Italian judiciary have informally briefed that the decision was a warning that activist rulings by the ECHR “will not be given deference”. The juridical principle at issue here is nothing less than national sovereignty. Where an alien court has the right to overrule a national constitution, sovereignty has de facto ceased to exist. Citizens may go to the polls at a general election to elect an administration, but the “government” they choose will be no more than a municipal council. This, of course, was always the intention of the Lisbon Treaty and its supporters.
Europhile politicians and commentators in Britain, after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the ratting by the Vichy Tories on their promise of a referendum, were masochistically resigned to the United Kingdom becoming a province of Brussels. Now the Italians have overthrown the fatalistic notion of the irresistible march of Eurofederalism. They have simply said: if it encroaches upon our national sovereignty, it won’t fly here. This is excellent.
Can we rely on our own New Labour-designed Supreme Court to take an equally robust stance in defence of the British Constitution? Ay, there’s the rub. An incoming Tory government (if we had a Tory party) should be committed to abolishing this alien tribunal and restoring jurisdiction to the House of Lords.
But such considerations should not blind us to the fact that the sovereignty of European states has been given a crucial boost by the Italian ruling. It is also likely to bolster resistance in Ireland, where a similar activist case from the ECHR is expected to attempt to impose abortion on a state that has rejected it. Not everyone would have expected the first roll-back of Lisbon to come from Italy; but it has, so we should be heartened. Eurofederalism – just say no!
Italy
By Gerald Warner
December 19th, 2009
The Telegraph
The first blow has been struck against the encroaching tyranny of the European Union and it is a significant one. In fact, one member state has defiantly drawn a line in the sand and signalled that it will not tolerate erosion of its sovereignty. Although it attracted little attention when it was published last month, now that commentators have had an opportunity to analyse Sentenza N. 311 by the Italian Constitutional Court, its monumental significance in rolling back the Lisbon Treaty is now being appreciated. (Hat tip, as they say, to Dr Piero Tozzi.)
The Constitutional Court ruled baldly that, where rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) conflict with provisions of the Italian Constitution, such decrees “lack legitimacy”. In other words, they will not be enforced in Italy. Although this judgement related to issues concerning the civil service, the universal interpretation is that the ECHR’s aggressive ruling in Lautsi v Italy, seeking to ban crucifixes from Italian classrooms, shortly before, was what concentrated the minds of the judges in the Italian Supreme Court.
In fact, sources close to the Italian judiciary have informally briefed that the decision was a warning that activist rulings by the ECHR “will not be given deference”. The juridical principle at issue here is nothing less than national sovereignty. Where an alien court has the right to overrule a national constitution, sovereignty has de facto ceased to exist. Citizens may go to the polls at a general election to elect an administration, but the “government” they choose will be no more than a municipal council. This, of course, was always the intention of the Lisbon Treaty and its supporters.
Europhile politicians and commentators in Britain, after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the ratting by the Vichy Tories on their promise of a referendum, were masochistically resigned to the United Kingdom becoming a province of Brussels. Now the Italians have overthrown the fatalistic notion of the irresistible march of Eurofederalism. They have simply said: if it encroaches upon our national sovereignty, it won’t fly here. This is excellent.
Can we rely on our own New Labour-designed Supreme Court to take an equally robust stance in defence of the British Constitution? Ay, there’s the rub. An incoming Tory government (if we had a Tory party) should be committed to abolishing this alien tribunal and restoring jurisdiction to the House of Lords.
But such considerations should not blind us to the fact that the sovereignty of European states has been given a crucial boost by the Italian ruling. It is also likely to bolster resistance in Ireland, where a similar activist case from the ECHR is expected to attempt to impose abortion on a state that has rejected it. Not everyone would have expected the first roll-back of Lisbon to come from Italy; but it has, so we should be heartened. Eurofederalism – just say no!
Italy
Friday, October 16, 2009
Italian Payoffs
There are so many reasons why this is just wrong ...
French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban
Tom Coghlan
The London Times
October 15, 2009
When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.
Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.
What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.
US intelligence officials were flabbergasted when they found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had also been buying off militants, notably in Herat province in the far west. In June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome made a démarche, or diplomatic protest, to the Berlusconi Government over allegations concerning the tactic.
However, a number of high-ranking officers in Nato have told The Times that payments were subsequently discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.
Western officials say that because the French knew nothing of the payments they made a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment.
“One cannot be too doctrinaire about these things,” a senior Nato officer in Kabul said. “It might well make sense to buy off local groups and use non-violence to keep violence down. But it is madness to do so and not inform your allies.”
On August 18, a month after the Italian force departed, a lightly armed French patrol moved into the mountains north of Sarobi town, in the district of the same name, 65km (40 miles) east of Kabul. They had little reason to suspect that they were walking into the costliest battle for the French in a quarter of a century.
Operating in an arc of territory north and east of the Afghan capital, the French apparently believed that they were serving in a relatively benign district. The Italians they had replaced in July had suffered only one combat death in the previous year. For months the Nato headquarters in Kabul had praised Italian reconstruction projects under way around Sarobi. When an estimated 170 insurgents ambushed the force in the Uzbin Valley the upshot was a disaster. “They took us by surprise,” one French troop commander said after the attack.
A Nato post-operations assessment would sharply criticise the French force for its lack of preparation. “They went in with two platoons [approximately 60 men],” said one senior Nato officer. “They had no heavy weapons, no pre-arranged air support, no artillery support and not enough radios.”
Had it not been for the chance presence of some US special forces in the area who were able to call in air support for them, they would have been in an even worse situation. “The French were carrying just two medium machine guns and 100 rounds of ammunition per man. They were asking for trouble and the insurgents managed to get among them.”
A force from the 8th Marine Parachute Regiment took an hour and a half to reach the French over the mountains. “We couldn’t see the enemy and we didn’t know how many of them there were,” said another French officer. “After 20 minutes we started coming under fire from the rear. We were surrounded.”
The force was trapped until airstrikes forced the insurgents to retreat the next morning. By then ten French soldiers were dead and 21 injured.
The French public were appalled when it emerged that many of the dead had been mutilated by the insurgents— a mixed force including Taleban members and fighters from Hizb e-Islami.
A few weeks later French journalists photographed insurgents carrying French assault rifles and wearing French army flak jackets, helmets and, in one case, a dead soldier’s watch.
Two Western military officials in Kabul confirmed that intelligence briefings after the ambush said that the French troops had believed they were moving through a benign area — one which the Italian military had been keen to show off to the media as a successful example of a “hearts and minds” operation.
Another Nato source confirmed the allegations of Italian money going to insurgents. “The Italian intelligence service made the payments, it wasn’t the Italian Army,” he said. “It was payments of tens of thousands of dollars regularly to individual insurgent commanders. It was to stop Italian casualties that would cause political difficulties at home.”
When six Italian troops were killed in a bombing in Kabul last month it resulted in a national outpouring of grief and demands for troops to be withdrawn. The Nato source added that US intelligence became aware of the payments. “The Italians never acknowledged it, even though there was intercepted telephone traffic on the subject,” said the source. “The démarche was the result. It was not publicised because it would have caused a diplomatic nightmare. We found out about the Sarobi payments later.”
In Kabul a high-ranking Western intelligence source was scathing. “It’s an utter disgrace,” he said. “Nato in Afghanistan is a fragile enough construct without this lot working behind our backs. The Italians have a hell of a lot to answer for.”
Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder from Sarobi, recalled how a benign environment became hostile overnight. “There were no attacks against the Italians. People said the Italians and Taleban had good relations between them.
“When the country [nationality of the forces] changed and the French came there was a big attack on them. We knew the Taleban came to the city and we knew that they didn’t carry out attacks on the Italian troops but we didn’t know why.”
The Italian Defence Ministry referred inquiries to the Prime Minister’s Office. A spokesman said: “The American Ambassador in Rome did not make any formal complaint. He merely asked for information, first from the previous Government and then from the current Government. The allegations were denied and they are totally unfounded.”
Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, defeated Romano Prodi at elections in April 2008.
The claims are not without precedent. In October 2007 two Italian agents were kidnapped in western Afghanistan; one was killed in a rescue by British special forces. It was later alleged in the Italian press that they had been kidnapped while making payments to the Taleban.
taliban
French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban
Tom Coghlan
The London Times
October 15, 2009
When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.
Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.
What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.
US intelligence officials were flabbergasted when they found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had also been buying off militants, notably in Herat province in the far west. In June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome made a démarche, or diplomatic protest, to the Berlusconi Government over allegations concerning the tactic.
However, a number of high-ranking officers in Nato have told The Times that payments were subsequently discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.
Western officials say that because the French knew nothing of the payments they made a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment.
“One cannot be too doctrinaire about these things,” a senior Nato officer in Kabul said. “It might well make sense to buy off local groups and use non-violence to keep violence down. But it is madness to do so and not inform your allies.”
On August 18, a month after the Italian force departed, a lightly armed French patrol moved into the mountains north of Sarobi town, in the district of the same name, 65km (40 miles) east of Kabul. They had little reason to suspect that they were walking into the costliest battle for the French in a quarter of a century.
Operating in an arc of territory north and east of the Afghan capital, the French apparently believed that they were serving in a relatively benign district. The Italians they had replaced in July had suffered only one combat death in the previous year. For months the Nato headquarters in Kabul had praised Italian reconstruction projects under way around Sarobi. When an estimated 170 insurgents ambushed the force in the Uzbin Valley the upshot was a disaster. “They took us by surprise,” one French troop commander said after the attack.
A Nato post-operations assessment would sharply criticise the French force for its lack of preparation. “They went in with two platoons [approximately 60 men],” said one senior Nato officer. “They had no heavy weapons, no pre-arranged air support, no artillery support and not enough radios.”
Had it not been for the chance presence of some US special forces in the area who were able to call in air support for them, they would have been in an even worse situation. “The French were carrying just two medium machine guns and 100 rounds of ammunition per man. They were asking for trouble and the insurgents managed to get among them.”
A force from the 8th Marine Parachute Regiment took an hour and a half to reach the French over the mountains. “We couldn’t see the enemy and we didn’t know how many of them there were,” said another French officer. “After 20 minutes we started coming under fire from the rear. We were surrounded.”
The force was trapped until airstrikes forced the insurgents to retreat the next morning. By then ten French soldiers were dead and 21 injured.
The French public were appalled when it emerged that many of the dead had been mutilated by the insurgents— a mixed force including Taleban members and fighters from Hizb e-Islami.
A few weeks later French journalists photographed insurgents carrying French assault rifles and wearing French army flak jackets, helmets and, in one case, a dead soldier’s watch.
Two Western military officials in Kabul confirmed that intelligence briefings after the ambush said that the French troops had believed they were moving through a benign area — one which the Italian military had been keen to show off to the media as a successful example of a “hearts and minds” operation.
Another Nato source confirmed the allegations of Italian money going to insurgents. “The Italian intelligence service made the payments, it wasn’t the Italian Army,” he said. “It was payments of tens of thousands of dollars regularly to individual insurgent commanders. It was to stop Italian casualties that would cause political difficulties at home.”
When six Italian troops were killed in a bombing in Kabul last month it resulted in a national outpouring of grief and demands for troops to be withdrawn. The Nato source added that US intelligence became aware of the payments. “The Italians never acknowledged it, even though there was intercepted telephone traffic on the subject,” said the source. “The démarche was the result. It was not publicised because it would have caused a diplomatic nightmare. We found out about the Sarobi payments later.”
In Kabul a high-ranking Western intelligence source was scathing. “It’s an utter disgrace,” he said. “Nato in Afghanistan is a fragile enough construct without this lot working behind our backs. The Italians have a hell of a lot to answer for.”
Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder from Sarobi, recalled how a benign environment became hostile overnight. “There were no attacks against the Italians. People said the Italians and Taleban had good relations between them.
“When the country [nationality of the forces] changed and the French came there was a big attack on them. We knew the Taleban came to the city and we knew that they didn’t carry out attacks on the Italian troops but we didn’t know why.”
The Italian Defence Ministry referred inquiries to the Prime Minister’s Office. A spokesman said: “The American Ambassador in Rome did not make any formal complaint. He merely asked for information, first from the previous Government and then from the current Government. The allegations were denied and they are totally unfounded.”
Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, defeated Romano Prodi at elections in April 2008.
The claims are not without precedent. In October 2007 two Italian agents were kidnapped in western Afghanistan; one was killed in a rescue by British special forces. It was later alleged in the Italian press that they had been kidnapped while making payments to the Taleban.
taliban
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Drug testing ... on your sewer
March edition of Popular Science. Your Sewer on Drugs.
The article is 4-5 pages long and quite interesting. Testing on the sewage system to check various issues but along the way, also testing for drugs.
According to the Annotated Sample on the final page of the article, 95% of sewage is water. The other 5% is what is more interesting.
Germs - e coli, strep, polio, hepatitis
Prescription drugs - hospitals, pharmacies, physicians, and patients - dump it down their sinks and toilets.
Illegal drugs - testing is possible for 20 illegal drugs.
Pesticides - agricultural runoff and improper disposal by the public.
Industrial Waste - from factories, paper mills and smelters
Toiletries - from shampoo to cosmetics
Solid Waste - heavy metals, needles, condoms, diapers, even dead animals.
Fascinating shit.
Drug tests are fine, but how to drug test a city!! Test the sewage.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) uses polls to find out who is and is not taking illegal drugs - but people lie. According to their survey for 2006: 20.4 million Americans age 12 or older were illicit drug users. 14.8 million admitted using marijuana. 2.4 million use cocaine. 731,000 admit to methamphetamine use.
But those numbers may be understated.
An Italian researcher decided to test the PO RIVER in ITALY. His results:
The equivalent of four kilograms of cocaine flow through the PO each day (they were search for benzoylecgonine). That breaks down to 40,000 dozes of 100 milligrams (pinch of sugar). If it were distributed among all people age 15 to 35, about 2.7% use cocaine. According to this research and figures, it is double what Italy believes is the rate of usage.
They checked on Milan - cocaine use spikes on weekends and levels off during week, but it doesn't drop! Use is ongoing or habitual.
This is one way to drug test a city. See if it is passing or not. Watch for this in the future when federal funding goes to city with lowest drug figures. To provide an incentive for cities to do something more than they are doing!
UPDATE: March 10. 2008, Washington Post. Area Tap Water Has Traces of Medicines
Tests Find 6 Drugs, Caffeine in D.C., Va. Whats in your water??
The article is 4-5 pages long and quite interesting. Testing on the sewage system to check various issues but along the way, also testing for drugs.
According to the Annotated Sample on the final page of the article, 95% of sewage is water. The other 5% is what is more interesting.
Germs - e coli, strep, polio, hepatitis
Prescription drugs - hospitals, pharmacies, physicians, and patients - dump it down their sinks and toilets.
Illegal drugs - testing is possible for 20 illegal drugs.
Pesticides - agricultural runoff and improper disposal by the public.
Industrial Waste - from factories, paper mills and smelters
Toiletries - from shampoo to cosmetics
Solid Waste - heavy metals, needles, condoms, diapers, even dead animals.
Fascinating shit.
Drug tests are fine, but how to drug test a city!! Test the sewage.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) uses polls to find out who is and is not taking illegal drugs - but people lie. According to their survey for 2006: 20.4 million Americans age 12 or older were illicit drug users. 14.8 million admitted using marijuana. 2.4 million use cocaine. 731,000 admit to methamphetamine use.
But those numbers may be understated.
An Italian researcher decided to test the PO RIVER in ITALY. His results:
The equivalent of four kilograms of cocaine flow through the PO each day (they were search for benzoylecgonine). That breaks down to 40,000 dozes of 100 milligrams (pinch of sugar). If it were distributed among all people age 15 to 35, about 2.7% use cocaine. According to this research and figures, it is double what Italy believes is the rate of usage.
They checked on Milan - cocaine use spikes on weekends and levels off during week, but it doesn't drop! Use is ongoing or habitual.
This is one way to drug test a city. See if it is passing or not. Watch for this in the future when federal funding goes to city with lowest drug figures. To provide an incentive for cities to do something more than they are doing!
UPDATE: March 10. 2008, Washington Post. Area Tap Water Has Traces of Medicines
Tests Find 6 Drugs, Caffeine in D.C., Va. Whats in your water??
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Viva Italia
Gotta Love the Euros. So civilized. They don't do war any more. They are much more passive. They love life and love each other, whatever age.
In Italy, a 34 year old man was arrested for having a 'love affair' with a 13 year old girl. In America, I know, we are so puritanical, we call that pedophilia. We lock him up where he gets to know Bubba very personally, every night until Bubba tires of him and cuts his throat.
In Italy, the court sentenced him to 16 months because they accepted his argument that he and the 13 year old girl had a 'real love'. His lawyers argued that a 'deep tenderness' existed between the 34 year old and the 13 year old and that he had fallen head over heels for her after a sexual encounter in his car. His lawyers said that the 13 year old had consented to every action. According to a judge in Rome (Simonetta Matone), the law must "always look to be reasonable in these cases." [How many cases like this do you get in Rome?]
I have no use for these people or their country, not to apologize nor discuss anything of a mature nature. Useless idiots in this country would have us do rapproachment with all countries on earth to make amends for Bush ... and why? Why discuss anything with Italy. It is they who should apologize for what they have done. And yes, this is one case and that isn't indicative of anything - although the attitude of the judge is. There are more, we just do not always hear about them.
Deconstruct this argument and the chronology - this man (34 years old) and this child (13 years old) are in his car. He does not YET HAVE FEELINGS FOR HER or they are, at that moment driven by his need to molest a child, he rapes her and she tells him she enjoyed it. A child does not have the maturity or emotional skills to make those decisions - the reason why we don't let 13 year olds get married or buy homes.
Then he develops feelings. I would be willing to accept that argument - even though he is a liar and said that to avoid eternal imprisonment with Bubba. I would then turn around and sentence him to 100 years for the first act - rape of the girl in the car, BEFORE he had feelings for her.
For the Italians, that transition was too difficult to make and they gave up and said it was ok. Did you wonder when reading the story why he had "sex" [raped] in his car with her? Most Italian males live at home with mama until their mid to late 30s. Real men they are - living at home and raping 13 year olds.
I have utterly no use for them, now or ever. Good riddance.
In Italy, a 34 year old man was arrested for having a 'love affair' with a 13 year old girl. In America, I know, we are so puritanical, we call that pedophilia. We lock him up where he gets to know Bubba very personally, every night until Bubba tires of him and cuts his throat.
In Italy, the court sentenced him to 16 months because they accepted his argument that he and the 13 year old girl had a 'real love'. His lawyers argued that a 'deep tenderness' existed between the 34 year old and the 13 year old and that he had fallen head over heels for her after a sexual encounter in his car. His lawyers said that the 13 year old had consented to every action. According to a judge in Rome (Simonetta Matone), the law must "always look to be reasonable in these cases." [How many cases like this do you get in Rome?]
I have no use for these people or their country, not to apologize nor discuss anything of a mature nature. Useless idiots in this country would have us do rapproachment with all countries on earth to make amends for Bush ... and why? Why discuss anything with Italy. It is they who should apologize for what they have done. And yes, this is one case and that isn't indicative of anything - although the attitude of the judge is. There are more, we just do not always hear about them.
Deconstruct this argument and the chronology - this man (34 years old) and this child (13 years old) are in his car. He does not YET HAVE FEELINGS FOR HER or they are, at that moment driven by his need to molest a child, he rapes her and she tells him she enjoyed it. A child does not have the maturity or emotional skills to make those decisions - the reason why we don't let 13 year olds get married or buy homes.
Then he develops feelings. I would be willing to accept that argument - even though he is a liar and said that to avoid eternal imprisonment with Bubba. I would then turn around and sentence him to 100 years for the first act - rape of the girl in the car, BEFORE he had feelings for her.
For the Italians, that transition was too difficult to make and they gave up and said it was ok. Did you wonder when reading the story why he had "sex" [raped] in his car with her? Most Italian males live at home with mama until their mid to late 30s. Real men they are - living at home and raping 13 year olds.
I have utterly no use for them, now or ever. Good riddance.
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