Tokyo - A Japanese court on Thursday found one of the country's most influential politicians not guilty of participating in a funding scandal, reconfiguring the balance of power in the governing party.

The Tokyo District Court acquitted Ichiro Ozawa -- nicknamed the "Shadow Shogun" for his political power-broking -- of falsifying a funding report.

Ozawa, who was forced to resign as head of the governing Democratic Party of Japan in 2009 because of the scandal, is now in a position to reassert his considerable clout within the party.

He opposes Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's plans to double the sales tax, a controversial measure aimed at tackling Japan's huge public debt.

Brussels - The European Union voiced deep concern Thursday over the situation of Ukraine's jailed ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is on a hunger strike and reportedly suffered physical violence.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Ukrainian authorities to allow the EU ambassador to visit Tymoshenko in prison along with independent medical specialists "as a sign of their political will to clarify the situation."

Ashton "is deeply preoccupied by the situation of Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine," the chief EU diplomat's spokesman said in a statement.

The Ukrainian ombudsman's office confirmed that 51-year-old Tymoshenko was "subjected to physical violence" during the transfer from her cell to a hospital on April 20, the statement said.

Ashton "recalls the obligation of Ukraine to examine promptly and impartially any complaints of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," it said.

You might think Man has come a long way from the Dutch and English slave masters of the 18th Century selling work-able men and women from Africa at "markets" in North, Central and South America. But look at the attitudes to indigenous people.

The facts are that in our day and age Power - the ability to do things irrespective of any resistance from anybody - has been fundamentally privatized worldwide.So when private corporations decide to grab resource-rich lands they use all methods - modern and primitive - to get their way, as occurs for example, with the primitive Awá Indian tribe dwelling in Brazil's Amazonian rainforest where major logging companies simply hunt them down to extermination.

For the Awá people, modern Western "democracy", "market economy" and "human rights" mean decimation so complete that, according to a London Guardian newspaper report last Sunday 22nd April, today there's only 355 of them left.The whole tribe could easily fit inside a jumbo jet!

That's the result of the private logging industry inside Brazil ramming into the Amazon forest to get their trees.Reminiscent of the film "Avatar" these corporations use strong private armies of pistoleros - gun-toting "soldiers of fortune" - to round up and kill anyone, primitive aboriginal or local townsfolk, who doesn't immediately grasp the benefits of the "market economy"

Why did this particular case reach the Western press? Because an NGO called "Survival International" campaigns in the Awa's defense, supported by British actor Colin Firth. No doubt, this at least is something, but...what about all the other thousands of tribes and unprotected, voiceless peoples throughout the world who haven't caught the eye of any Oscar-winning actor?

Madrid, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) - Spain will restore border controls to France on Saturday, during a summit of European Central Bank (ECB) to be held on 3 May in Barcelona, said Monday the Ministry of Interior.

The measure, which will run until next May 4, will involve the temporary suspension of the Schengen Agreement on free movement of citizens among the 27 European Union countries.

According to the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy, the land boundaries with France will be reinforced at the border of La Jonquera, Port Bou, Puigcerdá, Camprodon, Les and Canfranc and air borders of Girona and Barcelona airports.

The Schengen Agreement text states that the free movement of persons in Europe without borders can be temporarily interrupted in the case of "a serious threat to public order or national security."

The Spanish authorities fear the arrival of protesters from other countries to Barcelona as part of the unrest prevailing in the so-called Old Continent due to the adjustment measures implemented by governments to overcome the crisis.

The Interior Ministry has announced that it will close the borders between Spain and France, due to serious fears of public order and domestic security issues, to coincide with the European Central Bank summit in Barcelona.

The move temporarily suspends the Schengen Treaty and temporarily restores border controls to France from midnight on Saturday 28th April until midnight on Friday 4th May.

The Schengen agreement, originally established in 1995, to which the UK declined to agree, states that the free movement of persons in Europe without borders can be stopped temporarily if you know it "a serious threat to public order or domestic security."

All land borders will be closed to free flow and there will be increased security checks at Girona and Barcelona airports.

© Image by William Banzai

Government On the Verge - Yet Again - of Doing Something Which Causes More Harm Than Good

Torture doesn't provide any actionable intelligence - it actually reduces the chance that the witness will tell you anything - and yet the government insisted on using it.

Security experts (conservative hawks and liberal doves alike) agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism - see this, this, this, this, this, this and this - but the government insisted on doing it.

For years, many high-level economists and financial experts have said that bailing out the giant banks will make a true economic recovery impossible ... but the government keeps bailing them out.

The government tried to pass SOPA - even though security experts said it would harm Internet security.

Now - after the defeat of SOPA - boneheads in Congress are doing it again ... trying to ram through the CISPA bill which would do nothing useful, and would more or less destroy all privacy in the U.S.*

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, chasing far-right voters in a troubled re-election bid, will press EU partners Thursday to make it easier to recall border guards in Europe's visa-free travel area.

Sarkozy's interior minister will present to EU counterparts a German-backed proposal that would allow states to reintroduce border controls for 30 days as a last resort if another Schengen nation fails to police its external frontiers.

After coming second to Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in Sunday's first round, Sarkozy told a campaign rally on Monday that the French "no longer want a sieve-like Europe" and that "borders are meant to be protected."

Janet Tavakoli calls it as she sees it - and what she often perceives isn't a pretty picture. But for any advisor, or other investment professional, to ignore this industry veteran's razor-sharp insights would be folly.

A gutsy critic of both Wall Street and the federal government, the Chicago-based consultant, specializing in derivatives and structured products, pulls no punches. Through her independent research into the global financial crisis, Tavakoli uncovered what she calls massive, widespread fraud committed by a network of mortgage originators, securitizers, and rating and regulatory agencies, among others.

Earlier, the founder of Tavakoli Structured Finance, 58, predicted the thrift industry blow-up and the demise of Enron. Then she foresaw that excessive leverage and structured products' misratings would lead to a global financial crisis.

In her just-published e-book, The New Robber Barons, Tavakoli charges that the relationship between failed mortgage lenders and investment banks that securitized and sold risky loans was "the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of our capital markets ... a financial Pearl Harbor," where "investment bankers piloted many of the planes."

Now Tavakoli sees another huge financial crisis looming.

The University of Chicago MBA has traded, structured and sold derivatives at firms including Merrill Lynch, PaineWebber and Westdeutsche Landesbank; and she had earlier stints at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. Research recently talked with her about red flags and preventive solutions.

The United States military and foreign service are embroiled in yet another sex scandal as fresh revelations surface concerning the misconduct of a number of US military service members and an embassy staffer in Brazil.

The incident took in the capital Brasilia late last year, when three Marines on a US Embassy security team and one embassy staff member pushed a female escort out of a car after a dispute over payment. The woman broke her collarbone in the incident, the Associated Press reported.

"There were at least two women with the Marines outside a nightclub," a US defense official said on condition of anonymity.

The official added it appears that one of the women started a fight in a vehicle, then she was removed from the car, and when she tried to re-enter, she fell to the ground and was injured.

He also said that no charges were filed by Brazilian authorities.

Another defense official said the embassy staff member was a supervisor. The embassy tracked the woman down and paid for her medical expenses.

When did things begin going wrong in America?

"From the beginning," answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands since 1948.

Demonization always plays a role. The Indians were savages and the Palestinians are terrorists. Any country that can control the explanation can get away with evil.

I agree that there is a lot of evil in every country and civilization. In the struggle between good and evil, religion has at times been on the side of evil. However, the notion of moral progress cannot so easily be thrown out.

Consider, for example, slavery. In the 1800s, slavery still existed in countries that proclaimed equal rights. Even free women did not have equal rights. Today no Western country would openly tolerate the ownership of humans or the transfer of a woman's property upon her marriage to her husband.