Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Schede e bombe

Anche l'ipercritico NYT saluta il successo del referendum costituzionale 
in Irak.
-------------------
Quello che già sappiamo, e da cui non si può mancare di essere
impressionati, è che un gran numero di Iracheni delle più varie idee 
hanno deciso il loro futuro costituzionale, sfidando le minacce 
terroriste. Hanno esercitato un basilare diritto democratico che sarebbe 
stato inconcepibile solo pochi anni fa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/opinion/17mon1.html
What we know already, and can't fail to be impressed by, is that large
numbers of Iraqis of all persuasions turned out, in defiance of
terrorist threats, to decide their constitutional future. They have
exercised a basic democratic right that would have been inconceivable
just a few years ago.
------------------
Aggiungiamo che l'affluenza è stata ottima, compreso il triangolo 
sunnita, che tutto si è svolto senza incidenti, e direi che ci si può 
unire alle lodi che sentivo stamattina, riportate dal Wall Street 
Journal, per una classe politica irakena che ha dimostrato di valere di 
più di quanto si credesse, sia tra sostenitori che detrattori della guerra.
La situazione è meno rosea di quanto un neocon entusiasta potesse 
sperare agli inizi. Ma anche meno fosca di quanto si ami dipingerla da 
queste (e altre) parti. Auguri all'Irak e buon lavoro a chi lotta con le 
schede e non con le bombe.
Tb
-- 
TBLOG
http://www.tonibaruch.blogspot.com/

 stato inconcepibile solo pochi anni fa.
Come no.  Era concepibilissimo.
Pochi anni fa gli Irakeni hanno votato al 100% per Saddam
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2331951.stm
oggi votano al 99% per la costituzione
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/international/middleeast/17cnd-ballot.html?ei=5094&en=6b936c6ff54e6da8&hp=&ex=1129608000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
GT

 Auguri all'Irak e buon lavoro a chi lotta con le schede e non con le bombe.
Ottimo argomento psyops, anche se in un paese occupato e' logico che ci 
sia chi lotta con le bombe...
Am.

Project Censored e' un progetto accademico (iniziato da Robert Jensen,
professore di giornalismo all'universita' del Texas di Austin) che
raccoglie storie
"auto-censurate" dalla cosiddetta stampa libera.
Il catalogo delle storie piu' censurate di quest'anno e ora disponibile
a
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/
In America:
1. Bush administration moves to eliminate open government
While the Bush administration has expanded its ability to keep tabs on
civilians, it's been working to make sure the public - and even
Congress - can't find out what the government is doing.
One year ago, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) released an 81-page
analysis of how the administration has administered the country's major
open government laws. His report found that the feds consistently
"narrowed the scope and application" of the Freedom of Information Act,
the Presidential Records Act, and other key public information
legislation, while expanding laws blocking access to certain records
- even creating new categories of "protected" information and
exempting entire departments from public scrutiny.
When those methods haven't been enough, the Bush administration has
simply refused to release records - even when the requester was a
Congressional subcommittee or the Government Accountability Office, the
study found. A few of the potentially incriminating documents Bush and
Co. have refused to hand over to their colleagues on Capitol Hill
include records of contacts between large energy companies and Vice
President Dick Cheney's energy task force; White House memos pertaining
to Saddam Hussein's, shall we say, "elusive" weapons of mass
destruction; and reports describing torture at Abu Ghraib.
The report's findings were so dramatic as to indicate "an unprecedented
assault on the laws that make our government open and accountable,"
Waxman said at a Sept. 14, 2004, press conference announcing the
report's release.
Given the news media's intrinsic interest in safeguarding open
government laws, one would think it would be plenty motivated to
publicize such findings far and wide. However, most Americans remain
oblivious to just how much more secretive - and autocratic - our
leaders in the White House have become.
Source: "New Report Details Bush Administration Secrecy" press release,
Karen Lightfoot, Government Reform Minority Office, posted on
www.commondreams.org
, Sept. 14, 2004.
2. Media coverage fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the civilian death toll
Decades from now, the civilized world may well look back on the
assaults on Fallujah in April and November 2004 and point to them as
examples of the United States' and Britain's utter disregard for the
most basic wartime rules of engagement.
Not long after the "coalition" had embarked on its second offensive, UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called for an
investigation into whether the Americans and their allies had engaged
in "the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and
disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons, and the use
of human shields," among other possible "grave breaches of the Geneva
Conventions ... considered war crimes" under federal law.
More than 83 percent of Fallujah's 300,000 residents fled the city,
Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell, staffers with the American Friends
Service Committee, reported in AFSC's Peacework magazine. Men between
the ages of 15 and 45 were refused safe passage, and all who remained
- about 50,000 - were treated as enemy combatants, according to the
article.
Numerous sources reported that coalition forces cut off water and
electricity, seized the main hospital, shot at anyone who ventured out
into the open, executed families waving white flags while trying to
swim across the Euphrates or otherwise flee the city, shot at
ambulances, raided homes and killed people who didn't understand
English, rolled over injured people with tanks, and allowed corpses to
rot in the streets and be eaten by dogs.
Medical staff and others reported seeing people, dead and alive, with
melted faces and limbs, injuries consistent with the use of phosphorous
bombs.
But you wouldn't know any of this unless you'd come across a rare
report by one of an even rarer number of independent journalists - or
known which obscure Web site to log onto for real information.
Of course, the media blackout extends far beyond Fallujah.
The US military's refusal to keep an Iraqi death count has been
mirrored by the mainstream media, which systematically dodges the
question of how many Iraqi civilians have been killed.
Les Roberts, an investigator with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health, conducted a rigorous inquiry into pre- and post-invasion
mortality in Iraq, sneaking into Iraq by lying flat on the bed of an
SUV and training observers on the scene. The results were published in
the Lancet, a prestigious peer-reviewed British medical journal, on
Oct. 29, 2004 - just four days prior to the US presidential
elections. Roberts and his team (including researchers from Columbia
University and from Al-Mustansiriya University, in Baghdad) concluded
that "the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of
Iraq is probably about 100,000 people, and may be much higher."
The vast majority of those deaths resulted from violence -
particularly aerial bombardments - and more than half of the
fatalities were women or children, they found.
The State Department had relied heavily on studies by Roberts in the
past. And when Roberts, using similar techniques, calculated in 2000
that about 1.7 million had died in the Congo as the result of almost
two years of armed conflict, the news media picked up the story, the
United Nations more than doubled its request for aid to the Congo, and
the United States pledged an additional $10 million.
This time, silence - interrupted only by the occasional critique
dismissing Roberts's report. The major television news shows, Project
Censored found, never mentioned it.
Sources: "The Invasion of Fallujah: A Study in the Subversion of
Truth," Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell, Peacework, Dec. 2004-Jan.
2005; "US Media Applauds Destruction of Fallujah," David Walsh,
www.wsws.org
 (World Socialist Web site), Nov. 17, 2004; "Fallujah
Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone," Dahr Jamail, New
Standard, Dec. 3, 2004; "Mortality before and after the 2003 Invasion
of Iraq," Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi,
and Gilbert Burnham, Lancet, Oct. 29, 2004; "The War in Iraq: Civilian
Casualties, Political Responsibilities," Richard Horton, Lancet, Oct.
29, 2004; "Lost Count," Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education,
Feb. 4, 2005; "CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?" Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting, April 15, 2004, and Asheville Global Report,
April 22-28, 2004.
3. Another year of distorted election coverage
Last year Project Censored foretold the potential for electoral
wrongdoing in the 2004 presidential campaign: The "sale of electoral
politics" made number six in the list of 2003-04's most underreported
stories. The mainstream media had largely ignored the evidence that
electronic voting machines were susceptible to tampering, as well as
political alliances between the machines' manufacturers and the
Republican Party.
Then came Nov. 2, 2004.
Bush prevailed by 3 million votes - despite exit polls that clearly
projected Kerry winning by a margin of 5 million.
"Exit polls are highly accurate," Steve Freeman, professor at the
University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics, and
Temple University statistician Josh Mitteldorf wrote in In These Times.
"They remove most of the sources of potential polling error by
identifying actual voters and asking them immediately afterward who
they had voted for."
The eight-million-vote discrepancy was well beyond the poll's
recognized, less-than-1-percent margin of error. And when Freeman and
Mitteldorf analyzed the data collected by the two companies that
conducted the polls, they found concrete evidence of potential fraud in
the official count.
"Only in precincts that used old-fashioned, hand-counted paper ballots
did the official count and the exit polls fall within the normal
sampling margin of error," they wrote. And "the discrepancy between the
exit polls and the official count was considerably greater in the
critical swing states."
Inconsistencies were so much more marked in African American
communities as to renew calls for racial equity in our voting system.
"It is now time to make counting that vote a right, not just casting
it, before Jim Crow rides again in the next election," wrote Rev. Jesse
Jackson and Greg Palast in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Sources: "A Corrupt Election," Steve Freeman and Josh Mitteldorf, In
These Times, Feb. 15, 2005; "Jim Crow Returns to the Voting Booth,"
Greg Palast and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan.
26, 2005; "How a Republican Election Supervisor Manipulated the 2004
Central Ohio Vote," Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman,
www.freepress.org
, Nov. 23, 2004.
4. Surveillance society quietly moves in
It's a well-known dirty trick in the halls of government: If you want
to pass unpopular legislation that you know won't stand up to scrutiny,
just wait until the public isn't looking. That's precisely what the
Bush administration did Dec. 13, 2003, the day American troops captured
Saddam Hussein.
Bush celebrated the occasion by privately signing into law the
Intelligence Authorization Act - a controversial expansion of the
PATRIOT Act that included items culled from the "Domestic Security
Enhancement Act of 2003," a draft proposal that had been shelved due to
public outcry after being leaked.
Specifically, the IAA allows the government to obtain an individual's
financial records without a court order. The law also makes it illegal
for institutions to inform anyone that the government has requested
those records, or that information has been shared with the
authorities.
"The law also broadens the definition of 'financial institution' to
include insurance companies, travel and real-estate agencies,
stockbrokers, the US Postal Service, jewelry stores, casinos, airlines,
car dealerships, and any other business 'whose cash transactions have a
high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters' "
warned Nikki Swartz in the Information Management Journal. According to
Swartz, the definition is now so broad that it could plausibly be used
to access even school transcripts or medical records.
"In one fell swoop, this act has decimated our rights to privacy, due
process, and freedom of speech," Anna Samson Miranda wrote in an
article for LiP magazine titled "Grave New World" that documented the
ways in which the government already employs high-tech, private
industry, and everyday citizens as part of a vast web of surveillance.
Miranda warned, "If we are too busy, distracted, or apathetic to fight
government and corporate surveillance and data collection, we will find
ourselves unable to go anywhere - whether down the street for a cup
of coffee or across the country for a protest - without being
watched."
Sources: "PATRIOT Act's Reach Expanded Despite Part Being Struck Down,"
Nikki Swartz, Information Management Journal, March/April 2004; "Grave
New World," Anna Samson Miranda, LiP, Winter 2004; "Where Big Brother
Snoops on Americans 24/7," Teresa Hampton and Doug Thompson,
www.capitolhillblue.com
, June 7, 2004.
5. US uses tsunami to military advantage in Southeast Asia
The American people reacted to the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean
last December with an outpouring of compassion and private donations.
Across the nation, neighbors got together to collect food, clothing,
medicine, and financial contributions. Schoolchildren completed class
projects to help the cause.
Unfortunately, the US government didn't reflect the same level of
altruism.
President Bush initially offered an embarrassingly low $15 million in
aid. More important, Project Censored found that the US government
exploited the catastrophe to its own strategic advantage.
Establishing a stronger military presence in the area could help the
United States keep closer tabs on China - which, thanks to its
burgeoning economic and military muscle, has emerged as one of this
country's greatest potential rivals.
It could also fortify an important military launching ground and help
consolidate control over potentially lucrative trade routes. The United
States currently operates a base out of Diego Garcia - a former
British mandate in the Chagos Archipelago (about halfway between Africa
and Indonesia), but the lease runs out in 2016. The isle is also
"remote and Washington is desperate for an alternative," veteran Indian
journalist Rahul Bedi wrote.
"Consequently, in the name of relief, the US revived the Utapao
military base in Thailand it had used during the Vietnam War [and]
reactivated its military cooperation agreements with Thailand and the
Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines," Bedi reported.
Last February the State Department mended broken ties with the
notoriously vicious and corrupt Indonesian military - although human
rights observers charged the military with withholding "food and other
relief from civilians suspected of supporting the secessionist
insurgency, the Free Aceh Movement," Jim Lobe reported for the Inter
Press Service.
Sources: "US Turns Tsunami into Military Strategy," Jane's Foreign
Report, Feb. 15, 2005; "US Has Used Tsunami to Boost Aims in Stricken
Area," Rahul Bedi, Irish Times, Feb. 8, 2005; "Bush Uses Tsunami Aid to
Regain Foothold in Indonesia," Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, Jan. 18,
2005.
6. The real oil-for-food scam
Last year, right-wingers in Congress began kicking up a fuss about how
the United Nations had allegedly allowed Saddam Hussein to rake in $10
billion in illegal cash through the Oil for Food program. Headlines
screamed scandal. New York Times columnist William Safire referred to
the alleged UN con game as "the richest rip-off in world history."
But those who knew how the program had been set up and run - and
under whose watch - were not swayed.
The initial accusations were based on a General Accounting Office
report released in April 2004 and were later bolstered by a more
detailed report commissioned by the CIA.
According to the GAO, Hussein smuggled $6 billion worth of oil out of
Iraq - most of it through the Persian Gulf. Yet the UN fleet charged
with intercepting any such smugglers was under direct command of
American officers, and consisted overwhelmingly of US Navy ships. In
2001, for example, 90 of its vessels belonged to the United States,
while Britain contributed only 4, Joy Gordon wrote in a December 2004
article for Harper's magazine.
Most of the oil that left Iraq by land did so through Jordan and Turkey
- with the approval of the United States. The first Bush
administration informally exempted Jordan from the ban on purchasing
Iraqi oil - an arrangement that provided Hussein with $4.4 billion
over 10 years, according to the CIA's own findings. The United States
later allowed Iraq to leak another $710 million worth of oil through
Turkey - "all while US planes enforcing no-fly zones flew overhead,"
Gordon wrote.
Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the first six years
of economic sanctions against the country, unearthed yet another scam:
The United States allegedly allowed an oil company run by Russian
foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov's sister to purchase cheap oil from
Iraq and resell it to US companies at market value - purportedly
earning Hussein "hundreds of millions" more.
"It has been estimated that 80 percent of the oil illegally smuggled
out of Iraq under 'oil for food' ended up in the United States," Ritter
wrote in the UK Independent.
Sources: "The UN Is Us: Exposing Saddam Hussein's Silent Partner," Joy
Gordon, Harper's, December 2004; "The Oil for Food 'Scandal' Is a
Cynical Smokescreen," Scott Ritter, UK Independent, Dec. 12, 2004.
7. Journalists face unprecedented dangers to life and livelihood
Last year was the deadliest year for reporters since the International
Federation of Journalists began keeping tabs in 1984. A total of 129
media workers lost their lives, and 49 of them - more than a third
- were killed in Iraq.
In short, nonembedded journalists have now become familiar victims of
US military actions abroad.
"As far as anyone has yet proved, no commanding officer ever ordered a
subordinate to fire on journalists as such," Weissman wrote in an
update for Censored 2006. But what can be shown is a pattern of tacit
complicity, side by side with a heavy-handed campaign to curb
journalists' right to roam freely.
The Pentagon has refused to implement basic safeguards to protect
journalists who aren't embedded with coalition forces, despite repeated
requests by Reuters and media advocacy organizations.
The US military exonerated the army of any wrongdoing in its
now-infamous attack on the Palestine Hotel - which, as the Pentagon
knew, functioned as headquarters for about 100 media workers - when
coalition forces rolled into Baghdad on April 8, 2003.
To date, US authorities have not disciplined a single officer or
soldier involved in the killing of a journalist, according to Project
Censored.
Meanwhile, the interim government the United States installed in Iraq
raided and closed down Al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices almost as soon as
it took power and banned the network from doing any reporting in the
country. In November the interim government ordered news organizations
to "stick to the government line on the US-led offensive in Fallujah or
face legal action," in an official command sent out on interim prime
minister Eyad Allawi's letterhead and quoted in a November report by
independent reporter Dahr Jamail.
And both American and interim government forces detained numerous
journalists in and around Fallujah that month, holding them for days.
Sources: "Dead Messengers: How the US Military Threatens Journalists,"
Steve Weissman, 
www.truthout.org
, Feb. 28, 2005; "Media Repression in
'Liberated' Land," Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, Nov. 18, 2004.
8. Iraqi farmers threatened by Bremer's mandates
Historians believe it was in the "fertile crescent" of Mesopotamia,
where Iraq now lies, that humans first learned to farm. "It is here, in
around 8500 or 8000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat, here
that agriculture was born," Jeremy Smith wrote in the Ecologist. This
entire time, "Iraqi farmers have been naturally selecting wheat
varieties that work best with their climate ... and cross-pollinated
them with others with different strengths.
"The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice,
Iraqis don't know what wheat works best in their own conditions."
Smith was referring to Order 81, one of 100 directives penned by L.
Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, and left as a legacy by
the American government when it transferred operations to interim Iraqi
authorities. The regulation sets criteria for the patenting of seeds
that can only be met by multinational companies like Monsanto or
Syngenta, and it grants the patent holder exclusive rights over every
aspect of all plant products yielded by those seeds. Because of
naturally occurring cross-pollination, the new scheme effectively
launches a process whereby Iraqi farmers will soon have to purchase
their seeds rather than using seeds saved from their own crops or
bought at the local market.
Native varieties will be replaced by foreign - and genetically
engineered - seeds, and Iraqi agriculture will become more vulnerable
to disease as biological diversity is lost.
Texas A&M University, which brags that its agriculture program is a
"world leader" in the use of biotechnology, has already embarked on a
$107 million project to "reeducate" Iraqi farmers to grow
industrial-sized harvests, for export, using American seeds. And anyone
who's ever paid attention to how this has worked elsewhere in the
global South knows what comes next: Farmers will lose their lands, and
the country will lose its ability to feed itself, engendering poverty
and dependency.
On TomPaine.com, Greg Palast identified Order 81 as one of several
authored by Bremer that fit nicely into the outlines of a US "Economy
Plan," a 101-page blueprint for the economic makeover of Iraq,
formulated with ample help from corporate lobbyists. Palast reported
that someone inside the State Department leaked the plan to him a month
prior to the invasion.
Smith put it simply: "The people whose forefathers first mastered the
domestication of wheat will now have to pay for the privilege of
growing it for someone else. And with that the world's oldest farming
heritage will become just another subsidiary link in the vast American
supply chain."
Sources: "Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War Against Farmers,"
Focus on the Global South and Grain, Grain, October 2004; "Adventure
Capitalism," Greg Palast, 
www.tompaine.com
, Oct. 26, 2004; "US Seeking
to Totally Re-engineer Iraqi Traditional Farming System into a US Style
Corporate Agribusiness," Jeremy Smith, Ecologist, Feb. 4, 2005.
9. Iran's new oil trade system challenges US currency
The Bush administration has been paying a lot more attention to Iran
recently. Part of that interest is clearly Iran's nuclear program -
but there may be more to the story. One bit of news that hasn't
received the public vetting it merits is Iran's declared intent to open
an international oil exchange market, or "bourse."
Not only would the new entity compete against the New York Mercantile
Exchange and London's International Petroleum Exchange (both owned by
American corporations), but it would also ignite international oil
trading in euros.
"A shift away from US dollars to euros in the oil market would cause
the demand for petrodollars to drop, perhaps causing the value of the
dollar to plummet," Brian Miller and Celeste Vogler of Project Censored
wrote in Censored 2006.
"Russia, Venezuela, and some members of OPEC have expressed interest in
moving towards a petroeuro system," he said. And it isn't entirely
implausible that China, which is "the world's second largest holder of
US currency reserves," might eventually follow suit.
Although China, as a major exporter of goods to the United States, has
a vested interest in helping shore up the American economy and has even
linked its own currency, the yuan, to the dollar, it has also become
increasingly dependent on Iranian oil and gas.
"Barring a US attack, it appears imminent that Iran's euro-dominated
oil bourse will open in March, 2006," Miller and Vogler continued.
"Logically, the most appropriate US strategy is compromise with the EU
and OPEC towards a dual-currency system for international oil trades."
But you won't hear any discussion of that alternative on the six
o'clock news.
Source: "Iran Next US Target," William Clark, 
www.globalresearch.ca
,
Oct. 27, 2004.
10. Mountaintop removal threatens ecosystem and economy
On Aug. 15 environmental activists created a human blockade by locking
themselves to drilling equipment, obstructing the National Coal Corp.'s
access to a strip mine in the Appalachian mountains 40 miles north of
Knoxville. It was just the latest in a protracted campaign that
environmentalists say has national implications but that's been ignored
by the media outside the immediate area.
Under contention is a technique wherein entire mountaintops are removed
using explosives to access the coal underneath - a practice that is
nothing short of devastating for the local ecosystem, but which could
become much more widespread.
As it stands, 93 new coal plants are in the works nationwide, according
to Project Censored's findings. "Areas incredibly rich in biodiversity
are being turned into the biological equivalent of parking lots," wrote
John Conner of the Katúah branch of Earth First! - which has been
throwing all its energies into direct action campaigns to block the
project - in Censored 2006. "It is the final solution for
200-million-year-old mountains."
Source: "See You in the Mountains: Katúah Earth First! Confronts
Mountaintop Removal," John Conner, Earth First!, November-December,
2004.
-----------------------------------
E da noi:
http://www.smemoranda.it/_box_home/baselista2/artI4263.html
1.CRIMINALITA' ORGANIZZATA
"Bisogna convivere con mafia e camorra", si era rassegnato nel 2001 il
ministro delle infrastrutture Pietro Lunardi. Al di là delle
spettacolari quanto pericolose guerre dei clan napoletani, sempre più
spesso il peso della criminalità organizzata in diverse ragioni del
paese viene ignorato.
Eppure, secondo alcune stime, il fatturato delle mafie italiane
rappresenta oggi cento miliardi di euro annui, pari al 7,5% del PIL.
Secondo la direzione investigativa antimafia, citata dalla rivista
Limes, il capitale immobilizzato dalle mafie italiane è di circa mille
miliardi di euro. Ed è in grado di condizionare la politica, di
alterare le regole economiche e in certe zone di mettere in discussione
le libertà fondamentali dei cittadini.
2.PROCESSI
Durante la stagione di Mani pulite, ogni udienza giudiziaria era
seguita da tutti i mezzi d'informazione del paese.
Il processo di due dei più stretti collaboratori del premier, quello a
Palermo nei confronti di Marcello Dell'Utri e quello a Milano contro
l'ex ministro della difesa Cesare Previti, sono stati seguiti solo per
alcuni giorni al momento delle sentenze.
Fondatore di Forza Italia, Marcello Dell'Utri è stato condannato in
primo grado nel dicembre 2004 a nove anni di reclusione per "concorso
esterno in associazione mafiosa".
3.CONFLITTO D'INTERESSI
Passata la legge Frattini (che prevede unicamente incompatibilità
generale tra l'amministrazione di un'azienda e il fatto di
ricoprire una carica di governo, ma non tra la semplice proprietà di
un'azienda e l'incarico politico, ndr) il conflitto d'interessi è
stato a poco a poco dimenticato.[...]
4.PARMALAT
La vicenda di Parmalat, il più grande scandalo finanziario della
recente storia italiana, sembra quasi dimenticata. Eppure la famiglia
Tanzi arebbe provocato un buco di più di 14 miliari di euro, circa
l'1% del PIL, coinvolgendo migliaia di piccoli risparmiatori.
La vicenda non ha prodotto riforme strutturali e non ha più l'onore
della cronaca.
5.POVERTA'
In un'economia dove la crescita è fiacca, alcune zone del Mezzogiorno
affondano.
I giovani hanno ripreso a spostarsi verso il nord, l'abbandono
scolastico è due volte e mezzo più alto che nel resto d'Europa e la
mortalità infantile è quattro volte superiore a quella del nord.
Per il settimanale americano Newsweek, "se il sud fosse uno stato
indipendente sarebbe il più povero dell'Unione Europea".
6.INQUINAMENTO
Nel dicembre scorso, dopo anni di battaglie giudiziarie, cinque ex
dirigenti della Montedison sono stati condannati in appello pwer la
morte di un operaio colpito da tumore.
Quanti casi come questo rimangono aperti? A Gela, nelle vicinanze del
polo petrolchimico, un neonato su venti presenta malformazioni.
7.IMMIGRAZIONE
Mentre proseguono gli sbarchi di clandestini sulle coste italiane, i
centri di detenzione continuano a esser quasi invisibili per stampa e
tv.
8.INTOLLERANZA
Le dichiarazioni xenofobe dei leader della Lega nord non fanno quasi
più notizia. Come anche il saluto fascista del calciatore Paolo di
Canio, le dichiarazioni antisemite di un parlamentare di Forza Italia
sostenuto da un gruppo di settanta colleghi e gli omicidi di
omosessuali a Roma.
9.DOPING
All'inizio dell'anno a Torino il medico sociale della Juventus,
Riccardo Agricola, è stato condannato per frode sportiva e
somministrazione pericolosa di farmaci. A varie riprese, i giocatori
della più popolare squadra italiana si sarebbero dopati.
Intanto, secondo e stime Sandro Donati, 400mila persone in Italia fanno
ricorso a sostanze dopanti il cui traffico è sempre di più nelle mani
della criminalità organizzata.
10.CARCERI
Da otto anni nel carcere di Pisa, l'intellettuale condannato per
l'omicidio Calabresi è stato autorizzato nel giugno scorso a lavorare
come bibliotecario alla Normale di Pisa. Ma la grazia per l'ex leader
di Lotta Continua continua a essere bloccata dal ministro della
giustizia Catelli.
Per quanto riguarda l'amnistia, la legge promessa da più parti è
stata dimenticata. Le carceri sono sovraffollate e i casi di suicidio
si moltiplicano.

Ecco alcuni dettagli che l'"ipercritico" NY Times decide di non dare.
E che secondo me sono MOLTO piu' cruciali delle pippe sui sunniti
contro sciiti.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI01Ak01.html
The Iraqis - even those who were willing to cooperate with the United
States - wanted, at least on paper, to build a Scandinavian-type
welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to
be spent on upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care,
housing, and other social services. "Social justice is the basis of
building society," the draft declared. All of Iraq's natural
resources would be owned collectively by the Iraqi people. Everyone
would
have the right to work and the state would be legally bound to provide
employment opportunities to everyone. The state would be the Iraqi
people's collective instrument for achieving development.
...
As direct occupiers, the US enacted laws that give foreign investors
equal rights with Iraqis in the domestic market; permit the full
repatriation of profits; institute the flat tax system; abolish
tariffs; enforce a strict intellectual property rights regime; sell off
a whole-range of state-owned companies; reduce food and fuel subsidies;
and privatize all kinds of social services such as health, education
and water delivery.
By the time the next version was leaked in late July, the progressive
provisions in the draft constitution had disappeared.
...
Behind closed doors where real debates took place, according to the
Washington Post, Khalizad was described by Reuters as being a
"ubiquitous presence" and by the Financial Times as playing a
"big role in the negotiations".[8] One State Department official
called Khalilzad's actions "intensive diplomacy".[9] While media
spin on the process portrayed US officials as reluctant, impatient
intermediaries uninterested in the contents of the constitution ("just
as long as it gets it done on time"), at one point, Khalilzad's team
of American diplomats offered their own proposed text of the
constitution to the Iraqis.[10] Shuttling back and forth from constant
meetings with the Iraqi president, the speaker, and other high-ranking
officials, Khalilzad was backed up by US embassy officials who,
according to the Washington Post, were working from a Kurdish party
headquarters to "to help type up the draft and translate changes from
English to Arabic for Iraqi lawmakers".[11]
Complained Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the constitution
committee Kurdish member of the constitutional committee who was
involved in the caucuses: "The Americans say they don't intervene,
but they have intervened deep. They gave us a detailed proposal, almost
a full version of a constitution. They try to compromise the different
opinions of all the political blocs. The US officials are more
interested in the Iraqi constitution than the Iraqis themselves,
because they promised their people that it will be done August
15."[12] And the officials were not acting as neutral mediators;
according to Othman, US and UK officials were "being governed by
their domestic agenda". He also lamented how these officials were
meeting with Iraqis individually in backroom meetings, saying "It's
not right and is counterproductive. If they have something to say, why
don't they come and address the whole committee?"[13] Nechirvan
Barzani, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan regional government in
Arbil and one of the US's closest allies, confirmed Othman's charges.
"The US and the UK are working behind the scenes, dealing with all
the groups, saying it should be like this and like that," he
said.[14]
...
By the time it was served on the table on August 28, the final draft of
the Iraqi constitution must have tasted very different from previous
servings. Not only were some of the key ingredients of the previous
drafts removed outright, new ingredients with distinctly neoliberal
flavors were added.
Gone was the article proclaiming adherence to social justice as the
basis of the economy. In its place was a provision binding the state to
"reforming the Iraqi economy according to modern economic bases, in a
way that ensures complete investment of its resources, diversifying its
sources and encouraging and developing the private sector". By
"reforming" the framers of the constitution could only have meant
the usual stock of neoliberal economic "reforms" that have been
prescribed or imposed on dozens of developing countries around the
world. This includes privatizing state-owned enterprises, liberalizing
trade, deregulating the market, and opening it up to foreign investors.
Instead of revoking the so-called Bremer Laws, or the decrees enacted
by the occupation authority implementing these neoliberal policies, the
draft constitution would make Iraqis constitutionally bound to enforce
them. Another provision reiterates, "[t]he country shall guarantee
the encouragement of investments in different sectors".
Also gone was the provision affirming the Iraqi people's collective
ownership of Iraq 's oil and other natural resources and obliging the
state to protect and safeguard them. Instead, a new article lays the
legal ground for selling off Iraq 's oil and putting it under the
control of the big multinational oil companies. Article 110 goes so far
as to spell out that "the federal government and the governments of
the producing regions and provinces together will draw up the necessary
strategic policies to develop oil and gas wealth to bring the greatest
benefit for the Iraqi people, relying on the most modern techniques of
market principles and encouraging investment".
...
Contrary to the impression purveyed by the media, federalism is opposed
by a clear majority of Iraqis - by a majority of Sunnis and a majority
of Shi'ites alike. According to a July 2005 survey conducted by the
International Republican Institute, a US government-funded entity
tasked to build the machinery of pro-free market Iraqi political
parties, 69% of Iraqis from across the country want the constitution to
establish "a strong central government" and only 22% want it to
give "significant powers to regional governments". Even in
Shi'ite-majority areas in the south, only 25% want federalism while 66%
reject it.[23]
...
The constitution is also laying the ground for the eventual acquisition
of Iraqi assets, in the form of equity, real estate or other capital,
by foreigners or multinational corporations. While the June draft
states that "Iraqis have the complete and unconditional right of
ownership in all areas without limitation", the final draft drops the
words "unconditional" and "without limitation" and adds instead
the qualification "except what is exempted by law".
Given that Bremer's Order 39 already allows foreign ownership of
Iraqi assets and given that this order will be perpetuated as a law,
the constitution in effect removes the restriction giving Iraqis
exclusive ownership over assets in Iraq. While oil is not covered yet,
it may soon be, judging from Iraqi officials' pronouncements. The
so-called "national patrimony" provision, which reserves certain
sector's of a country's economy such as land or natural resources
for that country's citizens, is a common feature in the constitutions
of many developing countries. It has been struck off Iraq's. So while
the press continues to tell the story of Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds
squabbling over the spoils of oil; they are missing the contest between
Iraqis and non-Iraqis. The constitution may yet pave the way for
non-Iraqis to have as much right over Iraq's oil as Iraqis.
The June draft promises extensive welfare commitments to Iraqis,
including free education and free health care. The International
Monetary Fund, which has been insisting on eliminating government
subsidies to Iraqis, would have found in these principles serious legal
obstacles to their prescriptions. The July draft says welfare services
would still be given - but only if the government could afford them.
The final draft gives vague assurances that the services will be
delivered but this time, it adds new language on the private sector's
role in delivering them. These subtle changes are significant because
they hint at the coming wholesale privatization of social services in
Iraq, as is already being advocated by USAID-funded contractors working
to restructure Iraq's educational and health sectors.
One other thing worth mentioning is that Iraq's will probably be the
only constitution in the world that enshrines "fighting terrorism"
as one of the state's objectives. Given how "terrorism" in Iraqi
discourse has been used by pro-occupation Iraqis and US officials to
refer to the resistance movement, the clause could be invoked to
legally justify continuing military offensives against political forces
that refuse to come to terms with the occupation and the political
process it has bred. As has happened in other countries, the "war
against terror" could also conceivably be used to justify continuing
US military presence in Iraq.
----------------------
A 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI01Ak01.html
c'e una tabella che spiega come la bozza di costituzione si e' evoluta
col tempo.   Tutto fa pensare che senza le frodi, non sarebbe mai
passata.

 passata.
Tutto lo fa a pensare a Torrieri, che non riesce a fermare la sua 
rosicata permanente.
Rinnovo i miei auguri al popolo irakeno e il mio apprezzamento per la 
classe politica che ha saputo arrivare fin qui, sfidando gli assassini 
seriali apprezzati da queste parti.
Tb
-- 
TBLOG
http://www.tonibaruch.blogspot.com/
FALSO. E GLASSATO DI BLU:
http://tonibaruch.buzznet.com/user/?id=1653547
I CULOTASTIERATI:
http://tonibaruch.buzznet.com/user/?id=921717

 costituzione è stata votata da un grande numero di iracheni, e approvata.
Ma certo.  Dal 99% dei votanti.
Saddam era piu' popolare, pero'.  A lui lo approvarono tutti i 100%.
GT

 Saddam era piu' popolare, pero'.  A lui lo approvarono tutti i 100%.
Però non gli contestavano i dati né dalla commissione elettorale, né 
dall'asia Times, né da Montreal.
Peccato, vero?


 dall'asia Times, né da Montreal.
Nelle dittature e occupazioni militari, "elezioni" e "referendum" non
hanno nessun significato.    L'unico metro attendibile e non
falsificabile sono i soldati di regime uccisi dalla resistenza.
E secondo questo metro l'oppressione post-Saddam non ha nulla da
invidiare a quello che c'era prima.  E incidentalmente, molto ma MOLTO
peggiore a quello che i Sovietici fecero in Ungheria.
GT

 peggiore a quello che i Sovietici fecero in Ungheria.
Addirittura un inezia in confronto a quello che i nazisti hanno fatto 
gli ebrei, allora.
E al tuo cervello cosa hanno fatto? Quello sì che mi sembra messo peggio 
dell'Irak saddamita :-)


 consultazioni democratiche.
E infatti li' secondo la resistenza fece 0 morti fra le forze armate
liberatrici.   In quei posti la resistenza combatteva A FIANCO dei
libertatori.
Il che spiega qualche differenza fra Italia/Francia '44 e Vietnam/Iraq
dei decenni successivi.
GT

 liberatrici.  
Ok, allora avei detto una cazzata.
(č una cazzata anche quella dell'ultima riga, peraltro)


Ma certo.  Dal 99% dei votanti.
C.V.D. il Torrieri e' un povero coglione che non sa manco leggere i
testi inglesi che spesso cita :)
-Stefano

peggiore a quello che i Sovietici fecero in Ungheria.
Certo, certo Torrieri... :)
*pat pat*
-Stefano


Se li sterminano ancora un po, diventano pure europei con accento yankee.
Esemplare la democrazia imposta coi bombardamenti.
Un tempo lo chiamavano nazismo o colonialismo.
Lampante l'esempio italiano in Etiopia, eravamo campioni di democrazia
altroche' fascisti.
Saluti Cad Ali'
--------------------------------
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