The last few years have been tough ones for the Social Democratic Party of Finland. The SDP, armed with a new chairwoman and coming off a stinging electoral defeat in 2007, was looking to reverse the trend in the municipal elections this past autumn. It did not quite work out as anticipated, and the party now faces the challenging task of reclaiming lost territory.

[Last month], Italian State Railways (FS) inaugurated its Milan-Bologna high-speed rail line. From [December 15], regular trains traverse it at 300 km/h.

Above: an ETR 500 train in new Frecciarossa livery passes the new Po bridge (cable-stayed, main span: 194 m) in autumn fog. Photo from FS. Below: parallel test run at 300 km/h on the new line by test units ETR 500 Y1 and Y2, filmed by apparent test train driver 44Nikko87.

Let me introduce the line (doing some more parallel bridge blogging) and say a few words about high-speed in Italy below the fold.

Bumped to showcase a recent example of Train Blogging, a regular feature on European Tribune.

Throwing this out into the Intertubes.

I need to work out indicative costings to look at a cost benefit analysis of a proposed upgrade of a rail corridor into a Tram/Train system. The intent is to fight off a proposal to kill off the urban terminus of a rail line with a cheaper system that provides compelling benefits in the downtown district and substantial advantages region wide ... both those areas that use rail for regional transport and those that don't.

Where would you go to get indicative cost figures for:
(1) tram (streetcar) track by km
(2) tram electrical infrastructure by km
(3) Battery-electric bi-level Tram/Trains
(4) Traffic and Pedestrian level crossings
(5) Upgraded traffic priority traffic light control boxes
(6) Rail switches
(7) Rail platforms

... stuff like that? For an indicative costing, the greater the variety of sources to choose from, the better.

The contention that Hamas is Israel's latest and perhaps only remaining red herring, the culmination of its "war on terror" or terrorist-victim propaganda (see the documentary, Peace, Propaganda, and The Promised Land: Part I and Part II), which is intended to avoid peace negotiations, comes home in this article by Michael Scheuer, Bringing the Arab-Israeli War Home.

The strategy contended here is that Hamas permits Obama to avoid the conflict, as Clinton and Bush II did, possibly until the last year of his second term, guaranteeing failure. Failure means the Palestinians missed another opportunity in the land for peace formula (read, deceit).

In the meantime, while Palestinians are dying in Gaza by the hundreds, Palestinians also keep dying in the West Bank and East Jerusalem protesting the continuing confiscation of their lands. The
International Solidarity Movement site  provides weekly updates on Israel's colonialism in the territories, which reveals that the cement has never stopped flowing, not even interrupted by the Gaza action.

Having introduced to myself to the community yesterday, I will try to post periodically with financial and economic insights from the other side of the pond.

As some noted yesterday, I write regularly at No Quarter, and while our political and economic lives are totally intertwined, my focus is much more on the economic side of the equation.

I do hope that you find my writing to be insightful and with engaged conversation that it will help all of us try to stay ahead of the curve during these challenging times.

On that note, I will provide a link to my writing yesterday, as BO stated the U.S. economy is "Bad and Getting Worse"....      

Picking the Winners
Just because it's green and a good idea, isn't a guarantee it will succeed reaching the marketplace, much less reach commercialization, writes Joseph Lado in an article for EVWorld.com

The picture above is of Apollo 15's astronaut James Irwin with the first lunar rover on the Mare Imbrium. It has been nearly 40 years since man drove an electric vehicle on the moon, much less mined it for Helium 3.

[The title of this piece is a riff on the book by Prof. David Archer.]

I was tempted into writing this entry upon reading a piece by Mr. de Sousa , especially the sentence

"What is needed now is to bring the debate to the public, dig it out of shady blogs and impenetrable scientific journals."

By way of background, I am a once and sometime physicist. I have plowed through my share of impenetrable journals. So I do feel a certain sympathy for the sentiments expressed by Mr. De Sousa.

That said:

Everyday, I am presented with questions that I cannot fully answer. If these questions are sufficiently important, I educate myself sufficently to form an opinion. If time and circumstance preclude sufficient education, I defer to the opinion of those I consider trustworthy in the matter at hand.

This is dangerous.

If I have not the expertise to form a decision, I naturally tend to agree with a purported expert whose opinion furthers my other interests.

Therefore: If the matter is sufficiently important, I bend priorities and arrange circumstance in order to educate myself.

promoted by afew

The temperatures forecast for Lisbon by the Meteorology Institute for the next few days are as follows:

	Today	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Min (ºC)	8	4	-2	-3	-1	2
Max (ºC)	12	11	6	7	6	9

Having worked for the better part of the last 25 years in the mortgage trading and sales space on Wall St., I have had dozens of friends and family members asking me to add insights as to the dynamics at work on Wall St. and the economy at large.

In the process of doing that I have found that there is so much to address. I have also discerned that there is an extreme level of distrust amongst so many towards our banking and brokerage industries.

I hope that for those who read this attached piece scripted on November 12th that you find it informative and helpful in understanding the dynamic at work in our global economy.

   

The strife in the middle east has been going on, in its latest phase, for 60 years. Now when something goes on this long without being resolved there has to be a reason. The reason can usually be found by examining who stands to gain from the status quo.

I'll offer three hypothesis as to who these might be.

Jan 4, 2009

The video upon which this diary was based is apparently a hoax. The diary and video were deleted. My apology. Here is another apology from another site that I reprint.

"We, like many other websites, posted a video allegedly showing the aftermath of an IDF air strike on a Gaza market. The video turned out to be disinformation: it was not shot three days ago, as indicated by the link, and has nothing to do with the current conflict. It is actually from 2005. It was taken in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, when a pickup truck carrying homemade rockets detonated by mistake during a Hamas rally. Our apologies to our readers.

I regret that I was deceived by the video I grabbed and uploaded for propagation in the original post "Israel bombs a civilian market (GRAPHIC Video)".

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m50383

This diary was originally posted by Mattes on Booman Tribune and is reposted by permission. It attempts to break down the falsehoods that lie behind Israel's current attack on Gaza. Does anyone remember in the weeks before the ceasefire terminated when UN relief centers in Gaza reported that they had to close down because there was no food left to distribute?

The years have turned and Spring will quickly arrive. Happy New Year to all and if you like, show us your photos.

front-paged by afew

IDF troops are moving into Gaza, supported by artillery and air strikes. Unless Hamas quickly collapses, which seems unlikely, this stage of the operation by the Israeli military will inevitably bring more casualties among Palestinian civilians, radicalize public opinion in the Arab world, and make prospects of peace in the Middle East even more problematic. There is definitely a legitimate reason for Israel to make sure its southern cities and towns are protected from missiles. The question is if that will be the case in the long run. Diplomacy clearly failed in its efforts to work out a common set of goals that would bring all the parties together, and most recently to even renew the cease fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which triggered the current conflict. Perhaps, the world was too busy trying to figure out its way out of the economic crisis, to pay much attention to that perennial hotspot?

Warning - multiple video downloads ahead.

This is an excuse for a few music biz anecdotes and a jumble of videos - purely for your entertainment and my ego. You have been warned...

I came to Finland in '74 to build the first multitrack recording studio for a progressive record company - Love Records.. Check out the logo. The logo helped me eventually score discounts with the NY exporter of Urei compressor limiters and Roger Mayer noise gates. He was a lovely senior gay man and fell in love with the logo.

Pain is a very powerful interrupt. It overrides all other sensual information entering the brain, and bypasses all neural networks. Pain gets your full attention.

The administration's legacy is already being debated, and the biggest events of it may have too many variables for a definitive consensus to be settled on.  Some of the less well known stories may provide a great deal of clarity, however.

For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

From june 4th to june 7th, the European voters of are called upon to elect the European Parliament in the 2009 European elections. Is that really so? Is there anything like ,,European elections"?

No. The elections to the European Parliament are all but European elections. What is taking place are in reality 27 national elections, in which 27 times national voters elect their 27 national groups of representatives to the European parliament. Elections to the EP are nothing but  27 national and independant elections, being conducted around the same week-end. Accordingly there are also 27 different but relevant national electoral laws. The European law sets only an absolute minimum of common rules. It e.g. determines the total number of delegates in the European parliament, their distribution on the 27 member states, allows citizens of European member states residing in another member state to run as candidate and to vote. For all the rest, there is only the blue sky of national constitutions as limit for the national legislator to regulate, to influence and even to hinder the process of the election to the European Parliament. The European Directive on the election of the European Parliament  is so unambitious in its aspiration to create a genuine European procedure for the election of the European Parliament, that the European Commission does not even esteem necessary to hold a collection or even an overview of the 27 national electoral laws. Apparently, it does not even consider it necessary to gather information about possibly existing common principles for parliamentarian elections in all member states with a view to streamline those in one of their so typical harmonization procedures in the interest of electing a European Parliament representing European political will . Harmonization policy, so consistently implemented in the economic sector, without any consideration for national characteristics or needs, in order to achieve free and as unregulated as possible competition, seems to be irrelevant when it comes to the constitution of an organ of the European Union. Civil law, corporate law, penal law, bank law... the member states must adapt them to European standards. When it comes to the election of the European Parliament... everything is fine, acceptable, one national procedure is as good as any other.

The electoral laws in the different member states are accordingly extremely varied. In some states only national parties, in others also simple voters lists, or again in others also parties from other member states are admitted to participate in the election. In some member states, there are many constituencies, in others only one. In some states, it requires 160,000 supporters' signatures for bringing a new party on the electoral ballot, in others none. In some countries these signatures must be confirmed by the electoral authority in a written procedure, in others the signing must be done before the electoral authority or in presence of a sollicitor, in others  any signature without validation is accepted. In some countries the participating parties or voters' list must pay a securitiy deposit, whose sum can go from small go to substantial. In one country (France) the official hurdles are very low, however the parties must pay the printing costs of their ballots, which amounts  to, the number of voters being 47 million, over a million euro.  

To put it bluntly : In some cases,the basic purpose of national electoral laws is to limit competition in politics. New parties are to be kept outside the political arena. If we consider the case of Italy : Five electoral districts, in each of which  35,000 signatures must be collected, just for the privilege of being put on the official ballot. And each signature must be authenticated by a notary,the new party carrying the authentication fees. The simple aspiration to participate in an election is therefore extremely time and money consuming.

The time available for the collection of the signatures is, again, different  from member state to member state, but, for once a rather common principle, relatively short. Only after designation of the candidates in the party instances, which is possible at the earliest six to eight months before the election date, the new party can start the campaign for collecting signatures.  The signatures must be gathered from one to two months before the election.

Compared to Italy or also Denmark, where 70,000 voices are necessary, the situation is almost too good to be true in Germany:  Either 2000 signatures per regional list (16) or 4000 signatures for the federal list. Any party not being able to gather that amount of supporters` signatures would anyway have no reason to nurture any hope of achieving a 5% election minimum election result in order to send candidates to the EP.

What is not forseen and even forbidden according to the national electoral laws is ... a European party. Isn't that strange ? The object of the election is the constitution of an European Union institution ...  and only national parties are allowed to nominate  candidates ? Which means, parties, which in their member structure, program, objectifs, awareness and consciousness  are national, which lack understanding of European politics ; whose members in general have very little European background. Why should a national party, for instance, stand up for a Common European international policy, by nature and definition restricting national sovereignity in foreign affairs, if the national minister for foreign affairs, thus losing influence and clout, were member of that party? Why should a national party stand up for the emergence of European parties, thus creating future competion in up-coming European elections ?

Maybe this explains the low quality policy output of the EP. It is not the fault of the acting persons, even if national parties use the EP gladly to dispose of politicians that have failed on national level[1]. The problem is structural. Let's take an informed guess on the number of different parties represented in the EP: From Germany six. From France (probably )six. From Great Britain (probably)  four. If we calculate on the basis of four parties per member state, we get a result of 108 parties represented in the EP. The fact that these 108 parties regroup in parliamentary groups within the EP does not resolve the dilemma. Because their political platform, even for European politics, is national ; it was written and voted on nationally. Candidates from 108 different parties were sent to the EP with 108 different programs. With 8 parliamentary groups, each of the mis composed of 13 parties (on average). Can it really be a surprise that the smallest common denominator is indeed tiny, thus impeding any relevant political initiatives from within the EP?

Democracy in Europe will only be feasible if the European parliament is elected by all European voters in a single trans-european election, acquiring a trans-european legitimacy and in consequence becoming possibly the source of a truely European political will, which will be all but just the smallest common denominator of the programs of more than one hundred national parties. Then and only then will the elections of the European Parliament have become genuine European elections. The present system is a pure labelling fraud, masking the sad truth of national parties' monopoly of the European political system.  

Harald Greib*
St Jean de Fos - France

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*Harald Greib is Vice-President of Newropeans and the author of "Berlin mit Bitte um Weisung" a European story published by MDV 2006.

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[1] Most recent cases in Germany: Friedbert Pflüger, failed in Berlin; Monika Hohlmeier, failed and abhorred in Bavaria. Europeans can expect to see them back on track and well paid in Brussels and Strasbourg starting June 2009.

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PLEASE HELP NEWROPEANS TO RUN FOR EU ELECTIONS IN GERMANY AND ITALY.

Our two first lists of candidates for june 2009 European elections have been elected for Germany and Italy.

But Newropeans needs to collect signatures from citizens from these two countries to be allowed to present these lists of candidates:  
4000 signatures are requested in Germany before the end of February 2009.
175000 signatures are requested in Italy before the end of April 2009.

In both of these countries Newropeans has real chances to have elected candidates.  

But our biggest issue NOW IS COLLECTING REQUESTED SIGNATURES.

HELP NEWROPEANS MAKE DEMOCRATIC CHANGES HAPPEN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION!! Democracy starts with citizens, MORE DEMOCRACY STARTS WITH YOU!!

GERMANY: You live or have friends who live in Germany. We need people to certify signatures collected in their own city next to their city councils. Wish to help. Contact: Margit Reiser-Schrober: mreiser-schober@newropeans.eu  
See the list of candidates for Germany here: http://newropeans-auf-den-stimmzettel.pbwiki.com/

ITALY: You live or have friends who live in Italy. We need people to collect signatures physically. Wish to help. Contact: Diego Malcangi dmalcangi@newropeans.eu
See the lists of candidates for Italy here:

Franck Biancheri
President of Newropeans
www.newropeans.eu

-------------------------------------------------------

BITTE HELFT NEWROPEANS AUF DIE STIMMZETTEL IN DEUTSCHLAND UND ITALIEN.

Die Kandidaten unserer ersten beiden Listen für die Europawahlen im Juni 2009 sind in Deutschland und Italien gewählt worden.

Damit diese Listen in ihren jeweiligen Ländern zur Wahl zugelassen werden, benötigt Newropeans:
4.000 Unterstützerunterschriften in Deutschland (bis Ende Februar 2009).
175.000 Unterstützerunterschriften müssen in Italien bis Ende April 2009 vorliegen.

In beiden Ländern hat Newropeans reelle Chancen, ins EU-Parlament zu kommen.  

Im Moment ist unsere größte Aufgabe also DIE NOTWENDIGEN UNTERSCHRIFTEN ZU SAMMELN!

HELFT NEWROPEANS DABEI, DIE EU DEMOKRATISCHER ZU MACHEN!! Die Demokratie fängt mit den Bürgerinnen und Bürgern an, MEHR DEMOKRATIE BEGINNT BEI DIR!!

DEUTSCHLAND: Du wohnst in Deutschland oder hast dort Freunde? Wir brauchen Leute, die die gesammelten Unterschriften auf dem zuständigen Einwohnermeldeamt beglaubigen lassen. Wenn Ihr helfen wollt, kontaktiert bitte: Margit Reiser-Schrober: mreiser-schober@newropeans.eu
Hier könnt Ihr die Liste der deutschen Kandidaten sehen:
http://newropeans-auf-den-stimmzettel.pbwiki.com/

ITALIEN: Du lebst in Italien oder hast dort Freunde? Wir benötigen Helfer die persönlich Unterschriften sammeln. Wenn Du helfen willst, nimm Kontakt mit Diego Malcangi dmalcangi@newropeans.eu auf.
Hier kannst Du die Liste unserer italienischen Kandidaten einsehen.

Franck Biancheri
President of Newropeans
www.newropeans.eu

You can read the whole piece here -  http://environment.yale.edu/pubs/Money-Cant-Buy-You-Love  
Money Can't Buy You Love, Or Happiness
By James Gustave Speth

It is very well written and brings a broad review of events and trends.  I'll try to give you the flavor of the piece in the quotes below.

In an interview with the FT:

Paulson says crisis sown by imbalance

The US Treasury Secretary said that in the years leading up to the crisis, super-abundant savings from fast-growing emerging nations such as China and oil exporters - at a time of low inflation and booming trade and capital flows - put downward pressure on yields and risk spreads everywhere.

This, he said, laid the seeds of a global credit bubble that extended far beyond the US sub-prime mortgage market and has now burst with devastating consequences worldwide.