One of the country’s staples seems aptly suited to the current national condition of being without government for a year In the bars and boutiques around the splendidly gothic Grand Place in Brussels, tourists and locals can savour beer, chips and chocolate. They can also enjoy waffles, another Belgian staple, and one which is aptly suited to the current national condition. Thanks to epic political waffling, Belgium on Monday will have been without a government for a year. A caretaker government has been running Belgium since elections on 13 June 2010, but despite countless negotiations among the fragmented political parties, the country’s leaders are not even close to an agreement on a new coalition. The deadlock reflects a widening split between French and Dutch-speaking communities who rarely intermingle, and increasingly refuse to learn each other’s language. In last year’s elections, the biggest proportion of votes, some 17%, went to the N-VA, a Flemish nationalist party founded only 10 years ago that calls for independence for Flanders. Despite his belligerent rhetoric, N-VA leader Bart De Wever is involved in seven-party talks on a new coalition, but there is a suspicion – and not just on the French-speaking side – that he is systematically sabotaging them for his own political ends. Language bickering infects almost every political issue, to the extent that Belgians cannot even agree on what music to play in the Brussels metro. Last month, complaints about an apparent bias towards Jacques Brel and other French-language singers forced the public transport authority to restrict its playlist to English, Spanish and Italian songs. Some say Belgium’s 180-year history, as a shotgun alliance of French and Dutch speakers, means the country lacks a sense of national purpose to push people together during a crisis. “We have an awkward democracy, which is quite conflict prone,” said Carl Devos, professor of political science at Ghent University. “If you don’t have a national identity, everything is defined as them and us. Belgian problems don’t exist: it’s only French and Flemish problems.” Yet for most Belgians these tiffs matter little. Thanks to well-functioning bureaucracy, rubbish is collected, buses run on time, and taxes still have to be paid. This is partly because many powers have already been hived off to Belgium’s regional governments and linguistic communities, who handle day-to-day responsibilities like transport, the environment, and local economic projects. At the federal level, the caretaker administration of the outgoing prime minister, Yves Leterme, has kept things ticking over. It deftly helmed Belgium’s six-month presidency of the European Union last year, pushed through bold budget-cutting measures in February, and also dispatched fighter jets to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya. The country is recovering well from the downturn: business and consumer confidence is at its highest level since 2007, and last month the government forecast economic growth of 2.2% for this year and 2012, well above the average of 1.7% for the eurozone. “You could say that Belgium has invented a whole new form of governance: Nogov, ” says Dave Sinardet, a politics lecturer at Brussels Free University (VUB). “The fact that Belgium has not done so badly in the past year, does in a way prove that the country is not a complete non-functioning mess, as some in Flanders claim it is.” The scant impact deadlock exerts on everyday life is probably why most Belgians shrug off the stalemate, even making light of it at times. Earlier this year, tongue-in-cheek efforts to resolve the crisis included a campaign to get Belgian men to quit shaving until a government is formed and a suggestion by one MP that politicians be denied sex until they can agree on a coalition. When Belgium broke the world record for its government impasse, beating Iraq’s 2009 marker as undisputed dithering champion, it was greeted with ironic celebrations across the country . There will probably be a few more mocking celebrations on Monday. It may well be another year before the crisis is resolved, but if Belgians continue to laugh at their bizarre condition, it probably means there is hope yet. Belgium Europe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …One of the country’s staples seems aptly suited to the current national condition of being without government for a year In the bars and boutiques around the splendidly gothic Grand Place in Brussels, tourists and locals can savour beer, chips and chocolate. They can also enjoy waffles, another Belgian staple, and one which is aptly suited to the current national condition. Thanks to epic political waffling, Belgium on Monday will have been without a government for a year. A caretaker government has been running Belgium since elections on 13 June 2010, but despite countless negotiations among the fragmented political parties, the country’s leaders are not even close to an agreement on a new coalition. The deadlock reflects a widening split between French and Dutch-speaking communities who rarely intermingle, and increasingly refuse to learn each other’s language. In last year’s elections, the biggest proportion of votes, some 17%, went to the N-VA, a Flemish nationalist party founded only 10 years ago that calls for independence for Flanders. Despite his belligerent rhetoric, N-VA leader Bart De Wever is involved in seven-party talks on a new coalition, but there is a suspicion – and not just on the French-speaking side – that he is systematically sabotaging them for his own political ends. Language bickering infects almost every political issue, to the extent that Belgians cannot even agree on what music to play in the Brussels metro. Last month, complaints about an apparent bias towards Jacques Brel and other French-language singers forced the public transport authority to restrict its playlist to English, Spanish and Italian songs. Some say Belgium’s 180-year history, as a shotgun alliance of French and Dutch speakers, means the country lacks a sense of national purpose to push people together during a crisis. “We have an awkward democracy, which is quite conflict prone,” said Carl Devos, professor of political science at Ghent University. “If you don’t have a national identity, everything is defined as them and us. Belgian problems don’t exist: it’s only French and Flemish problems.” Yet for most Belgians these tiffs matter little. Thanks to well-functioning bureaucracy, rubbish is collected, buses run on time, and taxes still have to be paid. This is partly because many powers have already been hived off to Belgium’s regional governments and linguistic communities, who handle day-to-day responsibilities like transport, the environment, and local economic projects. At the federal level, the caretaker administration of the outgoing prime minister, Yves Leterme, has kept things ticking over. It deftly helmed Belgium’s six-month presidency of the European Union last year, pushed through bold budget-cutting measures in February, and also dispatched fighter jets to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya. The country is recovering well from the downturn: business and consumer confidence is at its highest level since 2007, and last month the government forecast economic growth of 2.2% for this year and 2012, well above the average of 1.7% for the eurozone. “You could say that Belgium has invented a whole new form of governance: Nogov, ” says Dave Sinardet, a politics lecturer at Brussels Free University (VUB). “The fact that Belgium has not done so badly in the past year, does in a way prove that the country is not a complete non-functioning mess, as some in Flanders claim it is.” The scant impact deadlock exerts on everyday life is probably why most Belgians shrug off the stalemate, even making light of it at times. Earlier this year, tongue-in-cheek efforts to resolve the crisis included a campaign to get Belgian men to quit shaving until a government is formed and a suggestion by one MP that politicians be denied sex until they can agree on a coalition. When Belgium broke the world record for its government impasse, beating Iraq’s 2009 marker as undisputed dithering champion, it was greeted with ironic celebrations across the country . There will probably be a few more mocking celebrations on Monday. It may well be another year before the crisis is resolved, but if Belgians continue to laugh at their bizarre condition, it probably means there is hope yet. Belgium Europe guardian.co.uk
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enlarge The Republican Party, Tim Pawlenty often lectures, “should be the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.” If so, the GOP White House hopeful miserably failed his own Sam’s Club test this week. Unveiling his economic plan draining $7.8 trillion from the U.S. Treasury in order to give millionaires a 41% tax cut , Tim Pawlenty made George W. Bush look like Karl Marx. To be sure, the ” Better Plan ” from the man who calls himself “T-Paw” was greeted with sidesplitting laughter . His claim to that he could achieve to 5% economic growth over ten straight years – a feat never performed in modern American history, was righty mocked across the political spectrum as ” fantasy “, ” magical “, ” wishful thinking ” and ” fuzzy math .” His demand for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and capping federal spending at 18% of GDP would have made lawbreakers out of Ronald Reagan as well as the 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators who just voted for the Ryan budget plan . Perhaps most comical is Pawlenty’s insistence that “If you can find a good or service on the internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing it.” But the most jaw-dropping aspect of Tim Pawlenty’s economic hallucination is the unprecedented upward income redistribution it would produce. Reviewing an analysis by the Tax Policy Center , Bloomberg explained that “the top 0.1 percent of U.S. taxpayers would save an average of $1.4 million in taxes under the economic plan of Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty,” while “almost half of the benefits would flow to taxpayers in the top 1 percent of income distribution, or those earning more than $593,011 in 2013.” As Citizens for Tax Justice concluded, the 400 richest Americans – whose incomes doubled and tax rates were halved over the past decade – would enjoy a 73% reduction in their tax bills. And it turns out, the merely well-off and the fabulously rich would join the unimaginably wealthy in reaping the T-Paw Payday for the gilded class : Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million would enjoy an average cut in personal income taxes of $288,822, a 41.4 percent cut. Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $10 million would enjoy an average cut in personal income taxes of $2.4 million, a 46.3 percent cut. The cost of the personal income tax cuts just for taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million would be $141.8 billion. Pawlenty’s windfall for the wealthy would make George Bush and Paul Ryan blush. While the corporate tax rate would be slashed from 35% to 15%, Pawlenty would create two tax brackets of 10% for those earning up to $50,000 and 25% above. (As with the Paul Ryan plan, the loopholes Tim Pawlenty would close remain unnamed.) At a time of when the federal tax burden is at a 60 year low and income inequality at an 80 year high , Pawlenty insists “we should eliminate altogether the capital gains tax, interest income tax, dividends tax, and the death tax.” (It is worth noting that less than one-quarter of one percent of U.S. families pay the estate tax , while George W. Bush’s last round of capital gains and dividend tax cuts in 2003 delivered 70% of their savings to “top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000.”) All told, Tim Pawlenty’s budget-busting blueprint would cost a staggering $7.8 trillio n over the next 10 years. In comparison, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 emptied the Treasury of $2.5 trillion over their first decade, and if made permanent, would drain roughly $4 trillion more. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, the savings from Paul Ryan’s draconian budget cuts ( three quarters of which are extracted from the poor and elderly ) endorsed by 98% of Republicans on Capitol Hill are almost completely offset by his $4.2 trillion in tax cuts. It’s with good reason that ThinkProgress concluded: Pawlenty’s plan wins the triple crown: it’s more radical than Ryan, costs three times more than the Bush tax cuts, and still means a tax increase on the middle class. Unveiling his absolutely fabulous plan for the fabulously rich, the former Governor and friend of Morgan Stanley used his humble roots as cover: “I come from a working class background. I didn’t grow up with wealth. But I’ve never resented those who have it.” In contrast, President Obama, Pawlenty charged, is “a champion practitioner of class warfare.” And with that, the would-be Sam’s Club Republican Tim Pawlenty gave away the game. After all, the side decrying the class war is usually the one winning it. (This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
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Continue reading …Twin explosions ripped through a market district in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, earlier today, killing at least 34 people and injuring more than 100. The initial bomb went off in a hotel bathroom from a timed device, say police, but the second was detonated by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle….
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Somalia’s president congratulates troops who killed al-Qaida terrorist responsible for African embassy bombings Kenyans and Somalis are celebrating the death of al-Qaida mastermind who planned East Africa’s deadliest terror attack in recent history and had eluded capture for 13 years, and Somalia’s president has congratulated the troops who killed him. The death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed – a man who topped the FBI’s most wanted list for planning the Aug. 7, 1998, U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania – was the third major strike in six weeks against the worldwide terror group that was headed by Osama bin Laden until his death last month. Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed congratulated government soldiers for killing Mohammed on Tuesday at a Mogadishu security checkpoint. “His aim was to commit violence in and outside the country,” Ahmed said, showing reporters documents and pictures he said government troops recovered from Mohammed. Ahmed did not let reporters check the documents, but he held up photos he said were of Mohammed’s family and operational maps for the militants in Mogadishu. Ahmed also held up a condolence letter he said Mohammed sent after bin Laden’s death. He didn’t say who it was addressed to, but said Mohammed co-authored the letter with a known Islamist leader in Somalia, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also honoured the victims of the bombings during a visit to the American compound in Tanzania. She put flowers on a large rock just inside the main gate of the embassy, said a silent prayer and spoke with three Tanzanian employees who were at the embassy when it was bombed. The attacks in Tanzania and Kenya killed 224 people. Most of the dead were Kenyans. Twelve Americans died. One of the survivors, Douglas Sidialo, was blinded by the bombing in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi. “God the creator has delivered Fazul Abdullah Mohammed to his destiny the same way he delivered Bin Laden to his destiny,” he said. “When you kill by the sword, bullets and bombs you die through a similar tragedy.” Sidialo, who said he once wanted to skin Bin Laden alive, said Sunday he has “moved on” and now would have preferred to see Mohammed captured alive and asked to account for his decisions. “Any death is not a cause of celebration,” he said. Thousands were wounded when a pickup truck rigged as a bomb exploded outside the four-story U.S. Embassy building. Within minutes, another bomb shattered the U.S. mission in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. “Killing terrorists only breeds more terrorists. We must find a lasting solution to this menace,” said Sidialo. Global terrorism Somalia Africa Kenya Tanzania guardian.co.uk
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Only question is whether prime minister will win enough votes to secure a mandate to rewrite the country’s constitution Voters in Turkey look set to make Recep Tayyip Erdogan the most successful prime minister in the history of the country’s multi-party system after an election that could open the door for fundamental changes to the constitution. Erdogan’s centre-right Justice and Development party (AKP) has goverened since a landslide victory in 2002, and all indicators are that it will win easily again after Sunday’s vote. “The sole question is if the AKP will win with a margin sufficiently large enough to secure them a constitutional majority, ” Gencer Ozcan, professor for international relations at Bilgi University, told the Guardian. According to Turkey’s current constitution, a party needs to win at least 10% of the national vote before it can enter the country’s 550-seat parliament. Only two of the 15 parties standing for election are expected to achieve that, with pollsters suggesting that the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) will get up to 30% of the votes. The rightwing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) might yet be stopped from reaching the threshold, after a sex tape scandal caused the resignation of 10 senior party members. Some 28 independent candidates, who are not bound to the 10% hurdle, are also expected to be voted into office. The AKP has vowed to change the constitution, which has remained largely unchanged since it was implemented in 1982 in the aftermath of a military coup two years earlier. If the MHP fails to get 10% of the vote, the AKP has a real chance to secure a supermajority, which would allow Erdogan to rewrite the country’s constitution without having to consult the rest of parliament. “In one way or another, Erdogan wants to implement a presidential system,” Ozcan said. “This is the main goal of a new constitution. This is the first time that the prime minister handpicked all AKP candidates, assuring absolute loyalty within his own party. In previous terms, there was a form of balance of power within the AKP, but this is now over.” Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian stance has raised concerns in Turkey and abroad, and government critics accuse him of wanting to “Putinise” the country in an effort to remain in charge beyond 2015, when he would be barred from serving as prime minister again. “He strongly dislikes any kind of checks and balances,”Ozcan said. Four years ago the debate centred on whether Erdogan wanted to turn Turkey into an Islamic state , with the military threatening to overthrow the government. “The only reason that I give my vote to the CHP today is to push the AKP out of power,” said Seyhan Namli, as he went to the polls in the Cihangir neighbourhood of Istanbul. “I am not afraid of an Islamisation of Turkey at all,” she said. “But the AKP disregards the poor, the disenfranchised. They do politics only to fill their own pockets.” Even were they to win a constitutional majority in parliament, the AKP will face a rocky third term. Analysts predict a dangerously overheating economy, and Turkey’s “zero-problem” foreign policy is being challenged by regional uprisings such as that in neighbouring Syria , long an ally of AKP-ruled Turkey. Journalist Oral Çalislar told the Guardian: “Prime Minister Erdogan has already indicated that after the elections, the honeymoon with Syria will be over. Turkey will take a much harder stance, and side with the EU to solve the Syrian problem.” The handling of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority will also be a key issue. In a ballot station in the predominantly Kurdish area of Dolapdere, Süleyman Demir expressed his dissatisfaction with the AKP. “We don’t expect anything from the government anymore”, he said. “Erdogan has made his view on Kurdish rights only too clear over the past weeks.” During the election campaign Erdogan adopted a harsher and more nationalistic tone which, critics say, has alienated many Kurds. “There is no comparison anymore to the Erdogan of 2002 and 2005. He has turned his stance by 180 degrees,” said 34-year-old Demir. He, like many other Kurds, voted for one of the independent candidates backed by the Kurdish BDP. “We don’t want any canals, bridges or airports,” he said in reference to Erdogan’s regeneration schemes . “We don’t need any ‘crazy projects’. All we want is peace, and an end to the bloodshed in the south-east.” Turkey Middle East Europe guardian.co.uk
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Earlier today, David Gregory, the moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press , called out Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, for spinning the Obama administration’s economic record. After reading a troubling list of economic facts, Gregory asked Wasserman Schultz why Americans should “trust” Democrats and President Obama on the economy. Democrats should be trusted,… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Corner Discovery Date : 12/06/2011 17:19 Number of articles : 2
Continue reading …Albert Gaxiola on trial in the Flores family murders: A special kind of depravity
June 12, 2011 No Comment
enlarge [Albert Gaxiola, left, in the courtroom, with his attorney, Steve West] The case of Shawna Forde and her killer Minutemen — who in 2009 broke into a home in rural Arizona and killed a 9-year-old girl and her father — is really, as you’d imagine, a story featuring a cast of depraved characters, led of course by Forde, who was convicted in February and now sits on Arizona’s death row. Likewise, the gunman in the case, Jason Bush — a onetime Aryan Nations member and general nutcase — is now awaiting execution . But if the case prosecutors presented holds up — and the evidence, frankly, is powerfully damning — there was a special level of depravity reached by Albert Gaxiola, the third defendant in the case, whose trial I have been covering this week under the auspices of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. That’s because Gaxiola had been a longtime friend of the Flores family and was adored by their two little girls, Brisenia and Alexandra — and yet he evidently not only set them up for murder, he accompanied the gang of killers inside as they ransacked the home and Brisenia lay dying on a couch. I knew some of this from having talked with people in Arivaca in February . But it all came out in court this week, when the mother and only survivor of the home invasion, Gina Gonzalez, testified to that effect. Dave Ricker, the Green Valley News reporter who really has owned this story since it happened, has the details : After hearing a recording of a 9-1-1 emergency center call made by the surviving victim in the fatal home invasion the jury heard Gonzalez relive for the third time from the witness stand the night she was wounded and her husband and daughter were shot to death before her eyes. After she had been shot, Gonzalez decided to play dead in hopes of surviving. “I laid on the floor very scared,” she said. “I heard Junior taking his last breaths.” Eventually, the tall male, Jason Bush, who was doing the shooting of the victims, addressed Brisenia, who by now had awakened. Bush asked her about the location of her older sister. “He was telling her that nothing was going to happen to her and that everything was going to be okay,” Gonzalez related. “She was crying a lot. She was scared.” Brisenia told the Bush that her sister was staying with her grandmother’s house. Brisenia was asked if the body on the floor in front of the love seat was her sister. “At first she said yes. Then she tips over and looks and says ‘that’s my mom; why did you shoot my mom?’” Gonzalez said. At that point, Bush paused to reload his weapon as Brisenia watched. “I could hear him put the bullets in the gun,” Gonzalez said. “She was begging him not to shoot her.” What followed were two more blasts from his gun in the direction of her daughter. “He shot her. I saw her fly back. He shot her twice,” Gonzalez said. By that time the female intruder told her compatriots that they had to leave, but they paused first to search the Flores home for money and drugs. After they left, Gonzalez did what any mother would do. “I sat up and grabbed Brisenia. I was telling her not to die on me,” she testified. “She was shaking really hard.” Gonzalez was able to get to a portable phone on an ottoman close by, thus she call 9-1-1. “I asked them what I should do,” she recalled. At that point, Gonzalez notice that the female leader of the home invasion crew, Shawna Forde, re-entered the home with a big smile on her face. “I’m panicking; I’m freaking out; a million things are going through my head,” she said. Gonzalez decided to try to get to her husband’s gun in the kitchen, as she made her way to the kitchen her leg snapped. Eventually, she retrieved the gun and used it to exchange gunshots with the tall male shooter, who had reentered her home, wounding him in the leg. As you can imagine, this was truly gut-wrenching testimony in a week full of such moments. One of the more damning pieces of evidence was the fact that Gaxiola’s DNA turned up all over an AK-47 the perpetrators idiotically left behind at the scene, sitting on top of the kitchen stove. Defense attorneys, as you can imagine, tried their damnedest to cast doubt on that particular piece of evidence, and spent the better part of Friday afternoon in that attempt. Whether they succeeded or not remains to be seen, but it was a highly technical bit of arguing and did not sound terribly convincing — especially considering that the kitchen is where, as it happens, Gina Gonzalez happened to earlier testify she thought she had heard a voice like Albert’s speaking while the house was being ransacked. We also had a brief flurry of concern yesterday involving one of the potential witnesses in the case, Laine Lawless — an extremist nutcase who was involved in the post-murder logistics between Forde and Gaxiola. Lawless had previously tried to enter the courtroom in disguise, even though she had been barred. One of yesterday’s witnesses bore an unfortunate resemblance to Lawless and some of the deputies were concerned that she was about to try the same stunt — but it was, of course, a false alarm. Be sure and read Ricker’s complete coverage of the case, as well as that of my friend and colleague Terri Greene Sterling, who was also in court this week. Unfortunately, I have to return home this week and will be relying on my colleagues, including the superb Kim Smith of the Arizona Daily Star (who also has a good wrapup of this week’s trial ), to keep you updated. Coming up: We’ll hear from the dubious Oin Oakstar again, and we’ll probably learn more about that Border Patrol uniform they found in Gaxiola’s home. (Gonzalez testified that the “Mexican” man she saw poke his head in the door briefly — the one she thought looked like Gaxiola — was wearing a Border Patrol uniform.)
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