Blitz all’ex Eutelia, sedici indagati

di Marina Bisso

SEdici indagati per l´irruzione all´ex Eutelia. Erano le 5.20 dello scorso 11 novembre quando Samuele Landi, ex amministratore delegato della società Eutelia (azienda specializzata nell´alta tecnologia ceduta la scorsa estate al gruppo Agile-Omega) ha guidato un commando di quindici agenti privati per “liberare” la sede dell´azienda sulla Tiburtina, occupata da alcune settimane dai dipendenti senza stipendio da tre mesi e in protesta contro i 1.200 licenziamenti annunciati. Ora per quel blitz, sia l´imprenditore che i poliziotti privati sono tutti accusati di «sostituzione di persona» e di «esercizio arbitrario delle proprie ragioni».

Sull´episodio è stata avviata un´inchiesta dal procuratore capo Giovanni Ferrara e dal pm Fabio Santoni. Non sono stati invece contestati i reati di violenza privata e minacce. Per i magistrati l´assalto organizzato alla ditta fu dunque un atto illegale: il titolare della società avrebbe dovuto chiedere e attendere l´eventuale ausilio della forza pubblica e non provvedere direttamente e immediatamente allo sgombero dell´azienda assoldando gli uomini della sicurezza e facendo credere di essere poliziotti.

Quella notte, invece, una squadra di quindici uomini armata di piedi di porco aveva scardinato i cancelli della sede sulla Tiburtina. I dipendenti dell´azienda di servizi informatici, in occupazione da fine ottobre, in un primo momento avevano pensato di trovarsi davanti dei veri agenti. «Sono arrivati mentre stavamo dormendo – avevano raccontato i dipendenti della società – Urlavano, dicevano di essere della polizia. Poi ci hanno chiesto i documenti puntandoci in faccia le torce e minacciandoci». In realtà, però, i componenti della squadraccia appartenevano alla Berani Group, agenzia di sicurezza privata. A comandare la spedizione c´era appunto Samuele Landi, membro di spicco della famiglia proprietaria di Eutelia.

Un «uomo d´azione» come ha sempre vantato l´ex ad, soprannominato “Capitan Uncino”. L´imprenditore, presidente e comandante in capo dello Skydive sport center Tortuga di Arezzo, racconta anche di aver alle spalle 1.900 lanci col paracadute. Fino a pochi giorni fa, una foto sul suo blog lo ritraeva sorridente, con un coltello fra i denti, e un cappellino con teschio in testa. La sua ultima azione però è finita con una duplice accusa della procura, che ora valuterà se interrogarlo.

Intanto una seconda inchiesta è stata aperta dalla procura, contro ignoti, per le minacce ricevute Federico Ruffo, l´inviato di Crash, il programma di Rai Educational, che l´11 novembre aveva filmato l´irruzione delle guardie giurate all´interno degli edifici occupati dai lavoratori ex Eutelia. Nei giorni scorsi sotto la casa del giornalista era apparso un messaggio tracciato con della vernice rossa: «Ruffo, sei morto».

(29 novembre 2009)

Fonte: http://roma.repubblica.it/dettaglio/blitz-…ndagati/1791901

Nascoste all’interno del Policlinico buste con dosi di eroina e cocaina

Le “Volanti” al lavoro per risalire all’identità dello spacciatore

Giuseppe Palomba

L’occhio attento di una guardia giurata ha consentito agli agenti dell’ “Ufficio prevenzione generale e soccorso pubblico” della polizia di Stato di recuperare un ingente quantitativo di cocaina e eroina. Droga che, secondo una prima stima approssimativa, una volta immessa sul mercato al dettaglio avrebbe fruttato svariate migliaia di euro.
Nel particolare, come confermato ieri mattina in conferenza stampa dal vicequestore Giusy Interdonato, funzionario della sezione “Volanti”, si tratta di 20 grammi di cocaina e 104 grammi di eroina. Lo stupefacente, all’interno di alcuni sacchetti di cellophane già diviso in dosi, è stato recuperato all’interno di un canale di scolo delle acque piovane a ridosso del muro di cinta.. Il “carico” era stato poi sistemato all’interno di una busta per lettere di colore giallo.
Ad avviare l’attività di indagine la segnalazione, giunta da parte di un vigilantes. Guardia giurata, in servizio alla porta lato mare del Policlinico, che ha riferito all’operatore del “113″ di una persona che, con fare sospetto, si aggirava all’interno dell’area del nosocomio universitario sostando, con sempre maggiore frequenza, in prossimità del muro esterno. Così gli agenti, una volta presa anche la descrizione dello sconosciuto, si sono messi all’opera alla ricerca di qualcosa. Mai avrebbero pensato di trovare quel “tesoro”.
Tra le ipotesi che in questo momento vengono avanzate dalle forze dell’ordine, che cercano ovviamente riscontri, quella di un possibile “pusher” che aveva trovato, all’interno del Policlinico un posto sicuro dove posare lo stupefacente prima di venderlo al dettaglio. Questo, se confermato, spiegherebbe il perché della suddivisione della droga già in dosi. Altra ipotesi quella di una possibile consegna che doveva avvenire lontano da occhi indiscreti.
Gli agenti dell’ “Ufficio prevenzione generale e soccorso pubblico” stanno ora visionando, con l’apporto dei colleghi della Scientifica, i filmati registrati dai sistemi di televideosorveglianza dello stesso Policlinico e di alcuni esercizi commerciali della zona. La speranza è che possano trovarsi elementi utili all’identificazione dell’uomo che ha lasciato lo stupefacente.

26/11/2009 Fonte: http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/NotiziaArchiv…676&Edizione=13

Ruba un autocarro, ma viene fermato dai vigilantes e arrestato dai carabinieri

Aveva anche una ricetrasmittente sintonizzata sulle frequenze dei carabinieri

di Redazione

È stato sorpreso alla guida di un autocarro rubato dall’interno di una ditta di autodemolizioni e per questo è finito in carcere. Si tratta di Riccardo Sgaramella, 32enne di Andria, arrestato a Ruvo di Puglia dai Carabinieri della locale Stazione, con l’accusa di “furto aggravato”.

Domenica notte, una “gazzella” dell’Arma, in servizio di perlustrazione, è stata fatta convergere lungo la strada provinciale 231, dove una pattuglia di vigilantes aveva sorpreso un individuo alla guida di un autocarro di sospetta provenienza furtiva.

Giunti sul posto, i carabinieri hanno proceduto alla perquisizione dell’uomo, nel frattempo bloccato dai metronotte, che è stato trovato in possesso di una radio ricetrasmittente funzionante e sintonizzata sulle frequenze delle Forze di Polizia, appesa al collo. Durante l’operazione, infatti, si sono udite persino alcune conversazioni tra pattuglie dell’Arma.

Sull’autocarro, invece, i militari hanno rinvenuto una borsa contenente diversi attrezzi da scasso. Gli accertamenti eseguiti hanno permesso di appurare che il veicolo era stato rubato poco prima dall’interno di una ditta di autodemolizioni della zona. Il sopralluogo eseguito presso la ditta, infatti, ha permesso di riscontrare una grossa falla sulla recinzione dell’area, tale da consentire il passaggio del mezzo.

Condotto in caserma ed accertate le sue responsabilità, il 32enne è stato arrestato e condotto presso la casa circondariale di Trani.

Il veicolo, del valore di circa 45mila euro, è stato poi restituito al legittimo proprietario, mentre gli attrezzi da scasso e la radio ricetrasmittente sono stati posti sotto sequestro.

Fonte: http://www.ruvolive.it/news/news.aspx?idnews=4348

Mantovano: Chi guarda le guardie

 

Non solo polizia, anche vigilanza privata, ronde e buttafuori. Così il governo regola, controlla e tutela l’opera di chi lavora per la sicurezza di tutti

di Alfredo Mantovano

Il sistema della sicurezza non si esaurisce col lavoro delle forze di polizia, che pure mantengono un ruolo centrale e prevalente, ma può contare su altri importanti soggetti, dalla polizia locale ai sindaci, fino alla vigilanza privata: nessuno di costoro recita una parte marginale, da ritenere di serie B o C. Ciascuno è chiamato a svolgere una parte propria, in stretta collaborazione con gli altri soggetti. In quest’ottica il Parlamento sta lavorando a una riforma della legge quadro sulla polizia locale; nella stessa ottica, da quando si è avviata la legislatura, ai sindaci sono stati conferiti nuovi e più precisi poteri, per esempio attraverso lo strumento della ordinanza di sicurezza urbana o il potere di iniziativa per l’utilizzo dei volontari della sicurezza (le cosiddette ronde). Nello stesso quadro si inserisce il lavoro della vigilanza privata, che orientamenti presenti in sede europea tendono a non valorizzare come una componente della sicurezza di tutti: tanto che in realtà diverse da quella italiana esso costituisce di frequente un ramo di qualche azienda multiservizi di grosse dimensioni. Lo sforzo che si sta operando in questo momento in Italia, in particolare a opera del governo, è teso, nel rispetto delle regole sulla concorrenza, a far sì che chi lavora per la sicurezza di tutti, portando un’arma e tutelando obiettivi importanti, non può essere messo sullo stesso piano di altri dipendenti che svolgono un qualsiasi, pur significativo, servizio.
Dovendo recepire le indicazioni comunitarie contenute in una sentenza della Corte di giustizia europea del dicembre 2007, vi è stato un adeguamento normativo teso a realizzare: il miglioramento della qualificazione professionale delle guardie particolari giurate (ciò dovrà essere condiviso con le Regioni, che hanno competenza legislativa esclusiva in materia); il rispetto della contrattazione collettiva, a tutela della qualità dei servizi e della sicurezza dei lavoratori; la difesa delle guardie giurate relativamente a nuove ipotesi di mobilità aziendale, conseguenti alla eliminazione del limite provinciale della licenza, prima previsto per la operatività di un istituto di vigilanza; il più agevole reimpiego delle guardie rimaste senza lavoro, con la loro iscrizione in un registro istituito nelle prefetture, a disposizione dei datori di lavoro. Un decreto del ministro dell’Interno, prossimo al varo, darà fra breve piena e più puntuale attuazione alla riforma del settore. Un dato positivo è costituito dalla istituzione della Commissione consultiva centrale per le attività di sicurezza privata, nel cui ambito sono state costituite due sottocommissioni: una ha il compito di definire i requisiti di capacità tecnica e di qualità dei servizi (è stato già predisposto in tal senso uno schema di decreto), l’altra l’individuazione dei requisiti minimi professionali e di formazione del personale dipendente dagli istituti. Questa Commissione è il luogo del confronto e del raccordo, in tempo reale e senza lungaggini, fra tutti i soggetti in causa: i rappresentanti degli istituti di vigilanza, i sindacati, i ministeri interessati, in primis quello dell’Interno.
Nel frattempo un altro riconoscimento al settore è venuto dalla nuova disciplina dei cosiddetti buttafuori, di coloro, cioè, che sono posti a tutela della sicurezza nei locali di intrattenimento, anzitutto le discoteche, e di eventi di spettacolo: le nuove disposizioni, contenute nel “pacchetto sicurezza” e in un decreto ministeriale di attuazione, puntano a eliminare gli abusi e a pretendere requisiti di affidabilità e di formazione adeguati. È inoltre imminente la sottoscrizione di una rinnovata versione del protocollo “mille occhi sulla città”, teso a rendere gli operatori della vigilanza privata soggetti riconosciuti e attivi della sicurezza, in stretta collaborazione con le forze di polizia, con i sindaci e con la polizia locale.
*sottosegretario del ministero degli Interni

Fonte: http://www.tempi.it/interni/008033-mantova…arda-le-guardie

Mantovano: Chi guarda le guardie

Non solo polizia, anche vigilanza privata, ronde e buttafuori. Così il governo regola, controlla e tutela l’opera di chi lavora per la sicurezza di tutti

di Alfredo Mantovano

Il sistema della sicurezza non si esaurisce col lavoro delle forze di polizia, che pure mantengono un ruolo centrale e prevalente, ma può contare su altri importanti soggetti, dalla polizia locale ai sindaci, fino alla vigilanza privata: nessuno di costoro recita una parte marginale, da ritenere di serie B o C. Ciascuno è chiamato a svolgere una parte propria, in stretta collaborazione con gli altri soggetti. In quest’ottica il Parlamento sta lavorando a una riforma della legge quadro sulla polizia locale; nella stessa ottica, da quando si è avviata la legislatura, ai sindaci sono stati conferiti nuovi e più precisi poteri, per esempio attraverso lo strumento della ordinanza di sicurezza urbana o il potere di iniziativa per l’utilizzo dei volontari della sicurezza (le cosiddette ronde). Nello stesso quadro si inserisce il lavoro della vigilanza privata, che orientamenti presenti in sede europea tendono a non valorizzare come una componente della sicurezza di tutti: tanto che in realtà diverse da quella italiana esso costituisce di frequente un ramo di qualche azienda multiservizi di grosse dimensioni. Lo sforzo che si sta operando in questo momento in Italia, in particolare a opera del governo, è teso, nel rispetto delle regole sulla concorrenza, a far sì che chi lavora per la sicurezza di tutti, portando un’arma e tutelando obiettivi importanti, non può essere messo sullo stesso piano di altri dipendenti che svolgono un qualsiasi, pur significativo, servizio.
Dovendo recepire le indicazioni comunitarie contenute in una sentenza della Corte di giustizia europea del dicembre 2007, vi è stato un adeguamento normativo teso a realizzare: il miglioramento della qualificazione professionale delle guardie particolari giurate (ciò dovrà essere condiviso con le Regioni, che hanno competenza legislativa esclusiva in materia); il rispetto della contrattazione collettiva, a tutela della qualità dei servizi e della sicurezza dei lavoratori; la difesa delle guardie giurate relativamente a nuove ipotesi di mobilità aziendale, conseguenti alla eliminazione del limite provinciale della licenza, prima previsto per la operatività di un istituto di vigilanza; il più agevole reimpiego delle guardie rimaste senza lavoro, con la loro iscrizione in un registro istituito nelle prefetture, a disposizione dei datori di lavoro. Un decreto del ministro dell’Interno, prossimo al varo, darà fra breve piena e più puntuale attuazione alla riforma del settore. Un dato positivo è costituito dalla istituzione della Commissione consultiva centrale per le attività di sicurezza privata, nel cui ambito sono state costituite due sottocommissioni: una ha il compito di definire i requisiti di capacità tecnica e di qualità dei servizi (è stato già predisposto in tal senso uno schema di decreto), l’altra l’individuazione dei requisiti minimi professionali e di formazione del personale dipendente dagli istituti. Questa Commissione è il luogo del confronto e del raccordo, in tempo reale e senza lungaggini, fra tutti i soggetti in causa: i rappresentanti degli istituti di vigilanza, i sindacati, i ministeri interessati, in primis quello dell’Interno.
Nel frattempo un altro riconoscimento al settore è venuto dalla nuova disciplina dei cosiddetti buttafuori, di coloro, cioè, che sono posti a tutela della sicurezza nei locali di intrattenimento, anzitutto le discoteche, e di eventi di spettacolo: le nuove disposizioni, contenute nel “pacchetto sicurezza” e in un decreto ministeriale di attuazione, puntano a eliminare gli abusi e a pretendere requisiti di affidabilità e di formazione adeguati. È inoltre imminente la sottoscrizione di una rinnovata versione del protocollo “mille occhi sulla città”, teso a rendere gli operatori della vigilanza privata soggetti riconosciuti e attivi della sicurezza, in stretta collaborazione con le forze di polizia, con i sindaci e con la polizia locale.
*sottosegretario del ministero degli Interni

Fonte: http://www.tempi.it/interni/008033-mantova…arda-le-guardie

BRACCIANESE, RUBA AUTO SERVIZIO A VIGILANTE MA VA FUORI STRADA:ARRESTATO

Questa notte, intorno alle 3, in via Braccianese km 7, i carabinieri dell’Aliquota Radiomobile della Compagnia Roma Cassia hanno arrestato un operaio di 28 anni di Nettuno, già pregiudicato, per aver rapinato, con violenza, l’auto di servizio ad una guardia giurata di un istituto di vigilanza romano. Il malfattore, sotto l’effetto di sostanze stupefacenti che aveva assunto, dopo poco, è andato a sbattere contro un muro lungo la strada, venendo bloccato dai militari nel frattempo giunti sul posto. Il 28 enne è stato medicato, per lievi lesioni, all’ospedale Villa San Pietro e poi arrestato con l’accusa di rapina in attesa del giudizio direttissimo. (omniroma.it)

(18 novembre 2009 ore 15:51)

Fonte: http://roma.repubblica.it/dettaglio-news/roma-15:51/26042

I AM DOWNTOWN. The air is chill and the traffic thrums and stalls around me like angry geese, horns going off in a cavalcade. My arms are full of things a man in my financial situation has no right to afford, but I have a cheque due from the management company for a bunch of voice-overs I did the previous week and they even paid me to sign a pile of forms I didn’t exactly read. I’m excited but nervous because I feel the change in the air and it’s not just the first flakes of winter snow.
            I ignore the incipient fender benders around me and step over a homeless guy lying in front of the department store asleep with his cock out and the biggest take-away mocha chill latte I have ever seen in my life spilled across the pavement beside him, a rich woman’s small dog lapping unseen at the edge of the puddle with its eyes going wide as it steps into a little of the human sensorium. The black guys at the entrance of the shop eye me like a rival gangsta, which I ignore because, you know, I’m cool with that shit, and I nod on the sly and make up some kind of fucking hand signal for a laugh that makes one wince and the other screw up his face in bewilderment. Oh yeah, and I have dropped about fifteen of these tiny little cute pills I found down the back of the couch, gagging on the lint, the pink hearts familiar to me and not actually candy as you might expect. They give me a fire in my belly and an iron rod I have to practically strap to the side of my leg as I amble into the big lit-up store, ignoring the more Christmassy decorations with my arms already half-filled with shit I shouldn’t be buying.
            I’m moving house soon. That explains the back-of-the-sofa foraging and also why I am not at home at 6pm without a good excuse, no-one to cook my dinner or give me the hairy eyeball when I turn up at nine smelling like woodsmoke or brine or ectoplasm or Asian pussy with no real explanation to offer to a family who apparently all knew about the ridiculous one-man play my life had become. It just lacked a title. Perhaps, Zephyr the Amazing Doofus. I could think of a dozen things more harsh if it wasn’t for my happy pills and I’ll be frank with you that it’s a nice surprise to get a little holiday from the black mood that has been following me of late.
            I have only just recovered from finding myself standing somewhere in the middle of the Eighth Century pushing corpses into a swamp with just a handful of unspeaking, black-cowled so-called priests as my accomplices. As Seeker glibly explained – troublingly so for someone who is practically a born-again-Christian – by the time Ash and the guy from the Jackass crew’s bodies turn up, they’ll have been decayed for centuries and unidentifiable. I thought I read or watched something once about peat bogs actually preserving people better, but I am not going to get into a slanging match with a bunch of Wallachians who don’t actually speak anyway, except among themselves, and even then in low whispers.
            I am buying the essentials: clean underwear, rewritable DVDs, disposable razors, cue tips, a new hairbrush, toothbrush, shoe brush, boot polish and five cans of leather refresher that makes the emo chick behind the counter raise her heavily-pierced eyebrow, an effort by itself, and she laughs gently and makes some joke about me having a fetish and because I’m a little high I just nod and leer and say, “Yes, Veronica, and that is not all I can do,” and successfully creep her out. If I had my mask on she would so be mine. I dig the purple highlights in her hair, the chalky face, the pubescent cleavage straining at the secretarial white button-up blouse the shop makes her wear. I think of Cusp and my daughter Tessa simultaneously and it’s not the most comfortable sensation I’ve had all week.
            In front of a display of the latest holo-projection TVs my Zephyr phone starts blurping and I look over my shoulder, knowing already I am going to risk it despite the mild shopping turbulence around me. I pile my things onto the carpeted step beneath one of the TVs that is showing news footage of the Pope setting down in Newark and whoever it is on the other end of the phone, I cannot hear a fucking word they are saying. I cut the line and realise I have five text messages, three of them from Seeker about “team business,” one from the guy who still manages my web forum and one from Streethawk, of all people, asking if the rumours are true that we’re putting together a new squad. Sorry Bruce, no homos allowed, is what I think to myself and then catch myself on the television suddenly, brows crinkled as I ponder how exactly I turned out to be such a homophobic beeotch given my upbringing – and it’s disorienting trying to work out why I can see myself on the holoscreen until I realise a salesman is demonstrating a handicam to a bunch of East China tourists who look like they have never seen an electric light let alone a DVD camera.
            The phone rings again. I put my finger in my other ear. It’s the guy from the web forum again, I can’t remember his name for the moment as he’s telling me something about an irate fan who keeps demanding he pass on a message about the end of the world. I give a good laugh – it’s not easy being Zephyr on the phone when I’m not in costume and I’m surrounded by other people – and I tell my little helper not to worry about it and I have a pretty good idea who it is. This is a lie, of course, but I am not about to go sweating the psychiatric foibles of every loser who finds himself at contactzephyr.com.nu(.)
            On the regular televisions I see shaky footage of a guy in a wrestling suit straining like someone with a blocked ass and then he swells and blisters and grows to about the size of a small elephant and goes all red and angry-looking and the words COALFACE appears as the surface of his body blackens and cracks open like the mantle of a volcano and I have to admit to myself, that’s one nasty-looking motherfucker, and that’s why I am glad it appears to be just a TV show. I pick up my purchases and decide to go buzz the perfume section and see about buying an early birthday present for Tessa, marvelling at my uncurtailed freedom and wondering where exactly it is that I am going to sleep once Beth settles on a date for taking back the apartment.

THE PHONE IS ringing while I take a dump and it’s not just my sullen alpha waves that mean I don’t move a muscle, letting it drone on and on and on, my thoughts a thousand miles away and the sky outside filling up with black ink.
            Eventually the phone is quiet. I shower, do my “ablutions,” which is a term I guess writers of Stoker’s era used to avoid describing the messy business I clean off my knuckles with tissue paper the consistency of gauze wrap as I sigh, filled with discontentedness, and then stand at the wide bank of apartment windows gazing across the cityscape as night descends like an inexpertly hung stage curtain, staggering down unevenly but eventually consuming the whole thing in darkness until the audience, uncomfortable in their seats, shift and wonder what purpose this development, how does the staging match the set design in bringing forward the central themes of the piece, assuming an author somewhere, intentionality, a coherent structure, the inevitability of climax and resolution, only to find the circus has moved on and run off with the price of their admission.
            My life, for the moment, lacks all of these details. When I go to dress, half-a-quart of milk gurgling in my stomach and a vague craving for Swedish meatballs unconquered, I realise my costume smells like a homeless man’s trolley. The comparative luxury of my situation affords me a clean outfit and the almost Japanese ritual of the process of costuming myself in leather and turning the old suit inside out and hanging it to air in the wallspace obscures the central fact I now have few reasons to dress like an ordinary person, that without those silently knowing figures so recently extracted from my life I am one hundred per cent superhero on call without much else to show for my existence.
            While I might long for a different kind of normal, the feeling of familiarity and safety brought by my leather encasement is a comfort I might find hard to describe if I had to, if there was anyone else with which to share my thoughts except you, my phantasmal darling. Briefly I think of Cusp, Seeker, Vulcana, Devil Betty, handicam footage of my daughter and Shade turning pirouettes at mach over the Silver Tower. While I admit I am feeling sorry for myself, and it might be the comedown from self-medication making it such a drag, the tomb of the apartment and the desecration of my sacred private life revealed by the bare refrigerator, strewn magazines and empty pizza boxes underlines the reality beneath my funk. I am no has been when I am Zephyr, yet even slumping on the sofa and staring at the disconnected television and I am already moving imperceptibly back toward being that person who, in a parallel life, declined to climb the maddening tower and went on to live a plain, inglorious and altogether unremarkable life. Perhaps I would’ve been happier. Perhaps I could’ve kept Beth, though it’s questionable I could’ve wooed her in the first place without my lightning trick and incredible strength to seduce the girl she so quickly ceased to be upon our graduation. More likely I would’ve met some girl behind the desk of a pharmacy, a library, a video store, raised a brood of weird-looking children and continued on through ignominy to the anonymity of death.
            Oh God.
            In the bathroom I contemplate my face in the mirror, my mask gone. Whatever fate awaited me – presuming the intersection of my life with that lightning bolt was anything other than fated – the very fact of my existence is underwritten by my paternity. Electrical storm or no, whatever else, they tell me I am John Lennon’s son. The Preacher Man. Yet we look nothing alike. Or, almost nothing alike, unless there’s something I’m missing.
           There is an iconic image of Lennon from the Summer Rebellion. I move through the apartment to my computer in the wallspace, many of my things in boxes in preparation for the move. Excel spreadsheets from Sal Doro’s disc about the Azzurro Corporation is open from my half-hearted review of the web of complex company structures and asset holdings that one of Sal’s journo colleagues had inexplicably to hand. It is quickly minimised as I pull up Firefox and perform an image search to get the picture I am after. It’s just a few seconds between this and that and then my alleged father’s face is staring out at me, the Preacher Man bearded and cross-legged in a white linen robe with heavy beads around his neck, floating in the air over the writhing hordes of protesters and London bobbies with Perspex shields and grimaces marring their moustachioed faces. He has one hand raised above him and the word “stop” nascent on his lips. Distracted that moment by a cameraman, perhaps an inherited trait after all, he turns his face sixty degrees towards the viewer and unintentional immortality. Put that in your cosmic peace pipe and smoke it, grandpa.
            I’m eating at my parents’ place tomorrow night. All will be revealed, I suppose.
            I sigh and wish I had a cigarette and my eyes drift down the initial table of thumbnails from the internet search and suddenly I find myself looking at quite a different, but nonetheless familiar face.
            My half-brother, Julian.

Gli occupanti dopo il blitz dei vigilantes all´ex Eutelia: “Ma noi non ci arrendiamo”

di Daniele Autieri

Quando una squadra di quindici uomini, in piena notte, scardina con i piedi di porco i cancelli della sede di Agile (ex Eutelia) sulla Tiburtina, Nando è lì dentro, insieme agli altri. Romano, 55 anni, è uno dei dipendenti del gruppo che da 13 giorni occupano la società per protestare contro i 1.200 licenziamenti annunciati. «Ci hanno presi nel sonno – racconta -. Urlavano, dicevano di essere della polizia. Poi ci hanno chiesto i documenti puntandoci in faccia le torce e minacciandoci».

In realtà, però, i quindici guastatori non appartengono alle forze dell´ordine, ma alla Berani Group, agenzia di sicurezza privata. E non si muovono da soli: a guidarli c´è Samuele Landi, membro di spicco della famiglia proprietaria di Eutelia ed ex ad. La passione di Landi per l´azione la raccontano i suoi dipendenti: soprannominato “Capitan Uncino”, Samuele Landi è presidente e comandante in capo dello Skydive sport center Tortuga di Arezzo, e ha alle spalle 1.900 lanci col paracadute. La sua ultima azione però è finita in questura per l´intervento delle forze dell´ordine, arrivate venti minuti dopo la retata. «Cercavano lo scontro – racconta Nando – ma noi fortunatamente non abbiamo reagito fino all´irruzione della polizia. A quel punto la situazione si è calmata e Landi è stato portato in questura».

I lavoratori sono rimasti lì. Il vero pericolo però non è ancora scampato e si chiama licenziamento. «Se non interviene la presidenza del Consiglio – spiega Alessandra Carnicella, che ha interrotto l´occupazione la notte precedente per tornare dal figlio malato – presto saremo in mezzo alla strada. Anche per questo siamo determinati a continuare la nostra battaglia». Sono 1.200, 284 solo a Roma, i lavoratori che rischiano a breve di essere licenziati. Sono i dipendenti di Agile, società contenitore creata da Eutelia nel maggio scorso e venduta un mese dopo per soli 96mila euro al gruppo Omega (che in un comunicato si definisce «estraneo» alla vicenda).

«Siamo stati acquistati da Omega a giugno – ricorda Nando – e già da luglio hanno smesso di darci lo stipendio; 90 giorni dopo ci hanno annunciato il licenziamento». Una forma di killeraggio industriale che il 55enne romano conosce bene: è infatti uno dei lavoratori di Getronics Italia, la multinazionale con 1.500 dipendenti e 222 milioni di fatturato che Eutelia ha comprato nel 2006, incamerando immobili e una liquidità disponibile di 47 milioni. Costo dell´operazione? Un euro, quanto un caffè.

COMMANDO SULL’A4, 7 ARRESTI

- Sette arresti per l’assalto a un furgone portavalori avvenuto nel giugno del 2008 sulla A4.
Circa 100 poliziotti stanno eseguendo le ordinanze di custodia cautelare emesse dalla Procura di Bergamo, all’altezza del comune di Seriate.

Le indagini della squadra Mobile di Bergamo guidata da Gianpaolo Bonafini hanno permesso di smantellare la pericolosa banda di malviventi operante tra la Lombardia e la Puglia.

I presunti colpevoli sono 7 italiani, tutti pregiudicati.

Il 9 giugno 2008, pochi prima delle 20, il commando aveva rallentato il traffico alle spalle del portavalori fino a bloccarlo.

Le auto vennero incendiate per impedire con un muro di fuoco i soccorsi, mentre altre due macchine, indisturbate, affiancarono il blindato e a colpi di kalashnikov e di pistola costrinsero le guardie giurate ad arrendersi. I rapinatori svaligiarono il portavalore, poi a piedi e in auto si diedero alla fuga.

13/11/2009 Fonte: http://www.tusciaweb.it/notizie/2009/novem…n_commando.htm#

Guardie giurate, la nuova frontiera delle ronde

Il sindaco di Cassina de’ Pecchi il sindaco leghista arruola le guardie giurate per presidiare il territorio. E la Provincia lo finanzia
di Gabriele Cereda

A Cassina de´ Pecchi sbarcano le guardie armate arruolate dal Comune. Altro che ronde, la nuova frontiera della sicurezza fai-da-te arriva dalla giunta guidata da un sindaco leghista. A vegliare sui 12mila abitanti ci penseranno gli uomini della Gpe, un istituto di vigilanza privato. A stanziare la metà dei 18mila euro necessari a garantire il servizio è stata la Provincia. E scoppia la polemica.

La decisione è stata presa nella riunione della giunta provinciale di ieri mattina, su richiesta dell´assessore alla Sicurezza e polizia provinciale Stefano Bolognini. All´assessore, capodelegazione in giunta della Lega, si era rivolto il sindaco della cittadina, il leghista Claudio D´Amico, chiedendo alla Provincia un contributo «anche solo parziale». Che l´idea la riassume senza giri di parole così: «I clandestini, arrivati in grande numero, hanno infarcito la delinquenza locale. Vogliamo sicurezza e questa è la strada più breve per ottenerla». In realtà i numeri della microcriminalità sono nella norma, fanno sapere le forze dell´ordine.

Non è così per D´Amico, che non potendosi permettere di ampliare l´organico della polizia locale è ricorso ai vigilantes. In macchina, di notte, batteranno centro e periferia palmo a palmo. Come prescrive la legge potranno intervenire solo di fronte a un reato. Per il resto, dovranno limitarsi a segnalare «movimenti sospetti». Il servizio durerà fino alla fine dell´anno. Poi bisognerà trovare altri fondi. «In estate abbiamo sperimentato le “ronde” per un mese. I risultati sono stati ottimi. Sono stati sventati almeno quattro furti. Ora speriamo che arrivi anche la collaborazione dei cittadini», dice il sindaco. «Non è questa la strada per rendere la città più vivibile», replicano dall´opposizione di centrosinistra.

Dall´altra parte, la giunta di Cassina insiste nel cavalcare il tema della sicurezza come «un bene da cui non si può prescindere». Il sindaco, per difendere il suo territorio capolinea della linea Verde del metrò, ha anche deciso di aumentare le telecamere di videosorveglianza. E presto tutti gli edifici comunali saranno dotati di antifurti collegati alle centrale operativa delle guardie giurate.

(10 novembre 2009)

Fonte: http://milano.repubblica.it/dettaglio/guar…e-ronde/1775679

(OMNIROMA) Roma, 10 nov – Un gruppo di lavoratori dell’ex Eutelia, circa 20, che avevano occupato per protesta alcuni locali della sede al Tiburtino intorno alle 5 sono stati raggiunti da 10 vigilantes che, dopo aver forzato il cancello, hanno cercato di mandarli via. Sul posto sono intervenuti gli agenti della polizia di stato del commissariato San Basilio. I vigilantes, in divisa, avrebbero raccontato di essere stati chiamati dall’ex amministratore delegato, ascoltato successivamente dalla polizia che sta ricostruendo la vicenda.

I AM READING the Post with some disdain, my back to a girder in the otherwise fully translucent diner, trying to kid myself that I am flicking through the political and world news sections to get to the sports and not Nate Simon’s Tuesday column. The little fuck has been hinting at the breakdown in my friendship with Twilight for two weeks running now, but he hasn’t even tried to call to verify his information. Thanks to Christ he doesn’t know half as much as he could, even if he’s already spilled twice as much as I’d ever want the average Joe Public to know about how Twilight and I came to blows and sent half the city (actually just Rhode Island) into the Abyss. I am not presently accepting calls from the Mayor’s office for fear they might have some crazy idea about reparations.
            Fortunately the Post reporter has a new bag. Sal Doro covers the big fish (like me, normally), which is why I guess Simon is left speculating on the disappearance of some dude who works the south city and calls himself Crusader. Original. While I have barely heard of this guy before, I don’t think the fact some fruit in a costume fails to stop three daytime robberies and a laundry fire justifies a missing person report. If he’s anything like I was when I was starting out, a really bad zit was enough to keep me low for two weeks at a time.
            I flick through this trivia and check the other items. I see Eris has been at her own unique brand of chaos again, hospitalising a guard at the storage vaults attached to the State Museum of the Americas. Hebrew parahuman Allan Silverman has demanded an invite to an upcoming session of the City States Symposium in Atlantic City with predictable results. Mastodon and Cipher have teamed up to smash a Yardie drug den, which begs a far more interesting story given the old man’s pharmaceutical pursuits. An emissary from a parallel earth has apparently left Atlantic City in disgust after being refused entry to the Flyaway. The stock price for most major drug companies took a hit last week following rumours a German sorcerer had eradicated all strains of influenza. Turned out not to be true. Pity. Meanwhile a villain called Dragonmaster, a Brit, I assume, since I’ve never heard of him, has come out of the closet to a men’s mag. One look at the scaled leather costume the guy wears and you’ve got to wonder who was left to gasp in surprise at that particular revelation.
            Oh, and Windsong has been seen flying formations over Staten Island with a British super, the renowned bisexual beauty Shade. The thirty-something bisexual beauty Shade. I make a note to self and grit my teeth and barely look up at the sweet Minnesotan farm girl who delivers my espresso as a pizza delivery guy cutting up the sidewalk outside hits a dude in a suit and his moped goes hissing out-of-control toward a fountain. I snap the newspaper shut and patently ignore the chaos, my hand around the warm mug a pleasure to savour as I fight against the invisible forces that would otherwise suck my mood.
            Surprisingly the gossip pages have absolutely nothing about Seeker’s decision to form a new group of Sentinels. Considering it’s been the talk of the top end of town the whole week past, I find that amazing. Either someone has hushed the city’s reporters, they’re saving it for a special issue, or else Atlantic City’s costumed elite are keeping quiet for one rare moment in their lives, reasons unknown.
            Mickey Rourke enters the diner and I sink lower in my chair. I owe him thirty bucks and last time we got wrecked at Halogen I may have told him I’d pay him back with a hand-job. He’s just crazy enough to want to collect just so he can see me squirm. A disturbing individual.
            I snap the paper again to straighten the crooked columns and my phone, sitting on the table with more papers from my agent and my house keys, lights up and displays Seeker’s name.
            “Speak of the Devil,” I grin in answer somewhat inappropriately.
            “We need to talk.”
            “About the Sentinels?”
            “. . . yes, about the Sentinels. The New Sentinels.”
            I nod and smile to myself. “Where’ve you got that castle parked?”
            The door to the diner swings open and she is standing there with her phone to her ear in that ridiculous Paula Abdul outfit.
            “I brought a ride,” she says. “Come on.”

IT IS WEIRD in the cab, the feeling we’re both thoroughly disguised as we play-act in our secret identities. Seeker’s trying pretty hard to show she’s a street-smart and stylish broad, not at all the arch conservative, borderline religious psycho we’ve sometimes considered her over the years. Great jugs an’ all, but any time the old Sentinels tried to have the least bit of fun, either Seeker would blow up in a tirade reminding us of our higher calling, calling us all juveniles, or else she would go off in a sulk that managed to cast a pall over at least the majority of our worst excesses. Now if someone could explain to me why in the back seat of a yellow cab there’s more sexual tension than my junior high prom, I’d really appreciate it.
            “So, uh, it’s Loren, right?”
            “It seems like a million years ago, but yeah,” she replies.
            “You’re from . . . Atlantic City?”
            “Is anyone?”
            She gives a breathtaking laugh filled with only half the confidence she’s trying to project. I glare at the cabbie through the rear view mirror and make sure he’s got his eyes on the road.
            “My folks were from Willagee, Nebraska. Pa brought us to Atlantic City right after the Kirlians. He was a builder. Made his money in the upgrade.”
            “And so it’s here where you . . . ?”
            Seeker wrinkles her nose, acknowledging we don’t have the best privacy by giving just a curt nod. Adorable. Fucking hell. I nod to myself and stare out the window and am kinda surprised when she keeps talking.
            “I was fourteen,” she says. “The visions came first. Apocalypse. Death from Space. All very sci-fi. I woke up one night re-enacting that scene from Ghostbusters, you know, floating above the bed covers? Our family priest knew a pastor who knew a rabbi who knew a cardinal. I’m sure you can follow what I mean.”
            “And from there?”
            “Well, to cut a long story short: the Wallachian Brotherhood.”
            “The guys in the castle?” I ask.
            “Yes.”
            “The brotherhood.”
            “Oh, there’s women too. I never asked about that. . . .”
            “And they are, exactly. . . ?”
            “A fifteen-hundred-year-old secret society dedicated to keeping the doors closed between our world and the next,” Seeker says in a relaxed voice that does nothing to detract from her measured and careful pronunciation.
            “Okay. So they hunt monsters and stuff who sneak through?”
            “In the early days, that’s how it began,” she says. “It got complicated once they perfected their own technology on a parallel earth.”
            “And these are the guys who are offering to sponsor the New Sentinels a base?” I ask slowly.
            “Well we’ll need one.”
            “I thought Devil Betty. . . ?”
            “I don’t know, Joseph. As I said to you before, I’m not that comfortable with the, uh, demonic overtones of that name.”
            “So a kid makes a bad wish on a shooting star after listening to too many Marilyn Manson albums.” I shrug. “To paraphrase something I heard recently, just because she used to worship the Devil doesn’t necessarily make her a bad person.”
            “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Seeker replies.
            “Okay.”
            I stare out the window with the patented gaze of one of those small pampered lap dogs rich women like to take with them on trips across town. Through the glass of the taxi window the downtown area flicks past at a haphazard pace. Finally we get stalled in traffic again down near the harbour and for some reason I start chuckling about a joke in an email I got from Nautilus a couple of days back.
            “What’s so funny?” Seeker asks.
            “It’s nothing.”
            “Hmmm. By the way,” she says, “I meant to ask you, have you heard from Darkstorm in the past few days? I can’t get him to answer his cell.”
            “Hmmm no,” I reply. “Years ago he used to have this message drop at a laundry in Chi-town. That place secretly run by goblins or elves or whatever the hell it was. You want to stop by there?”
            “No,” Seeker replies. She stares out the window now, just in time to catch a homeless man introducing two tourists to his dancing chicken act. Loren’s pretty eyes flinch at the sight, making me wonder just how innocent can the girl be given some of the things we’ve seen in this life.
            “I’m sure he’ll turn up in the end,” she says, distracted.
            “How’s Vulcana doing, by the way?”
            The brightness re-enters Seeker’s eyes.
            “Better every day. This is one of the benefits of the Wallachian Fortress I want to talk about with you, Joseph. The Brotherhood’s clerics will have her fighting fit in no time at all.”
            “I wonder how Connie feels about that?”
            “Why in Heaven would you say that?” Seeker frowns. “Her arm was off. I’m sure she’s thrilled to get back to how she was.”
            I nod, inner turmoil defused as the frantically eavesdropping cabbie drives us to the rendezvous with the disappearing castle.
            It only takes Loren a moment to mindwipe the driver once we’ve parked, and since I’m a little short of change, I offer to pay and catch her up, leaving the disoriented cabbie parked in a tow zone as I scamper to eventually follow the hot brunette in the high-heeled boots disappearing into thin air outside the boarded up walls of the construction site.

So why do superheroes have secret identities?

Because no good deed goes unpunished.

You’d think, that in this time of deep recession, social strife, and political infighting leaving the American people largely bereft of inspiration and leadership, that those brave few willing to stand up to the worst elements of our society would be recognized as such as rewarded for their efforts, right?

Like Jim Nicholson, the Seattle bank teller who, at the end of July of this year, responded to a bank robber by lunging at him, demanding the robber produce a weapon if he had one, and then chasing the unarmed would-be robber out of the bank and restraining him until police arrived.  He helped apprehend a bank robber who could have committed more crimes had he not been stopped, and saved the money of hard-working bank customers, right?*  Of course he did, and as it turned out, the vagrant robber had a long history of theft and burglary charges; he could have used the ill-gotten loot to buy himself a gun and become really dangerous!

As a reward for his heroism, Nicholson received the coveted You Don’t Work Here Anymore Pink Slip Award.

Key Bank declined to comment on the firing.  However, Seattle police and an FBI special agent agreed that the proper course would have been to simply give the robber what he wanted and be a “good witness.”   That’s the safe way to do it, and that, as I understand, is the bank’s policy as well.  But did Nicholson deserve to lose his job for standing up to a robber?

Before you answer that, let’s look at the case of Josh Rutner, an Ocala (Florida) “loss prevention officer” (or “asset protection officer;” the article call him both titles and, really, they both mean “dude what stops shit from gettin’ stole”) at the local Wal-Mart.  Since it’s his job to stop unpaid-for merchandise from leaving the store, he says (and I agree) that he was “just doing his job” when he restrained a shoplifter.  But then things got serious: the shoplifter pulled a knife, slashed at Rutner’s face, and ran away.

Now, most of us would have our self-preservation instincts kick in at this point, and we’d just let the guy run his happy ass away and become someone else’s problem.  Not Josh Rutner.  Josh Rutner gave chase, thinking, as he says, that the man was a danger to the public and the city that needed to be stopped right then and there.  With the aid of a customer, Rutner apprehended and restrained the shoplifter until the police arrived.

The next day, Rutner was fired.  In addition, the customer was banned from ever shopping at any Wal-Mart in the US ever again.  Okay, I’m kidding about the second part.  But seriously, Rutner did get his ass canned the very next day.

The same reasons were given as Mr. Nicholson above:  it’s not policy to give chase or interfere.  Despite Rutner’s job specifically being preventing losses, his attempts to do that very thing got him fired. . .because he gave chase to an armed suspect, which store policy prohibits.  Never mind that he kept an armed person with no fear of, and a demonstrated armed resistance to, law enforcement from reaching the streets and maybe harming someone else somewhere else.  If this had been a comic book, he wouldn’t have stopped the guy; instead, he would have let the guy go and the guy would later kill Rutner’s kindly old Uncle Ben, resulting in Rutner becoming the hero known as the Amazing Rutner-Man.  I should really stop writing these when I’m sleepy.

So why do superheroes have secret identities?

Because no good deed goes unpunished.

Clark Kent wants to keep his job.  Bruce Wayne, God rest his soul, didn’t want to get kicked out of the Wayne Foundation by cowardly, superstitious shareholders.  Peter Parker wants to keep taking pictures for a living (or keep teaching science, whatever the hell he’s doing nowadays).  I could go on, but really, the majority of you wouldn’t know who I was talking about anyway, so I’ll put my geekiness away now.

Point is, in a society in which criminals do not fear the law and depend on no one else standing up to them, we’ve put in place “policies” and “corporate rules” to make sure that no one does.

Maybe criminals, like politicians, need to remember to fear the people. . .

VS – 11.8.09

P.S.  I am not by any means saying that I want people to go out and become vigilantes, or take stupid chances fighting off criminals.  I am saying that those of us who do stand up to crooks of all collar colours should be rewarded, not punished.  So if you become Captain Long-johns and go fight crime in Hoboken, whatever happens to you is totally not my fault.

ROMA: UBRIACO PICCHIA VIGILANTES METRO, ARRESTATO DAI CARABINIERI

Roma, 1 nov. – (Adnkronos) – I carabinieri del Nucleo Radiomobile di Roma sono intervenuti ieri sera nella stazione della metropolitana Spagna dove hanno arrestato uno studente spagnolo di 23 anni per lesioni e violenza a pubblico ufficiale. Il giovane, in evidente stato di ebbrezza alcolica, ha aggredito con calci e pugni una guardia particolare giurata che era in servizio nella stazione.

I militari hanno faticato non poco per immobilizzare il 23enne che dopo una breve colluttazione e’ stato ammanettato. Per il vigilantes e’ stato necessario il trasporto all’ospedale Santo Spirito dove gli sono state diagnosticate lesioni alla testa e agli arti guaribili in 15 giorni. Lo spagnolo, trattenuto in caserma, e’ in attesa di essere giudicato con il rito direttissimo.

Fonte: http://www.libero-news.it/adnkronos/view/215106

IT TAKES MASTODON a second or so to realise we really are going to have a rumble. Then he does his foot-stamping trick and if things were quieter you’d hear the leather straps of his chest harness strain with the stretch as he swells from just over six foot to a little over nine. Now his shoulders are the size of Christmas hams and his mutton chops loom about the size of small cats duct-taped to the side of his grinning, leering face.
            “Alright Zephyr, this is more like it.”
            “Take it easy, old man,” I say as I hurtle across the chamber. “Don’t break anything.”
            By that I mean anything of his own, of course. I’m quite happy for him to hand these guys their heads and we’ll just bury the corpses wherever the Wallachians suggest. Across the room I see Ash dragging himself away from the mound of disgustingness he has helped create, while the chick with the whip and the chick with the sword seem intent on looking scenic rather than helpful.
            I crash into the space previously occupied by Captain Jackass. In my wake another portal opens overhead and I should’ve seen this one coming, knowing this motherfucker plans ahead for all these sorts of things as metal shopping cart after metal shopping cart suddenly start plunging toward me and into the room. There’s something awkwardly painful about being hit by raining metal trolleys that I think the madman understands only too well. Even for me, as the first one rebounds from my forearms, head and knee simultaneously, it’s more than just my ego taking a battering.
            Pouring on a bit of super-speed, I manage to get out from beneath the metal rain, but Seeker and the Don aren’t so lucky. It’s only that I manage to wing Jackass with another lightning bolt that the portal sucks closed and the damned things stop coming. Moments later on the other side of the room there’s another sizzling noise and, through a hole no bigger than my fist, a shower of golf balls pour into the room. Ash and Madame Lash – there’s a good rhyming couple for you – go down on their arses and its only by the grace of her rubber-band teleporting trick that Samurai Girl gets to bitch-slap Jackass and force the latest wormhole closed as well.
            “Nice moves!” I yell. “Now watch your back.”
            The dude calling himself The Drill flies straight for Seeker, but there’s nothing I can do for her right now as the one with the kneepads starts unhooking goodies from his belt-pack and tossing them at me in the centre of the room. The first one is little more than a firecracker and then the next thing I know there’s tear gas flooding across the scene and I have to cover my nose and mouth with my hand and squint to get a good sense of his location. Perhaps Prankster has superhuman powers of regeneration to back up his gimmicks. If not, he may have a problem eating with anything other than a straw or perhaps a wet nurse after my tightly-clenched left connects with the side of his jaw and introduces him to the hard stone floor.
            Madame Lash does something lame with her whip. I suspect she’s trying to create a vortex to disperse the gas, which is a sweet idea except for Murderboy leaping from one wall to another and finally landing on her back and sinking his teeth into the side of her neck. To her credit, powers or none, the lady freaks out just fine enough to fling the weird-ass villain over her shoulder in a practised judo move. Just as emo-boi rights himself, she does a reverse spinning kick that sends him across the room and into the aforementioned pile of shopping trolleys.
            I am distracted by a right cross to my jaw. Spinning about, I can’t see anyone, and then fingers tap me on the shoulder and, like a total cad, I flip about and yet another punch snaps across my jaw. Their saving grace is there’s no superhuman strength in the blows. Across the chamber I see the so-called  captain give a little wave and then, through one of his teleport discs, his foot comes through and tries to get me in the jewels. No dice. I grab the good captain’s ankle and channel more than a handful of volts back through the portal. If he hasn’t fouled himself, I’d be surprised. The hole in space collapses taking his errant limbs with it.
            Time to get things moving.
            Through the tear-gas haze, Ash appears like a homeless man to grab The Drill either side of his helmet. The bad guy has put a few holes in Seeker’s shoulder and she’s laying on the floor looking uncharacteristically limp. It doesn’t matter. Ash is pissed. His fully unleashed power is lethal. The Drill’s head disintegrates into a hissing pile of white-hot dust and the helmet kind of falls apart as the silica of the dead bad guy’s skull and tissue pour from the front vent like sand from a broken hourglass. The still very rubbery and real headless body plops onto the floor next to Seeker, who screams shrilly, thereby drawing almost every eye in the room to the scene.
            Mastodon has been maced by Prankster. Samurai Girl has lines of drool hanging from her chin, two canisters of tear gas still gushing nearby. Madame Lash has lost her whip. She has a black eye and is bleeding heavily from a neck bite and another to one of her breasts, which has slipped free from her heavy corset. I direct a quick zap toward her assailant and the hair-dyed freak cartwheels away with the sort of noise I’d expect a cat to make.
            “Time to finish up, Don!” I yell with my eyes streaming, half-squeezed shut.
            I almost stumble over The Drill’s corpse, shield Seeker with my body as Prankster and then Jackass circle. I’m trying to do the maths and it won’t add up and that’s when I belatedly realise we’re missing someone.
            “Okay, where’s the other fucker?”
            If you thought Murderboy was creepy, it’s Kid Kaos who is the real psycho case on their team: Captain Jackass’s pet serial killer, which he keeps on a close emotional leash – except when he lets the leash go pretty long. And when he does, that’s trouble, because the Kid is a natural assassin. He can ghost as well as turn see-through, so you never know where he’s gonna appear.
            This time he wobbles back into view directly behind Ash, who is standing there in the white bodystocking I know his mum probably sewed for him, palms clawed and radiating their own dangerous vibe. Only he doesn’t have a clue about the danger immediately to his rear and the Don and I barely open our mouths before Kid Kaos slots into place, his turn to grab Ash by the skull and twist.
            Somehow amid his descent to the hard stones, Ash’s rolling eyes swivel around until they find mine; and they stay locked on me as Kid Kaos ghosts the young hero’s head into the stone floor and leaves it there, buried, fused, the corpse’s back painfully arched, arms splayed. And I swear, a hot white rage is building up inside me, but it’s tempered by a tiredness too, that everything has to end like this and that it’s not just Captain Jackass and his crew who have no respect for how things should be, but that it’s life itself that doesn’t respect the conventions of our particular genre. Ash was a nineteen-year-old hero just starting out in the world. He’d moved here from Detroit because he never had anything to do. Now he’s just a hundred-and-eighty pounds of pre-packaged meat going to spoil, or more likely wind up alongside the guy he killed in some nameless Wallachian garbage dump or swamp or unholy fucking backwater. I’m tired with the idea of payback, but until something better comes along, that’s the only option I have.

SO WE TEAR into them. Kid Kaos fades from view before I can blow a few thousand volts through his chest. Murderboy runs up one wall and vaults, something sticky about his hands as he crosses the ceiling like a monkey and comes down on Mastodon, who promptly throws him halfway across the room.
            Prankster pulls another weird-looking gun and fires at me and a net flops out, heavy little balls on the edges as it goes over. I put a scorch mark in the middle of his chest and he goes backward, adding to his bruise collection for today, but in the moment I struggle with the net, Jackass throws up one of his discs over my head and dusty red recycled house bricks suddenly pour down in their hundreds. Between the bricks and the dust I go down for a moment.
            I am relieved to see Samurai Girl run at just under mach around the room. She swings with practised swipes and cuts Murderboy and Jackass and bounds out of the way as Kid Kaos rematerialises. If I weren’t so angry I’d be amused by the sight of the hockey-masked freak picking up a pair of bricks and disappearing with them again. It’s not so funny when he materialises near Mastodon, phases the brick invisible and leaves it lodged in the big guy’s stomach. The Don twitches and drops as his system goes into shock and it’s really only blind luck that my own short circuit hits the fading assassin before he’s gone completely. Mask and all, Kid Kaos slides about ten feet and remains curled with a smoky residue overhead.
            I’m on hyper alert. When a teleport disc appears beside me, I throw myself into it and out the other end, grappling suddenly with the team leader before Jackass headbutts me with the helmet and I feel my nose break, no big deal, the blood running down my face unnerving as I blindly grasp his scarred, malignant face and start to squeeze. At the same time I hammer short right jabs into his ribs, feeling them break, and somewhere amid all that the laughter goes out of him and he begins to freak, thrashing wildly, screaming, clawing at my grimace as I ram my knee into his crotch and then make the mistake of hurling him bodily across the room.
            He bounces across the stone and comes up with his face bleeding almost as bad as the sword-wound to his side. Captain Jackass spits blood and shakes his head, face a mask of fury.
            “You can have this one, Zeph. Next time you won’t be so lucky. I’ll make sure of it.”
            I am left to ponder any hidden meanings in this as he throws teleport discs underneath his mates, including the unconscious ones, and they disappear in short notice from view.
            I wipe leather across my bleeding face without much satisfaction as Samurai Girl tends to Seeker’s pierced shoulder. Madame Lash isn’t going anywhere and that’s even more terribly true for Ash. Mastodon drops to his knees as well and gives me a nod with his grave face.
            “Could do with a few more hit points there, boss,” he says.
            I can only nod. “At least this time the little bastard didn’t dump me in the Himalayas when he was finished,” I try and grin and fail.
            The silent cowled figures of the Wallachian monks appear through a distant doorway bearing the now familiar sight of a floating stretcher. I hold up my hands for two more.
            “Not so crash hot, huh Zephyr?” Seeker says in a pained voice.
            “I guess we weren’t really geared up for that,” I say. “Any idea how the hell they found us here?”
            “I’ll have to ask the priests in charge of the cloaking device,” Seeker replies. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
            I motion to the dead kid. “Tell it to him.”
            “The Wallachians, you know. . . .”
            “Keep your fucking priests off him,” I say more harshly than I intend, but the vision in my mind’s eye is compelling and probably not completely inaccurate. “It could’ve been a worse death.”
            “Ash might have something different to say to that,” she says.
            “I’m not about to find out. Leave it be.”
            We exchange knowing looks, hers doe-like, mine taciturn, and Madame Lash gets up in the middle of our exchange and grabs her rig and staggers for the door like a drunk hooker in search of a payphone.
            I harrumph. “I’d better see the lady out.”
            And that’s that.

THE CHANGE IS coming to Atlantic City, and at last those of us who spend our times in costumes and masks posing for the cameras and occasionally getting our heads kicked in before them can relax, knowing at least now, as the first snow comes, it is not because the harbinger of some alien god is preparing to walk onto the set and begin throwing cars and buildings around with gay abandon. It’s simply getting cold. Winter is yet to arrive, but here in the northernmost quadrants of the city that buried the ghosts of old New York, that first touch of frost seems to be coming earlier and earlier each year no matter what the boffins say about global warming. You can see and feel it on the streets. The cops spend more time blowing on their coffees than tackling the crime rate, the hookers have taken to wearing coats and the homeless people are drawing even less attention from the upwardly mobile than usual as the weather soaks into their weary metabolisms and those at the fatal ends of the population curve simply don’t move any more as the snow starts stacking up around them, the result being an unexpected burial with Miracle On 41^st Street trappings.
            It’s not all doom and gloom and hell we’ve really only had one day where the city called out the snow sweepers. The kids are still filling (new) Central Park without enough to toboggan, it’s never too cold for an ice-cold Coke – they’re considering me for a new ad campaign so I am practising my smile a lot and trying to look carefree – and the cold weather also means less street battles as a few of the more sensible bad guys decide to holiday somewhere warm and return to conquering the world when the weather improves.
            Being a child of this weird megalopolis I love it all, and it’s only the fact that cold weather means the inevitability of Christmas that some of the shine comes off my enthusiasm.
            It’s not like I have a lot to cheer about. For some godforsaken reason I am yet to quit my apartment and hand it over to my seemingly forever angry and increasingly estranged wife and our darling progeny, the superhuman prodigy you’d know best as Windsong. Beth has full custody, having threatened to gang up with her lawyer pals and cut off visiting rights altogether unless I agreed. She’s shitting in her LeCroix of Paris stockings that any time we spend together, Tessa and I are going to play dress ups and plan her future crime-fighting career. Funny that I was married to this woman for seventeen years and she can’t understand I don’t want our daughter dragged into this crazy life any more than she does.
            The bigger problem remains Tessa. I guess saving the city from Ras Algethi on her first outing has somewhat gone to her head. Sure we hardly talk about anything else on our walks, coffees at Gonzo’s, lunches at Ribaldi or Piccolo or that theme sandwich bar in SBSCC Tower where the waiters dress as mime artists and beatniks. God forbid we should discuss why her loving parents of fifteen years are seeking divorce. However I’m really only just learning now how filled with this costumed, larger-than-life world my little girl’s head is – she who, among so much of the world, I thought I knew so well.
            The diehard fans have discerned and may well even be pleased to know I have embarked on a minor costume redesign. The identical leather ensembles do little to change the previous version except my insignia is no longer red but gold. My publicist’s idea. I hear more from the disgruntled guy who maintains my online forum than the public relations queers I have allowed to siphon off ten per cent of my income, even from the marketing deals I made before I hired them (unlike Miss O’Hagan, I was fully aware just how little I was drawing in). Nonetheless when the Enercom phone flashes, or buzzes I should say, if it’s Hallory O’Hagan I always pick up. What the hell. Technically I am single again and its my inner Irishman craving a redhead.

SEEKER’S INVISIBLE FORTRESS has the crazy acoustics like you’d expect from any thousand-year-old castle. The frustration in my voice bounces vibrantly off the walls, coming back to us just in time to blend with the sound of my boredom as I throw down the clipboard with doodle marks all over the page, my micro tantrum getting pretty much no-one’s attention as Seeker and Mastodon stand in the enormous, austere chamber power-tripping on the three flunkies before them.
            “Try-outs have barely started and we’re already down to these nobodies?” I say more loudly this time.
            If at first you don’t succeed and all of that.
            Mastodon turns and gives me his best badass scowl, but I know he’s just playing school captain because he thinks he might get into Seeker’s pants with his responsible older superhero act. He didn’t spend three years on the same team with her as I did. No-one’s going there. The frigging Pope’s not getting any pussy from Seeker. Well you know, of course he’s not, but you know what I mean. If anyone was going to score with our perfect preacher and resident Cheerleader for Christ, maybe he’d be the guy to do it. Or maybe not. Hell, this is a lifelong habit of mine, speaking with no real good idea of what I’m gonna say next.
            The new kids on the block are Ash, a white kid in a kimono called Samurai Girl and, believe it or not, a dominatrix who speaks in the third person named Madame Lash. I’m not sure she’s got the whole ‘hero’ thing down yet. I could tell from the moment she walked into the room that Mastodon wanted her on the team. Only thing we haven’t told Mastodon yet is that we’re only offering him a Reserve position. It’s not the age. It’s more that Seeker’s not too comfortable with the old boy’s pharmaceutical interests and the faceless Wallachian monks who prowl the corridors down here stop and flatten themselves against the walls when Mastodon goes past. Perhaps its just those fucking horn things jutting out from his collar, but I doubt it.
            As my last outburst resounds from the walls, the teenager with the Asian sword suddenly appears in my face – a good trick, since I can still see her across the room out of the corner of my eye – and waggles her finger before slapping me and disappearing again.
            “What the –?”
            “Show some respect, mister,” she says.
            “How about you earn some?”
            “Easy, people,” Mastodon adds in the folksy tone he has assumed for the evening.
            “Hey, ‘Don, give me a frigging break here,” I start to say only to get cut abruptly by a hand signal from my offsider and nominal co-captain Seeker.
            “Everyone please try and remain calm,” Seeker says. “Zephyr, I know you’re impatient to finalise the roster, but please. We have a lot of people interested in the new team and I want to give everyone who applies the courtesy of a real try-out.”
            “Madame Lash thanks you, Seeker,” Madame Lash says and scowls at me.
            “Hey lady,” I add, ignoring Seeker’s ongoing implications. “I’ve never even heard of you before, so don’t go giving me all that ‘tude, okay?”
            “Jesus, you are like twice the arsehole Madame Lash has heard,” the corset queen replies.
            “Heh heh, sounds like she’s got you pegged, Zeph.”
            “No seriously, ‘Don,” I say. “Don’t you think we’re going to have a little problem with a bondage fetish on the team? And in this place, don’t you think that’s a bit bizarre?”
            “You’re in all that leather and you’re sayin’ I have a fetish? Madame Lash finds that rich.”
            “Zephyr,” Seeker warns.
            “Jeez guys, can’t we all chill?” the bald guy Ash says. His face is a mask of warring emotions. “I was really pumped about these auditions, but now I’m not so sure. Shit.” He sounds like he’s gonna cry.
            “Okay, okay,” I say and put up my hands and a little of the heat goes out of the room, but even though I am grinning I feel like a total ass because there’s no way I am letting this one go, even if the others think I’ve suddenly learnt a little diplomacy. “Just tell me what your powers are, Lash baby, and I’ll relax.”
            “Powers?” she says and blinks.
            “Yeah,” I reply. “We all see the whip and that’s awesome. Ditto the cleavage. Very nice. But what can you do?”
            The others look like they want to voice a protest – Seeker looks like she wants to boil me alive – except for the fact it’s a pretty good question and Madame Lash is a bit slow to answer.
            “We already had to kick Madrigal out of here, so, like, you know, we need to know who you are and what you do, since you don’t have a reputation of your own to trade in,” I say slowly, a wiseguy despite trying to be even-handed. “How else are we gonna know you’re not some plant, you know, a Cheese agent or something?”
            “Cheese agent?” Samurai Girl frowns.
            “K.A.A.S., you know, the uh European um, death to parahumans mob?” Mastodon shrugs.
            “Kaas is Dutch for cheese,” I take my turn to say. “It’s an old joke.”
            “I’ll have to remember that.”
            Eyes swivel back to Madame Lash looking increasingly infuriated.
            “If you’re not interested in the power of my lash, then perhaps Madame Lash should take it elsewhere,” she cries and pulls the handle of the whip from her belt and unrolls the sucker and gives it a whopping great crack. Mastodon flinches and grins.
            That’s my cue for another one-liner, but instead, the air above our heads sizzles with a faintly familiar noise and then a handful of costumed figures sporting enormous grins start dropping through. I recognise the leader of the cohort almost straight away, as well as the figure beside him, and I’m on my feet quicker’n you could shit.
            “Well well,” I say loud enough to make sure my colleagues hear clearly. “If it isn’t Captain Jackass. It’s been a long time, pal. I see you brought your boyfriend.” I gesture to the crouched figure in the black bodystocking, a hockey mask on his face: Kid Kaos. “Got some new friends too though, huh?”
            “Just like you, Zephyr,” the madman says and giggles and steps forward, only the jaw of his scarred face visible beneath the spray-painted gridiron helmet he wears. “We heard you was havin’ a party. Can’t do that without inviting the Kaos Krew, Mister Zephyr! You know what I always say: you bring the babes, I’ll bring the raging boners!”
            As if on cue Jackass’s allies scatter at his gesture as another one of his portals opens up over the young trio in the middle of the room and through the hole in space-time pour a few hundred pounds of decomposing crap including bones and a decaying treacle that may or may not be dog food. Ash immediately drops to his hands and knees and starts puking, while Samurai Girl uses super-speed to evade and Madame Lash just gets the fuck out of the way like any sensible person would.
            Jackass is one of the guys who gives the supers world a bad name. With no real agenda except proving himself above the law and out for his own brand of retarded laughs, the self-styled captain exists just to piss into the wind for heroes everywhere. He adamantly refuses to play ball with some of the standard expectations of the genre, including clear distinctions between good guys and bad. He doesn’t want to take over the world – just make the rest of us look like arseholes.
            I open up with an electrical attack, but the captain teleports out of the way and the charge hits his long-time accomplice instead. Kid Kaos kicks out wildly and lands on his back twitching like a frog in a biology experiment.
            Jackass pops up from another black energy disc just inches behind Seeker, leaning his diseased chin on her shoulder and tilting his head playfully.
            “Silly me,” he yodels. “I’ve introduced myself, but not my friends.”
            He sinks back through the portal before Seeker can properly turn and nail him, and moments later the caped fuckwit reappears on the far side of the room, his companions around him.
            “Guys,” he says, “meet Zephyr and his little team. We’re inviting ourselves over to play, but I’m sure they won’t mind. They look like sports. And Zephyr, these are my new recruits: Murderboy.”
            A preppy-looking but nonetheless Emo kid runs fingerless-gloved fingers through his dyed black comb-over and turns abruptly, striking a deliberate mock model’s pose.
            “Prankster.”
            Stockier than any of the others, this guy wears a kevlar vest and heavy skate armour. A slim backpack that may or may not be a parachute and an ordinance belt with a variety of grenades and canisters jingles musically at his deliberately bad dance moves.
            “And The Drill.”
            The fifth member of the team also wears a helmet, though its like the one Red Monolith wore, complete with a tinted face visor. He pulls a pair of power drills from holsters at his sides and crosses them over his chest in a clear imitation of the skull and crossbones. The bastard then levitates into the air, head touching the ceiling some forty feet up just to show us he’s got powers in his own right.
            “Well gosh, Captain,” I say and do my own fake chuckle. “Shame you didn’t let us know you were coming. Now we’re just gonna have to kick your ass!”
            I give a roar and blaze with energy that throws the room into an electric blue focus as I launch from the floor and power straight towards my grinning nemesis.
            Sure I know that wasn’t the wittiest line in history, but this is no comic book. I hate this guy, hate everything he has ever done and hate nothing so much as the total disdain he has for how we do things here on my patch – and by that I mean the whole of Atlantic City. So once again, it’s my turn to hand this guy his asshole and show him how to wear it as a hat.
            I figure it’ll be a good training exercise for the kids.

Guardia giurata Litiga col fratello, gli spara in fronte e lo uccide

Una guardia giurata litiga con il fratello e, dopo aver estratto la pistola che normalmente usa per lavoro, gli spara in faccia e lo uccide. In fronte. Un solo colpo. Preciso e tragicamente fatale. Il fatto ieri sera al settimo piano di un appartamento di via Lope de Vega, una traversa di viale Famagosta. Sono da poco passate le 20.30 quando al 118 arriva una telefonata disperata. «Correte, ho sparato a mio fratello». L’ambulanza arriva sul posto e trasporta velocemente l’uomo, le cui condizioni appaiono subito disperate, all’Humanitas. Dove però, nonostante tutti i tentativi, muore poco dopo. Trentasette anni, nessun precedente penale. Come nessun precedente penale risulta a carico del fratello, il vigilante immediatamente portato dalla polizia in questura per il fermo e i primi interrogatori. I due erano in casa da soli e l’arma del delitto è una calibro 7,65. Ancora ignote le cause del terribile gesto.

26/10 2009 Fonte: http://www.ilgiornale.it/milano/guardia_gi…ge=0-comments=1

Sparatoria a Grugliasco forse un rapinatore è ferito

Una guardia giurata lo avrebbe visto fuggire barcollante

TORINO
È probabile che uno dei rapinatori sia rimasto ferito nella sparatoria avvenuta oggi pomeriggio nell’area del Centro Agroalimentare di Grugliasco. Ad averlo visto fuggire barcollante assieme ai complici è la guardia giurata Gianluca Gallicchio, 31 anni, che è stato aggredito al momento della tentata rapina.

Secondo una prima ricostruzione dei fatti, i rapinatori erano tre: due a bordo di un furgone Fiat Scudo, uno su una utilitaria. La guardia giurata si trovava su una Fiat Punto quando uno dei malviventi, con il volto travisato da una maschera di lattice, si è avvicinato puntandogli una pistola. Esperto in arti marziali, Gallicchio lo ha disarmato, ma a quel punto un complice ha iniziato a sparare ad altezza d’uomo. Ne è seguito un conflitto a fuoco (pare sia stata sparata in tutto una decina di colpi) terminato con la fuga, in direzione Torino, dei tre rapinatori. È confermato dagli investigatori che avessero come obiettivo la filiale della banca SanPaolo-Imi. Il Fiat Scudo è già stato trovato abbandonato in Grugliasco.

Fonte: http://www3.lastampa.it/torino/sezioni/cro…olo/lstp/77981/

IT IS NOVEMBER 6^th, 1971. The footage is drab, so unlike the era, the shifting, turbulent crowds, the thrashing of the desperate as they choke London’s streets and their faces are a riot of the worst emotions. Anything you might care to name – horror, terror, fear, grief, anger – is stamped indelibly in the grain of the historical recording. Yet watching it, all I can think is, fuck, that’s my dad, that’s my dad and watch on in disbelief as the cavalry arrives in a psychedelic wash of lights that break like soap bubbles over the crowd.
            The four of them appear in a wave, Starkey in those terrible elastic pants he had to wear, all of them in their matching blue marching band jackets, the closest thing they ever had to a uniform since they grew out their awful fucking 60s hair, a long way from the leather-jacketed young hoods they had first been. In seconds the Wolfman transforms, hirsute top half practically hanging out of his sleeves and the open top, a feral grin on his face as he leaps from the tableau before St George has even lowered his arms from the teleport that brought them from their secret base on the Isle of White.
            Within a year, Ringo will be dead, but that doesn’t trouble him obviously as he powers through the crowd on all fours, people throwing themselves like the Red Sea out of his loping path. There had been a terrible mood in Britain that winter with the miners’ strikes and the government’s debt default and the renewed IRA bombings and the Manchester rail disaster and, like meat left in the sun, the public rage stayed cold and hard all winter and then boiled over once the warm weather arrived and the Beatles, along with the other loose change of British superdom found themselves at the front again, advocating violent social change as if by accident. And the Summer Rebellion was born, an inevitable expression of the twisted logic of metahumanity which, if not destroying them, would at least ruin any hope for the way things could’ve been.
            In the footage you can hardly see my dad’s face for the radiant smile and those stupid little glasses he wore. I can’t see that I really look anything like him. He lifts his hand to the cheering crowd as Paul shoulders past with what seems to be a look of unrestrained menace. George already has the moustache he wears today, whenever that was the last time I saw him on the news, anyway, and he and John lift from the ground and float towards where the wall of British policemen in their Saturday morning cartoon helmets are being slaughtered.
            No one seems to even remember the Spiders from Mars – Bowie’s term, if I recall. And even fewer remember what they were called until Bowie’s song came along. All anyone knew was these dark evil fuckers from outer space had been hatching inside members of Parliament for a lot longer than anyone would care to admit and it wasn’t until the Preacher, my dad, stumbled across their alien thought-waves that their conspiracy came unstuck. How much of the country’s woes at that time were down to their influence, no one could really tell. And even after the events of November 6, the people weren’t in much of a forgiving mood. The fact the ruling elite could even be vulnerable to such a threat inspired the fury of the common people, like their masters’ weakness was just a new form of an ages old betrayal.
            Ironically the news crews couldn’t get close to the action. The crowds and the retreating police, hopelessly under-armed to face such threats, carrying their dead and injured like from a terrorist attack and crying and moaning and bleeding and stoppering their wounds with little more than their handkerchiefs, they all blocked the path to the burning street where the Spiders were finally routed. There is little to see of the well-upholstered members of parliament with their heads burst open directing desperate and powerful attacks. There are white balance-destroying flashes of red as McCartney unleashes his eyebeams and another bang, the crowd reacting like a single flinching organism as a car explodes, but otherwise the cameraman’s testimony blurs softly in and out as he plays at the far extremes of his focal range.
            If you sit through the whole thing, eventually there’s this enormous ragged cheer and an hour later, a victorious procession as the four of them are carried on the crowd’s shoulders under the shadow of Big Ben, huge grins on their comfortably adored faces. I don’t have the patience for that sort of thing and my back is aching from sitting hunched at the computer and I switch off Youtube to spare my download limit and call up the web archive instead with the grainy Leibovitz photos from autumn 1972 – their last photo shoot as a powers team, taken for Rolling Stone.
            Outside the panorama windows, the city is quiet. I call it that even when I can hear the odd car horn, a distant siren, a drunk guy retching his heart out in the alley down the side. This is as close as the city ever comes to being at peace, four o’clock in the morning and the weather turning cold and sunrise still effectively a long way off and me without a cold woman to warm my bed or a child to do the same for my heart. Instead it is just me and Wikipedia as my hand trawls over the mouse sensor and the facts flick by.
            He wrote two books: one just before they went to India and one in ‘74, after the Wolfman died. And he fathered one child the world knew about. I guess I should call him my half-brother, Julian, but I can’t help wondering how many more half-brothers I have out there.
            It is a while before I realise I have closed my eyes, unconsciously asleep. That’s the mixed curse of total freedom in the postmodern. In track pants and a Starbucks tee, I stumble as far as the settee and let the darkness wash over me.
In the early premonitions of my sleep, I see myself as a baby, lifted up into the arms of a strange man with a hoary beard and small round glasses that reflect my innocent curiosity and mirror his own.

THERE IS SOMETHING appropriate about the bass throb of the wind turbines as my daughter and I land like two refugees from the postmodern astride the same Newfoundland coast on which mad Viking explorers once fumbled their colonisation so badly. Like the thirty-odd unit wind farm, we are on this squall-battered peninsula for the elevation and the isolation. And like the turbines, we are far enough from civilisation that not even the most vocal civic association could object to what we propose.
            Far to the north the land turns dark green with fir and spruce and I expect there are concrete barricades eventually as the crumbling Canadian highways head like a thwarted destiny to No-Man’s Land, the rusting watch-towers with their big-breasted, shaven-headed, woollen pullover’d guards forever on duty protecting the tiny principality from the patriarchal threats of the outside world. A cruel joke and a living irony in one breath. The pun on their name is a testament to what so many costumed freaks like myself discover: you can choose a dandy title (in the late 70s, the separatists declared they were Wimminsland), but the newspapers will ultimately decide whether or not it takes. Some grumpy sub-editor, or perhaps a legion of them, their ire multiplied, eyeing the gap in the headline or the cadence of some inferior cub reporter’s sentence and deciding to rewrite the course of history in a clatter of keystrokes.
            Here on this pulsing scarp we are safe from any threat and small enough not to present one on the separatists’ Cuban-supplied radar. If there are blobs, they do not tell the story of a father simply trying to do the best thing by his child.
            Windsong is a name the media have taken to with a fury. In her mask and vandalised leather jacket, Tessa is as much a stranger as any teenage daughter could ever be, the disaffected teenager par excellence. Yet she has a knowing wink for me and flushed cheeks that belie great expectations. We are both of us “leathered up,” as she put it, spare civvies in a Dulce & Gabana shoulder bag her mother bought as a surreptitious divorce present, a way of letting Tessa know things were only looking up with the deadweight dad out of the picture. I have mine stashed in the flat panel of the back of my jacket. The screwed-on plates of the stylised zed, now in gold, on advice from my new publicist, mist over with the cold, but I don’t feel it and Tessa tells me it’s the same for her. We are built to withstand such lesser things. We are in our environment.
            “You know, when I was a child –”
            “A child who knew I was Zephyr,” I say.
            “Yes,” Windsong slowly exhales. “When I was a child, when I was eight or something, I went through a long patch thinking you were gonna leave us.”
            “You must find this ironic.”
            “Dad,” she fumes.
            “Let’s practise,” I reply. “Zephyr, remember?”
            “Okay.”
            “Why did you think I was going to leave?” I relent and ask. “Because I was Zephyr?”
            “No,” Windsong replies. “You know I said it was never a conscious thing, understanding you were Zephyr. It’s only the past few years, you know, that I was hiding from mum that I knew.”
            “Just as well,” I say. “Being a kid, knowing that sort of thing? I dunno.” In my head I imagine a quick thousand-odd scenarios where my secret ID could’ve been compromised. Most of them are during the school Christmas concert.
            “It’s not a good thing,” I say at last. “A kid could spent their life worrying I wouldn’t come home, some of the things I’ve done.”
            Windsong bites her lip and says nothing. A light breeze stirs and I know it is my baby weather-controller testing out her powers, flexing her muscles, so to speak, now we are far away from prying eyes. My other super sense – the one attuned to my role as a parent – tells me I have stifled whatever point she was trying to make. I snap my mouth shut and contemplate for perhaps the hundredth time this morning that having a split life really is more than just a very obvious metaphor. I fear what a psychiatrist would think, observing that I could be such very different people with and without the mask. Tessa desperately needs training if she is going to persist in flying out her bedroom window at night looking to thwart bad guys. So ironic that we’re finally here, it’s Zephyr-her-dad she needs more than anything.
            So I peel off the mask. The spirit gum leaves gunky pores, but no actual telltale residue. If there’s someone gunning for me with a telephoto lens then I’m about fucked, right about now, though in all likelihood its just us and the seals down on the rocks. The air is cold enough it seems to congeal in the swirls and eddies Tessa makes rise up from the damp and silent earth, brief glimpses of shapes appearing and disappearing in the mist.
            “Is that you doing that?”
            “Yeah,” she says, seemingly as astounded as I. “Never tried before. Hell, I don’t even think I’ve been out in the cold like this with my, you know, powers before. I just wondered if it could be done and, well, there you are.”
            “Not sure it has a combat application,” I grin.
            She looks up and notices for the first time I have demasked. Her face contorts with caution, but she says nothing.
            “You were going to tell me why you worried I would leave,” I say softly.
            “Because of me.” The voice is small, the gaze turned away. Tessa removes her own mask and dabs at a sudden tear that has come from nowhere.
            “You?” I give half a laugh of surprise, confusion, affection. “You? Baby, half the things I did, back in those days at least, I did because of you. I wanted my little girl to be proud. It was one of the frustrations of my life that I couldn’t share this with you. I’m glad those days are behind us.”
            “Even if it means I have powers?”
            “Yeah,” I shrug, surrendering to the observation.
            I’m still not thrilled to see Tessa going into the wrong side of the family business. Judging by the chauffeured town car that comes and drops her off for her twice weekly visit, my wife Beth made the better call when it comes to professions. We shared an interest in the law initially – her as a student and later practitioner, and me as a guy who dresses up in gaudy outfits and beats on villains – and that wore thin over time.
            Windsong replaces her mask the same way I do – it’s one of mine, after all – two fingers pressing it in place either side of her brow. The transformation into young adult is miraculously complete. Last time I glimpsed her on the NBN news I instinctively checked out her cans, her stocky childhood legs fast thinning out and hope not for any starvation diet. Although I am in good health – miraculously so, given the events of the past month – my own obsolescence is dawning on me the more I am confronted by my replacement.
            “I used to think you would resent me,” Windsong says at last. The words tumble free in a rush that I recognise from my own habits, it’s a sudden confession. Her face is turned away so I can’t see if her masked eyes still water.
            “Why?”
            “Well you’ve got to admit it, dad,” she says and gives a throaty laugh, wiping her face with the back of her fingerless gloves. (They’re a little bit Young Madonna, but I don’t have the heart to tell her. Kids will be kids and I can recall stomping around for a year in Maxine’s high heels pretending to be Gene Simmons at one stage, though admittedly I was a lot younger than fifteen). “No one could blame you if you had masculinity issues.”
            “Really?” I say, like this is a revelation to me.
            “Well, take a quick check: you grew up thinking your father was a gay sperm donor and you were raised by two dykes. You knocked up your childhood sweetheart when she was, what, eighteen? And rather than be the bread-winner, because of the whole costume thing, it was mum who went on to graduate law school and bring in the income. I thought one day you would be looking after me and something would happen, some urgent call, and you just wouldn’t come back. Like I just didn’t matter.”
            There’s silence for a moment, but not for long. It’s not like me to let such feelings linger.
            “And did I?”
            “No,” and she laughs softly, a commiseratory sound. “No, you always did.”
            “Better still, babe, there were plenty of times the police scanner went off and we couldn’t get a sitter or it wasn’t your day at kindy and I just watched it on the news. I just left it, let guys like Mastodon and the Wavemaster and Aquanaut and, that other guy, the guy with the fucking horns. . . .”
            “Capricorn.”
            “Ha, you know your shit, don’t you?”
            Windsong laughs. “Put your mask on old man. You sound like Zephyr again.”|
            As I comply, I give a wry smile and watch Windsong roll her arms around like she has any idea of what a warm-up is. We flew here from Atlantic City and I clocked her top speed at just under four hundred mph. Not a dash on mine. Still not a warm-up, to my mind.
            “So are you ready to get this show on the road?”
            “Yep,” she nods, and starts pulling back her hair from her heart-shaped face. “Combat training 101. That’s what I want, Zephyr.”
            “No, honey, that’s what you need,” I reply. “I saw you trash that jewellery store heist on CNN on Tuesday. That guy with the crowbar almost had you.”
            Her face pales as she realises she’s been busted.
            “You . . . saw that?”
            “I sure did,” I say without much of the amusement I feel. “You’re lucky I didn’t tell your mother.”
            “She’d only blame my visits with you.”
            “Exactly,” I say back. “Why do you think it’s our secret?”
            “Thanks, dad,” Windsong says through lowered lashes in the true tones of the abashed teenager she is. “I appreciate it.”
            “You owe me,” I reply. “And payback starts here.”
            She looks up. There’s fire and determination in her eyes, though unfortunately not a whiff of experience. I make a slow lunge with my hand lit up like a birthday cake and rather than defend herself, Tessa just wrinkles up that cute snub nose of hers and I think she’s about to say “Dad!” in her best irritable teenager voice. And then she’s launching backward courtesy of a significant but low voltage shock.
            Windsong lands fifteen feet away and doesn’t move. The idiocy of my grin drips steadily off my face until, with concern, I hurry forward to check I haven’t hurt her too badly.
            And walk straight into her attack.

There came an hour like no other.

On one cold clear day in September, 1963, the Atomic Brain’s assault on the White House occupied both the Front and Professor Phenomenon, the Astonishers fought the Final Men of the Forever Reich in Los Angeles, Malcolm Extreme kidnapped and then lost Frank Sinatra to the Black Hope, Mr. Mystery confronted Dr. Dread for the first time, and Papa Crow & the Witching Hour defended against the Conqueror Worm in Underland.

New York City had no united front against Year Zero, the post-human supremacy organization.

Dr. When (in one of his first appearances in recorded Post-Human history) appeared to seven separate New York super-powered vigilantes urging them to congregate at a Rockefeller Center before Year Zero appeared. None of them did. Rockefellar Center fell.

The seven vigilantes arrived late, barely preventing Professor Zero from broadcasting his telepathy via a nation-wide television signals.

The Conscience (an 11th hour founder) insisted, “We should make this easier next time.”

And thus there’s always been an 11th hour defending New York– a loose union of New York’s solo supers. Not a proper team, but a collaborative effort.

Dr. Tara Chance insisted in her book Too Much of a Muchness that if the Eleventh Hour functioned like a normal interventionist squad, they would “kill each other in under an hour.”