Friday, 31 July 2009
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Iraqed
Blair to be called before Iraq War inquiry
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be called before an independent inquiry into the country's role in the Iraq war, its chairman says. John Chilcot tells the assembled media in London he will not "offer a list of witnesses" but that "key decision-makers in the key phases of the Iraq affair" will be called. full story
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be called before an independent inquiry into the country's role in the Iraq war, its chairman says. John Chilcot tells the assembled media in London he will not "offer a list of witnesses" but that "key decision-makers in the key phases of the Iraq affair" will be called. full story
From Calitics.com
Hi Calitics Readers -
This week, the State of California has been dealt a devastating blow. Not only from the signing of one of the worst budget "compromises" ever seen in the state's history, but also in the Governor's line item vetoes.
He took $6 million from state parks, meaning 100 parks will likely be closed. Healthy Families, the insurance program for children, also lost millions of dollars, and HIV/AIDS funding was hit particularly hard, as the Governor took over $52 million from prevention and other associated services. These are short-sighted and disastrous policy decisions, but that has come to be what we expect from this Governor.
While there will be some wrangling yet to come, the fact is that we have lost control of the state. Despite the fact that California voters are generally progressive leaning, we are controlled by a small minority. Our system is not functional, and our leaders are not fully accountable as there is always the crutch of blaming the other guy. It is no way to run the 8th largest economy in the world.
We've been looking at how a constitutional convention would work, what the progressive goals for such a meeting would be, and what conservatives would want out of the deal. The fact is that this state needs big change that will allow fair and just governance.
On the other hand, what this state does not need is a shifting of taxes from the rich to the poor. The initial goal of the 21st Century Commission was to reduce volatility, but it seems Bush Ranger Gerald Parsky sees that as a good excuse to reduce taxes for those making over $200,000 at the expense of the middle class. If you have a moment, contact your legislator to let them know that we should not be shifiting taxes to the middle class.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
If you are a member of Facebook, support Calitics at facebook.com/calitics. You can also donate to the Calitics CaliPAC.
Thanks again for reading Calitics. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Do you have a story idea? Let me know! If you like these emails, please forward them on.
This week, the State of California has been dealt a devastating blow. Not only from the signing of one of the worst budget "compromises" ever seen in the state's history, but also in the Governor's line item vetoes.
He took $6 million from state parks, meaning 100 parks will likely be closed. Healthy Families, the insurance program for children, also lost millions of dollars, and HIV/AIDS funding was hit particularly hard, as the Governor took over $52 million from prevention and other associated services. These are short-sighted and disastrous policy decisions, but that has come to be what we expect from this Governor.
While there will be some wrangling yet to come, the fact is that we have lost control of the state. Despite the fact that California voters are generally progressive leaning, we are controlled by a small minority. Our system is not functional, and our leaders are not fully accountable as there is always the crutch of blaming the other guy. It is no way to run the 8th largest economy in the world.
We've been looking at how a constitutional convention would work, what the progressive goals for such a meeting would be, and what conservatives would want out of the deal. The fact is that this state needs big change that will allow fair and just governance.
On the other hand, what this state does not need is a shifting of taxes from the rich to the poor. The initial goal of the 21st Century Commission was to reduce volatility, but it seems Bush Ranger Gerald Parsky sees that as a good excuse to reduce taxes for those making over $200,000 at the expense of the middle class. If you have a moment, contact your legislator to let them know that we should not be shifiting taxes to the middle class.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
If you are a member of Facebook, support Calitics at facebook.com/calitics. You can also donate to the Calitics CaliPAC.
Thanks again for reading Calitics. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Do you have a story idea? Let me know! If you like these emails, please forward them on.
Sarah Palins care for the nrg probs of the US
After stepping down on Sunday morning, Sarah Palin posted her final Twitter update to her @AKGovSarahPalin account, which had close to 125k followers. With Palin’s refusal to specifically address her post-gubernatorial plans, speculation has run rampant over what she intends to accomplish out of office. She is reportedly considering joining the ranks of the esteemed talk radio punditry.
An analysis of Palin’s Twitter activity in the weeks leading up to her final @AKGovSarahPalin update on Sunday may provide the best insight into what issue most concerns the former vice presidential nominee.
A comprehensive analysis of Palin’s last two months of Twitter updates (May 26-July 26) reveals that she mentioned energy 53 times out of 400 updates, far more than any other single issue. That is nearly 4 times as many mentions than the economy, and just short of 11 times the mentions of health care. A word cloud based on her Twitter activity reinforces the fact that Palin has been focusing her efforts on leading the GOP’s opposition to clean energy reform. Here’s a chart tracking Palin’s tweets:
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Schwarzenegger blasts unemployment appeals board over backlog
Sometimes, Schwarzenegger complains about the delinquents who illegally subsidize on state welfare. But when the moment comes to protect his spoongos from criticism for their unwill to permit welfare they are dropped like a stinking sock. Axxhole?
LATimes
LATimes
Obama Embraces Bush-Era Immigration Detention System
Obama Embraces Bush-Era Immigration Detention System
The Obama administration has refused to make legally enforceable rules for immigration detention, rejecting a federal court petition by former detainees and their advocates and embracing a Bush-era inspection system that relies in part on private contractors. The decision, contained in a six-page letter received by the plaintiffs this week, disappointed and angered immigration advocacy organizations around the country. They pointed to a stream of newly available documents that underscore the government’s failure to enforce minimum standards it set in 2000, including those concerning detainees’ access to basic health care, telephones and lawyers, even as the number of people detained has soared to more than 400,000 a year.
Italy: Berlusconis sex adventures in a relaxation clinic for back problems
timesonline
A model and soap opera actress said yesterday that she was one of the girls who joined Silvio Berlusconi for a weekend at a health spa last year.
Licia Nunez, 31, said that she joined the Italian Prime Minister at an Umbrian health resort with several other women last November, but was devastated to have been dragged into a scandal surrounding the alleged recruitment of prostitutes to attend parties.
She said that Mr Berlusconi called her a few days ago to tell her how indignant he was about what had been written about her in the newspapers. She has worked for Mr Berlusconi’s television channels.
“I am not an escort, I have never taken money, I have never received gifts, I am not a part of anybody’s entourage,” Ms Nunez told the daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on its website.
“As soon as my mother read all this dirt she burst into tears. This is very serious, I am really afraid for my career.”
Prosecutors in Bari, southern Italy, are investigating a businessman, Gianpaolo Tarantini, on suspicion that he abetted prostitution by allegedly paying women to attend parties at Mr Berlusconi’s homes in the capital and Sardinia. Mr Tarantini has denied all wrongdoing.
Two weeks ago the weekly magazine L’Espresso reported that Mr Berlusconi, Mr Tarantini and several young women spent the weekend of November 28 last year at the Marc Messegue Health Centre near the medieval hilltop town of Todi, 130 kilometres (80 miles) northeast of Rome.
Ms Nunez said that she joined Mr Berlusconi and his guests but had travelled alone in a car with a driver that the Prime Minister provided.
Ms Nunez, who comes from Barletta outside Bari, said that she had met Mr Berlusconi “six or seven times” and spoke of seeing him at a social event in March 2008 before he was re-elected Prime Minister for the third time.
She described him like a paternal figure who advised her on artistic issues.
“I struck up the courage to give him my cell phone number. Incredibly, he called me after the elections and invited me to Palazzo Grazioli to celebrate the victory,” she said.
She also described what happened when she met Mr Tarantini with Mr Berlusconi and the others at the Todi health spa.
“We all ate together and of course I spoke to this man [Mr Tarantini]. We come from the same place so we cracked jokes in the local Bari dialect. Then we exchanged telephone numbers, it was more of a courtesy,” she said.
“I never ask a stranger if he has a criminal record, it was enough for me that he was the premier’s guest.”
Ms Nunez said she had never accepted any gifts from the Prime Minister but had given him a “beautiful blue cashmere scarf” for his birthday in 2008. “In Umbria he wore it around his neck, which made me happy,” she said.
Mr Berlusconi’s office declined to comment on Ms Nunez’ interview today and her lawyers, Alessandro Varrenti and Annamaria Bernardini de Pace, who are based in Milan declined to speak to The Times on their client’s interview.
Bavaria Motor Works says bye bye F1 - Schuhmacher returns
Looks like Ferrari had to do sth after obstructing Mosley and Ecclestone for a while, now even more because BMW said bye bye. If I was Schuhmacher I wouldnt return. Fate is fatal sometimes. The pressure would be too big 4 me.
Schumi kehrt zurück
Nun also doch: Rekord-Weltmeister Michael Schumacher steht vor einem Comeback in der Formel 1. ...»
Health
Wall Street loves news of fading public option
by SusanG
Wed Jul 29, 2009 at 07:18:02 AM PDT
Give financiers credit--they see through the bullshit and know exactly who's going to benefit if the public option gets dropped from health care reform. Hint: It ain't the public.
Shares of U.S. health insurers rose broadly on Tuesday on hopes a health reform bill would not include a government-run option, which has drawn strong opposition from insurers who fear it would destroy the private marketplace.
The S&P Managed Health Care index of large U.S. health insurers closed 6.5 percent higher.
Aetna rose 12.6 percent, Coventry was up 12.7 percent and Cigna was 7.7 percent higher, all on the New York Stock Exchange. Centene rose 7.9 percent.
Senate Panel Endorses Sotomayor
nytimes
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, moved closer to taking her seat on Tuesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved her nomination and sent it on to the full Senate.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, moved closer to taking her seat on Tuesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved her nomination and sent it on to the full Senate.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Class Warfare in China
I mean there is some left position denying the Chinese doing: you can call this state capitalism. In fact, China stopped the privatization. So, I mean, in the end its a proper decision I think
nytimes:SHANGHAI — China’s state-run press confirmed Monday that a riot broke out at a steel mill in north China Friday evening, leaving the executive of another steel mill dead.
The report, in the English-language China Daily, provided few details on the mayhem, but a report on Saturday by a Hong Kong-based group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, which broke the story on the riot, said that at least 30,000 workers were involved and that about 100 people were wounded.
The riot, at the Tonghua Iron and Steel Works in Jilin Province in northern China, broke out after a visiting steel executive from a related company threatened mass layoffs at the Tonghua steel mills as part of a major restructuring of the state-owned company, China Daily said.
The riot followed a pattern of massive demonstrations that have taken place in various parts of the country over the past few years, many involving citizens outraged over government corruption or threatened with layoffs or orders to relocate.
The China Daily report said Chen Guojun, the steel executive who was beaten to death, had threatened 3,000 Tonghua steelworkers with layoffs, which he had said could take place within three days. He also had signaled that larger jobs cuts were likely at the struggling steel mill.
The report said the rioters blocked the police, ambulances and government officials from reaching Mr. Chen before he died.
- The riot in northern China broke out after the visiting executive threatened mass layoffs at the Tonghua steel mills.New York Times - Jul 26 7:54 PM
nytimes:SHANGHAI — China’s state-run press confirmed Monday that a riot broke out at a steel mill in north China Friday evening, leaving the executive of another steel mill dead.
The report, in the English-language China Daily, provided few details on the mayhem, but a report on Saturday by a Hong Kong-based group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, which broke the story on the riot, said that at least 30,000 workers were involved and that about 100 people were wounded.
The riot, at the Tonghua Iron and Steel Works in Jilin Province in northern China, broke out after a visiting steel executive from a related company threatened mass layoffs at the Tonghua steel mills as part of a major restructuring of the state-owned company, China Daily said.
The riot followed a pattern of massive demonstrations that have taken place in various parts of the country over the past few years, many involving citizens outraged over government corruption or threatened with layoffs or orders to relocate.
The China Daily report said Chen Guojun, the steel executive who was beaten to death, had threatened 3,000 Tonghua steelworkers with layoffs, which he had said could take place within three days. He also had signaled that larger jobs cuts were likely at the struggling steel mill.
The report said the rioters blocked the police, ambulances and government officials from reaching Mr. Chen before he died.
Monday, 27 July 2009
House passes resolution that states Obama was born in Hawaii, 378-0.
House passes resolution that states Obama was born in Hawaii, 378-0.
This evening, the House passed a resolution sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) that commemorates Hawaii’s 50th anniversary as a U.S. state by a vote of 378-0. The resolution also contains this provision: “Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii,” a measure that some GOP members may have had trouble supporting. However, many of the Republican representatives who at expressed at least subtle doubt that Obama was not born in the U.S. voted for the resolution. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who had earlier in the day prevented the resolution from coming to a voice vote on the House floor, and Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), who sponsored a bill requiring presidential candidates to prove natural-born citizenship, both voted for the resolution. Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), a co-sponsor of Posey’s bill who expressed doubt about Obama’s citizenship last week on MSNBC, did not vote.
MS and EU
I don't get it anyway. An explorer isn't such a huge piece of software. It has 20 MB's at best. And it's most of the time better if the code is shorter. I like netscape nav 9 best because it loads pages as TP and allspinzone fastest. So, I dont know what MS did again what was so evil. There were always competing browsers like netscape for example. I think all the fuzz about the Mozilla browser is made up. I mean u still need to install your macromedia flash player after downloading it dont u? What I'm trying to say: There won't be any wonders in this sector anytime soon. MS will do it's homework and the pervasive crap of accusing ms of maildoing is just another ridiculous EU attempt to obstruct an US digital giant.
Silicon Alley Insider
Silicon Alley Insider
In our opinion, we're about five years into the a decade-long destruction of one of the most powerful and profitable monopolies in history.
The latest EU decision, in which Microsoft will offer European PC buyers a choice of browsers, is not a big deal in and of itself. Many of the users offered a choice will still choose IE, and Europe isn't the world. Also, since Microsoft makes no money from selling the browser, the decision won't have a financial impact.
But the move will hasten the erosion of IE's global share. And this, in turn, will inhibit Microsoft's ability to drive people to its own online services. And it comes as Microsoft's influence is waning in several other critical areas:
- Desktop operating systems. The "operating system" is gradually being reduced to a set of drivers designed to run a single app: The Internet. Microsoft is struggling to maintain its pricing and profit structure in netbook sales (the fastest growing segment of the market), and "desktops" are no longer the center of the computing universe. As more and more resources are shifted to the cloud, and users access the same info and apps from multiple devices and locations, the role of the desktop operating system will be further reduced.
- Mobile computing. Relative to Apple, Research In Motion, and other mobile leaders, Microsoft is nowhere here.
- Cloud computing. In a world in which the processing and the apps live in the cloud, the operating systemon any given device is much less important.
- Office apps. Yes, Google Apps are still weak, especially for professional users. But Google has grabbed the low end of the office app market, and they'll presumably build from there. Meanwhile, Microsoft's features and functionality in Office have vastly overshot the needs of the mainstream market. This makes Office ripe for disruption.
Vernon Forrest killed in robbery
cable news network
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Former boxing champion Vernon Forrest is dead after being shot multiple times in a neighborhood southwest of downtown Atlanta, officials said Sunday.
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Former boxing champion Vernon Forrest is dead after being shot multiple times in a neighborhood southwest of downtown Atlanta, officials said Sunday.
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Sarkozy rushed to hospital in jogging scare
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taken to hospital for medical tests after falling ill while jogging with bodyguards near Paris, according to French media reports. full story
Palin's resignation day arrives
Palin's resignation day arrives
FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin steps down Sunday with her political future clouded by ethics probes, mounting legal bills and dwindling popularity.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin steps down Sunday with her political future clouded by ethics probes, mounting legal bills and dwindling popularity.
Palin has said little of what her life will be like as a private citizen. She is scheduled to speak Aug. 8 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, and has said she plans to write a book, campaign for political candidates from coast to coast and build a right-of-center coalition.
She also plans to continue speaking her mind on the social networking site Twitter.
Saturday, 25 July 2009
NK calls Hillary Clinton a "schoolgirl"
aol
www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56N3JM20090724
sent by Fiore since 17 hours 47 minutes, published about 1 hour 19 minutes
PHUKET, Thailand (July 23) - Hillary Rodham Clinton and North Korea exchanged pointed barbs Thursday, with Clinton declaring North Korea "has no friends left" and the communist regime calling the U.S. secretary of state a "schoolgirl."
The sharp words came as North Korea announced it had refused to re-enter talks to terminate its nuclear weapons program.
U.S. to transfer $200 million to Palestinians
www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56N3JM20090724sent by Fiore since 17 hours 47 minutes, published about 1 hour 19 minutes
The United States plans to transfer $200 million to the struggling Palestinian Authority to help cover its budget shortfall, an Obama administration official said on Friday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to announce the transfer of funds on Friday as part of U.S. efforts to improve conditions on the ground that will bolster attempts to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The money is not new assistance, but part of $900 million in U.S. funds that Clinton pledged at a donors conference in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in March, the official told Reuters.
NYT: Bush weighed using GIs in U.S. arrests
NYT: Bush weighed using GIs in U.S. arrests
WASHINGTON - Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.
WASHINGTON - Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.
Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.
Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.
State budgets walloped again
State budgets walloped again
Revenue shortfalls lead to new budget gaps only three weeks into the new fiscal year. States are forced to make more painful budget cuts.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The bad news about state budgets just keeps getting worse. Only three weeks into the new fiscal year, gaps are already opening up. And the shortfalls are only expected to grow.
"If you think legislators are breathing a sigh of relief because their budgets are passed, think again," said William Pound, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
State legislators and governors had to contend with deficits totaling $142.6 billion as they closed out fiscal 2009, which ended on June 30 for 46 states, according to the conference. Three states have yet to pass balanced budgets for fiscal 2010, as officials tussle over painful budget cuts and tax increases.
But even some states that approved budgets are going back to the drawing board as revenues drop faster and more sharply than they had estimated.
Legislators from around the country, who are meeting in Philadelphia, gathered Tuesday to discuss their common plight. Gallows humor was abundant, according to Corina Eckl, director of the conference's fiscal program.
New bank bankruptcy: Guaranty financial group of Texas is totally bankrupt. It administrated before 16bio$
German NTV
4:48pm: A weak economy and frozen financing markets could spell trouble for regional banks with ballooning commercial loan portfolios. More
7 regional banks fail
No. 2 Texas bank expects to fail
California lawmakers OK budget plan
4:48pm: A weak economy and frozen financing markets could spell trouble for regional banks with ballooning commercial loan portfolios. More7 regional banks fail
No. 2 Texas bank expects to fail
California lawmakers OK budget plan
Friday, 24 July 2009
Cheney triggers Armitage(!)
Perhaps I get this sentence below the headline wrong but it means to me: if cheney doesnt get busted with plame, he ll never will. strange that he increased the load by shooting wittington. I think there was someone important who couldnt bust Cheney anymore. Wonder who this was.
Cheney backs Libby, blames leak on Armitage
That meant taking up the pardon question again was, as a West Wing veteran put it later, like passing a kidney stone — for the second time. Bolten declined to take a stand, according to several associates. Instead, he lateraled the issue to Fielding, claiming that a legal, not a political, call was required. If the counsel’s office decided a pardon wasn’t merited, says an official involved in the discussions, everyone else would have cover with Cheney. “They could say, Our hands are tied — our lawyers said the guy was guilty.”
Cheney backs Libby, blames leak on Armitage
That meant taking up the pardon question again was, as a West Wing veteran put it later, like passing a kidney stone — for the second time. Bolten declined to take a stand, according to several associates. Instead, he lateraled the issue to Fielding, claiming that a legal, not a political, call was required. If the counsel’s office decided a pardon wasn’t merited, says an official involved in the discussions, everyone else would have cover with Cheney. “They could say, Our hands are tied — our lawyers said the guy was guilty.”
New Jersey
Those arrested included Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who was charged with conspiring to arrange the sale of an Israeli citizen's kidney for $160,000 for a transplant for the informant's fictitious uncle. Rosenbaum was quoted as saying he had been arranging the sale of kidneys for 10 years.
Microsoft got hit by financial crisis and recession
Microsoft was hit by the ebbing on international financial markets harder than expected. Profit's shrunk for 30% to 3bio$.
Microsoft sales sink another 17%
AmEx profits nearly cut in half
Ford results top forecasts
AT&T beats expectations
Microsoft sales sink another 17%
AmEx profits nearly cut in half
Ford results top forecasts
AT&T beats expectations
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Berlusconi dives for first time since takeover 2008 below 50% trust
RP
Facing ever new relevations about the private life of Mr.Berlusconi, the Italians are loosing more and more their trust into their head of govt. Berlusconi has only 49%left of the trust of his peoples according to a poll of LaRepubblica, the other half thinks of him as not trustworthy or totally untrustworthy. It is the first time since may's 2008 return to power that he dropped below 50%.
Facing ever new relevations about the private life of Mr.Berlusconi, the Italians are loosing more and more their trust into their head of govt. Berlusconi has only 49%left of the trust of his peoples according to a poll of LaRepubblica, the other half thinks of him as not trustworthy or totally untrustworthy. It is the first time since may's 2008 return to power that he dropped below 50%.
Germany: Carstensen's self-aimed defeat
Schleswig-Holstein Carstensens gezielte Niederlage
FAZ - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Vor 2 Stunden
Von Frank Pergande, Kiel 23. Juli 2009
The prime used a side entrance to enter the parliament. The hall is one of the nicest in the country. : it offers a wide view over Kiels bay.
The prime used a side entrance to enter the parliament. The hall is one of the nicest in the country. : it offers a wide view over Kiels bay.
Germany: Carstensen is prime of Schleswig-Holstein: Will he be confirmed today by parliamentr?
Carstensen stellt Vertrauensfrage
....»
wants to put up the confidence question today and to bulldoze the way for new elections on sep27.Even the own party doesnt seem to intend to vote for the own guy.
Porsche head Wiedeking says bye bye
link
50 Mio Euro final pay
Wiedeking takes the hat
The power struggle inside Porsche has been decided. Wiedeking leaves the sports car producer immediately.His successor at the top of the company will be the head of production Macht (German for might). Financial head Härter is also packing his clothes. The Porsche comptroller board confirmed an increase of capital for the company during a nightly Marathon summit, also nodded Katar as a shareholder. ....»
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
RNC's Steele unsure which insurance company covers him
Bruhaha. I mean competence surely is an important factor in politics. Steele avoids for example to extend his life expectancy. He surely is explaining to the American consumer how to save money in times of crisis. Though you might drop dead. This is probably what happens with most of his audience.
What health plan?RNC's Steele unsure which insurance company covers him.» More from Politico
Michael Steele isn’t sure what kind of health insurance he has.
McCain refuses to endorse Steele’s charge that Obama’s health care plan is ‘socialism.’
Ahmadinejad humiliated over vice president choice
So-Khatami isnt such a softy though he always tries to appear like one. Its interesting that the supreme leader may have also some "fundamental" opinions. I was pretty astonished by police and Basji slapping down the demonstrations - a bit too easy without Khatamis help. So hes another Mr.Evil. Lets see what happens next.
Clinton outlines how U.S. might deal with nuclear Iran Reuters – 1 hr 19 mins ago
Ahmadinejad humiliated over vice president choice
AP – 18 mins agoTEHRAN, Iran - Iran's supreme leader ordered the president, a close ally, to dismiss his controversial choice of a top deputy for making pro-Israeli remarks, the semiofficial media reported Wednesday, in a rare split among the country's top conservatives. Full Story »
Clinton outlines how U.S. might deal with nuclear Iran Reuters – 1 hr 19 mins ago
Riot police beat Iranian protesters
'Hundreds of riot police' attack pro-democracy demonstrators.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
California
terminated
Oil Companies and the Budget Dealby: Robert CruickshankTue Jul 21, 2009 at 14:30:00 PM PDT |
| We've been focusing a lot here on Calitics in the last day or so on the losers in the recent budget deal. But who are the winners? Pretty high on that list would have to be Big Oil. They were able to convince Democrats to drop their demands for an oil severance tax, and were able to convince Democrats to agree to allow the first offshore oil drilling in 40 years to begin off the unspoiled coast of Santa Barbara County near Point Conception. Every other oil-producing state in the union taxes the extraction of oil from its lands - including Texas and Wyoming. Even Sarah Palin raised the oil severance tax in Alaska to 25% in 2007. Instead, as Paul Hogarth pointed out, California is defining itself to the right of Sarah Palin by refusing to embrace such a tax. The California Budget Project estimated a 9.9% oil severance tax would bring it at least $1 billion to state coffers. If oil prices rose again above $100/bbl then we could see $2 billion in revenue per year. Given the high likelihood of such increases, an oil severance tax would be a significant long-term boon to the state's coffers, since oil companies can't exactly shift production out of state, since oil is only going to become more valuable over time. And that money could help prevent the most egregious human services cuts that were agreed to in the budget deal - the cuts to healthy families that will cost 500,000 children their health care coverage, the cuts to in home supportive services that people like Nori need to survive. There are many possible responses to the budget deal. The Courage Campaign is asking our members to zero in on the oil severance tax and ask their legislators to vote "no" on a budget that does not include that tax. We will collect signatures to our letter and deliver it to every legislator in the Capitol ahead of the Thursday budget vote. Californians are being asked to make a choice: give the oil companies a sweetheart deal unprecedented in the United States, or demand that oil companies pay their fair share and help prevent a humanitarian catastrophe that budget cuts will cause. The Courage Campaign thinks the choice is clear. Let's let make sure our legislators hear about that clear choice before the vote on Thursday. Over the flip is the email we sent to our members, which includes the California Closed video produced by community organizers Marta Evry and Laura Velkei. |
| There's More... :: (1 Comments, 463 words in story) |
Monday, 20 July 2009
Basiji militiaman: I raped virgins before their executions
Basiji militiaman: I raped virgins before their executions
A member of Iran’s notorious Basij militia who ran afoul of his superiors when he released two teenaged pro-democracy protesters says he was tasked with taking the virginity of young females sentenced to die.
In an exclusive interview with the Jerusalem Post, the unnamed male described how, as an 18-year-old Basij recruit, he was tasked with taking the virginity of girls who were sentenced to die.
Under Iranian law, a female cannot be executed if she is a virgin. Thus, prison officials forced young women into a brief “marriage” before their sentence was carried out.
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Sanford: 'God will change me'
Sanford: 'God will change me'
SC governor promises voters to be "better and more effective leader."
bruahha. yah well. Delinquents have no belief in human justice anymore I guess
Saturday, 18 July 2009
Friday, 17 July 2009
Software
My Skydrive
Hi. I transferred some of "my" public domain software to my skydrive. Have a look.
Any software recopied may or may not infringe copyright law. The owner of this site does not take any responsibility for any infringement of copyright laws. If you think copyright law is concerned, mail me at ccoaler@hotmail.com. The owner of this site will not be liable for any mailfunction caused by the software.
asstutorial-assembler tutorial
3Ddeveloper - C IDE
20-mysql tutorial
a86v372 - A86 Assembler v3.72
apache - apache
birdinflight - bitmap example
bitmap1,bitmap3,bitmap4,bitmap3181 - bitmap tutorials
bitmaps,bitmapfileformat - bitmap 1x1 including some addresses like 0022h (size)
bitmapinversereality - how to invert a bitmap (source)
Carraybitmap - bitmap source
CISBitmap - bitmap source
cmars - raytracing landscape - u can zoom thru by pressing keys
demosrc - bitmap viewer including source
gtk - gtk c++ runtime easy to integrate into your c++ compiler 2 program gadgets and so on
hc2setup - Hyper Cam 2 setup - video framegrabber
hex view - hexadecimal viewer
hvcode - sourcecode for hexviewer
instant unzip - free unzipper
ll_land - dotted landscape (source)
magic cpp - c++ ide
mplab -assembler ide including assembler fast easy thrashing
mysql - build your own server, looser
mysql essentials
mysql tutorial
read.index(sry dysfunctional)
read.php -sql help
textved - some form out of characters that u can steer by keys around axiz
tut0xnew - assembler tutorial with example programs
w95 - driver to run USB sticks on win 95
xfire -old assembler
xnview - framegrabber - can also save any loaded file in many file formats
Hi. I transferred some of "my" public domain software to my skydrive. Have a look.
Any software recopied may or may not infringe copyright law. The owner of this site does not take any responsibility for any infringement of copyright laws. If you think copyright law is concerned, mail me at ccoaler@hotmail.com. The owner of this site will not be liable for any mailfunction caused by the software.
asstutorial-assembler tutorial
3Ddeveloper - C IDE
20-mysql tutorial
a86v372 - A86 Assembler v3.72
apache - apache
birdinflight - bitmap example
bitmap1,bitmap3,bitmap4,bitmap3181 - bitmap tutorials
bitmaps,bitmapfileformat - bitmap 1x1 including some addresses like 0022h (size)
bitmapinversereality - how to invert a bitmap (source)
Carraybitmap - bitmap source
CISBitmap - bitmap source
cmars - raytracing landscape - u can zoom thru by pressing keys
demosrc - bitmap viewer including source
gtk - gtk c++ runtime easy to integrate into your c++ compiler 2 program gadgets and so on
hc2setup - Hyper Cam 2 setup - video framegrabber
hex view - hexadecimal viewer
hvcode - sourcecode for hexviewer
instant unzip - free unzipper
ll_land - dotted landscape (source)
magic cpp - c++ ide
mplab -assembler ide including assembler fast easy thrashing
mysql - build your own server, looser
mysql essentials
mysql tutorial
read.index(sry dysfunctional)
read.php -sql help
textved - some form out of characters that u can steer by keys around axiz
tut0xnew - assembler tutorial with example programs
w95 - driver to run USB sticks on win 95
xfire -old assembler
xnview - framegrabber - can also save any loaded file in many file formats
Thursday, 16 July 2009
President Obama hits the campaign trail Thursday
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama hits the campaign trail Thursday -- not for himself, but for fellow Democrat Jon Corzine.
President Obama campaigns Thursday for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.
The president is the main attraction at a rally in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, for Gov. Corzine, who's fighting for re-election this year.
While Obama has headlined seven political fundraising events this year, this will be the first campaign rally he's attended for a fellow Democrat since taking over as president in January.
A poll of New Jersey voters released this week suggests Corzine trails Republican challenger Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, by 12 points. The same Quinnipiac University survey indicates that six out of 10 Garden State voters approve of the job Obama's doing as president.
See also: NJ GUBERN. VOTE
Report: Iran's nuclear chief resigns
Report: Iran's nuclear chief resigns
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- The commander of Iran's nuclear program for more than a decade has resigned, Iran Student News Agency reported Thursday.
Reza Aghazadeh has largely stayed out of politics.
Reza Aghazadeh told ISNA that he submitted his resignation 20 days ago. He said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now accepted it.
Aghazadeh, who gave no reason for his decision, was promoted to Iran's vice president of atomic energy in 1997 under reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
As head of Iran's atomic program, Aghazadeh was practically handpicked by the senior figures in Iran's clerical establishment and fully trusted by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
He has largely stayed out of politics and refrained from publicly taking sides amid the political turmoil that recently gripped Iran following last month's disputed presidential vote, which triggered massive protests.
His resignation is significant because it will be difficult for Iran to find someone that is both trusted by the clerical rulers and accepted by the international community.
Former South Korean leader on respirator
SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- A former South Korea president who won the Nobel Peace Prize for fostering better relations between North and South Korea has been placed on a respirator in a hospital, a news agency reported Thursday.
Kim Dae-jung "became short of breath on Wednesday night and was put on a respirator around 3 a.m. this morning," Park Chang-il, chief of Severance Hospital in Seoul, was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.
"His condition has improved since. He is conscious, and his pulse, breathing and body temperature are normal."
Park said Kim, who was being fed through a feeding tube, "has no complications, but has been receiving kidney dialysis for a long time."
He had been hospitalized since Monday and placed in the intensive care unit after being diagnosed with pneumonia, the news agency reported.
Schwarzenegger stinks
He was able to transform the most modern state in the world in five years into a third world country.
And the governator terminates the state.
LOS ANGELES — California lawmakers neared a deal on Wednesday with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to close the state’s $26 billion budget gap in ways that would profoundly alter the state’s relationship with its cities and millions of residents who receive basic services.
And the governator terminates the state.
LOS ANGELES — California lawmakers neared a deal on Wednesday with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to close the state’s $26 billion budget gap in ways that would profoundly alter the state’s relationship with its cities and millions of residents who receive basic services.
Card users get $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge
Card users get $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A technical snafu left some Visa prepaid cardholders stunned and horrified Monday to see a $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge on their statements.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A technical snafu left some Visa prepaid cardholders stunned and horrified Monday to see a $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge on their statements.
That's about 2,007 times the size of the national debt.
Josh Muszynski, 22, of Manchester, New Hampshire, was one Visa customer aghast to find the 17-digit charge on his bill. Adding insult to injury, he had also been hit with a $15 overdraft fee.
He noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP while making a routine balance inquiry on his online Bank of America account. According to his statement, he had spent the profound sum in one pop at a nearby Mobil gas station -- his regular stop for Camel cigarettes.
"Very, very panicked," he jumped in his car and sped to the station.
Had they perhaps noticed any "outrageous" charges come across their books recently, he inquired of the cashier there. She checked the records. They had not.Coalition in Kiel close to its termination
Coalition in Kiel close to its termination
Social Dems demand Carstensen to step back from office
DThe schleswig-holsteinian social dems decline regardless of the coalitiontwist the dissolvement of parliament. If the prime cannot continue or doesnt like to continue, hes welcome to step back," declared social dem head Stegner. In a vote that was put up toaday or will be put up today, the Christ dems intend to vote on friday for the dissolvement of parliament....»
One close thought: the recent nuclear accident in NPP Kruemmel. Kruemmel is on Schleswig-Holstinian territory and the nuclear watchdog responsible for the NPP is from Schleswig Holstein. Looks like Mr.Carstensen gets unbelievably busy in the aftermath. Lets have a look bac to the last municipal vote which was in 2008: the Christ Dems got 36% in towns and other municipalities, the social dems 26% and the leftparty 7%. In parliament, there is a total of 69 seats. The social dems got 42% of all seats or 29 seats. A 2/3 majority is needed to dissolve parliament.There is no majority that would guarantee a dissolvement of parliament. The last election was held 2005. I mean the current situation is pretty well and defined, so its not clear to me why the Christ Dems want a dissolvement - except some special or maybe "delicate" circumstance forces them to do so - maybe an investigation into a nuclear accident. So: Carstensens move is politely surprising and doesnt have any guarantee to work.
wiki:Schleswig-Holstein
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
McCain freaks out
"I strongly support the comments of Senator Kyl and call on the administration to retract its threat against the citizens of Arizona."
So... Mccain says we oppose the emasure but we want the money
So... Mccain says we oppose the emasure but we want the money
Germany: recession taking its toll
Germany's Export Champions Slammed by Economic Crisis
The recession is supposedly bottoming out, but where is the upswing? The crisis is hitting southern Germany particularly hard as engineering companies and auto parts manufacturers lose orders at a faster pace than ever before. Ironically, their strength as exporters is the cause of their current troubles. By Alexander Jung more...
Germany's Export Champions Slammed by Economic Crisis
By Alexander Jung
The recession is supposedly bottoming out, but where is the upswing? The crisis is hitting southern Germany particularly hard as engineering companies and auto parts manufacturers lose orders at a faster pace than ever before. Ironically, their strength as exporters is the cause of their current troubles.
Karl Schlecht is standing on the roof terrace of his company headquarters, looking down at his life's work. He moves carefully toward the railing. Schlecht is 77, his bones ache and his new hip is causing problems. But his ailments are minor when compared with the worries of Putzmeister, the company he founded 51 years ago in Aichtal, a town in Germany's southwestern Swabia region.
"It makes my heart ache," says Schlecht, as he stares out at an area devoid of human activity. There is no one to be seen on the factory grounds -- no metal workers, no mechanics, no engineers. Most of the employees have been on short time since January, and the concrete pumps and mortar machines the company produces are beginning to accumulate throughout the plant -- inventory for which there are no longer any buyers. In other words, dead capital.
Only last year, Arab and Asian buyers were clamoring for Schlecht's products. Putzmeister had erected a separate building for making large pieces of equipment designed to convey concrete and mortar hundreds of meters into the sky on high-rise building construction sites in Dubai, Beijing and Shanghai. "It was like a beehive," says Schlecht, referring to the amount of activity in the new building. But nothing is humming on those sites anymore.
Order volume has declined by more than half, and Putzmeister is already losing €5-10 million ($7-14 million) a month. Management consultants have analyzed the company's operations and recommended sharp cutbacks. "Well," says Schlecht, "we'll have to cut the company in half." And this at a time when others are already hoping for a turnaround in the economy?
Putzmeister, with its 3,600 employees, was until recently still being celebrated as one of those typical mid-sized, virtually unknown German companies that is a world leader in its niche market. Many of these companies are mechanical engineering companies and auto parts suppliers, produce first-class products, have exceptional expertise and export a large share of what they make. Putzmeister, for example, exports about 90 percent of its products.
The German economy is famous for such "hidden champions." These closet global market leaders have served as both an engine for growth and a job-creating machine for Germany.
Their concentration is particularly high in southwestern Germany, in small cities and towns along a corridor stretching from Pforzheim to Stuttgart to Ulm. Their benchmark was the world, and now their world is falling apart.
Orders have plunged by anywhere from 30 to 50 percent, in some cases even more. This, in turn, has created massive excess capacity. Temporary workers have long been let go, and fixed-term contracts have expired. Most of the remaining workers are now on state-supported short-time working schemes, where the government helps to make up their lost income.
A company that has lost half of its business needs to grow by about 10 percent a year for at least seven years to return to former levels. More realistically, management should consider itself lucky if there is any growth at all in the near future. The direct consequences include mass layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies.
Is there any glimmer of hope? "I don't think so," says Peter Zimmermann, the CEO of Mink, a company based in the town of Göppingen near Stuttgart. A family business in its sixth generation, Mink is the world market leader in specialized industrial brushes. Zimmermann is incensed when he hears people say that the worst is over. "This isn't a crisis," he says. "It's a catastrophe."
Zimmermann estimates that the company has been set back by a decade. Orders have declined by 40 percent, and he is now forced to reduce staff, letting people go he would like to have kept on. The priority, says Zimmermann, is to make sure the company survives, "as horrible as it sounds."
Even the boldest of optimists are slowly realizing what a break with the past the global economic crisis represents for Germany, particularly for the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg. More than in most other regions, the population here depends heavily on exports of its products: machinery, industrial equipment and automobiles. The region was one of the main beneficiaries of globalization, making its current plunge all the more precipitous.
This regional slump is relatively unaffected by the most recent figures from Berlin, which indicate that German industry experienced a rise in orders and exports in May. The general euphoria over such figures is difficult to comprehend, especially when one considers that the number of new orders, when compared with May of last year -- the key benchmark -- has declined by almost 30 percent, while exports are down about 25 percent.
Perhaps the economy is indeed bottoming out, as it reaches what Frank Mattern, the head of management consulting firm McKinsey's German operations, refers to as the "new normal" of business activity. Nevertheless, old sales figures remain unattainable for now. Even if the crisis ends soon, Germany, as a manufacturing economy, will have changed after the crisis. The question is: What will it look like?
Companies will become more cautious, taking less risk and investing less, even though nothing is more important now than to develop the products of tomorrow. But companies lack the confidence to do that.
This lack of confidence, in turn, has been most detrimental to the dynamics of the economy. "In the coming years," says McKinsey's Frank Mattern, "we will have to get used to lower growth rates."
Nowhere has the impact of economic decline been as harsh as in the region that has come to be known as Germany's Musterländle (loosely translated as "model state"). "Things are getting grim here," says Putzmeister CEO Karl Schlecht.
An economic network with roots dating back to the early 19th century is beginning to crumble. Back then, young businesses located along the Ulm-Stuttgart railroad line, including press maker Schuler in Göppingen (founded 1839), exhaust specialist Eberspächer in Esslingen (1865), auto parts maker Bosch (1886) and carmaker Daimler (1890) in Stuttgart. Companies were founded then that still shape the region's industrial landscape today.
They have survived two world wars and several monetary reforms, but now they face their toughest test yet. Sieghard Bender, the head of the local branch of the IG Metall metalworkers' union, considers 90 of the roughly 100 larger companies in his district to be problem cases. When asked how many of those companies are still doing relatively well, the union leader pauses to think for a moment. Five, he answers.
Bender, an easygoing man in his mid-50s, is sitting on a wooden bench in the garden behind the union's offices. The regional chapter is having a summer party, and Bender is getting himself a serving of pasta salad. He is one of the few people here who has already lived through a severe crisis. In 1991, then IG Metall Chairman Franz Steinkühler sent him to Chemnitz, a traditional location for engineering companies, to save what could be saved after the demise of East Germany. That experience helps him today, says Bender.
For months, he has been rushing from one employee meeting to the next. He senses the discontent brewing among workers, who face growing problems and expectations that are essentially unrealizable. On the bright side, he says, the regional chapter is gaining new members again, at a rate of about 50 a month.
The summer party has given Bender an evening of respite, with the exception of the music booming from the building. The union officials have taken refuge in the garden, where they are discussing the depressing nature of short-time work. "The people are suffering, the way a dog suffers when it has nothing to do," says Bender, slapping a colleague on the back. The man, Roland Weber, is 38 and can easily spend a quarter of an hour giving an impromptu lecture on how a piece of metal achieves the desired strength through a process of heating and cooling. This is his field, and he clearly knows it inside and out.
Weber, a metal hardener by trade, has worked for Index, an Esslingen company that manufactures machine tools, for the past 15 years. He was working six days a week until last fall, but now he works only three days a month. Short-time work has turned his life upside down.
Nowadays, Weber handles many of the household responsibilities, driving his children to sports practice or shopping for groceries. He runs into other Index employees at the supermarket, where he sometimes has a cup of coffee with them. Weber has quit smoking, saving €200 ($280) a month as a result. The family has been forced to cut corners, no longer going out to steakhouses in Stuttgart and canceling its beach vacation in Italy. Nevertheless, Weber estimates that they are still short by about €600 ($840) a month. "There's too much month left at the end of the money," he says.
Weber prefers not to think about how much longer the short-time work will last, what happens after the company's annual summer shutdown, and whether his profession as a metal hardener has a future. "If I did, I would drive myself crazy."
Hundreds of thousands of skilled workers like Weber are now idle, people the center-left Social Democrats 10 years ago were touting as the new "center" of society. They are people who were convinced that happiness is granted to those who work hard, and that success is based on performance.
The sociologist Heinz Bude calls them the "core social classes of the German model." Recently they have been feeling that they are trapped in a downward spiral, and their self-confidence has been undermined. "Fear is rampant in the places where value is created in Germany," says Bude.
In Göppingen, a traditional Swabian industrial town, the numbers reflect this fear. A year ago, the unemployment rate in the district was 3.5 percent, lower than almost anywhere else in Germany. It has since risen by at least a third. In June, 19,913 people were registered as unemployed. But this number only tells half the story.
Another 20,000 workers are on short time. Göppingen has become the capital of short-time work and, as a result, the town's reputation is changing.
Schuler, the world's largest manufacturer of presses, is in the red and has cut 600 jobs. The slump in the luxury vehicle market has sharply affected automobile parts supplier Bader, which specializes in leather trim. The well-known model railroad manufacturer Märklin has declared bankruptcy. Hard times are ahead for Göppingen. Mayor Guido Till, a member of the Social Democrats, clings defiantly to every sign of hope.
Only recently, says Till, a producer of construction machinery held a topping-out ceremony to dedicate a new building, in the midst of the recession. And he estimates that the town's commercial tax revenues this year will be almost as high as they were last year. In fact, Till insists, the crisis has not really made itself felt in his town, and it is "not even an issue" for the city council.
A few blocks from the town hall, on the first floor of the municipal employment agency, there is a meeting of a group of people with a completely different take on the crisis. They are employers from the region who have come to the agency to learn more about short-time work.
"Feel free to ask me anything you like," says Ralf Schneider, an expert from the Göppingen labor agency. Schneider knows that it takes some business owners a long time to overcome their misgivings about asking for help.
One of the attendees speaks up. He wants to know whether workers have to use up all of their accumulated vacation days from previous years before they can go onto short-time work. "Yes, the leftover vacation must be used up first," Schneider responds. But what if some have accumulated more than 100 days, going as far back as 2006? "Oh my goodness," says Schneider.
Another attendee asks whether apprentices can be put onto short time. Yes, in principle, says Schneider, but if apprentices fail their final examination later on, they can claim that they weren't properly trained. The employers nod their heads, as it dawns on them that they will have to do more than simply fill out an application form. "Your personnel department won't have to go on short time, I can promise you that," says Schneider.
Until recently, the biggest challenge for the employment advisers in Göppingen was to provide companies with enough skilled workers. Now they are struggling with a completely different set of problems.
For instance, apprentices who have not been offered full-time work after completing their training programs are increasingly claiming unemployment benefits. The number of unemployed workers under 25 has grown by 82 percent within a year. And, says agency director Martin Scheel, those who are coming to the agency to look for work are, for the first time, mainly people who have completed a vocational training program. "This time, we can't say that it's only affecting unskilled workers."
Many people have come to the bitter realization that even the kind of specialized expertise which was always prized in Germany is no guarantee against losing one's job. This is a consequence of global competition, which is becoming considerably more cutthroat now that the prosperous boom years are over.
Today, engineering companies and auto parts makers from Asia are penetrating deeply into markets for high-quality goods, markets once dominated by German specialists. The Chinese competitors are making products "of a quality that would leave you speechless," says Putzmeister founder Karl Schlecht.
Schlecht has a certain amount of admiration for his Asian competitors, for their discipline, their business acumen and their thriftiness -- all traditional Swabian virtues. "They will soon be making the things we make here just as well as we do, but for a much lower price."
For industry veterans, this raises fundamental questions, questions which are on the minds of everyone in the export industry today. Would it have been possible to prevent this sharp downturn? What should companies do now? How can they bring down labor costs even further?
Daimler has led the way in this regard. Roughly 60,000 Daimler employees now earn and work almost 9 percent less than they did before. But is this enough? Or will companies have to shift even more of their production away from Germany? Moving production abroad was in decline until recently, but now corporate strategists are rethinking their calculations.
Or could the solution be for export-focused companies to abandon their niches and expand their range of customers and products? Some companies have already taken this approach. Auto-parts maker Bosch, for example, is expanding its renewable energy business. But this is only effective to a certain extent, because Bosch's customers in the wind and solar power industries are also struggling and are often unable to secure the financing they need.
The options are unsatisfactory. "We did everything right," insists Mink CEO Zimmermann. He says that he consistently emphasized quality, delivered his products on a just-in-time basis, and maintained a broad base of 20,000 customers and 300,000 products. Even more importantly, his company produces brushes, a product which wears out and needs to be replaced. "We thought that was our life insurance policy," says Zimmermann.
Germany: Christ Dems seek dissolvement of Schleswig Holsteins parliament
spiegel-online
Kiel - The Christ Dems intend to finish the coalition with the social dems. The faction in Kiel agreed on a respective proposal on wednesday unanimously. On thursday the dissolvement of parliament will be seeked and on friday therell be a vote about it.
The grand coalition in Schleswig Holstein is close to its end: The christ dem faction in parliament intends to quit the alliance with the social dems. Reason is a twist with the social dem state head Stegner. The Christ Dems desire new elections on 27th of sep - whether the comrades agree is still open.
Kiel - The Christ Dems intend to finish the coalition with the social dems. The faction in Kiel agreed on a respective proposal on wednesday unanimously. On thursday the dissolvement of parliament will be seeked and on friday therell be a vote about it.
NPP Kruemmel: metal splinters seem to have entered reactor core
spiegel-online
The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), on the other hand, who have so far failed to come up with an inspiring issue for their campaign, could hardly believe their good fortune. Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a member of the SPD, referred last Friday to the incident as the "Krümmel monster" (a reference to Krümelmonster, the German name for the "Sesame Street" character Cookie Monster), while at the same time unveiling proposed legislation that would speed up the process of taking Germany's oldest reactors, including Krümmel, out of commission. "Of course, this is an election campaign," the minister said candidly, "but we have to make it clear that the CDU/CSU and the FDP are in bed with the nuclear power industry."
Many details surrounding the series of mishaps are still unknown. Nevertheless, the Social Democrats are already demanding action be taken. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the party's candidate for chancellor in September elections, joined the chorus of those calling for a permanent shutdown of Krümmel. But the SPD's schadenfreude could prove to be premature. Gitta Trauernicht, the Schleswig-Holstein minister of social affairs who is in charge of nuclear energy for the state, is also in hot water over the affair -- and she belongs to the SPD.
ATOMIC NIGHTMARE
Krümmel Accident Puts Question Mark over Germany's Nuclear Future
By SPIEGEL Staff
The recent accident at the Krümmel nuclear power plant in northern Germany was more serious than was previously known. Anglea Merkel's Christian Democrats are now finding themselves on the defensive with their plans to extend the life of German nuclear reactors.
Ernst Michael Züfle should never sit down at a poker table, at least not when real money is at stake. When asked last Thursday about damage to the reactor of the Krümmel nuclear power plant, Züfle, the head of the nuclear division of Swedish energy company Vattenfall, swallowed audibly, nervously rolled his pen between his fingers and avoided making eye contact.
AP
The Krümmel nuclear plant near Hamburg: The reactor had to be shut down on July 4 following a short circuit in a transformer.
It was already awkward enough for Vattenfall that the accident, which resembled a similar breakdown two years ago, occurred after it had spent €300 million ($420 million) upgrading the plant. As in the 2007 incident, this time there was also a short circuit in a transformer. The reactor, which had just been started up, quickly had to be shut down again on Saturday, July 4.
Züfle was also forced to admit that the accident in the nuclear power plant was more serious than previously known. In addition to the transformer problem, he conceded, there was damage to "perhaps a few fuel elements," namely the radioactive core of a nuclear power plant. When asked how long the company had known about the problem, he replied, somewhat helplessly: "Please bear with us, because we need time to investigate the incident." He could have offered more of an explanation.
What began as a minor technical glitch developed into a serious problem within a few days, especially for Vattenfall, the operator of the Krümmel plant. In addition to revealing a troubling degree of carelessness and mismanagement, what happened in the Krümmel reactor shows that the Swedish energy company has hardly improved its communication strategy since the last accident. Once again, the company has withheld important information and, once again, it has been hesitant to come out with the truth.
Vattenfall has consistently stressed that all safety systems were operational at Krümmel and that no radioactive leaks occurred. But this makes the political fallout from the incident all the more serious, putting Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party on the defensive with their plans to back nuclear power if they emerge victorious from this fall's parliamentary election in Germany.
There has long been a lot more at stake than just the future of Krümmel. The public discussion in Germany over nuclear power now revolves around the necessary safety culture surrounding a high-risk technology, the newly erupted debate over extending the lives of reactors and the credibility of electric utilities and politicians in an election year.
According to insiders, it is clear that not only Vattenfall, but also the relevant supervisory authorities, did not provide adequate information about what had happened at Krümmel. The Social Affairs Ministry in Kiel, which is responsible for reactor safety in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, where Krümmel is located, was apparently aware of the Krümmel reactor's vulnerability to breakdowns much earlier than was officially admitted.
The damage is considerable, and it extends to the entire nuclear industry. Germany's major energy utilities see the Swedish operator's sloppy management of Krümmel, which is now coming to light, as a major fiasco.
On Tuesday of last week, Wulf Bernotat, the CEO of energy giant E.on, which owns 50 percent of the damaged reactor, wrote in a sharply worded letter to Vattenfall management in Sweden that his company was "appalled" by the handling of safety procedures at the plant. The reactor shutdown will cost E.on, as a co-owner, about €20 million ($28 million) a month.
Industry insiders also believe that this time Vattenfall will not be able to get away by sacrificing a few scapegoats, such as firing the director of the power plant. The resignation of Vattenfall CEO Lars Göran Josefsson can not be ruled out, and there is even talk in the industry that the company could lose its license to operate nuclear power plants. If that happened, E.on, as co-owner, would likely be forced to step into the breach.
The top executives of nuclear power plant operators fear that they can give up their dream of securing government approval for extending the lives of their plants. The vehemence with which Jürgen Grossmann, the head of the German utility giant RWE, insisted, in an interview with the tabloid Bild, that all German nuclear power plants are safe shows just how sensitive the issue is.
The German utility executives' fears that the safety problems at Krümmel could be far worse than previously known are not unjustified. An insider familiar with the work that was done on the Krümmel reactor described to SPIEGEL the causes of the as-yet-unexplained damage to the fuel elements. In his view, Vattenfall is "the discount chain among the nuclear energy companies," and he is convinced that "the elementary rules of our profession were broken there."
What Vattenfall nuclear division manager Züfle did not say last week was that an internal crisis meeting was held at Vattenfall with nuclear technology firms Westinghouse and Areva a few days before the Kiel nuclear regulatory agency on June 19 cleared the reactor to be started up again, after it had been shut down for two years following the last accident. The subject of the meeting was foreign bodies in the reactor.
Prior to the meeting, workers had discovered unusual objects underneath the fuel elements, which are more than 4 meters (13 feet) long. According to the insider, a "pale shimmer" was visible on photos of the objects. An ordinary rod was apparently used to extract a few large metal shavings from the reactor vessel. According to the eyewitness, technicians could not determine whether there were more metal shavings in the vessel. The shavings, which are several centimeters long and very sharp, were apparently the result of work that had been done on fittings and pipes in the power plant, and had also entered pipes in the reactor area as a result of vibrations.
To protect the reactor from such foreign objects, in accordance with internal cleaning procedures, pipe connections are normally required to be flushed out after the completion of inspection work. According to employees, however, this step was omitted because of "time constraints." The reactor was apparently started up with the metal waste lodged in some of its sensitive components.
Vattenfall spokesman Ivo Banek denies the allegation that rules were not followed. "We had the various systems cleaned," he says. At the same time, Vattenfall told SPIEGEL that "salvage equipment (e.g., a short metal rod connected to a cable) was used to recover all detectable metal shavings." On Friday evening, Vattenfall officials still claimed that they had no knowledge about the size of the metal pieces that had been retrieved.
Part 2: In Hot Water
When foreign objects swirl through a reactor, which happens in particular after an emergency shutdown, they can damage the fuel rod casings, where the uranium is stored. The consequences can be serious, because fuel elements that have been damaged or bent as a result of age may compromise the "safe operation" of the plant during, for example, another emergency shutdown -- of the kind that became necessary following the recent transformer short-circuit.
If additional metal pieces are found during tests performed on the reactor, which began on Friday when the reactor cover was opened, it may be necessary to remove the entire core from the reactor vessel. "Vattenfall can already order some castors for temporary storage," says someone involved in the investigation, in a reference to the "castor" casks used for storage and transport of radioactive material.
According to a member of the German government's reactor safety commission, smaller foreign objects have also been found occasionally in other reactors, but larger foreign objects in the reactor pose a "serious problem." The safety official says he is unaware of any similar cases ever having occurred in German reactors. A realistic estimate of the cost of cleaning a reactor, including shutdown costs, would range into the triple-digit millions, says the official.
FUEL ROD TESTS
On Monday, Vattenfall began analyzing around 80,000 fuel rods from the Krümmel plant, as at least one of them is thought to be defective. The company said that the tests had nothing to do with the transformer short circuit on July 4.
Trauernicht sharply criticized Vattenfall's information policy, despite the fact that she could have known about problems with the trouble-prone transformer in the reactor. In December 2007, experts from the northern branch of Germany's Technical Inspection Association (TÜV), the Kiel ministry and both Siemens and Vattenfall performed several so-called partial discharge tests on the transformer in question. The tests, which are used to measure short-circuit risk, indicated a value that was five times as high as the normal value. This prompted the inspectors to note in their inspection report that further tests were necessary "in relation to starting up the reactor."
But the outside experts took their testing equipment with them when they left. After that, Vattenfall neglected to install its own instruments. The procedure specified in the "Startup Notice" issued by the nuclear regulators in Kiel on June 19 is relatively vague. In a section titled "Determining the Usability of the Transformer," the document reads: "Partial discharge tests are envisioned for machine transformer AT02 during the course of resumption of normal operation." But the instructions did not state that such tests were required or prescribed, giving the impression that the tests could easily be dispensed with.
It is clear that the ministry did not check to determine whether the procedure arranged with Vattenfall was in fact performed. Such an inspection was not justifiable under nuclear regulatory law, says a spokesman for Trauernicht. But that is only half the truth, because 2007 accidents in the Brunsbüttel and Krümmel nuclear power plants led experts, nuclear regulators and operators to approve an entire package of measures to regulate continued operation. These measures also included procedures with no justification in nuclear regulatory law.
The German Environment Ministry has long believed that legal restraints under nuclear regulatory law should also apply to transformers and generators. "Technologically speaking, there are many interactions between the transformer and the safety of the plant," says Dieter Majer, a subdivision head in charge of nuclear safety at the Environment Ministry. For this reason, he says, it was correct for the problems with the transformer to be mentioned in the applicable notice from the nuclear regulatory agency.
But the nuclear regulators at the ministry in Kiel relied on Vattenfall, which had assured the officials that it planned to perform the tests. "In light of everything we have experienced with Vattenfall in the past, this sort of behavior is shockingly naïve," says a member of the reactor safety commission.
Perhaps the motivations are much more straightforward than one would think. Schleswig-Holstein earns at least €35 million ($49 million) in annual revenues just from surface water fees from three nuclear power plants, Brunsbüttel, Brokdorf and Krümmel -- provided they are up and running. For a state with a current budget deficit of €600 million ($840 million), this is a lot of money. In other words, every day a reactor is connected to the grid in Schleswig-Holstein is a good day.
The inconsistencies in the behavior of the Kiel inspectors are also reflected in federal politics in Germany. The debate over the series of problems at Krümmel and the safety of German nuclear power plants reveals even more contradictions, particularly in the nuclear policies of the CDU/CSU and the FDP.
According to the CDU/CSU's election platform, which Chancellor Merkel presented to the public shortly before the weekend when the Krümmel accident occurred, "nuclear power is, for the present, an indispensible part of a balanced energy mix." Because solar and wind energy are not yet fully available, the document reads, the CDU/CSU supports "an extension of the operating lives of the safe German plants." The FDP holds similar views. But now the Krümmel accident has sparked a debate within the two pro-nuclear parties over what exactly the resolutions mean. There have been vehement protests against demands to allow nuclear power plants to continue operation for an almost unlimited period of time.
Günther Oettinger, the governor of the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg and a member of the CDU, has proposed leaving nuclear power plants connected to the grid for as long as safe operation is possible. Even Krümmel is a "power plant with a future," he said last week.
A look at the United States shows what this could mean. US nuclear power plant operators are staunch advocates of "life beyond 60" for their plants. Almost all are trying to get their operating licenses extended to 60 years, and the US nuclear regulatory agency (NRC) is already planning another round of negotiations for the period beyond 60 years. Deputy FDP Chairman Andreas Pinkwart even says that he "cannot rule out the construction of brand-new nuclear power plants."
Part 3: A New Lease of Life?
Resistance is starting to form against all this pro-nuclear activity. The CDU state government in the western state of Saarland, which will run for reelection in late August, even wants to speed up the pace of shutting down Germany's oldest reactors. "It is very important that we disconnect power plants like Krümmel as early as possible," says the state's environment minister, Stefan Mörsdorf. "Their 'residual electricity volumes' can then be transferred to other, more modern reactors."
Under the 2002 German law regulating the decommissioning of nuclear power plants, it is stipulated that for the nuclear power plants currently in operation, the right for their further operation will expire after the production of a certain amount of electricity, known as the "'residual electricity volume," which is fixed individually for each plant. The nuclear phaseout law was introduced by the SPD-Green government under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
At the same time Mörsdorf, a Christian Democratic, wants to leave the question open as to whether the residual electricity volumes now allowable by law can even be raised. According to Mörsdorf, "We won't be able to talk about that until later, perhaps not even until after the next legislative period." The question of whether the government ought to "add another five years" to the lives of nuclear power plants should not be answered, says Mörsdorf, until it becomes clearer how quickly the development of renewable forms of energy will proceed and how reliable natural gas shipments from Russia are.
Bavarian Environment Minister Markus Söder, a member of the Christian Social Union, the sister party to Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, also says that unlimited reactor lifespans are "out of the question," although he advocates extending lifespans "across the board, for all safe reactors, by at least eight to 10 years compared with the (SPD-Green) exit plan." After that, says Söder, Germans will have to "see how renewable energy has developed."
Christian von Boetticher, the Christian Democratic environment minister of Schleswig-Holstein, where the Krümmel reactor is located, has a somewhat different argument: "We must make it clear that we will not automatically extend the life of every nuclear power plant." The CDU/CSU, says Boetticher, must "take a critical look at all nuclear power plants in Germany." The FDP in Schleswig-Holstein, on the other hand, is fundamentally opposed to extending plants' operating lives. It favors the SPD-Green Party plans to phase out nuclear power altogether and would not even allow Krümmel to be reconnected to the grid.
There are also major differences over how Merkel plans to make lifespan extension more appealing to the public. According to the CDU/CSU election platform, the additional profits generated by the measure would be used primarily to support energy research and lower electricity prices.
No Solution
A lot of money is at stake. Nuclear power plants, most of which have already been fully depreciated, are powerful moneymakers for their operators. According to internal industry calculations, they produce annual profits of €7-8 billion ($9.8-11.2 billion), assuming electricity prices are high. If their lifespans were extended by 10 or 15 years, total extra profits would amount to €70-120 billion ($98-168 billion).
But who will monitor the "eco dividend" touted by Bavarian Environment Minister Söder? Should Germany's four major electric utilities be allowed to use the profits to solidify their power in the market, or should the money be spent on non-profit projects? As with the issue of plant lifespan, the CDU/CSU and the FDP lack a clear position on the use of potential profits.
There is another problem lurking in the background that has citizens worried: the unresolved question of disposal. For four years, the CDU/CSU thwarted attempts by Environment Minister Gabriel to find, with the help of scientists, a location where highly radioactive waste could be stored safely. Southern Germany was also included in their search for sites, which was met with resistance from conservative politicians there.
Stephan Kohler, the head of the German Energy Agency, who is often suspected by environmentalists of being on the side of big business, sees the unresolved question of waste disposal as the key argument against an extension of lifespans. "Just because we will have to find a solution eventually doesn't mean we can merrily continue producing radioactive waste," he says, noting that scientists have already spent the last four decades searching for a way to safely dispose of the waste. "It is not the fault of the German anti-nuclear movement that we haven't found a solution yet," says Kohler.
The CDU/CSU and the FDP are pinning their hopes on a single site: Gorleben, a name which has been synonymous in Germany with the conflict over nuclear energy for more than 30 years. The exploratory mine has already consumed €1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) in costs, which suggests that a fait accompli has already been achieved in Gorleben under the pretense of research. Officials at the Environment Ministry say that the exploration of the salt dome at Gorleben has already cost considerably more money than would have been needed for an analysis which did not have a predetermined result in mind. The facility in Gorleben, say ministry officials, has been designed so its dimensions are also sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the planned nuclear waste storage site.
The way the CDU/CSU describes the final storage issue in its election platform is fitting: "The CDU and CSU want an immediate lifting of the moratorium on investigation of the Gorleben site, so that the interim storage facilities at nuclear power plants can be closed as quickly as possible." This sounds much more like a decision which has already been made than a genuine investigation.
However, placing so much emphasis on Gorleben is dangerous, and possibly very expensive, because a court could very well reject the choice of the site, made as it was without clear criteria, alternatives or previously defined safety standards. That could spell the loss of billions in investments and decades of valuable time expended on the search for alternatives.
Given the heated discussion over nuclear power, an incident that occurred in Gorleben on the same Saturday as the Krümmel accident seems emblematic. The short circuit in the Krümmel nuclear power plant caused, ironically, a power outage in the site's exploration mine. In the future, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection plans to supply green power to the nuclear site.
PETRA BORNHÖFT, MARKUS DEGGERICH, FRANK DOHMEN, SEBASTIAN KNAUER, GUNTHER LATSCH, CHRISTIAN SALEWSKI, CHRISTIAN SCHWÄGERL, SAMIHA SHAFY
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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