Mario Monti, the economist who will head an emergency Italian government following the departure of Silvio Berlusconi, brings credentials earned in a decade of battles as a European Commissioner from the 1990s.
Monti made his name as the powerful Competition Commissioner who took on U.S. corporate titans General Electric and Microsoft, blocking GE's planned merger with rival Honeywell and imposing a record 497 million euro ($683 million) antitrust fine on the software giant.
His technical expertise, sharp intellect and diplomatic skills added to his refusal to bow to intense lobbying pressures made him one of the most highly regarded officials the Commission has seen.
"He didn't have a very Italian way of going about things," recalls one former ambassador, who worked with Monti in Brussels and remembers him as a hard but reliable negotiating partner. "His nickname in those days was 'The Italian Prussian'".
He was nominated by Berlusconi as internal markets commissioner in 1994, taking over the competition portfolio in 1999 where he served for five years.
Named last week as Senator for Life by President Giorgio Napolitano, Monti, 68, is expected to appoint a small cabinet made up largely of technical specialists to steer Italy through a crisis that has brought it to the brink of financial disaster.
A similar technocrat government under former Bank of Italy official Lamberto Dini passed important reforms in 1995 and the hope of many outside Italy is that Monti can do the same.
A convinced free marketeer with close connections to the European and global policy-making elite, Monti has always backed a more closely integrated euro zone and has written a series of articles in recent months lambasting the Berlusconi government's policy failures.
He is chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission, a body that brings together the power elites of the United States, Europe and Japan and is also a member of the secretive Bilderberg Group of business leaders and other "leading citizens".
Continued on Page 47
#3
Trilateralists and Bilderbergers probably rate at about the same intellectual level as the anarchists holding up the banner that said, "Abolish Capitalism and Replace It With Something Good!"
Despite ivory tower credentials, they have no clue as to how business works. Instead they rely on theory and computer models made by equally clueless people.
Muslims in Switzerland are responding with shock and outrage after a pig carcass and severed swine heads were discovered buried at the site of a proposed mosque.
Police in the town of Grenchen uncovered the pigs Friday after they received an anonymous message claiming that someone had buried the body parts and spilled 120 liters of blood from the animals in an effort to desecrate the ground to halt the construction of the mosque.
Pork and pork byproducts are haram, or forbidden, in Islam.
The unsigned flier, written in German, says "This operation was done (conducted) to protest against the growing expansion of Islam in Switzerland," and says that a similar desecration in Spain earlier halted another mosque construction project.
Thomas Suber, chief of the Solothurn Canton police, told CNN by phone that there were no suspects currently, but that a full investigation is under way.
"We can't say yet it is a hate crime in those words, but it could have been done to stop the mosque," said Suber.
Suber said that whoever is responsible may be brought up on environmental pollution charges.
The police chief says that veterinary health officials have been called in to find if pig's blood has in fact been spilled, and that charges may be filed over illegal dumping of animal parts in addition to other potential criminal charges.
But for Muslims in Switzerland, it's just the latest sign that they are being victimized by some in the far right.
Abdel Azziz Qaasim Illi, spokesman for Switzerland's Central Islamic Council said the deed "crossed a line" that had already been pushed against Muslims since a popular referendum in 2009 banned the construction of new minarets.
Continued on Page 47
#3
Should this be considered as a case of Biological warfare or Theological warfare ?
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
11/14/2011 6:17 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Switzerland's Central Islamic Council (Islamischer Zentralrat Schweiz) is a salafist/islamofascist outfit. Qaasim (Patric) Illi is an ethnic Swiss convert to Islam, and a former pal of Sheikh Yassin.
His wife Nora Illi is an ethic Swiss convert to Islam as well. Here's an article in German plus photograph.
Some choice quotes from Illi's website during the second intifada: «Zwei Linienbusse voll mit Zionisten-Besatzungs-Bastarden gesprengt. Die Brüder erlegten min. 16 Zionisten und mehr als 91 wurden verletzt», "Two transit busses full of Zionist-Occupier bastards blown up. The brothers culled at least 16 Zionists and more than 91 were injured."
«Breaking News: Explosion in Taba, Hilton in die Luft gesprengt, viele Zionisten-Schweine in kleine, handliche Stücke zerlegt. Mind. 35 Tote, 250 Verletzte. In Gaza feiern die Massen. Allahu Akbar!» "Breaking News: Explosion in Taba, Hilton blown up, many Zionist-pigs cut up into small manageable pieces. The masses are celebrating in Gaza. Allan's Snackbar!"
I'm not shedding any tears over Mr Illi's precious little feelings being hurt.
#6
I get kind of outraged when they discover human body parts and blood in torched or dynamited churches located in predominately 'Religion of Peas®' countries, too. Plus, the authorities there do even less than what the good Constable Suber appears to be doing here.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/14/2011 8:24 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Anyone think they might have done it themselves?
Wouldn't be the first (or second, or third, or ...) time.
#8
Entirely possible. Expected, even. When the infidels just aren't generating enough outrage to keep them happy, why, it's for the good of the community to manufacture some.
#12
The reason that Sarah Palin is not vice-president right now is that she cannot take a punch and keep on truckin'. She just has to claw out the eyes of her tormentor.
That is a natural thing, just not a Christian thing.
So, you Islams, don't be like Sarah, get to being more Christian, or you get a big fat fail posted on your forehead by everyone you want to love you.
Yes, exactly. Ever spend time in Switzerland? It's hard to be outraged about much of anything. But Muslims surrounded by pork-eating, beer-swilling infidels may feel obligated to be outraged, lest Allan (or some Islamofascist head-chopper) suspect their faith is inauthentic. If they can't find anything real to be outraged about . . . well then, why not make something up.
[Dawn] Swiss prosecutors will opt to avoid a public trial for three Swiss men suspected of giving nuclear weapons technology and supplies to a rogue network in Pakistain, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The case is politically sensitive for Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... and the United States because of alleged national security implications, the men's alleged CIA ties, and repeated instances of evidence being destroyed. It involves charges of violating Swiss nonproliferation laws.
The Federal Prosecutors Office in Bern was quoted as saying it plans to use a shortened procedure to require a penalty but no trial if the nation's top criminal court doesn't object and the men plead guilty, the Zurich weekly newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported.
Bern prosecutors' office did not immediately respond to an News Agency that Dare Not be Named request for comment.
Urs Tinner, his brother Marco and their father Friedrich have been under investigation by Swiss authorities for almost a decade for supplying equipment and technical know-how to an international smuggling ring led by Pak scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Urs Tinner was released in December 2008 after almost five years in investigative detention without being charged.
As the creator of Pakistain's atomic bomb, Khan sold the centrifuges for secret nuclear weapons programs in countries that included Libya and Iran before his operation was disrupted in 2003.
A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutors, Walburga Bur, has previously told AP that a shortened procedure was possible under which the Swiss engineers admit the basic charges against them but face no more than five years imprisonment. Normally, anyone who breaks Swiss laws banning the export of nuclear material faces up to 10 years imprisonment.
Urs Tinner, who like his brother and father has been released on bail pending charges, claimed in an 2009 interview with Swiss TV station SF1 that he had worked with US intelligence. He said he had tipped off the CIA about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.
The CIA has declined to comment on the case.
The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, which forced Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, and helped expose Khan's smuggling ring.
The case against the Tinners sparked a political outcry in Switzerland after it was revealed that the Swiss government repeatedly ordered evidence destroyed, allegedly under pressure from senior US officials.
The Swiss government cited national security concerns, but a parliamentary investigation found there had been no immediate danger to Switzerland's security.
A Swiss investigating magistrate, Andreas Mueller, who oversaw the last three years of a six-year federal probe against the Tinners, recommended last December that the government bring charges against the three men.
Mueller said his recommendation, contained in a confidential report to federal prosecutors, was based on an exhaustive probe. He said the Tinners had worked for the CIA since June 2003 and did not deny also working for the Khan network.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
