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France is ashamed of its kids. The mayors of Orleans, Colombes, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Nice, Cannes and Antibes have had to impose curfews on children to defend their towns from infantile barbarity that is threatening tourism
North Korea pays its debts with slaves
North Korea is repaying its soviet-era debt, worth billions of pounds, to Russia by sending thousands of servants to work in eastern Siberia. In this way Pyongyang reduced $50.4 million debt to Moscow last year
Queuing outside Italian consulates in Argentina and Romania
After 3 years of recession, argentinans are starting to worry, if not paniking
Investment
banks need a better professional ethical code
Do not trust your investment bank advisors - they are incompetent
and cannot tell you when to sell your shares to keep their job
Great disappointment for the Italian tourists coming back from their holiday in Cuba
Baby -
its beautiful!
It's arrived a little late in Italy but the bellies of pregnant women
have become something to show off rather than hide away once the bump
starts to show.
The
"made in Italy" brand name is under attack
The Italian food industry is losing its primacy in the world market.
The (fat)people
versus fast-foods
Fast foods like cigarettes; McDonald's like Philips Morris. The Mc-fat
kills like tobacco does, and at the moment, it is enemy number one in
the US. What's worse the fastfood-cocacola industry targets kids straight
at their schools by using Walt Disney's characters, entertaining clowns
(such as Ronald McDonald), happy meals with toys...
Slaughter
house Istanbul
Do you need a fresh cheap kidney? Go to Turkey
Iran
- Rampant Prostitution
(Where prostitution is a form of revolution)
Young
Iranians
From their favourite cafes young Iranians expect Khatami victory to
change their lives
Flying is going to be more and more dangerous because of new management cuts
Italians
cheat mainly in the summer
It seems that the hot weather has a strange effect on the Italian
hormones. 8 out 10 Italians say they would leave and/or cheat on their
partners during a summer holiday. It is a fact that summer triggers
our sexual instincts in Italy.
Italians mainly split up in the summer
Dead
Smokers Are Good for Government Budgets
Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, may have the answer to the nightmare
problems that beset every government when it tries to balance the budget.
Are you a doctor, a lawyer or a knight?
Italy is one of the few Western countries that has strange titles in front of people's names.
What
does mean to have a right-wing government
I don't know abroad, but in the Banana Republic of Italy, it means
that
Great disappointment for the Italian tourists coming back from their holiday in Cuba.
With
its beaches, climate, landscape and unique communist culture, Cuba is
still a beautiful holiday destination, but it has lost grand part of
its attractions - the legendary Cuban girls who have made million of
foreign men dreaming for more than ten years. The millions of tourists
that have invaded Cuba every years were mainly single men searching
for the woman of their life or at least for a romantic adventure. Gossips
of Jineteras (Spanish for horse-woman, but it also means easy girls)
who fell easily in love have attracted men from all-over the world.
They hunted men and pretended to fall in love with them and asked in
change only small presents (from clothes, dinners or food to a better
life abroad). It was the unofficial tourist campaign that has pushed
tourism to Cuba. And Italians were not immune from the Cuban beauties.
Only last year 200,000 of 1.5 million tourists were mainly Italian singles.
In 1998 there were 2000 Italian-Cuban marriages (a record). In 1992
Castro said that tourism in Cuba is the healthiest and most genuine
in the world. He defined his "tourist promoter" chicas as genuine, acculturate
and healthy girls. He added that Cuba had the lowest AIDS rate in the
world. But after reaching almost 2 million of tourists per year, Cuba
seems does not need the "chica" effect any longer. This summer the romantic
engagments with tourists are outlaw. A curfew-like law forbids girls
to walk alone or with tourists men. So there are no chicas on the Cuban
streets. The Cuban anti-prostitution tightening was announced last January
by the Cuban Leader Maximo (Fidel Castro). The Policia Revolucionaria
Nacional started to rounded up all the girls that in the tourist places
where caught with foreign men. The first two times caught flirting with
tourists, the girls received and admonition ("cartas de advertencia")
and are sent to Villa Delicia, an ex barrack where the girls are forced
to wash toilets and pluck chickens for one week. But if caught for the
third time, they disappear. Rumours say they are sent to real revolutionary
re-education lagers and condemned to hard labour in cane sugar fields.
A Colombian journalist and writer, Silvana Paternostro, who has deeply
studied the rule of the woman in Latin America countries, said that
Castro's measures are more a national security question then a moral
one. The Jineteras were absorbing and spreading to Cuba the Dollar culture,
which is the first menace of Cuban regime. Great disappointment for
the Itanlian tourists coming back from their holiday in Cuba.
top
Baby
- its beautiful!
It's arrived a little late in Italy but the bellies of pregnant women
have become something to show off rather than hide away once the bump
starts to show.
The phenomena started with Demi Moore, naked and pregnant, on the cover
of Vanity Fair magazine in 1991. Ten years later pregnant women are
gracing not only magazine covers but also TV chat shows and sport shows
(whose main audience are men).
Go-getting pregnant women are working till last day, showing thei
r big belly with tiny t-shirts to the public. Once they used to wear tunics, be constantly ill and stay at home to hide their "problem".
In Italy, a country in which one women in two chooses not to have babies for economic reasons.
Penis envy has been replaced by "womb" envy and pregnant women seem possessed by an "omnipotent delirium about their ability to provide a paradise inside their bodies free from hunger, fear and cold," say psychoanalyst, Maria Rita Parsi. "Pregnant women are never been so proud of their state. It's like if they want to tell the world that they are well and they do not have an handicap; they are still beautiful, they are still sexy and can still make love."
But
this couldn't be different in Italy, the country where kids and pregnant
women are a rarity, since Italy has the lowest birth rate in the world.
But also because Italy is the country where a mother is the "Mamma",
the most important figure in the Italian family and society.
But if in the past pregnancy was seen as the phase when a beautiful
women started to become a Mamma - synonym in Italy for the fat women
who care, cook and clean the house for her children even if they are
30-40 years old and are married - now pregnant women are getting trendy
and important figures of the show businerss. They use their unique and
pointed belly to improve their carreer,e specially in the show business.
They are special, a show phenomenon never seen before.
Indeed if Italian television is anything to go by, women in advanced stages of pregnancy are fronting, chat shows, football shows and featuring in advertisements. Some of them, like Asia Argento (daughter of famous Italian horror film director), hired the job simply because of their unique state - pregnant and beautiful. Argento is co-host of one of the most popular chat shows in Italy, says "I think I can be the vehicle to destroy the Italian taboo on pregnant women going out in public."
Simona Ventura is the champion of the pregnant wonder women in Italy who at eight months pregnant is full of energy and continues to work fulltime as a football commentator on TV and she is also acting as a dancer in a TV show.
There is now an army of talented, beautiful and pregnant women with no swollen ankles, extra kilos or tiredness
The pastel tent dresses which were deemed essential to hide your shameful
swollen body have been replaced by body hugging clothes - the new fashion
imperative for modern pregnant women launched by Madonna- the bigger
the belly the smaller the t-shirt.
Men's calender model has kept her perfect body right up until 2 hours before delivering her baby when she was seen in skin tight lycra pants and a super tight Tshirt.
The
"made in Italy" brand name is under attack
The Italian food industry is losing its primacy in the world market.
The number of the Italian food products registered are 2545. It is a business of L160, 000 billion per year; in Europe reaches more than L1 million billion. But the Italian Lambrusco, Parma Ham, Gorgonzola and Parmesan cheeses are menaced by products made in Canada, New Zealand, Germany or the UK which have names that recall the Italian original product.
The
Italian producers have patented and protected their names, but it is
not enough. "Biozola" and "Cambozola" cheese (Camembert cheese with
blue spots made by the German company Kaserei Champignon Hofmeister
to look like the Italian Gorgonzola blue cheese) are invading the world
markets and fooling the consumers who think to buy real Italian delicatessens.
Cheesemakers in the north Italian town of Parma have gone to the European
Court of Justice to protect the name Parmesan, saying their traditional
product is being besmirched by forgeries. They have named New Zealand
as their public enemy number one. The case was filed by a consortium
of cheesemakers, Parmigiano Reggiano, who have been making the hard,
dry cheese for centuries with traditional methods (since the XI century).
They say their business is affected by cheaper rivals made to less-demanding
standards; made from milk from a big-volume dairy producer, packed in
plastic bags and emblazoned with an Italian flag to give it a local
feel.
Traditional Parmesan comes from a clearly defined region, where the
cows' diet is strictly controlled and the product contains no additives,
says Parmigiano Reggiano.
The consortiums in Italy that registered the famous cheese with the
name of Parmigiano-Reggiano, forgot to patent also the different translations
of their local product. Now they are spending lots of money to sue all
the different companies that are selling 600 million Kilos a year of
grated cheese called "Parmesan" made with additives, whitenings, antioxidant
and anti-fermentation chemicals to resemble the real Parmigiano.
The "Prosciutto di Parma" consortium, which instead remembered to register
its product in English as "Parma Ham" is suing the UK supermarket chain
ASDA for selling a Parma Ham sliced in the UK - which is impossible
for regulation because the real Parma Ham can only be sliced in the
province of Parma.
In Canada, a meat company, Maple Leafe, registered in 1971 a ham made
from Canadian pork with the name "Prosciutto di Parma". Since then the
Italian ham-producers can not sell in Canada the real Italian Prosciutto
di Parma (which is really made in the Italian province of Parma).
The other Italian company that produces the famous Prosciutto San Daniele
(made in the town called San Daniele) can not sell its ham in the US,
because an US company, Daniele Prosciutto & Company, sells with
the same name its Italian-style hams and salamis, advertised as the
favourites by Michelangelo.
Moreover on the internet is possible to find US web sites that sell Roman Pecorino (Italian for sheep cheese) made from cow milk, or Canadian Robiola (another Italian cheese), California Chianti wine, South Africa Grappa or Australian Marsala (a liquor made in the Sicilian town of Marsala).
But these grapes, pigs, sheep and cows have never been or seen Italy, how can they been sold as Italian products?
Now the EU Court has also to decide how legal is to sell a product branded with a name that recalls or as more than few syllables similar to another similar registered products. In Canada, for example, the Parmigiano cheese is sold with the name "Parmigianino" and in Argentinia as "Reggianito".
The
(fat)people versus fast-foods
Fast foods like cigarettes; McDonald's like Philips Morris. The Mc-fat
kills like tobacco does, and at the moment, it is enemy number one in
the US. What's worse the fastfood-cocacola industry targets kids straight
at their schools by using Walt Disney's characters, entertaining clowns
(such as Ronald McDonald), happy meals with toys...
McDonald's and the other fast-food chains are now being blamed for the
US obesity rate, the highest in the world - an epidemic affecting half
the country's adults and a quarter of its children.
People should know what lies behind the shiny, happy surface of every
fast food transaction. They should know what really lurks between those
sesame-seed buns. As the old saying goes: 'You are what you eat.'"
THE NEXT time you buy your son a McDonald's Happy Meal, make sure you
also buy him health insurance. For, each time he bites into a lamb or
beef Burger, or digs into his french fries, or empties a styrofoam glass
of Coke, he takes his first step towards an adulthood spent living with
the not-so-palatable effects of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
"Each time your tongue feels happy, it gives your blood vessels many
reasons to be unhappy.
The secret of the tasty Mc-food is in the artificial flavours created
by companies such IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances), Givaudan,
Haarman & Reimer and Takasoga. These chemicals are so magic that
can transform the cheap yuky Mc-food in a yummy and addictive delicatessen,
but dangerous for our health.
Burger buns and pizza crusts made of refined flour are stacked with
simple carbohydrates that the body effortlessly converts to sugar. The
vegetable shortenings used to make the buns are rich sources of trans-fatty
acids, which are deadlier than saturated fats.
The deep-fried mutton or chicken patties, or the fish fillets, that
go in between the buns are vast reservoirs of saturated fats - it's
not only because of the oil used, but also because of the routine addition
of animal fat to make the patties tastier. On top of all this, they
come drowned in mayonnaise or with slices of cheese.
French fries contain twice as much fat per ounce as a regular hamburger.
But they are not the only items on the fast-food menu to be artificially
flavoured. Wendy's grilled chicken sandwich, for instance, is laced
with beef extracts. Burger King's BK broiler chicken breast patty contains
"natural smoke flavour" produced by Red Arrow Products Company. And
the artificial strawberry flavour in a milk shake has 49 chemical compounds.
Fast food, without doubt, is getting farther and farther away from nature.
Fast food is also laden with salt, which explains the high sodium counts
in the accompanying chart. Salt serves three ends: it acts as a preservative;
it obscures unsavoury tastes; it's addictive.
By exposing our children to meals that are rich in fats and low on fibre,
we are conditioning their blood vessels to heart disease and to be dysfunctional
at an early age. In other words, the meal that calls for the most exercise
(to offset the impact of a hamburger, for instance, you need to walk
briskly for 96 minutes!), creates resistance to physical activity.
Americans now spend Dollars 120bn a year on hamburgers, hot dogs and
pizza, more money on fast food than higher education, personal computers,
computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on
movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music.
One in four Americans eats a fast-food meal every day. Every month,
more than 90 per cent of American children eat at McDonald's; the average
American eats three hamburgers and four orders of french fries every
week.
McDonald's and its imitators gave the people exactly what they wanted;
and as a result, it is the world's largest owner of retail property,
and America's largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes, and the
second-largest (after Kentucky Fried Chicken) of chicken. But what has
the consumer got in return? Not much
The US has become the most obese country - 23 per cent of its adults
and one in five of its children are obese. As a result, Americans spend
US$100 billion, about as much as its fast-food budget, on treating obesity
and US$30 billion on diet drugs. And every year, as many as 400,000
Americans undergo liposuction, or the surgical removal of fat.
Every day in America, as many as 200,000 people fall ill because of
one foodborne disease or the other, 900 are hospitalised, and 14 die.
It was inevitable because of the way slaughterhouses function in this
planet's most developed country: the over-worked, under-paid and mostly
immigrant workers don't always clean the hides properly, so chunks of
manure and dirt are left on the meat when they're removed with the help
of machines; stomachs and intestines are still pulled out of cattle
by hand, so if the job isn't performed properly, the contents of the
digestive system may spill everywhere; and workers in a hurry forget
to disinfect knives every few minutes, thus spreading germs to everything
they touch. "
Burger King, McDonald's and Tricon Global Restaurants Inc (the owner
of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) now employ about 3.7 million people
worldwide, operate about 60,000 restaurants and open a new fast-food
restaurant every two hours.
They create more jobs, and more money in people's pockets and more choices
of what to buy with it. They provide cheap meals for the increasing
number of people working in low-paid service jobs, like those offered
by the new McDonald's. It completes its own circle.
But now Americans have open their eyes and know that these corporations
are making their business exploiting children. The fast-food industry
is now at the top of the consumers' black list (as it was the tobacco
industry ) .
Changes are needed. Those dishing out unhealthy meals should be tossed
out of public school cafeterias, and manipulative ads targeting kids
ought to be banned. Better working conditions, more meaningful care
of the environment, and more government handouts are part of the cure.
The fast-food businesses are fully capable of developing, marketing
and profiting from meals healthier than those they currently serve.
If they don't, the case will go to the America judicial machine.
Meanwhile, bon appetit.
Slaughter
house Istanbul
Do you need a fresh cheap kidney? Go to Turkey
Turkey is well known for its Turkish baths, carpets and everyone knows
what a Turkish coffee is. But have you ever heard of Turkish kidneys?
Turkey is considered to be Europe's human organ supermarket.
In Turkey there are criminal organisations that smuggle human organs and specialise in the parts of disabled people and children. Desperate people from Eastern Europe go to Turkey with 2 kidneys and no money and come back to their country with one kidney and a pocketful of dollars. But for some western Europeans it is the other way round. They go to Turkey sick and with lots of money, and come back with 2 good kidneys and a dent in their wallet.
This is not a urban myth. The international traffic of human organs is a profitable business for world-wide criminal organisations who are now operating closer to Europe. In fact, they are working for us Western Europeans.
Whenever people disappear in Turkey, the locals now say: "Organ Mafyasi" (human organ Mafia).
The human organ mafia is formed of powerful Turkish-Isralian-Russian criminal organisations which also have branches in the Ukraine and Albania. Their main logistical bases are on a number of boats on the Black Sea. These boats are difficult to track down because they frequently change their names and flags.
In the attempt to save the country's image, the head of Interpol in Ankara, after denying the evidence, admitted the existence of such criminal organisations in the country but explained that there is no evidence to prove they kidnap children and sell their organs.
Most of these organisations have support from the top (read Turkish premier Suliman Demirel). It is not by chance that Turkey is the third most corrupt country in the world. Doctors who denounce their colleagues involved in such business are fired, while the accused are promoted.
The capital's main hospital has been involved in a human organ traffic scandal. Most of the young people who were saved and extracted alive, or with some bone fractures, from the rubble of the earthquake two years ago have disappeared after being hospitalised for small injuries. At Golkuk, a town on the Black Sea which was seriously damaged by the earthquake, 21 children have vanished from hospitals. The government has offered £800 to parents to accept and sign their children's death certificate. 70% of parents signed.
But children have continued to disappear even after the earthquake. They went to hospital for a small shoulder injury and came back without a kidney. Kidneys are the Turkish speciality.
Street
kids are the main target of such organisations. They are easy to approach
by using candy, a sandwich or a new T-shirt. They even manage to approach
disabled and abandoned children, who are the most difficult because
they are distrustful: they know noone likes them. But, once fooled,
the disabled children will find new fake foreigner parents and a fake
passport to go abroad and live with them. There they will be slaughtered
and sold in parts. Kidneys are worth L200 million each (£70,000), livers
L300 million, hearts L300m, spinal marrow L320m, lungs L300m, cornea
L170m, pancreas L280m. Like pigs' meat, everything can be used: L20
million for arteries.
top
When serious illness meets deep poverty
The long waiting lists for human transplants in western countries, European laws that block transplants in the case of death and the fear of dying is pushing more and more people with malfunctioning organs to risk money, international police and their life to acquire a human organ they presume to be healthy and fresh.
Compared to 15 years ago, the price of illegal human parts has increased because more and more countries have introduced laws to prevent such business. However, the life chances of those who donate or receive an illegal transplant have not increased. The cost of a kidney was L80 million 3 years ago, but now has reached L200 million ($70,000) - the higher the risk, the higher the cost.
There are cases of people contracting HIV after a new functional kidney was illegally transplanted in their body. The surgeon, who risks imprisonment for the transplant, will look after the patient until when he/she gets the money. Risks of rejection are very high, but complaints are practically impossible.
Everybody knows who organises this business but how can it be stopped? How can evidence be found? For while selling an organ in Turkey is a crime, donating one to a relative isn't.
The most wanted surgeon who takes kidneys from the poor to sell them to the rich is nicknamed "the vulture" (his real name is Yusuf Sommez). He has been denounced twice, fired by the public hospital where is use to work, removed from the professional register for 6 months, he has spent a few days in prison, but he always denied the evidence. His excuses are that he has never bought a human organ and that it is not up to him to establish the degree of kinship between donors and receivers. He trusts the legal documents that these people show him. (Unfortunately, he has been filmed while he was making his clients sign a blank piece of paper).
He started his flourishing transplant network in his private hospital, (called Meyan = Asian Istanbul) in 1997. During a trial he admitted he had transplanted more than 500 kidney form living people, which means a turnover of at least L100 billion. At that time his donors where Turkish. Some of them managed to denounce him to the authorities, because they grew ill after the operation.
So he then decided to find donors amongst former Soviet Union sellers - who are easier to control and do not generally remember the name of the places where they been mutilated, nor of the people they have met. Their kidneys are also cheaper: $3,000 (instead than the $8,000 asked by Turks).
The majority of donors come now from one of the poorest countries in Europe - Moldavia. The Moldavian government knows the existence of "the human organ mafia" in the country, but since it can not afford to supply electricity, it is most unlikely that it will be able to find the funds to start an international investigation. Local rural GPs in Moldavia have noticed that lots of their patients leave the farm by coach and come back some days later without a kidney.
To immigrate to Turkey, Moldavians need $50 dollars for a coach ticket and 180 visas to pass through Romania and Bulgaria. Here they have to choose between a hard illegal job in Turkey, trying to immigrate to Western Europe or donating a kidney.
The sellers generally come from poor countries with poor health systems. They are not in better situation than the buyer. After a while they run out of money and have to start to work again. But with one kidney it is easy to get ill. But with just one organ left, the desperately poor sellers will generally not have money to pay for medical assistance or for a new organ.
Rumour
has it that the "vulture" is now in Prague where is asking half billion
lira per kidney.
top
Iran
- Rampant Prostitution
(Where prostitution is a form of revolution)
Large numbers of deprived women have been forced into prostitution or
become addicted to drugs.
On the street they have to wear the Chador, but at home they love to
wear mini-skirts, makeup and listen to rock music: it's the double life
of the Iranian young women.
Economic hardship is the main problem confronting most Iranians. The
economy is stagnant and Islamic hard-liners around Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
the Supreme Leader and the ultimate source of power in Iran's theocracy,
have blocked most of President Khatami's changes and jailed many leading
reformers. More than half of the 62 million Iranians are below 19, meaning
that every year hundreds of thousands want jobs that don't exist. Women
bear the brunt of the economic difficulties and social barriers and
restrictions.
The daily Hamshahri reports that at least 12 million Iranians are living
below the poverty line, and 20 percent of the population controls 80
percent of the nation's wealth - damning statistics for a ruling clergy
that overthrew the monarchy and came to power in a revolution that promised
greater equality and a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Islam and religious education has been forced on all Iranian students,
but indifference to spirituality and moral issues among the youth is
increasing. The main social division inside the country is not only
between conservatories and radicals, but it is between young and old
generations.
The 40 million youngs in Iran are the most repressed by the society
(50% of Iranians are less than 20 years old, who like the western culture,
surfing the Internet, go to discos-cinema). These are the children of
the post-revolution baby boom.
Their family, their society and their religion impose them a severe
and unwanted moral which caused psychological crisis, frustration and
depression. This leads to drugs, prostitution and suicide; the young
modern and literate women are the most affected.
Iran has the sad record of the country with the highest number of suicides
in the world per inhabitants - 25 suicides per 100,000 people (the world
average is 11.5). A study showed that twice as many women commit suicide
as men.
Psychologists say the reason for suicides and prostitution of most women
is deprivation of individual freedoms.
Caught in a vicious cycle of social humiliation and coercion, economic
dependence, family insecurity, fear for their children's lives as well
as their own, shame, lack of confidence, daily harassment for "improper
veiling," insults, and sexual abuse, Iranian women lead a bleak life.
Feelings of despair and helplessness cast dark shadows over the lives
of many, giving rise to a growing trend of suicide.
Reports add that girl children as young as ten, instead of spending
their days playing with other children, are forced to marry men three
to four times their age. Meanwhile as "married women," they are banned
from attending school. Some of them die after setting themselves on
fire to avoid marrying 40 or 50something-year-old man.
It is not strange to believe that the easiest solution for most young
Iranian girl/women is then to escape from home. 90 percent of girls
who run away from home fall into prostitution (between 1998 and 1999,
the number of prostitutes has increased by 635%); and most of them end
up in centre for drug addicts.
It is appalling. Never has prostitution been so rampant. Ayatollahs
blame the western morals for this. For years, the hard-line clergy that
has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution has painted a rosy picture
of Iranian society, never admitting to vices such as prostitution, which
officially is punishable by death.
Many more of the social consequences of the mullahs' rule date back
to the destructive, meaningless Iran-Iraq war, dragged on by Khomeini's
regime for eight years. Since it was very difficult for a wife or a
widow to provide for herself and raise a family in Iran's highly patriarchal
society, multitudes turned to prostitution as the only means of survival
and as a last resort to feed their family.
Now prostitutes are becoming more and more visible on the streets due
to economic hardships and new social freedoms granted since the 1997
election of the moderate President Mohammad Khatami.
Everything is done behind the veil. Prostitutes regularly roam Gandhi
Street in north Tehran. At 5 p.m., cab drivers, looking for wealthy
or foreign patrons, are driving slowly. In exchange for only $1 (500
Tomans), they can provide you with girls, alcoholic beverages, heroin
and hashish.
In most of the cases, modern prostitution is not only a way to make
some money (fees are between £3-20, up to £35 - a worker's month salary
- if vergin), it is also the woman way of assert her individuality and
her rebellion against the culture and the morality imposed by the religion
authority.
Unemployment and skyrocketing prices make it impossible for millions
of Iranians to get married and raise a family. At a seminar on the difficulties
of getting married, Ayatollah Haeri Shirazi proposed in January 1997
that authorities promote an unofficial, temporary marriage called sigheh,
that can last less than 24 hours and be repeated as many times as desired.
This form of exploitation of women has become very widespread, and legitimizes
sexual relations with very young girls.
The only duty for the husband is to visit his temporary "wife" every
weekend at her father's house, for which privilege he pays her father
about $12 per visit.
(I will send you the name of the journalist later on becouse I left
the article at home)
YOUNG
IRANIANS
From their favourite cafes young Iranians expect Khatami victory to
change their lives
The scene at the Iranian cafes looks innocent enough by Western standards:
young men and women chatting, sipping soft drinks, as they relax beside
a stream. Nearby, a small group are singing a pre-revolution love ballad
to a guitar.
Such a sight would have been unthinkable until recently. Officially,
women are allowed to be alone only with men who are their husbands or
close relatives, but many at the cafe were with boyfriends. Couples
in search of greater intimacy scrambled to secluded spots up the mountain.
Headscarves were often swept back to reveal more hair than technically
allowed (and for a daring few, replaced by sun hats or baseball caps).
The religious police - Bassidys - still play cat-and-mouse with courting
couples on the mountain, and many young men have stories of being carted
off to explain their "inappropriate" behaviour.
Places such as the Pizzeria Sorrento in Theran, have been closed many
times by the Bassidys (=moral police, vice squad) because young men
and women were eating pizza at the same table, which is still a taboo
in Iran.
But nothing will stop the young Iranians to meet, spend time together
and to desire and copy the western world. Some young men have ponytails
- very trendy at the moment - but it has been object of long debates
in the Iranian conservatory papers.
In a country where women are required - on pain of the lash - to observe
the rules of hejab in public by covering their hair and wearing loose
clothing to hide the shape of their bodies, facial appearance is all
important. Hence the new trend: the rush of nose jobs.
A student whose nose was plastered in dressings after an operation said:
"Iranian women have beautiful faces, but big noses. I've read that,
in the West, women have breast jobs. This is the equivalent for us.
It's the fashion.
Mr Khatami has proved unable - or unwilling - to take on his influential
opponents. Ayatollah Khomeini remains a dominant political figure, 12
years after his death.
Not all Iranians are pleased with Mr Khatami's limited version of Islamic
glasnost. Old Iranians still think that his reforms have given them
drug addicts and bad hejabi [loose women].
(Iran has six million drug users, almost 10% of the country's population,
with three times more women than men among new drugs users. In Iran
possession of more than 30g of heroin is punishable by the death penalty.
Analysts blame a variety of social and cultural restrictions, including
the Islamic ban on alcohol as the main reason for the rising drug use).
Flying
is going to be more and more dangerous because of new management cuts
Falling traffic, rising losses, striking pilots, failed mergers; these
are the problems affecting the world's airlines. The market is highly
competitive and apart from a few exceptions, the only alternative most
airlines have is merging in big groups to try to survive. But most of
these mergers end up in job cuts.
Air Canada, for example, has no choice but to trim labour costs -- its
single biggest expense -- as the carrier tries to restore profits in
a slow economy, according to analysts.
Air Canada, which had a loss from operations of $221-million in the
first quarter, bought financially troubled rival Canadian Airlines last
year. To gain government approval, it agreed not to fire workers until
at least March 2002. The airline also made job guarantees in labour
contracts. In the first quarter, salaries, wages and benefits were $768-
million, or 29% of total expenses.
Robert Milton, chief executive, is now preparing the airline's workforce
of about 44,000 for job cuts or reduced hours by first asking for voluntary
action.
Mr. Milton urged employees to reduce their hours of work or take a leave
of absence to help the company weather the economic slowdown.
In March, labour costs have gone up 16%, or $400-million, since the
merger last year. Every other cost except fuel has gone down.
This year, Air Canada offered voluntary severance packages to about
3,500 workers, with 1,350 departing in the first quarter. It expects
most of those people to be gone by the end of the year, leaving it with
a total of 42,700 workers.
But Air Canada is not the only example:
Swissair Group chairman and CEO Mario Corti will announce plans to save
500 mln sfr annually by cutting 250 senior pilots and delayering the
group's organisation, to join One World. According to a director of
the pilots union Aeropers, Richard Huber, some job cuts are inevitable
for pilots, who earn as much as 400,000 sfr per year.
Total world airline scheduled passenger traffic in terms of passenger-kilometres
is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 4.5 per cent over the
period 1999 to 2010, according to forecasts prepared by the International
Civil Aviation Organization.
Over the 1999-2010 period, the annual total number of domestic and international
aircraft departures on scheduled services is forecast to rise by almost
a third and the number of aircraft-kilometres flown by almost a half.
Latest statistic figures say that world-wide air companies lose a plane
each million flights - which means 20-25 serious accidents a year. With
the increasing air traffic and the decresing number of workforce employed
in the sector, in the following years there will be more crashes a year
- experts forecast one a week.
The latest figures are already scary: 1999=628 people died in an air
crash; year 2000=1044 people died in an air crash.
Moreover, 80% of the crashes are caused by a human error.
But according to Italian pilots it's not a coincidence after the continuos
top-management changes, the early retirement of 500 pilots and the indiscriminate
company's cuts to save business.
In order to intensify the new pilots' training process, Alitalia puts
a beginner pilot in each flight next to and the co-pilot monitored by
a senior pilot. But in three of the latest five air accidents in Italy,
there were only training pilots in the plane cabins.
Crew and planes are extremely exploited. Maintenance operation during
the 45 minutes between the landing and the take off of a plane has been
reduced to ten. Because of delays due to increased air traffic, pilots
waste the remaining of their eight-hour brake driving to hotels. Night
flights are considered in the same way of day flying. Results: pilots
are more and more often tired and stressed at the end of their shift,
which coincides with the most difficult and dangerous flying operation
- landing.
The pilot, by contract, is the only one who can establish his/her physical
and psychological suitability for flying. But more often to avoid disciplinary
measure pilots decide to fly even if stressed by serious financial or
marriage problems.
Italians cheat mainly in summer
It seems that the hot weather has a strange effect on the Italian
hormones. 8 out 10 Italians say they would leave and/or cheat on their
partners during a summer holiday. It is a fact that summer triggers
our sexual instincts in Italy.
In Spring love is in the air in Italy, but it is in the summer that hormones start to drive Italian men and women wild. Men turn their heads more easily to admire a décolleté and/or a pair of bare legs, while women love to show off their goods to feel admired.
Experts call it "last-day-of-school syndrome", and it mainly affects male partners in Italy. Like pupils when they say goodbye to their teacher before the summer holiday and promise to study and do lots of homework during summer, Italian men leave their wife/fiancé (who is going on holiday with the children or with a friend), with a simple kiss, promising they will behave and think about them all the time.
It can also happen on holiday with the wife and kids - a telephone call force the husband to go back to town for work; but instead of working…
It is a cliché, but it is still a reality in Italy, and it mainly affects professional mature men. They are the ones who give lots of summer work to lawyers and counsellors, who have to fix their naughty summer behaviour.
Causes of this phenomenon are obviously the Italian hot summer climate which triggers the production of testosterone to the maximum.
But recently the hot weather is also affecting women's hormonal secretion. Under the Italian summer sun, women too have "tropical" desires.
As a result, demands for separations triple in September. But not all summer adventures/affairs lead to divorce or separation; most of them trigger a simple revision of the prenuptial agreement.
The summer hormonal itch affects 47% of men and 24% of women; in summer the potential number of cheating partners is 2 thirds more than in other seasons. The hottest places were to get the contagion are beaches, discos, supermarkets and on the Internet. But it is at work where the treacherous can express themselves best and the epidemic reaches its climax - helped by the cooling atmosphere created by the air conditioning.
Recently, in a company of the New Economy, 19 of the 20 employees have had an affair with a colleague in the same company.
Where? The area around the coffee machine is very successful for revealing unrestrainable desires. But real actions can take place in the loo (17%) and/or in the lift (11%), while the most hard-core ones on the desk during over-time. Male entrepreneurs generally hunt secretaries and employees, while woman bosses sin mostly with superior/senior managers.
61% of Italians have admitted that they lose their mind for a colleague in summer. Men go crazy by looking at female colleague's legs and women get aroused from colleague's muscles, hair and sweat.
64.1% of female cheaters prefer summer affairs with a family friend and 22% with an unknown man. Men are instead more equally divided for what concern the grade of acquaintance of their prey: 46% opt for unknown woman and 40% for a friend.
Italians mainly split up in the summer
40,000 Italian couples split up every year. More than 8 Italian couples out of 10 split up in summer (mainly in July). July in fact, is the month with the highest number of separations and divorces. It seems that in July, Italians cannot refrain their desire to get rid of their partner.
Women
mainly blame their partners for being boring and stock men. Men instead,
accuse their partners of being pert and of always grumbling about something.
But are women the first to take the initiative to confess the crisis
and to ask to split up. And summer seems to be the right month for getting
rid of their boring thing to be free once more. Tired of an unsatisfactory
emotional life, Italian women feel the need to find a new partner that
will make them fall in love again (32%).
While one man out of four declares instead he has too many scruples
to leave her.
Character incompatibility and betrayal are not the only reasons. 37% of the Italian men blame their partners of being stingy when it comes to cuddling.
Most of the problems of Italian couples are related to the unfair division of labour. 70% per cent of women work more than 60 hours per week (real work + house work, kids included), while only 15% of men do the same.
Women tend to forget that their Italian lover is still a child who still needs (mum's) attention.
Coming home with 4 plastic bags full of shopping, the kids to be collected from gym, dinner to be fixed, the washing to be hung out to dry with their mind still on the report to prepare for work; this is the life of Mrs X. While mister Y instead is mourning about her lack of affection and attention; 18% of Italian men miss kisses on the neck and behind ears, 15% miss romantic strolls holding hands, 22% accuse their female partners of not sitting on their lap any longer, not caressing his hair and not sleeping hugged each other.
According to Roberta Rossi, Italian sex psychotherapist, it is already a common place that also Italian women are considered more aggressive because they think more about their job than their family. But men can not compare the women of today to the woman of 20-30 years ago and get moody because they are no longer the centre of their female partner's attention.
The more she loves her job, the more the man gets jealous and suspicious: she might be having an affair.
While statistics put work and computer as the worst enemies of the Italian couple, especially in bed, unemployed partners are more passionate and more erotically imaginative.
The lack of good TV programs is also to blame; or rather it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. In summer the lack of quality TV programmes, which are replaced with talk shows full of beautiful women, and the related men's appreciations drive the female partners crazy.
Even when Italian couples manage to go in holiday together, the risk of the summer couple stress lies in ambush. Men who do not generally do house-work, are forced to deal with shopping, cooking, washing and children on summer holiday. On holiday, men do not have the excuse of leaving to go to work to escape these duties, which turn into a nightmare after spending every single hour with their partners.
But if the beginning of the summer is the time for separation, the beginning of autumn is the time to get back together. After a summer holiday, 65% of the couples that split up in summer decide to go back to their previous partner.
Dead
Smokers Are Good for Government Budgets
Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, may have the answer to the nightmare
problems that beset every government when it tries to balance the budget.
A report it has just sent to the Czech Republic suggests the country
could save more than £100m a year in healthcare and pension costs because
people who smoke die early.
Philip Morris produces and sells one of the ultimate symbols of capitalism,
Marlboro cigarettes.
When the Marlboro Man rode into eastern Europe after the fall of communism,
Czechs welcomed him with open arms.
In March last year, the prime minister, Milos Zeman, declared on television
that "by smoking, I contribute to the stability of the state budget.
By buying cigarettes I increase state revenues, and I will die of lung
cancer, so the state won't have to pay me a pension."
So when it surfaced this week that a report commissioned by Philip Morris
Cos. Inc.(MO.N) said the early deaths of smokers saved the Czech government
money on health care, pensions and housing for the elderly, the local
reaction was nonchalant -- despite fresh outrage by tobacco industry
opponents.
Its calculations suggest that in 1999 the government saved between 943m
koruna (£16.6m) and 1.29bn koruna (£22.7m) on healthcare, pensions and
housing for the elderly thanks to premature deaths from cigarettes.
The savings outweigh the costs of caring for sick smokers and the loss
of income taxes from deceased wage earners. In fact, the net benefit
to the government from its smoking population in 1999 was 5.82bn koruna
(£102.3m), the report claims.
The world's largest cigarette maker, Philip Morris has made commercial
inroads into the country which rivals can only dream of. In 1992 it
bought Tabak, the main Czech cigarette maker. Philip Morris CR now controls
just over 80 percent of the local cigarette market and posted a profit
of 3.2 billion crowns ($80 million) in 2000, making it one of the most
profitable firms in the Czech Republic and paying a handsome return
on its $420 million investment.
But those profits are under threat, as in many countries, from anti-smoking
legislation the Czechs must eventually adopt to join the European Union.
Philip Morris feared the Czech parliament could excessively raise taxes
on cigarettes as it tries to harmonize its taxes with the European Union.
(The cost of cigarettes in the Czech Republic was only about one-third
of those in western Europe). Czech cigarette taxes are currently 42
percent, compared with EU recommendations of 59 percent.
But would a responsible, reformed tobacco company tell foreign governments
that dead smokers are a good thing for their budgets? Philip Morris
is doing exactly that.
The same Philip Morris that has spent millions of dollars on a public
relations campaign to convince the American public that it is now a
responsible company is also telling the government of the Czech Republic
that smoking is good for the government's finances, because of savings
from early deaths caused by smoking.
Tobacco is a controversial industry, but it is still an industry that
needs some economic data on the sector. But Philip Morris is now whispering
in the ear of the Czech Government, saying: 'Look, we can help you deal
with those expensive old people, so why don't you go easy on controlling
smoking?"
This report is powerful evidence that the kinder, gentler Philip Morris
depicted in the company's U.S. ads is just a wolf in sheep's clothing.
It's a wolf that has the gall to tell a government that the early deaths
that result from their products are a good thing.
This report is also a much-needed warning to policy makers at all levels
in the United States and around the world that Philip Morris has not
changed and cannot be trusted when it says it wants to play a constructive
role in developing laws and treaties to regulate tobacco products. The
same Philip Morris that told the Czech government that smokers dying
early is a good thing is also asking Congress to pass its version of
Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco, and it has urged
the World Health Organization to take its advice in negotiating the
proposed international tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco
Control. It is the same Philip Morris that has been invited by the Bush
Administration to negotiate a settlement to the federal tobacco lawsuit.
A company that goes out of its way to rationalize as a good thing the
fact that its products kill people does not deserve such a seat at the
table.
Philip Morris' only interest is its own bottom line, not the protection
of our children or the public health, and this report shows the lengths
to which it is willing to go to get its way when it thinks no one is
watching.
Are you a doctor, a lawyer or a knight?
Italy is one of the few Western countries that has strange titles in front of people's names.
To be a Doctor in Italy, it does not only mean to have a degree in medicine.
Whoever has a degree, achieved after long years of University (at least
five years) can be addressed as Dottore - from to be Dotto, which means
to be erudite.
The title doctor is generously given to anybody in Italy that goes to
work with suit and tie, because it is assumed they have a degree or
a diploma in something (economy, medicine, physic), to be a white collar
with a clean and envied job.
Higher social class Italians, worthy of special attributes of importance
and respect, are generally addressed as presidents. Once this title
was only use for high honorary state appointments (President of the
Republic, of the Senate or of the Lower Chamber), but now this use has
been incredibly extended. Any chairman of a small company or organisation,
even of a local fishermen association, will be called President Y for
the rest of his life.
Similar for secondary school teachers, who love to be addressed as Professors,
and the editors of newspapers, who will always be called Direttori at
work or outside, but especially if the journalists want to keep their
job.
Italy is one of the few countries who has a knight for prime minister.
Italian new premier, Silvio Berlusconi, is known as "Il Cavaliere" (=the
Knight). The state bestowed this honour (Cavaliere del Lavoro) on him
for his great achievements as an entrepreneur in 1977, together with
Mr Gianni Agnelli, who amongst his several work appointments boosts
the title of Presidente (of Fiat and Ferrari) and Senatore. But in Italy,
Mr Gianni Agnelli is known as the Avvocato (=the Lawyer) with the capital
"A". (All the other Italian lawyers are avvocato with a small "a").
Addressing him as Signor Gianni Agnelli is as unpopular as offensive.
These are unwritten rules which change with the passing of years, trends
and with the change of the Italian language.
Italian
waiters or parking place attendants, in the hope of a good tip, do not
call you Signore, but Dottore, Ingegniere or Commendatore and they address
you with the polite "Lei or Voi" forms. They try to guess your status
or job by the way you dress or by the brand of car you drive.
If you dress casual or have a small car (maybe a Fiat), they will use
the "you" form, which is supposed to be colloquial and friendly, but
it is found very degrading.
Nobility started to be unpopular in 1922 with a Royal decree, when Italy
was still a monarchy. Since then, nobody could be appointed earl or
baron any longer, but the King of Italy obviously refused to completely
abolish the costume, by leaving the titles obtained before such a date.
With the end of the WW2 and the Royal family running off, nobility was
not any longer popular in Italy. Ever since noble titles before family
names started to be a rare thing.
But until today, the state has not stopped the use of appointing a few
knights or commanders every year, for the honourable achievements of
skilled entrepreneurs, scientists and bankers.
It was, and still is, the real revenge of the Italian middle class who
started to bear their own titles. The need to be distinguished from
the populace or the working class (in Italy there no such a thing as
lower class) was so strong that entrepreneurs, landowners and rich tradesmen
started to put a prefix in front of their name.
Most of the time, these people had also an education, which was a rarity
in a country of illiterates; as Italy was until a few years ago. Since
then, prefix such as Dottore (doctor), Ingegnere (engineer), Ragioniere
(accountant) started to appear before names at the end of letters, on
business cards and in telephone directories.
Addressing a person you don't know, has been always quite tricky in
Italy, because of the confusing social etiquette and the changing costume.
A women can be a Signora (Mrs) or a Signorina (Miss), depends on her
age and on her marital status. But mistake are commons. In Italy there
is not Ms. Sometimes 50 something single women prefer to be cold Signorine,
or vice versa. How to know?
The French have a similar problem with "Madame" and "Mademoiselle",
but they address all the men with "Monsieur", or a capital "M" if in
writing.
The English have solved both these two sex problem with Sir and Ms,
and everybody is addressed with "you".
Isn't this more democratic?
Italians, stop to show off your status.
Drink
diving kills Russians
A fatal cocktail of intolerable heat and cheap vodka has led to record
numbers of Muscovites drowning this summer.
The
free market is to blame, says Luigi Ippolito in Corriere della Sera
Fifteen died on Monday and 18 on last Saturday as they sought refuge
from the highest temperatures the city has seen since 1885.
So far this summer 240 people have been fished out dead from Moscow's
rivers, ponds, reservoirs and lakes: a record figure twice last year's
total. Rescuers said about 80% of them had been drunk.
Built to withstand seven months of ice and snow, Moscow is not designed
for heatwaves. As it endures the second week of temperatures above 33C,
people have been fleeing their flats and offices to cool off in any
available stretch of water.
Air conditioning is a rarity in Russia and people take to rivers, ponds,
and reservoirs to cool off - often swimming right under "no swimming"
signs and oblivious to police, who rarely enforce swimming bans. In
addition to the deadly combination of swimming and alcohol, drownings
are attributed to the absence of lifeguards and lack of swimming or
safety instruction.
Many dive in directly under signs prohibiting bathing, Lyudmila Skvortsova
of the Moscow emergencies ministry said. Often the water is dangerously
polluted or its currents are too powerful for weak swimmers.
'It's difficult to battle against human stupidity. We don't have enough
lifeguards to monitor forbidden swimming areas,' she said.
After a surge in drownings this summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin
told the government on Monday to institute better water safety measures.
Meeting with Cabinet officials on Monday after returning from the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, Putin noted that the weather "is no worse now on the Moscow River than on the Mediterranean," the Kremlin press service said. Putin instructed Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko, who oversees social issues, to ensure that health and rescue services are activated in places where people swim.
Soldiers
standing guard outside the Kremlin walls are being changed twice as
often as usual due to the heat, but elsewhere in the capital the high
temperatures have been greeted as cause for celebration.
For days the banks of the Moskva river have been crammed with sunbathing
picnickers, and impromptu beer and vodka stalls have been set up, encouraging
people to ignore the rarely enforced bylaws prohibiting drinking in
public places.
But Muscovites like drinking beer with vodka -a popular way of simultaneously
quenching thirst and getting drunk fast. 'The main problem is the alcohol.
Every day we warn people not to go swimming after drinking . . . Parents
are often too drunk to watch their children,' Ms Skvortsova said.
Most of the dead have been men in their 20s; many of them may have been
unable to swim properly.
As pools become the preserve of the rich and swimming lessons an unaffordable
extra in schools, fewer Russians are being taught how to swim. In the
Soviet Union, swimming courses and swimming pools were free.
Officials say that five times more people drown each year in Russia
and other former Soviet republics than in Western countries.
Figures
reports that in Russia everyday at least 150 people drawn. Until 1991,
when the Soviet Union flag was still on the roof of the Kremlin, the
average number of people who drawn annually was around 7,000; (Vodka
was still popular at that time). Last year this figure reached 22,000,
which is absurd if we consider that in the US, that has 2 times the
Russian population, the drawings of last year were only 4,500.
The Water rescue services have been cut for want of funds. Valerij Novikov,
president of the Russian rescue organisation, blames the lack of infrastructures.
Under the Soviet Union, his organisation had 15,200 rescue stations.
Today they are 456. Moscow alone has 23 rescue/aid stations for 300
water reservoirs (rivers and ponds). "In a free market epoch, to be
a safeguard is not good business," he comments. "It impossible to make
rescuing and business go together."
In the past we were fund by the state, now nobody wants to spend money
to save lives - there is no profit - and Russians drawn everyday.
The "Homo Sovieticus" had lots of defects and bad habits, but he could
float. Now, the new "Homo Russian", has still the same habits (read
vodka) and he is sinking together with his country. Was it worthy?
City halls are seeking their own corporate logos
Cities are acting in an entrepreneurial fashion to use assets that
are lying fallow, after they realised they have a value, and that value
can be sold.
In the US, more and more cash-strapped cities, taking a cue from stadiums and sporting events, are searching out corporate sponsors for everything from their computer systems to their lawn mower fleets. They're also considering the sale of naming rights on facilities from city parks to subway stations.
More and more city halls are following this new trend because it is the alternative to fewer services or higher taxes.
The city sponsorship business will be to everybody's advantage - either for companies or cities.
The former have obtained extra privilege publicity spots in strategic places such as beaches and schools; which will substantially increase their profits in the area.
But those which will gain the most (with less and unpopular efforts) are municipalities. City halls will cash huge sums to spend for their community - to improve services, clean beaches and create more opportunities for the young without increasing citizens' taxes.
Here same example. Simple Green is the official cleaning product of Huntington Beach. Verizon Wireless is San Diego's preferred cell phone provider, and Coke is Oakland's drink of choice.
Oakland has lately signed an exclusive deal with Coca-Cola that makes its products the only ones sold on city property, including recreation centers and fire stations. The arrangement is for 10 years in exchange for a 45 percent sales commission, projected at $500,000 a year. What the city gets out of the deal? $1.2 million to use for building parks and develop recreation programs for kids.
Miami-Dade
County is looking at everything it could sell to sponsors, down to its
trash cans, and Atlanta has debated selling naming rights to its airport
and parks.
Governments pursuing such deals say they are a logical extension of
procurement contracts already used to buy everything from cars to computers
to cell phones. Adding the "official" tag sweetens the deal for both
sides, although the revenue is a small fraction of city budgets.
San Diego has named Verizon Wireless its "official wireless partner" when the company won the contract for city cell phone services. There was no public opposition to the deal. The city pays Verizon between $500,000 and $600,000 a year for cell phones and service, and Verizon pays back an annual $200,000 "marketing fee" for the "official" title. In exchange, its logo appears in the city's newsletters, brochures and Web site. Verizon has the exclusive right to sell phones at community service centers and in city stores that sell official city of San Diego gear, and it will be a named sponsor of four city events a year.
San Diego is now seeking bids for city computers and offering the "official" moniker for $200,000. A company could donate computers to the city in exchange for city promotion to its employees and newly licensed businesses. The city also is considering an official film company to sell disposable cameras at tourist spots and would like a corporate donor to buy the city a firefighting helicopter that would carry its name.
In
Huntington Beach, Simple Green donates cleaning products to the city
and pays community groups to clean up beaches -- worth a total of $30,000
to $40, 000 a year -- in exchange for advertising on lifeguard towers.
Chevrolet, the city's "official lifeguard vehicle," gives the city 20
pickups and SUVs a year, valued at $500,000, and gets exclusive use
of the beach to display cars at special events and film commercials.
Miami-Dade County recently began an "inventory of everything that can
be sold: the parks district, marinas, airports, beaches, government
buildings, jails," said consultant Myles Gallagher, president of the
Superlative Group in Cleveland. "You can sell everything down to the
garbage cans, but that probably doesn't make much sense.
Honolulu now advertises BMW and Prudential on its Web site.
But
the public may be wary of such deals. An Atlanta councilman's pitch
to sell naming rights to its airport and city parks has stalled after
drawing public scorn.
Boston's Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority received no takers
for its offer to sell the names of four subway stations earlier this
year. A similar idea for San Francisco's Muni stations never got off
the ground.
But some city officials say the public will come around when they realise
the alternatives are fewer services or higher taxes.
"You have the same people who, at one moment, tell you don't raise my taxes, " said Jim Engle, deputy director of community services for Huntington Beach. "But as soon as you come up with a creative way not to, they say you're overcommercializing."
Columbia's
"90 minutes of peace"
Columbia claim 'Peace Cup' to unite a country in celebration
Colombia's national football team (la Seleccion= the national team)
for three weeks has hidden the dust of the county's civil war under
the carpet
.
``Viva Colombia!'' - shouted in unison FARC rebel comandantes and members
of the government jumping out of their chairs when Colombia scored against
Mexico, in the last Copa America final.
Peace was not at hand, but for one brief moment, Colombians of all stripes
came together Sunday (27 July) to watch and revel in the nation's victory
in the finals of the Copa América, Latin America's premier soccer tournament.
``Ninety minutes of peace,'' exulted FARC (=Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
de Colombia) guerrilla comandante Andrés París after watching Colombia
down Mexico 1-0 on television at the negotiating complex in a jungle
clearing in southern Colombia, where government and leftist guerrillas
negotiate peace.
The Colombian national team defeated Mexico to win the Copa America
title for the first time and ignite a spark of hope in this battered,
bloodstained nation. The 1-0 victory Sunday came after Colombia's premier
defender, Ivan Cordoba, headed a penalty kick past Mexican goalie Oscar
Pérez in the second half.
"Soccer has magic," the Colombia coach, Francisco Maturana, said, moments
after his team's victory. "We were forgetting how to smile and we had
no joy. Now we do."
The nation exploded in delirium as the game ended. Fireworks went off.
Cars honked. Fans screamed. Streets overflowed with singing, fevered
fans. For three weeks their bloody civil was not as important as football.
On every corner, knots of people gathered to dance, sing and celebrate.
Some wrapped themselves in Colombia's yellow, red and blue flag. Others
covered themselves with paint of the same colors. They bought bags of
white flour from street vendors, and threw them on cars, buildings,
one another -- a victory tradition. There was sporadic street violence:
two children were killed in traffic accidents, and 20 others were injured
- nothing compared to what happens normally.
Sometimes a game is more than a game, and Colombians were well aware
that Sunday's match fit that description. This was more than about Colombia
winning its first Copa and holding its six opponents scoreless.
The country had accommodated 12 Latin American teams and their fans
over nearly three weeks with no major incidents of terrorism or violence.
President Andres Pastrana has dubbed the games the "Cup of Peace," suggesting
that a successful job playing host to the 85-year-old event could even
bolster his negotiations to end a decades-old civil war.
Despite the deployment of 20,000 Colombian security officers, however,
many athletes arrived with deep misgivings -- some did not arrive at
all -- and many Colombians carped at Pastrana for trying to stake his
country's reputation on a soccer tournament.
The final game has been played in Bogota's El Campin stadium, less than
a mile from the site of a May 25 bomb blast that killed four people.
``We were winners in football, winners in organization, and winners
in celebration,'' President Andrés Pastrana said after attending the
match in Bogotá with his wife and three children, all wearing the team's
blue and yellow shirts.
However, it was not the best of tournaments. Amid security concerns,
Argentina and Canada stayed away and only 3,000 foreigners came for
the matches, denying hotels and travel agents an expected bonanza.
Organizers first voted to postpone the tournament until next year after
a string of terror bombings and the FARC's brief kidnapping of a top
Colombian soccer official. But they later relented under pressure from
commercial sponsors (Coca-Cola and MasterCard) who would have lost some
$60 million.
Critics at home attacked Pastrana's lobbying to keep the tournament
on schedule despite the nation's ugly reality, with El Tiempo newspaper
columnist Roberto Posada saying it reflected ``the president's frivolity.''
But frivolity was also the order of the day in Villa Nueva Colombia,
the complex of one-story barracks and canvas tents where Pastrana's
envoys meet twice a week to talk peace with representatives of the the
FARC, the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The complex lies near the crossroads village of Los Pozos, deep in the
large piece of southern Colombia that Pastrana turned over to the FARC
in 1998 as an inducement to peace talks.
Although the village is too isolated to receive regular TV broadcasts,
the government-owned Inravisión TV channel agreed to use its satellite
dish to show the game in the 40-foot hall where the negotiators usually
meet.
FARC sentries around the complex quickly headed for the room when the
game started, and eight senior FARC comandantes sat to the side of the
oval negotiating table, holding assault rifles between their legs.
París, a jovial former college professor, wore a green T-shirt with
the name of his favorite soccer team, Bogota's mediocre Millonarios,
above the face of Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto ``Ché'' Guevara and
his trademark slogan, ``Forever Until Victory.''
Many of the comandantes took delight in swigging from a pint of clear
liquor while ducking behind others to avoid being snapped by the news
photographers recording the unusual scenes of guerrillas at leisure.
``If Colombia loses I'll get a week of digging trenches for drinking
on duty. But if we win, the judges will be too drunk to make any ruling,''
joked Comandante Iván Ríos, a member of the FARC's negotiating team.
The rebels erupted into giggles when they realized that the radio play-by
play they had tuned in after the audio part of the TV feed broke down
was from the Colombian armed forces' radio network.
``A special message of solidarity to all the soldiers, sailors, marines
and aviators out there risking their own lives to protect the fatherland,''
the radio announcer solemnly intoned during a pause in the game.
``What? And nothing for the FARC heroes fighting to make this a better
country?'' joked Comandante Simón Trinidad, a one-time bank manager
with a reputation as a hard-liner within the FARC's leadership ranks.
``The victory is a signal of peace,'' said Joseph ``Sepp'' Blatter,
the president of FIFA, world soccer's governing body. A victory like
this is so important for people to have hope, to show the world that
Colombia is not all about violence.
The joy of Colombia's victory did not last long for some. Minutes after
the game ended, FARC mortars killed two soldiers and two police officers
only 150 miles from the complex. A half-dozen other skirmishes were
reported the same day elsewhere around the country, leaving another
17 dead.
What does mean to have a right-wing government
I don't know abroad, but in the Banana Republic of Italy, it means
that
while
the premier is having sumptuous dinners with the other leaders and members
of the G8, the Italian vice-premier, Gianfranco Fini (leader of Alleanza
Nazionale, the political party found from the ruins of Mussolini's Fascist
party) can finally share some spaghetti with the chiefs of the police
forces in charge of the security in Genoa during the last G8.
It means then, that fascists can finally play their favourite game (beating
up?) from the highest levels, while in charge of what they care most:
the security of the citizens.
It means that the secret services know the presence amongst the pacific
left-wing demonstrators of radical right-wing members (of the Italian
neo-nazis association called Forza Nuova), who were ready with knives
to stab police officers to discredit the manifestation, but they cannot
stop them.
It means that police and Carabinieri officers can shoot protesters dead
and get out by saying it was for self-defence.
It means that the police can enter a school and arrest everybody for
"criminal association".
It means that the police forces will let journalist see the blood of
the demonstrators on walls and floors after the officers have beaten
up the protestors for admonition.
It means that the government can declare that the Genoa Social Forum
is a den of terrorists and accusing of protecting them, whoever in the
Parliament disagree.
It means freedom of beating up lawyers and journalists while they are
doing their job.
It means that Radios and TVs have space only for government's supporters
to say how right was to beaten up protestors at Genoa and that they
will do it again.
It means that in the Parliament they will claim the responsibility of
their hard line because they have the consensus of the public, according
to their opinion polls.
France
is ashamed of its kids. The mayors of Orleans, Colombes, Aulnay-sous-Bois,
Nice, Cannes and Antibes have had to impose curfews on children to defend
their towns from infantile barbarity that is threatening tourism.
Even though the perpetrators are children, they are dangerous and have
become a serious problem in large metropolitan towns such as Paris,
Lyon, Strasburg, but also in the more tourist areas of the Cote d'Azur.
The police and the authorities are powerless against them. What can
you do to a criminal child? The police are at their wits end, they cannot
use handcuffs and truncheons - how can they cudgel a child? So how can
the police teach these delinquents a lesson?
Following the example of their big brothers and infatuated by criminality, these brats (or "sauvageons", as they are called in France) find their gang the only fascinating way to spend a miserable youth in the poor suburbs of modern France.
Their families face crises, educators have given up, politicians, sociologists and psychoanalysts are at each other's throats in trying to find a solution.
What do these naughty kids do? They torch cars (130 cars were set on fire during the 14 July's anniversary weekend alone), mug people, destroy buses and cinemas, rob supermarkets, plunder telephone boxes and swim naked in public pools. They operate in groups and after their acts of vandalism they disappear like rats in the alleys they have grown up in and know like the back of their hands.
For the first time since Nazi occupation, authorities have had to revive the curfew forbidding under13s from the streets between 11pm and 6am. So far the curfew is official in only a few towns, but soon will be imposed all over France.
In order to defend and protect precious tourists, to allow them take midnight dips, cruise from club to club and to wander along promenades without fear, the police of the Cote d'Azur are patrolling the area as if facing a dangerous Mafia.
Reports of baby gangs mugging tourists while swimming at night are routine. Completely naked on the beach because their clothes, wallets and mobile phones are gone, tourists know they are the victims of the baby gangs from their triumphant calls - from a safe distance. They are too young to rape but sometimes they are violent. They use baseball bats and knives. Whoever tries to approach the bands risks trouble and a few paedophiles have already been stabbed - though this hasn't been officially reported to the police.
Jospin and the Conseil d'Etat have agreed on a hard line approach to deal with the problem. Mdme. Segolene Royal, French Family Minister, blames the parents who can be fined £20 and lose child benefits. The minister believes the state has to re-educate parents more than kids.
The next town to apply the curfew will be Nanterre - where the French student protests of 1968 started.
In France the number of crimes have increased by 9.5% in the first semester of this year. Crimes such as bag-snatching and pick-pocketing have drastically risen by 38.5% in the Paris' metro. 40% of these small crimes are the job of teenagers. So be very careful, if you are thinking of paying a visit to the French capital.
With
75 million of visitors per year, France is the first tourist destination
in the world. But tourists also attract small delinquency.
From Notre-Dame to The Louvre, from the Tour Eiffel to the Champs-Elise's
bands of young with young skilled robbers targets the pockets of inattentive
tourists, too busy to admire the beauty of the city than to watch for
pickpockets.
In Paris the number of car thefts and burglaries and armed robberies is reduced while petty larcenies have increased. The dreamed object is the mobile phone.
And if you decide of going to Paris by car, lock yourself inside the car while driving, and try not to stop at red traffic lights. Band of teenagers will clean you of your possession while you are waiting for the green light.
North Korea pays its debts with slaves
North Korea is repaying its soviet-era debt, worth billions of pounds, to Russia by sending thousands of servants to work in eastern Siberia. In this way Pyongyang reduced $50.4 million debt to Moscow last year.
We thought Russia had gotten rid of the gulag, that labour camps in the depths of Siberia were a thing of the bad old Stalinist past. We even thought Russia had stopped the Soviet labour practice of workers being assigned a given job in a given place with no say in the matter.
But if Russians have been able to leave communist days behind, thousands of North Koreans who live and work on Russian territory have not.
They are working in labour camps, unpaid or for an "insignificant" salary, to pay off their country's debt to Moscow. Human rights workers say at least in the past they were not free to leave the camps and many have been tortured or even killed for trying.
It's not a secret that such labor camps existed in Soviet Union era. Amnesty estimated the number of miners and loggers in such camps across Siberia and the Far East in the 1970s and '80s was 20,000. In the 1990s this number was reduced to about 6,000.
Human rights activists who campaigned against their existence in the early 1990s thought they were closed down in 1993 when a 1967 agreement with Pyongyang expired.
According to Amnesty, that agreement was renewed in 1995. The camps were states-within-a-state, had their own internal prisons and were guarded by the North Korean secret police, the PSS. Torture was also widespread. Many who escaped told Amnesty that the prisoners were often immobilized by plaster casts put along the full length of their legs, or metal devices of similar purpose. There are also reports of executions.
"They are not free to move around. They are not free to seek asylum if they want to. It's a very prison-like environment. And it is the Russian police who are involved in guaranteeing security for those timber camps where the North Koreans are meant to stay," said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch for Europe and Central Asia.
As a condition for Kim Jong-Il's visit to Putin, North Korea agreed to repay some $5.5 billion (£3.5 billion) over 30 years. But since North Korea doesn't make anything, except missiles (with technology from Russia) Kim Jong-Il will enlarge a scheme blamed for the torture and summary execution of some of his country's most desperate refugees.
Although some North Koreans considered it a better opportunity than working at home, the debt-for-labour agreement is appalling and certainly violates the spirit if not the letter of Russian and international law.
Perhaps even more appalling is the way that these workers are line-itemed. North Koreans are no longer fellow comrades walking in step toward a bright socialist future but "exports" and "goods." These "slaves" are regularly registered under "exportations" by North Korea Economic Development and Trade Ministry and represent ninety percent of its exports to Russia.
Is Moscow so desperate to get some payback for the weapons it sent to
the hermit kingdom over the last half century that it is willing to
tolerate an Asian gulag archipelago within its borders? If Putin really
wants to help ease Pyongyang out of its isolation, he would forget the
Soviet-era debt or at least stop the Soviet-era method being used to
pay it off. Or maybe Russia is hoping for a similar arrangement for
itself to ship unpaid labourers to Europe in lieu of the debt. Thousands
of Russians might sign up, but in Europe no politician would come near
it.
top
Queuing outside Italian consulates in Argentina and Romania
After 3 years of recession, argentinans are starting to worry, if not paniking
Argentina will soon have more in common with Ecuador or Colombia than
with countries it used to compare itself with like Canada or Australia.
As sociologists like to remind us, emigration - even the idea of emigration
- is a safety-valve that helps to reduce tensions. In many circumstances
that is an excellent thing.
Many Argentines think themselves lucky: as their parents or grandparents
came from Europe, it is not at all hard for them to get one of those
neat little maroon passports that will enable them to settle anywhere
they like between Lapland and Crete, the Aran Islands and the river
Neisse, without having to bother about work permits or visas or any
other bureaucratic requirement designed to keep outsiders out.
Why bother to go to all the trouble of thinking up drastic reforms and
then pushing them through when at any moment you and your family can
break free by moving to a rather more promising part of the planet?
Every month well over a thousand Argentines pick up a Spanish passport
and just as many acquire one that confirms they are as Italian as anyone
born in the old country. Not all make immediate use of their documents
but, as the Spanish chief consul remarked to El País, "psychologically
it changes their lives": they know that if things get really bad, they
can go somewhere else. Needless to say, now that the Argentine "exodus"
has become a much commented phenomenon, its importance will continue
to grow and it will contribute more and more to the demoralization of
what was once a strikingly self-confident community but which now, like
a determined hypochondriac, seems bent on worrying itself to death.
To
explain what is happening, El País pointed out that unemployment in
Argentina is about 16 percent and that as the "economic model" offers
vigorous young people nothing they are fleeing from it. If so, that
would be strange to say the least, because in Spain the current unemployment
rate is 13.6 percent and the "model" is much the same as the one existing
here, though it does work a great deal better. The truth is, statistics
and economic theory tell us little. What matters is the feeling that
in Europe prospects are bright while here they are awful, that Europeans
can plan ahead because they optimistically believe their fate is in
competent hands while Argentines have to be ready for anything because
they are under the thumb of a bunch of greedy halfwits.
What they are fleeing from is either some aggressively non-capitalist
order, as in Cuba or Afghanistan, or an improvised stab at capitalism
being made in a country long devoted to some rather different arrangement
such as Russia, Ecuador or Argentina.
Changing the notion that Europe, not to speak of the United States,
is the future and Argentina a failure whose good days are over and will
never return should be the government's priority: unless it manages
to restore faith in the country's outlook the consequences will surely
be dire.
Were Argentina to degenerate into a mafia-infested region largely inhabited
by ill-educated and intensely conservative older people who have been
abandoned by the talented young, its prospects would surely be unenviable:
while Italy's poor south will always get big handouts from the rich
north and from the European Union, nobody apart from charitable outfits
like Oxfam would feel obliged to help Argentina out.
Argentines,
like other Latin Americans, have rarely thought themselves personally
responsible for what is done in their name. Government has traditionally
been something to be left to a handful of specialists, whether these
be Army officers or professional politicians. In the aftermath of the
military dictatorship this deferential attitude began to give way to
a greater willingness to take an active interest in public affairs.
Honest middle-class citizens who, unlike the poor, think politicians
should show more respect to the taxpayer, tell each other tales of life
in grandfather's country and then, if they have left things late, make
a beeline to the nearest European consulate.
But
things got worse when organised criminals have started to put their
hands in the passport business.
In
La Plata, one of the main Argentinean cities where there are 2 million
of Argentineans with Italian origins, the demand of Italian passports
has tripled since 1995. 2800 passports and 3200 citizenships were processed
only last year.
Everyday 40-50 people queue outside the Italian Consulate to apply for
a passport, where there are only three clerks who can handle only 10
requests a day. So people wait for days outside the consulate to keep
their good place in the line. Some do shift with relatives, others sleep
in the parking place under the consulate, and others give a few pesos
to homeless to queue for them.
But things got worse when organised criminals have started to put their
hands in the passport business. Criminals connected with lawyer companies
promise fast ways to get the desired passports by oiling the bureaucratic
machine/process with some cash. Others sell first places in the queue
at very high prices for the pockets of today's Argentineans. A few days
ago, three members of a band (called "Gordo Leo") that deal with such
a business were arrested in La Plata. They asked between 50 and 75 pesos
(£30-50) to queue outside the consulate. Who refused to pay was forced
to live the queue.
"People pay because they are desperate, and because otherwise it can
take them months before only enter the consulate," says Jose' Luis -
president of Comites, the association of the Italians abroad.
In Buenos Aires, officially things are better: the places on the queue
are drawn.
But queuing outside Italian consulate reaches the incredible in Bucharest.
There 400 people queue every day for 10 hours to get the few numbers to line in the next day's queue to get an Italian working permit or visa.
Rumanians,
who wants to escape from the misery of their country, prefers to go
to Italy to find fortune (read a job, stylish clothes and good food).
Their language is close to Italian and they consider themselves our
cousin for reasons that go back to the Roman times.
In line with Italian-Romanian uses/tradition, where cheating is a sign
of cleverness, most of the requests of visa have a fake document - a
fake identity card, degree or diploma, wedding certificate or ministry
stamp - made by Romanian, but also Italian, forgers.
Some Romenians show papers of Italian entrepreneurs, who ask $1,200
to write two lines where they state they offer a working contract to
mister X.
The Italian staffs in Bucharest have been scold for not being very accurate
to check all the visa requests, so now they are very accurate and very
meticulous, which means very slow.
But the slow bureaucracy of the Italian consulate - 4-5 months only
for a tourist visa - has pushed the wish-to-be-an-immigrant Rumanians
to try other ways.
The great efficiency of the German and Austrian consulates in Bucharest
has turned to be very useful. Within only 2 working days is possible
to get a tourist visa for Germany or Austria. Thanks to the Shenghen
agreement, once inside the EU, the Romanian tourist is free to "visit"
Italy (and other EU countries), where they will apply for a work permit
(a faster way than from Rumania) and find a job (most of the time illegal)
as waiters, servants, or fruit/vegetables pickers.
Italy has always been blamed for its not-very-hard line against non-EU immigrants, but there are more fake tourists that get inside the EU borders with a German or Austrian tourist visa than refuges and illegal immigrants that land to Italian costs with sinking boats.
Investment banks need a better professional ethical code
-
especially in Italy
Do not trust your investment bank advisors - they are incompetent
and cannot tell you when to sell your shares to keep their job.
They only have to hook you to get their commission and to sell shares
of companies that pay the bank they work for.
Most
of the time, those sitting behind the corner desks of Italian banks
to recommend customers about the best investment deal, are not on the
professional register and do not have any certificate of financial competence.
In Italy they do not even have a specific name or a working category:
in some places they are called traders, elsewhere they can be investment
advisers or simply customer advisers.
They generally come from the counter/cash desk and do not have adequate
training. They work at the corner desk because of the lack of professional
(and expensive) staff in the bank. (Most of the time their banks simply
transfer the personnel with the objective of staying within the budget).
They have attended an inside course of a few days (12 days for IntesaBci
- one of the most important investment bank in Italy), maybe taught
by a senior employee via Intranet or on the Internet - only if the management
has retained it necessary. They have a fixed salary - No rewards for
satisfying customers.
Italian bank clerks progress in their careers depending on what their
manager will think of them. And if the bank has floated Eni in the stock
market, it is certain that they will push customers to buy Eni's shares.
Most of the income of an investment bank comes from floating a company
and by the commission it asks for market operations.
The most common advice is "buy". It is not by chance that only 2% of
their market recommendations until a few months ago were "sells". Now,
after the recent conflict of interest scandals involving well-known
investment analysts, the negative ratings have increased to 13%.
The Italian market watchdog - Consob - is not doing much to stop this
sort of legal "fraud" and the advisors will never stop to say "buy"
if it means good commission for them.
And in the case of bad advice and the customer losing money? Patience!
Tough enough. They can always get away with: "unfortunately the markets
are unpredictable" and that "anybody can make mistakes" - too much,
perhaps.
From the beginning of this year, Italians have lost 588 billion euros
in the stock market - 25% of them were small savers, who have lost an
average of £4,000 per family in only 8 months. The most recommended
shares were obviously amongst the ones that fell drastically. (Seat
Pagine Gialle, for example has fallen by 89%). While the big investors
have managed in a way or in another to make the loss, the small savers
have only learn two good lesson - do not trust your local bank investment
advisors and do not invest in the stock market - ever!
They didn't know that the real (and honest) market analysts and advisors
do not work in their local bank. They'll be away advising wealthy clients.
felice petrelli