EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Union has taken the first step on the path to signing up to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a move that supporters say will mark the completion of human rights protection in the EU.

All member states have signed up to the ECHR, a 1950 international treaty guaranteeing a series of rights, including freedom of thought, speech, assembly and religion and governed by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Shaken by a sharp drop in the size of the Brussels press corps in the last few months after years of steady attrition, the European capital's foreign press association is anxious that action be taken to stem the decline.

From a high point of 1,031 journalists in 2005, making it the biggest foreign press corps in the world, the number of reporters has steadily dropped down to between 860 and 935 today.

The EU court in Luxembourg has ruled that peepshow booths cannot benefit from reduced VAT rules designed for cinemas. The ruling, in a case brought by the Erotic Center in Belgium, said the VAT breaks cannot be applied to viewing "films, or extracts from films, in private cubicles."

EU commission chief Barroso urged Georgia's government to avoid exacerbating regional tensions after a Georgian television station caused panic by airing a fake news report about Russian forces heading for the capital Tbilisi."I am concerned by recent reports of a hoax news item in Tbilisi," he said

ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet has rejected the idea of a country leaving the eurozone, an idea floated by Germany. "I have always said that I do not comment on absurd hypotheses." "Entering the eurozone is a major decision. It is not an a-la-carte membership," he told Le Point magazine on Monday.

AFP- France on Thursday vowed a "merciless" campaign to stamp out ETA on its soil after a member of the Basque separatist group was accused of shooting dead a French policeman.
   
"The mobilisation of the French police and gendarmes against this terrorist organisation will be total and merciless," Sarkozy said after meeting the family of the 52-year-old officer who was gunned down on Tuesday.
   
"Let no one imagine that the territory of the French republic is a quiet rear-base for the terrorists and assassins who kill, as ETA has shown it can for decades," he said in Damarie-les-Lys, scene of the shooting southeast of Paris.

March 18, 1990, saw the first free elections to the East German parliament. After its foundation 40 years earlier, the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) for the first time gave its people the opportunity to express their opinions at the ballot box. The result was overwhelming support for a quick road to reunification - and an end to East Germany as a state.

"The March 18 elections in effect were a referendum on German reunification," said historian Andreas Apelt. As soon as the result was in, it was clear that East Germany would soon cease to exist."

"The vote determined the path the country would embark on. And that path clearly led towards a united Germany," said Apelt, who was an East German civil rights activist in 1990 and ran in the elections himself.

"It was this day that marked the end of the so-called 'dictatorship of the proletariat'," German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled. "It was the final victory of the peaceful revolution."

A Polish court has convicted three of the five men who stole the "Arbeit Macht Frei" from the Auschwitz memorial site in December.

The three Polish men, two of whom are brothers, were sentenced to prison terms from 18 months to two and a half years. They were also each fined 10,000 zloty (2,580 euros, $3,530).

Two other men, said to have established contact with the Swedish alleged mastermind of the plot, are still waiting for their trial to begin.

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan threatened the future of thousands of Armenian illegal immigrants currently living in Turkey on Tuesday.

"There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000," Erdogan said while speaking on the BBC Turkish service on Tuesday.

"If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don't have to keep them in my country," he added.

The government is locked in a serious and bitter dispute with the parliamentary body set up to monitor MI5 and MI6 over the guidelines covering the torture and abuse of detainees held abroad, the Guardian has learned.

The dispute, compounded by a row about plans for more effective overall scrutiny of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, has added significance since it has been sparked by a group of senior MPs and peers handpicked by the prime minister.

France must bring back the brothel to protect its prostitutes from exploitation, trafficking and aggression in the street, an MP from Nicolas Sarkozy's rightwing party has said.

Chantal Brunel, a member of the ruling UMP, called on French authorities to study the possibility of legalising centres where sex workers could serve clients within a regulated and protected framework.

It was time, she said, to move away from attempts to stamp out prostitution and instead focus on making the sex trade more safe and transparent.

William Hague was said to be aware 10 years ago of a deal struck by senior Tories that eventually resulted in Lord Ashcroft secretly remaining a non-dom after obtaining his peerage, according to official documents released today.

Hague, the former leader of the Conservative party who had been lobbying for the billionaire to secure a seat in the House of Lords, has repeatedly insisted that he was only told earlier this year that Ashcroft was a non-dom, and therefore not paying full UK tax on all his earnings.

But previously confidential parliamentary correspondence published today showed that Hague's chief whip, James Arbuthnot, was instrumental in lobbying for Ashcroft not to have to give up tax privileges on his massive overseas earnings - despite assurances given by Hague that he would pay "tens of millions" to the Treasury.

The papers also include a letter from Arbuthnot which suggests that Hague was fully aware of the deal between the Cabinet Office and Ashcroft.

PASOK ―today under the leadership of George Papandreou (offspring of the Papandreou dynasty of the centre-"Left") was the "perfect" choice for the elites, as this party has governed Greece, in turns with the Karamanlis dynasty of the centre-Right, during the entire post-junta period that followed the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. In fact, these two dynasties, initially under the tutelage of the British and then of the US elite, and, lately, under that of the transnational elite, have been the main players of the Greek political scene for the entire post-war period, which began with the end of the Greek Civil War in the late 1940's. However, the very fact that PASOK managed to gain a comfortable parliamentary majority (thanks to an electoral system that blatantly favours the first party in number of votes), in reality, sowed winds which, most likely, will, soon, reap whirlwinds. This is because the bipartisan system in Greece is not based on any solid foundations. An indication of this is the fact that, while in Europe, neo-liberal parties alternate with social-liberal ones (which have, long ago, abandoned even the socialist rhetoric) on the basis of a clear agenda that summarises the demands of neo-liberal globalisation, in Greece, both parties, and especially the social-liberals, systematically hide their true identity! When therefore, the true identity of PASOK is being revealed today, following the harsh measures it is introducing to deal with the crisis, its electoral base is in fact being dismantled and the result may well be the future dissolution not just of PASOK but of the entire bipartisan system in Greece.

It is clear that the same, more or less policies, with perhaps small variations on the actual fiscal measures to be introduced, would have been adopted by whatever party was elected, given the main goal imposed by the European Monetary Union (EMU) on all member-states for the reduction of the public debt to meet the Maastricht Treaty criteria. The "choice" given by the elites to the Greek people was clear: either to re-elect the previous governing party (New Democracy) with an explicit new mandate to implement the savage cuts in social spending suggested by the EU commission and international organisations, or to elect a party (PASOK) which was in fact deceiving the electorate that it could somehow avoid the suggested savage cuts ―in other words, a party that was, in fact, relying on its socialist name and its control of trade union bureaucracies to pass exactly the same policies! The method has been, after all, successfully tested for many years by the British Labour party, with the full support of the elites in Britain. It is therefore obvious that PASOK aspires to play exactly the same role now, with the full support of the local elites, which played a crucial role in its rise to power.

Gen Sheehan had been speaking at a US Senate hearing on allowing gay people to serve openly in the US military. He said Dutch leaders had told him that the presence of gay soldiers had contributed to the Bosnian massacre.

[...]

Gen Sheehan said the former chief of staff of the Dutch army had told him that the presence of openly gay soldiers in the Dutch peacekeeping force were seen as "part of the problem" which contributed to the fall of Srebrenica.

In einem der vermutlich größten Steuerskandale der Republik müssen in den nächsten Wochen etwa 1100 Verdächtige mit Hausdurchsuchungen rechnen. Die nach dem Ankauf einer CD mit Bankdaten der Schweizer Credit Suisse zuständigen Ermittlungsbehörden in Nordrhein-Westfalen haben alle Akten zusammengestellt und einen Großteil der Unterlagen an die Steuerbehörden anderer Bundesländer verschickt.

Die meisten Verfahren werden sich nach einer ersten Sichtung vor allem gegen Steuerbetrüger aus Bayern, Baden-Württemberg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen und Rheinland-Pfalz richten. In internen Schätzungen kamen Beamte vor Wochen zu dem Ergebnis, dass bis zu 400 Millionen Euro Nachsteuern fällig werden.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Germany has performed a dramatic u-turn and now says it would support International Monetary Fund aid for Greece, were it requested

"We see no need for immediate action now. Greece has not asked for aid," a German source working closely on the subject told EUobserver on Thursday (18 March). "In case the situation of Greece does get worse, Germany would be open for an IMF solution," the person added.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said member state growth assumptions in budgetary plans submitted to Brussels are overly optimistic, suggesting upcoming national deficits could be worse than governments predict.

Commenting on Wednesday (17 March) on the member state plans - known as stability and convergence programmes in EU parlance - the commission also said several member states need to provided greater details on how they intended to rein in their runaway budgets.

EU commission chief Barroso Wednesday said Greece is "on track" to achieve "the ambitious target of 4% deficit reduction in 2010." Speaking after meeting Greek PM Papandreou, Barroso said reinforced economic policy co-ordination and country surveillance proposals will be made at the end of March.

Up to 1.2 million jobs could be lost in the EU by 2015 if online piracy continues at its current rate, reports The Guardian, citing a study backed by the EU and trade unions. In 2008, the creative industries accounted for almost 7% of the EU's GDP and they employ 6.5% of the EU workforce.

SOUTH AFRICA: Test running has started in earnest on the 20 km first phase of the Gautrain line between Sandton and OR Tambo International Airport. Opening has been set for June 8, subject to a final technical 'go/no-go' decision in April.

The original timescale would have seen the Bombela consortium complete Phase 1 by June 27. However, after the project began South Africa was selected to host the FIFA World Cup, and the provincial government was keen to see the opening brought forward so that the line could handle some of the football traffic. The cost of accelerating the work was initially too high for the government, but agreement has been reached to launch a reduced-scope service at no extra cost.

Phase 2 is scheduled for completion in 2011. Extending the line north from Sandton to Pretoria and Hatfield and south to Park station in Johannesburg, this will take Gautrain to 80 route-km.

Has the Chinese export sector become hostage to WalMartization, the ability of powerful retailers to squeeze vendor profit margins? Reader Michael Q called our attention to a key remark in a Wall Street Journal story:

   Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan, in an exclusive interview Thursday ahead of a visit to the U.S., said that the profit margin on many Chinese export goods was less than 2%.

    Most exporters absorbed the appreciation in the value of the yuan that followed its revaluation in 2005 by boosting innovation and cutting costs, but many were forced to close, he said. A further rise in the currency's value would endanger more exporters' survival, which China can't afford, he said.

As Michael Q, who is an equity analyst, noted:

   2% margins on export-oriented businesses is not representative of any sort of real competitive advantage. A real competitive advantage when it comes to exporting would show double-digits profit margins. This whole sector is hanging by a thread...nearly none of the activity China has engaged in since the downturn is secular or self-sustaining.

Yves here. The implications for China are serious. First, this says that it perceives it has no room to revalue the RMB upwards. Not only are exporters politically powerful, but on a more mundane level, the regime has achieved social cohesion through a promise of rising prosperity. Too much unemployment would undermine the legitimacy of the governing classes.

But second, it also implies China cannot even tolerate much inflation. Remember, inflation will push up the price of good in local currency terms, which in a fixed peg currency regime, translates directly into price increases. Price increases from a country whose selling proposition is cheap prices would lead importers to look for substitutes in other emerging economies. A 2% margin not only says manufacturers have no room to cut prices, it also says they cannot afford much in the way of lost revenue.

This dynamic makes the idea floated on the blog earlier, that China might devalue the RMB , less radical than it might seem.

One of WalMart's mottos is "Always lower prices!" Who could have foreseen that this might lead to world-wide deflation when relentlessly pursued by the world's largest and lowest cost retailer?

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be creating new grounds for a court challenge to the proposed U.S. health-care overhaul as she considers using a mechanism [!] that would avoid a vote [!] on the full legislation.

Pelosi said this week she might use a [NEW! IMRPOVED!] parliamentary technique that would "deem" House members to have passed the Senate's health-care plan by voting for a more politically palatable package of changes.

Some legal scholars question whether that approach can be squared with the Constitution and the Supreme Court's 1998 declaration that the two houses of Congress must approve "precisely the same text" before a bill can become a law.

"Any process that does not result in the House taking of yays and nays on statutory text identical to what passed the Senate is constitutionally problematic," said Jonathan Adler, a professor who runs the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University's law school in Cleveland.

The greatest obstacle to any challenge may be getting a court to consider the issue. In 2007, a federal appeals court in Washington rejected a similar attack on a Republican-backed package of tax and spending cuts, which because of a clerk's error had passed the House and Senate with different wording.

The three-judge panel said that, under an 1892 Supreme Court decision, courts can't second-guess [read: arrogate] congressional leaders [sic; quorum vote] when they certify that both houses have passed the same legislative language....

"There are a lot of people who don't want to vote for it [Baucus bill]," Pelosi said this week. "We will do what is necessary to pass a health-care bill [sic]."  

Read more...

That's what all the pretty autocrats say.

Possibly related posts:

ppt demagogery
legitimate "process arguments"
"illigitimate" process arguments
reconciliation tactics, reconciliation law

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A rocket fired from the Gaza strip on Thursday one hour after EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton entered the territory has killed a migrant worker of Thai origin in Israel's Negev region. Over 100 rockets have been fired from Gaza over the past year, Israeli media say.

EP chief Buzek has hit out against Cuba's arrest of 30 people from the Damas de Blanco opposition group. "I urge the Cuban government to stop harassing people who protest for freedom," he said, noting that the EP has waited 5 years to hand the movement a prize, as its members cannot leave Cuba.

Nunavut, a region in north Canada, has voted to ban European alcohol in the northern Canadian territory in symbolic retaliation for an EU ban on seal products, AFP reported. However, the motion is unlikely to become law. The EU in July last year adopted a ban on seal products.

AFP - An American woman who called herself "JihadJane" pleaded not guilty Thursday in a Philadelphia court to recruiting terrorists.
   
Pennsylvania resident Colleen LaRose, 46, is charged with "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists," among other charges.
   
She allegedly sought both male and female recruits, raised money and agreed to murder a Swedish cartoonist, pledging "only death will stop me," the indictment charges.

REUTERS - President Barack Obama picked up support for healthcare reform on Wednesday from a prominent liberal and a group of Catholic nuns, who broke with bishops on the issue of abortion and urged passage of the overhaul.

Representative Dennis Kucinich, one of the most liberal members of Congress and a supporter of nationalized healthcare, became the first Democrat in the House of Representatives to switch from "no" to "yes" on the overhaul as it neared a likely final vote on Sunday.

"This is a defining moment for whether or not we'll have any opportunity to move off square one on healthcare," Kucinich said in announcing his switch two days after Obama lobbied him on an Air Force One flight to Kucinich's home state of Ohio.

REUTERS - Russia said on Thursday it would start up the reactor it is building at Iran's first atomic power plant in mid-2010, prompting immediate criticism from visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced the startup, but Clinton said such a decision would be "premature" without Iranian assurances on its nuclear programme, which the West fears is aimed at producing atomic weapons.   Russia agreed to build the 1,000 megawatt reactor at Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf, 15 years ago, but delays have haunted the $1 billion project and diplomats say Moscow has used it as a lever in relations with Tehran.   "We continue work on developing atomic energy capacity both at home and abroad," Putin told a meeting on nuclear energy in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk.   "The start-up of the first reactor of the Bushehr atomic power station is planned for this summer," he said.  

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki retained his narrow lead over secularist challenger Iyad Allawi Thursday as Iraq neared a final preliminary count of votes cast in a March 7 parliamentary election.

The tight race between the Shi'ite prime minister and Allawi, who was dominating largely Sunni provinces, was expected to lead to weeks or months of tense negotiations to form a new government as Iraq emerges from years of sectarian conflict.

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's Acting President Goodluck Jonathan will nominate a new ministerial team by early next week, and is likely to reappoint around half the cabinet he has just sacked, presidency sources said Thursday.

Fast appointment of the ministers could do much to alleviate uncertainty in Africa's most populous nation after Jonathan dismissed the entire cabinet Wednesday, aiming to consolidate his authority a month after assuming executive powers.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Protesters in Bangkok vowed on Thursday to prolong a mass anti-government rally to force Thailand's government to call elections, despite doubts the mainly rural movement had what it takes to sustain the rally.

On their fifth day on Bangkok's streets, the red-shirted protesters called for a "class war" and threatened to make life unbearable for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva after splashing blood on the gates of his home and office, forcing him to sleep in a military base and preventing him from attending parliament.

AFP - The UN body overseeing commerce in endangered wildlife on Thursday rejected a proposal to outlaw international trade in eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna, a sushi mainstay in Japan.
   
The controversial proposal for so-called Appendix I status was quashed with 68 votes against, 20 in favour and 30 abstentions at a meeting in Doha of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
   
The measure would have needed the support of two-thirds of the nations present to pass.

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - Multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis killed 150,000 people in 2008 and infects between 400,000 and 500,000 people globally, according to World Health Organization estimates released on Thursday.

WHO said the numbers suggest the hard-to-treat infection is spreading and said there is an urgent need for countries to set up labs to fight it.

So-called MDR-TB is especially common in Russia, Tajikistan, China and India, WHO said in a report. It said an especially hard-to-treat form called extensively drug resistant TB or XDR-TB is also growing.

"Almost 50 percent of MDR-TB cases worldwide are estimated to occur in China and India. In 2008, MDR-TB caused an estimated 150,000 deaths," the WHO report said.

PARIS, March 18 (Reuters) - Funding to combat malaria must be more than tripled if the mosquito-borne disease which kills nearly a million people a year is to be fought effectively, health campaigners said on Thursday.

Presenting a report covering the past decade, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership said a jump in financing had helped to contain the disease but more needed to be done.

"In all the countries where there is sufficient financing, we are reaching our goals," said Awa Marie Coll-Seck, executive director of the partnership, which is backed by the World Health Organisation.

Total annual global funding was about $2 billion at the end of 2009, far short of the estimated $6 billion required annually to expand the campaign, the partnership said.

LONDON (Reuters) - German scientists have created a three-dimensional "invisibility cloak" that can hide objects by bending light waves.

The findings, published in the journal Science on Thursday, could in the future make it possible large objects invisible, but for now the researchers said they were not keen to speculate on possible applications.

"For now these...cloaking devices are just a beautiful and exciting benchmark to show what transformation optics can do," said Tolga Ergin of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Transformation optics use a class of materials called metamaterials that guide and control light.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying a U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan on Thursday.

The capsule -- ferrying Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev -- landed in the vast steppe near the town of Arkalyk in northern Kazakhstan as planned, Russia's Mission Control said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials on Thursday sought to clamp down on the marketing of cigarettes to children and teenagers, issuing national limits on vending machine sales, free samples and taking other steps after a failed attempt more than a decade ago.

Under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules, tobacco companies such as Reynolds American Inc and Altria Group Inc's Philip Morris could no longer use brand names to sponsor sporting and other events or to sell merchandise such as hats and T-shirts.

Artists, authors and academics from overseas are regularly being refused permission to enter the UK under the government's points-based visa system, according to a dossier of cases to be presented to Downing Street tomorrow.

Writers have been prevented from attending their book launches, painters deported for carrying their own works and a Pakistani band banned from attending the World Pipe Band championship in Glasgow, according to the civil rights group, Manifesto Club.

A petition opposing the visa restrictions is to be handed into the prime minister's office tomorrow. It has been signed by prominent figures, such as the sculptor Antony Gormley, the director of the National theatre, Nicholas Hytner, the lawyer Lady Kennedy and the poet Blake Morrison, as well as 10,000 others.

An accompanying dossier, naming those turned away over the past year, records their anger and disappointment. "This is an account of talent stopped at our borders, which has left the country all the poorer," the petition says.

• Snow melts at 0.3 cm pr degree C, pr day.
  
• Undisturbed snow is 30% water by volume.  (40%+ if machine moved/packed)

That means some of the 4 m high densely packed snow piles on Helsinki streets, in an average of + 3 C, will take 6 months to disappear. Unless moved. The mean temperature in Helsinki in April is 3.3 C.

You can't be me, I'm taken

In view of the continuing hostility of the police towards Strawberry Fair and their decision to ignore the decision of elected councillors to grant it a licence to run in 2010, the organisers have reluctantly taken the decision to cancel this year's event. Justin Argent, Chair of Strawberry Fair said "Gaining a secure license that will allow the Fair to continue for many years to come has to be the top priority for the Strawberry Fair committee. The police appeal of the decision made by Cambridge City Council means that we now have to put all our efforts into fighting that appeal, rather than into the detailed preparations for the 2010 Fair which should now be taking place, and we are not prepared to compromise either the appeal or the Fair itself.

The timetable for the appeal means that we will not know whether the Fair can go ahead as planned until far too late in the day. We do not want to pass this risk on to the many supportive suppliers, traders, and artists whose livelihoods would be severely damaged by a last minute cancellation. By taking this decision now, people will be able to find alternative activities for 2010 safe in the knowledge that we are doing all we can to make sure Strawberry Fair returns in 2011 and beyond.

Cambridgeshire Police have made it absolutely clear they do not want the event to go ahead and have put an incredible amount of time and resource into preventing it. We feel the police action shows just how far out of step they are with the people of Cambridge, who have shown overwhelming support for the event; and had the same enthusiasm been spent on working with us rather than fighting us, many of the key concerns would have been dealt with.

WOKING, England (Reuters) - McLaren unveiled the first of a range of supercars on Thursday that will take their Formula One battle with Ferrari and Mercedes out of the racetrack and into the automotive arena.

McLaren said the new MP4-12C, with a likely price tag of around 150,000 pounds ($229,200) and annual production of 1,000 cars from 2011, represents the "logical next step" for the British-based company.

A haulage firm launched an investigation today after a video emerged that appeared to show a lorry driver speeding along a motorway unaware a car was trapped across its bumper.

The mobile phone footage shows an Arclid Transport lorry travelling in the fast lane on the A1 near Wetherby, West Yorkshire, with a blue Renault Clio trapped sideways under its bumper.

Believed to be filmed in January by passengers in a vehicle travelling on the same road, the driver of the Clio, who has not been identified, appears to be trying to release the car from the lorry by pressing the brakes.