Office of President: Klaus happy with EU treaty proposal

The office of the Czech president has revealed that President Václav Klaus is satisfied with a proposal by the Swedish EU presidency addressing his demands for modifications to the EU's Lisbon treaty. In a statement, released on Friday, the president's office made clear the proposal met Mr Klaus's expectations

Joe Biden told reporters after meeting the Czech Prime Minister, Jan Fischer, in Prague on Friday.

"The Czech Republic stepped up and did their part in the previous missile defence plan, and today we discussed the potential role the Czech Republic could play in the new architecture, a better architecture that has the capacity to actually protect Europe, and does not just focus on the US. I am very appreciative that the prime minister stated to me that the Czech Republic is ready to be a part of that new architecture and discuss the terms this participation will take."

For his part, Czech Prime Minister was somewhat more reserved when talking about a possible role for the Czech Republic, saying the country would only begin to seek its role within the new system after it has more information.

The nominated Prime Minister Lucian Croitoru presents on Friday the list of ministers he will present to the Parliament, television channel Antena 3 informs. I sent to the Parliament my governing program and the list of the ministers in the new cabinet, Lucian Croitoru declared.

Here are his declarations:

• I have the support if the Democrat Liberal party and I negotiated with the other political parties and the national minorities

• All other political parties said that they will not endorse this government. Afterwards, I have met members of the Democrat Liberal Party and President Basescu who assured me that the new Cabinet will receive the vote of the Parliament given the current economic situation.

Also see: Presidents vs. Parliaments: now playing in Romania)


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Inch by painful inch, Angela Merkel's coalition partners are moving closer to forming a government in Berlin, as the parties struggle to reconcile conflicting election pledges. Many newspapers on Friday accuse the parties of pandering to special interests rather than considering what is best for the country.

It has been a tortuous process but now, almost four weeks after elections put them in the driving seat to form a new government, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) seem on the cusp of agreeing to a coalition deal this weekend.

The parties have struggled to reconcile very different election pledges to cut taxes on the one hand, while not imposing tough cuts on social spending on the other. All the time a new legal commitment to balancing the budget by 2016 has tied the negotiating partners' hands when it comes to increasing public borrowing to cover these seemingly incompatible promises.

Marathon talks into the early hours of Friday morning, however, saw the FDP move closer to clinching a deal with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). After 12 hours of talks Horst Seehofer, the CSU leader, told journalists at 1 a.m. that the parties had made progress towards an agreement ahead of Saturday's self-imposed deadline.

AFP - France will send out the first warnings to digital pirates early next year after passing tough legislation allowing for Internet access to be cut for those who illegally download movies and music, a minister said.

The Constitutional Court passed the law on Thursday to the joy of President Nicolas Sarkozy and anger of Internet libertarians in France and other countries which are considering copying the French example.

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said the members of a watchdog to oversee application of the digital clampdown would be named in November and the first warnings would go out "from the start of 2010."

It should have been enough to confront him with past comments that have been recorded in a manner that makes them undeniable. It should have been enough to examine his party's stated policies and its ludicrous elevation of an indigenous ethnicity in an island that has assimilated waves of immigrants for centuries.

It should have been laughably straightforward for the panellists to debate with and destroy Griffin's arguments. Instead, inflated by their outrage, the other speakers repeatedly interrupted, spoke over and cut short the BNP leader. They could have given him all the rope he needed to hang himself. By treating him as a pariah not even granted the liberty of finishing many of his sentences, never mind a particular proposition he was beginning to elaborate, they showed precisely the disregard for others and their views that they condemn in Griffin's party.

French lower house of parliament backs bank tax

PARIS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - France's lower house of parliament on Friday approved a plan to impose a 10 percent tax on bank profits in 2010 despite opposition from the government.

The National Assembly, adopted the opposition-proposed measure by 44 votes to 40.

However, a source in President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party said the government would ask for a new vote, claiming a technical problem because two UMP deputies had accidentally voted the wrong way.

Yet another case of the government unable to get the votes it needs in Parliament (I don't think I've ever seen this happen once, let alone multiple times, under previous governments), a sign of the deep misgivings on the right about Sarkozy (the fact this his policies are often lefty-populist rather than conservative, that he listens to no-one, and takes credit for everything).

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

The Munich-based Ifo Institute said its business climate index, based on a survey of 7,000 executives, edged up from 91.3 in September to 91.9 points in October in its seventh successive monthly increase.

The index, seen as a major barometer of the economic mood in Europe, is the latest indication that Europe's largest economy is pulling out of its worst recession since World War II.

A group of rich Germans have launched a petition to reintroduce a wealth tax to help the country rebound from the ongoing economic crisis.

These labourers, working on station platforms in the Paris metro, are illegal immigrants. The conditions they work in, shown in the following videos, are simply deplorable. 

Under the pretence that they wanted to send photos home, the labourers were allowed to bring a small digital camera along to work. They then passed their videos to French labour union CGT, who brought them to the attention of the media. The images show the workers removing concrete slabs from the station platform, and then resurfacing the ground with boiling tarmac. Bare armed, gloveless, without masks, without helmets.

The postal workers strikes have led to 30 million letters being delayed, it was revealed today.

The Royal Mail said the figure was equivalent to around 40 per cent of an average daily postbag.

The company branded the strikes as "unnecessary and irresponsible", as a second day of action crippled deliveries.

Meanwhile the Communication Workers Union confirmed there will be a three day strike from next Thursday involving over 120,000 workers.

US software giant Microsoft has reported a first-quarter net profit of 3.57 billion dollars, down 18% from a year earlier but in excess of analysts' forecasts.

AFP - Australia Friday approved Yanzhou Coal's 3.2 billion US dollar takeover of miner Felix Resources, its biggest by a Chinese firm, in a breakthrough for the Asian giant's scramble for commodities.

Four banks, one in Georgia and three in Florida, were shut today, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., pushing this year's total to 103. That's the most since the savings-and- loan crisis led regulators to shutter 179 institutions in 1992....

The number of bank closings would likely be higher this year if the FDIC's fund wasn't depleted and if the agency had more bank examiners, RBC's Cassidy said. The agency shrank under President George W. Bush before adding employees in the Obama administration. The FDIC has about 6,000 employees now, compared with 21,000 during the savings-and-loan crisis in 1991, he said.

Possibly related news:

Pool of Applicants: "The job in question was simply for an administrative assistant. Responsibilities included data entry, assembling paperwork and making copies. Yet look at what the pool of applicants contained. * I.B.M. business analyst with 18 years experience * A former director of human resources * Someone with a master's degree and 12 years at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm * A former bank branch manager * A woman who once owned a trucking company"

23 Oct 1930: "Editorial: The cynical might dismiss the new Hoover unemployment efforts as just a continuation of last fall's business conferences, with their dubious results. However, the attitude now seems different. Last fall, there was much enthusiastic publicity and overconfidence; now, the committee is being discreet and seems to understand hard work is needed with local govts., and with corporation leaders not "as amenable to the presidential mandate" as last fall. A renewal of efforts to stimulate employment "by all safe means" and to help "those least able to withstand" the depression is worthy of unstinted support from business and government.

Bear market is now worse than any in last 25 years; Dow is down 52% from Sept. 3, 1929 peak vs. 47% decline in 1921, 40% in 1917, and 45% in 1907.

Some traders say upcoming Congressional elections may be weighing on the market.

Extensive bargain hunting by small investors reported by leading brokers, with "outright purchases covering many sheets on the order books while selling transactions were confined to a few columns." This was also reflected in steady gains in the stockholder counts for leading corporations."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Guess who said the following:

   Far from turning around the [George] Bush legacy of deficits and debt, [US president Barack] Obama has made it worse. It has got all the hallmarks of a financial collapse about to happen in America...

    The US dollar is almost becoming like junk bonds.

A senior Senator from Australia.

Leading Australian paper The Age adds:

   The Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce is openly canvassing an economic upheaval that would dwarf the current global financial crisis, triggered by the US defaulting on its sovereign debt within the next few years.

    In unusually pessimistic comments for a senior political figure, Senator Joyce said the US Government was running such large deficits and building up so much debt that it was in a similar position to Iceland or Germany before World War II.

A commenter offered some perspective:

Anonymous said...

    Correction - barney is no senior senator despite what The Age might say (he just opens his mouth so much it seems like he's been around forever). He's a junior senator of the Nationals. The nationals are the junior member of the coalition party. And the coalition party is in opposition. Unlike the USA, senators generally vote on party lines rather than donation book lines.

    He's also a bit of a thicky and very suggestible. Gets all worked up about some issue and spouts his mouth off, then gets led back to his stall and eventually just votes with his party anyway. About half the time he seems to say the right thing - but it's usually for the wrong reason and so by accident.

There was little doubt at the start of this recession that, contrary to Gordon Brown's insistence, Britain was uniquely vulnerable to an extremely painful slowdown. Its reliance on the City for large chunks of economic growth, the worrying state of the housing market, the excessive levels of debt held by consumers around the country were worrying enough, and that was before you started to consider the terrifying budget deficit. But it is only now, more than a year and a half into what many leading economists are classifying as a depression, that such concerns have been borne out in cold, hard statistical evidence.

Yesterday's gross domestic product figures may well be revised in the coming months, but the pattern is clear: whereas all the other major economies are gradually dragging themselves out of recession, Britain is still mired in what has now become its longest period of continuous contraction since comparable records began (and, most likely, since the 1930s). It has been a shock, not just for the Treasury, whose experts now privately admit they will have to cut their economic forecasts for this year come the Pre-Budget Report later this autumn, but also for most of the City's economists.

The broad assumption had been that although the UK had had a tough recession, it would emerge from it and start growing at a relatively solid pace UK by the middle of the year. But yesterday's figures proved such conclusions disasastrously wrong. The falls in economic activity were not merely isolated to the City, but across the entire economy, from the manufacturing sector to the services sector - from hotels and restaurants to construction. That there are so few rays of light was perhaps the most astonishing thing about the official figures: after all the Bank of England has pumped an unprecedented amount of cash into the economy and slashed interest rates to the lowest level in history; the Government has cut VAT and offered car buyers big tax breaks.

However, such incentives are of little use when an economy is facing the twin pressures of an immense financial crisis and onerous levels of personal debt. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund released a little-noticed piece of research which showed that the scale of the credit crunch was greater in the UK than in any other Western nation. In other words the gap between what people need to borrow in order to satisfy their living standards and what banks are willing and able to lend is, at £215 billion, far bigger than anywhere else in the developed world.

It is this that helps explain the scale of the recession. Even those who still have their jobs (and lest we forget unemployment tends to keep rising well after the recession is over) are unable to borrow in order to plan for the future. It is a sobering experience, but is a necessary one: Britain has lived beyond its means for too long. If it takes the humiliating prospect of being overtaken by Italy to bring this to light, so be it.

AFP - A judge in Uruguay sentenced former dictator Gregorio Alvarez to 25 years in prison Thursday for murder and rights violations during his 1981-1985 rule, a lawyer said.

Judge Luis Charles handed the sentence to the 82-year-old Alvarez after he was found responsible for 37 "aggravated homicides," said lawyer for the prosecution Oscar Lopez Goldaracena.

Alvarez played a key role in the country's 1973's coup before going on to be commander-in-chief of the army and ultimately the final president of Uruguay's civilian-military dictatorship.

A fierce battle in Mogadishu on Thursday killed at least 21 civilians and wounded dozens after insurgents fired on the Somali president's plane, prompting an artillery response from peacekeepers.

NATO defense ministers agreed on Friday to broaden counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and boost training of local security forces. But they sidestepped the issue of raising international troop numbers.

At a meeting in the Slovakian capital Bratislava on Friday, ministers backed the idea of a wider strategy to fight a growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and counter growing public opposition to the mission as casualties climb.

The new strategy would involve a renewed focus on civilian reconstruction, the protection of the Afghan population and the eventual transition to Afghan responsibility for security.

A bomb blast ripped through an air force base in the Pakistani town of Kamra, killing six civilians and two military personnel on Friday hours before a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the northwestern city of Peshawar, wounding 10.

REUTERS - Iran on Friday failed to accept a UN-drafted plan for it to cut a stockpile of nuclear fuel that the West fears could be used for weapons, and instead said it wanted to buy nuclear fuel from abroad.

The deal drafted by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) has already been approved by the other parties - the United States, Russia and France.

By offering a rival proposal, Iran appeared to be following a well-tested strategy of buying time to avert a threatened tightening of international sanctions.

Hundreds of Palestinians are kept behind bars in Israel without charges having been filed and with no access to a fair trial. Not even their lawyers are allowed to look at the evidence. Some governments in the West have expressed their concern, but the Israelis haven't budged.

"Five months after elections, perfect elections recognised the world over, there is no government in Lebanon," Kouchner said in Beirut, where he is to meet top officials on a day-long visit.

"It is not up to France to form your government and we have not come to give lessons, but we are worried.

"You cannot continue this way. You are promoting all the most dangerous trends in the region ... At stake are your security and the unity and freedom of Lebanon," he said.

Election campaigning wraps up in Tunisia on Friday before Sunday's presidential and parliamentary poll, in which incumbent President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is expected to win yet another term.

(Is this actually a news item?...)


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

I think [the Democratic Party as currently constituted] prefer [the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry] to their voters. I think they feel more comfortable with them. I heard a story recently from a Democratic Party operative who tells me that certain members of one of the president's cabinet departments only got wind of how hard it is out there for ordinary people to pay their bills when they invited in a major corporation to give them a presentation about their financial outlook for the holiday season -- and through that report found out that this company's prospective customers were spending less because large numbers of them had been laid off, or had huge medical bills, or had maxed out their credit, and so on.

Letters from customers, survey answers and such, were read to the cabinet group. And they were shocked. This is how they find out about the economic reality of this country -- accidentally, from a major campaign contributor! That's how out of touch these people are.

On these financial issues, not just the issue of financial regulation on Wall Street but the larger issue of income distribution and what kind of country we want to be -- the Democratic Party no longer has a policy that makes any sense. They do not seem to understand or even recognize that real wages in this country have not grown for most people for decades. Or if they do understand, they refuse to imagine any solutions that are not in some way a compromise with their major campaign contributors. They talk about closing tax loopholes and phony corporate addresses in the Caribbean as solutions to economic problems...
....

It seems to me then that the only hope of getting any of these problems is to get ourselves a national candidate who on the one hand is a mainstream politician and on the other is willing to embrace the notion of an open protest against the Democratic Party doctrine. We need for someone who has some legitimacy with both the media and the Democratic Party constituents themselves to come out and publicly campaign to re-seize the Party from the Wall Street interests that have come to dominate it. We need someone who understands the finance stuff (which automatically reduces the pool of possible applicants to a small handful), will know the difference between real regulatory reform and a dog-and-pony show, and will not be likely to fill a cabinet with bankers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

The question I have lately is, why not draft Elizabeth Warren to run for president? And I don't mean in 2016, I mean in 2012.

Oh NOES! The Grinch Stole Christmas and Wall Street won't like it. Unless Obama can execute a quick U-turn he could be a one term president. Worse, he could do for the Democratic Party what Tony Blair did for Labor. Better that the progressive wing of the party try to salvage a future than to stay on board the Titanic.

Current policies will sink the future of the USA, as they are tying that future to the large Wall Street financial institutions, which will either drag all down with it when the current levitation fails or will suck all moisture and nourishment out of the corpse if they remain afloat. Elizabeth Warren has a calming and reassuring presence, but has shown dogged determination and courage in speaking truth to power.

I have seen her suggested as a candidate for the Senate from Massachusetts in the extraordinary election in early 2010.  The Senate would be an excellent post in which to burnish her credentials and shift gears from her current role to one more focused on mobilizing support for change. It would seem that there are even many feminists who would prefer Elizabeth to Hillary to be the first woman US President.  One certainly could not complain about baggage.    

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

AFP - Nearly 5,000 people have died from swine flu infections since the A(H1N1) virus was uncovered in April, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

The death toll marked an increase of about 265 over the 4,735 deaths reported to the WHO a week ago.

AFP - President Gloria Arroyo on Friday signed a law creating a national climate body that she said will help the storm-devastated Philippines better prepare for natural disasters in the future.

The "Climate Change Commission", which she herself will head, will draft an "action plan" to mitigate and prepare for the effects of climate change.

Weather is not climate, but if this Commission leads to action, I say who cares.


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Technicians at the Bochum University of Applied Sciences are revving their new BOcruiser solar-powered engines for the World Solar Challenge in Australia. The solar car racing event showcases cutting-edge technology.

Skyline Solar, a Silicon Valley start-up, has become the latest green energy company to tap the struggling auto industry's manufacturing muscle. The Mountain View, Calif., company said Thursday that components for its solar power plants were being made in a Troy, Mich., car factory operated by Cosma International, a division of auto manufacturing giant Magna International.

The same machines that stamp out doors, hoods and other car body parts are now making metal arrays that hold Skyline's photovoltaic panels. "It's literally just carving out a piece of an existing facility and putting through a product that for all intents and purposes could be a new make and model of the next family sedan," said Bob MacDonald, Skyline's chief executive. "Every time there's a new model year for a Ford Mustang, they have a tool and die set they put into this press. So you just have a different tool and die in there that forms a new shape for Skyline."

The bottom line, MacDonald said, is that Skyline has slashed its capital costs by taking advantage of Cosma's existing manufacturing capability. He said Skyline has contracts in place for small-scale solar farms. He said he could not divulge the details of those contracts but noted that Skyline had begun to receive shipments of arrays from Michigan.

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency will put controls on the emissions of hazardous pollutants such as mercury from coal-fired power plants for the first time by November 2011, according to an agreement announced Friday to settle a lawsuit against the agency.

Many other polluters were forced to reduce emissions of toxic material such as mercury, arsenic and lead after the Clean Air Act was strengthened in 1990. Power plants, however, the largest source of mercury pollution, aren't subject to nationwide rules.

The tougher rules will clean up more than just heavy metals because some kinds of pollution controls -- scrubbers, for example -- also remove other pollutants, such as soot.

Controlling mercury is significant because the pollutant enters the food chain and ends up in fish. Children, including those who were exposed to mercury before birth, are especially at risk of developmental and learning disabilities. Adults also can experience health problems from eating too much contaminated fish.

AFP - In a move to promote serious study of Japanese manga, a university in Tokyo plans to open a library with two million comic books, animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artifacts.

Tentatively named the Tokyo International Manga Library, it would open by early 2015 on the campus of the private Meiji University, and be available to researchers and fans from Japan and abroad.

About time.


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Poland and Central Europe have prospered since the fall of communism in 1989. Today, however, Europe is faced with a great test. A leading Polish journalist and ex-dissident argues that cynisism and the lure of authoritarianism are the new threats to a European freedom secured only two decades ago.

What are the reasons behind what happened 20 years ago? The most banal answer to this question is that communism proved economically ineffective. But there are still communist countries today, despite their systems' inefficiencies: Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and China. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied with a purely economic answer to this question.

The year 1989 was a year of miracles, an annus mirabilis. Yet the explanations for the fall of communism differ...

...Communism fell, paradoxically, because the Soviet elite believed it could be reformed...

Part 2: The Working Class Who Toppled Communism Were the First Victims of the Transformation

Adam Michnik was a leading dissident in communist Poland and is editor in chief of the Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

(As a general comment: though I think he has the usual CEE liberal ideological blinders on, in-between there are lots of astute observations in the piece --- some in separate comments below.)


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A play based on the short but stormy love affair between the Third Reich's infamous propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and a young Czech film star has been causing quite a stir locally. Goebbels-Baarová has sparked controversy ― partly because of its unforgiving treatment of actress Lída Baarová and its message aimed at today's Czechs...

The play focuses on the off-screen romance between Goebbels and the young and beautiful Baarová after she went to Berlin after being signed up by the famous German film studio UFA in 1935.

...Baarová had longer to reflect on their relationship which helped to taint her in the eyes of many Czechoslovaks as a collaborator. She died aged 86 in 2000 in Austria with that fateful romance of six decades earlier having haunted the rest of her life.

...The director says that Lída Baarová is symbolic of certain currents in Czechoslovak society in the 1930's that flirted with the Nazis. The short-lived Czech government between the Munich agreement and final invasion of the remnants of the Czech state in March 1939 took an overtly collaborationist line with Nazi Germany. Other choices about collaboration in different circumstances came later.

Austrian psychiatrist Heidi Kastner has spent her career preparing expert opinions on fathers who abuse their children, including Josef Fritzl. In a SPIEGEL interview, she discusses her new book and her experiences researching fathers who abuse their children in horrendous ways.

SPIEGEL: Ms. Kastner, you write about cruel and extreme acts of violence against children. Who would want to read this sort of material voluntarily?

Kastner: I don't know. I am confronted with these cases regularly. Perhaps I have lost, to some degree, my awareness of how this affects others. Someone who works as a garbage collector eventually gets used to the stench.

Is Moscow or St. Petersburg Russia's cultural capital? Neither one, apparently, now that Perm is seen as the hot new contender for the title. The city of a million people, near the Ural Mountains, previously known for its Soviet-era labor camps and weapons factories, is experiencing an astonishing transformation.

Two Northwest Airlines pilots failed to make radio contact with ground controllers for more than an hour and overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles before discovering the mistake and turning around.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the crew told authorities they became distracted during a heated discussion over airline policy and lost track of their location, but federal officials are investigating whether pilot fatigue might also have played a role.

Sarkozy's son elected to board of influential agency | France 24

The morning after Jean Sarkozy renounced his controversial bid to head an influential public agency that oversees Paris's business district, the 23-year-old son of French President Nicolas Sarkozy was instead elected to its board.

Jean Todt is to succeed the controversial Max Mosley as president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA).  

The 63-year-old former Ferrari boss won the FIA general assembly election in Paris with 135 votes against 49 for former world rally champion Ari Vatanen of Finland.

Todt succeeds Briton Max Mosley whose reputation was badly damaged after it became public last year that he had engaged in Nazi-themed sado-masochistic sex sessions with prostitutes.

Mosley had agreed not to stand for a fifth term as FIA boss as part of an agreement struck in July to end the threat of a breakaway series by Formula One teams.

"The US Embassy in Bern submitted the formal extradition request to the Federal Office of Justice on 22 October 2009, within the deadline of 40 days stipulated under the bilateral extradition treaty," the Swiss Federal Office of Justice said in a statement.

The request will now be forwarded to the canton of Zurich, where Polanski was detained upon his arrival on September 26 to collect an award at the city's film festival.

Asterix and his village of Gauls, who have already sold 325 million copies and been translated into 107 languages, will celebrate their 50th birthday with the launch of the 34th book in the series.

Courtesy of Ben Smith, Politico

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Bush also said that he regretted appearing in front of a "Mission Impossible" sign in 2003 during an address about the Iraq war. Of course, the sign actually said "Mission Accomplished." Maybe "Mission Impossible" would have been more appropriate.