The Agonist - Europe Minus UK

Italians outraged as European court rules against crucifixes

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:27:47 -0800

After a European court rules against crucifixes in Italian schoolrooms, Italians from across the political spectrum decry an assault on the country's Roman Catholic identity.

Christian Science Monitor, By Nick Squires, November 3

Rome - Italians reacted with outrage on Tuesday after a European court ruled that displaying crucifixes in the country's schools violated the principle of secular education.

Italy's education minister condemned the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the Christian cross was a symbol of the country's Roman Catholic religion and cultural identity.

Mariastella Gelmini, a member of the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, argued that "no one, and certainly not an ideological European court, will succeed in erasing our identity," said

Other ministers said they were appalled by the ruling, calling it "absurd," "shameful" and "offensive."

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologist, Dies at 100

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:47:32 -0800

Edward Rothstein | Paris | November 3

NYT - Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of what was once called “primitive man” and who towered over the French intellectual scene in the 1960s and ’70s, has died at 100.

His son Laurent said Mr. Lévi-Strauss died of cardiac arrest Friday at his home in Paris. His death was announced Tuesday, the same day he was buried in the village of Lignerolles, in the Côte-d’Or region southeast of Paris, where he had a country home.

“He had expressed the wish to have a discreet and sober funeral, with his family, in his country house,” his son said. “He was attached to this place; he liked to take walks in the forest, and the cemetery where he is now buried is just on the edge of this forest.”

A powerful thinker, Mr. Lévi-Strauss was an avatar of “structuralism,” a school of thought in which universal “structures” were believed to underlie all human activity, giving shape to seemingly disparate cultures and creations. His work was a profound influence even on his critics, of whom there were many. There has been no comparable successor to him in France. And his writing — a mixture of the pedantic and the poetic, full of daring juxtapositions, intricate argument and elaborate metaphors — resembles little that had come before in anthropology.

Also: The Influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss

Hallowe’en is the devil’s work, Catholic church warns parents

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:10:11 -0700

Graham Keeley & Richard Owen | Madrid / Rome | October 31

The Times - When Victoria Romero, 6, dressed up as a witch for a Hallowe’en party this week she could hardly have imagined that she was provoking the wrath of God by attending a celebration akin to a Black Mass — at least in the eyes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain.

Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops.

However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival.

Father Joan María Canals, the director of the Spanish Bishops Conference Committee on Liturgy, condemned parents for permitting their children to go to “un-Christian” parties when they should be focusing on All Saints Day today and All Souls Day on Monday.

His views were endorsed yesterday by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, which reported his views under the headline “Hallowe’en’s dangerous messages”.

It quoted him as saying: “Hallowe’en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.” Parents should “be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death”, he said.

[...]

José Sánchez González, the Bishop of Sigüenza-Guadalajara, in central Spain, went further, suggesting that Hallowe’en parties had a “background of the occult and anti-Christianity”. He said that he saw the dark influence of Hollywood playing with the young minds of Spanish children as they danced innocently around pumpkins, little realising that they were attending a pagan festival.

Prosecution opens case against Karadzic, absent again

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:57:15 -0700

Reed Stevenson | The hague | Oct 27

Reuters - Radovan Karadzic led a campaign to make Bosnian Muslims "disappear from the face of the earth" and carve out a mono-ethnic state for Bosnian Serbs, war crimes prosecutors told a U.N. tribunal on Tuesday.

In opening statements, prosecutors painted a picture of the former Bosnian Serb leader as a supreme commander single-mindedly pursing a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Their statements were delivered to empty chairs on the defendant's side of the court as Karadzic boycotted the trial for a second day.

"The Supreme Commander explained in October 1991 what was coming for Sarajevo: 'Sarajevo will be a black cauldron where Muslims will die. They will disappear, that people will disappear from the face of the earth'," Prosecutor Alan Tieger cited Karadzic as saying.

He was referring to the 43-month siege of Sarajevo that began in 1992 and killed an estimated 10,000.

The break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s saw Serbs, Croats and Muslims fighting for land. More than 100,000 people were killed.

"The supreme commander had directed his forces in a campaign to carve out a mono-ethnic state within his multi-ethnic country," Tieger said, calling him a "hands-on leader who maintained direct contact".

Berlusconi faces early tax trial

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:45:33 -0700

Duncan Kennedy | Rome | Oct 26

BBC - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is to go back on trial in November, accused of tax fraud.

It follows a recent decision by Italy's highest court to lift his immunity from prosecution while serving in office.

He is to stand trial on 16 November - much earlier than expected - on charges linked to the purchase of TV and film rights by his family company, Mediaset.

Mr Berlusconi denies the charges. He also faces another trial, yet to be set, for bribing a British tax lawyer.

Rich Germans demand higher taxes

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:00:08 -0700

Berlin | October 23

BBC - A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.

The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery.

Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say.

The petition has 44 signatories so far, and will be presented to newly re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The US-Russia-Ukraine Triangle

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:10:48 -0700

With the possible exception of Georgia-US-Russia, no US relationship in the former Soviet region is more fraught today than the US-Russia-Ukraine triangle. At a time when Washington and Moscow have variously committed to a relationship reset, a new operating system, and a rerun of the Clinton-Yeltsin strategic partnership, it is disappointing how little substance has followed rhetoric. Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe are still reeling from the US Administration’s abrupt and ill-timed reversal on missile defense deployment, and Team Obama is eager for opportunities to demonstrate its commitment to the new Europe, which received no shortage of love from the Bush Administration.

Enter the prospect of US-Ukraine cooperation on missile defense. According to Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US, the two countries have begun working discussions on sharing data from Ukrainian radar for use with a revised US-led missile defense system in Southeastern Europe. The Ukrainians may be overreaching here, trying to manufacture a moment of decision that the US Administration prefers to avoid, however there is no doubt that missile defense cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe remains very much on the table, even after the Bush plan was scrapped last month. And while the Obama Administration insists any radar-interceptor system is still intended primarily to defend against a rogue missile launch by Iran, Moscow has renewed its objection that missile defense based in former Warsaw Pact territory is a threat to its nuclear deterrent, an absolute red line for an ex-superpower whose conventional forces are not up to the task of defending its sprawling borders.

All of this makes perfect sense in the context of an increasingly zero sum US-Russian relationship: If the possibility of US-Ukraine missile defense cooperation reassures Kiev (and Warsaw and Prague) that the US is still fully engaged in the region, it should be no surprise that Russia is as upset over this as it was over the Bush Administration’s plans for a Polish and the Czech system–perhaps more so because some of the radars at issue are in Crimea, a Russian majority region of Ukraine where Moscow could exploit ethnic tension to empower a pro-Russian separatist movement. Ironically, during the month between Obama’s cancellation of the original missile defense plan and now, Moscow had refused to acknowledge the importance of the US concession, latching onto the system’s technical shortcomings to dismiss it as destined for failure from the outset. In turn, Congressional hawks have argued that Russia’s offer to cut its deployed nuclear arsenal by about a quarter is hollow, since most of those weapons are unreliable antiques.

The bigger picture: If it can’t have close ties with both Russia and the West, Ukraine’s best bet is security through NATO membership, and prosperity through EU membership. Both are threatened by Russia’s plans to build the Nord Stream pipeline, which will cut Ukraine out of the gas trade, and Moscow’s ambition to control a sphere of influence, which will, at a minimum, extend to borderlands with large Russian populations. The Ukrainian Presidential election in January will reshuffle Kiev’s cast of players, but is unlikely to effect a permanent reorientation toward Moscow over Brussels and Washington. For the US, opening a dialogue on potential cooperation with Ukraine signals that the missile defense reversal in September was not the beginning of the end of US engagement in the region.

By Matthew Rojansky. To see more articles by Matthew, go to http://blog.psaonline.org/

Pope Sets Plan for Disaffected Anglicans to Join Catholics

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:26:00 -0700

Rachel Donadio & Laurie Goodstein | Vatican City | OCtober 20

NYT - In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican on Tuesday announced that it would make it easier for Anglicans who are uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church.

A new canonical entity will allow groups of Anglicans “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

Though both Catholic and Anglican leaders sought on Tuesday to present the move as a more coherent, unified response to those seeking conversion, the Vatican appeared to have announced the move to the Anglican Communion only in recent weeks and as a fait accompli. And many Anglican and Catholic leaders expressed surprise, even shock, at something they said would undermine efforts at ecumenical dialogue and capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church over issues likethe ordination of gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions.

The move could have wide impact in England, where large numbers of traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England’s embrace in recent years of liberal theological reforms like ordaining women bishops. These Anglicans, and others in places like Australia, might be attracted to the Roman Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go. If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the Catholic church, it will probably set off battles over ownership of church buildings and land.

[...]

In recent decades, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have sought to heal those centuries of division, and some feared that the Vatican’s move might jeopardize decades of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans seeking common ground by implying that the ultimate aim of that dialogue is conversion.

Officials of both the Vatican and the Anglican Communion made clear on Tuesday that the move was intended to address the doctrinal issues surrounding conversion, not the diplomatic issues of interfaith dialogue.

The move creates a formal structure to oversee conversions that had previously been evaluated case by case, including those of married Anglican priests, who are permitted to remain married after they convert to Catholicism. Called Personal Ordinariates, the structure will consist of local Catholic faithful overseen by Anglican prelates who will provide guidance to Anglicans — including entire parishes or even dioceses — seeking to convert.

[...]

As such, the structure could conceivably create a new, separate and hybrid Catholic Church in a place like Britain, where Anglicans now vastly outnumber Catholics.

Cardinal Levada, who flew back to Rome from London Monday evening, acknowledged that the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and leading cleric of the Anglican Church, had only been informed about the Vatican’s decision within the past month.

A Censored Headline and why it Matters

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:54:19 -0700

A Censored Headline and why it Matters:

German High Court Outlaws Electronic Voting

Justices of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Image

(DailyCensored.Com) The justices above are clearly the most rational group of high level functionaries in the industrialized world. They did what no other court would do in Europe or the United States. They effectively outlawed electronic voting. On March 3, 2009, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared that the electronic voting machines used in the 2005 Bundestag elections for the German national parliament were outside of the bounds of the German Constitution.

They reasoned that electronic voting is not verifiable because citizen votes are counted in secret. It obscured a technology inaccessible to all but a very few initiates. Most importantly, the German high court noted, electronic voting machines don't allow citizens to "reliably examine, when the vote is cast, whether the vote has been recorded in an unadulterated manner" Mar. 3, 2009.

The written opinion effectively bars electronic voting in future elections based on the complexity of voting machines and the inability of voters to watch their vote being counted. This raises the bar of acceptability well above the meaningless solutions offered by "paper trails" for touch screen voting or the so-called "paper ballots" for computerized optical scan voting machines, the most popular form of voting in the United States.

Germany's 2009 Bundestag elections were conducted with hand counted paper ballots.

Have you heard that one of the world's leading economic powers, the fourth largest economy in the world, banned electronic voting; said it was undemocratic? Given the multitude of problems encountered in the U.S. and the number of questionable election results, wouldn't it make sense that when Germany banned electronic voting and replaced it with paper ballots, there would be at least a days worth of national coverage in the United States?

Nothing like that occurred. The Associated Press (Times of India) story on the verdict danced around the periphery of the world media market with coverage in Turkey, India, Australia, and Ireland. But there were no major media takers for the AP story in the United States.

There was every reason to carry the story. In a 2006 Zogby poll, 92% of the 1028 registered voters surveyed said they agreed with this statement:

Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes - 92% agree. New Zogby Poll On Electronic Voting Attitudes Aug. 21, 2006

That's exactly the proposition that the German court upheld. Surely there was an audience for the German decision but there was hardly a word from corporate media.

Why did this happen?

There are certain vital stories that the U.S. corporate media won't touch. The most prominent censored headline is "Over One Million Iraqi Civilians Dead in Conflict." This figure has been known since 2007 while a previous survey showing 650,000 dead was spiked in 2006. The Iraqi civilians died as a result of internal conflict unleashed by the U.S. invasion in 2003. Had Bush-Cheney not invaded with the approval of a sleep walking Congress, these people would not have died as they did.

Another vital story that isn't covered is election fraud, fixing an entire election. The corporate media simply can't raise the possibility that election fraud exists. The preliminary steps enabling election fraud through computerized voting are outsourcing elections to private vendors; the lack of any verifiable connection between your vote and the voting machines processes; and, security risks.

However, corporate media are more than happy to cover the nearly nonexistent "voter fraud" stories about masses of illegal voters showing up at the polls. The Bush administration was only able to produced 24 convictions of citizens and non citizens combined over a three year period.

The media will discuss electronic voting malfunctions but they simply won't connect the dots. Computers function as programmed, by definition. "Malfunctions" during vote counting are part of any given program. When the errors benefit one side of the political equation, it is highly relevant to raise questions about intentional "errors." However, the treatment of these stories is always within the context of computer problems instead of a broad inquiry into why elections are outsourced to private vendors and the resulting risks and problems and. U.S. elections will be virtually dominated by one private firm out of Omaha, Nebraska, ES&S.

German Citizens Prevail

A recent article by elections activist Kathleen Wynne, former Associate Director of BlackBoxVoting.org, told the story of the story of the landmark German case with a link to an extensive radio interview with litigant Dr. Ulrich Wiesner (Electronic Voting Declared Unconstitutional in Germany).

Physicist Ulrich Wiesner, PhD and Prof. Joachim Wiesner, PhD, an eminent German political scientist, brought suit against the use of electronic voting machines in the 2005 Bundestag elections. The evidence gathered supported the findings of the court described above. While both Wiesner's on the suit have PhD's and distinguished careers, they brought the landmark case on their own as citizens. Undeterred by the odds and the dismissal of German politicians, they stood by their cause and won.

It's a great story, father and son team prevail against huge odds to ensure that all Germans get their vote counted. But none of the majors here bit.

These articles constitute most of the serious coverage of this story in the United States. Paul Lehto wrote two articles for OpEdNews.com on March 3 and 19, 2009: Germany Bans Computerized Voting, Will Hand Count in 2009 and German high court honors US democratic principles. Activist Bev Harris wrote a commentary on 3-19-09: Let's get off the hamster wh..., BlackBoxVoting.org. Newsweek ran an insightful column in its education section on June, 2009, We do not trust machines. While AP ran the story, it wasn't picked up and featured by any major media outlet in the United States. The International Herald Tribune also covered the decision but its sister paper, The New York Times, dropped the ball.

The Wynne article told the story of the citizens who made the decision happen, the Wiesner father and son team. Deadline Live with Jack Blood, the radio show, carried a comprehensive interview of German litigant, Dr. Ulrich Wiesner and follow up discussions with Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris

But that's it. The highest court in the nation with the world's fourth largest economy makes law that bans electronic voting after determining that computerized elections are fundamentally opposed to democratic principles. The decision applies directly to the electronic voting systems used in the United States. What do we hear from the U.S. corporate media? Just about nothing.

In this case, when a tree falls in the forest and just a few people hear it, it's no big deal. But it should be.

END

For more information on hand counted paper ballots and evidence for this case, see:
Center for Hand-Counted Paper Ballots
VoteRescue.org
Hacking the Electoral Law, Ulrich Wiesner, PhD, 23rd Chaos Communications Conference (PDF)

This article may be reproduced in whole or in part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

Seduced by the memory of Mata Hari

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:19:45 -0700

John Litchfield | Oct 20

The Independent - The Emir of Qatar wants to reopen the hotel where the 'master-spy' was arrested. John Lichfield reports on its colourful history

In February 1917, a French judge and a dozen police officers barged into Suite 113 in a luxurious hotel on the Champs Elysées. The beautiful female occupant appeared – naked, according to one account – and handed around chocolates in a captured German helmet.

Ten months later, the woman, aged 41, was shot as a German spy by a military firing squad in the forest of Vincennes, east of Paris. She was a dancer, not a soldier and probably never much of a spy. She came from a country, the Netherlands, which was not even involved in the Great War.

Her name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle-McLeod, an adventuress, exotic dancer and courtesan, better known by her stage name, Mata Hari (a name under which she invented the striptease in 1905).

Three years after her death, the hotel in which she was arrested – the Elysée Palace – went bankrupt. It was acquired by a French bank and passed on from bank to bank until, eight years ago, it became the French headquarters of HSBC. The 1897 façade, strangely elaborate for a bank, still dominates the upper left-hand pavement of the Champs Elysée, if you look uphill towards the Arc de Triomphe.

Much of the décor and structure of the hotel remains, including a gilded and chandeliered restaurant, now used as an office canteen and bank clients' dining room. The two rooms which formed Suite 113 in 1917 still exist, converted to offices.

After almost 90 years as a bank, the Elysée Palace is about to become a hotel once again. The Emir of Qatar, who likes to go shopping for Parisian landmarks as others might shop for handbags, is reported to have offered €400m (£365m) for the building. HSBC, which has been planning to move to more hi-tech headquarters, is said to be seriously considering the offer. Within the next five years, the Elysée Palace may be reborn as a 200-bedroom, five-star hotel, probably under a different name.

Riots Rattle Ancient French Town

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:21:17 -0700

Edward Cody | Poitiers, France | October 15

WaPo - Under a bright autumn sun, the narrow lanes of ancient Poitiers teemed with families enjoying a lighthearted celebration of street theater. Suddenly, a knot of black-clad youths emerged from the crowd. They donned plastic masks, pulled up their hoods and started destroying everything in sight.

In what police described as an organized attack, the band shattered store windows, damaged the facades of several banks and spray-painted anarchist slogans on government buildings. Aiming even at the historical heritage of this comfortable provincial town 200 miles southwest of Paris, they fractured a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's interrogation here in 1429 and -- in Latin -- scrawled "Everything belongs to everybody" on a stone baptistery that is one of the oldest monuments in Christendom.

The wanton destruction, which lasted for about 90 minutes early Saturday evening, was a dramatic reminder that France and other European nations, below their surface of stability and wealth, harbor tiny bands of ultra-leftist activists who still want to combat the market economies and parliamentary democracies on which the continent's well-being is founded.

"We will destroy your morbid world," one of the Poitiers protesters sprayed-painted on a wall near the city's landmark Notre Dame Cathedral.

[...]

"It's really strange," said Christine Simon, whose little shop hawking New Age spirituality lost a display window and several art works in the rampage. "Here in Poitiers, there is never anything like this. I don't mean nothing ever happens. We have a cultural life and all. But nothing like this."

Lost Greek city that may have inspired Atlantis myth gives up secrets

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:06:07 -0700

Helena Smith | Athens | Oct 17

The Guardian -

The secrets of a lost city that may have inspired one of the world's most enduring myths – the fable of Atlantis – have been brought to light from beneath the waters off southern Greece.

Explored by an Anglo-Greek team of archaeologists and marine geologists and known as Pavlopetri, the sunken settlement dates back some 5,000 years to the time of Homer's heroes and in terms of size and wealth of detail is unprecedented, experts say.

"There is now no doubt that this is the oldest submerged town in the world," said Dr Jon Henderson, associate professor of underwater archaeology at the University of Nottingham. "It has remains dating from 2800 to 1200 BC, long before the glory days of classical Greece. There are older sunken sites in the world but none can be considered to be planned towns such as this, which is why it is unique."

The site, which straddles 30,000 square meters of ocean floor off the southern Peloponnese, is believed to have been consumed by the sea around 1000 BC. Although discovered by a British oceanographer some 40 years ago, it was only this year that marine archaeologists, aided by digital technology, were able to properly survey the ruins.

LHC gets colder than deep space

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:14:07 -0700

Paul Rincon | Geneva | October 16

BBC - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment has once again become one of the coldest places in the Universe.

All eight sectors of the LHC have now been cooled to their operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F) - colder than deep space.

The large magnets that bend particle beams around the LHC are kept at this frigid temperature using liquid helium.

The magnets are arranged end-to-end in a 27km-long circular tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border.

The cool-down is an important milestone ahead of the collider's scheduled re-start in the latter half of November.

[...]

The operating temperature of the LHC is just a shade above "absolute zero" (-273.15C) - the coldest temperature possible. By comparison, the temperature in remote regions of outer space is about 2.7 kelvin (-270C; -454F).

High-speed Internet access is a legal right in Finland

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:34:58 -0700

Melissa Rohlin | Helsinki | October 15

LAT - Life, liberty and the right to broadband access?

If Thomas Jefferson and our enlightened forefathers were here today, perhaps our unalienable rights would mimic Finland's, which will now include the right to broadband access. According to Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communication, 1-megabit Web access will become a legal right for all citizens in July.

France is one of the few countries that has made it a human right but Finland said it's the first country to make it a legal right.

It's not clear whether those who can't get connection can sue the government for the violation.

Since 1-megabit web access is dauntingly slow -- it's equivalent to DSL speed -- the government has pledged to expand the legal right to 100-megabit broadband access by the end of 2015. This news must come as a relief to Finns who have more important things to do than suffer the pain and frustration of a slow Internet connection. (There are allegedly 1.6 saunas for every Finn.)

U.S. tells Poland it could host new interceptors

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:18:26 -0700

Gareth Jones | Warsaw | Oct 16

Reuters - A senior U.S. official told Poland on Friday it could be one of the sites for interceptors envisaged under President Barack Obama's revised plans for missile defence in Europe.

Poland and the Czech Republic are still smarting from Obama's decision to shelve a Bush-era plan to install elements of a missile shield on their territory to protect against possible long-range missile attacks by Iran.

Under the new project, Washington will first deploy sea-based interceptors and then in a second phase deploy land-based systems involving SM-3 interceptors targeting short and medium-range missiles.

"Poland could host one of two land-based SM-3 sites, with of course the agreement of the Polish government," U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow told reporters.

** Ukraine in talks to host part of US missile shield: report
** Ukrainian Envoy, Pentagon Deny U.S.-Kyiv Talks On Missile Defense