Prince, Berlusconi aide arrested (elite prostitution ring)

by **Joe Hillshoist** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 8:53 am

Maybe like this:<a href="http://www.pagefillers.com/dwrg/masq.htm#9" target="top">Masque of Mandragora</a> Its a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/masquemandragora/plot.shtml" target="top">dr who episode</a> , with costumes that look eerily similar to EWS's ritual scenes. Trippy little plot too.

by **Wolfmoon Lady** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 11:31 am

Hey, Joe - KEWL, re: your wife's a student of the Runes. Regards to her! Definitely watch Eyes Wide Shut - you will never regret it. (Steven Spielberg once said that you cannot put a Kubrick movie on and walk away from it. Such is the power of his artistry.) EWS was Kubrick's final gift to us. (There's that word again.) Think about how Kubrick represents the nature of sacrifice and gift-giving throughout (the movie takes place at Christmas, btw). A rich and interesting motif to study. FWIW: Some time ago, we discussed the film here at RI. Jeff was kind enough to include the <a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm9.showMessage?topicID=79.topic" target="top">archive link</a> of it, which I've now bookmarked and plan to revisit. Perhaps reading through it will inform your viewing experience. Many of us here own the film - some bought it during and after that thread. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)">

by **Ike Broflovski** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:11 pm

Slot machines and prostitutes? Who is this guy, Jack Ruby? I can't help wondering if there were a blackmail angle to this arrangement. Providing prostitutes for the rich and powerful, taping the encounters, then using the tapes for blackmail is the oldest trick in the book. Campione d'Italia sounds like an interesting place. It's an Italian enclave on the banks of Lake Lugano, completely surrounded by Switzerland, about 15 km from the Italian border. It's a tax, financial, and gambling haven, which is why the casino is there. Youssef Nada and Ali Himmat of al-Taqwa bank apparently live in Campione. (Not to suggest there's a direct connection, but it illustrates some of the folks who make up Campione's 3,000 residents.) I bet there's more to the story than elite deviants partying with prostitutes.

by **Seamus OBlimey** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:30 pm

Politicians held in sex scandal Two senior politicians of Indian-administered Kashmir have been arrested in connection with a sex scandal involving an underage girl. Former ministers Ghulam Ahmed Mir and Raman Mattoo were arrested by India's top law enforcement agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Ten people, including a senior police official, have been arrested so far in connection with the scandal. The affair has led to widespread protests in Kashmir. Senior CBI officer Pankaj Kumar Singh told the BBC that Mr Mir and Mr Mattoo were arrested from Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar and the Indian capital, Delhi respectively. Both were state ministers in the Kashmir coalition government. Mr Mir belongs to the Congress party, which heads the federal ruling coalition. Prostitution ring The CBI has also announced a reward of 200,000 rupees ($4,360) for anyone helping the agency in arresting a former law official of the state in connection with the case. The accused are alleged to have misused their authority to force under-age girls into prostitution in Kashmir. The scandal broke after a non-governmental group handed over a pornographic CD to the police. The CD contained images of a local girl thought to be 15 or 16 years old. The names of 56 men were disclosed after police questioned a woman alleged to at the centre of a prostitution ring, and the underage girl. The woman and the girl have also named 42 women linked to the scandal. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5097164.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...097164.stm</a> Kashmir gripped by vice scandal As Srinagar's long-term residents tell you, in Kashmir even a little spark can set off a huge fire. So what appeared to be a simple prostitution ring involving a "madam" and a few dozen young girls has, within weeks, snowballed into a huge sex scandal. And among the accused are well-known politicians, bureaucrats, security force officials and senior policemen. The trouble started in mid-March when a non-governmental organisation handed over a CD containing pornographic material to the police. The CD showed pictures of a local girl, a minor, probably 15 or 16 years old. Protests Ever since the scandal came to light, the Kashmir valley has erupted in anger. The separatist Hurriyat Conference, university students and women's groups have held days of demonstrations. The state lawyers Bar Association went on strike and also filed a petition in court. The main accused in the case, a woman named Sabeena, allegedly ran the prostitution racket which involved several underage girls. She has now been arrested by the police. But that did not stop an angry mob from attacking her home and razing it to the ground. In Indian-administered Kashmir, wracked by years of militancy, most say they have little faith in the administration's ability to dispense justice and a discredited police force is alleged to be hand in glove with the culprits. The anti-police sentiments are so strong that the case has been handed over to India's premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation. And the state High Court is monitoring the case on a daily basis. Influential people On the first day of a hearing last Monday, even the judges did not spare the police. In a courtroom packed with lawyers and the media, Justice Hakim Imtiaz Hussain made a stunning observation. "The police are directly hampering the process of investigation," he said. The second judge, Bashir Ahmad Kirmani, asked the police to produce case diaries relating to the case by the afternoon. "It should be easy, unless you have to manufacture the diaries," he added, amid peals of laughter from the lawyers and the media. In response to the criticism, all that Srinagar's beleaguered police chief, K Rajendra Kumar, would say is that he has "full faith in the judiciary". Most people here perceive the police as the real villains - they allege that senior police officers tried to protect the guilty as they are important people. In Habbakadal district - where Sabeena lived until her recent arrest - lips are tightly sealed. Her ravaged two-storey house on the banks of a river looks more like a murky drain. Well connected Not one person we approached was willing to talk to the BBC, and the only residents willing to pose for our camera and give names and addresses were children. And then a young man puts it all in perspective. "Everyone knew what was going on here. We'd all seen minor girls entering and leaving her house. But they are all scared to say anything against her, because she was very well connected." In fact, Sabeena was arrested two years ago on similar charges, but she was soon let out. Many locals believe that her well-connected clients helped her out. And they say there is a chance she will walk free this time too. The city air is thick with all sorts of rumours. Everyone you speak to has a different theory as to who could be behind the racket. And the mischief-makers show no sign of a decreasing appetite for gossip - lists with names of girls allegedly involved in the racket are being sold on the streets for a rupee or two. Of course, different lists contain different names. No one, including the police, has a clue where the names have come from. Many see it as a larger conspiracy to malign Kashmiri women. In this conservative society, where many women are behind veils in public, the outrage is not difficult to understand. Tense times "Kashmir is a closed society," says Mr Azhar-ul Amin, a Srinagar-based lawyer and member of the Bar Association. "We respect our women. But this scandal is creating an impression outside Kashmir that our girls are available for sex. All the girls of Kashmir are being maligned here. Our sense of hurt is tremendous." Mr Amin says it is a simple criminal case and should be investigated as such, with the guilty being punished for their crimes. "Prostitution exists everywhere in the world, in every country, every society," he said. "The case is unnecessarily being blown out of proportion." But his is perhaps a rare voice of reason in these tense times. "We want the culprits to be handed over to us and we will dispense justice ourselves - according to Sharia law," one angry young told me in Habbakadal. Many also allege that some in the mob that ransacked Sabeena's house included her own supporters, and that crucial evidence was destroyed. So while the claims and counter-claims fly thick and fast, all those girls who were allegedly being exploited by Sabeena seem to have been forgotten. "Most of them are poor girls from villages. They're ignorant and they are lured into the prostitution racket by the promise of employment," said Humaira Kausar, a Kashmir University student. Protesters say that the real travesty of justice is that while the girls who are the victims are being named, no one has revealed the names of the perpetrators of the crime. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4995140.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...995140.stm</a> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=seamusoblimey>Seamus OBlimey</A> at: 6/20/06 12:31 pm

by **rain** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:53 am

first, the 'weirdness' factor. the first thing that popped into my head when this story broke was the shootings in Elk Grove, California, a while back. ok. having said that, I thought some of you might like this quote - '...The Savoy Dynasty got back to Italy in 2003 after 56 years in exile. Now the dynasty are sharing their everyday life with world persons, they organize charity dinners and mask balls. ...' <a href="http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?focus=ana&aid=545">www.focus-fen.net/index.p...na&aid=545</a> or, 'The other “misunderstandings” include: talks he had for recruiting young women in providing special services to Sicilians that had laundered illegal revenues of the casino in Campione D’ Italia - a small Italian enclave in Switzerland. The band would have said this is providing a “full package” of services: casino, luxury hotel, and a companion.' and, 'Some expressions not so royal They reveal that victor Emmanuel bargains really mean for his meetings with prostitutes using not as noble words. He also uses the same manner when talking to the administration at the island of Corsica that had ordered him destroy a bridge in one of his estates: “a round of a machine gun would make them shut their mouth.' from the same article. anyway, because I feel that Victor Emmanuel has presented an opportunity, for those who would keep pulling at the threads, the tapestry becomes more evident, a few snippets - In the late 1800's a New Yorker, Elizabeth Fields married into the Savoy dynasty. <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/calbk:@field(DOCID+@lit(calbk108div4))">memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/qu...k108div4))</a> Presumably, it was her money that built the Palazzo Brancaccio, one of Rome's most spiffy palaces. <a href="http://www.palazzobrancaccio.com/">www.palazzobrancaccio.com/</a> and from <a href="http://www.spitfirelist.com/f370.html">www.spitfirelist.com/f370.html</a> '...the Bush/Thyssen-Bornemisza connection. Like Al Taqwa/Nada management and the overlapping Banco del Gotthardo, the Thyssen-Bornemisza operations are based in Lugano Switzerland. This program poses the question of whether the Thyssen-Bornemisza and Al Taqwa milieu may be linked, and whether the Nada/Banco del Gotthardo is part of the Bormann nexus.' “While establishing its headquarters in a tax haven, the Brothers’ bank opened a branch, Al Taqwa Management Organization S.A., in Italian Switzerland, in Lugano. Lugano, a discreet frontier banking locale, is a stone’s throw from Milan, a major financial center, and above all the Islamist groups’ entry point to Europe.” “Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza runs his private Dutch-based investment group from Lugano, Switzerland, and his cousin Count Federico Zichy-Thyssen, grandson of old Fritz Thyssen, exercises control over Thyssen A.G. from his base in Buenos Aires.” If the investigators realized that the U.S. intelligence chief in postwar Germany, Allen Dulles, was also the Rotterdam Bank’s lawyer, they might have asked some very interesting questions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles’ client as well. Nor did they ever realize that it was Allen Dulles’s other client, Baron Kurt Von Schroeder, who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen companies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Rotterdam Bank was at the heart of Dulles’ cloaking scheme, and he guarded its secrets jealously.”

by **Gouda** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:54 am

Since Berlusconi left "office," ain't the net been widening... <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/06/20/italy.mafia.reut/index.html">edition.cnn.com/2006/WORL...index.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Italy arrests 'avert Mafia war' PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) -- Police arrested at least 45 people on Tuesday in what they said was a operation aimed at thwarting an all-out Mafia war of succession after April's capture of former "boss of bosses" Bernardo Provenzano. Police said the suspects, including the heads of 13 Mafia families in Sicily, made up the support network that had allowed Provenzano to remain on the run for 43 years. A total of 52 arrests warrants were issued and some were still being served. Palermo police chief Francesco Caruso said the sweep came after police intercepted telephone conversations between suspects pointing to a possible Mafia war of succession after Provenzano's arrest. "Through wiretaps, we found out that winds of war were blowing in Palermo that could have started a new Mafia war and so we move in," Caruso told a news conference. Police were also led to the suspects by coded notes left behind in Provenzano's hideout near the hill town of Corleone, made famous by the Godfather films.  National anti-Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso said the probe allowed police to identify mob ties to politicians and businessmen. He gave no details. Provenzano, nicknamed "Binu the tractor" for the way he would mow down enemies as a young hitman, has been accused of complicity in dozens of murders carried out by the Mafia during the more than four decades he was on the run. Provenzano's arrest was the state's biggest success against the Mafia in more than 13 years. Known as the "Phantom of Corleone", he had run the Mafia since former "boss of bosses" Toto Riina was arrested in 1993. He had been sentenced in absentia to life in jail in connection with the Mafia's most notorious crimes of recent decades, including the killings in 1992 of top anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. in April after more than 40 years on the run.<hr></blockquote>

by **Dreams End** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 9:32 am

Here's a story that didn't get much follow up. Think there's overlap? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Italy investigates 186 over child torture site Rome May 25, 2005 Page Tools * Email to a friend * Printer format * * Italian police are investigating 186 people including three priests after uncovering an Internet pornography site for paedophiles that showed young children being tortured, an official said today. Police said the anonymous web site had been protected by a password and was only accessible for nine days last year in an apparent effort to avoid detection. But a tip-off to a child-abuse telephone helpline allowed computer experts to track down the users. Besides the Roman Catholic priests, police also believe a mayor, a teacher and a doctor downloaded illegal videos. "The children on the films were aged between 4 and 8 at most. Some were abused, others were even tortured," said Domenico Di Somma, coordinator for the police computer investigation taskforce. Police have confiscated computers across Italy, but have not yet pressed charges as they continue with their investigation. The head of an Italian child protection organisation said the case, which was centred on the Mediterranean island of Sicily, was just the tip of an iceberg. AdvertisementAdvertisement "Dismay turns to uncontrollable rage when you are confronted by these images which not even the most hardened maker of horror films could bear to watch," Antonio Marziale of the Observatory of Child Rights was quoted as saying by Ansa news agency. "Paedophilia has assumed emergency proportions and should be top of the government's agenda." - Reuters<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Italy-investigates-186-over-child-torture-site/2005/05/24/1116700715702.html">www.theage.com.au/news/Wo...15702.html</a>

by **Joe Hillshoist** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 9:46 am

This is a quote from a show I am watching now. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The people are in the control of the drug dealers, the petrol warlords and the paedophiles.<hr></blockquote> Its not quite what you might expect, but it close enough. Evil knows no boundaries. <a href="http://abc.net.au/lateline/" target="top">In about 12 hours from this post</a> It should be up there. Wow there's shitfight outside. Hope its just a possum.

by **biaothanatoi** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 12:44 am

The approach of one of the witnesses in the Lateline show to "paedophilia rings" was curious - "yes, paedophilia in these communities is systemic, organised, children are being pooled by offenders ... but there are no peadophile rings." Um, welll, perpetrators don't exactly take out a franchise and hire an accountant and set up shop under a big flashing "Organised Crime 'R' Us" sign. A group of men in different communities banded together to facilitate one another's access to larger groups of children, plying them with petrol and alcohol, 'educating' them with snuff films and sadistic pornography, manipulating them into drug addiction so the child will return to them time and again ... and that's not organised paedophilia? It's almost as though the fact that money wasn't changing hands doesn't make this a "real" crime, let alone an "organised crime".

by **Joe Hillshoist** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:46 am

the sad fact with Australian culture is that the blackfellas are the black sheep. There is a wealth of baggage that goes with this subject. I am wondering about a few things. 1 What are the connections between the perpetrators and Canberra. 2 Will the aussie public continue to see blackfellas as the "other" and transfer their entire reaction to the story to an "other", something that can't happen here. 3 Will it really change. $ why did the Kovco enquir... oh sorry 5 In the context of jeffs attitude about portals, mindsets and the like, the community where this is(particular example) happening is around Uluru. Anyone know anythink abou the beck Hansens Grid and similar nonsense. Unfortunately none of this is new. or even news to anyone who has had much to do with indigenous communities. Its the same old story. Fucked if I have an answer. Aboriginal people are also the sounding board for fascism. they use that "other" principle to innure people to what will be done to them.

Prince, Berlusconi aide arrested (elite prostitution ring)

Re: how do you say Eyes Wide Shut in Italian?

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Strange story

They're all at it..

Lugano

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