Britain's six million carers won a landmark victory today when the European Court of Justice upheld the right of a woman who was denied time off work to look after her disabled son.

Sharon Coleman, who was forced to resign her work as a legal secretary, claims that she suffered "discrimination by association" in breach of EU rules.

In a ground-breaking ruling the European Court judges held that an EU Directive which outlaws discrimination at work on grounds of disability is not limited to disabled people themselves but extends also to those caring for them.

The ruling also reinforces the previous law that any discrimination at work by association - whether on grounds of religion or belief, age or sexual orientation is also prohibited.

In a withering indictment to be released next week, the European Commission accuses Bulgaria of high-level corruption and maladministration in the handling of EU funds. The report outlines measures to freeze further aid.

New European Union member Bulgaria has already crossed the bloc's ruling powers just over eighteen months after joining the EU.

As a result of investigations into the management of EU funds in the bloc's most recent and poorest newcomer, the EU report will confirm that it has banned four Bulgarian agencies from handling EU funds because of corruption, freezing nearly 1 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in pre-accession aid and threatening future payments.

In leaked statements reprinted earlier this week, EU investigators said that, among other discrepancies, they had found that Bulgaria had misused money from EU farm aid projects worth some 32 million euros.

The EU report described a "criminal network" of more than 50 Bulgarian companies and foreign-based firms, centered on two businessmen with alleged ties to top Bulgarian politicians, the Focus news agency reported.

Belgian King Albert II sent his Prime Minister Yves Leterme back to the drawing board late Thursday, insisting he stay in power and seek a resolution of his coalition's stalemate, Belgian media reports said.

Albert turned down Leterme's resignation, which was first submitted late Monday, after the Flemish Christian Democrat prime minister realized that his five-party coalition government would fail to meet a self-imposed July 15 deadline for reaching a consensus on constitutional reform.

 

The king received Leterme for official discussions after days of talks with leading politicians about a solution. He also named three mediators with instructions to find a way out of the crisis: two French-speaking politicians, Francois-Xavier de Donnea and Raymond Langendries, as well as Karl-Heinz Lambertz from German-speaking Belgium.

 

Albert urged the government to give full support to the reconciliation efforts.

Leaders of the world's major religions need to focus more on the needs of women, theologians told a Saudi-organized conference this week.

Clerics need to "restore the dignity of women," Juan Jose Tamayo, director of theology at Madrid's Juan Carlos III university, told a roundtable on Thursday, July 17.

The roundtable was part of the Saudi-organized World Conference of Dialogue in Madrid, which aims at promoting religious unity. It brings together 200 participants, including leading Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish thinkers.

"Women have been forgotten and marginalized in religions," Tamayo said as reported by the AFP news agency. "They are organized hierarchically and patriarchically, excluding women in all fields of knowledge and religious matters."

Judges in Bochum on Friday handed a two-year suspended prison sentence to a 66-year-old real estate tycoon in the first case brought to justice in Germany in connection with a major Liechtenstein tax evasion scandal.

Judges in the western German city of Bochum told the first multi-millionaire up for trial he would probably receive a suspended term of two years' jail for evading 7.5 million euros ($11.8 million) in tax between 2001 and 2006.

Elmar Schulte, from the western city of Bad Homburg, was found guilty of six counts of tax evasion after depositing several million euros in the Alpine principality of Liechtenstein and failing to declare the interest made.

He had made a full confession and already paid 7.6 million euros in back taxes and fines to German tax authorities.

Germany's BND foreign intelligence service described in February how it bought data on trusts managed by the Liechtenstein Bank LTG on behalf of wealthy tax-shy Europeans. The BND reportedly paid about 4 million euros for one DVD with the data.

The European Commission has backed a plan to give 1bn euros (£800m) of unspent EU farm subsidies in aid to farmers in Africa.

The cash could help farmers boost output, helping tackle food shortages and soaring prices.

The money has been allocated to the EU agriculture budget, but not spent.

Some countries have queried the move's legality. But if EU ministers and the European Parliament agree, it could take effect in early 2009.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: "The impact of high food prices is particularly severe for the world's poorest populations."

Without European help, United Nations goals to halve world poverty might fail, and tensions between countries in Africa over resources might intensify, he said.

With airlines struggling to maintain their businesses in an era of skyrocketing fuel prices, the aviation industry has attacked European plans to include its carbon pollution in the emissions trading scheme.

The head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Giovanni Bisignani, in a speech on Wednesday (16 July) to an international conference on sustainable aviation in the UK said: "The airline industry is in crisis. With a fuel bill of US$190 billion [€120 billion] - one third of its costs - saving fuel is a matter of survival. Still Europe is fixated on punitive measures supposedly designed to reduce emissions.

From January 2012, all flights taking off from Europe or landing there will be included in the ETS

"There is a rush to implement taxes, taxes and more taxes. They all have an environment label, but do nothing to reduce emissions," he continued.

Last week, MEPs voted overwhelmingly (640 to 30) for aviation to be included in the ETS from 2012. The plan, including both EU and non-EU airlines, must yet be ratified by the member states, who agreed to the idea in June.

"Taxes don't reduce emissions. Only better operations and technology can do that," said Mr Bisignani, lashing out at UK and Dutch passenger duties and associated taxes.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said he will not pressure the Government to hold a second vote on Lisbon Treaty, seeking to quell a controversy stoked by President Nicolas Sarkozy. 

Mr Kouchner will join Mr Sarkozy in Ireland on Monday after voters here last month rejected the Lisbon Treaty, which is aimed at streamlining decision-making across the 27-nation bloc.

" I don't plan to persuade them to vote again. The goal of this trip is to listen to the Irish people,'' Mr Kouchner told reporters in Paris today.

"The important thing is not to teach them lessons."

The Government should hold a new referendum on the treaty, Mr Sarkozy told French lawmakers, Agence France-Presse reported on Wednesday.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen said last month there was "no quick fix'' to the impasse created by the rejection of the treaty, which must be ratified by all EU members before taking effect.

"You can't hide behind your little finger,'' said Mr Kouchner today.

"At some point, but not during this trip, there will be a need to choose between the Lisbon treaty and the Nice treaty," he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov downplayed earlier criticism of a German peace plan aimed at resolving a conflict with Georgia, saying it could break the deadlock. Abkhazia's separatists however have rejected the plan.

Speaking after talks with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Moscow on Friday, July 18, Lavrov said Berlin's peace plan was "extremely helpful for looking for compromises and a way out of the crisis."

"We believe that the logic of your plan is absolutely the right one," Lavrov told Steinmeier at a joint news conference.

An Irish MEP has called for a total ban on tobacco products across the European Union within 15 years.

Avril Doyle, head of the Irish faction within the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), on Tuesday told a Brussels conference on how to prevent the tobacco industry from lobbying EU politicians that she wants cigarettes and cigars illegal in Europe by 2025.

Earlier this week, the European commission unveiled plans to make Europeans pay a lot more for cigarettes by hiking excise taxes

"I would be happy to see a long-term target date, say 2025, when it would be illegal to sell tobacco products in the EU," she said to an applauding crowd of parliamentarians and global health experts.

"That would give them 15 years' notice for all our citizens to realise just how serious we are about not allowing their continued sale in the EU, and hopefully elsewhere," she added.

Ms Doyle, who sits on the steering committee of the EPP, the largest political group in the EU assembly, organised the conference, which was tasked with developing ways for the EU to comply with what anti-smoking campaigners call the most important article of the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Article 5.3, which requires its signatories to prevent lobbying by tobacco companies on any public health policies.

Last week, the gloves finally came off the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. It had to happen sooner or later, but few would have expected this soon. It was crystal clear US President George W Bush administered a diplomatic snub to Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Hokkaido, Japan.

Bush characterized him patronizingly as a "sharp guy" soon after they met in Hokkaido on July 9, but that was after making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proceeded to Prague and signed a deal just the previous day to install a US radar system as part of its missile defense system in Central Europe.

If Medvedev's core mission in Hokkaido was to underscore

Russia's growing role in the world arena as a power with which the West has to contend, Bush acted as if he couldn't care. The US was also plainly dismissive of Medvedev's proposal at the G-8 for a pan-European security system that would include Russia. Medvedev expressed his "dismay" on hearing about the Prague deal. As if to rub in the snub, Rice proceeded from Prague to Bulgaria, where the US has for the first time established a military base, and then on to Georgia to discuss its plans of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

While in Tbilisi, she called for international mediation to stop violence spilling over in Georgia's beakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abhkazia, which have been sources of rising tensions, with Georgia accusing Russia of trying to annex the regions. To carry matters further, the US began a joint military exercise with Georgia codenamed Immediate Response 2008, near Tbilisi, which will continue through the month of July.

The exercise, financed by the Pentagon and planned by the US Armed Forces Eastern Command, is intended as a warning to Russia that Georgia is America's project and Washington wouldn't hesitate to do some heavy lifting to safeguard the "Rose Revolution".

Solar Firms Struggle to Forecast 2009 Uncertainty about subsidies in Spain and - to a lesser degree - the United States has led to a flurry of activity to get installations finished before the expiration dates, but some analysts say a slight slowdown could be coming. by: Jennifer Kho June 19, 2008

Like any business, the solar business hates uncertainty. And right now, there's plenty of it. Advertisement

That's because government subsidies in Spain and the United States hang in limbo, leaving solar companies with a foggy picture of what 2009 will look like, according to a research note from Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Jeff Osborne this month.

The Spanish incentive is one of the most alluring in the world today, offering at least 42 euro cents per kilowatt-hour of solar energy fed into the grid. But the program is set to expire Sept. 30 and a new policy hasn't yet been established, meaning projects that aren't completed by then aren't guaranteed a set price.

With decisions still hanging in the balance, industry insiders have been speculating about the replacement incentive for months.

Spain's Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade last year proposed lowering the feed-in tariff to 31 euro cents per kilowatt-hour. A leaked royal decree in April proposed a subsidy of 35 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, according to a research note from Piper Jaffray analyst Jesse Pichel.

The concern about the Spanish tariff is heated enough that when Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero called public-sector support of renewable energy "an important investment in the future" in an interview with the Financial Times earlier this month, it prompted Pichel to write another note.

"We believe this interview should give investors some comfort that Spain will remain a significant growth market for solar longer term, although 2009 may be a modestly down year," he wrote. "Spain remains an overhang until the new decree is official in July or September."

In the United States, a bill that would have extended renewable-energy incentives for several years failed to pass last week and again this week, throwing a wrench into projects that won't be completed before the year ends. The industry has been struggling for months to extend tax the tax credits, but hasn't been able to get a bill past both houses of Congress (see Senate Blocks Renewable Incentives Bill, Policy Roundup: U.S. Senate Passes Incentives, Solar Roundup: Another Tax-Credit Proposal, Solar Sharpens Weapons for Incentive Battle, Solar Industry's Five-Step Plan, Renewable Tax Incentive Still At Risk, Senate Rejects Green Incentives to Pass Energy Bill and Senate Sends Energy Bill Back to Beginning).

While many companies still believe a one-year extension will be passed before the credits expire at the end of the year, Thomas Weisel Partners doesn't have high hopes that will happen on time to prevent a gap, according to a research note.

Spain Could Reduce Solar Subsidies by 35% The government is negotiating with solar-energy producers to set new solar prices and an installation cap for next year. This latest proposal could be bad news or just a hard bargaining position, analysts said. by: Ucilia Wang July 2, 2008

Spain could cut its popular solar subsidies by up to 35 percent and limit the total size of the program to a lower level than previously anticipated, Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias reported this week. Advertisement

The newspaper's story provided the latest glimpse into what the Spanish government might eventually approve for its feed-in tariff program, which requires utilities to buy solar energy at a higher rate than conventional power.

Speculation about the program - one of the most alluring solar-incentive programs in the world - has been rampant, and has filled the industry with uncertainty. That uncertainty has made it difficult for solar companies and their customers to plan future projects, noted New Energy Finance analyst Francesco D'Avack.

The latest proposal isn't likely to reduce their concerns. The government is considering capping the solar-electric installations at 300 megawatts for 2009 and increasing it by 10 percent the following year, according to Cinco Dias, which cited minutes from a meeting between Spain's secretary energy Pedro Marin and the Photovoltaic Energy Industry Association.

The new feed-in tariff program could also make a distinction between panels placed on roofs and those on the ground. Utilities would pay 33 euro cents for each kilowatt-hour of electricity from rooftop systems and 29 euro cents for ground installations.

The current price is about 45 euro cents, depending on the size - not the placement - of the installations. The rate is up from the 42 euro cents last year because the feed-in tariff program allows the rate to be adjusted for inflation.

this last benefit i was 2 years too late to sign on for here in italy. now it's not pegged to inflation. this is seriously dampening my desire to put in 5 more MW, as that's more than i can use, and if 10 years from now the euros i'm being incentivised, and paid for, may bear little relation to the rapidly inflating cost of living.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

Greentech Media | Is Spain Shining Too Bright?

Is Spain Shining Too Brightly? The country's solar industry is growing so fast that the Spanish government is considering upping its renewable-energy goals and decreasing its incentives. by: Rachel Barron October 17, 2007

Sun worshippers have always flocked to Spain to soak up powerful rays of light. That same desire has more recently beckoned those in the solar industry to come in droves. Coupled with support from the Spanish government, the country's solar industry is on track to more than double this year. Advertisement

But is getting so much sun a good thing? In late September, the country reached 344 of the 400 megawatts it had set as its goal for solar-electric power. Spain had originally expected to meet the goal by 2010. The accelerated pace is a cause for concern because the government had scheduled its current high level of incentives to end once Spain reaches its goal. With industry watchers now expecting Spain to exceed this cap as early as this month, the Spanish government is on the move to shift its strategy.

Spain's Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade has proposed tripling the cap on solar-electric installations from 400 megawatts to 1.2 gigawatts. A decrease in the country's feed-in tariff, which pays homeowners and businesses a higher rate for renewable energy fed back into the electrical grid, also is on the table.

Even though the Spanish government has yet to make a decision, industry watchers are bracing themselves for change. The final decree could have a big impact on the country's solar market, which some analysts say is growing at unsustainable rates.

In 2006, 100 new megawatts of solar power were installed in Spain. Credit Suisse expects that number will grow to 300 megawatts this year and 500 megawatts in 2008.

With growth driven by its solar goal and generous feed-in tariff, Spain ranked No. 4 in the world for its total solar capacity in 2006, according to a report by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association and Greenpeace. Germany was No. 1, followed by Japan and the United States.

...

Also fueling concern is the proposed drop in the feed-in tariff. The industry now has a year's grace period before the tariff, which pays 42 euro cents per kilowatt hour, drops. The government proposal also includes an additional annual 5 percent tariff reduction (à la Germany) starting in two to three years.

For the year to come, Jenny Chase, a senior analyst for New Energy Finance, expects developers and investors will race to finish up projects so they can get in at the current tariff levels. If they succeed, the projects will be guaranteed the current rate for 25 years. The result could be even steeper growth -- putting installations in several hundreds of megawatts -- in the next year, she said.

But after that, companies will have to hook into the grid with a lower tariff, which Trip and Chase said could very likely be 31 euro cents.

Such a decrease no doubt dims the bright future of Spain's solar industry.

According to Chase's calculations, owners under the current tariff see an average 26-percent return on their investment, before taxes and a few other costs. But if the lower price were adopted, that rate would drop to about 12 percent. "It's a big cut," she said. "But it won't make them uneconomical."

She also sees an upside. From her perspective, the Spanish solar industry is growing too fast. The proposed legislation could help the industry transition to a model of sustainable growth.

...

Still, Vespermann said Conergy "can live with" the suggested 5-percent-per-year cut in the tariff. The industry is on track to reduce total solar system costs by 7 to 8 percent annually anyway, he said.

Another reason a steady drop won't hurt too bad is that all the sun Spain gets equates to more hours of energy, say when compared to Germany, helping to make up the system costs.

Regardless of the final outcome, solar companies know a change is coming. Trip and Chase said such moves are a necessary to push the industry into a more mature state. And weaning it off government support will push solar power into grid parity, the point when it is competitive with conventional electricity.

Eco Talks - Fosters+ Partners envisions an Ultra- Mod yet Green Rimini in Italy.

A whole eco- development plan is being put forward by Fosters+ Partners for the Italian coastal town of Rimini. In this age of emerging mega cities with their jaw-dropping architectural planning and futuristic buildings worldover, Rimini might just be the next addition. The renowned architectural firm has plans to renovate the waterfront of this town putting it on the map of eco-tourism.

The proposal bears the nouveau development plan comprising of a brand new seafront promenade that links to Rimini's existing green boulevards. Fosters+ Partners have envisioned a hotel tower located 300 meters into the ocean. Not only this, there will be a long pear that will extend from the hotel to the pedestrian link. The whole concept involves developing and planning the new waterfront by making use of latest technologies like rainwater collection and solar photovoltaics.

WASHINGTON: Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal army documents.

During just one six-month period -- August 2006 through January 2007 -- at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military's largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.

Electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an army survey issued in February 2007. It noted "a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires."

WASHINGTON: Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day.

One recent Q. & A. asked, for example, whether Obama supported the decision by Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to include a timetable for American troop withdrawal in any new security agreements with the United States. The answer, provided to Obama with bullet points, was yes -- or "a genuine opportunity," as he put it in a speech on Iraq this week.

Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.

"It is unwieldy, no question," said Denis McDonough, 38, Obama's top foreign policy aide, speaking of an infrastructure that has been divided into 20 teams based on regions and issues, and that has recently absorbed, with some tensions, the top foreign policy advisers from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign. "But an administration is unwieldy, too. We also know that it's messier when you don't get as much information as you can."

Cuba is to put more state-controlled farm land into private hands in a move to increase food production.

The decree, approved by President Raul Castro, was published in the country's Communist Party newspaper, Granma.

Private farmers who have shown themselves to be productive will be able to increase their holdings up to 99 acres (40 hectares) for a 10-year period that can be renewed.

Until now, Cubans have only been able to own small amounts of land.

Correspondents say the majority of agriculture was placed in the hands of large, state-owned enterprises.

These have proved highly inefficient, and the BBC's Michael Voss says half the land is unused and Cuba now imports more than half its needs

Former Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm late Friday stepped down as co-chair of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign.

"It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Sen. McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Gramm said.

The former senator had been criticized for a remark in which he said that the economic slowdown was a "mental recession," and that the U.S. was a nation of "whiners." The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) had seized on the remark and used it for a barrage of attacks on Gramm and McCain.

"That kind of distraction hurts not only Sen. McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems, it hurts the country," Gramm said. "To end this distraction and get on with the real debate, I hereby step down as co-chair of the McCain campaign and join the growing number of rank-and-file McCain supporters."

The Waaaaahmbulance has finally arrived, saving Bunsen from the Nation of Whiners.

Bye, Phil.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Historian and author Gareth Porter discusses with Pepe Escobar the positioning of Senator Barack Obama relative to the power of the national security establishment in the US; the legacy of JFK; the feasibility of the US refusing to occupy Muslim lands; and what it takes to be elected president of the United States.Bio

Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.Transcript

PEPE ESCOBAR, SENIOR ANALYST: I'm here in Washington with Gareth Porter, historian and author, and we're going to talk about Iran, Iraq, Obama, McCain, and the ramifications of Obama and McCain's foreign policy. Gareth, let's start with the war in Iraq. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran emerges as the big regional power in Southwest Asia. The US gets rid of the Taliban in east of Iran and gets rid of Saddam Hussein west of Iran. Basically what Bush and McCain have been saying and preaching all along is that they will never accept it, the emergence of Iran as a big regional power. Obama, on the other hand, maybe we could say that he's a following a tradition that starts with Truman, goes through Ronald Reagan, and gets to George Bush I. It's basically a Cold War mentality. It's American hegemony in the end. But at the same time, Obama wants to get rid of all US troops in Iraq, bring them back home. What are we facing here? Isn't this an enormous contradiction, like Cold War mentality, being progressive and antiwar in the case of Iraq?

GARETH PORTER, INVESTIGATIVE HISTORIAN, MILITARY POLICY ANALYST: And the answer is both. And that's because he is a contradictory figure in a political system which is profoundly dysfunctional in terms of what it produces on many fronts, but particularly on national security policy. I mean, this is a society that has long since lost--and arguably never had in the first place--the capacity to really have a serious debate about any national security issue, for the simple reason that the terms of any public discourse on national security are so heavily weighted in favor of the national security bureaucracy's point of view that, you know, the media, news media, essentially carry only one side, and therefore only a small minority of people in the United States are going to have the opportunity to access a point of view that is different from the point of view of those people who've been making the wars of the past and still making the wars of the present. And therefore there's no surprise here that someone who is as intelligent and in many ways as progressive as Obama is, you know, remarkably so within the context of the Democratic Party, let alone the political system in general, is a captive of what you call--and I think correctly so--Cold War mentality, that is to say, a mentality that begins with a whole set of assumptions that have very little to do with reality, particularly in the case of Iran, to suggest that, you know, Iran is a threat because of the allegations that have to do with Iraq or with the nuclear program that are not based on, you know, reality at all. You know, this is simply a function, for the most part, of where he gets his information, who advises him, and where they get their information. The whole system is completely tilted, so extremely tilted towards the warlike point of view, that even somebody who does have a great deal of intelligence, relatively speaking, and a desire to make change, relatively speaking, is hogtied, in a way, to try to do anything about it.

No free ride for Europe, says top Barack Obama aide

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph on the eve of Mr Obama's week-long trip to Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe, Susan Rice emphasised that the election of Mr Obama would mark a decision by Americans to "turn the page" on President George W Bush.

But the former Rhodes Scholar, who took her Master's degree and doctorate in international relations at New College, Oxford, made clear that an Obama administration would also challenge Europe to do more after a Democratic victory in November's election.

"It would signal a return to the more pragmatic and bi-partisan traditions of American foreign policy, which have been lost to ideology in the Bush years," she said. "He will not proceed through an ideological frame and seek to impose that frame on every challenge.

Phil Gramm, the senator-banker who until recently advised John McCain's campaign, did get it right about a "nation of whiners," but he misidentified the faint-hearted. It's not the people or even the politicians. It is Wall Street--the financial titans and big-money bankers, the most important investors and worldwide creditors who are scared witless by events. These folks are in full-flight panic and screaming for mercy from Washington, Their cries were answered by the massive federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, the endangered mortgage companies.

When the monied interests whined, they made themselves heard by dumping the stocks of these two quasi-public private corporations, threatening to collapse the two financial firms like the investor "run" that wiped out Bear Stearns in March. The real distress of the banks and brokerages and major investors is that they cannot unload the rotten mortgage securities packaged by Fannie Mae and banks sold worldwide. Wall Street's preferred solution: dump the bad paper on the rest of us, the unwitting American taxpayers.

The Bush crowd, always so reluctant to support federal aid for mere people, stepped up to the challenge and did as it was told. Treasury Secretary Paulson (ex-Goldman Sachs) and his sidekick, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, announced their bailout plan on Sunday to prevent another disastrous selloff on Monday when markets opened. Like the first-stage rescue of Wall Street's largest investment firms in March, this bold stroke was said to benefit all of us. The whole kingdom of American high finance would tumble down if government failed to act or made the financial guys pay for their own reckless delusions. Instead, dump the losses on the people.

Democrats who imagine they may find some partisan advantage in these events are deeply mistaken. The Democratic party was co-author of the disaster we are experiencing and its leaders fell in line swiftly. House banking chair, Rep. Barney Frank, announced he could have the bailout bill on President Bush's desk next week. No need to confuse citizens by dwelling on the details. Save Wall Street first. Maybe lowbrow citizens won't notice it's their money.

We are witnessing a momentous event--the great deflation of Wall Street--and it is far from over. The crash of IndyMac is just the beginning. More banks will fail, so will many more debtors. The crisis has the potential to transform American politics because, first it destroys a generation of ideological bromides about free markets, and, second, because it makes visible the ugly power realities of our deformed democracy. Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan in this crisis because they have colluded all along over thirty years in creating the unregulated financial system and mammoth mega-banks that produced the phony valuations and deceitful assurances. The federal government protects the most powerful interests from the consequences of their plundering. It prescribes "market justice" for everyone else.

and some comments:

Wall Street's Great Deflation

Interesting numbers from The Nation: Top 5 corporate CEO's combined income - $290,456,558; Top five hedge-fund managers combined income - $12,600,000,000.

And then there's John Paulson, former employee of Bear Stearns who in '07 and early '08 made $3 billion shorting subprime mortgages. (Name familiar? Henry Paulson is Treasury Secretary.)

Given that America's 400 highest-earning taxpayers in '05 paid only 18.2 percent of their income in federal taxes their contribution to their own bail-out will be miniscule compared to the rest of us.

Given Washington's complicity in the drive to enrich the already rich this country has become an industrial autocracy.

Posted by felicity at 07/14/2008

and:

Wall Street's Great Deflation

As someone who's a shareholder in one of the big banks on Wall Street (the one with the least exposure to sub-prime), I'm hoping for some kind of taxpayer rescue plan, so that my stock can get back on track.

The thought that some of you here will have to pay additional taxes so that my bank will be cushioned from any post-subprime down draft tickles my funny bone no end.

Posted by KSP556 at 07/14/2008

and:

Wall Street's Great Deflation

In 20 years the United States will become like England after the end of WW II, a once great nation with diminished power and little influence in the world. Prepare ... Posted by bcodding at 07/14/2008 @ 9:45pm |

Alas, 'tis true, 'tis true.

And if Obama were to dare to try to slow - or worse, reverse - this process, the hired slimers in the "progressive" media, like the New Yorker, will be on the job to do The Owners' bidding, slapping the uppity one back down in his place.

But in the unlikely event that it doesn't work, The Owners have other ways of getting their way. None less than the NYTimes wrote, on its front page no less, many months ago, of the possible assassination of Obama. Never a mention of a similar fate for a Clinton.

Obama gets the message, loud & clear.

Posted by sloper at 07/15/2008

and:

Wall Street's Great Deflation

I agree with William Greider: Make Fannie Mae what is was before, a regulated non-profit agency.

Deregulating Fannie Mae and then creating Freddie Mac for "competition" has only created another corrupt oligopoly. This trust has gone bust. The reformers of the 1930s knew what they were doing!

This terrible two-step corruption dance, in which Republicans lead the push to deregulate, and then Democrats lead the push to bailout, has got to stop. This kind of foul bipartisanship is good for nobody.

Posted by JakobFabian at 07/15/2008 @ 07:02am

last but not least:

Wall Street's Great Deflation

Good for you. The editors of The Nation voted (and will vote) for the Dems, and probably a lot of the geniuses contributing to this thread did (and do) as well.

The notion of "the people" no longer makes sense. American citizens love to whine and complain, but they never do anything. They didn't stop the Iraq war. They didn't get the Democratic leadership to impeach Bush/Cheney. Apparently they couldn't pressure Obama to change his position on telecom immunity.

It's better to do something, even if that means fattening one's stock portfolio, than sit around and whine like old women.

Posted by KSP556 at 07/15/2008

ah yes, it takes all sorts...

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

There has been endless jabber in the blogsphere about a possible October surprise, an attack on Iran to strengthen John McCain's bid for the White House. After last week's Iranian missile tests in response to an earlier Israeli air force exercise that included in-flight re-fueling operations, the media was abuzz with speculations about Israel possibly going it alone. Now it's definite, almost official: there won't be an attack on Iran during the remainder of President Bush's tenure.

What evidence I have to make such a claim? None. What crucial factors I can cite to base my take on? Three.

First, yesterday evening, The Guardian revealed that the Bush White House is to announce next month the opening of an US interests section in Tehran, thus re-establishing direct diplomatic relations with Iran after almost thirty years.

Second, at Saturday's talks in Geneva between the EU-3 and Iran, the US will be represented by Undersecretary of State, William Burns. For the first time US and Iranian negotiators will officially meet one-on-one to discuss the latter's nuclear enrichment.

Third, according to Anthony Cordesman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen was sent to Israel ten days ago to tell Tel Aviv quite frankly that the U.S. would neither approve nor green-light an Israeli solo run.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

U.S. Solar Could Surpass German Market by 2011 According to a solar overview from JP Morgan, the U.S. market will reach 1.6 gigawatts in 2011, compared with a market of 1.35 gigawatts in Germany in 2012. The research firm also expects Greece, South Korea and Italy to grow quickly. by: Jennifer Kho July 18, 2008

The U.S. will overtake Germany as the largest solar market in 2011, a recent JP Morgan report suggests.

According to a chart in the June report, which in turn cited Marketbuzz and Wall Street research, the U.S. market is projected to grow from an estimated 617 megawatts of new photovoltaic installations this year to 617 megawatts in 2009, 1.02 gigawatts (thousands of megawatts) in 2010 and 1.63 gigawatts in 2011.

Meanwhile, another chart - this one citing Solarbuzz, Navigant Consulting, Greentech Media's PV News and China's Renewable Energy Development Project progress report - forecasts that the German market will grow 6 percent from 1.28 gigawatts of capacity in 2008 to 1.35 gigawatts in 2012.

But in spite of slower growth than other countries, JP Morgan expects Germany - by far the largest solar market today - to remain one of the world's largest markets in 2012.

According to the chart, which Calisolar CEO Roy Johnson included in a presentation at Intersolar this week, South Korea will be the third-largest market at 957 megawatts. And even separated out from its country, California alone could be counted as the fourth-largest market, as it is expected to reach 920 megawatts.

"It's got roughly half the population of Germany, twice the incident sunlight and about one-tenth the market of Germany [today]," Johnson said of California.

The JP Morgan chart projects that the fastest-growing markets in the next four years will be Greece, expected to grow 135 percent, followed by South Korea expected to grow 89 percent, and then Italy, which is expected to grow 65 percent.

In spite of faster growth, Italy's market will be smaller than that of Spain in 2012, according to the chart, which shows Italy at 404 megawatts and Spain at 450 megawatts.

The Spanish solar market has taken off, due to a generous incentive program. But the program is set to expire in September, causing industry-wide uncertainty about whether the new program will continue to strongly support solar installations (see Solar Firms Struggle to Forecast 2009).

BERLIN (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

It is the first time he has backed the withdrawal timetable put forward by Obama, who is visiting Afghanistan and us set to go to Iraq as part of a tour of Europe and the Middle East.

Ouch.

I'm not sure how I feel about this as it relates to policy, because I don't know a lot about Maliki and don't trust news reports one way or another.  (Others should feel free to enlighten me.)  From a purely domestic political perspective, though, this is quite powerful.

So Maliki endorses Obama, for all practical purposes.  Who's next?  Merkel?  Brown?  Karzai?  Sarkie?  Not being a big believer in the idea that foreign leaders and citizens should keep their opinions to themselves about our election, I say they should quit being sissies.


Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas talks about new trends in architecture and urban development, the end of the European city, the rise of Dubai, Russia and China, the obsession with XXXL and the difference between the people who design buildings for a living and "star architects."

 Rem Koolhaas's CCTV Tower in Beijing: "It looks different from every angle."

SPIEGEL: Mr. Koolhaas, you are designing buildings in Europe, the United States, the Persian Gulf and China. From which part of the world do you expect to see the strongest impulses for architecture and urban development emerging in the future?

Koolhaas: We have to draw some distinctions here. As far as the experience of building goes, the strongest impulse will undoubtedly come from China and the Middle East, and probably from India, as well. Things get more complex when it comes to thinking. The intellectual force of the West is still dominant, but other cultures are getting stronger. I expect that we will develop a new way of thinking in architecture and urban planning, and that less will be based on our models. There are many young, good architects in China. The unanswered question is whether our cooperation, this internationalization, will result in a common language of architecture, whether we will speak two different languages or whether there will be a mixture of the two.

SPIEGEL: At a recent talk in Dubai, you showed two slides. The first image was of a series of iconic skyscrapers that you, Zaha Hadid and other star architects designed. The second was of a collection of high-rise buildings designed by unknown architects. The images were surprisingly similar.

Koolhaas: I have a very hard time with the expression "star architect." It gives the impression of referring to people with no heart, egomaniacs who are constantly doing their thing, completely divorced from any context. I believe that this is a grotesque insult to members of a profession who -- to the extent that I know my colleagues -- go to great lengths to find the right thing, the appropriate thing, for each individual case. At the same time we are, of course, driven by the market -- and by developers who try to pin us down to certain forms. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the best way for us to escape this being pinned down to the purely formal. That's why I decided to simply demonstrate it: There is, in fact, no great difference between the buildings by "star architects" and those designed by others.

The Greek Orthodox Church says it wants to convert a 17th Century monastery into a prison for convicted clerics.

The Holy Synod has applied for permission to turn the Hrysopighi monastery in the southern Peloponnese peninsula into a correctional facility.

It hopes the recently convicted Bishop of Attica, Panteleimon, will be able to serve out his six-year sentence for embezzlement in the monastery.

The plan could later be extended to other errant priests, officials said.

Panteleimon, who is in his 70s, was convicted a month ago of embezzling around 200,000 euros ($317,000; £158,000) from a monastery under his jurisdiction.

Loud pop music in bars makes people drink more and down it more quickly, a study in France has shown.

Researchers watched young men who had ordered a glass of beer on a Saturday evening in two unnamed bars in western France. The drinkers were unaware they were being watched by the researchers, who had programmed the sound system to select randomly either a normal level of 72 decibels or a loud level of 88dB.

Nicolas Guéguen, Professor of Behavioural sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud, led the study. He said: "Previous research has shown that fast music can cause fast drinking, and that music versus no music can cause a person to spend more time in a bar. This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption."

The results, published online in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, show that the louder the music, the more swiftly the drinkers finished their beer, ordered more - or left.

The Sats fiasco reveals all that's wrongheaded about Labour education policy

If you are looking for the reason why Labour has spent more on education yet failed to improve it, look no further that the present - entirely predictable - crisis over Sats (Standard Assessment Tests). All three of the things that are wrong, foolish, and muddled about government education policy are evident.

First, the notion that if you hand anything at all over to the private sector, it will magically improve.

Second, that if you want to make teachers and schools perform better, you set them arbitrary targets, and kick them if the targets aren't met.

And third, that everything in education can be measured in crude tick-box forms, which can be completed by anyone who can read, because no sophisticated judgments are required.

How else could we have got to a situation where schools have to revolve round the demands simplistic little tests make on their pupils; where those tests can be marked by people who have no qualifications or experience in education; and these people can be employed at a pittance by an American company to do work that could be done far better, and with much greater understanding, by experienced and qualified people whom the British taxpayer already employs?

And that is not the worst of it. Our government not only insists on finding someone - anyone - from the private sector to do work that the public sector could do better and more cheaply; it then gives them a contract that means they can foul up badly and still not be fired without a golden goodbye of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

This isn't just about how they fail in education, this how they fail in everything.

keep to the Fen Causeway

At first glance, Cesare Bonizzi looks like the archetypal Capuchin monk - round-faced, stout, with twinkling eyes and a long flowing white beard. But beneath his robes beats a heart of metal.

Brother Cesare is the lead singer in a heavy metal band which has just released its second album.

A former missionary in the Ivory Coast, he lives in a small friary in the Milan hinterland.

The 62-year-old monk's love affair with heavy metal began when he attended a Metallica concert some 15 years ago.

"I was overwhelmed and amazed by the sheer energy of it" he says.

Perhaps it has disappeared through a window into another universe, like its characters.

It looked increasingly unlikely yesterday that cinema audiences in this world will get to see the planned film sequels in Philip Pullman's children's fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials.

Sources in the film industry said that plans for a sequel to The Golden Compass appeared to have been put on ice following the fervent Christian protests surrounding the first film, which led to boycotts and box office disappointment in the United States.

Pullman told The Independent that he had not yet been contacted by Shepperton Studios and was not aware of any imminent plans to film the sequel, The Subtle Knife. When the first film was in production last year, he was regularly contacted by Chris Weitz, its writer and director.

Impatience and sharp elbows run in the genes, it seems. President Nicolas Sarkozy has been battling for space in the French headlines this week not just with his wife, not just with his ex-wife, but with his tall, blond, fast-moving son, Jean.

At the age of 21, "speedy" Sarkozy Jnr has become a political and media phenomenon in his own right. He is, nominally, a second-year law student on his summer holidays. He is also - not entirely to his father's liking - the leader of the majority political group on the council of the wealthiest département in France.

Jean Sarkozy's latest precocious exploit is to achieve something that even his father has not yet succeeded in doing. He has, involuntarily, created confusion and despair in one of the bastions of the French left-libertarian media establishment, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The President's son - who oozes charm and confidence - became engaged this month to one of the wealthiest young women in France. His fiancée is Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, heiress to the family which owns the Darty electrical goods stores - the French equivalent of Currys. Mme Sebaoun-Darty is Jewish. Persistent media rumours - finally denounced yesterday as false - claimed that Jean Sarkozy intended to convert to Judaism before his marriage. On the basis of these rumours, a radical cartoonist-columnist in Charlie Hebdo suggested earlier this month that Jean Sarkozy was an opportunist who would "go far in life". The Sarkozy family and his fiancée's family threatened to sue the magazine for alleged anti-Semitism. The magazine's editor asked the veteran cartoonist, Siné to retract. He replied: "I would rather cut off my balls."