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Afghanistan withdrawal Sherlock Immigration George Osborne Greece Michael Gove
News > World > Europe

Italy's anti-politician on the verge of election sensation

[Beppe-Gril]
[Beppe-Gril]


Hopes of a stable coalition emerging after today's vote have been upset by
emergence of the comic turned would-be leader

Peter Popham Author Biography
[Peter_Poph]

Peter Popham

Peter is a foreign correspondent and feature writer with The Independent who
has done long stretches in Japan, India and Italy.

More articles from this journalist
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Sunday 24 February 2013

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As Italians vote today and tomorrow in one of the most unpredictable general
elections in the nation's history, Europe looks on with fingers crossed, hoping
that a prudent and functional coalition will emerge from the ballot box.The
chances are not great.

The nightmare prospect that Silvio Berlusconi might return to power yet again
has receded in recent weeks. He is still hugely popular, and his Freedom People
party was in second place when the last opinion polls were published before the
ban on polling came into effect a fortnight ago.

But his comeback has been put in the shade by the mercurial ascent of an
equally magnetic and controversial figure: Beppe Grillo, a charismatic
64-year-old comedian from Genoa whose anti-political non-party, the Five-Star
Movement, has come roaring from behind in recent weeks and may have taken over
the number two slot, with one in five Italians said to be planning to vote for
his mostly young, untried and unknown candidates. The likely presence in the
next parliament of 100 or more "Grillini" puts a large question mark over the
stability of any possible alliance.

With Pope Benedict XVI about to retire, President Giorgio Napolitano weeks away
from the end of his seven-year term and the Prime Minister, Mario Monti, a
lame-duck caretaker, Italy is entering a phase of dramatic uncertainty.

Into that vacuum has rushed the ranting, foul-mouthed, tousle-haired figure of
Mr Grillo, an accountant before he became a cult comedian, whose final rally of
his so-called "Tsunami Tour" of the country on Friday filled Rome's Piazza San
Giovanni is said to have attracted 800,000 supporters.

Mr Grillo's simple and hugely popular argument is that Italian politics of both
left and right is rotten to the core and the nation's only hope is to sack all
professional politicians – "tutti a casa!" roared the Rome crowd, "send them
all home!" – and replace them with honest, well-intentioned Italians who will
resist the temptations of power and set their country on the road back to
sanity.

"From every point of view, political, economic, social, the [politicians] are
failures," he roared to the crowd in Rome. "And now something starts. We will
no longer have to see ordinary people suffering and those on TV with their
dickhead faces. They must all go home!"

But behind the simple rhetoric lies a sophisticated campaign in which Mr Grillo
turned his back on all conventional media, refusing to be interviewed on TV or
in newspapers, building a huge support base on the net with his popular blog.
Masterminded by the movement's co-founder, Gianroberto Casaleggio, the approach
is as original as Mr Berlusconi's was 20 years ago.

"It is extraordinary the sort of unlikely people who say they will vote for
Grillo," commented James Walston, of the American University of Rome. "The
majority are younger disillusioned left-wing voters but there are a good number
of older ex-Berlusconi people. Once again Italy has invented a new form of
politics."

Until Mr Grillo burst upon the scene, the post-election scenario that many
outside Italy were praying for was that Pier Luigi Bersani's centre-left
coalition would win a majority in the lower house, while the centrists
clustered around Mr Monti might take the upper, which is decided region by
region. Talk of a coalition has been discouraged during the campaign, but it
was believed they could forge an alliance strong enough to weather the
immediate economic storms facing the country.

Mr Bersani, a former Communist, is the latest lacklustre figure trying to wave
the left's old banner without frightening the horses. But Mr Monti, whose
translation from grim-faced technocrat to beaming candidate has lost him fans –
many say he is now "just another politician" – is said to have been losing
support drastically, so that all the plotting may turn out to have been in
vain.

It is the essence of Mr Grillo's appeal that he refuses to discuss cutting
deals with anybody: for his supporters, that's the bad old days. Instead he
scatters ripe insults over rival leaders like confetti: Mr Berlusconi is the
"psycho dwarf", Nichi Vendola, leader of Left, Liberty and Ecology, is "a hole
without a doughnut", Mr Monti is "Rigor Montis".

It's knockabout stuff that has delighted crowds the length of the country. How
it will translate into the gritty work of governance is anybody's guess.

Suggested Topics

  • Silvio Berlusconi
  • Josie Long
  • Italy
  • Genoa
  • Comedians

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Home / Top News / World News / Politician drops out of election over
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Aug. 12, 2013 at 4:35 PM   |   0 comments

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[http://upi.com/13494]
BERLIN, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- A German politician has withdrawn from an upcoming
parliamentary election after a pro-pedophilia essay she wrote was unearthed
during an investigation.

Dagmar Doring of the Free Democratic Party announced she was dropping out of
the general election Sunday following the revelation, The Local.de reported.

The essay, which Doring penned in 1980 when she was 19 years old, was
discovered during an investigation, commissioned by the Green Party, into
political demands for the legalization of pedophilia made during the 1970s and
1980s.

Doring wrote that she had experienced a situation where, "no man and no woman,
rather a child, in particular a girl," could satisfy her needs and that she was
afraid of the law which punished the "love between adults and children," and
said she wanted "to do everything to change such laws."

The essay was published in a book called "Paedophilia Today."

In a statement on her website Sunday, Doring said: "As a married woman and
mother of three children, my then immature thoughts are today unbelievably
embarrassing -- most of all with regards to my family and my current
colleagues."

Doring said she plans on keeping her job as chair of the FDP women's group in
the state of Hesse, the Frankfurter Rundschau said Monday.
© 2013 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction,
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When the Media Compliments a Female Politician's Looks, She Loses the Election

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The XX Factor
What Women Really Think
April 8 2013 11:24 AM

When the Media Compliments a Female Politician's Looks, She Loses the Election

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By Amanda Hess
  
  
148336970 Don't hate her (just) because she's beautiful.

Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

President Obama apologized last week for introducing California’s Kamala Harris
as “by far, the best-looking attorney general” in the country. But the
president isn’t the only one who recognizes an attractive politician when he
sees her. This election cycle, a prominent South Carolina Republican feels
threatened by congressional candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch: “Everybody is
really concerned because she’s not a bad-looking lady,” he said. When Ashley
Judd briefly considered a bid for the Senate, Dave Weigel noted one of the
actress-turned-politican’s main advantages: “readers of popular websites like
to click on photos of attractive women.” And Maureen Dowd thinks Hillary
Clinton’s fabulous haircut is indicative of her chances in 2016: “her new
haircut sends a signal of shimmering intention,” Dowd says. Hillary “has
ditched the skinned-back bun that gave her the air of a K.G.B. villainess in a
Bond movie and has a sleek new layered cut that looks modern and glamorous.”

The implication is that the better a woman looks, the better she’ll fare in the
horse race. Today, Name It. Change It. released a study showing that when the
media focuses on a female politician’s appearance, voters actually vacate her
in droves. This spring, the organization staged a “hypothetical congressional
contest between female candidate Jane Smith and male candidate Dan Jones,”
presented a series of fake news stories about each candidate to 1,500 likely
U.S. voters, then asked participants how they’d cast their vote. Voters who
heard a pair of mundane stories that detailed Jane and Dan’s responses to an
education bill split their votes pretty evenly between the two candidates. But
when voters heard stories that sneaked in references to Jane’s physical
appearance, Jane lost serious ground to Dan.

Even when discussion of female politicians’ appearance is coded as a
“compliment,” it damages her chances. Voters lost confidence in Jane whether
the coverage of her looks was neutral, ostensibly flattering, or just plain
mean. In the control group that didn’t hear about Jane’s appearance, she earned
the support of 50 percent of voters. When the news story included a neutral
appraisal of her appearance—“Smith dressed in a brown blouse, black skirt, and
modest pumps with a short heel”—she lost four points. The flattering
coverage—“In person, Smith is fit and attractive and looks even younger than
her age. At the press conference, smartly turned out in a ruffled jacket,
pencil skirt, and fashionable high heels”—lost her six points. And the negative
coverage of her looks—“At the press conference Smith unfortunately sported a
heavy layer of foundation and powder that had sealed into her forehead lines,
creating an unflattering look for an otherwise pretty woman, along with her
famous fake, tacky nails”—lost her seven points. Voters who heard news reports
about Jane’s looks rated her less “in touch,” “likeable,” “confident,”
“effective,” and “qualified.” That was true even among Jane's base —though
young women initially supported Jane by a huge margin, focus on her blouses and
heels and nails turned them off from their candidate.

Name It. Change It.’s report didn’t run a similar experiment for coverage of
Dan’s looks, so we don’t know how praise of his cuticle maintenance would have
affected his chances. But we do know that despite President Obama’s commitment
to equal-opportunity physical flattery, female candidates contend with far more
superficial coverage of their campaigns than do men, and that seriously
undermines their success. In Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns,
Erika Falk examined media coverage of every female presidential candidate in
American history, from Victoria Woodhull in 1872 to Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Female candidates were subjected to four times the appearance-based coverage
that male candidates were. And the trend didn’t budge across the 136-year
sample: Journalists in 2004 described Carol Moseley Braun’s body more
frequently than journalists in 1872 touched on Woodhull’s looks. Independent
studies have found similar gender discrepancies in media coverage of 2008 vice
presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and 2000 presidential
contenders Elizabeth Dole, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, and John McCain.

This type of coverage is a media problem, not a Jane Smith problem. But Jane
can help reverse her losses when she refuses to take these “compliments” about
her looks. Name It. Change It. went on to find that when Jane and outside media
commenters point out that looks-based coverage “has no place in the media and
that her appearance is not news,” Jane can regain most—but not all—of her
losses from the physical fixation. And “even voters who had not heard the
appearance descriptions respond positively to the woman candidate standing up
for herself.” Dan’s support, meanwhile, remains constant throughout the
kerfuffle.

When Obama pointed attention to Kamala Harris’ looks, Politico media reporter
Dylan Byers asked, “How did it become so difficult to call a woman good looking
in public?” Name It. Change It.’s report suggests that it’s relatively easy for
media commentators like Byers to call a woman hot—they just make it very hard
for that woman to win.

Amanda Hess is a freelance writer and DoubleX contributor. She lives in Los
Angeles. Tweet at her @amandahess.

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COLLECTIONS>MAFIA

A Top Sicilian Politician Is Slain; Pre-Election Mafia Warning Seen

By ALAN COWELL
Published: March 13, 1992

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Three weeks before Italy's national election, gunmen killed Prime Minister
Giulio Andreotti's party boss in Sicily today.

The dead Christian Democratic official, Salvo Lima, 64 years old, was regarded
as Mr. Andreotti's main vote-raiser in Sicily.

No group came forward to take responsibility for the killing, but Christian
Democratic officials and politicians from other parties depicted the killing in
a suburb of Palermo as a show of Mafia force before elections billed as a
watershed in Italian politics.

The Mafia was "evidently determined to fight all attempts by the state to
respond efficiently to the country's need for security and legality," said
Giacinto De Marco, a leading magistrate. Gunmen on Motorcycle

Police officials said two men on a motorcycle had opened fire on a car carrying
the politican and two aides near his home in a suburb of Palermo. As the
wounded man tried to escape, one of his assailants shot him dead through the
head. There was no immediate word of arrests.

*
*
*
*

Mr. Lima served twice as Mayor of Palermo and became a member of the Italian
Parliament in 1965. He had been a member of the European Parliament in
Strasbourg since 1979.

The killing was thought to be the first Mafia slaying of a Sicilian politician
since another former Mayor of Palermo, Giuseppe Insalaco, was shot dead four
years ago.

The election on April 5 is being described by some political commentators as
crucial in deciding whether Italian politics changes course after more than
four decades of pork-barrel maneuvering in which every major political party,
including the Christian Democrats, has been accused of having ties to organized
crime.

New electoral laws approved in a referendum last year are in part supposed to
prevent crime gangs, especially the Mafia, from installing pliant legislators.
The Christian Democrats, like other parties, have promised a war on organized
crime.

Mr. Lima himself had been accused by political adversaries of having Mafia
connections. Several judicial inquiries found no trace of ties between Mr. Lima
and the Mafia. But in a parliamentary report on the Mafia's political
connections three years ago, his name came up 162 times.

More Like This

  • Mafia Signals Defiance With a Palermo Killing
  • Italian Ex-Premier Is Ordered to Trial As Mafia Protector
  • Andreotti and Mafia: A Kiss Related

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November 10, 2013 | 11:16am

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An outright victory for Michelle Bachelet or a second round in Chile’s
presidential elections? That was the main question as she and the country’s 13
million eligible voters went to the polls.

The sixty-two-year old former president has topped the opinion polls in the
lead up to the ballot and is poised to become the first Chilean leader in more
than 50 years to serve two terms. She was president from 2006 to 2010 but was
constitutionally barred from seeking immediate re-election after her first
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She has pledged to overhaul the educational system and narrow income inequality
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Nelson Mandela Becomes First Politician To Be Missed

News in Brief • Breaking • World • death • politicians • world leaders • News •
ISSUE 49•49 • Dec 5, 2013
[wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKhI]

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JOHANNESBURG—Following the death of former South African president and civil
rights leader Nelson Mandela today at the age of 95, sources confirmed that the
revered humanitarian has become the first politician in recorded history to
actually be missed. “Today we lost not only an international hero and a symbol
of the resilient human spirit, but also the very first political figure ever
who people actively wish was still alive and affecting world affairs,” said
political historian Wallace M. Delaney of Columbia University, adding that
Mandela will long be remembered for enduring 27 years in prison in the fight
against apartheid, championing equality across the globe, and standing alone as
the only world leader whose passing left the international community
grief-stricken and feeling a palpable void in their lives. “Certainly people
have felt a sense of sorrow at the deaths of politicians in the past, but
Nelson Mandela’s death is the only one on record that people everywhere
unanimously agree has left the world notably worse off. I miss him, we all miss
him—and that’s entirely unprecedented in the world of politics.” Delaney added
that he could not predict who might be the second politician to be missed by
humanity, but confirmed there were no viable candidates anywhere out there
right now.

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A Pastor Asks A Politician Why He Supports Gay Marriage. It Seems He Wasn't
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What do you do when you're a politician live on television and a pastor who is
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take note from Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, a devout Christian, and
do exactly what he does in these amazing four minutes.

At 2:00, he sets a righteous trap, and by the end you'll be giving him a
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Investigate politicians' expenses

UPDATE (20/12/13): We've added the most recent six months of travel expenses
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Ukip politician: women with babies lack ambition to reach the top

MEP Stuart Agnew sparks new sexism row two months after Godfrey Bloom was
removed from party

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  • theguardian.com, Thursday 28 November 2013 16.44 GMT
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Stuart Agnew
Stuart Agnew said of women's ambition: 'Something gets in the way. It's called
a baby.'

A senior UK Independence party politician has said women with babies do not
have the ambition to go right to the top, sparking yet another storm about
sexism following the sacking of the party's controversial MEP Godfrey Bloom.

Stuart Agnew, a Ukip MEP, made the remarks in a debate about gender quotas in
Brussels last week as he tried to explain the lack of women in senior roles.

Speaking in the European parliament, Agnew said: "If you look at the people who
get degrees, more women get them and they are getting the jobs in the
workplace, but for various reasons they don't have the ambition to go right to
the top because something gets in the way. It's called a baby.

"I've never had a baby, but I understand if you do have a baby it can change
your life – it changes your ambitions. So, the route is there. Those females
who really want to get to the top do so."

He defended his comments in a statement to the Huffington Post, saying: "I was
certainly not trying to suggest that all women who have babies don't make it to
the top. Margaret Thatcher is an example that springs to mind!

"It is a great pity that there hasn't been more focus on the EU's mandatory
gender quota itself. The penalties include closing down the company if they
have too many men or women. Dissolving the company would hardly benefit either
gender employed there. All would be unemployed."

His comments come just two months after Bloom, another MEP, was removed from
the party shortly after branding a roomful of women "sluts" and hitting a
reporter over the head with a brochure during a rant about racism.

It also follows a row this week about a Ukip councillor in Cambridge, who
allegedly suggested a group of children in care were "takers" from society.

Cambridgeshire county council is now looking into a number of complaints about
the incident, in which the councillor, Gordon Gillick, reportedly asked three
teenagers in foster care: "How does it feel to be takers from the system?" He
was also reported to have asked them when they would "start giving back to
society".

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, had to fend off a number of embarrassing
comments by Ukip candidates in May's council elections and since then the party
has been making an effort to improve vetting.

It asked candidates for next year's European Union elections to fill in
questionnaires about their views and this was taken into account during the
selection process.

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Ukip politician: women with babies lack ambition to reach the top

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November 2013.

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Ukip politician: women with babies lack ambition to reach the top

MEP Stuart Agnew sparks new sexism row two months after Godfrey Bloom was
removed from party

  • Share
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  • 
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  • Rowena Mason, political correspondent
  • 
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 28 November 2013 16.44 GMT
  • Jump to comments (…)

Stuart Agnew
Stuart Agnew said of women's ambition: 'Something gets in the way. It's called
a baby.'

A senior UK Independence party politician has said women with babies do not
have the ambition to go right to the top, sparking yet another storm about
sexism following the sacking of the party's controversial MEP Godfrey Bloom.

Stuart Agnew, a Ukip MEP, made the remarks in a debate about gender quotas in
Brussels last week as he tried to explain the lack of women in senior roles.

Speaking in the European parliament, Agnew said: "If you look at the people who
get degrees, more women get them and they are getting the jobs in the
workplace, but for various reasons they don't have the ambition to go right to
the top because something gets in the way. It's called a baby.

"I've never had a baby, but I understand if you do have a baby it can change
your life – it changes your ambitions. So, the route is there. Those females
who really want to get to the top do so."

He defended his comments in a statement to the Huffington Post, saying: "I was
certainly not trying to suggest that all women who have babies don't make it to
the top. Margaret Thatcher is an example that springs to mind!

"It is a great pity that there hasn't been more focus on the EU's mandatory
gender quota itself. The penalties include closing down the company if they
have too many men or women. Dissolving the company would hardly benefit either
gender employed there. All would be unemployed."

His comments come just two months after Bloom, another MEP, was removed from
the party shortly after branding a roomful of women "sluts" and hitting a
reporter over the head with a brochure during a rant about racism.

It also follows a row this week about a Ukip councillor in Cambridge, who
allegedly suggested a group of children in care were "takers" from society.

Cambridgeshire county council is now looking into a number of complaints about
the incident, in which the councillor, Gordon Gillick, reportedly asked three
teenagers in foster care: "How does it feel to be takers from the system?" He
was also reported to have asked them when they would "start giving back to
society".

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, had to fend off a number of embarrassing
comments by Ukip candidates in May's council elections and since then the party
has been making an effort to improve vetting.

It asked candidates for next year's European Union elections to fill in
questionnaires about their views and this was taken into account during the
selection process.

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Article history

About this article

Close this popup

Ukip politician: women with babies lack ambition to reach the top

This article was published on the Guardian website at 16.44 GMT on Thursday 28
November 2013.

Politics

  • UK Independence party (Ukip)

Life and style

  • Women

World news

  • Gender

  • More on this story

  • Nigel Farage

    Nigel Farage: establishment and media are out to get us

    Ukip leader makes warning as he defends councillor whose comments on
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Editorial

Politicians for Sale

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: October 7, 2013

Nearly four years after its controversial ruling in Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission, the Supreme Court is once again taking up the issue of the
regulation of money in politics. This time, the risk to the integrity of
elected officials, and public confidence in government, may be even greater.

Today's Editorials

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On Tuesday, the court is scheduled to hear oral argument in McCutcheon v.
Federal Election Commission, in which an Alabama businessman, Shaun McCutcheon,
challenges the constitutionality of the overall cap on contributions an
individual may make directly to federal candidates, party committees and
political action committees in each two-year election cycle.

Mr. McCutcheon says this limit — currently set at $123,200 — violates his First
Amendment right to free speech. The government argues that the overall limit,
together with the $5,200 limit on an individual’s donations to a particular
candidate, works to prevent political corruption, as well as the appearance of
corruption.

The limits were enacted by Congress in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
In a 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court struck down limits on
campaign spending, but it upheld the limits on direct political contributions.
Since then, the court has upheld every federal contribution limit that has come
before it.

Mr. McCutcheon contends that striking down the overall limit would not
undermine protections against corruption because an individual would still be
bound by the per-candidate limits. But this ignores the reality of modern
campaign finance, in which politicians and party committees solicit large sums
from individual donors and then funnel the money through fund-raising
committees to particular candidates. Without the current cap, the government
argues, a single donor could give up to $3.6 million to a party’s political
candidates and committees in an election cycle.

The very wealthiest Americans already have disproportionate influence: in the
2012 election, 1,219 donors reached or nearly reached the overall limit, and
together they were responsible for giving $155 million to federal races.

One study, by Demos and the United States Public Interest Research Group,
projected that without the overall limit in place, those donors would have
contributed nearly triple that amount — or nearly 50 percent more than
President Obama and Mitt Romney received from all small donors combined. This
is significant because a recent report by political science researchers showed
that the wealthy differ significantly from ordinary Americans in their policy
preferences. For example, job creation is consistently the top priority for
most Americans, but the budget deficit is the most pressing problem among the
wealthiest.

Sensible contribution limits do not limit speech. As the court recognized in
the Buckley case, they are a “quite modest restraint” that help prevent evasion
of the per-candidate limit. An individual like Mr. McCutcheon may still say
whatever he wants, and he may spend all he would like on independent
campaign-related messages.

The nation’s founders understood the threat of corruption in politics and were
preoccupied with combating it. The government should be dependent on “the great
body of the people,” James Madison wrote, and not “an inconsiderable
proportion, or a favored class of it.” If the court is going to help protect
American politics from becoming little more than “a disagreement among rich
people,” as one observer put it, it should follow its own precedent and uphold
the overall contribution limit.

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Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 10, 2013

An editorial on Tuesday about a Supreme Court case concerning campaign
contributions incorrectly implied that the 2010 decision in Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission allowed individuals to make unlimited independent
expenditures in elections. That right was extended to individuals by a 1976
Supreme Court case.

A version of this editorial appears in print on October 8, 2013, on page A26 of
the New York edition with the headline: Politicians for Sale.

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World Briefing | Europe

German Politician Faces Plagiarism Accusations

By MELISSA EDDY

Published: September 30, 2013

BERLIN — A German university is looking into allegations that Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, a leading Social Democrat and a former foreign minister,
plagiarized parts of his doctoral dissertation.

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Mr. Steinmeier is the first ranking member of the center-left Social Democrats
to be confronted with such accusations. Similar charges brought down two
members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet.

Mr. Steinmeier is the parliamentary leader for the Social Democrats, who are to
hold talks with Ms. Merkel’s conservatives this week to explore the possibility
of forming a new governing coalition. He has dismissed the charges and said
Monday that he had requested that the University of Giessen check his
dissertation for unacknowledged citations. It was written in 1991 and explored
the role of the state in the prevention of homelessness.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a former defense minister, and Annette Schavan, who
served eight years as education minister, both quit their posts after separate
challenges to the authenticity of their research. The University of Bochum is
investigating the doctoral dissertation of Norbert Lammert, a senior member of
Ms. Merkel’s party.

Germans prize titles; the title Doctor is commonly used for nonmedical
professionals. The spate of plagiarism allegations in recent years has led to
soul-searching among German academics and universities in an effort to ensure
that the titles retain their importance.

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German Politician Meets With Snowden

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: October 31, 2013

BERLIN — Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, met
for almost three hours in Moscow on Thursday with Hans-Christian Ströbele, the
longest serving member of the parliamentary committee that oversees German
intelligence.

Related

  • Listening Post: One Casualty of Eavesdropping on Merkel: A Warm Rapport
    (November 1, 2013)

  • Tap on Merkel Provides Peek at Vast Spy Net (October 31, 2013)

  • In Shadows, Hints of a Life and Even a Job for Snowden (November 1, 2013)

  • Australia Said to Play Part in N.S.A. Effort (November 1, 2013)

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Mr. Ströbele and Georg Mascolo, a German investigative journalist, told German
television they found Mr. Snowden in good spirits and very aware of the effect
of his disclosures about the depth and breadth of the United States’ spying on
foes and allies.

Mr. Ströbele and Mr. Mascolo went to Moscow to explore whether Mr. Snowden
could or would testify before a planned parliamentary inquiry into what is
referred to here as the N.S.A. affair, the agency’s monitoring of Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s cellphone calls.

Any arrangements for Mr. Snowden to testify would require intricate legal
maneuvering. It seemed unlikely that he would travel to Germany from Moscow,
where he has lived since Russia granted him temporary asylum July 31, for fear
of extradition to the United States.

Since the N.S.A. spying became public, Germans have voiced growing anger toward
the United States, Berlin’s most important ally.

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A version of this article appears in print on November 1, 2013, on page A10 of
the New York edition with the headline: A Politician From Germany Meets
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Acquitted Israeli Politician Returns to Job as Foreign Minister

By ISABEL KERSHNER

Published: November 11, 2013

JERUSALEM — Avigdor Lieberman, the powerful Israeli nationalist politician
whose blunt talk has often stirred outrage at home and abroad, was reinstated
on Monday as the country’s foreign minister. Mr. Lieberman, who was acquitted
last week of corruption charges that had dogged him for more than a decade, was
back at the diplomatic helm on Monday night after a stormy debate in Parliament
and a vote confirming his reappointment.

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Amir Cohen/Reuters

Cleared of corruption charges, Avigdor Lieberman, right, was welcomed back to
government on Monday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Finance
Minister Yair Lapid.

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A Russian-speaking immigrant from the former Soviet Union who lives in a
settlement in the West Bank, Mr. Lieberman was foreign minister in the previous
Israeli government from 2009 to late 2012, a tenure marked by several episodes
that critics deemed highly undiplomatic. Famously skeptical of the prospects of
reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians, Mr. Lieberman, a hard-line
populist, accused the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, of
engaging in “diplomatic terrorism.”

Last year, addressing an audience of foreign diplomats in Israel, Mr. Lieberman
gave vent to his government’s anger over European support for diplomatic gains
by the Palestinians at the United Nations and over international rebukes for
Israeli settlement plans. Comparing Israel’s situation to that of
Czechoslovakia in 1938 before the Nazi invasion, he said, “When push comes to
shove, many key leaders would be willing to sacrifice Israel without batting an
eyelid in order to appease Islamic radicals and ensure quiet for themselves.”

He quit the post shortly before the last government ended its term when he
faced indictment on charges of fraud and breach of trust. Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has since acted as his own foreign minister. After forming
his new government eight months ago, Mr. Netanyahu held the job open for Mr.
Lieberman pending the conclusion of his trial.

Mr. Lieberman returns at a time when Israel is trying hard to stop what it
views as a poor nuclear deal shaping up between the world powers and Iran.
Israeli-American tensions have been rising over the Iranian issue and the peace
talks with the Palestinians, which are now taking place under a cloud of mutual
recrimination.

Israel is also involved in delicate negotiations with the European Union over
the bloc’s move to ban the financing of Israeli institutions that work in
territory seized during the 1967 war. And relations with Turkey, once Israel’s
closest Muslim ally, remain strained despite Mr. Netanyahu’s apology for
operational mistakes that led to nine deaths in a 2010 raid on a Turkish ship
that was trying to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Mr. Lieberman
opposed making the apology.

Israel’s most diplomatically fragile relationships — with the American
administration, the Palestinians and others — are largely handled by the prime
minister’s office, not by the Foreign Ministry. Still, Israeli opponents of Mr.
Lieberman worried that his return to office was hardly likely to enhance
Israel’s international standing.

“I can’t think of anybody less suited to serve as the diplomatic face of Israel
than this person, who lacks inhibitions and sows discord,” Zahava Gal-On, the
leader of the leftist Meretz Party, wrote on her Facebook page soon after Mr.
Lieberman’s acquittal. In Parliament on Monday, she said that appointing Mr.
Lieberman as foreign minister was like “planting a bomb under the peace
process.”

Foreign policy insiders in Jerusalem seemed hard pressed to point to any
resounding successes during Mr. Lieberman’s first term at the Foreign Ministry.
He toured South American countries hoping to cement relations, but there
appears to have been little follow-up. When the United Nations General Assembly
voted last year to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state, 138
countries voted in favor, while only nine voted against and 41 abstained, a
diplomatic blow for Israel after months of lobbying.

One relationship that Mr. Lieberman has worked hard to promote is with Russia.
Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Moscow later this month.

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Czech Politician Faces Claims of Aiding Secret Police

[CZECH-articleLarge]
Milan Bures for The New York Times

The billionaire Andrej Babis denies claims he was a Communist-era secret police
agent.

By DAN BILEFSKY

Published: November 12, 2013

PARIS — Andrej Babis, a populist billionaire who handed out doughnuts to voters
at subway stations, emerged as a surprise kingmaker in the recent Czech
elections by fashioning himself as a self-made outsider who would stamp out
corruption and sleaze.

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But now Mr. Babis, 59, a blunt-spoken Slovak food, media and chemicals mogul
with a Czech passport and properties in the French Riviera, is being forced to
grapple with a murky past. Prague, the Czech capital, is buzzing with talk of
secret files code-named “Soldier” and “Eye” that purport to expose him as a
Communist-era secret police agent, an allegation he denies.

The center-left Social Democrats scraped together a slim victory in
parliamentary elections held last month after a spying and bribery scandal. But
by many accounts, the real winners were Mr. Babis and his anti-establishment
party, Ano, or Yes. The party’s second-place showing, with about 19 percent of
the vote — not far behind the Social Democrats, who had about 20.5 percent —
makes it indispensable in creating a coalition government. Mr. Babis, who won a
seat in Parliament himself, is being mentioned as a possible prime minister or
finance minister.

Yet, in a region where history is close to the surface, Mr. Babis’s dizzying
rise has been clouded by allegations from the Nation’s Memory Institute, based
in Slovakia, that he worked in the 1980s for the reviled Czechoslovak secret
police, the StB. Czechoslovakia split 20 years ago into the Czech Republic and
Slovakia. Today, Czechs who collaborated with the secret police can be barred
from holding public office.

It is a reflection of many Czechs’ ambivalence about their own collaboration
with the Communist government that the details of Mr. Babis’s files that
emerged during the campaign did not stop his party from doing well. But if he
is blocked from joining a future administration or decides to remain on the
sidelines, the country could emerge with a minority government, worsening its
political instability.

Already, the allegations are unsettling some in Ano’s ranks. In a report
published on Tuesday, Ivan Pilny, a senior party figure, threatened to resign
if Mr. Babis turned out to have been a secret police agent. “If we are
presented with proof that Mr. Babis collaborated with the StB, I would have to
leave the party, as that would mean he lied to us,” Mr. Pilny told Mlada Fronta
Dnes, a leading Czech news outlet.

According to previously classified documents released by the Nation’s Memory
Institute, Mr. Babis was registered as an informant in 1980 and became an agent
two years later. His code name was Bures, a common Czechoslovak surname. The
files describe how Mr. Babis, who then worked for a state foreign trade company
dealing in chemicals, purportedly met with secret police handlers in 1982 at a
bar in Bratislava, now the capital of Slovakia. Later, the “Soldier” file says,
they met at least 17 times. The “Eye” file lists two reports Mr. Babis is said
to have sent to a colleague, without giving details.

In a telephone interview from Prague, Mr. Babis denied the accusations, saying
he had been summoned to meet with the secret police at most three times and had
never joined their ranks. He said the files were forgeries made by the StB to
blackmail him, in part because some of his family members had affronted the
government by emigrating.

At the time, he said, the state wanted to import phosphates from Syria and he
refused because the materials posed a health hazard, making him a target of
official ire. He has taken the Slovak institute to court and demanded that he
be removed from the list of collaborators. A hearing is scheduled for January.

“It is nonsense,” Mr. Babis said. “I never signed anything. I was a victim. I
never did anything wrong to anyone.”

He added that he was not proud of having been a member of the Communist Party,
but that he had joined at his mother’s urging, out of economic pragmatism. “I
was young; I did stupid things,” he said, noting that only a minority of
Czechoslovaks had the courage to be dissidents. “To get by, you had to
cooperate.”

Tomas Bursik, a historian at the archives of the security services in Prague,
noted that a large portion of Mr. Babis’s files had been destroyed, and that
what remained did not contain any examples of his handwriting or signature.
“This all reminds me of a witch hunt,” Mr. Bursik said.

[meter]

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Hana de Goeij contributed reporting from Prague.

A version of this article appears in print on November 13, 2013, on page A4 of
the New York edition with the headline: Czech Politician Faces Claims of Aiding
Secret Police.

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Op-Ed Contributor

Politicians’ Extortion Racket

By PETER SCHWEIZER

Published: October 21, 2013

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — WE have long assumed that the infestation of special
interest money in Washington is at the root of so much that ails our politics.
But what if we’ve had it wrong? What if instead of being bribed by wealthy
interests, politicians are engaged in a form of legal extortion designed to
extract campaign contributions?

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Consider this: of the thousands of bills introduced in Congress each year, only
roughly 5 percent become law. Why do legislators bother proposing so many
bills? What if many of those bills are written not to be passed but to pressure
people into forking over cash?

This is exactly what is happening. Politicians have developed a dizzying array
of legislative tactics to bring in money.

Take the maneuver known inside the Beltway as the “tollbooth.” Here the speaker
of the House or a powerful committee chairperson will create a procedural
obstruction or postponement on the eve of an important vote. Campaign
contributions are then implicitly solicited. If the tribute offered by those in
favor of the bill’s passage is too small (or if the money from opponents is
sufficiently high), the bill is delayed and does not proceed down the
legislative highway.

House Speaker John A. Boehner appears to be a master of the tollbooth. In 2011,
he collected a total of over $200,000 in donations from executives and
companies in the days before holding votes on just three bills. He delayed
scheduling a vote for months on the widely supported Wireless Tax Fairness Act,
and after he finally announced a vote, 37 checks from wireless-industry
executives totaling nearly $40,000 rolled in. He also delayed votes on the
Access to Capital for Job Creators Act and the Small Company Capital Formation
Act, scoring $91,000 from investment banks and private equity firms, $32,450
from bank holding companies and $46,500 from self-described investors — all in
the 48 hours between scheduling the vote and the vote’s actually being held on
the House floor.

Another tactic that politicians use is something beltway insiders call “milker
bills.” These are bills designed to “milk” donations from threatened
individuals or businesses. The real trick is to pit two industries against each
other and pump both for donations, thereby creating a “double milker” bill.

President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. seemed to score big in
2011 using the milker tactic in connection with two bills: the Stop Online
Piracy Act and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and
Theft of Intellectual Property Act. By pitting their supporters in Silicon
Valley who opposed the bills against their allies in Hollywood who supported
the measures, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden were able to create a sort of
fund-raising arms race.

In the first half of 2011, Silicon Valley had chipped in only $1.7 million to
Mr. Obama’s political campaign. The president announced that he would
“probably” sign antipiracy legislation — a stance that pleased Hollywood and
incensed Silicon Valley. The tech industry then poured millions into Mr.
Obama’s coffers in the second half of 2011. By January of 2012, Hollywood had
donated $4.1 million to Mr. Obama.

Then, suddenly, on Jan. 14, 2012, the White House announced that it had
problems with the antipiracy bills and neither passed. “He didn’t just throw us
under the bus,” one film executive and longtime supporter of Mr. Obama
anonymously told The Financial Times, “he ran us down, reversed the bus and ran
over us again.”

To be sure, not all legislative maneuvers are extortive; sincere and
conscientious political deeds occur. Still, the idea that Washington gridlock
is an outgrowth of rank partisanship and ideological entrenchment misses a more
compelling explanation of our political stasis: gridlock, legislative threats
and fear help prime the donation pump.

The reason these fund-raising extortion tactics succeed is that politicians
deploy them while bills are making their way through Congress, when lawmakers
possess maximum leverage. That’s why at least 27 state legislatures have put
restrictions on allowing state politicians to receive contributions while their
legislatures are in session.

Why not do the same in Washington? It would reduce politicians’ penchant for
cashing in on manufactured crises. Perhaps it would even compel Congress to be
more efficient while in session.

We have focused for too long on protecting politicians from special interests.
It’s time we stop pitying the poor politicians and start being wary of them —
for they play the shakedown game as well as anyone.

[meter]

Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of
“Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes and Line Their Own
Pockets.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 22, 2013, on page A23 of
the New York edition with the headline: Politicians’ Extortion Racket.

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In India’s Politics, Jail Time Is a Badge of Honor

[SUB-JP-INDIA-articleLarge]
Manpreet Romana for The New York Times

Kameshwar Baitha in Daltenganj, India. He was elected to Parliament despite
murder charges.

By ELLEN BARRY

Published: October 13, 2013

DALTENGANJ, India — When he decided to run for a parliamentary seat from this
impoverished, and mainly low-caste constituency in northeast India, Kameshwar
Baitha made no effort to sugarcoat his criminal record.

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Obediently, he cataloged the serious charges pending against him, all of which
he says are false. There were 17 for murder, 22 for attempted murder, 6 for
assault with a dangerous weapon, 5 for theft, 2 for extortion, and so on, a
legacy from Mr. Baitha’s previous career as a leader of the local Maoist
insurgency. On top of that was the fact that he was in jail.

But this did not hurt him with voters here, noted his son, Babban Kumar, who
hopes to follow his father into politics. With people in this area, who look to
elected leaders as Robin Hood figures, it may have helped.

“You have to fight against something, how else can you get into politics?” Mr.
Kumar said. “Without going to jail, you cannot be a big politician.”

New impulses are rippling through Indian politics this year, as a growing,
urbanized middle class demands that hundreds of tainted politicians be driven
from the system.

In Delhi, crowds driven by Internet campaigns have rallied around an
anticorruption platform, holding brooms to symbolize the coming cleansing. The
Supreme Court, sensing the public mood, ruled in July that it was illegal for
politicians who had been convicted of crimes to continue holding office by
simply filing an appeal against their convictions. The ruling would disqualify
politicians sentenced to more than two years in prison by a lower court. This
change, which could uproot formidable political forces, was endorsed this month
by the governing coalition’s crown prince, Rahul Gandhi.

The effort will meet its greatest challenge in another India — the old one,
where voting is still largely driven by caste. In the tribal region that Mr.
Baitha represents, the vast majority of elected officials face criminal
charges, most related to corruption, but many for violent crimes. Voters
typically dismiss such charges as trumped-up, one more attempt by elites to
crush the champions of the poor.

These are some of the things that allowed Mr. Baitha to discuss the subject
comfortably in the red-velvet seating area of a government guesthouse, as a
ceiling fan turned slowly overhead. He urged his guest to imagine if everyone
convicted of a crime were barred from politics.

“The whole Parliament will be empty,” he said. “It will become a joke.”

A big test of the new measures’ effect will come in the case of Lalu Prasad,
the longtime leader of the neighboring state of Bihar, who was disqualified
from holding office and running in coming elections this month after being
sentenced on corruption charges. The case against him had proceeded at a
snail’s pace for 17 years, as Mr. Prasad had thumbed his nose at prosecutors.

A master of populist showmanship who came from a caste of cow herders, he
transformed his court dates into political theater. He arrived for one session
in the back of a bicycle rickshaw, surrounded by throngs of adoring supporters,
and once left jail on the back of a small elephant.

The dance seemed to end with his sentencing. But last week, sitting inside the
Birsa Munda jail in Ranchi, it seemed he was perfectly capable of managing his
still-formidable political empire. Scores of aides and supporters were
clustered outside the jail’s iron gate, bearing coconuts and handwritten
letters. Prison guards let visitors in and out at regular intervals, as if they
were operating a reception center. The Telegraph, Ranchi’s main
English-language daily newspaper, reported that he had summoned a tailor to his
cell.

When a local anticorruption activist filed a complaint, charging that the
visits were a major violation of prison regulations, Mr. Prasad decided to keep
a “low profile” by receiving visitors only after 3 p.m., the newspaper
reported. His visitors all said the charges were false. “People in Delhi don’t
want the poor people to rise,” said one of them, Kumar Lakshman, 28. “Lalu is
causing the poor people to rise.”

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Hari Kumar and Malavika Vyawahare contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on October 14, 2013, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: In India’s Politics, Jail Time Is a
Badge of Honor.

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Home » opinion » Rice pledge scheme: Who should we trust - economist,
accountant or politician?
Thai Talk

Rice pledge scheme: Who should we trust - economist, accountant or politician?

Suthichai Yoon
The Nation November 21, 2013 1:00 am
Former deputy premier and finance minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakul

Former deputy premier and finance minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakul

Arrow Prev Arrow Next

So, what's the estimated loss the government will incur from the controversial
rice price-pledging scheme?

Former deputy premier and finance minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakul predicts the
loss will be in the range of Bt200 billion a year.

No, says Deputy Premier and Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisarn,
that figure is far too high. A "reasonable estimate" of the deficit would be
around Bt100 billion annually, he says.

Finance Minister Kittiratt Na Ranong suggested that Pridiyathorn's assessment
of total losses of Bt425 billion was a "misunderstanding".

That, the minister said, was due to the fact that some economists simply don't
understanding accounting.

"Some economists might not appreciate the difference between accounting loss
and the real loss on this project," Kittiratt said. "And when they produce
these numbers for the public, they can create the wrong kinds of perceptions."

Of course Pridiyathorn did study accounting - and did quite well at that. The
discrepancy has nothing to do with one's knowledge of accounting. It's based on
the fact that the government and its critics were using two different sets of
rice prices: One was based on the purchase price of paddy at Bt15,000 per tonne
(or Bt24,000 per tonne of milled rice) while the other was calculating the loss
on the basis of the market price.

That's why both can claim the other side was wrong. As far as accounting is
concerned, they were on different pages and talking at cross-purposes.
Technically, both sides might be right. Politically, only one party can
convince the public that it's telling the truth.

If one was running a private company listed on the stock market and under the
shareholders' constant scrutiny, the profit-and-loss account must necessarily
be based on the market price so that management can make plans for "real
losses" and not "paper losses".

If the government was to be up front with the public, it could offer both the
accounting loss and the real deficit so that the taxpayers could determine for
themselves how big of a financial burden they consider acceptable.

In accounting terms, this is called "lower of cost or market" (LCM), or
replacement cost. It's known as a "conservatism principle", which means you
don't attempt any of the "creative accounting" that politicians favour but
which can wreak havoc on the real bottom line - the country's coffers.

The politicians were obviously embarrassed by the professional accountants at
the Finance Ministry in charge of "closing the books" on the rice
price-pledging project. This particular working group was headed by a tough,
professional accountant, Supa Piyachitti, who was rightly determined to tell it
like it was.

Supa reported that the first two harvests saw the government lose Bt136.89
billion, based on the market price at the time. Her political bosses were
furious and initially refused to accept the number. Under great public
pressure, though, the ministry's chiefs had to grudgingly take that number as
the official statement. Since the price of rice has since been on a downward
trend, it's likely that, if the books were revised today, the size of the
deficit would be even greater.

Then there are the stories flying around that the Commerce Ministry has been
selling rice stocks at even lower prices to certain groups of traders. This has
fuelled speculation that the government's bottom line in this case could be
even worse, as much as 30 per cent lower than the already low level of revenue.

Is that why we taxpayers haven't been shown the real "income statement" and
"profit-and-loss accounts" of this scheme that has been the subject of heated
debate? Is this why all the talk about government-to-government deals and
memoranda of understanding with this and that government has not been
substantiated with transparent disclosure of details pertaining to the supposed
contracts?

It has come to a point where it's not clear who is the taxpayer's worst enemy:
the economist, the accountant or the politician.

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Daily chart

The one about the politician and the economist

Feb 27th 2013, 17:05 by Economist.com

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What political leaders did before they took office

A POLITICIAN, a businessman, a comedian and an economist walk into a room.
Unfortunately, this is not a joke—they all vie for the position of Italy's next
prime minister. At an election this week the politician received the most
votes, but not enough to govern. A deadlock now ensues. The career background
of Italy's previous prime ministers is similarly eclectic. Between 1973 and
2010, the two main jobs held by prime ministers before they came to power were
split roughly equally between lawyer, professor, and politician or civil
servant. Economists featured only three times out of 23. And elsewhere, prime
ministers with an economics background are also rare.

According to a paper by Mark Hallerberg of the Hertie School of Governance in
Berlin, and Joachim Wehner of the London School of Economics and Political
Science, policymakers with "technical competence" are more likely to hold
office during a crisis. The authors found that a banking crisis increases the
probability of having an economist as prime minister; a professor is more
likely to hold the position during stockmarket crashes or inflation crises.
Italy's Mario Monti and Greece's Lucas Papademos are recent examples.
Unfortunately, voters seem inclined to get rid of them at the earliest
opportunity.

[20130302_woc154_0]

Previous [20130302_in]

Focus: Academic papers

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Daily chart: The numbers behind the ratings

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clandestino in reply to cowichan61 Feb 27th 2013 20:09 GMT

The chart displays the occupational backgrounds of prime ministers or
presidents, not their educational backgrounds.
In figure 1 on page 14 of the original paper, Canada is shown to have (had)
prime ministers holding both undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics,
as well as relatively "competent" central bankers. Hence the attraction of
Carney to the UK...

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Ngamudji Mar 3rd 2013 23:58 GMT

I have some doubts about the graph's accuracy. It says that nearly 30% of
Australian Prime Ministers were university professors before becoming PM, and
that this was the third most common occupation of individuals who became PM.
To the best of my knowledge, not one of Australia's 27 PMs was a university
professor. Nor have any held a PhD. We have had several lawyers, a medical
doctor, two school teachers, two coal miners, several union officials, a
municipal clerk and a roadie for a rock band. But no professors.
The closest we have come is Dr Herbert V ("Doc") Evatt, who had a PhD, was
President of the UN General Assembly and a High Court judge. Evatt led the
Labor Party in the 50s but never made it to PM - the highest office he reached
was External Affairs Minister and was later Leader of the Opposition. On the
conservative side of politics, Dr John Hewson, taught economics at university
level. He led the Liberal Party in the early 90s as Opposition Leader, but
famously (here) lost the "unloseable election" of 1993.
Canada at least had one PM with a PhD, William Mackenzie King, so they are
ahead of us in this department. But the graph shows Canada as scoring only 10%.

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Lambda11 Mar 1st 2013 11:00 GMT

I don't get this chart at all (and I'm a statistician so data analysis is my
thing). I can accept some lines totalling more that 100% since some people will
be classed in more than one category. However, if this is the case then why is
Spain then only 75% in total? Can someone explain what I'm missing. Doesn't
seem a good representation in any case since the totals aren't then comparable.

Thanks!

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guest-woojmme Feb 28th 2013 18:48 GMT

It does not add to 100 percent (sometimes more, sometimes less)... flawed
analysis?

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sanmartinian in reply to guest-woojmme Feb 28th 2013 20:02 GMT

to guest-woojmme on not not adding up to 100%
.
As explained further below by another fellow poster, politicians can belong to
more than one category so totals are 100% only by accident.
.
When numbers don't add up in our mind, it's probable the flaw is our mind, not
in the others'.
.
Or, as Poirot is supposed to have said, when facts and reasoning do not match,
something is wrong with facts.

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sanmartinian Feb 28th 2013 17:41 GMT

Echoing fellow poster California Robert, engineers are absent from the list.
.
But then we did have Jimmy Carter, didn't we?
.
Would you like a repeat?
.
Nor doctors.
.
Except of course Baby Doc and his father in Haiti.
.
As an engineer myself with a very healthy disrespect for politics, I guess we'd
better stay away from that peculiar world of intrigue and incompetence.

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California Robert Feb 28th 2013 16:03 GMT

Would that I could vote for an engineer.

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Karen Ronk in reply to California Robert Mar 1st 2013 2:00 GMT

Did you steal that line from Dr.Seuss?

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UDSrez24vA Feb 28th 2013 15:27 GMT

There is at least one clear error. At least one president of Mexico was an
economist. Ernesto Zedillo PhD in Economics from Yale and currently a professor
at the same university

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teacup775 Feb 28th 2013 14:52 GMT

For Italy, you might want add the study of women's lingerie.

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Rosaalba Feb 28th 2013 14:42 GMT

We had a lady economist, Tansu Ciller, as the prime minister of Turkey in the
1990s.The economy did not fare any better, arguably, she was quite bad at the
job.

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egeli Feb 28th 2013 14:16 GMT

How does this chart work? None of the rows add up to a 100%

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CaptainObvious66 in reply to egeli Feb 28th 2013 15:44 GMT

in the bottom right hand corner it says that positions are not mutually
exclusive. ie anyone can be identified as more than one of the above.

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Tria Err Feb 28th 2013 13:35 GMT

So Greece followed by Italy have the most economists as political leaders. Hows
that working out?

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Anduril Feb 28th 2013 11:34 GMT

"A POLITICIAN, a businessman, a comedian and an economist walk into a room. "

Perfectly natural for the mob and lobby rule in current Western democracies.

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Christoph Horvay Feb 28th 2013 10:58 GMT

The prevalence of lawyers and civil servants explains quite well the
wide-spread deficiency in ethics and technical competence among political
leaders. I am not Italian, but I consider any proper clown preferable to Silvio
Berlusconi.

P.S. I wonder how anyone can compile data on the occupational background of
Swiss prime ministers when that office (or an office comparable to it) does not
exist.

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semicontinuous Feb 28th 2013 8:23 GMT

Just goes to show that politicians make the best politicians... surprisingly
enough... The top countries in this list are all very well managed, are they
not?

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spartan33 Feb 28th 2013 7:40 GMT

Political leadership of countries should bar candidacy to lawyers, economists
and professors.

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Vive_chimie in reply to spartan33 Feb 28th 2013 8:40 GMT

Don't you believe in democracy and political freedom?

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Anti-Racist Feb 28th 2013 7:12 GMT

The reason Ireland isn't ranked highly here is because most of our ploiticans
are gangsters.

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Garib Singh Feb 28th 2013 6:59 GMT

Greece has had an Economist and a Professor? Think they don't like a think...
what say eh?

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MDesmond Feb 28th 2013 5:00 GMT

Probably a good thing that you left the clowns off your chart.

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sanmartinian in reply to MDesmond Feb 28th 2013 17:33 GMT

To MDesmond on clowns having been left off the chart
.
Thank God they were.
.
As positions are not mutually exclusive, and judging by the performance of
politicians these days, clowns would reach 100% for most countries.
.
The last statesman I remember was Helmut Schmidt. Unfortunately I didn't agree
with his ideology.
.
Well, you can't have it all.

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MDesmond Feb 28th 2013 4:58 GMT

.

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Varq Feb 28th 2013 3:33 GMT

This is a pretty restricted list of occupations. Without reaching far I can
immediately think of heads of government and members of cabinet who were
soldiers, sailors, airmen, scientists, engineers, medical doctors, airline
pilots, lounge singers on cruise ships and many other things. Admittedly, such
a survey can't list all possible occupations but four really is limited.
And what is a professor? The first question that naturally springs to mind if
someone is identified as a "professor" is, "Of what?" Surely that is a much
more imporotant point than the person's professorship? This question is
reminiscent of those articles which describe someone who has been out of work
for a long time, and yet, " She has a degree." "In what?" I ask.
All degrees and all professors are not created equal and to lump them all
together is ludicrous.

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Christoph Horvay in reply to Varq Feb 28th 2013 11:09 GMT

We should not forget Jimmy Carter, the peanut grower who consulted with his
teenage daughter prior to spreading a butter-smooth opinion on political topics
of global relevance across all floors of the White House, or Nancy Reagan who
(or who's astrologers) probably had more executive power than her presidential
actor-husband Ronald.

Who was/is the lounge singer?

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5An8tTmHCs in reply to Christoph Horvay Feb 28th 2013 15:00 GMT

That is very generous of you to call Ronald and actor.....!

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Varq in reply to Christoph Horvay Mar 5th 2013 6:08 GMT

Silvio Berlusconi.

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Laconophile Feb 28th 2013 3:09 GMT

What is this supposed to be? An abacus? This chart makes no sense.

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???initialComments:true! pubdate:11/06/2013 10:07 EST! commentPeriod:14!
commentEndDate:11/20/13 10:7 EST! currentDate:1/2/14 7:0 EST!
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Explore real-time news, visually

Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman acquitted of corruption charges

By William Booth, E-mail the writer

JERUSALEM — A former Israeli foreign minister, the political brawler and power
broker Avigdor Lieberman, was found not guilty Wednesday in a complicated
corruption probe, clearing the way for his quick return to the international
stage.

Lieberman was charged with fraud and breach of trust. Specifically, he was
accused of improperly promoting a former diplomat as Israel’s ambassador to
Latvia. Prosecutors alleged that the former diplomat had fed Lieberman insider
information about a separate money-laundering investigation — since dropped —
of his business dealings.

TOPSHOTSSome of the 243 immigrants deported from the United States arrive at
the Air Force base in Guatemala City on January 2, 2014. The US deported 50,221
Guatemalans between January and December 2013, a historical record that exceeds
by 23 percent the number of expulsions registered during the same period in
2012, according to records of the General Directorate of Migration of
Guatemala. AFP PHOTO / Johan ORDONEZJOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP/Getty Images

Photos of the day

U.S. snowstorms, a dog deli, Burmese prisoner release, Antarctic rescue and
more.

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Latest stories from Foreign

Al-Qaeda force captures Fallujah

Al-Qaeda force captures Fallujah

Liz Sly

“At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,” said a
local journalist.

More U.S. Embassy staff to leave South Sudan

More U.S. Embassy staff to leave South Sudan

Sudarsan Raghavan

The drawdown underscores U.S. concerns about the deteriorating security
situation.

GOP hawks skeptical about Kerry’s push for Mideast deal

GOP hawks skeptical about Kerry’s push for Mideast deal

Anne Gearan and William Booth

McCain, Graham share some of the Israeli leader's doubts about terms for a
Palestinian peace agreement.

Lieberman, 55, is leader of the Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) party, which
serves the interests of Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet
Union. Originally from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, he is a
larger-than-life wheeler-dealer in Israel’s domestic politics and an often
undiplomatic diplomat.

Just a few days ago, Lieberman accused South Africa’s government of
anti-Semitism and urged Jews there to leave the country and come to Israel
“before it is too late.”

Last year, he accused Europe of failing to condemn a leader of Hamas, the
militant Islamic organization that controls the Gaza Strip. Lieberman likened
the atmosphere in Europe to the period when the Nazis sent Jews and others to
concentration camps during the Holocaust.

In another memorable exchange in 2010, he warned Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad not to tangle with Israel, telling him: “You and your family will lose
the regime. Neither you nor the Assad family will remain in power.”

Lieberman is an ally — and an occasional sparring partner — of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu. Lieberman’s party merged with Netanyahu’s to form the
ruling government coalition.

With his legal troubles apparently over, Lieberman is free to return to his
cabinet post, which he vacated this year to face charges, while Netanyahu
assumed the duties of foreign minister. During the investigation and trial,
Lieberman continued to serve in the Israeli parliament, where he chairs the
powerful foreign affairs and defense committee.

Netanyahu spoke with Lieberman on Wednesday, telling him, “I congratulate you
on your unanimous acquittal and am pleased that you are returning to the
government,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

Shelly Yachimovich, head of the Labor Party and leader of the opposition,
called Lieberman “a foreign minister who has damaged Israel” and urged
Netanyahu not to allow him to return to the post.

Lieberman’s likely imminent return as foreign minister comes at a busy time, as
Israel faces a long list of international challenges, including mending frosty
relations with Turkey and pushing the Obama administration and its
international partners to keep economic sanctions against Iran in place until
that country decommissions its uranium centrifuges and opens its nuclear
program up for inspections.

He would probably play a less central role in the ongoing peace negotiations 
between Israel and the Palestinians. That job went to the justice minister,
Tzipi Livni, and Yitzhak Molcho, a top Netanyahu adviser who is widely thought
to be there in part to keep an eye on Livni.

“In reality, the Foreign Ministry does not run foreign policy because it is the
prime minister who makes most of the decisions,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a
political scientist at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel
Aviv. “I don’t think we will see a drastic change, because there is not a huge
difference in substance between Netanyahu and Lieberman. Both accept partition
[the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state], and both believe that it is
probably not achievable.”

Rynhold added, “I think Lieberman will deal with other issues. His style will
obviously be different to Netanyahu’s because he is more robust and plays to
populist elements at home. Although he is tough, foreign diplomats do say that
he is a man that you can do business with.”

Lieberman’s handpicked candidate in the Jerusalem mayoral race lost last month.
A guilty verdict on Wednesday would probably have ended his political career.

After his acquittal, Lieberman headed from the courtroom to the Western Wall,
where he donned a skullcap and shawl, had a quick picture taken and said a
prayer of thanks.

Ruth Eglash contributed to this report.

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Always easier to engage with a bad argument against your viewpoint than a good
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The Gordon Chang story is getting lots of (deserved) derision. Wish we were
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Rob Ford, Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor: Finally, a famous Canadian politician!

By Diane Francis, E-mail the writer

Diane Francis, a dual Canadian-American citizen, is the author of “Merger of
the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country.”

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has accomplished what no Canadian prime minister — or
any Canadian for that matter — has ever achieved.

After a video showing him smoking crack was obtained by Toronto police, he’s
made front pages around the world, become a Twitter sensation and been featured
by Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel in the same evening.
The last time a Canadian politician attained any name recognition outside
Canada was in 1970, when Pierre Trudeau dated Barbra Streisand.

Video

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is considering entering a rehab program, his lawyer said
Friday. It's the first indication that the mayor may bow to heavy pressure to
seek help, if not take a leave of absence, after he admitted to smoking crack.
 

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is considering entering a rehab program, his lawyer said
Friday. It's the first indication that the mayor may bow to heavy pressure to
seek help, if not take a leave of absence, after he admitted to smoking crack.

More from Outlook

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Hope amid despair in S. Sudan

Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

How renewed violence has altered the new nation’s aspirations.

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Jane Goodall: The last wolves?

They’re disappearing from the American landscape in Denali, Yellowstone and
beyond.

Mike Shanahan’s worst week

Mike Shanahan’s worst week

Chris Cillizza

On the bright side, he doesn’t have to coach the Redskins anymore.

“Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine,” Ford told reporters Tuesday. “But no, do I,
am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? . . . Probably in one of my drunken
stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.” He blamed alcohol — a claim
bolstered by an “impaired rant” posted online Thursday by the Toronto Star. He
blamed the press for not asking the correct questions. Then he refused to
resign, and his popularity rose to 44 percent, according to a recent poll by
Forum Research.

I suspect that more Americans now know the name of Toronto’s mayor than know
the name of Canada’s prime minister. (It’s Stephen Harper. Just FYI.)

That’s because Ford’s an exception — an American-style political train wreck.
Americans perceive Canada as the place next door that exports logs, hockey
players and cold fronts. It’s frustrating but understandable. Why pay attention
to the polite neighbor who never complains and always uses headphones?

Canadians, like Americans living in Omaha or Rochester or Montpelier, accept
that they rarely get to bask in the limelight.

But when you’re no longer being treated like a pliant kid brother, it’s
welcome. That’s why, after Ford’s admission, triumphalist pro-Canadian tweets
followed. “Rob Ford goes global!” read one. Another gushed: “And people say
Canada never makes the news in the U.S.”

The fact is that, most days, Canadians just don’t feel the love. A Pew Research
Center poll of 39 countries published this summer showed that Canadian
respondents, by 2 to 1, said the United States doesn’t consider Canada’s
interests. The poll also found that respondents in France, Poland, Britain,
Italy and Germany felt Washington cared slightly more about them.

Attempts to generate recognition are humiliating: the Canadian government’s ads
in D.C.’s Metro and in U.S. newspapers designed to sell Americans on Keystone
XL because the oil sands are in a friendly jurisdiction called Alberta that is
really close by. Then there were the War of 1812 ads we produced earlier this
year to boost Canadian pride in a conflict that nobody cares much about.

Ford is box office boffo because he upends American stereotypes about Canadians
and, for what it’s worth, Canada’s self-image.

Canadians are cleaner, nicer and slimmer than their southern neighbors. They
watch hockey, recycle and never do drugs. They are polite and apologize if they
bump into machinery. Even their postgame celebrations are tame, rarely turning
into riots. When fans in Vancouver did riot in June 2011 after the Canucks lost
Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals to the Boston Bruins, the image that went
’round the world was of a couple kissing in the street.

In Canada, scary becomes cuddly.

Gawker, which broke the Ford video story in May, exploited this stereotype
viciously: “Rob Ford looks like the kind of red-faced American trash who would
knock down an old lady in the WalMart pharmacy line just to get his brother’s
oxycontin prescription five minutes faster,” national correspondent Ken Layne
wrote. A self-proclaimed Canadian waded in apologetically and posted this
comment on Gawker’s site: “We’re 100% as fat as Americans. Believe me. Our
false sense of superiority over Americans is baseless. We’re just as bad as you
are. So don’t feel bad.”

Frankly, I relish the notoriety. Ford has worked over the national brand, but
he’s made Canada interesting. As an arch BBC anchor said gleefully: “Finally,
something has actually happened in Toronto. But how do Torontonians feel being
made famous on the back of the mayor smoking crack cocaine?”

Mister Brit, it feels okay. After all, everyone knows that any publicity is
good publicity, eh?

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German Politician’s Remark Stirs Outcry Over Sexism

By MELISSA EDDY and CHRIS COTTRELL

Published: January 28, 2013

BERLIN — A comment by a male politician about how well a female journalist
could “fill out a dirndl” has prompted an outcry from women across Germany and
a furious debate over the prevalence of casual sexism in Europe’s largest
economy.

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[GERMANY-articleInline]

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Rainer Brüderle, a prominent member of the Free Democrats, faced a backlash
over remarks about Laura Himmelreich, a reporter for Stern magazine, shown this
month in Osnabrück.

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The unwelcome aside about the woman and the dirndl, the cleavage-revealing
traditional dress, by Rainer Brüderle, a leader of the pro-business Free
Democrats, led thousands of women to take to Twitter, sharing personal stories
of humiliation, embarrassment and harassment under the hashtag “aufschrei,”
German for “outcry,” in the days since the controversy arose.

Newspapers and television talk shows have parsed the encounter between Mr.
Brüderle and the journalist, Laura Himmelreich, which took place on the eve of
a party congress last year. Ms. Himmelreich first wrote about it for the
newsweekly Stern after Mr. Brüderle last week was named the top candidate for
the Free Democrats in September’s parliamentary election.

The article and ensuing furor came less than a month after the leading
candidate for the left-leaning Social Democrats declared that Chancellor Angela
Merkel benefited from a “women’s bonus” with the electorate. That drew
criticism, though on nothing like the scale of the recent controversy.

Mr. Brüderle tapped a deep vein of resentment among women here, particularly
over their treatment in the workplace. Despite the fact that Germany is home to
Ms. Merkel, one of the world’s most powerful leaders, many professional women
say gender relations are surprisingly backward for a developed country and
years behind the United States when it comes to workplace equality and, in
particular, sexual innuendo.

“Sexual harassment is all too often viewed as a trivial offense, taken as a
misunderstanding of the situation because ‘it was meant as a compliment,’ ”
said Sarah Elsuni, an interim professor for public law and gender studies at
Humboldt University in Berlin.

She welcomed the debate for drawing attention to what she sees as a serious
social problem that usually goes unpunished. “Women are too often afraid to
bring the issue up when it happens,” she said.

Women in Germany earn on average 22 percent less than men in equivalent
positions, placing them fourth from the bottom among their European
counterparts in terms of pay equality and well below countries known for macho
cultures, like Italy, Portugal and Romania. They are also underrepresented in
top-level management. An effort to require equal representation on boards last
year went nowhere.

A mother who spends more time focusing on her job than relatives and nosy
neighbors deem appropriate is called “Rabenmutter,” or “raven mother,” an
aspersion that sounds as though it came from the era of the Grimm brothers
fairy tales but that is still in use today.

Nicole Simon, 42, a social media consultant in Germany, described the
outpouring as an example of the years of pent-up frustration over episodes that
are so common that women learn to simply block them out.

“Consensus online seemed to be, ‘I thought I could not share these stories, but
reading all the other things, I am surprised at how much I have suppressed over
the years,’ ” Ms. Simon wrote in an e-mail.

A woman who gave her name as Gudrun Lux posted about seeing her application for
a job rejected because, she was told, “the boss does not want any women of
childbearing age.” Another calling herself Su-Shee recounted interviewing a
young male applicant who asked to see “the real boss, the man.”

Mr. Brüderle, the politician, has refused to comment publicly on the
accusations, and several members of his party have come to his defense. Long
before the story broke, however, the Free Democrats came under criticism as an
old boys’ club.

“You are confronted with unbelievable headwinds if you are a woman,” said Doris
Buchholz, leader of a national group of women associated with the Free
Democrats, in a telephone interview. “I have experienced being told that they
would like to have good-looking women on their election posters, ‘because sex
sells.’ ”

The uproar could have political repercussions for Ms. Merkel as well. The Free
Democrats are her party’s coalition partner in government, and the party hoped
that Mr. Brüderle would pull them out of a lasting tailspin that has seen the
party drummed out of several state Parliaments. Instead, he has polarized their
already fractured voting base. Without a strong showing by the Free Democrats
in September Ms. Merkel could have a difficult time winning re-election.

Germany is no stranger to debates over women’s roles and image in society.
Recent years have seen the extension of parental benefits to include fathers
and a push to expand publicly financed day care in an effort to help women with
families and careers.

But the comments of many men who weighed in on Twitter reflected the heart of
the problem. While there were voices of support, and even shame, at times the
number of provocateurs making light of the debate overshadowed those voicing
sympathy.

One man calling himself Blawpp wrote, “The outcry campaign is good because it
lets us know how psychotic women talk and think so we can better avoid them.”
Another named Christoph commented, “Thank God I don’t have any female
colleagues who get upset every time I tell them to use their feminine charm
more.”

According to the Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth,
58 percent of German women say they have been subjected to sexual harassment,
with more than 42 percent of the cases happening on the job.

Aynur Eroglu, a 20-year-old in Berlin who works in sales, says she is no
stranger to sexual harassment at her job, where most of the customers are male.

“It happens all the time,” Ms. Eroglu said. “They get touchy or tell me how
great my butt looks, saying they’d love to take me home.”

“All you can do is walk by and ignore them, or if it gets to be too much tell
them to leave,” she added. “They don’t always listen.”

 

[ View the story "#Aufschrei Tweets" on Storify]

A version of this article appeared in print on January 30, 2013, on page A5 of
the New York edition with the headline: German Politician’s Remark Stirs Outcry
Over Sexism.

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Editorial

Death Meted Out by Politicians in Robes

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: November 18, 2013

In nearly all of the 32 states that permit capital punishment, a jury makes the
final decision on whether a defendant will live or die. Not so in Alabama,
where elected judges may override a jury verdict of life in prison and
unilaterally impose a death sentence.

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Since 1982, Alabama judges have overridden 95 such verdicts, sentencing
defendants to death even though the jury voted for life — many times by a vote
of 12 to 0.

This bizarre arrangement is the result of a state law requiring that capital
punishment be imposed when a crime’s aggravating factors, like an especially
heinous murder or one committed for hire, outweigh the mitigating factors, like
a defendant’s age or mental capacity. But regardless of how a jury weighs those
factors, its verdict is advisory only. A judge may then weigh them differently
and override the verdict without explanation. In more than 90 percent of
overrides, judges chose death after a jury chose life.

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to this law, which
appears to violate a 2002 ruling that capital defendants “are entitled to a
jury determination of any fact” necessary to sentence them to death.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 12-page opinion, joined partly by Justice
Stephen Breyer, dissenting from the court’s decision not to hear the current
case, Woodward v. Alabama. While the court previously upheld the Alabama law in
1995, she noted, the state is now alone in overriding jury verdicts of life.
Because it undermines “the sanctity of the jury’s role in our system of
criminal justice,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, the Alabama law is
“constitutionally suspect.”

Justice Sotomayor rightly identified the reason Alabama’s judges impose more
death sentences per capita than any other state. The judges, she wrote, “who
are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral
pressures.”

The judges are not shy about this fact. A 2000 campaign ad for one said he “has
the tough-on-crime record to be chief justice.” Another bragged that he “looked
into the eyes of murderers and sentenced them to death.” One judge told The
Birmingham News in 2011 that voter reaction does “have some impact, especially
in high-profile cases.” Nor is it any more comforting when the judges decide to
explain themselves. One judge justified his override of a life sentence for a
white defendant because otherwise, he said, “I would have sentenced three black
people to death and no white people.”

In his dissent from the 1995 ruling upholding the Alabama law, former Justice
John Paul Stevens wrote that allowing a judge to override a jury verdict in
this way severs “the death penalty from its only legitimate mooring.”

The death penalty should have no legitimate mooring at all in modern American
society, and it certainly should not be imposed by a judge who is worried about
keeping his job.

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A version of this editorial appears in print on November 19, 2013, on page A24
of the New York edition with the headline: Death Meted Out by Politicians in
Robes.

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03 January 2014
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UKIP Politician In 'Send Them Back' Video

Victoria Ayling, who defected from the Tories in March, talks about immigration
and then adds: "I just want to send the lot back."

2:48am UK, Sunday 08 December 2013
UKIP councillor Victoria Ayling

Video: UKIP 'Send Them Back' Video Row

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UKIP has again become embroiled in controversy after one of its politicians was
caught on camera saying immigrants should be sent home.

Victoria Ayling, 54, who defected from the Conservatives in March, made the
comments in a 20-minute video seen by The Mail on Sunday newspaper.

She talks about restricting the numbers of foreigners entering Britain, and
then between takes, adds: "I just want to send the lot back, but I can't say
that."

Mrs Ayling - a Lincolnshire County councillor and deputy leader of the local
UKIP party - then jokes that the inflammatory remark may one day come back to
haunt her.

"(It could be used for) some future get back at me. Bribery, blackmail - we
need the blackmail music don't we."

Mrs Ayling hit the headlines earlier this year when she confronted David
Cameron during the Tory conference and told him she was leaving the party.

It is the latest in a string of controversies for UKIP after MEP Godfrey Bloom
sparked fury when he referred to "Bongo Bongo Land" and then resigned from the
party for calling female activists "sluts".

UKIP leader Nigel Farage described Mrs Ayling's comments as "slightly odd".

He told The Mail on Sunday: "I have met her two or three times and I have
discussed policy at length before accepting her into the party.

"I had no reason to believe she held views that were extreme or inconsistent
with ours. While this comment looks odd and unpleasant there may be a context
here that is slightly different to the way it appears."

Godfrey Bloom Godfrey Bloom resigned from UKIP after his 'sluts' comment

Mrs Ayling’s husband, Rob, from whom she has since divorced, helped shoot the
footage in 2008 to promote her political career.

At one point, she says: "We must basically repatriate those that shouldn't be
here. That's not quite policy yet. Maybe I should soften it a bit." She then
added: "OK. Send them back."

Her ex-husband is then heard to mutter: "National Front."

She replies: "Multiculturalism is dead, I'm allowed to say that, but maybe
Britishness is waving the National Front flag a bit."

Mrs Ayling told the paper she stood by her comments. She said they had been
taken out of context because she was only referring to illegal immigrants.

"It is nothing different from what the Home Secretary is advocating now any
way. And the blackmail music is from a Monty Python sketch. I don't think there
is anything there that can be seen as offensive or politically incorrect," she
said.

In an official statement, a UKIP spokesperson said: "These comments were made
five years ago when Ms Ayling was a Conservative candidate. Off the cuff
remarks have been deliberately miscontrued.

"We believe, and she assures us, that these comments refer to the status of
illegal entrants to the UK.

"We cannot comment on material made while she was a Conservative candidate but
we believe her to be a good councillor and upstanding citizen and will support
her through this."

:: Watch Sky News live on television, on Sky channel 501, Virgin Media channel
602 and Freeview channel 82.

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  • Viral videos of the year

Oregon politician gets six years for Facebook IPO fraud

Reuters
By Joseph Ax December 16, 2013 7:52 PM
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By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former candidate for governor of Oregon was sentenced to
six years in prison on Monday for fraudulently convincing investors he had
access to shares of Facebook Inc before its highly anticipated initial public
offering in 2012.

Craig Berkman, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994 as a Republican,
told investors he would use their money to buy pre-IPO shares in Facebook and
other companies like LinkedIn Corp, Groupon Inc and Zynga Inc.

Instead, he used new investor money to pay off earlier investors and to fund
his own expenses, including nearly $6 million to help satisfy a settlement with
a firm that accused him of failing to pay his debts, U.S. authorities said.

In June, Berkman pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to securities and
wire fraud and agreed to forfeit more than $13 million he raised from more than
120 investors, including longtime friends.

"I am sincerely sorry, and I take full responsibility for the negative
consequences of my behavior," Berkman told U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin
at his sentencing on Monday.

The sentence was less than the 97 months suggested by federal sentencing
guidelines but more than the 24 months Berkman's attorney had requested.

Berkman, a businessman and the former head of the Oregon Republican Party, will
also be required to make restitution of approximately $11 million, according to
prosecutors.

Facebook's IPO, one of the largest in history, generated several scams by
individuals claiming to have access to the coveted pre-IPO shares.

Berkman's fraud was similar to that of former Florida fund manager John
Mattera, who defrauded investors of $13 million and was sentenced to 11 years
in prison in June.

Berkman lost a primary election in 1994. He also considered a second bid for
governor in 2002, according to The Oregonian newspaper.

In 2001, the Oregon Division of Finance and Securities issued a
cease-and-desist order and a $50,000 fine against Berkman for offering and
selling convertible promissory notes without a brokerage license, according to
the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In 2008, an Oregon jury found Berkman liable in a private action for breach of
fiduciary duty, conversion of investor funds and misrepresentation to
investors, related to his involvement with a firm called Synectic Ventures.

Synectic Ventures filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against him for
debts he failed to pay related to an earlier judgment against him, the SEC
said. Berkman reached a settlement with Synectic and used some of the money he
collected from his Facebook fraud to pay the claims.

The criminal case is U.S. v. Berkman, U.S. District Court, Southern District of
New York, No. 13-732.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Chinese politician Bo Xilai convicted in corruption case

Published September 22, 2013
FoxNews.com

  • China Bo Xilai Verdic_Cham.jpg

    FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2013 file photo released by the Jinan Intermediate
    People's Court, former Politburo member and Chongqing city party leader Bo
    Xilai, center, stands on trial at the court in eastern China's Shandong
    province. (AP Photo)

Fallen Chinese politician Bo Xilai was sentenced to life in prison Sunday after
a court convicted him of charges of corruption, accepting bribes, and abuse of
power. 

The Jinan Intermediate People's Court court sentenced Bo to life in prison on
the bribery charges, 15 years for embezzlement and seven years for abuse of
power, rejecting Bo's defense that he did not know about the $3.5 million in
bribes from two business associates in the form of extensive valuable gifts to
his family -- including a French villa, expenses-paid trips, an electric
scooter and fancy delicacies such as abalone. However, the court said a small
portion of the bribes alleged by prosecutors, of about $160,000 were not proven
in court.

The verdict and sentence brought a close to one of the most lurid political
scandals in the history of Communist China and concluded Bo's downfall, which
was set in motion by his wife's murder of a British businessman, followed by a
defection of his top aide to a U.S. consulate with information about the murder
case just ahead of a leadership transition.

The court also ordered that Bo's assets be seized, according to a transcript of
proceedings on the court's microblog.  The former Politburo member and party
chief of the megacity Chongqing had vigorously denied any criminal wrongdoing
during the trial. Bo had blamed the corruption on others in his inner circle,
thus forgoing the opportunity to earn leniency as is customarily given in
Chinese courts when a defendant expresses contrition.

Bo also became the highest-level politician convicted for corruption under
China's leader Xi Jinping, who has staked his reputation on combatting graft
within the Communist Party.

"I think the point is that Xi wanted to punish Bo Xilai for daring to go
against the party's arrangements," said Willy Lam, an expert on party politics
at Chinese University in Hong Kong. "He was punished for his disobedience and
defiance."

Bo was escorted into the court by marshals Sunday morning and stood to listen
as the judge began reading the lengthy verdict, which reviewed the facts
established in the trial.

delicacies such as abalone. However, the court said a small portion of the
bribes alleged by prosecutors, of about $160,000 were not proven in court.

The trial proceedings had been publicized through partial transcripts that gave
a measure of legitimacy to a trial seen by many observers to have a foregone
conclusion of guilt and predetermined sentence because of the Communist Party
leadership's control over the court system.

"This is a big victory for Xi Jinping's leadership, because you cannot say this
is a secretive trial. It is at least a semi-open trial," said Li Cheng, an
expert of elite politics at Brookings Institute. "Bo's political career is
zero, and the trial really transformed Bo from a charismatic leader to a
self-indulging person."

Bo, once a rising political star, was removed from office in March and expelled
from the party in September.

Bo's career started to unravel in February 2012 when his top aide, police chief
Wang Linjun -- after having a fallout with Bo -- fled to a U.S. consulate with
information about the murder case and unsuccessfully sought political refuge in
a severe breach of Communist Party rules.

Bo was removed from office and placed under investigation, which revealed other
offenses such as corruption. Expelled from the Communist Party in September, Bo
is the highest-ranking Chinese official to stand trial since former Shanghai
party chief Chen Liangyu in 2008.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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      □ Work &lsquo;till you drop

At Work

New York politician Dennis Gabryszak sent staff video of 'oral sex'

  • by: By Laura Italiano
  • From: New York Post
  • December 22, 2013 1:08PM

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NY Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak. Picture: Supplied

NY Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

MOVE over, Vito "Gropez" - yet another New York politician has been accused of
outlandish sexual harassment by young female staffers.

Married-with-children NY Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak, 62, tormented three
workers with lewd antics such as sending a video of himself supposedly
receiving oral sex, suggesting they shack up with him in hotels and talking
about a tattoo on his penis, new court documents charge.

"I got a boner when I walked into the office today when I saw you," the
seven-year assemblyman allegedly drooled to his then-director of
communications, Anna­lise C. Freling, 28, last year at a governor's event,
according to court papers filed Thursday.
Anna­lise C. Freling was allegedly harassed by her boss NY Assemblyman Dennis
G...

Anna­lise C. Freling was allegedly harassed by her boss NY Assemblyman Dennis
Gabryszak. Source: Supplied

"You're so hot, you know what I want to do with you," he allegedly said.

The documents were part of a notice of claim that legally informed the
assemblyman of the women's intent to sue.

Their accusations come during a banner year of Albany sleaze: Assemblyman Vito
Lopez (D-Brooklyn) resigned amid young female staffers' accusations that he'd
asked them to massage him and fondle his cancerous tumours.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was accused by Lopez staffers of quashing
their complaints, vowed Thursday to immediately bring the Gabryszak allegations
to the Assembly Ethics Committee.

Gabryszak, a Buffalo-area legislator who's been married for 37 years and has
two adult children, started harassing Freling within days of hiring her,
according to the court documents obtained by the Albany Times Union.

In late 2011, Gabryszak told Freling he was sending her a recorded message to
play to his constituents - but instead sent her a video "of him in a bathroom,
either receiving or pretending to be receiving fellatio," the papers allege.

Freling said she quit in May after complaining to Gabryszak's chief of staff to
no avail.

Kimberly Snickles, 26, took over as communications director - and within two
weeks Gabryszak invited the attractive brunette to a massage parlour and
informed her at dinner "that he was more of a 'butt' guy than a 'boobs' guy,"
she claimed.

In addition, "in June 2013, in the assemblyman's office, Gabryszak told her and
one of his interns a joke about him "having a tattoo on his penis," the papers
allege.

That same month, as Snickles was marching with the assemblyman in a parade and
they crossed a set of train tracks, "The assemblyman asked her if she 'liked to
be tied up to them,' " the papers say.

Whenever Snickles and another intern travelled in the back seat of Gabryszak's
car, "he would regularly look in the rear-view mirror and ask them 'if they
were kissing each other,' " the papers say.

All three women described the desperate Gabryszak asking them to stay with him
at his Albany apartment or, when they had to travel together, at his hotel.

"The assemblyman regularly talked about prostitutes and his regular visits to a
local strip club called "Double Vision" on Route 9 in Clinton, complained the
third staffer, Jamie Campbell, his former legislative director, who also quit
in October.

And Gabryszak - who lives in Depew western New York with his wife, Louise, 61 -
didn't reserve his disgusting chit-chat for just underlings, the documents say.
He also once jokingly referred to a colleague - Brooklyn Republican
Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis - as "Mallio-c - kkiss," the papers state.

Last year, Gabryszak championed an anti-workplace-harassment bill.

"When you are at work, you need to have an environment that is stress-free,"
Gabryszak, who is refusing to talk about the latest allegations, had told
reporters at a press conference in May 2012. "You need an environment that is
safe, that is conducive to doing the job that needs to be done."

The assemblyman did not respond to messages left on his cell and office phones.

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