Jose Manuel Barroso may have the backing of Europe's heavyweights to continue as Commission President, but France, at least, is expected to look for something in return.

Both the French and German leaders want Barroso to produce a formal policy programme ahead of a parliamentary vote on a second mandate.

Analyst Marco Incerti of the Centre for European Policy Studies said: "I think it is always part of the political game, so there are a lot of negotiations taking place. Mr Sarkozy will no doubt want something in exchange for giving in on small legal details, so I think it may be a case of him raising the stakes so that he can get some concessions, maybe some portfolio which he is interested in for the French commissioner."

President Sarkozy has indicated France wants a senior commission post for Michel Barnier, the current French Agriculture Minister. French diplomatic sources Paris is eyeing the strategically important Internal Markets portfolio, presently being occupied by Ireland's Charlie McCreevy.

Sarkozy said he and Chancellor Merkel had agreed to back each other's choices for jobs on the Commission.

TBILISI, June 13 (RIA Novosti) - Georgia is on the verge of civil unrest, an opposition leader said Saturday.

This was how former premier Zurab Nogaideli, who leads the Movement for a Just Georgia, commented on Friday's clashes between young opposition members with parliament security guards in Tbilisi, which resulted in the arrest of five opposition members.

"In the fall there will either be a serious civil unrest or elections at which the citizens can make their choice. The choice what path the country will follow is to be made by Saakashvili and his entourage," he said.

Fourteen leading non-parliamentary opposition parties and political organizations have been protesting in Georgia since April 9 demanding that President Mikheil Saakashvili resign over his failure to carry out democratic reforms and over last August's disastrous war with Russia.

However, Nogaideli has refused to join the organizers of mass protest events, saying he will act independently.

The EU's energy ministers have agreed new rules on oil stocks, but failed to agree on the location of a new energy regulatory agency.

At their meeting in Luxembourg today (12 June), ministers agreed to update rules on oil stocks that will require member states to ensure that at least one-third of their stocks are refined petroleum products rather than crude oil so that they can be released quickly in times of crisis.

The agreement also covers the rules for releasing stocks in the case of a crisis and a change in the way that the minimum requirements are calculated, based on consumption.

Ministers failed to take a decision on where a new Agency for the Co-ordination of Energy Regulators (ACER) should be located, as support was  divided among the three cities competing to host the body.

EU ministers have agreed on a framework for improving financial supervision but the 27 member states remain split over what powers new regulators should have.

The financial crisis exposed gaps in cross-border supervision, which meant institutional problems in one country had a knock-on effect on neighbours.

But next week EU leaders will have to consider how much power they want new EU-wide supervisory bodies to have.

The UK is wary of EU regulators encroaching on the City of London.

Poland may well put a spanner in the works of a German-Russian project to lay a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, writes Polska Daily. The European Commission has entrusted Warsaw with a mission to dredge the Baltic sea bed of chemical weapons lost during World War 2. A detailed ecological analysis carried out under Polish supervision suggests that an extremely dangerous arsenal lurks underwater. "According to cautious estimates, about 40,000 tons of chemical weapons are strewn across the Baltic seabed, not to mention some 300,000 tons of rusting regular ammunition," relates Polska. Poland, as well as Stockholm and Helsiniki have been fervent opponents of the German-Russian North Stream project from the very beginning. Should a sea bed pipeline be too hazardous, one alternative could well be envisaged - that the pipeline could take a land route... through Poland.

Italy and The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity What we read during these days about Italy and its government is simply appalling as people continue to ask questions here and here, but nobody replies.

I would like here to suggest Professor Carlo Maria Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity to analyze the Italian case. Professor Cipolla divided the society in 4 groups of people on the basis of:

• Benefits and losses that an individual causes to others.
• Benefits and losses that an individual causes to him or herself.

Graphically, the idea is represented by this:

    * Intelligent people (top right)
    * Helpless / Naive people (top left)
    * Bandits (bottom right)
    * Stupid people (bottom left)

Cipolla further refines his definition of "Bandits" (B) and "Helpless People" (H) by noting that members of these groups can either add to or detract from the general welfare, depending on the relative gains (or losses) that they cause themselves and society. A bandit may enrich himself more or less than he impoverishes society, and a helpless person may enrich society more or less than he impoverishes himself.

It would appear that in the bottom right quadrant, the B could also stand for Berlusconi-

"This is how Spain's new 'strategic weapon' destroys"

Words fail me. Is this what Spain's mainstream left newspaper has become?

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buiter

The European Parliament shifted to the right not because the centre-right won the EU elections, but rather due to the Socialists' inability to convince voters that they can tackle the economic crisis, Simon Hix, professor at the London School of Economics, told EurActiv in an interview.

Why did the Socialists do so badly?

It is astonishing. Across Europe, social democrats, regardless of whether they are in government or in opposition, have done very badly, while the centre-right in government has done quite well, like in Poland, France, Italy and even Germany.

Something systematic is going on. Two factors: mainstream centre-right parties in most places have adopted the agenda of social democrats, i.e. they are now in favour of public spending, as a result of the economic crisis. There is no particular difference between the centre-right and centre-left, but the centre-right told the electors: You should trust us more, because we know how to run the economy better than they can.

In the meantime, the people really affected by the economic crisis and by large-scale immigration, which we have seen in the last decade in Europe, are all white, indigenous social democratic voters, who are predominantly voting either for the far-right or the far-left.

In Britain, these votes went to the Greens and the BNP. In France, they've gone to the Greens and to the Communists, in Germany to Die Linke and the Greens, in Hungary they went to Jobbik, in Finland to the True Finns, in Denmark to the Danish People's Party, and in the Netherlands to Geert Wilders.

So you go around Europe and you see no particular difference between the centre-right and centre-left, but the centre-right said to the electors: You should trust us more because we know how to run the economy better than they can.

It is not the centre-right winning, but rather the centre-left going down, and the votes are shifting to extremist parties.

While the stabilization of the economy over the short term is critical, we also discussed other challenges ahead of us.

The crisis has revealed that there are some fundamental weaknesses in the global economy related to propriety, integrity and transparency. To address these issues in a comprehensive fashion, we agreed on the need to develop the Lecce Framework - a set of common principles and standards governing the conduct of international business and finance - which builds on existing initiatives and lays the foundation for a stable growth path over the long term (see the attached annex for details).

We are committed to working with our international partners to make progress with this initiative, with a view to reaching out to broader fora, including the G20 and beyond.

We discussed regulatory reform in our countries and at the international level. We are swiftly implementing the decisions taken at the London Summit and call on others to join our efforts to ensure global financial stability and an international level playing field.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The rapid rise in bond yields will force the Federal Reserve to "engage again" in the purchases of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co., said Friday.

The surge in Treasury yields is lifting mortgage rates, threatening to dampen home demand and kill off the refinancing boom that is bolstering the health of some households.

"What mistake can the U.S. economy afford to make? If you look at it that way, I suspect that we will see the Fed engage again in these markets," El-Erian, who oversees $756 billion at PIMCO, told Reuters Financial Television.

Debate is brewing within the Federal Reserve over whether it should ramp up its purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to keep a lid on interest rates, or scale them back to avoid an outbreak of inflation.

Massive buying of securities by the U.S. central bank has doubled the size of its balance sheet to around $2 trillion as it flooded the economy with money to prevent a severe recession getting worse.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department is facing mounting pressure to ensure that taxpayers get a fair return on banks' warrants as the largest firms prepare to shake off government ownership stakes.

At the same time, Treasury is mired in negotiations with the banks, who want to lower the warrants' multi-billion dollar price tag and avoid another big hit to their capital position.

"The pricing of the warrants held by Treasury ... will be critical to ensuring an appropriate return on investment for the government and, consequently, American taxpayers," the two chief watchdogs of the financial rescue wrote this week in a letter obtained by Reuters.

A financial industry source said banks' negotiations with Treasury over the value of the warrants are "calm" but said "the price ranges are all over the place."

The debate over the warrants is coming to a head as next week 10 of the biggest banks will begin to repay almost $70 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, freeing the firms of a public stigma and restrictions on executive pay.

Repaying rescue funds will involve banks buying back the preferred shares that many sold to the government when financial markets were squeezed by a credit crunch last fall. But banks also wish to repurchase the warrants that give the government the right to buy common stock at a pre-set price for up to 10 years.

With all the talk of "green shoots" of economic recovery, America's banks are pushing back on efforts to regulate them. While politicians talk about their commitment to regulatory reform to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, this is one area where the devil really is in the details - and the banks will muster what muscle they have left to ensure that they have ample room to continue as they have in the past.

The old system worked well for the bankers (if not for their shareholders), so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the efforts to rescue them devoted so little thought to the kind of post-crisis financial system we want that we will end up with a banking system that is less competitive, with the large banks that were too big too fail even larger.

It has long been recognised that those America's banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed. That is one reason that the performance of several of them has been so dismal. Because government provides deposit insurance, it plays a large role in restructuring (unlike other sectors). Normally, when a bank fails, the government engineers a financial restructuring; if it has to put in money, it, of course, gains a stake in the future. Officials know that if they wait too long, zombie or near zombie banks - with little or no net worth, but treated as if they were viable institutions - are likely to "gamble on resurrection". If they take big bets and win, they walk away with the proceeds; if they fail, the government picks up the tab.

Credit default swaps are "instruments of destruction" that should be outlawed as the world looks to re-regulate the global financial system in the wake of last year's credit crisis, the billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros said on Friday.

Mr Soros, the Hungarian-born US fund manager, said that the swaps were `truly toxic', grossly distorting risk, encouraging speculation and with the potential bring ruin on financial institutions and companies.

Yield on Two-Year T-Bonds Spike Up    Eric Roseman Sovereign Society

Treasury Prices Buckling Under the Weight of This Year's Issuance (30-Year US Treasury Bond Prices)

Dollar Treads Water

Roseman's opinion:  "The Treasury market is coming undone in a big way. This is not good news for the credit market or the U.S. dollar."  He, of course, is happy to sell you some advice.

Embattled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown won some backing from a Nobel Prize-winning economist today, who said the UK economy looked to be faring the best in Europe.

Princeton University economics professor Paul Krugman praised Mr Brown's handling of the banking crisis and his economic policies as "intelligent".

"I think the UK economy looks the best in Europe at the moment," he told The Observer. "The fact of the matter is that Britain did manage to stabilise the banking system."

He added: "If the government can hold off having an election until next year, Labour might be able to run as 'the people who brought Britain out of the slump'."

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election by a thumping margin, official figures showed Saturday, but his moderate challenger rejected the tally as a "dangerous charade" that could lead to tyranny.

The scale of Ahmadinejad's victory -- he took nearly twice as many votes as former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi with counting almost complete after Friday's poll -- upset widespread expectations that the race would at least go to a second round.

Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said Ahmadinejad won 62.6 percent of the vote and Mousavi 33.75 percent. Turnout was a record 85 percent of eligible voters.

Mousavi protested against what he said were many obvious violations.

"I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade. The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardize the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny," Mousavi said in a statement made available to Reuters.

He had been due to hold a news conference, but police at the building turned journalists away, saying it was canceled.

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 (IPS) - Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai received U.S. President Barack Obama's seal of approval and a promise of 73 million dollars in education, health, and governance-related assistance after a mid-afternoon meeting at the White House here Friday.

Emerging from the talks, Obama expressed "extraordinary admiration for the courage [and] the tenacity that the prime minister has shown in navigating through some difficult political times."

At the same time, he indicated that Washington is not yet prepared to substantially ease nine-year-old sanctions directed primarily against Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and his top military and political aides, with whom Tsvangirai has been engaged in an uneasy power-sharing agreement since February.

"I have committed 73 million dollars in assistance to Zimbabwe," he said, adding, however, that none of that money will "be going to the government directly because we continue to be concerned about consolidating democracy, human rights and rule of law, but it will be going directly to the people in Zimbabwe."

Despite its not being channeled through the government, he said, "I think (the aid) can be of assistance to the prime minister in his efforts."

At the same time, Obama took a slap at Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron hand since its independence nearly 30 years ago.

"President Mugabe - I think I've made my views clear - has not acted all the time in the best interest of the Zimbabwean people and has been resistant to the kinds of democratic changes that need to take place," he said, noting Tsvangirai had made "progress" in leading his country out of a "very dark and difficult period politically".

...this morning there's no relief on the horizon for Palestinians hoping to ease their desperate housing shortage. Only a day earlier, employees of Jerusalem's Israeli-run municipality handed house demolition orders to three more families in the Al-Bustan area of Silwan, which lies alongside Wadi Qadoum and abuts the walls of the Old City. All of the homes in Al-Bustan - 90 in total - are slated for demolition, despite ongoing negotiations between residents and City Hall.

There is even more cause for Palestinian alarm at Israeli intentions. Eli Yishai, the interior minister in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right- wing government, has reportedly instructed ministry employees to nix a new master plan for the city on the ground that it allocates too much land for the construction of Palestinian homes.

The master plan, on which dozens of Israeli architects and town planners worked for several years, was intended to outline the city's development over the next few decades and to remedy a situation in which, since 1959, Jerusalem has not been developed according to a comprehensive agenda.

Palestinians have long had difficulty getting permits to build even on their own property. The plan, if implemented, would allow increased building in the eastern part of the city, including 13,500 more housing units for the city's Palestinians.

The outline of the plan was recently submitted to the interior ministry for approval, but city officials discovered this week that Yishai had ordered the plan shelved. Instead, he threw his support behind another programme, drafted in 2000, which set aside considerably less area for new Palestinian building.

... The president never said a word about ... about any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century. <...>

... he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of Egypt's finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in the audience of this, because, in most cases -- and especially among those younger than 50 -- their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews. <...>

It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn't know, or just thought it wasn't expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort "to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings" without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.

EasyJet, the British purveyor of low-cost, short-haul air travel, has inspired passionate criticism over its environmental impact. Air travel is one of the fastest-rising sources of carbon emissions, and detractors believe that weekend jaunts across Europe are unnecessarily wasteful.

Despite these accusations, EasyJet's founder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, says that his company is a climate hero, not a villain.

"I think we have a good story to tell," Mr. Haji-Ioannou said at the Politics of Climate Change Conference in London last week. Compared to the air travel competition, he noted, EasyJet uses newer, more efficient jets and packs as many people as possible onto each aircraft, thereby minimizing the emissions contribution per passenger.

By offering a bare-bones service, Mr. Haji-Ioannou argued, EasyJet is both more affordable and more efficient. "I'm a bit troubled that we take as a given that greener is more expensive," he said. "Cheaper is usually more environmentally friendly."

BONN, Jun 12 (IPS) - A leading global environmental group has accused the United States of holding up UN climate negotiations.

Friends of the Earth Malaysia's honorary secretary Meena Raman said that throughout the second round of the United Nations climate talks in Bonn that ended Jun. 12, the U.S. administration had blocked progress to move negotiations forward.

Delegates from 183 countries meeting in Bonn discussed key negotiating texts which will serve as the basis for an international climate change deal due to be reached at a meeting in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18. The Copenhagen meeting would seek to bring an international agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012.

The 12-day gathering in former West German capital Bonn this month was attended by more than 4,600 participants, including government delegates, and representatives from business and industry, environmental organisations and research institutions.

Rather than show global leadership, the Obama administration failed to live up to its responsibility as the world's largest historical greenhouse gas polluter, Raman told reporters Jun. 12.

"This strategy damages the prospects for a just, equitable, and effective outcome" at the key UN conference planned in Copenhagen, she added.

Echoing general disappointment with the new U.S. administration, Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S. said: "The election of President (Barack) Obama created tremendous hope worldwide that the U.S. would finally play a leadership role in solving the climate crisis that - more than any other nation on earth - it is responsible for causing.

"Unfortunately for the survival of people and the planet, the Obama administration's position at these UN negotiations sounds frighteningly similar to that of (former U.S. president) George Bush."

WASHINGTON, DC, June 12, 2009 (ENS) - There are 44 coal combustion waste sites nationwide that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified as "high hazard," but the agency cannot make the locations of these hazardous sites public, Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters today. The California senator chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees the federal environmental agency.

In the aftermath of last December's spill of more than a billion gallons of coal ash waste at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-fired power plant, the U.S. EPA conducted inspections of the nation's coal combustion waste sites.

Agency inspectors identified several hundred coal ash piles across the country including 44 sites that pose a "high hazard." These sites are located in such a way that if the coal ash ponds were to fail, they would pose a threat to people living nearby.

But, Senator Boxer said, "the EPA, after consulting with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security, has indicated that they cannot make the list of 'high hazard' sites public."

"If these sites are so hazardous and if the neighborhoods nearby could be harmed irreparably, then I believe it is essential to let people know," Boxer said. "In that way, they can press their local authorities who have responsibility for their safety to act now to make the sites safer."

"There is a huge muzzle on me and on my staff, and the only people I can tell about this are the senators whose states are impacted," said Boxer. "We cannot talk to any of their staffs. This is unacceptable. The committee is going to continue hearings into this matter."

Today, Senator Boxer sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the EPA seeking further information on whether the public disclosure of coal ash waste sites is consistent with the treatment of other hazardous sites.

http://www.appgopo.org.uk/

an all-party, (underfunded), parliamentary brainstorm tank about peak oil and gas.

very progressive, can we have one for italy, please?


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

Staff Sergeant Narima H. speaks five languages, wears a uniform, takes part in dangerous foreign missions and believes in Allah. And as a woman of Islamic faith, the 29-year-old is precisely the kind of asset the Bundeswehr needs when trying to bridge the cultural gaps that the security of its soldiers and the success of its operation depend on.

At present, the Bundeswehr is almost exclusively active in countries where the majority of the population is Muslim, and Narima's next mission is no exception. She is currently preparing for another deployment to Afghanistan.

"I am learning Dari," she told Deutsche Welle. "My company is based in Kundus and that is one of the languages spoken in Afghanistan - specifically northern Afghanistan."

The trip will be her fourth foreign assignment.

"If we have migrants from countries where we are on a mission, we can learn a lot," said Lieutenant Colonel Ulrich Kirsch of the Federal Armed Forces Association. "We can draw on their intercultural expertise."

Chinese archaeologists are set to begin a fresh round of excavations at the site of the ancient terracotta warriors, hoping to uncover more secrets of China's first emperor.

About 1,000 warriors have already been excavated - all with unique features - but archaeologists believe the tomb may contain up to 8,000 life-sized figure.

The Neolithic tombs, which until now had gone unnoticed under farmland despite being just 15 miles from Stonehenge, are some of the oldest monuments to have been found in Britain.

The tombs were discovered by Damian Grady, an English Heritage photographer, who flew over the area in a light aircraft taking aerial photographs of the land, looking for marks or features on the landscape suggestive of ancient monuments. One photograph showed two long mounds.

This chuckle a minute memoir is by an Iranian `expat' who armed with a degree in Street Theatre from London lands in Salt Lake City just in time for the Iranian Hostage Crisis.


Camel Jockey Go Home is the story of an Iranian `expat' whose begins his career teaching American English (as in grammar) to American kids during the 444 days of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  It is a gut-funny, colorful, first-person narrative of a Persian `blue blood' in his early 20's, navigating a new life and career in The Mormon Zion, Utah.

After barely finishing mime and Clown College in London, the author lands his first  summer job in America as a bus boy for President Nixon's cabinet.  Nixon's resignation finds the Author ripped suddenly from the luxury of gilded office suites to a parking garage job deep underground leaving him feeling especially victimized and betrayed by Woodward and Bernstein for the loss of the 2.75/hour job.

"I was a victim of Watergate scandal too!!!"

Nevertheless, the Author is inspired by the experience and by the politicians to whom he served food and drink.

In his short time in the company of greats like Ford, Agnew, George Wallace, Kissinger and others, the Author develops a passion for politics and an especially intimate appreciation for the art of bullshit.  "The Founding Fathers called the freedom to bullshit, `freedom of speech' to make it sound nicer.  Among all the politicians, Ted Kennedy was the master bullshitter. He became my role model."

Sharp-tongued political commentary throughout the book juxtaposes the politics of the "corrupt old Muslim thugs" and the old-boy politics of Washington. and its own equally brutish US foreign policy.

...

A giddiness seeps through the narrative from the knowledge that the Author's own cynical assault on everything sacred would, in his former country, earn a stoning at best

The Author tells his own colorful life story through the recounting of others' stories collected many waves of new Americans who came to Utah over the past 3 decades; from Iranian war criminals and their victims, to Bosian concentration camp survivors and their Serbian captors, from The Lost Boys of Sudan to the heirs of Latin American drug smugglers, teachers, butchers, doctors, judges, musicians, farmers and soldiers.

Camel Jockey Go Home contains some of the most amazing stories of our time, told by people displaced and uprooted from every corner of the world.  But he does more than just teach them English. He helps them heal and become their own story-tellers.