Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation

by Alison Benjamin
THE GUARDIAN

Germany has banned a family of pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has suspended the registration for eight pesticide seed treatment products used in rapeseed oil and sweetcorn.

The move follows reports from German beekeepers in the Baden-Württemberg region that two thirds of their bees died earlier this month following the application of a pesticide called clothianidin.

"It's a real bee emergency," said Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeepers' Association. "50-60% of the bees have died on average and some beekeepers have lost all their hives."

Tests on dead bees showed that 99% of those examined had a build-up of clothianidin. The chemical, produced by Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer, is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho. It was applied to the seeds of sweetcorn planted along the Rhine this spring. The seeds are treated in advance of being planted or are sprayed while in the field.

The company says an application error by the seed company which failed to use the glue-like substance that sticks the pesticide to the seed, led to the chemical getting into the air.

Bayer spokesman Dr Julian Little told the BBC's Farming Today that misapplication is highly unusual. "It is an extremely rare event and has not been seen anywhere else in Europe," he said.

Clothianidin, like the other neonicotinoid pesticides that have been temporarily suspended in Germany, is a systemic chemical that works its way through a plant and attacks the nervous system of any insect it comes into contact with. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency it is "highly toxic" to honeybees.

This is not the first time that Bayer, one of the world's leading pesticide manufacturers with sales of €5.8bn (£4.6bn) in 2007, has been blamed for killing honeybees.

In the United States, a group of beekeepers from North Dakota is taking the company to court after losing thousands of honeybee colonies in 1995, during a period when oilseed rape in the area was treated with imidacloprid. A third of honeybees were killed by what has since been dubbed colony collapse disorder.

Bayer's best selling pesticide, imidacloprid, sold under the name Gaucho in France, has been banned as a seed dressing for sunflowers in that country since 1999, after a third of French honeybees died following its widespread use. Five years later it was also banned as a sweetcorn treatment in France. A few months ago, the company's application for clothianidin was rejected by French authorities.

Bayer has always maintained that imidacloprid is safe for bees if correctly applied. "Extensive internal and international scientific studies have confirmed that Gaucho does not present a hazard to bees," said Utz Klages, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience.

Last year, Germany's Green MEP, Hiltrud Breyer, tabled an emergency motion calling for this family of pesticides to be banned across Europe while their role in killing honeybees were thoroughly investigated. Her action follows calls for a ban from beekeeping associations and environmental organisations across Europe.

Philipp Mimkes, spokesman for the German-based Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, said: "We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now. This proves without a doubt that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn't be on the market."

French court overturns al-Dura libel judgment

by Haviv Rettig Gur
THE JERUSALEM POST

The French Court of Appeals on Wednesday found in favor of media critic Philippe Karsenty, overturning a lower court decision that he had libeled France 2 and its Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin when he accused them of knowingly misleading the watching world about the death of the Palestinian child Muhammad al-Dura in the Gaza Strip in 2000.

"The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that [al-Dura's shooting] was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody - without being sued," Karsenty told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the verdict was issued at 1:30 p.m. Paris time.

Al-Dura was filmed cowering with his father, Jalal, behind a barrel at the Gaza Strip's Netzarim junction on September 30, 2000, during an apparent gun battle between Palestinians and IDF troops.

Fifty-five seconds of video footage were released to the world by France 2 at the time, out of some 18 minutes that were shown in court and even more footage that France 2's detractors claim is not being shown to the public.

The video, taken by Palestinian cameraman and France 2 stringer Talal Abu Rahma, shows al-Dura hiding, and then cuts to footage of him lying, apparently dead, at the junction. It does not show the child killed.

The footage, and Enderlin's broadcast assertion of Israeli responsibility for the killing of al-Dura, turned the 12-year-old's death into a cause célèbre in the Muslim world.

According to Middle East and media expert Tom Gross, "Osama bin Laden referred to al-Dura in a post-9/11 video; the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl placed a picture of him in their beheading video; streets, squares and academies have been named after al-Dura. He became a poster child for the [second] intifada."

Karsenty, the head of the media watchdog Media Ratings, was sued for libel after calling for Enderlin's and France 2 news director Arlette Chabot's dismissal, saying the footage was "a hoax."

Enderlin, who was not present in Gaza at the time of the incident, has vehemently denied the charge, expressing confidence in cameraman Abu Rahma's honesty.

Convicted of libel in 2006, Karsenty was slapped with two $1,380 fines - one to be paid to France 2 and one to the station's reporter - and ordered to pay another $4,000 in court costs when he wrote that the incident constituted a "masquerade that dishonors France and its public television."

On Wednesday, his appeal against that conviction was upheld.

The IDF, which initially apologized for the death of al-Dura, concluded after an investigation that the boy could not have been hit by Israeli bullets.

A statement forwarded to the Post from Enderlin said "the appeals court ruled that Karsenty's words were, in fact, libelous, and that Karsenty failed to prove that the news was staged and/or false."

The statement added that the case was nevertheless overturned because "the court believed Karsenty had the right to stridently criticize the [France 2] report, since it dealt with an emotional topic, and that Karsenty's investigation into the matter convinced the court he was being sincere."

A source close to Enderlin's side of the case explained that "you can get out of a libel suit either by proving you're right, or by showing you were sincere and had some research. The court found the latter to be the case."

The source also said Enderlin and France 2 would appeal the verdict, noting that they had won three out of four instances of judgment in the matter.

But, replied Karsenty, the only appeal left would be to France's Supreme Court.

"If they continue to insist they are correct," added Karsenty, "we will have victims of terror attacks that directly resulted from the [al-Dura] footage sue France 2."

Karsenty also called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who Karsenty sees as "ultimately responsible" for the publicly owned television station, "to take responsibility for the French state's defense of the worst anti-Semitic lie around. It's time to apologize to the world for broadcasting a fake news report that has inflamed the Muslim world and endangered world peace."

Karsenty's claims are based on inconsistencies in the footage, including a publicly available video-taped admission by Abu Rahma that there are untold secrets related to the case, the fact that only seven bullet holes are seen behind al-Dura despite Abu Rahma's repeated statements that the child survived 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli forces directed at the boy, footage clearly showing pretend gun battles and faked ambulance runs at the junction that day, testimony of the IDF soldiers stationed at the junction who said they did not participate in any firefight that day, and the lack of footage of al-Dura's actual shooting.

Despite France 2's playing down of the verdict, some analysts believe it is significant. According to Gross, "Today's ruling shows there are serious doubts about France 2's version of events, and that the entire world press was irresponsible in being so quick to take at face value the claims of a local Palestinian cameraman, who has admitted his partisanship."

Several months ago, the deputy commander of the IDF Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, wrote to France 2 asking for the entire unedited 27-minute film shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman on September 30, 2000, as well as footage the cameraman filmed on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom stressed that the IDF had "ruled out" the notion that al-Dura was killed by Israeli fire.

Citing the findings of the IDF's probe into the incident, ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, "The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction]."

The text of Wednesday's ruling has not yet been released to the media.

The Afrikaner Connection

IOL.co.za

Afrikaners have joined an international organisation fighting for the rights of minorities, Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder said on Monday.

The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), at its General Assembly in Brussels over the weekend, accepted the Afrikaner people as one of its 70 members which include Australia's Aboriginals, the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania and Tibetan monks.

According to the FF Plus, the inclusion in this international pressure group was one of the parties' greatest achievement's to date.

"If you look at the situation in South Africa at the moment, it would be unwise for a group such as the Afrikaner not to consider other options, and one of those options is to internationalise our case," Mulder said at a press conference in Pretoria.

UNPO's membership consists of indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognised or occupied territories.

"It is an organisation that fights for the right of the world's silent voices," Mulder said.

It has grown from its original fifteen founders, to representing almost 70 members worldwide.

Except for minority groupings, it also includes countries that have declared independence and have not been recognised internationally such as Somaliland which is part of Somalia, and Iraq's Kurdistan.

The organisation lobbies internationally for the rights of these communities and countries including at the United Nations (UN) and European Parliament.

It counts the recognition of Kosovo as one of its successes. - Sapa

Bush Fails to Win Saudi Help on Gas Prices

by Terence Hunt

AP

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - President Bush failed to win the help he sought from Saudi Arabia to relieve skyrocketing American gas prices Friday, a setback for the former Texas oilman who took office predicting he would jawbone oil-producing nations to help the U.S.

Bush got a red-carpet welcome to this desert kingdom, home to the world's largest oil reserves, and promised to ask King Abdullah to increase production to reduce pressure on prices, which soared past $127 for the first time Friday. But Saudi officials said they already were meeting the needs of their customers worldwide and there was no need to pump more.

Their answer recalled Bush's trip to Saudi Arabia in January when he urged an increase in production but was rebuffed.

Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said the kingdom decided on May 10 to increase production by 300,000 barrels a day to help meet U.S. needs after Venezuela and Mexico cut back deliveries.

"Supply and demand are in balance today," al-Naimi told a news conference, bristling at criticism from the U.S. Congress. "How much does Saudi Arabia need to do to satisfy people who are questioning our oil practices and policies?"

Early this week, Senate Democrats introduced a resolution to block $1.4 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia unless Riyadh agreed to increase its oil production by 1 million barrels per day.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said the discussion with Bush about oil was friendly. "He didn't punch any tables or shout at anybody," the minister said. "I think he was satisfied."

That couldn't be said for at least one of the candidates hoping to succeed Bush in January. Said Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton: "I think it's very important that we do something more dramatic than going to have tea with the Saudis."

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said consumers would not see dramatic price reductions. Oil experts agreed.

Bernard Picchi, an energy analyst at Wall Street Access, an independent research firm, called the 300,000 barrel Saudi production increase "a token amount."

It would be different, he said, if Saudi Arabia boosted production by 1 million or 1.5 million barrels a day. The announced increase will have Saudi Arabia pumping 9.45 million barrels a day by June, Saudi officials said. That's about 2 million barrels below its capacity. Analysts also discounted the impact of the U.S. Energy Department's announcement that it would cancel shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months beginning July 1.

"It's ridiculous because I don't think this is going to bring the price down," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Alaron Trading Corp., of the Energy Department's move.

Midway through a five-day Mideast trip that began in Israel and ends in Egypt, Bush spent the day with Abdullah at his weekend retreat outside the capital. It is known as a horse farm since the king maintains 150 Arabian stallions there. The farm also produces thousands of goats and sheep, bred for the king's royal banquets.

The sagging U.S. economy and painful gasoline prices are the top concerns of Americans in the heart of a heated presidential campaign. The run-up in oil prices has been alarming.

Futures prices of crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange have more than doubled in the past year, from $62.46 a barrel in the first week of May, 2007. Prices reached $100 a barrel for the first time in February and continued rising. They closed at $126.29 Friday.

On Jan. 26, 2000, during a presidential debate, Bush opposed taking oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and instead said then-President Clinton should "jawbone" oil producing nations. That week crude oil prices were $28 a barrel.

Hadley said the Saudis briefed Bush on plans to increase their production capacity. They also argued that even an increase would be unlikely to bring down the soaring prices, which they said were driven more by uncertainty in the market, lack of refining capacity for the type of oil readily available and other complicated dynamics.

Economists say prices are being driven up by increased demand, not slow production. China and India are stretching supplies as they use ever increasing amounts of energy.

Hadley suggested the White House was satisfied with — or at least accepted — the Saudi response. However, he said the Bush administration will see if the explanation "conforms to what our experts say."

Hadley said Bush and the king also focused on Iran and concern about recent violence in Lebanon, where Hezbollah overran Beirut neighborhoods last week in protest of measures by the U.S.-backed government. The display of military power by the Shiite militant group, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, resulted in the worst internal fighting since the end of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia — eager to stop any advance of regional power by Shiite-dominated Iran — joins the West in supporting Lebanon's government. Hadley said Bush and Abdullah shared a concern that the recent events would "embolden Iran." The U.S. and Saudi Arabia, he said, "are of one mind in condemning what Hezbollah did."

On Thursday, Hezbollah and the Lebanese government reached a deal to end the violence after Lebanon's Cabinet reversed measures aimed at the militants.

Bush's visit was billed as a celebration of 75 years of U.S.-Saudi relations, though they have been frayed by Arab perceptions that Washington favors Israel too much in the dispute with the Palestinians, the Iraq war and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The two countries used the occasion of Bush's visit to sign new agreements.

Among them was an agreement for the U.S. to assist the kingdom in developing civilian nuclear power. Another involves U.S. promises to help protect any Saudi nuclear infrastructure with training, the exchange of experts "and other support services as needed." Hadley said it would not involve U.S. troops.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, at the news conference with the oil minister, said he shared Bush's hope for a Mideast peace agreement by next January but sharply criticized Israel for the "humanistic suffering weighed upon the West Bank and Gaza Strip population" of Palestinians. He said Israel's "continued policy of expanding settlements on Palestinian territories" undermines the peace process.

No clear terror threat in cyanide case

by Jeff Latzke
AP

The FBI claims a Texas man told an informant he had a 25-gallon drum with enough cyanide inside to "kill a city." What he apparently didn't have was a plan to carry out an attack.

Jeffrey Don Detrixhe, 38, of Higgins, Texas, was arrested this week in southeastern Oklahoma on a complaint of possession or transfer of a chemical weapon following an FBI sting in which an informant claimed he saw Detrixhe bring home an approximately 4-foot tall drum with cyanide in it.

The informant, with the FBI's backing, conjured up a fake buyer tied to the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood and arranged for a supposed sale of the cyanide in exchange for $10,000, a thermal imager and an AK-47 automatic assault rifle, according to an FBI affidavit filed to secure Detrixhe's arrest warrant.

The arrest of Detrixhe on Monday near Idabel was "really at some of the earliest preventative stages" to stop any terrorist activity, said research and program director James O. Ellis III of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City.

"It was merely trafficking in the substance. It would be different if he had a fully formed plot that it would soon be weaponized," said Ellis, whose organization was created after the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing.

"In this case, it was caught so early so it's hard to attribute clearly what would have come out of it," Ellis added.

The FBI and federal prosecutors refused to say how much cyanide was recovered during a search of Detrixhe's home, except that it was enough to do damage.

"On the one hand I want the public alerted. On the other hand, I don't want them frightened," said U.S. Attorney Sheldon Sperling in Muskogee. Sperling's office briefly handled the case before Detrixhe waived his initial court hearing and was ordered Wednesday to be taken back to Amarillo, Texas, where the charges originated.

"This is a dangerous, dangerous compound. I think the FBI agents appropriately took this very, very seriously," Sperling said.

The affidavit written by FBI Special Agent John Whitworth alleges that Detrixhe gave the informant 77 grams of sodium cyanide that was supposed to be a sample for the supposed buyer to determine whether to purchase the rest. For that sample, Detrixhe allegedly accepted $450 — a small sum compared to the price he wanted for the rest.

A conviction for intent to sell a chemical weapon is punishable by up to life in prison, Sperling said. In 2004, another Texas man — 63-year-old William Krar — pleaded guilty to possessing 800 grams of cyanide, along with a stockpile of weapons including machine guns and bombs and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Cyanide is a deadly chemical that stops the body from processing oxygen, effectively causing death by asphyxiation.

Sperling said it can be used for less menacing purposes, including putting a finish on bronze sculptures, helping emergency responders quickly lower a person's blood pressure and exterminating pests.

But it's more commonly known as a deadly chemical used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. History also blames cyanide in the poisoning death of Rasputin in revolutionary Russia, and Adolf Hitler's wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide by taking cyanide.

"There were no apparent legitimate uses that the defendant himself was engaged in," Sperling said.

Federal public defender Julia O'Connell, Detrixhe's court-appointed attorney, did not return telephone messages seeking comment. Detrixhe was expected to have a new attorney appointed after he is extradited to Amarillo, unless he hires one of his own. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Drake said she expected Detrixhe's detention hearing and preliminary hearing to be next week.

Jim Harmon, who works with the Chemical, Biological and Energetic Agent Research Group at Oklahoma State University, said cyanide is not as potent as some other nerve agents but can still cause almost immediate death in high quantities or concentration.

"This is just one of those things you don't want to play with," said Harmon, a physics professor who will use 1/1000th of a gram or less of the substance during laboratory experiments.

Ellis said cyanide has been tied to numerous plots in the U.S. over the years, including the deaths of seven Chicago-area residents who took cyanide-laced Tylenol in 1982. More recently, New York police claimed they'd thwarted an al-Qaida plot to spread cyanide gas in the subway system.

Ellis wasn't sure what kind of death toll a 25-gallon drum of cyanide could bring.

"It takes higher concentrations," Ellis said. "It's not as quick to kill and it takes a little more logistical support to have as significant impact as a nerve agent."

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

by Ariel David
AP

VATICAN CITY—Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said.

The interview, headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.

Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

But he said he continues to believe that "God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance."

Funes urged the church and the scientific community to leave behind divisions caused by Galileo's persecution 400 years ago, saying the incident has "caused wounds."

In 1633 the astronomer was tried as a heretic and forced to recant his theory that the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

"The church has somehow recognized its mistakes," he said. "Maybe it could have done it better, but now it's time to heal those wounds and this can be done through calm dialogue and collaboration."

Pope John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

The Vatican Observatory has been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science. Its scientist-clerics have generated top-notch research and its meteorite collection is considered one of the world's best.

The observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is based in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town in the hills outside Rome where the pope has a summer residence. It also conducts research at an observatory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

Bavarian Premier Calls for Dialogue on Sudeten German Issue

DEUTSCHE-WELLE

Bavarian Prime Minister Guenther Beckstein called Sunday for a dialogue with the Czech government to resolve outstanding issues related to the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II.

For this to happen, "Prague had to face up to the chapter of history relating to the expulsions," he said at a rally of the Sudeten German Association in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.

"Concealment will not resolve the problem. A lasting reconciliation is possible only on the basis of the historical truth," Beckstein said at the gathering attended by around 8,000 mostly elderly expellees.

Beckstein shared the view of Sudeten leaders that Prague might be willing to discuss the issue, but said the "difficult conditions of government" at the moment made a breakthrough unlikely.

He said obstacles on the path to reconciliation were the decrees proclaimed by the late president Edvard Benes that led to the confiscation of German property and the deportation of more than 2 million Sudeten Germans, who were accused of being Nazi collaborators.

Another impediment was the law that granted immunity from prosecution to those who committed crimes during the expulsion, Beckstein said.

Many died in the brutal expulsion and hundreds of thousands later settled in Germany and Austria where they and their descendants still live, preserving their dialect and folk customs.

Bavaria seeking closer ties to Czech Republic

Beckstein, said one of Bavaria's goals was to strengthen relations with the Czech Republic, with which it shares a common border. "This will not always be easy but it is a necessary task," he said.

The Czech government, meanwhile, dampened the hopes of the Sudeten Germans for an early dialogue, saying it saw no need for such discussions.

"There is no change in our position. If the Sudeten Germans see things differently it might be linked to a change in their relationship to the Czech Republic," foreign ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova was quoted as saying by the Czech news agency CTK.

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler forced Czechoslovakia to cede its western Sudetenland region to Germany in 1938, saying German speakers were being persecuted there.

Hitler seized the rest of the country in early 1939, ahead of his invasion of Poland in September, which precipitated World War II.

After the war, the seized territory was restored to Czechoslovakia, but the postwar expulsions under the Benes Decrees, which have never been repealed, remain a sore point for many Germans.

Senior McCain Advisor Helped Arrange Rev. Moon Coronation

Filed by Nick Juliano

The Raw Story

A bizarre Capitol Hill ceremony a few years ago in which the eccentric conservative publisher the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared himself the Second Coming was organized with help from a senior adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign.
Advertisement

Charlie Black, a Washington lobbyist and McCain confidant, lent his name to the coronation ceremony and invited a few friends, according to newly disclosed e-mails.

"What is clear from this email is that top Mccain advisor Charlie Black is admitting that he helped plan, and would have attended, an event where a convicted tax fraud would have been crowned King Of America and declared himself the Messiah--all on U.S. Government federal property (on March 23, 2004)," writes author Cliff Schecter, who published the e-mails on his blog Friday.

In the e-mails, which were also obtained by RAW STORY, Black said he became involved because of his relationships with executives at the Washington Times, the conservative, Moon-owned newspaper, and its charitable foundation.

"I think the dinner committee list included a number of us 'secular' conservatives," Black writes in one e-mail to author John Gorenfeld, who has explored Moon's influence in Washington in his book Bad Moon Rising.

Black said he did not know Moon personally and was unable to attend the coronation ceremony, which Gorenfeld details here. (The full e-mails are reprinted below.)

During the ceremony, Moon declared, "I am God's ambassador, sent to Earth with his full authority," according to a contemporaneous account in the New York Times.

Black's relationship with the event seems relatively tangential, but this campaign season has shown that tangential relationships can cause headaches for candidates. Moon is among the most controversial figures on the right, although he gets relatively little notice in the mainstream press.

Schecter, who recently published a book critical of the GOP nominee, The Real McCain, outlines some of Moon's most outrageous views: that he is the second coming of Jesus, that crosses and crucifixes undermine God's message and that Jesus failed in his mission.

"One wonders," Schecter muses, "what many in the media would do if Reverend Jeremiah Wright called Jesus a "failure," proclaimed he (Wright) was the "Messiah" called in by God to clean up Jesus' mess and staged mock funerals for Christian crosses."

Moon's Unification church is considered a cult by many observers. Considering himself to be the Messiah, Moon claims to have communicated with the dead, including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, who he claims to have "reformed" from beyond the grave. The church has been accused money laundering, and Moon has used it to spread anti-Semetic and anti-gay teachings.

Black has been a longtime player in Republican politics. His ties with the Bush family go back to 1972, when he and Karl Rove were jockeying for control of the College Republicans in a campaign so dirty that George H.W. Bush, then head of the Republican National Committee, had to step in and sort matters out. Black then worked for Ronald Reagan's and George H.W. Bush's presidential campaigns from 1976 to 1992. He served as an adviser to George W. Bush's campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and is often quoted in news stories as an unofficial White House spokesman.

Until March of this year, Black served as the chairman of the lobbying firm BKSH & Associates. The firm has represented AT&T as it dealt with the fallout of its involvement in President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and coached Blackwater CEO Eric Prince before congressional testimony regarding security contractors killing innocent Iraqis. It previously worked with Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who was a key source of faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq war.

Black's e-mails are reprinted below:

---

On Apr 28, 2004, at 10:34 AM, CHARLIE BLACK wrote:
John,

I lent my name and sent invitations to a few friends. Unfortunately, I had a conflict and couldn't go to the event.

Charlie

---

From: John Gorenfeld
To:"CHARLIE BLACK"

cc:
Subject: Re: Moon event at Dirksen Senate Office Building, 3/23
05/06/2004 09:31 PM

Dear Mr. Black,

Thanks for your reply.

It's kind of an amazing event, with Moon being coronated as the king and declaring himself the Messiah at a federal building. Can you tell me how you got involved with inviting people? Is this an annual event, or just a one-time thing?

sincerely,

John

---

On May 7, 2004, at 11:16 AM, CHARLIE BLACK wrote:

I don't know if it is annual, but they have done similar events. I don't know Reverend Moon, but work with the management of the Washington Times and their foundation occasionally on conservative causes. I think the dinner committee list included a number of us "secular" conservatives.

Charlie Black
BKSH & Associates
(202) xxx-xxxx

Commentary: The Winds of Fascism Blowing Across Europe

by Gaither Stewart

ONLINE JOURNAL

ROME -- I feel sick.

She says I’m sick in the head.

Actually I’m sick in the heart, sick in my viscera. My head reels, I feel chronic vertigo.

She says it’s only paranoia.

I tell her the old Polish joke popular during the military regime. He constantly felt spied on, tailed everywhere, his phone tapped, his mail read. His friends said he was nuts. His wife sent him to an analyst. As it turned out, his friends, his wife, his analyst were right: it was only the secret police.

My problem is over-sensitivity, hyper-susceptibily, recurrent political allergies and chicken-hearted alienation. For decades now my general anxiety has been hatching. Sometimes I feel it swelling my nostrils, as when I breathe the pollen-laden Rome spring air. From my viscera it creeps into my spleen and leapfrogs across to my liver. It crawls up through tubes to my lungs, ever higher through my esophagus, lingers in the back of my throat and finally settles into my brain, first destroying my amygdala before obliterating the whole campus of my hippocampus.

It’s them!

Who? Who is it?

You know who! It’s them! Who else but the Fascists, I whisper, and sing softly a few lines of Red Flag to whip up my courage.

The Fascists?

Shhh. Not so loud, they’ll hear you. I mean, the sovereign people did elect them! They’re already everywhere like locusts in grain fields. You hear that ting ting ting tinkling? It’s their Celtic crosses, tinkling and tingling and clinking, clinking and tingling and tinkling and, and. . . .

Silly, she says. You’re just having another attack. It will pass.

Listen to them, the Celtic crosses, tinkling and tingling? No telling what side effects these fits have on my psyche. There’s no remedy, I lament, humming a few bars of the International. Too late for contraception, tardy for vaccinations or firewalls. We must be already infected. Paranoia, indeed!

New realities

On the last day of April, we watched on the telly the new fascist Mayor of Rome ascend the Campidolgio, gaze out over the people and the city’s imperial past and the remaining signs of the Ventennio, the 20 years of Mussolinian Fascism, and the new political paysage decreed by idle electors who should have stayed their sandy beach instead. Stunned, we watched him finger his Celtic cross and pronounce that he was mayor of all the Romans. Our mayor too! And down below they salute, their arms stiff in the old Roman way, the old fascist salute.

The events this spring in Rome, in Italy, have already resonated over the western world. A déja vu from those 20 fateful years of the dictator Benito Mussolini that got Italy into the jam it’s in today. The restoration of the Fascists is no minor accident along the way. It crowned the victory of the Right in its New Millennium Italian campaign. And what a Right! A Fascist Right led by Silvio Berlusconi (who so recalls Mussolini), who was heard to utter these words about his victory: “We’re the falange.”

As I write these lines, Berlusconi’s falange is occupying every nook and cranny it can get its hands on in the country people of the world so love. First Berlusca swept the elections to become the new leader. Then, on the heels of his blitzkrieg, the Fascist heirs of the old Fascist Party -- who now call themselves post-Fascists, collected the magnificent capital city of Rome and ancient capital of Europe. Fifty-year-old Mayor Gianni Alemanno calls his Celtic cross a symbol, a symbol he removed from the body of a fallen Fascist companion and that he never takes off! A street warrior he was during gli anni di piombo, the so-called “years of lead” because of the bullets zipping through the air as Left and Right battled on the streets of Italy in the 1970s and 80s.

Gianni Alemanno, the former youth leader of the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement, the heir of Mussolini’s Fascist state, is the first proto- or ex- or neo- or (as Fascists prefer) post-Fascist Mayor of Rome. Installed on the Campidoglio on the last day of April, Alemanno announced matter-of-factly that his first two measures would be to remove the 20,000 Roma gypsies encamped in the city and many along the Tiber River. Roma, go home! As if gypsies had a home. Then, he will demolish American architect Richard Meier’s brand new monumental museum that houses the shrine of Ara Pacis -- the Emperor Augustus’ Altar of Peace dating back to January 30, 9 BCE -- which the Right disliked from the start while the former Left mayor was building it, even though it has become a top tourist attraction in the city center. And then . . . and then, he set about naming a string of Fascist cronies into his city administration.

Italy has not just shifted rightwards, out front of the rest as often in its past, a test tube for West Europe, but, in fear of the artificially created fears of immigrants and terrorists, it has literally hurtled to the right. First, swarms of Italians shoed in Berlusconi and his Fascists and his alliance of the autonomist-federalist-separatist Northern League and another autonomist party in the south. Then, Romans came out for Mayor Alemanno and his band of proto- neo- ex- post-Fascists.

This new Italy of the Right -- already called the Third Republic -- intends negating not just the outgoing Center Left government and its actions. Berlusconi has already made his voice heard in East and West and especially at the European Union in Brussels: he personally will arrange for gas for Italy from the Russia of his friend Putin, he will nationalize Alitalia Airlines against all rules to the contrary, he will, he will, he will . . . do what he likes.

Rome is not only the capital city, modernized by 15 years of leftwing mayors. Traditionally it is also a stronghoold of the Left, the pride of the Left, with its efficient mayors speaking a modern cultural langauge, open to experiments and development, pointed toward the future. Italy’s capital in the hands of the National Alliance (Aleanza Nazionale), Fascism’s direct heir, is an anomaly, as is the country’s new political geography: the North with its capital of Milan belongs to the autonomist Northern League, the South including Calabria and Sicily to the Southern Automist Movement, Rome to the Fascists, and Italy to Berlusconi.

The transformation of Italy’s map couldn’t be more radical. This event is not a normal alternation in power between two similar parties. This is an electoral earthquake. Even Alemanno was the last to expect his victory in Rome. It was taken for granted the Left would win again. The post-Fascist victory changes the face also of Italian politics. The Center Left -- the reformist Democratic Party headed by Rome’s ex-Mayor and ex-Communist Walter Ventroni who dared run alone -- lost its bet. In the elections, it lost also the “radical Left” -- the Communists, Socialists and other small Left-leaning parties with which it refused to run.

The sad reality is that the resurgence of the right-wing vote would have anyway swept away any combination of the Left. The outcome testifies to a majority of a real Right in the nation. Italy’s municipal and national elections were not about programs which were similar. Neither Berlusconi nor the new mayor of Rome were elected for their programs. People wanted discontinuity. A new direction, even if it smacked of the old. As nonsensical as the alternative choice of Silvio Berlusconi and Rome’s post-Fascists seems, people voted against the political caste. Rome electors of both Right and Left leapt onto Berlusconi’s bandwagon.

The Right vote in Rome and Italy bears an indelible “anti-establishment” stamp, the same as in most of Europe during the last two years. It is both a nationalistic and sometimes an anti-European Union voice, xenophobic, anti-immigration and anti-globalization, the voice of the populist spirit sweeping across the Continent. For many, the Center Left, the Left in general, is perceived as an extraneous, foreign body. At the same time, populist Berlusconism in Italy and the anti-Europeanism in Sarkozy’s France and in Tory Great Britain, avoid old rules and commitments. The European Right is instead marked by a Janus-like duality: it is both establishment and outsider, rebelliousness and professionalism, anti-politics and political caste, ideological and anti-ideological.

And the deception works.

Here’s a look at this new “post-Fascist” Italy: on a national level, Gianfranco Fini, president of the neo-Fascist National Alliance, has become the new president of the Chamber of Deputies, the third in rank in the Italian state. Fascists will occupy two of 12 major ministries, backed up by a horde of Fascist deputy ministers and under secretaries. In Rome, as in other cities, provinces and regions throughout the country, ex-Fascists are stepping into positions of power.

And it has an ideology, and how! -- the Christian roots of Europe, condemnation of relativism, moral or otherwise, low tolerance level for others, protection and security for citizens, all the components of modern populism. Old social blocks have collapsed, the class role weakened, interest groups intertwined.

Meanwhile, as the bourgeois Right marches in triumph over the Continent, the Left staggers, teeters and totters in disarray, suffering from its minority syndrome, an electoral inferiority complex. Unity on the Left remains a chimera. In Italy, one says there is much too little Social Democracy and too little Left in the Center Left, which avoids the word “Left,” and too little political initiative in the radical Left which detests the word “Center.” Incompatible or not, the two have thus far proven to be a losing combination. The alliance was ineffective in the outgoing government, a loser in the eyes of the electorate and especially in the eyes of the Left components themselves, today political orphans, for the first time without representation in the new Parliament. Yet neither the Center Left nor the Left can hope to govern the nation alone. Too many of the Left, it seems, accept the role of permanent opposition.

Nonetheless, though no longer in Parliament, Italy’s radical Left, as most of the European Left -- and unlike the US Left -- has its political parties, its national press, a network of societies and circles and social forums for grasroots activities and the training of new political leaders. It thus nurtures hopes of a return to parliament in the next elections which in turn makes future participation in politcal power theoretically possible.

Winds of the Right blowing across Europe

Actually it didn’t happen from one day to the next. In retrospect, howeve,r it seems to have come about suddenly while Italy was busy watching the experiment with its first real Center Left government, a coalition of the Center and the Radical Left, including Communists. For 20 months or so the experiment limped along, stumbled, and then collapsed over a bagatelle. New elections brought Italy back to the main body of Europe in which the Right is either a majority or at the helm of state of the four biggest countries with a combined population of nearly 300 million -- besides Italy, Germany, France and Great Britain, the latter still formally governed by a Labour Party leaning rightwards and today in a minority in the Tory-dominated nation.

Despite its broad national roots, the British Labour Party lost heavily in local elections this past weekend, including the loss of the mayorship of London to the Conservative candidate, in substance resembling the simultaneous rout of the Left in Italy -- the painful price the UK Left must now pay for the disastrous alliance of Tony Blair with Bushian America. In Germany, the Christian Democrats govern in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party that chose an alliance with the Right rather than with the Left of Socialists and Communists of the Linke, the same choice the Center Left Democratic Party of Italy had made. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy last year rode roughshod over the Center Left Socialists and at the same time crushed both the extreme Right of the National Front and the French Communist Party on the Left, certified by the bourgeoisie for his crushing of the impertinent uprisings in the Paris banlieues when he called the sons of immigrants the “scum of the nation.”

In 2007 elections in Greece, the Center Right New Democracy Party won in close elections, while The Netherlands and Belgium are both governed by a coalition of center-oriented Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. In Portugal in 2006, the Center Right Social Democratic Party won presidential elections over the Center Left Socialist Party. Also in 2006, Sweden, which had been dominated by the Social Democratic Party since 1932 -- accounting for Sweden’s broad social system -- fell to the Center Right Alliance for Sweden. A similar right-leaning model rules in most of East Europe, today still searching for an acceptable social-political model. Emblematic of the times in the East: Ukraine is displaying its confusion by renaming its streets, Tolstoy Street becomes John Lennon, and Maxim Gorky cedes to Abraham Lincoln.

Is it any wonder then that I am sick, malato, malade, enfermo, krank? That I am a lonely paranoic staggering under the onslaught of legions of continental Chichikovs?

Only in Spain, tough Germanic Spain, standing like a proud and lonely Don Quixote, only in Spain does a Socialist Party govern, today the most progressive land in Europe. But it, too, is under neo-liberalist fire. Lonely but in neo-liberal eyes an intolerable Spain! A Socialist who dares to keep his word on withdrawing troops from Iraq! Lonely and criticized also by the Left for daring to lean on conservatives to push through his program! Oh God! How to do the right thing? But not to worry, the Right says. Zapatero’s new four-year term will pass quickly, after which Spain’s Fascist Right can leap back onto center stage.

In the wake of the spread of uniformity and the gospel of order and security, one might wonder if all these Center Right governments are in cahoots? It would seem so. Is this the real face of the European Union? It seems so. Is this part of the World-Government-New-World-Order process? Looks like it.

But how did it happen that the Left which for over a century fashioned social Europe has now lost out to the neo-liberal Center Right? And what about the European Social Idea? One answer is the sad reality that human beings are conservative. People want to be led, led well and honestly, but led by the hand. In general, people just want to be “happy.” As a rule the Right is adept at making illogical impossible promises of happiness and creating the sense of false consciousness of happiness. People need and want to hear those promises, as unlikely as they may be, of good times to come.

Europe is again rich. And as a result daily life is more and more “bourgeois.” For the conservative majority, red flags and the hammer and sickle mean bloodshed, uncertainty and disorder. Some members of the European Parliament recently went so far as to propose a ban on the hammer and sickle symbol. Bourgeois values have never left much space for leftist ideas.

Once creative and innovative, the maker of revolutions, the European bourgeoisie is today largely Right. Especially in Italy and France. We forget that the European bourgeoisie permitted Fascism and Nazism, created it in fact, in order to preserve its social rule, private property and the capitalist system threatened by the Revolution that Western Socialists were never able to pull off. To many, Fascism was merely an annoyance that saved the bourgeois system. In fact, Fascism tempted the bourgeoisie in all of Europe. In that sense, the European bourgeoisie continues to believe -- in its overwhelming false consciousness -- that the government exists for it and for its interests. In today’s European showcase, bourgeois Liberals, who across Europe as a rule vote Right, are Power’s ally and stand in the way of genuine social progress and effective redistribution of wealth.

Though in that sense Europeans have opted for false happiness, I still don’t believe the question of Socialism-Communism has been definitively settled. On one hand, the inexplicable mystery for neo-liberals is that traditionally Social Democratic countries in Scandinavia enjoy the world’s highest standard of living, and that those mixed economies, part social, part capitalist, work. Though Communism, crushed by its Soviet past, is no longer considered a viable alternative to neo-liberal democracy, its memory is alive. Marx wrote that the ghost of Communism haunted Europe. Today, in the minds of many, the memory of that ghost persists, a ghost so powerful that the Right regularly dangles its threat before the eyes of voters each time they go to the polls.

Emigration on my mind

The situation is bleak, I’m bleak, and I don’t feel better about it. Not at all. While Right Europe worries about immigration to Europe, I have emigration on my mind. But to where? Spain perhaps? But in less than four years Zapatero’s time will be up. The Fascist falange will probably return. And then where would a prospective emigrant go? Across the strait to Morocco, maybe. Tangier has a certain appeal. Latin America, too, is appealing, albeit risky. It could only be Venezuela or Bolivia or Cuba. But even Cuba! First tourism, then Fidel’s retirement, now cellular phones and computers. Who knows where revisionism there will end? So I come back to Europe. For some reason I rule out Iceland. But Finland might be nice. After all, 12 of 20 government ministers are women! A world record. Still, Finnish conservatives won last year’s elections while Social Democrats, Socialists and even Communists all converge around the Center. I must confess that I’m perplexed by the stability up there in rich Finland.

Meanwhile, sick and lonely, I’m again studying the Ultima Thule idea, which has long fascinated me. It is in reserve as a final emigration destination.

Building Manager: D.C. Madam's Death Suspicious

WESH.com

The death of Deborah Jean Palfrey, also known as the D.C. Madam, continues to be plagued by uncertainty.

Among the conspiracy theorists is Joe Strizack, the manager of Park Lake Towers, an Orlando condo building where Palfrey owned a unit.

Strizack said even after reading Palfrey’s suicide letters, he does not believe her death was a suicide.

"No one will get into that unit until her mother does," Strizack said. "That place is sealed."

Strizack said he talked to Palfrey the day she left for her mother’s home in Tarpon Springs, where she was later found hanged.

Strizack looked over the suicide notes, but he questioned if the notes were actually written by Palfrey, and if they were, he thinks they may have been written under duress.

"She could sign her signature a hundred times and it would be identical," Strizack said. "That is not her signature."

He remains adamant that Palfrey was murdered.

"Monday morning a woman tells you that she’s afraid for her life, she told me several instances where people we following her, and Thursday she’s dead," Strizack said. "What do you think? If someone would put a hit out for her and id someone wanted something done they could do it."

Despite the speculation, the Tarpon Springs Police Department is sticking by their original statement. They said there has been no new evidence to suggest Palfrey’s death was anything other than suicide.

Previous Stories:

* May 2, 2008: D.C. Madam Found Hanged In Tarpon Springs

Italian Government Disowns Honolulu Consul Letter Recognizing Hawaiian Kingdom Government

by Andrew Walden

Hawaii Free Press

The so-called “Hawaiian Kingdom Government” made international headlines last week with its takeover of Iolani Palace. But headlines are not the only outside support the Hawaiian Kingdom Government group is receiving. In a February 28, 2008 letter, Honorary Vice-Consul of Italy in Hawaii, Carmen Di Amore-Siah, purports to grant the Hawaii Kingdom Government group recognition by the Government of Italy.

In the letter addressed to Hawaii Kingdom Government and stamped “Italian Consulate” Di Amore-Siah writes:

“This office on behalf of the Italian Government in Hawaii acknowledges that there was a prior treaty that was not between the United States nor the State of Hawaii but between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the Italian government.

“We acknowledge and recognize that the Hawaiian Kingdom exists and is operating at 210 Iolani Avenue in Honolulu, Hawaii 96783. We appreciate your visits to our office and appreciate the relationship that Italy has with the Hawaiian Kingdom and its currently operating government.”

Speaking to Hawaii Free Press, Luca Ferrari, Italian Embassy spokesperson explained:

“If this letter is authentic, she is not acting within the authority of her office. These are personal opinions. To the extent that she is representing them as the opinion of the Italian government, that is certainly the big problem. To write it on official Italian stationary as representing the Italian government is unacceptable.”

Prior to its 1893 overthrow, the Hawaiian Kingdom had relations with numerous foreign countries, including a July 22, 1863 treaty with Italy.

http://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/treaty_italy.shtml

The Hawaii Republic, which resulted from the overthrow of the monarchy, was granted diplomatic recognition by Italian King Umberto I, September 23, 1894.

http://historymystery.grassrootinstitute.org/2008/04/06/recognition-of-the-republic-of-hawaii-italy

As for the current policy, Mr. Ferrari explained: “The Italian government does not recognize any Kingdom of Hawaii what so ever. We have no relationship. Our relationship is with the United States. As far as we are concerned, Hawaii is one of 50 states.”

Apparently the Di Amore-Siah letter was triggered by the Hawaiian Kingdom Government group pretending to ‘cancel’ the 1863 treaty that the Hawaiian Kingdom had with the Republic of Italy after the Honorary Consul failed to respond to an earlier Hawaiian Kingdom Government letter. Di-Amore-Siah writes:

“I acknowledge that the former Treaty between the Italian Government and the Hawaiian Kingdom was enacted and valid for over a century. I also understand that this treaty was cancelled in August of 2007, for the Italian Government’s failure to acknowledge your prior correspondence in an affirmative letter of acknowledgement.

“We are grateful that the Hawaiian Kingdom has reconsidered the cancellation of the treaty.”

Contacted by Hawaii Free Press, Di-Amore responded with a short written statement. In it she wrote:

“The Italian Government as well as I, believe that this is not a simple matter it is a ‘complicated matter’ and many of the consulates will disagree on the question of the existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom…. The United States has exercised sovereignty over Hawaii since 1898, and the rest of the world (except, based upon my letter Italy) has accepted this both de facto and de jure. Some in our community do want independence and assert the continuing existence of the Kingdom. Ultimately it depends on what other countries decide.”

Asked if she had been in touch with other officials of the Government of Italy regarding this letter, Di-Amore-Siah responded: “They have it. I gave it to them weeks ago.” The letter indicates that a copy was sent to the Italian Consulate-General in San Francisco. Speaking for the Embassy in Washington DC, Mr. Ferrari says: “This is the first time we have seen this letter.”

Speaking to Hawaii Free Press off the record, a United States' State Department official with involvement in Italian affairs indicated he would take up the matter with the Italian ambassador. The official said: “I think they have some explaining to do there.”

Explaining her decision, Di Amore-Siah wrote:

“Many advocates have worked to assist Hawaiians in their efforts to recover land and resources, and most recently were successful in obtaining from the Hawaii Supreme Court a permanent injunction preventing the sale or transfer of any of the lands ceded to the United States by the State of Hawaii until the claims of the Native Hawaiians are addressed and resolved, in the case of OHA v. HCDCH, decided Jan. 31, 2008. You might want to read that case, because it gives an excellent overview of this topic.

“They hope that the Akaka Bill can be passed, which would lead to negotiations for the return of land and resources to a reestablished Native Hawaiian governing entity….”

“The basis for my opinion and the acknowledgement letter that I wrote is based upon my knowledge and an article that I assisted in writing in law school and my understanding of international law. The article is authored by -- Jon M. Van Dyke, Carmen Di Amore-Siah, and Gerald W. Berkley-Coats, Self-Determination for Nonself-governing Peoples and for Indigenous Peoples: The Cases for Guam and Hawaii.”

Mr. Ferrari has a different understanding of international law. He says: “The honorary consuls have very limited powers. They are never allowed to talk on behalf of the government. We are immediately launching an investigation. The Consul General in San Francisco will be in charge of the investigation.”

Neo-Nazi killing puts spotlight on Italian militants

by Phil Stewart

ROME, May 5 (REUTERS) - The death on Monday of a man attacked by neo-Nazis threw the spotlight on political militancy in Italy, prompting the opposition to ask if a right-wing sweep at an April election had fed a climate of intolerance.

The victim, 29-year-old Nicola Tommasoli, finally succumbed to his injuries and died on Monday after being beaten into coma on May 1 by a group of youths identified by police as neo-Nazi soccer hooligans.

The beating, in the northern city of Verona, was condemned across the political spectrum; police have so far ruled out any political motive for what appears to be an isolated act of violence.

Still, Italy's centre-left portrayed it as a sign a growing intolerance in a country where fears about crime -- particularly by immigrants -- contributed to their resounding defeat by the right in last month's national and municipal elections.

The incident has put right-wingers on the defensive over the suggestion that support by militants helped them to win the April elections, including the mayorship of Rome.

"The responsibility lies with right-wing populists," said Paolo Ferrero, a leftist minister in the caretaker government expected to step down later this week.

He accused the far right of creating "scapegoats" for Italy's social problems that "brings in votes in a climate of insecurity, but also sows a long trail of hate".

The defeated centre-left candidate for prime minister, Walter Veltroni, said: "We are faced with a neo-fascist-style aggression that cannot and should not be underestimated".

In an informal poll by one television station, 51 percent of respondents said they feared the Verona attack could herald the start of a new wave of violent intolerance.

CITY OF LOVE?
The mayor of Verona, from the anti-immigrant Northern League which backed Silvio Berlusconi as premier, rejected any link between his party and Tommasoli's assailants. "There are millions of people that voted for us. It could be that one of them is a criminal," Tosi, who is cracking down on illegal immigrants in Verona, a city made famous by Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet".

But Tosi is not the only right-wing politician who had to distance himself from far-right elements.

Rome's new Mayor Gianni Alemanno urged supporters to avoid "excesses" after a small group gave him the right-armed Roman salute associated with fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and chanted "Duce!" (leader), as Mussolini's followers called him.

Alemanno, whose National Alliance is the successor to the post-war neo-fascists but is trying to become a mainstream conservative party, complained that the left tried to depict him as a fascist and anti-Semite during the campaign.

"We must condemn any form of ideological extremism regardless of where it comes from," said Alemanno as he visited monuments in Rome to Jewish victims of Nazi occupation, Italian wartime resistance heroes and Rome's synagogue.

"There are extremist fringes on the far right as well as the far left, but they are more an expression of urban marginalisation than actual politics."

During the mayoral race, Alemanno came under attack for wearing a Celtic cross round his neck -- a symbol of the far right in Italy comparable to the Nazi swastika.

Mystery of a killer elite fuels unrest in Turkey

Arrest of 47 people over alleged coup plot sparks fears of hidden ultra-right network

by Jason Burke

THE OBSERVER

It has the elements of a thriller: a shadowy group of right-wing former soldiers, a mafia don, extremist lawyers and politicians; hand-grenades in a rucksack; plots to kill the Prime Minister and a Nobel-prize winning writer; allegedly planted evidence and falsified wire taps.

Even the name of the villains - the Ergenekon network - has an airport paperback flavour, and the stakes involved are high: the stability of one of the world's most strategically important countries. This highly charged political reality is splitting Turkey.

In the coming days the Ergenekon investigation will reach its climax. According to newspaper reports, a long-awaited indictment will be issued by the state prosecutor. After successive waves of arrests, 47 people are in custody. They include senior figures in the ultra-right-wing Workers' Party, a dozen retired senior army officers, journalists and a lawyer accused of launching legal attacks that drove Nobel award-winning writer Orhan Pamuk from his homeland.

Crimes being blamed on Ergenekon include a series of murderous bomb blasts, a grenade attack on a newspaper, the murder of an Italian bishop and the killing last year of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink - all aimed, investigators believe, at creating a climate of terror and chaos propitious to a military coup that would depose Turkey's moderate Islamist government.

The coup attempt has revealed deep divisions in Turkey's 73 million-strong population over the country's identity: pro-European or anti-European, fiercely nationalist, ethnically homogeneous and militaristic, or globalised and pro-Western, more or less Islamic, more or less sunk in historical bitterness and dark conspiracy theories.

'The cleavage is deep: every institution, every social class, everybody is divided,' said Professor Murat Belge of Bigli University, Istanbul, an analyst. 'I am deeply apprehensive about what is going on now and what might happen.'

But for Mehmet Demirlek, a lawyer defending a colleague accused of being a key member of Ergenekon, the allegations are 'imaginary'. 'There is not a shred of truth in them,' he said. 'This is 100 per cent political. It has all been cooked up by the government and by the imperialist powers, the CIA, Mossad and the Jewish lobby and the European Union to eliminate Turkish nationalism. There is no such thing as Ergenekon.' His imprisoned client, Kemal Kerincsiz, told The Observer in an interview prior to his arrest he was a 'patriot fighting the disintegration of the nation'.

For Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer representing Hrant Dink's family, Ergenekon has 'existed for years'. 'A small part of what has been previously hidden is being exposed. Call it the "deep state".'

An investigation was launched by state prosecutors after 27 hand-grenades, said to be the make used by the military, were found in a home in a rundown part of Istanbul last June. Investigators claim that they later uncovered an underground network dedicated to extremist nationalist agitation.

Wire taps led to further finds of explosives, weapons and documents listing security arrangements of senior political and military figures and death lists. The papers supposedly proving Ergenekon - the name of a mythic mountain in Asia where the ancestors of the Turkic peoples escaped the Mongols - was set up in 1999 as a clandestine and violent organisation aimed of maintaining a reactionary, purist vision of a strong, militaristic Turkey, the heritage, the extremists believed, of the founder of the nation, Kemal Ataturk.

The plotters tap 'into a psyche that is based on a new and extreme nationalism', said Cengiz Candar, one of Turkey's most prominent journalists. 'The idea is that to preserve Turkey it is necessary and legitimate to resist in any way. And anyone who is pro-European, liberal, who argues for increased rights for minorities and so on is a traitor.'

According to Candar, this new nationalism is the result of a coincidence of factors: the difficulties of Turkey's accession to the European Union, soul-searching over nation identity generated by the debate on Europe, the emergence of a strong, semi-autonomous Kurdish state in post-Saddam Iraq with all the potential implications that has for Turkey's large Kurdish population, and, perhaps most importantly, the continuing electoral success of the AKP, the Justice and Development party, the moderate Islamist party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power in 2002. 'With no way of ousting them through democratic means, other means become attractive to the extremist nationalists. This country has a long tradition of such actions,' said Candar.

Turkey's political history has been marked by interventions by the army, each preceded by a period of violent instability and each justified by the need to preserve the constitution and the nation. The repeated electoral success of the AKP, its social and economic policies, its pro-European, pro-free market stance, the growth of newly wealthy, religiously conservative middle classes who vote for Erdogan and his colleagues and the party's break with Turkey's fiercely secular ideology - all threaten the nation's powerful military and bureaucratic establishment.

A legal bid to ban the party - on the grounds that it wants to impose Sharia law on Turkey and thus overturn the constitution - is one tactic, AKP party loyalists say. Violence and the activities of Ergenekon is another. 'How long are these people going to keep their power when it is incompatible with a European, fully democratic Turkey?' asked Belge. 'And how big is Ergenekon? Who are they? How high does it go?'

No official military spokesman would comment but General Haldu Somazturk, who retired three years ago, told The Observer 'the Ergenekon group is trivial, barely worthy of attention', saying that though 'it was possible' a few military officers might have become involved in the group, the vast majority of Turkish soldiers were 'committed to maintaining democracy'.

Somazturk, who said that his own views 'reflected those of most senior soldiers', insisted 'there are far more grave problems facing Turkey than a handful of right-wing crazies'. Instead, he said, it was the government that worried him. 'The AKP are a concern. There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Either a government is influenced by religion or it isn't. And if it is, then it is not secular and not democratic,' he said. 'We want to move democracy forward, they want to move it back and we are approaching a point of no return.'

In a rundown working-class suburb of Istanbul, far from the tourist sights of the historic centre, the deputy chairman of the Nationalist Action Party in the city, Nazmi Celenk, made an effort to show his party's moderate side. 'In Turkey we are on the front line of the clash of civilisations,' he said. 'We are the natural allies of America and Britain in this region. Our future is in Europe - but not necessarily in the European Union.'

Yet Celenk was critical of last week's reform of Turkey's strict rules on 'insulting Turkishness', pushed through parliament in the face of fierce resistance from the 70 deputies from his own party. If he was in power, Celenk said, the tight laws on freedom of expression would be maintained. And, if he had the power, he would invade Syria and split the state between Turkey and Iraq. The violent Kurdish activism in the south-east of his country would be solved 'in 24 hours'.

A street away, a group of mechanics and local shopkeepers played backgammon. They said they were worried by rising crime, drug use and low wages, but would not vote for the nationalists. 'They try and cause fights between us to get votes,' Hikmet, a bus owner, said.

Fethiye Cetin, the Dink family lawyer, is still optimistic despite the tensions. She discovered her own minority roots - an Armenian grandmother - at the age of 25. 'This period is the peak of aggressive nationalism in Turkey, but there is still peace,' she said in her small office on a hill above the blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. 'But everyone always focuses on the negative side and never on the tens of millions who live together without any trouble at all.'
Victim of the plot?

Hrant Dink was a 52-year-old journalist, assassinated in January 2007. As co-founder of Agos, a newspaper published in both Turkish and Armenian, he became a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey and pushed for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and human rights.

Dink was shot in Istanbul by Ogün Samast, a 17-year old Turkish nationalist. 100,000 mourners turned out to Dink's funeral to chant: 'We are all Armenians'.