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Surgeons don't put anyone through useless surgery.

Unfortunately reality has a known leftist bias. Here is the case I referred to (summon Google to translate). It was a private practice in Milan that put 91 people (at least) through needless surgery, causing the death of 5. The objective was to get the insurance money that would have been paid for the surgery.

This happened in Lombardy, the Italian region with the highest healthcare costs (and, you guessed, the most privatised system) per citizen in Italy. Do not think that the US are any different: a colleague of mine, married to a US citizen, lived a few years in the US, where doctors tried to convince her that she should have had a rhinoplasty, with the excuse that her nose could give her respiration problems (her nose looks perfectly normal); the unwritten idea was, you get a nose job, I give you an excuse, and I get the insurance's money. As this looked very much like insurance fraud to her she got cold feet, got visited a second time back in Norway just for safety, and had a good laugh with her Norwegian doctor.

Hmmm I guess the higher you spy the most prone to incidents you become.
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You can read it here (ridiculous Google translation) while the original is here.

here's an article (in italian) from a common italian newspaper. In the last paragraph the article says that the plant will meet the needs of 4000 families, saving 2100 tons per year of oil and the production of 3250 tons per year of CO2.

Definitely running late: Il Frecciarossa promette di volare ma accumula ritardi: proteste a Termini. And these are the latest and greatest High Speed trains that have already cost a fortune in overbudget expenditures and debt: 44 miliardi di debiti di Tav e FS caricati sui bilanci dello Stato.

I'm posting this from Amsterdam, I can only take that much crap and this has been going on for 15 years already...

It is a well know fact that Michael Dell uses Ubuntu exclusively at home, and only trots out the pro-Windows stance when paid to by Microsoft, so none of this should be taken seriously. Not that anyone sensible would take anyone saying 'Windows is good!' seriously.

do not count on it. In Italy, where I live, a former Finance minister, while he was in office, went public saying that taxes are very beautiful.
Other people's opinions are a perpetual source of amazement.

http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1998/aprile/11/Una_tagliola_come_antifurto_Topo_co_0_9804114255.shtml The story doesn't tell how it ends.

• Run the election
• Collect and count the votes
• Supervise the whole process
• Investigate the complaints

Some are looking for proof of fraud. But unless anyone is expecting Ahmadinejad to admit that he cheated, no solid official evidence is going to show up.
On the other hand, they:

• Shut down SMS service, main mode of communication reformists used for monitoring voting stations and reporting fraud. Minister of Communications says he doesn't know how it happened, which is quite an interesting thing to say considering he is the one who runs the switches.
• All 5 prominent reformist websites were also filtered night before the election, still blocked in Iran.
• Historically, conservatives have always lost when turnout goes above a certain number; around 60% participation. This time participation was 80+ and they won, by a landslide. There's simply no logical explanation.
• Pro-Ahmadinejad sources announced his victory, by a large margin, even included mostly accurate numbers hours before official results of initial count came out.
• Youtube, other online video sources, BBCPersian TV, Mobile phones in Tehran are all down/inaccessible.
• Prominent reformist figures have been detained (few of the top ones including former president Khatami's brother and his wife were freed this morning in fear of more tension, yes government is afraid)

Here's a clip from Corriere Della Sera on police attacking protesters.

I don't know if you're joking, but somoene agrees with you. Automated (and pretty poor)translation here, sorry I don't have time to do a better job.

The statement about blogs is not true, and the source of the information is questionable. As you can read on this article of Corriere della Sera, http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_ottobre_23/levi_legge_editoria_no_bavaglio_ai_blog.shtml (sorry, it's in Italian), where Mr Levi has been interviewed, the law you're discussing about refers to the editorial market, which means newspaper, magazines, books. As a consequence it only affects professional operators who produce them. Personal sites and blogs are excluded from these categories. The law only wants to extend to Internet newspapers the existing rules for the editorial market. Regards

The post is very inaccurate. Editors, please check the facts before posting sensationalistic headlines.

There is a law being discussed in the Italian parliament which intends to set the rules for online publications, and define their responsibilities.
The goal is to recognize and treat professional online news sites in the same way as traditional newspapers, where there is an editor ultimately responsible and accountable for the information
published. This is not unlike press laws in most western countries: if, for instance, the New York Times publishes unfounded corruption allegations against a politician, its editor is ultimately responsible for those allegations, and the politician could sue him for defamation.

There was some initial concern in the blogging world that this law could also apply to bloggers, but this concern was already cleared by the undersecretary to the Cabinet, Ricardo Franco Levi, which is the main curator of the text of the proposed law. He clearly stated that the new law would only apply to professional journalists, and that it would absolutely not apply to bloggers of any kind.

More information (in italian): http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_ottobre_23/levi_legge_editoria_no_bavaglio_ai_blog.shtml

BLOGGED BY Joseph Cannon ON 8/22/2006 7:23PM

The Men Who Knew Too Much? NSA Wiretapping Whistleblowers Found Dead in Italy and Greece

Adamo Bove and Costas Tsalikidis: Both uncovered a secret bugging system and both met untimely ends.

Was That Just A Coincidence? And Who Made Your Cell Phone?

Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon

Is someone murdering people who know too much about NSA wiretapping overseas?

Two whistleblowers -- one in Italy, one in Greece -- uncovered a secret bugging system installed in cell phones around the world. Both met with untimely ends. The resultant scandals have received little press in the United States, despite the profound implications for American critics of the Bush administration.

Last month, Italian telecommunications security expert Adamo Bove either leapt or was pushed from a freeway overpass; he left no note and had no history of depression. Last year (March, 2005), Greek telecommunications expert Costas Tsalikidis met with a similarly enigmatic end. Both had uncovered American attempts to eavesdrop on government officials, anti-war activists, and private businessmen.

The Bove case relates to the long-standing controversy over the CIA's kidnapping of cleric Abu Omar, who was flown to Egypt and tortured. The post-Berlusconi government of Italy is attempting to arrest and try all of the CIA personnel involved. Bove used mobile phone records to trace more than two dozen American agents.

Bove had also revealed that his employer, Telecom Italia, had allowed illegal "spyware" -- undetectable wiretaps -- to infest Italy's largest communications system. His testimony helped to uncover the unsettling relationship between SISMI chief Marco Mancini and Telecom Italia head Giuliano Tavaroli. (Mancini, recently arrested by Italian investigators, has also come under some suspicion for his possible role in the strange affair of Major General Nicola Calipari, killed by American troops in Iraq.) In the 1990s, Bove had received wide praise for helping to secure convictions of two bosses in the Camorra, Naples' answer to the Sicilian Mafia.

The case of Costas Tsalikidis -- an engineer for Vodaphone, Greece's top telecommunications firm -- offers a similar picture. Tsalikidis discovered an extraordinarily spohisticated piece of spyware within his company's network. The Prime Minister and other top officials were targeted, along with Greek military officers, anti-war activists, various business figures -- and a cell phone within the American embassy itself. This page gives a full list of the targets, very few of whom could be considered as having even a remote connection to terrorism.

As investigative journalists Paolo Pontoniere and Jeffrey Klein report:

The Vodaphone eavesdropping was transmitted in real time via four antennae located near the U.S. embassy in Athens, according to an 11-month Greek government investigation. Some of these transmissions were sent to a phone in Laurel, Md., near America's National Security Agency.

According to Ta Nea, a Greek newspaper, Vodafone's CEO privately told the Greek government that the bugging culprits were "U.S. agents." Because Greece's prime minister feared domestic protests and a diplomati

Many of these pictures even show other people photographing the sculpture, hehe.

If indeed it's forbidden to photograph that huge hunk of metal, that's one heck of a toothless law if I ever saw one ;)

There also proofs the at least 22 CIA agents abducted and tortured egyptian and italian citizend in Italy in the last 5 years. The few which survived reported that they had been imprisoned in the Temara prison in Morocco. Tortures included genital mutilations, electric shocks and violence. (source)

It's been on the news for months. The proposed bill, announced July 27, has actually been enacted as an executive provision ("decreto ministeriale," ministerial decree) by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It's now awaiting ratification by Parliament, which is required to make it an official law. It will expire if it's not voted on, or rejected. It's been called "decreto Pisanu," from the name of the signing Minister, since late August.

Next time, as an Italian, try reading papers or web daily Punto Informatico. The third story is about cafés being raided and closed in Florence for several criminal offences. Some of them have been shut down for 5 days because of violations of "decreto Pisanu," as further proof that this idiotic law is already being enacted.

What is, to me, the worst part has not been mentioned in the /. blurb. The wording in the law, apparently, makes ID recording mandatory for public WiFi access, as well, independent of the nature of the service - be it paid for, free of charge/public, or a city-wide municipal network. This may very well kill the stuttering penetration of commercial and public WiFi in Italy. Who's going to pay for the guy in charge of checking the validity of, and registering ID for people who want to connect to the library's free wireless network? Or just think of the lines to get registered for the airport's network...

I cleaned up some of the translation glitches. My Italian ain't great though...

---
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cronache/2005/0 5_Maggio/01/omissis.shtml

Calipari, evades the blockade of the Americans

With simple computer editing it is possible to read the report in its entirety and to discover the names of the soldiers involved...

(Ap) ROME - I am alone, failing to stop virtually, it is possible to go around them with a simple click, roadblocks placed deliberately in the US report on the death of Nicola Calipari, published Friday, that should have kept hidden names, procedures and other parts reserved for others. The black redacted areas that covered the 45 pages of the document were done for security reasons, to protect the anonymity of the marines involved in the tragic incident of march 4, when Calipari was killed by friendly fire on the road to the Baghdad airport.

What a shame however that the US command had not checked the copy and paste function that conspires to expose the report in its entirety, without censorship. How? It is sufficient to open the original document with Acrobat Reader, to choose all of the text and to do a copy and paste to Word or an any editor. Or, easier still, to open the pdf original, to click on Save as... then choose any different format other than pdf (Word, for example). A simple technical operation that is easily performed by any who has a computer connected to the Internet.

Between the parts of the covered report from the US military secrets there is, for example, the paragraph with the names of the elements of the patrol that fired on Calipari's car, or the identity of the third man (an Italian agent) to the driver of the car with Giuliana Sgrena and Calipari, and again the chapter with the procedures of engaging a check point. It is also revealed the safety operation around John Negroponte and the difficulty of that evening in the American chain of command. All details, together with others larger, are now public knowledge.

Or if they take it down or fix it up you can get it off the italian web site.

http://www.corriere.it/Media/Documenti/Classified. pdf

The article which is partially in the form of an interview then delves in the various historical descriptions on the burning on the stake and the horrendous tortures at the hands of the inquisition and closes inviting people to the conference.

A list of Giordano Bruno's publications can be found at this italian web site. Also, the italian ministry of research through one of its many sub-committees is working on a complete CD-ROM of Giordano Bruno's work in XML.