MEPs reject anti-gay commission candidate

David Gow in Brussels
Tuesday October 12, 2004

The Guardian

José Manuel Barroso, the incoming European commission president, was under
strong pressure last night to dump Rocco Buttiglione, a professed opponent
of women's and gay rights, as the next commissioner for justice and
security, after the European parliament's civil liberties committee rejected
his appointment.
It is the first time MEPs have rejected a designated commissioner. Although
they can unseat only the whole commission, not a single member, their
opposition to Mr Buttiglione could at the very least force Mr Barroso to
hand key parts of the justice portfolio to a colleague.

So far Mr Barroso has resolutely backed the Italian Roman Catholic, who is a
close friend of the Pope, saying his personal moral views will not affect
his political decisions in the secular EU, and Mr Buttiglione has been
chosen as one of his vice-presidents.

But as party leaders argue about at least four other designated
commissioners, including Neelie Kroes, the competition chief with a string
of former company directorships, Mr Barroso is faced with a serious
challenge to his authority when he meets them on October 21.

Mr Barroso succeeds Romano Prodi on November 1, and MEPs have the power to
vote out his entire team when it meets six days later. That is unlikely, but
sources said Mr Barroso would be unable to ignore the clear distaste of MEPs
for one of his senior team.

The Socialist group urged him to "reflect on the deep unease" in all the
parties about some of the proposed new commissioners.

After the committee voted narrowly to reject Mr Buttiglione yesterday, the
biggest group, the conservative European People's party (EPP), joined in a
majority vote to turn him down for another portfolio and as vice-president.

Michael Cashman, the gay Labour MEP who is on the committee, said: "The game
is almost up for Buttiglione ... Most MEPs don't want this man to be put in
charge of defending human rights, civil liberties and the EU's
anti-discrimination laws."

If Mr Barroso wanted to keep him he would have to give key parts of his
portfolio - non-discrimination, fundamental rights and women's rights - to a
colleague.

Last week Mr Buttiglione told MEPs: "I may think homosexuality is a sin, but
this has no effect on politics unless I say homosexuality is a crime."

But Mr Cashman said Mr Buttiglione, a former Europe minister in Silvio
Berlusconi's Italian cabinet, had put forward an amendment to delete
non-discrimination on sexual grounds during the drawing up of the EU's
charter of fundamental rights.

"We should not judge him by what he says but what he did and does."

Lady Ludford, a Liberal Democrat MEP and justice spokesman, said Mr
Buttiglione had "failed to convince that he could be a champion of
fundamental freedoms or civil liberties, or even effective security
cooperation."

Mr Buttiglione accused opponents of political and ideological
discrimination: "Some people think that a Catholic cannot be commissioner
for justice while others think a minister in Berlusconi's government cannot
do the job."

He denied having said that he wanted a family in which the woman stayed at
home and raised children. "I said that in today's world women have too many
obligations and we have to develop policies that allow them to become
mothers and develop their professional talents."

His party, the UDC, said last night that the vote against him was an
expression of prejudice. "We reject it on two grounds, as Catholics who
respect values and as liberals who are custodians of freedom," its
secretary, Marco Follini, said.

In Rome, Mr Berlusconi accused Italian leftwingers of "coarse propaganda"
against Mr Buttiglione's beliefs, telling the conservative newspaper Il
Foglio: "On a cultural and civic level, the mere idea of putting into
question the freedom of consciousness and opinion of a commissioner with a
Roman Catholic education and faith ... has an extremist if not obscurantist
flavour."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

How bad is Iraq report for Blair?

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
BBC News Online political correspondent


The fact that the Iraq Survey Group has found no weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq is unlikely to provoke gasps of surprise in Britain.
This is, after all, the moment the prime minister has carefully been
preparing voters for over the past few months.

His original line had been to urge his critics to let the ISG complete its
work before jumping to conclusions.

By last July, however, he had changed tack and told the MPs on the Commons
liaison committee that he had to accept the ISG had not found WMD "and may
never find them".

By the time of his party conference speech last week, he had gone so far as
to accept that the original intelligence on Saddam's supposed WMD had been
wrong.

Most importantly, however, he also completed the process of appearing to
shift his justification for the war away from WMD to the removal of Saddam
Hussein.

UN resolutions

"I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I
can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.

"The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power," he told
the conference.


Indeed it is even possible that the ISG report's findings... will offer Mr
Blair some ammunition to hurl back at his critics



What Mr Blair cannot do, however, is suggest regime change was his real
motive for the war - that may well have been illegal and, in any case, was
not cited at the time.
So he has chosen instead to remind people the precise justification was to
uphold UN resolutions which Saddam had defied for 12 years.

He will also now take much comfort from the suggestion by the inspectors
that Saddam was certainly attempting to produce a WMD programme and was
potentially even more of a threat than had originally been suggested before
the war.

None of this, however, will alter the stark fact that claims used by the
prime minister to back the war at the time - including the infamous 45
minute from attack suggestion - were wrong.

Not responsible

But that is now almost universally accepted, and any damage to the prime
minister as a result has probably already been caused.

Indeed it is even possible that the ISG report's findings on the level of
the potential threat posed by Saddam - because it is relatively new - will
offer Mr Blair some ammunition to hurl back at his critics.


It [the intelligence service] concludes Iraq has chemical and biological
weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and
active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which
could be activated within 45 minutes
Tony Blair
House of Commons Sept 2002


Critics are unlikely to accept that though. Former foreign secretary Robin
Cook, who quit the cabinet over the decision to go to war, said the
international community had always known Saddam Hussein had ambitions to
have such weapons.
This was why there had been a policy of containment, says Mr Cook.

Indeed, he says, the report's findings that Saddam wanted WMD, but had none,
suggested containment was a remarkably successful policy and the war was
unnecessary.

Democrats

The most troublesome aspect of the report for Tony Blair could be from its
impact in the US.

President Bush or his officials have now accepted that Saddam was not
responsible for 11 September (as many Americans had once believed), that
there was no link between Baghdad and al-Qaeda before the war and, now, that
there were no stockpiles of WMD.

These revelations are bound to be a factor the Presidential election
campaign and if Democrat John Kerry defies the odds and wins as a result,
that could spell trouble for Tony Blair.

Government advisers who attended the Democrat convention returned in no
doubt about the level of anger felt by Kerry - and even President Clinton -
at Tony Blair's stance on the war and continuing closeness to George Bush.

President Kerry would, of course, have to put much of that anger to one side
in the interests of good diplomatic relations with Britain.

But many believe there would still be a significant cooling in
trans-Atlantic relations.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/3719468.stm

Published: 2004/10/06 14:44:22 GMT

© BBC MMIV

SUV

Firenze vieterà la circolazione durante gli stop antinquinamento
Roma, pedaggio da 1000 euro per i Suv
Dal 2005 una tassa annuale per entrare nel centro della città con i
cosiddetti «Sport utility vehicle»

ROMA - Possedete un Suv e vivete in una grande città? Rischiate di poterlo
utilizzare al massimo per andare in montagna. Dopo polemiche e progetti di
legge cominciano ad arrivare i primi provvedimenti concreti volti a limitare
l'uso degli Sport utility vehicles.

PEDAGGIO SALATO - Costerà con ogni probabilità 1.000 euro anziché 316 il
permesso annuale della Ztl (la zona a traffco limitato che copre gran parte
del centro storico) di Roma per i Suv. La nuova tariffa potrebbe partire già
dal primo gennaio prossimo.


Uno dei modelli di Suv più diffusi anche sulle strade italiane: la Bmw X5
(Ansa)
Lo annuncia l'assessore alla mobilità Mario Di Carlo, in merito alle norme
restrittive che il Campidoglio sta preparando nei confronti dei fuoristrada,
accusati di essere altamente inquinanti. «Vorrei riuscire a introdurre
inoltre - prosegue Di Carlo - un riferimento al "passo", un po' come
succedeva non troppo tempo fa sulle autostrade: si pagava cioè il pedaggio a
seconda dello spazio che occupavano». Cautela invece da parte dell'assessore
riguardo al divieto di accesso all'interno della Ztl: «Non sappiamo ancora
se riusciremo a introdurre questo divieto perchè si tratterebbe di
limitazione della libertà individuale». Anche Firenze seguirà l'esempio
della Capitale vietando la circolazione dei Suv nei giorni che prevedono il
blocco dei mezzi più inquinanti, ovvero per due giorni alla settimana.

PROBLEMA EUROPEO - Il problema della circolazione dei Suv nasce dal fatto
che secondo una ricerca di Legambiente consumano fino a 4-5 volte più di un
utilitaria e che ingombrano in maniera esagerata le strette strade dei
centri storici. Per alcuni modelli si pone poi il problema delle bull-bar, i
paraurti creati per reggere gli urti dei tori, che possono essere pericolose
per i pedoni in caso di urto Un problema che si sono poste anche altre città
europee: Londra e parigi hanno infatti allo studio misure che limiterebbero
la circolazione di questo tipo di mezzi.

I PROPRIETARI SI DIFENDONO - Tuttavia i proprietari di Suv si difendono
contro la criminalizzazione di questo tipo di mezzo. «Non è la prima volta
che si tenta di mettere in castigo le auto a quattro ruote motrici, i
cosiddetti Sport Utility Vehicle, con motivazioni fragili se non inventate.
C'è molta confusione perché i Suv sono auto come tutte le altre», dice Wanni
Zarpellon, segretario della Federazione Italiana Fuoristrada, che conta
oltre 12 mila iscritti proprietari di auto 4x4 con 270 Club in tutta italia.
«La Panda 4x4 è un Suv e, in base al ragionamento che questi veicoli
inquinano, dovrebbe essere vietata, anche se si tratta della più classica e
conosciuta delle utilitarie -dice Zarpellon-. Immagino le reazioni di mamme
e nonne che accompagnano i ragazzini a scuola d'inverno e che usando questo
mezzo perché si sentono più sicure. La veritá è che gli scooter sono più
inquinanti delle auto. Questa è solo una campagna contro le auto 4x4 e gli
Sport Utility Vehicle».

6 ottobre 2004 - Corriere.it

nella toilette del bar non e' reato

La decisione di un giudice di Como: assolta coppia di svizzeri

Fare sesso nella toilette del bar non e' reato

Non si tratta di «atti osceni in luogo» pubblico perche' i due «erano
appartati e nessuno li vedeva».

COMO - Sesso libero nei bagni dei pub e dei bar. Basta che nessuno vi veda.
Cosi' ha stabilito un giudice di Como. La coppia che consuma sesso nella
toilette di un bar non commette atti osceni in luogo pubblico, perche' il
luogo e' comunque appartato. Cosi' si legge nella sentenza del giudice
monocratico di Como Luciano Storaci, che ha assolto due svizzeri del Canton
Ticino 33 anni lui, 32 lei, sorpresi un anno fa in intimita' nel bagno di un
pub del centro di Como. La coppia era stata scoperta dal titolare del
locale, che era andato a cercarli venti minuti dopo averli visti andare in
bagno: «Se il barista mi avesse dato il tempo di rivestirmi non sarebbe
successo nulla», si e' difesa la donna davanti al giudice.
Il pubblico ministero aveva chiesto una condanna a sei mesi per l'uomo e a
cinque per la donna, per atti osceni in luogo pubblico. Secondo il
difensore, invece, il comune senso del pudore non era stato violato, perche'
i due erano appartati e nessuno li vedeva. Alla fine il giudice ha assolto
gli imputati dall'imputazione principale, ma ha condannato l'uomo al
pagamento di 200 euro per avere rotto la serratura del bagno. A parte, lo
svizzero ha poi patteggiato tre mesi per resistenza a pubblico ufficiale,
per via della reazione inconsulta avuta all' intervento della polizia subito
dopo il «fattaccio».
5 ottobre 2004 - Corriere.it