Thursday 27 August 2009

Messina: unknown trying to burn the Vara

Santino Irrera
An attempt to fire the Vara has been perpetrated by unknown assailants in the early hours of the new day today, Thursday 27 August.
The famous 'votive Machina', pride of many messinesi but obviously detested by others, and, as noted, placed on display in Piazza Duomo, with the equally renowned icon of the legendary Mata and Grifone: somebody has attacked the first (la Vara) the bottles with flammable liquid and a roll of toilet paper that was supposed to have, in the intentions of the Vandals, the function of fuse and spread of flame.
The fire was fortunately averted by the arrival of several police cars.
(Photo: Serena Musumeci)

Tuesday 25 August 2009

The Daily Telegraph on Berlusconi: "Poor old nurse who will heal the debauched"

The British press insists on the events of Berlusconi
And the columnist ventured: "Treating an Italian sex is impossible"
The case also on Al Arabya
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From our CRISTINA Nadotti
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Silvio Berlusconi Veronica Lario
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London - There are very many articles on international press announced the release tomorrow of the new edition of "Trend Veronica Maria Latella's book that tells the last chapter of the marriage between Silvio Berlusconi and Veronica Lario. And all emphasize in particular the suggestion to the Knight to seek treatment in a clinic for sexual addiction.
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The article, however, resumed the subject in greater depth and controversial is that of Celia Walden, a commentator of the Daily Telegraph that takes its cue from the events of the Prime Minister to make an accusation at all heavy Italian men. "Poor nursing that Berlusconi will attend the clinic for sexual addiction - writes Walden - I can guess already, the old debauched, to invite the younger to sit in the lap of the Popes, or as she says to her therapist that would be wonderful if you untie your hair, deprive the glasses and wearing a bikini made of licorice. Yes, if the doctors will try to avoid a diagnosis of "hopeless case" may be in serious trouble. "
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"This, of course, if Berlusconi will decide to seek treatment - says the British journalist - but just takes a couple weeks to heal 60 years of womanizing? ". Walden goes on the particular case to the general thrust of the fact that, he says, when she was a student at Siena was caught pinching in the behind by a man while he was driving with his wife. "Remove the 'sexual addiction' to an Italian - supports - is like asking him to avoid the musical cadence when speaking. The symptoms - you have checked the description in medical dictionaries, says - fits the stereotypical national good title buckled Italians" . In practice, to Celia Walden and its clinical description, all Italians "have a profound and uncommon obsession with sex that makes them difficult to engage or maintain healthy personal relationships."
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It is more tender the French Le Figaro, which speaks of 'steel' Berlusconi in a whole page. Note however that the conservative newspaper with the latest scandals "his myth has been broken" and that on the eve of his 73 years had to "renounce the parties" to the "jokes fuoriluogo" for "trying to rebuild their reputation." On relations with the Church in Le Figaro noted: "It is his biggest concern at this time.
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A long article in the Arab website Al Arabya emphasizes the concern about the attitude of Italians "accustomed to scandal." The Arab media remember, as we did in recent days by other newspaper that Berlusconi already served as a pimp for Bettino Craxi and were introduced in its television broadcasts in Italy where the role of women is commodified. After making a list of trials against Berlusconi, and connections of the international press, Al Arabiya Knight likens to a novel Nero and explains his rise in the weakness of the opposition.
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Great publicity release of "Trend Veronica" in the German press, the "Frankfurter Rundschau, which states that the clamor for the story of Berlusconi was a bit 'waned, but now the book will open a new chapter interesting for the international press, and on Tagespiegel, stressing that Veronica Lario was tired of lies.
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Even the Irish Independent Irish speaking of the book emphasizes the "web of lies" that led Veronica Lario in divorce. The newspaper is surprised that "despite the explosive content of the tapes recorded by Patrizia D'Addario" "Italians remain so loyal to their controversial premier."
In Spain El Periódico Mediterráneo headline "Berlusconi sex addict according to his ex and El Periodico de Catalunya reported that Veronica Lario has revealed" the dirt "that surrounds her husband, especially to girls who go around" willing to throw the mouth of the dragon ". Even the Australian newspaper The Advertiser in Adelaide about a "Berlusconi sex addict."
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August 25, 2009
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Crisis: Trichet warns "there are difficult times ahead"

Trichet: We expect difficult times we are not yet to normal
Jean-Claude Trichet President European Central Bank's holding back the enthusiasm and warns: "There are difficult times ahead, no one imagined that the markets are back to normal, it would be a disaster if governments and banks do not learn the lesson of the crisis."
Trichet meets the most optimistic statements made by Ben Bernanke, Fed chairman during the annual summit on the state of the economy in Jackson Hole resort in Wyoming, where they gathered for their central bankers (for the Bank of Italy Mario Draghi).
Home sales in July in the United States increased by 7.3%, but also seizure in the second quarter of 2009 grew by 13%.
The consumer sales in July were weak and disappointing and there was a rebound in the number of new unemployed.
Banks continue to fail in small to medium - to the point that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was responsible for saving them nearly exhausted state funds available to him.
Bernanke also spoke in the same summit did not hide the negative elements that remain.

Sunday 23 August 2009

Hamid Dabashis cloud cuckoo home

The one described Professor Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University, NY) in his commentary the torture and rape reports from Iranian prisons are true, but he characterized Karroubi as credible and sincere testimony of the Islamic revolution, although he himself recently had his statements relativized.
Below shows Dabashi although, to judge that a change from the "Islamic" to the "Iranian" Republic will be completed, however, speaks in the same breath that it will consequently also no Jewish state could give.
They simply ignored it, that the Jewish state of Israel does not monolithic world is completed, but a very vital-plural. Here is Dabashi at the same anti-Zionist (and anti-Semitic in the core) by thinking like Karroubi. A pity, because his analysis fits in large parts.
Commentary: Iran confront rape, torture allegations
(CNN) - troubling news of kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder is flooding out of Iran.
Neda AQA Soltan was murdered point-blank in the streets of Tehran for the whole world to see, while Sohrab Arabi was killed far from any global attention and his body given to his mother quietly to bury, as was the body of Tortured Mohsen Ruholamini.
These names have assumed symbolic significance for many more innocent young men and women murdered by the custodians of the Islamic Republic with a Wanton disregard for the lives and liberties of its own citizens.
Not just murder, but the rape of young men and women so shameless is on the roster of the Islamic Republic. After years of Sporadic charges and troubling rumors, finally a Courageous cleric has put a stamp of public recognition on atrocious practices in the theocratic state.
Mehdi Karrubi - one of the revolutionary founders of the Islamic Republic, a high-ranking cleric, a presidential candidate, a former speaker of the house and now a widely popular political activist - has published a letter, addressing it to the former president and current head of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He accuse the security officers of the Islamic Republic of violently and repeatedly raping young women and men while they are in custody.
Since the publication of this letter, a massive outpouring of testimony and reports has come out, corroborating Karrubi's charges that Rapes of young women and men are a widespread, common practice in the Islamic Republic.
These are not light charges for any state, for any republic, let alone for an Islamic Republic.
These charges are no longer brought by expatriate, and at times discredited, opposition. It is the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, with impeccable revolutionary credentials, who are bringing these charges, as others are coming out and corroborating them in excruciating detail.
The Islamic Republic has never faced such a deep crisis of Legitimacy in its turbulent 30-year history.
As widely evident, it is not just the regime's claim to a "republic" that is in question and in jeopardy, but, perhaps far more seriously, it is its claim to Islam that has troubling consequences for more than 1.3 billion Muslims around the world .
People in the streets of Tehran are chanting, paraphrasing a famous slogan of the 1979 revolution, "Independence, Freedom, Iranian Republic," pointedly replacing "Iranian" for "Islamic."
Though this a perfectly legitimate demand, given the criminal record of the Islamic Republic, by no means is this feeling that a common denominator of the growing opposition to the regime.
To the degree that, at least in part, he represents this Uprising, Mir Hossein Moussavi, as a pious and practicing Muslim who continues to insist that he wishes to restore the ideals and aspirations of the Islamic revolution within the constitution of the state.
Never have the two opposing ideas of an "Islamic Republic," and Muslims living in a democratic republic seemed so at odds with each other. The 30-year experience of the Islamic Republic shows fundamental flaws in defining a state apparatus in the exclusive terms of a militantly legalistic Islam, while at the same time Iranian, the overwhelming majority of them Shiite Muslims, have repeatedly demonstrated, under this regime, they are perfectly capable of democratic behavior.
Not just as immigrants in the EU nations and the U.S., but as citizens in Iran, millions of Muslims have shown they are integral to the democratic institutions embedded in the notion of a nation-state.
What is in question is the viability of an Islamic republic - or for that matter, a Jewish state, a Christian empire, a Hindu fundamentalist government - or any state or movement that is not defined by the apparatus of democratic citizenry, but by exclusionary membership in a world religion.
As in the rest of the Muslim world, Islam is integral to Iranian society. But not exclusively so. Over the last 30 years, a radically legalistic interpretation of a cosmopolitan faith has been force-fed into a multifaceted political culture - and today all the world can see the violent convulsion of the system
There has been much talk of the need for an Islamic "Reformation" over the last few years. But what Islam needs is not a Christian-style reformation.
What Islam needs is a restoration of its historically cosmopolitan character in which Muslims and non-Muslims live in peace and prosperity, and which they now need to retrieve in order to live in peace and prosperity in a world that is not entirely Muslim.
By virtue of living in a democracy, and having endured indignities of rampant Islamophobia in their own country, American Muslims have a historic role to play, by way of sending a delegation to Iran, connecting to this grass roots democratic movement in a Muslim nation, and helping it restore its cosmopolitan character in pursuit of Enduring democratic institutions.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Hamid Dabashi.
Hamid Dabashi is the author of "Iran: A People Interrupted." He is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Afghanistan: Blood and threats vote

Taliban attack in Kabul in two days by presidential elections. Two rockets were fired against the presidential palace without causing victims, as reported to the police. The attack started from Bagram, on the south side of the Afghan capital. "Both rockets hit areas near the presidential palace but fortunately caused no victims." It is the second attack in Kabul, after the last Saturday in front of the headquarters of NATO, where the attacks are rare given the military presence of thousands of Afghans and international forces.
ELECTIONS
The Election Commission flaunts optimism: only 442 seats in 7000 will remain closed after tomorrow, when the Afghan citizens are called to choose the new head of state and 34 provincial councils. For Zekria Barakzai, deputy director of the committee, is a major achievement, given that until a few days ago it was feared that the conditions of widespread insecurity in the country become inaccessible and unusable, a number much higher, around 700. Yet if you look at the recent past, there is little to be cheerful. In 2004 when we held the previous president in the seats that were not able to open only 100.
Feroci Rappresaglia
Most election offices that do not come into operation is concentrated in the southern province of Helmand, the heart of the revolt integrist. To discourage citizens from participating in an "American initiative," and not be complicit in a plan "anti-patriotic and anti-Islamic, the Taliban have repeatedly threatened to attack both the seats and the roads to get there. In recent days the language of intimidation became increasingly grim. The latest propaganda leaflets circulated the other night in some areas of the South, promised fierce reprisals against those who go to vote. "Cut nose and ears," say the rebels, and also 'the ink-stained fingers. " A clear reference to the stamp that is stamped on the thumb in the electorate to prevent the recurrence of the same person to vote a second time.
ACROBAZIE POLICIES
Many polling stations closed, the climate of fear in the south Afghanisan where diavampano many weeks bloody clashes between Taliban and Afghan and international troops. It is inevitable that the risk of abstention here is particularly high. A problem more for Hamid Karzai, the outgoing head of state, as are areas populated predominantly by people dell'etnia Pashtun, one of which has the largest potential number of supporters. For this reason in recent days Karzai has resumed a series of alliances with people whose democratic faith is often uncertain, however, able to assure him of support consisting of slices of the population. First obtained the support of Ismail Khan, the powerful former warlord who enjoys wide following in Herat. In extremis then drew exile Rashid Dostum, leader of the minority Uzbek undisputed that in 2004 when it introduced the candidate, got 10%.
THE POLLS
In exchange for the return, Dostum has urged her to vote for Karzai. Considering that the polls give him 45% of votes, the support of the Uzbek leader is valuable in order to overcome the quorum of 50% and avoid the ballot. Dostum is a very unpleasant picture of the rooms UN and NATO for the crimes that have been spotted before and after the fall of the theocratic regime. But Karzai seems disposed to any acrobatics policy not face in the second round the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, steadily in the polls. The latter is attributed 25% of the votes. Its popularity is largely overcoming the boundaries dell'etnia Tajik where it belongs.
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17 August 2009
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Monday 17 August 2009

The reeleción: Delivering the Congress Parez Perez again

For the Central Editorial
SANTO DOMINGO. The Senate elected this Sunday and swore his management firm, to fall again in the chair Dr. Reinaldo Pared Perez and vice president Cristina Lizardo Mezquita and senators Dionis Sanchez and Ruben Cruz would Carrasco, secretaries for the period 2009-2010
It also left the Senate started the second regular term of the year, in compliance with the provisions of Articles 33 and 34 of the Constitution.
The healer in Puerto Plata, Francis Vargas, was introduced as a spokesman for the bloc of senators from the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), Roberto Rodriguez, the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), and Felix Vasquez, the Social Christian Reformist Party ( PRSC).
As a deputy spokesman for the PLD, Senator John Holland Mercedes Sena, by the PRD, César Díaz Filpo and Pedro Alegria, secretary.
Pared Perez completed the four years as chairman of the Senate, being the second in the past 30 years presiding over the Senate for four consecutive years.
Article 33 of the Constitution stipulates that the chambers will meet regularly on February 27 and August 16 and each term lasts 90 days, which may be extended up to 60 days more.
Article 34 provides that on August 16 of each year the Senate and House of Representatives shall choose their respective law firms managers.
The installation session was chaired by Senator Noel Vasquez Sterlin, older, and Leonel Alejandro Cordero and Luis Rene Willims Canaan, the youngest, as secretaries.
Verified the quorum, the President directed the firm's tentative vote on the plate and then filed a sworn those selected.
Senator Francisco Domínguez Brito was the only one who missed the session on medical leave.
After installation of the management firms, Wall Perez appointed a commission composed of the vice president Cristina Lizardo, spokesmen for the banks, Francis Vargas, Roberto Rodriguez and Felix Vasquez, as well as Senator Amarilis Santana, to deposit a wreath at the Pantheon Nacional, where lie the remains of the heroes of the Restoration of the Republic, which now meets its 146th anniversary.
Senate President Pared Perez convened on Thursday at 10:00 am and convened a meeting for Monday to the Coordinating Committee of the Assembly Editor, at 4:00 pm.
Also invited the Chairman of the Committee on Verification and Control of the House Frank Martinez and Lidio Cadet to perform as will a report on the work of the Assembly.
To say a few words, Pared Perez said that during his three years at the helm of the Presidency of the Senate has been characterized by respect for the political spaces of the senators and said that it expected to continue operating during the latter period.
He also said that he had no complaints from senators and highlighted the atmosphere of camaraderie that has prevailed in the Senate.
He thanked the senators for the legislative work that has been played, whose work is in the sight of all the Dominican people.
He also noted that because nearly all of the registration of senators hopes to be reelected, wished them luck and to achieve their political goals.
The senator from San Juan de la Maguana, Ramon de la Rosa, refused to be waived as was rumored last week.
The legislator described as a lack of respect to have a rumor circulating that he would resign his seat. He stressed that not delegate its functions to which he was elected and there is no reason to resign.

Sunday 16 August 2009

Queens

A small tribute to two timeless myths, in the heart of all the movie lovers.
More than 100 years ago was born Greta Garbo.
"The Garbo is a prominent white spectrum, remote and immortal as a statue of Pallas Athena. It is expected that most will not die" says the biography dedicatale application by Richard Corliss in 1974.
Since its first appearance "Variety" said. "This girl has everything, beauty talented personality."
Soon the name Garbo echoes in the songs, writers, painters inspired poets, the style "garbesco" deeply renews the look feminine, is synonymous with beauty charm elusiveness. All in dell'iperbole sign, which is a sign of Hollywood, in whose golden age was the undisputed Divine.
In all the films (from best to worst), his acting is intense, a surprisingly modern, almost inspired.
The essence of Garbo (magnetic solitary inaccessible) is there on the screen, an image film par excellence, that history recognizes as perhaps the first real singer of that which is the new cinema.
More than 90 years ago was born Ingrid Bergman. Among the best actresses of all time.
It is a legend of cinema, but has never been a vamp (although in the history of celluloid for the longest kiss in screen "Notorius" film shot in 1946 by the magician who was Alfred Hitchcock).
E 'stata una donna sentimentally restless, unconventional for the times they ran. A star always ready to accept challenges, to break schedules and clichés. Despite being beautiful, it had something more: a talent out of the ordinary and the desire to get involved beyond the various clichés.
The Hollywood star system would make it a symbol of a sound morality, a woman without problems, most loving mother. But Ingrid rebelled both professionally - in 1941 interpreted the character of the prostitute in "Dr Jekill and Mr. Hide" - which in private life, when in 1949 fell in love with Roberto Rossellini and left him for her husband Petter Lindstrom and daughter Pia (America and the Hollywood decreed ostracism for 7 years did not work in U.S. productions).