The Agonist - Europe

Transsexual prostitute in Italian political sex scandal burns to death

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:37:59 -0800

A Brazilian transsexual caught up in a scandal which prompted the resignation of a senior Italian politician was found burned to death in his home Friday.

Reuters, The Daily Telegraph

This Brenda might be a shemale, to be precise. Plenty of them from Brazil work as prostitutes in Italy.

Belgium Prime Minister Picked as European President

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:13:40 -0800

Stephen Castle & Steven Erlanger | Brussels | November 19

NYT - Leaders of the 27 countries of the European Union on Thursday night chose Herman van Rompuy [wikipedia], the Belgian prime minister, as the European Union’s first president, and Catherine Ashton [wikipedia] of Britain, currently the group’s trade commissioner, as its high representative for foreign policy. The vote was unanimous.

Both are highly respected but little known outside their own countries. After an eight-year battle to rewrite its internal rules and to pass the Lisbon Treaty that created these two new jobs, the choice of such unknown figures seemed to highlight Europe’s problems instead of its readiness to take a more united and forceful place in world affairs.

In a sense, Europe seemed to be living down to expectations. Earlier, the foreign minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, warned against a “minimalist solution” that would reduce the union’s “opportunity to have a clear voice in the world.”

“It is quite astounding,” said Olivier Ferrand, president of Terra Nova, a center-left research institute in France. “It is jaw-dropping. It is the end of ambition for the E.U. — really disappointing.”

E.U picks little-known politician as bloc's first full-time president

Washington Post, By Edward Cody, November 19

BRUSSELS -- Champions of European unity hoped their new president would be a continental George Washington, a brand name who could pull the European Union closer together and fulfill their dream of a strengthened role for Europe in world affairs.

But after weeks of back-room haggling and private international telephone conversations, the presidents and prime ministers of the 27 E.U. members on Thursday picked a little-known politician, Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, as the union's first permanent president.

The choice of a conciliator, rather than a bold leader, for the new job suggested the European Union was not ready for the dramatic departure advocated by ardent unity advocates, analysts said. As a result, they added, the United States and other E.U. partners should expect little change in their traditional bilateral dealings with national governments despite Van Rompuy's addition to the vast Euro-bureaucracy in Brussels.

Nuclear disposal put in doubt by recovered Swedish galleon

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:47:55 -0800

Terry Macalister | Nov 15

The Guardian - Nuclear disposal put in doubt by recovered Swedish galleonThe plan to use copper for sealing nuclear waste underground has being thrown into disarray by corrosion in artefacts from the Vasa

Plans for nuclear waste disposal could be thrown into confusion tomorrow at a summit because of new evidence of corrosion in materials traditionally used for burial procedures.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) says it will keep careful watch on a meeting organised by the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste, which will look at potential problems with copper, designated for an important role in sealing radioactive waste underground.

Concerns have risen from a most unexpected quarter. Examination of copper artefacts from the Vasa, a fifteenth-century galleon raised from Stockholm harbour, has shown a level of decay that challenges the scientific wisdom that copper corrodes only when exposed to oxygen.

Italy convicts former CIA agents in renditions trial

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:44:10 -0800

Milan | Nov 4

Reuters - An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a landmark ruling against the "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.

Judge Oscar Magi dropped the case against another three American defendants and the ex-head of the Italy's Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, as well as his former deputy.

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/

Austrian lifeform

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:41:34 -0700

As a European I have started to understand that the diversity on this continent is huge.

This time, again from the country of Hitler, Jörg Heider and Josef Fritzl.

Maybe you remember that when right-wing nut Jörg Heider died in a car accident, there were left behind his wife and the second widow, his male lover. There is yet another twist in the story, when German magazine Bild published the story of his 3rd widow, a 31 year old man called René N.

So it seems that this Austrian politician had a wife and two gay lovers. First and second widows have sued 3rd widow because of the story. Anyway, it is a little bit difficult to believe that this a fake story.

Vaclav Klaus: How Czech president is fighting on to stop Europe in its tracks

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:47:17 -0700

Ian Traynor | Oct 15

The Guardian - For a man standing alone between Europe and its future, Vaclav Klaus is playing hard to get. Last week a trip to Albania, this week Russia; the Czech president has performed a vanishing act just when he has the rest of Europe dancing to his tune.

He relishes being at the centre of a showdown. But it appears he is currently more interested in selling copies of his tract on global warming denial.

Last week, as a panicky campaign was launched in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, and Prague to try to force Europe's biggest renegade into line, Klaus was dining by the Adriatic.

For five days he refused to return phone calls from Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister and current EU president saddled with the Klaus emergency. Jan Fischer, the Czech Republic's caretaker prime minister, has an even less enviable task, as mediator between Klaus and the rest of Europe's leaders. But Klaus won't give him the time of day. Fischer admitted he had managed to get him briefly on the phone, but not to arrange a meeting.

Klaus was in Albania to promote Blue Planet in Green Shackles, his book arguing that the only thing man-made about climate change is that it is a myth. Today he decamped to Moscow, promoting a Russian edition of the book.

Recruited by MI5: The name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:43:41 -0700

Tom Kington | Rome | October 13

The Guardian - Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Iceland looks to serve the world

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:51:05 -0700

Simon Hancock | Reykjavik | October 9

BBC - Since the financial crisis, Iceland has been forced to retreat back from high octane bubble living to nature.

Fortunately, there is a lot of that nature to retreat to.

It is a breathtaking world of volcanoes, endless prairies and ethereal winter landscapes.

Not, you might think, the most obvious place to stick millions of the world's computer servers which are, for all their uses, rather less attractive.

But the country now wants exactly that - to become home to the world's computing power.

[...]

In Iceland, with its year round cool climate and chilly fresh water, just a fraction of this energy for cooling is needed. It means big savings.

Just outside Reykjavik, work is well advanced on the first site which its owners hope will spark a server cold rush.

Obama, the Nobel Prize, and Jazz.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:45:33 -0700

It's a fair question whether President Barack Obama really deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It's just that, in the scheme of things, I don't think it's a very interesting question.

I'm still digesting all of this, of course. Talk about a weekend surprise. But if we go by the usual Nobel standards, I can't see, at the moment, how Obama even comes close to deserving the laurels, which generally reward either a life commitment to changing the world (think Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela) or a huge accomplishment in the cause of peace (think Mikhail Gorbachev, pivotal in ending the Cold War, or Woodrow Wilson, instrumental in the Treaty of Versailles). Not that every Nobel Peace Prize winner has that kind of global veneration; recent recipients include former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Mohamed Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And anyway, I do think Obama has the potential for greatness in leadership -- if someday soon he would gird his loins to lead his party and his wobbly nation.

No doubt, there is plenty of sound and fury in the "is he worthy?" Nobel debate that is now rattling our American windows. Head Republican buffoon Michael Steele darted into traffic to yell public insults to the effect that Obama is a sorry excuse for a Nobel laureate. Some prominent Washington figures with better home training than Steele have murmured their tepid congratulations. Others are heartily slapping the prez on the back. Obama himself, wisely, comes across as humbled and overwhelmed by the honor. If nothing else, the event illustrates in thick bright-red crayon just how childishly single-minded some Republicans are in finding any Obama outcome to be proof of his evil. (RNC position if Obama wins Nobel: Of course he won. He's a slick black strutter who has managed to sweet-talk the world. RNC position if Obama does not win Nobel: Of course he didn't win. Did you really think this gibbering fascist huckster was even in the running?)

But as I said, to me what's important about this is not how we in our Americanness try to hash out Obama's Nobel merit. What's important is what Europeans are actually trying to say in giving him the award and in their response to his receiving it. It looks to me as if, for Europe, this award is less about what Obama has accomplished and more about what he makes possible, which I'm guessing they see as a bona fide hallelujah moment after the apocalypse of the Bush years.

Listen to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who the New York Times quoted as saying the award marked “America’s return to the hearts of the world’s peoples.”

And here is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, proclaiming that “In a short time [Obama] has been able to set a new tone throughout the world and to create a readiness for dialogue.”

Then there was Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, who declared, “The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world. And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

That whooshing sound you hear is a great gasp of relief from across the Atlantic at their now having an American partner who studies, thinks, plays well with others, and who keeps the cover securely locked over the blinking red buttons on the console.

Which is where jazz comes in.

Our country has a long tradition of missing or dissing the global meaning of things African-American. Just as jazz has been revered in Europe as essentially a very advanced and creative form of classical music while its primarily-black American practitioners have struggled here to be viewed as more than barroom entertainers, Europe now bows to a man (who happens to be black) who represents a return to global statesmanship on a teetering planet -- while Americans squabble about whether he is really a legal citizen and whether he really hates white people.

We Americans really need to get out more often.

70 years on, Polish resolution condemns crimes under Stalin

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:21:18 -0700

Rafal Kiepuszewski | Sept 25

Deutsche Welle - A resolution unanimously approved by the Polish parliament this week condemns the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939. The resolution referred to a series of massacres of Poles in Russia, as well as mass deportations of over one million Poles to Siberia. Poland also called on Russia to condemn the crimes.

Sixteen days after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on Sept. 1, 1939, troops under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin were sent into eastern Poland. A year later, a Soviet-led massacre in the Katyn forest left over 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals dead.

The response from Russia warned that the Polish resolution, which said the Stalin-era crimes amount to genocide, was a set-back to improving ties between Russia and Poland.

"The resolution adopted by the parliament deals a serious blow to efforts to develop normal neighborly relations between our countries," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the resolution was "tendentious and politicized."

Polish parliamentary speaker Bronislaw Komorowski said Russia's reaction indicates the country is still coming to grips with its past.

"The fact that Russia has reacted so nervously to a resolution that has nothing to do with present-day foreign policy is a sign that it is still unable to come to terms with its own history," Komorowski said

Concern Troll Alert

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:44:12 -0700

More of the same "Europe is being overrun by Muslims" claptrap.

Then again, what does one expect from a guy who wrote, "Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion."

Paris Crazy Horse shrugs off crisis with strip-tease

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:35:27 -0700

Paris | Sept 17

AFP - Crazy Horse, the upmarket Paris cabaret that insists its strip show is art, is revamping its decades-old revue to include a number that presents clothes removal as a solution to economic crisis.

The cabaret off the Champs Elysees, which has seen stars like Madonna, U2 and Gerard Depardieu sip champagne in its red velvet seats as they watch women undress, has hired star choreographer Philippe Decoufle to update its show.

Decoufle, who staged the 2007 Rugby World Cup and the Albertville Winter Olympics ceremonies in 1992, will launch the new revue next Monday after months of rehearsals.

"We work with a tiny idea for each number, and for which we put one, two or 12 girls on stage: they're stunning, naked, with high heels and wigs," the 47-year-old said at a press preview of the show this week.

One number features dancer Fiamma Rosa, dressed in a severe business suit, sitting at a desk while stock market prices flit across a screen behind her.

She fields a phone call that, judging by her dismayed reaction, brings bad news for her business. Her response is to begin removing her clothes and dance and drape herself provocatively across her desk.

"Another number is like one of those pens that you turn upside down and the woman's clothes fall off," said Decoufle.

Berlusconi's antics no longer funny in Brussels

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:09:29 -0700

Nicholas Rigillo | Brussels | Sept 18

DPA - For a growing number of foreign observers, Silvio Berlusconi is simply a clown who cannot be trusted.

The prime minister's antics and widely publicised sex scandals have so seriously damaged Italy's standing in Europe that it is no longer viewed as one of the bloc's major powers, experts in Brussels said Thursday.

'Berlusconi is deeply disrespected by the left, but he is also seen as awkward and unpredictable by his conservative colleagues. As a result, Italy's influence has become much weaker, weaker than Poland's,' said Piotr Kaczynski, an analyst at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies.

At a recent conference in Brussels, for instance, several panelists listed Britain, France, Germany and Poland as the European Union's 'big four,' despite Poland's economy being a fifth the size of Italy.

Concern Troll

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:20:59 -0700

One thing that annoys me, immensely, about articles such as this one isn't so much all the teeth gnashing about 'relativism' as the writer has some what of a point. What annoys me is the big 800lb gorilla that is not addressed.

First, let me say that I have met a great deal of European Muslims. The vast majority of those European Muslims love their life in Europe. They prefer European values to those of their homeland. I have met very few radical, firebrand Muslims in Europe or from Europe who want to overthrown the European nations and install some kind of Caliphate or Shari'a dominated legal system. That's not to say they don't exist, they do. But they are an even smaller minority amidst a minority.

And here's the 800lb gorilla: many of them are the descendants of people who came to Europe a generation or two ago for a better life--and were accepted into Europe as a pool of cheap labor. And now their children aren't living the European dream. They're an underclass, in essence, and Europe hasn't embraced them.

A good example were the riots and tire burnings in France several years ago. They young men who were doing this weren't Muslim radicals. They were French-born Algerians. And what they wanted was to be considered and accepted as French.

To my mind, this is much more of a problem for Europe as the resentment brooding does lead to Muslim radicalism.

Conservative concern trolls never want to talk about nations not living up to their own higher values, they prefer to blame it all on 'cultural relativism' and 'liberals who are weak at the knees.' Believe me, the Europeans are very aware they have a problem. But there is more to it than simple relativistic mamby-pambyness.