Symbols have a tremendous power to convey meaning, and the secularizing forces reigning in the European Union seem bent on eradicating all signs of the Christian civilization which once flourished in every one of its 27 member nations.

As the Lisbon Treaty tightens the noose around the necks of the nations of what was once Christian Europe, an appalling circumstance in Italy summarizes the shape of things to come. A report at Catholic.org (“Italy’s Bishops Irate over Crucifix Ban by European Court”) demonstrates what ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ actually mean in practice: A ban on expression of a nation’s Christian heritage.

Italy's bishops are saying the European Court of Human Rights is guilty of a partial and ideological outlook with its Tuesday decision that crucifixes in public school are a violation of freedom.

The Vatican and the Italian government expressed dismay with Tuesday's decision and Italian bishops expressed their own perplexity.

The court ruled in favor of an Italian citizen of Finnish origin who complained in 2002 that the state school where her two children studied violated their freedom by displaying crucifixes.

The school's administration refused to remove them, contending that the crucifix is part of Italian cultural patrimony; Italian courts subsequently backed this claim.

Now, the Strasbourg-based European court has asked the Italian government to compensate the woman with €5,000 ($7,300).
Judge Nicola Lettieri, who defends Italy in Strasbourg, assured that the Italian government will appeal the decision.

A court in Milan convicted 23 United States-government operatives and several Italian intelligence agents on Wednesday for unlawfully kidnapping a Muslim imam and sending him to Egypt for interrogation and torture.   

The former Central Intelligence Agency bureau chief in Milan, Robert Lady, was sentenced to eight years in prison. An Air Force colonel and 22 CIA agents were each sentenced to five years for their roles in the 2003 operation. The government agents were also ordered to pay the Imam and his wife over $2 million in damages. All of them were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.

“I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors," the Italian newspaper Il Giornale quoted Lady as saying. He was quoted in the same publication back in June as well, saying: “Of course it was an illegal operation. But that’s our job.” Of course, the Nuremberg principles do not accept following orders as an excuse for the commission of crimes. 

Space tourism has long been touted by its advocates as an important step in the development of privately-funded space travel, and now it looks like the theory is going to be put to the test.

To date, seven men have travelled to space in such a capacity — all of them aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, spending a cumulative 96 days in space. (The most recent space tourist, Guy Laliberté, a Canadian circus tycoon, spent 11 days in space, returning to Earth on October 11 of this year.)

But now a new company, Galactic Suite Ltd., intends to radically alter the state of space tourism by taking the next step in its development by providing a destination built for such travelers: The first space hotel. And while Americans have become used to space programs which are described in terms of decades, for Galactic Suite, it would appear that the future is now: The goal is an operational space hotel by 2012.