Lazio captain arrested in football match-fixing scandal

Deutsche Welle, 28 May 2012

Italian police have arrested Lazio captain Stefano Mauri in connection with a football betting scandal. Several homes have been searched, including that of national defender Domenico Criscito.

The captain of Rome-based soccer club Lazio, Stefano Mauri, was among the 19 people arrested by Italian police on Monday. Around 30 homes were also searched in connection with the Calcioscommesse match-fixing scandal that broke a year ago. The search included players, coaches and administrators from the top league, Serie A, to Serie B and the lower Lega Pro division.

Italy defender Domenico Criscito, who has been named in the preliminary squad for the European Championships, has also had his home at the national team's Euro 2012 training camp near Florence searched. Criscito, who plays for Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg, has been formally notified that he is under investigation.

Criscito is in Italy's preliminary
EURO 2012 squad

This comes just hours before Italy coach Cesare Prandelli is scheduled to announce his final EURO 2012 squad later on Monday.

Police also notified Antonio Conte, manager of freshly crowned Serie A champions, Juventus Turin, that he is being investigated.

Several other players have already been banned, including Italy midfielder Cristiano Doni, who will not be able to play for three-and-a-half years.

The former Atalanta captain and Italy midfielder was banned in August for his part in the scandal involving Serie B matches last season.

Atalanta, who were promoted from Serie B, had six points deducted in the top flight this season as a result of the scandal.

ng/tj (Reuters, dpa, AFP)

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Mass opposition rally in Tbilisi, Georgia

BBC News, 27 May 2012

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The protest was one of the largest
in the capital in recent years

Tens of thousands have thronged the streets of the Georgian capital to attend a political rally organised by a Georgian billionaire and opposition leader.

Bidzina Ivanishvili, one of the country's richest men, is campaigning ahead of October's parliamentary poll.

The protest is the largest anti-government demonstration in years.

Prime Minister Mikhail Saakashvili's second and last presidential term ends in January 2013.

Although his future plans are unclear, he has not excluded becoming prime minister.

Mr Ivanishvili made his entry into politics last October, announcing that he was forming a political party with the aim of winning the parliamentary vote and assuming the post of prime minister.

He has used his wealth to unite the opposition and fund his election campaign. 

Mr Ivanishvili is a billionaire-turned
politician

Addressing the crowd he said: "The parliamentary elections slated for autumn pose the question 'to be or not to be?' to our country.

"We will win, no doubt, although just wishing is not enough for a victory."

Mr Ivanishvili's supporters accuse President Saakashvili of authoritarianism and say he is not doing enough to tackle poverty and unemployment.

However, many Georgian voters are suspicious of Mr Ivanishvili, who earned his wealth in Russia during the 1990s.

The BBC's Damien McGuinness, in Tiblisi, says the demonstration is being seen as a test of the opposition's public support.

The turn-out - which the opposition claim was as high as 300,000 people - suggests that Mr Saakashvili's ruling party may have more of a fight on its hands than originally expected, our correspondent says.

A year ago, four people were killed after police clashed with violent protesters during another opposition rally.

Before Mr Saakashvili came to office after the Rose Revolution of 2003, Georgia was almost a failed state, with high rates of criminality.

There are fears, our correspondent explains, that a change of leadership would take the country back to that time.

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Vatican shuffle cloaked in controversy

Deutsche Welle, 26 May 2012

There could be a number of explanations for why Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was asked to step down as head of the Vatican bank. The Holy See, however, has remained tight-lipped about the reasons.

The Instituto per le Opere di Religione (English: The Institute for Works of Religion), odd though it may seem, is a bank hiding behind that name. It is the financial arm of the Vatican, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. The history of its predecessor institution dates back to the 19th century, and the bank took on its present form and name in 1942.

Recent decades have seen repeated rumors of the bank being caught up in dirty dealings, and a new low point has come with the resignation of its head, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.

Despite repeated disciplinary measures, Tedeschi (ironically, the name means 'the German') "has not completed certain tasks of eminent importance," the Vatican said but did not provide further details. 

Gotti Tedeschi was asked to
step down by the bank's board

Now, speculation is running high about what the real grounds for his dismissal could be. Some Italian media sources suspect a connection to classified documents leaked to the media by the Pope's butler, which include details on Vatican finances. Earlier investigations into Tedeschi's potential violation of anti-money laundering standards could also have played a role, although those investigations were later halted.

Among the world's "least transparent"

"It's a very peculiar bank. A bank that manages billions, including real estate," said Wolfgang Gehrke, a banking expert and head of the Bavarian Finance Center, in an interview with DW.

"It's a bank that is active in financial markets on the Vatican's behalf and that has set itself apart as one of the least transparent banks in the world. So, of course, when someone is being so untransparent, he also has to cope with every possible kind of rumor," Gehrke added.

Italian investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi has also looked into the Vatican bank's financial dealings. His book on the subject argues that the bank has been involved in exercising undue political influence, in money laundering and even murders and mafia affairs. Nuzzi's research suggests that ex-prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who is alleged to have had mafia ties, also had a secret account at the Vatican's bank - with transactions totalling more than 60 million euros ($75 million). 

Giulio Andreotti may have had
a secret Vatican bank account

Cleaning up too thoroughly?

"Out of esteem for the Pope," Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who has thus far enjoyed a reputation as a competent and morally upright banker, has said he will not respond to rebukes by the Vatican's board of directors.

"It's better that I remain silent, otherwise I would say ugly things," he told the Italian news agency Ansa. Having previously worked for Spain's Santander Bank, Tedeschi was named head of the Vatican's bank in 2009 to help straighten out the institution's affairs. It can also be speculated as to whether he did a bit too much cleaning up and became an uncomfortable, or even dangerous presence along the way.

"The financial machinations of the Vatican that I discuss in my book took place before the current Pope's term. However, there is a similarity between all representatives of the Catholic Church, which Pope Benedict XVI also shares: A mantle of silence is spread over everything. And along with it can come blackmail, corruption and money laundering," said author Nuzzi two years ago to the Hilpoltsteiner German daily.

But the Vatican's current head has taken steps in the direction of reform, says bank expert Gehrke.

"The Pope has made sure that the bank is ready - which used not to be the case - to subject itself to European standards on transparency. But that seems not to be working out entirely. None of us knows exactly how things take place in this bank and whether money laundering did in fact take place there," Gehrke explained. 

The Vatican's bank is housed
within this building

Among the few with insight into those questions are the bank's board of directors as well as the now expelled Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Gehkre notes that the board contains Curia members, "who absolutely have experience in capital markets."

"Vatileaks" suspect arrested

A suspect has been taken into custody following revelations made in documents leaked to the media. Internet portal ilfoglio.it and news agency Ansa report that one of the Pope's butlers, who has worked at the Vatican since 2006, made the classified information available. The investigation is being led by the Vatican's Gendarmerie police force.

It is safe to assume that the Vatican will do all it can to prevent further internal documents from getting into the media's hands - as they did when Renato Dardozzi (1922-2003), one of Pope John Paul II's closest colleagues, led the inheritors of his estate to publish information he had collected regarding the Vatican's financial affairs. In turn, the information Dardozzi gathered formed the basis for Gianluigi's book on the Vatican and its financial dealings.

Author: Tobias Oelmaier / gsw

Editor: Gregg Benzow

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(SaLuSa channelled by Mike Quinsey, March 16, 2012)

“…. Each project is underway and that will result in a sudden wealth of information reaching you. Events are such that the facts can no longer be kept hidden, and with that there will be an explosion of people coming forward to tell what they know. It may take longer where the Vatican is concerned, as it is akin to a secret society that has kept its dark secrets hidden well away. However, nothing will remain concealed for too long, as you are entitled to know the truth and the extent to which you have been deceived….”  

Christ Consciousness Is The Energy of The New World – Mar 7, 2012  (Kryon channelled by David Brown)

Dutch-born Nazi war crimes convict dies in Germany

Associated Press, by Geir Moulson, May 26, 2012

BERLIN (AP) -- Klaas Carel Faber, a Dutch native who fled to Germany after being convicted in the Netherlands of Nazi war crimes and subsequently lived in freedom despite several attempts to try or extradite him, has died. He was 90.

Klaas-Carel Faber

Faber's wife, Jacoba, told the Dutch news site de Nieuwe Pers that he died in a hospital on Thursday. A hospital official in Ingolstadt, the Bavarian city where the Fabers lived, confirmed that Saturday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with policy.

Faber - whom the Simon Wiesenthal Center last year placed at No. 3 on its list of most-wanted Nazi criminals - was convicted in 1947 of involvement in 22 murders and for aiding the Netherlands' Nazi occupiers during World War II. He was handed a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison, according to Dutch prosecutors.

But in 1952, he escaped and fled to Germany, where he lived in freedom.

Faber was saved by his German citizenship when German authorities rejected a request from the Netherlands last year for his extradition on a European arrest warrant. In January, Ingolstadt prosecutor Helmut Walter said he had filed a motion to have Faber serve his sentence in a German prison.

Walter said a state court in Ingolstadt wouldn't need to reconsider any of the Dutch case but decide whether, as a result of the European arrest warrant being rejected, the sentence against him could be enforced in Germany.

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment on Saturday, the start of a three-day weekend in Germany.

Faber was born in the Netherlands on Jan. 20, 1922.

Dutch prosecutors have said he was convicted for killings at three different Dutch locations in 1944-1945, including six at the Westerbork transit camp, where thousands of Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank, were held before being sent to labor camps or death camps in eastern Europe.

According to the Wiesenthal Center, Faber volunteered for Hitler's SS, a paramilitary organization loyal to Nazi ideology, after Germany overran the Netherlands during World War II.

He also served with the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi internal intelligence agency, and an SS unit code-named Silbertanne, or Silver Fir, which consisted of 15 men, most of them Dutch, who were mustered to exact reprisals for attacks by the Dutch resistance on collaborators, according to the Wiesenthal Center.

Dutch authorities first requested his extradition in 1954, but Faber had been able to get German citizenship because of his service to Germany during the war, so the request was rejected because West Germany refused to extradite its own citizens.

In 1957 a Duesseldorf court rejected attempts to bring him to trial in Germany, saying there was not enough evidence against him.

After a Dutch request to have him jailed in Germany in 2004 failed, Munich prosecutors in 2006 received new evidence from the Netherlands and looked into reopening the files. But prosecutors found that the former SS man may have been guilty not of murder but only of manslaughter - and the statute of limitations for that crime had expired.

In 2010, the Netherlands again asked for his extradition, using a new European arrest warrant. It was again rejected, because his consent was still needed to extradite him as a German citizen.

 Klaas Carel Faber (NOS screenshot)

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German doctors apologize for Nazi-era crimes

Lloyds bank's Jessica Harper charged with £2.5m fraud

Former head of fraud at part-nationalised bank is accused of submitting false invoices

guardian.co.uk, Josephine Moulds, Friday 25 May 2012

Lloyds Banking Group's headquarters in London. Photograph: Dominic
Lipinski/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

A former head of fraud at Lloyds Banking Group has herself been charged with a £2.5m fraud, causing blushes at the part-nationalised bank.

Jessica Harper, 50, is accused of submitting false invoices to the tune of £2.46m when working as head of fraud and security for digital banking. It is thought her work involved managing supplies and that the invoices did not relate to personal expenses.

The fraud is alleged to have started in September 2008, shortly before Lloyds had to be bailed out by the taxpayer. The UK government owns 41% of Lloyds after funnelling £20bn of rescue funds into the bank during the financial crisis.

Harper, who lives in Croydon, south London, will appear before Westminster magistrates court next Thursday, charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position.

Andrew Penhale, deputy dead of the CPS central fraud group, said: "The charge relates to an allegation that between 1 September 2008 and 21 December 2011 Jessica Harper dishonestly and with the intention of making a gain for herself abused her position as an employee of Lloyds Banking Group, in which she was expected to safeguard the financial interests of Lloyds Banking Group, by submitting false invoices to claim payments totalling £2,463,750.88, to which she was not entitled."

He said the CPS had decided there was "a realistic prospect of conviction and a prosecution is in the public interest".

Lloyds said: "As the court process is ongoing it would be inappropriate for us to comment."

German doctors apologize for Nazi-era crimes

The Jakarta Post, Associated Press, Berlin, Germany, Fri, 05/25/2012

Germany's medical association has adopted a declaration apologizing for sadistic experiments and other actions of doctors under the Nazis.

In the statement adopted earlier this week in Nuremberg, the association said many doctors under the Nazis were "guilty, contrary to their mission to heal, of scores of human rights violations and we ask the forgiveness of their victims, living and deceased, and of their descendants."

In addition to performing pseudo-scientific experiments on concentration camp inmates, German doctors also were key to the Nazi's program of forced sterilization or euthanasia of the mentally ill or others deemed "unworthy of life."

The medical association says "these crimes were not the actions of individual doctors but involved leading members of the medical community" and should be taken as a warning for the future.

Gibraltarian and Spanish police clash over fishing row

BBC News, 25 May 2012

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The UK has counted Gibraltar
as a colony since 1713

Gibraltarian police have confronted Spanish officers escorting Spanish fishing boats in the waters near Gibraltar for the second night running.

Gibraltar's government has said fishing with large nets in the area is illegal because of an environmental law.

But Spain claims sovereignty over the UK colony and its foreign ministry has said it supports the right of Spanish boats to fish in its waters.

The Spanish and UK foreign secretaries are due to meet in London on Tuesday.

Spain's foreign ministry has said the fishing dispute will not affect its relations with Britain, which has counted Gibraltar as a colony since 1713.

'Defending rights'

On Thursday, media reported that several Royal Gibraltar Police boats had surrounded three Spanish fishing vessels after they cast their nets near Gibraltar harbour the night before.

Gibraltarian news agency GBC News said several Spanish Guardia Civil boats appeared to be defending the fishermen, but were told to leave by the Gibraltarian police.

The Spanish boats reportedly left the area later after a Royal Navy vessel arrived and told them again to depart.

GBC news quoted Gibraltar's chief minister, Fabian Picardo, as condemning what were "obviously carefully premeditated challenges to our indisputable sovereignty, jurisdiction and control of British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and our airspace".

A UK Foreign Office statement confirmed that Britain's minister for Europe, David Lidington, had met with Mr Picardo to discuss various issues, including the fishing dispute and recent incidents in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters.

It said Mr Lidington had reiterated that the UK would "never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their wishes".

But Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters Madrid would continue to dispatch police boats to protect Spanish fishermen in the area to defend "the fishing rights of our fishermen".

The Catholic Church's inquisition of American nuns

Though castigated by their own Church authorities, US nuns are far more in tune with the actual views of American Catholics

guardian.co.uk, Victoria Bekiempis, Thursday 24 May 2012

Bishops have opposed healthcare legislation, while nuns are supporting it.
Photograph: Getty/Reuters/Kacper Pempel

So, did you hear the one about the American nuns?

No, this isn't the beginning of a joke. In April, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the Catholic Church's current iteration of the Inquisition, if you will – issued an assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious,which represents 80% of the US's 57,000 nuns.

Some key context here: the conference was formed 56 years ago at the behest of the Holy See, to provide "a unified voice" for US nuns who helped the poor, nursed the sick, taught students, worked as missionaries, and fought violence. (Another important bit of background: the congregation is the same arm of the church that bullied Lavinia Byrne, feminist theologian and former British nun, for arguing in favor of female ordination in a 1993 book.)

The conference, according to the Vatican, was spending too much time doing good – and not enough time enforcing church teaching (against abortion, homosexuality etc). So, the nuns actually got in trouble for being, well, nuns. So troubled was the church by this and the women's alleged "radical feminism" that the assessment demanded the appointment of an archbishop delegate to make them behave.

Nope, no joke.

At first, many members of the conference reacted with silent shock. They didn't speak out against the Church because of their vows of obedience. Many have since shot back, however, calling the charges wrongful criticism – and a distraction from the Church's failure to address adequately child molestation charges against clergy.

The Vatican might have gotten one thing right about these women: compared to the rest of the Pope Benedict XVI's ultra-conservative administration, they are radical feminists. But the Church has also gotten something terribly wrong: US Catholicism desperately needs "radical" feminist nuns – and should embrace, not criticize them – if it's going to remain relevant to American society.

A 2008 Pew forum on religion and public life study determined that nearly a third of Americans were brought up Catholic, but that "less than one in four remained so" – meaning the faith had shed "the greatest" proportion of US-born believers. Perhaps even more startling:

• "Roughly 10% of American adults, or 22.5 million, are former Catholics. That would qualify lapsed Catholics as the second-largest single US denomination, behind Catholics, at 54.8 million, and just ahead of the Southern Baptist Convention's 15.1 million members."

In addition, a study conducted by the center for applied research in the apostolate at Georgetown University indicates that "42.7 million Catholics, or two-thirds of US Catholics, are not going to mass." Only some 33% attend regularly. Another approximately 33% attend occasionally, and the rest never go, Catholic advocacy groups report. And the only reason the percentage of Catholics in the US population still hovers around 25%, Pew notes, is because of a steady stream of Latino immigrants.

The denomination's leaders worry so extensively about the hemorrhaging of parishioners that a group called Catholics Come Home launched a $3.5m ad blitz last December, according to the Denver Post, and had sponsored similar marketing campaigns in the past. The non-profit hoped that the 400-plus planned ads, with an estimated audience of 250 million viewers, would boost these sluggish numbers. If you look at lapsed Catholics' reasons for leaving the church, it doesn't seem like a lack of televised adverts quite tops their list.

Researchers at Villanova University's center for the study of church management recently reached out to several hundred lapsed Catholics in the diocese of Trenton, New Jersey. They wanted to figure out why they stopped frequenting mass. They were specifically asked "what issues they would raise if they could speak to the bishop for five minutes," according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

Their complaints included haughty clergy, "conservative haranguing", excessive focus on homosexuality and birth control, as well as negative attitudes toward female ordination. They also "didn't like the church's handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal and were upset that divorced and remarried Catholics are unwelcome at mass."

A key point is that some 66% of respondents "were female, and the median age was 53". This demographic detail has troubled Church leaders, who recognize that it is this group that has in the past tended to indoctrinate younger generations – their children and grandchildren – into the church. Anyone else see what's going on here?

The Catholic Church is shedding US members. Those who have left they church say they don't like the Church's conservative approach toward birth control, homosexuality, and female ordination. The Church has decided not to reconsider these policies – a move that could help maintain membership. Instead, the Holy See has decided to attack the one prominent and popular group among the clergy because they back the modern ideas demanded by believers.

Thus, rather than defending the faith, the Vatican's strategy works only to hasten the extinction of the very institution it's seeking to preserve.

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"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Based in Greece, Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to built Africa to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - New !

"Perceptions of God" – June 6, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Quantum Teaching, The Fear of God, Near-death Experience, God Becomes Mythology, Worship, Mastery, Intelligent Design, Benevolent Creator, Global Unity.... etc.) (Text version)

“.. For centuries you haven't been able to think past that box of what God must be like. So you create a Human-like God with wars in heaven, angel strife, things that would explain the devil, fallen angels, pearly gates, lists of dos and don'ts, and many rules still based on cultures that are centuries old. You create golden streets and even sexual pleasures as rewards for men (of course) - all Human perspective, pasted upon God. I want to tell you that it's a lot different than that. I want to remind you that there are those who have seen it! Why don't you ask somebody who has had what you would call a near-death experience?

(SaLuSa channelled by Mike Quinsey, March 16, 2012)

“…. Each project is underway and that will result in a sudden wealth of information reaching you. Events are such that the facts can no longer be kept hidden, and with that there will be an explosion of people coming forward to tell what they know. It may take longer where the Vatican is concerned, as it is akin to a secret society that has kept its dark secrets hidden well away. However, nothing will remain concealed for too long, as you are entitled to know the truth and the extent to which you have been deceived….”  

Christ Consciousness Is The Energy of The New World – Mar 7, 2012  (Kryon channelled by David Brown)

Vatican Bank chief Tedeschi dismissed

BBC News, 24 May 2012

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Mr Tedeschi is under investigation
for suspected money-laundering

The director of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, has been removed from his post for dereliction of duty, the Vatican says.

The bank's board of directors unanimously passed a no-confidence vote in Mr Tedeschi, a statement said.

It said he had failed "to carry out duties of primary importance", but it did not elaborate.

In 2010 Italian police launched an investigation against Mr Tedeschi as part of a money-laundering inquiry.

Members of the board believed Mr Tedeschi's dismissal was needed to "maintain the vitality of the bank", the Vatican statement said.

The board will now look for a new director to restore relations with the international financial community, "based on mutual respect for accepted international banking standards".

Mr Tedeschi declined to comment on his dismissal. He told journalists: "I'd rather say nothing, otherwise I'd say ugly things."

The Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was created during World War II to administer accounts held by religious orders, cardinals, bishops and priests.

It lost £250m in a scandal involving the collapse of one of Italy's biggest private banks - the Banco Ambrosiano - in 1982, with which it had close ties.

'Misunderstanding'

The Vatican Bank has been headed by Mr Tedeschi, 62, a trained economist, since 2009.

When Mr Tedeschi was placed under investigation in 2010, the Vatican said it was "perplexed and astonished", and expressed full confidence in Mr Tedeschi.

It said the matter was the result of a misunderstanding, and that none of its employees were involved in any wrongdoing.

As part of the inquiry, Italian tax police seized 23m euros ($29m, £18.4m) that the Vatican Bank had tried to transfer from a small Italian bank called Credito Artigianato.

A month later, the Vatican set up a new financial authority to combat money laundering and make its financial operations more transparent, ahead of an EU deadline.

Paolo Gabriele (bottom left) sees more of the

 Pope on a daily basis than most cardinals

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More opposition protesters arrested in Baku

Deutsche Welle, 24 May 2012

The run-up to Saturday’s Eurovision song contest in Azerbaijan continues to be overshadowed by the authorities’ crackdown on dissent. Dozens more protesters have been arrested in Baku.

Police in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, broke up an anti-government demonstration and arrested dozens of protesters on Thursday.

Police moved in after opposition activists gathered in front of the headquarters of Azerbaijan's state television station and began reading out statements demanding the release of political prisoners and an end to alleged censorship by the country's state media.

"Thirty to 35 people were detained," Leila Mustafayeva, a spokesperson for the opposition alliance Public Chamber told the AFP news agency.

Among those arrested were two women who held up a banner reading “We want public TV, not Ilham TV,” in a clear reference to the country's president, Ilham Aliyev.

The unauthorized demonstration came a few hours before the second semifinal of the Eurovision song contest, which is being held in Baku this year after the entry from Azerbaijan won last year's event. As the official partner of Eurovision, the state television station is hosting this year's contest.

Opponents of President Aliyev and his government have been trying to use the run-up to the event to draw international attention to alleged human rights abuses in the energy-rich country.

Government condemns 'politicization' of event

The government, meanwhile, condemned a meeting on Wednesday between the Swedish contestant, Loreen, with local human rights activists.

"The European Broadcasting Union must intervene in this issue and stop these politicized actions," Ali Hasanov, a senior official in the president's administration told the Trend news agency.

The final of the song contest, which is to be held on Saturday evening, will be broadcast live all over Europe. The annual event regularly attracts television audiences estimated at around 125 million people.

pfd/msh (AFP, dpa)

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Russia pays tribute to US budget

Pravda, 21.05.2012

There are many elementary things that recieve no attention at all, although they can be extremely important. If you take a Russian banknote in your hands, you will see that it says: "Note of the Bank of Russia." If you take a look at Soviet banknotes, you will see that they say: "State Treasury Note." It means that it is not the Russian state that makes the money that all Russians use in their everyday lives today. This is a consequence of 1991 - the time when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Modern-day bank notes are made in today's Russia on the base of the Constitution, as well as on the base of the laws about the Central Bank. The production volumes of today's banknotes in Russia are proportionate to the volume of the purchased virtual foreign currency. In other words, in order to pay, let's say, a note of 100 rubles to a cashier in a supermarket, the Russian economy has paid the United States of America the face value of this note.

If we add the structure of the Russian reserves, the general systems of balance of payments, the crediting mechanism - i.e. the elements of economic sovereignty, which Russia does not have, - then we will see that today, Russia pays nearly $200-300 billion to the US. This amount corresponds to the taxes, which Russian tax-payers pay - without customs payments.

Conditionally, every Russian citizen pays two taxes. One of them goes to the Russian budget, and the other one - in the same amount - goes to the American budget. Russia spends this money on the inflation mechanism, because this money is withdrawn from the economy. Therefore, Russia will never solve the inflation problem until it solves the problem of the Central Bank. Hungary tried to do it, for example, but was punished for it.

Russia is not alone here, of course. America defeated many countries of the world. The above is not a specific problem of Russia. That is why the USA consumes a half of the world's GDP because they collect tribute from everyone, not just Russia. 

Sergey Fyodorov

State Duma deputy

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Netherlands stands up for gay rights in Kiev

RNW, 22 May 2012

Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal says he regrets that the Gay Pride parade in Kiev was cancelled because of security concerns.

Image: Ukranianguide.com/COC.nl

“The threat posed by anti-gay protesters fits in with a political climate which has Ukraine drafting legislation that is seen as potentially discriminatory against gays.”

The Netherlands will address the issue at the end of this month during the EU-Ukraine talks on the constitutional state.

“The Ukrainian authorities must provide clarity about the measures being taken to safeguard gay rights, including the right to protest,” Mr Rosenthal said.

The minister is currently in Chicago for a two-day NATO summit.

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