Tag Archives: european

Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

by WilburRomano Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

After Ukrainian rebels used Russian missiles to shoot down a passenger airliner last month, the United States and the European Union escalated sanctions against Russia, cutting off Russian firms’ and individuals’ access to western markets and western financing. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin is striking back—by taking aim at his people’s ability to buy western-produced food.

On Wednesday, Putin issued a new decree warning that he plans to ban or limit imports of food products and agricultural goods from the US and the EU. Putin didn’t specify the exact products he wants to target; instead, he asked Russian government agencies to draft lists of products that should be limited or banned. (The Russian government has already reassured citizens that imports on wine and baby food are safe.)

Nevertheless, Russians and western ex-pats living in Russia are already venting their frustrations, the New Republic reports. “American whiskey, Dutch cheeses, German beer, Australian beef, Greek olives. Say bye-bye to all that,” an independent Russian TV channel tweeted. Russia imports a wide range of American food and agricultural products—$1.3 billion worth in 2013 alone. Here’s a list of some of the food and agricultural products that could be threatened by Putin’s move:

Kale: According to the United Nation’s commodity trade database, the US exported to Russia in 2013 about 338,266 pounds of cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi and kale, both fresh and chilled, worth about $93,894.
Whiskey: Russia bought $85 million worth of various whiskeys from the US in 2013, per the UN’s commodity trade database. “It is well known that Russians like to drink alcohol,” the US Department of Agriculture noted in a report released last year. Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey are increasingly popular in Russia, according to the report. Russia’s consumer protection agency recently announced that it was investigating Kentucky Gentleman bourbon due to fears that it contains chemicals that could produce infertility and cause cancer, and was already proceeding with plans to ban that specific brand in the country. (A spokesperson for the Sazerac Company said they had not been contacted by Russia’s Rospotrebnadzor, and had no comment at this time.)
Fruit: Russia imports more apples and pears than any other country, according to USDA. Shipments from the US only constitute a small share of those imports—less than 1 percent of the total apple market in Russia—but that still amounted to $7.7 million worth of apples in 2012. “U.S. apples have a niche market in Russia as many consumers prefer the large and richly colored apples, which are characteristics that U.S. suppliers can normally provide,” a USDA report said.
Almonds: In 2012, the United States supplied about 92 percent of the Russian almond market, USDA reported. In 2013, the US exported about $132,189,826 worth of shelled almonds to Russia, according to the UN.
Cows: In 2012, Russia imported 74,734 bovine animals from the United States. “Russia was the second largest market for the U.S. breeding cattle exports (30 percent of total U.S. live cattle exports) after Canada during the first 8 months of 2013,” the USDA reported.
Cake mix: In 2013, the United States exported about 2.2 million pounds of bread, pastry, biscuit mixes and dough worth $1,191,464 to Russia, according to the UN.
Soybeans: In 2013, US exported $157 million worth of soybeans to Russia.
Caviar: In 2013, the US exported $1,014,848 worth of preserved fish, fish eggs, and caviar to Russia.

See the article here:  

Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

Feds move to restrict neonic pesticides — well, one fed at least

by PennyMerritt Posted on July 20, 2014

Listen up, EPA!

Feds move to restrict neonic pesticides — well, one fed at least

By

Byron Chin

Hawaii’s Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge

So far the EPA has refused to ban use of neonicotinoid insecticides — despite mounting evidence that they kill bees and other wildlife, despite a ban in the European Union, despite a lawsuit filed by activists and beekeepers.

But if the EPA is somehow still unclear on the dangers posed by neonics, it need only talk to the official who oversees federal wildlife refuges in the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Ocean.

Kevin Foerster, a regional boss with the National Wildlife Refuge System, directed his staff this month to investigate where neonics are being used in the refuges they manage — and to put an end to their use. Foerster’s office is worried that farming contractors that grow grasses and other forage crops for wildlife and corn and other grains for human consumption on refuge lands are using neonic pesticides and neonic-treated seeds. There are also fears that agency staff are inadvertently using plants treated with the poisons in restoration projects.

“The Pacific Region will begin a phased approach to eliminate the use of neonicotinoid insecticides (by any method) to grow agricultural crops for wildlife on National Wildlife Refuge System lands, effective immediately,” Forster wrote in a July 9 memo that was obtained and published last week by the nonprofit Center for Food Safety. “Though there will be some flexibility during the transition and we will take into account the availability of non-treated seed, Refuge managers are asked to exhaust all alternatives before allowing the use of neonicotinoids on National Wildlife Refuge System Lands in 2015.”

An information sheet attached to the memo notes that “severe declines in bee fauna have been a driving force behind the growing concern with neonics,” but that other species are also being affected. The information sheet also warns that pesticide drift, leaching, and water runoff can push neonics into wildlife habitats near farmed lands.

The use of the pesticides in U.S. wildlife refuges has triggered outcries and lawsuits from groups that include the Center for Food Safety. “Federal wildlife refuges were established to protect natural diversity,” said Paige Tomaselli, an attorney with the center. “Allowing chemical companies to profit by poisoning these important ecosystems violates their fundamental purpose and mission.”

Foerster’s move will help protect nearly 9,000 acres of refuges in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands from ecosystem-ravaging poisons.

But the memo has significance beyond that. It confirms that wildlife experts within the federal government are acutely aware of the dangers that the poisons pose. Now we just need the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the EPA to talk to each other.


Source
Victory! Fish and Wildlife Service to Phase Out Neonicotinoids, Center for Food Safety

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Politics

View original: 

Feds move to restrict neonic pesticides — well, one fed at least

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, green energy, KTP, ONA, PUR, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Feds move to restrict neonic pesticides — well, one fed at least

Environmental free-trade deal could help tar-sands producers

by FSDFreeman Posted on July 8, 2014

Wanna see a magic trick?

Environmental free-trade deal could help tar-sands producers

By

Shutterstock

Negotiations began Tuesday at the World Trade Organization on a free-trade agreement that would free “environmental goods” from the shackles of tariffs and other protectionist measures. Such measures have been put in place around the world to protect domestic manufacturing industries and jobs from cheaper imports. They can increase the price of the products compared with, say, if they were all made in Vietnamese sweatshops.

The WTO talks in Geneva are a big deal — they involve the United States, China, the European Union, and 11 other countries. They could affect $1 trillion worth of trade every year.

So why aren’t environmentalists shouting, “Hallelujah?”

Because it’s a ruse.

“These negotiations are less about protecting the environment than they are about expanding free trade,” Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, told Grist. “Of course we support the increased use of, and trade in, environmentally beneficial products. But we have really serious concerns about the approach that the World Trade Organization is taking.”

The definition of “environmental goods” is being touted by much of the media as including wind turbine components and catalytic converters for controlling air pollution. But the list of goods that could be covered by the agreement, which was initially developed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, is far longer, and more sinister, than that. It includes products that have precious little to do with the environment — and some that can actually be used by industries that harm the environment.

Examples from the list include waste incinerators, which burn trash to produce electricity — and, in doing so, can pollute air and water with poisonous byproducts. The list also includes steam generators, which are used by coal and nuclear power plants. And it includes centrifuges, which are not only used for water purification but also by tar-sands oil producers.

Even if the list of products were whittled back to include only those that can truly benefit the environment, there are serious questions over whether such an agreement would be a good thing. Consider that American environmentalists, including 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace USA, and the Sierra Club, have been defending India’s protectionist solar rules, calling on the U.S. to drop its WTO complaint against them. The U.S. Trade Representative is irked that India is requiring many of the solar panels used for its ambitious clean-energy expansion plans to be produced domestically. Those rules are useful, however, in spurring the growth of a local and sustainable green-collar economy in an impoverished nation.

And, then, there’s the questionable role of the WTO in guiding the talks.

“We have concerns about putting this approach of liberalizing environmental goods under the thumb of the World Trade Organization, which is an institution that does not have a good track record on the environment,” Solomon said.

She would prefer to see such talks overseen by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is guiding climate negotiations that could culminate next year in a new international climate treaty. Or, she said, any number of other international groups or mechanisms — virtually anything but the WTO.


Source
Trade Talks on $1 Trillion in Environmental Goods, Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Continued: 

Environmental free-trade deal could help tar-sands producers

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, organic, PUR, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Environmental free-trade deal could help tar-sands producers

The EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” Starts to Take Concrete Shape

by JustinYQON Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

A few days ago, Google announced that it was beavering away on the 41,000 requests it had gotten from people demanding that it remove links to unflattering articles about themselves. So just what kind of people are making these requests? Brad DeLong directs me to the BBC’s Robert Peston, who gives us a clue:

This morning the BBC received the following notification from Google:

Notice of removal from Google Search: we regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/10/merrills_mess.html

What it means is that a blog I wrote in 2007 will no longer be findable when searching on Google in Europe….Now in my blog, only one individual is named. He is Stan O’Neal, the former boss of the investment bank Merrill Lynch.

My column describes how O’Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made.

Is the data in it “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”?

Hmmm.

I wonder if there’s a way to make this backfire? How hard would it be to create an automated process that figures out which articles Google is being forced to stuff down the memory hole? Probably not too hard, I imagine. And how hard would it then be to repost those articles in enough different places that they all zoomed back toward the top of Google’s search algorithm? Again, probably not too hard for a group of people motivated to do some mischief.

Maybe someone is already working on this. It wouldn’t surprise me. And I wonder if Google’s surprisingly quick response to the EU decision isn’t designed to spur exactly this kind of backlash. That wouldn’t really surprise me either.

Credit: 

The EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” Starts to Take Concrete Shape

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” Starts to Take Concrete Shape

Everything we know about neonic pesticides is awful

by PrincesFelician Posted on June 25, 2014

Bee-ware!

Everything we know about neonic pesticides is awful

By

Shutterstock

Neonicotinoid pesticides are great at killing insect pests, which helps to explain the dramatic rise in their use during the past 20 years. They’re popular because they are systemic pesticides — they don’t just get sprayed onto plant surfaces. They can be applied to seeds, roots, and soil, becoming incorporated into a growing plant, turning it into poison for any bugs that might munch upon it.

But using neonics to control pests is like using a hand grenade to thwart a bank robbery.

Which is why the European Union has banned the use of many of them – and why environmentalists are suing the U.S. EPA to do the same.

The pesticides don’t just affect pest species. Most prominently, they affect bees and butterflies, which are poisoned when they gather pollen and nectar. But neonics’ negative impacts go far beyond pollinators. They kill all manner of animals and affect all kinds of ecosystems. They’re giving rise to Silent Spring 2.0.

“It’s just a matter of time before somebody can point to major species declines that can be linked to these compounds,” said Pierre Mineau, a Canadian pesticide ecotoxicologist. “Bees have been the focus for the last three or four years, but it’s a lot broader than that.”

Mineua contributed to an epic assessment of the ecological impacts of neonics, known as the Worldwide Integrated Assessment, in which 29 scientists jointly examined more than 800 peer-reviewed papers spanning five years. Their findings are being published in installments in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, beginning last week with a paper coauthored by Mineua that details impacts on vertebrate animals, including fish and lizards. Here’s a summary of highlights:

Overview

Neonics can remain in the soil for months — sometimes for years. As they break down, they form some compounds that are even more toxic than the original pesticide. Because of these long-lasting ecological impacts, traditional measures of pesticide toxicity fall short of describing the widespread damages caused by neonics. In some cases, neonics can be 10,000 times more toxic to bees than DDT.

Ecosystem impacts

Noenics don’t stay where they are sprayed or applied. They can be found in soils, sedimentation, waterways, groundwater, and plants far away from farms and manicured gardens. They can interfere with a wide range of ecosystem functions, including nutrient cycling, food production, biological pest control, and pollination services. Of course, the animals that are worst affected are those that visit farmlands — and water-dwelling species that live downstream from farms.

Land-dwelling bugs

Everything from ants to earthworms can be affected, absorbing the poisons into their tiny bodies from dust in the air, through tainted water, and directly from plants.

Pollinators

Pollinators, including bees, butterflies, birds, and bats, are “highly vulnerable” to the pesticides. Not only do they drink poisoned nectar and eat poisoned pollen, but they can also be exposed to the pesticides through water and the air. This jeopardizes the ability of plants to reproduce, and the impacts can reverberate through ecosystems.

Aquatic invertebrates

Crabs, snails, and water fleas are among the water-dwelling species that can be exposed to the pesticides through the water in which they live. High concentrations of the pesticides found in waterways have reduced population sizes and diversity. The insecticides can affect the animals’ feeding behavior, growth rates, and movement.

Birds and other animals

Birds eat crop seeds treated with pesticides. Reptile numbers have dropped because the pesticides kill off their insect prey. And fish downstream from farms literally swim in the poison.

Knowledge gaps

Still, despite their prevalence, there’s a scary amount that we don’t know about these insecticides. The toxicity of neonics to most species has never been measured. For example, just four of the 25,000 known species of bees have been subjected to toxicity tests involving the pesticides.

And that’s not all

That’s just the ecosystem impacts of the poisons — the review doesn’t even deal with the effects of these insecticides on farmers or on those who eat farmed goods.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Food

Continue reading here – 

Everything we know about neonic pesticides is awful

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Optimus, organic, Ringer, solar, solar power, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Everything we know about neonic pesticides is awful

STUDY: US Reporters Use More Weasel Words in Covering Climate Change

by MarcosOlmstead Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

It’s no secret that different countries have different densities, so to speak, of global warming denial. In particular, English-language speaking nations like the US and the UK tend to be relative denialist hotbeds, and their media include a considerable amount of global warming skepticism. By contrast, media researchers have found that in Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico and Chile, as well as in European nations, journalists tend to cast much less doubt on climate research.

And now, a new paper captures the US media’s relative discomfort with climate science in a new way: By comparing the preponderance of words that suggest scientific uncertainty about climate change in two US newspapers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, with the concentration in two Spanish ones, El País and El Mundo. The study, by Adriana Bailey and two colleagues at the University of Colorado-Boulder, is just out in the journal Environmental Communication. It finds a considerably greater concentration of such uncertainty-evoking words in the US papers in their 2001 and 2007 coverage of two newly released reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The study used a technique of linguistic analysis that involved examining newspaper articles for “epistemic markers,” defined as “any words or expressions suggesting room for doubt” about climate science. Obviously, there are many, many such words and phrases, and the list of terms considered was quite exhaustive, ultimately comprising 10 separate grammatical categories. In English, terms suggesting uncertainty ranged from “common hedging verbs” (believe, consider, and appear) to “synonyms for uncertain” (blurry, inaccurate, and speculative).

For an example of how the analysis worked, consider this January 1, 2007 New York Times article by Andrew Revkin. In the phrase “substantial uncertainty still clouds projections of important impacts,” the underlined words were all counted as epistemic markers. (Revkin was referring in particular to forecasts about the rate of sea level rise from melting ice sheets.) Clearly, journalists have no choice but to use these words and phrases sometimes in their writing about climate change. But the study looked at the aggregate volume of their use—and that’s where the difference between the two countries showed up.

The number of hedging words per 1000 words in US and Spanish papers in 2001 and 2007. The analysis shows “total” articles (which includes opinion pieces), “news” articles only, and “negative” hedging words, those with a tone that suggested strongly that climate science is questionable. Reprinted from Bailey et al (2014), “How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty,” Environmental Communication.

The study specifically analyzed the “density” of these hedging words or phrases, or the number of them per 10,000 words in the American and Spanish papers. The result confirmed the researchers’ expectations. As they write, “The density of epistemic markers in US newspapers significantly exceeded the density of epistemic markers in Spanish newspapers during both 2001 (189 vs. 107) and 2007 (267 vs. 136).” “US papers are hedging more than the Spanish papers,” says Adriana Bailey, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Somewhat surprisingly, there was actually more hedging in news articles than in opinion pieces for both years in the US papers.

The study contained several other troubling findings as well. As suggested by the figure at right, the total “epistemic density” of US articles in actually increased from 2001 to 2007, even as scientific uncertainty about climate science declined. “Contrary to expectation, we saw increases in hedging, or constant amounts of hedging, in all four papers we analyzed,” says Bailey.

Here’s why that’s so odd. This was, after all, the period in which the IPCC went from saying it is “likely” that humans are driving global warming, to saying it is “very likely.” Yet hedging was more prevalent in the latter time period, not less. What’s more, it looks as though the increase in hedging words in US papers from 2001 to 2007 occurred solely at the New York Times—where it grew from 141 words in 10,000 to 297 in 10,000—even as the Wall Street Journal did not show a change over time (236 words versus 235 words per 10,000). (The study did not examine how papers covered the 2013 release of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which jacked up the scientific certainty even further.)

And there was one more finding of note. The researchers specifically categorized the uncertainty-laden terms by tone, so that more neutral words, like “estimate,” were separated out from clearly negative ones, words that forcefully suggested that the science of climate change is dubious. Take, for instance, this 2001 Wall Street Journal commentary: “We don’t know whether temperatures will continue to rise,” it reads at one point. The underlined words here were both scored as epistemic markers, but the bolded word was scored as a negative one. In the New York Times and in El Mundo, the proportion of negative markers increased over time from 2001 to 2007, a change that the authors note suggests “a real shift towards more negative language rather than a simple increase in overall hedging.” In general, US papers also had more negative markers overall than Spanish papers did.

Recent research suggests that through the very language they use to express the certainty of their conclusions—confusing terms such as “likely” and “very likely”—climate scientists, themselves, sow doubt in the minds of the public about their findings. The new study, then, in effect finds a double whammy: US journalists then go on to amplify that sense of uncertainty through their own use of hedging language.

No wonder we are still arguing about the reality of climate change…in this country.

Read this article: 

STUDY: US Reporters Use More Weasel Words in Covering Climate Change

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on STUDY: US Reporters Use More Weasel Words in Covering Climate Change

Vladimir Putin Has Been Outplayed by Barack Obama

by LarueLukis Posted on May 16, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Max Fisher notes this morning that although President Obama got a lot of flak for his restrained response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, his approach of giving Vladimir Putin enough rope to hang himself has turned out to be a lot cannier than his critics expected:

This has been so effective, and has apparently taken Putin by such surprise, that after weeks of looking like he could roll into eastern Ukraine unchallenged, he’s backing down all on his own. Official Russian rhetoric, after weeks of not-so-subtle threats of invading eastern Ukraine, is backing down. Putin suddenly looks like he will support Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election, rather than oppose it, although it will likely install a pro-European president. European and American negotiators say the tone in meetings has eased from slinging accusations to working toward a peaceful resolution.

Most of this is economic. Russia’s self-imposed economic problems started pretty quickly after its annexation of Crimea in March and have kept up. Whether or not American or European governments sanction Russia’s broader economy, the global investment community has a mind of its own, and they seem to have decided that Russia’s behavior has made it a risky place to put money. So risky that they’re pulling more money out.

A lot of that may have come the targeted sanctions that Obama pushed for against individual Russian leaders and oligarchs. Those targeted sanctions did not themselves do much damage to the Russian economy. But, along with Russia’s erratic behavior in Ukraine and the lack of clarity as to whether Europe and the US could impose broader sanctions, it appears to have been enough to scare off global investors — the big, faceless, placeless mass of people and banks who have done tremendous damage to Putin’s Russia, nudged along by the US and by Putin himself.

I’m a little less surprised than Fisher, though Obama’s policy was always a bit of a crapshoot since there was no telling (a) just how important Putin thought annexation of eastern Ukraine was, and (b) how much economic pain Putin was willing to put up with. This wasn’t necessarily a rational calculation on Putin’s part, which meant it was never entirely amenable to rational analysis on our part.

Still, there have always been good reasons to think that a military annexation of eastern Ukraine represented a huge risk for Russia—potentially turning into a long and wearying guerrilla war—and that even the existing economic sanctions were biting hard enough to be worrisome. After all, Putin’s nationalistic fervor may have initially played well domestically, but in the long term domestic opinion depends heavily on economic performance. If the Russian economy started to tank, those adoring crowds would have turned surly in pretty short order.

In my mind, the biggest wild card has always been this: what, really, is the value of eastern Ukraine to Russia? Yes, there’s some industry, and potentially a land border with Crimea. But those are frankly small things, especially if annexing Ukraine was likely to lead to prolonged low-level war and even stiffer sanctions from the West. As for Putin’s claim to be responsible for oppressed Russian-speaking minorities, I don’t think anyone should take that too seriously. He may sincerely feel aggrieved about this, but even the threat of action has already gotten him what he wants on this score: a strong likelihood that Kiev will negotiate a certain level of autonomy for regions in eastern Ukraine, and perhaps a more accommodating approach in other countries toward Russian speakers.

With the caveat—again—that this has never been an entirely rational situation, I continue to think that eastern Ukraine simply isn’t valuable enough to Russia to justify a lot of risk. Putin made a play for taking control without any real opposition, and it failed. It’s obvious now that the cost would be pretty high, both in military opposition and in economic pain. Too high. And Putin knows it.

Would a more assertive military posture from Obama have made a difference? Maybe. But there’s as much chance it would have made things worse as there was that it would have made things better. This is something that the John McCains of the world have never understood, which is odd since they know perfectly well how they themselves respond to threats of violence. Why do they think Putin would respond any differently?

In the end, Putin will probably come out of this OK. He has Crimea, and he’s regained at least a bit of the influence over Ukraine that he lost via his bungled foreign policy early in the year. If he backs off now, the economic pain will ease; Ukraine will be a more pliant neighbor; and he’ll retain his popularity at home. If he’s smart, he’ll decide this is close enough to victory, and call it a day.

But the United States will come out OK too. The punditocracy will have a hard time acknowledging this, since they’re pretty dedicated to the idea that there only two kinds of foreign policy success: military intervention and flashy, high-stakes diplomatic missions. But there are more subtle kinds of success too. This may well turn out to be one of them.

Continue reading:  

Vladimir Putin Has Been Outplayed by Barack Obama

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vladimir Putin Has Been Outplayed by Barack Obama

Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

by LibbyHammqmm Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Apropos of nothing in particular, I want to highlight this column from Hugo Dixon that I found at Counterparties yesterday:

Greece is undergoing an astonishing financial rebound. Two years ago, the country looked like it was set for a messy default and exit from the euro. Now it is on the verge of returning to the bond market with the issue of 2 billion euros of five-year paper.

There are still political risks, and the real economy is only now starting to turn. But the financial recovery is impressive. The 10-year bond yield, which hit 30 percent after the debt restructuring of two years ago, is now 6.2 percent….The changed mood in the markets is mainly down to external factors: the European Central Bank’s promise to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro two years ago; and the more recent end of investors’ love affair with emerging markets, meaning the liquidity sloshing around the global economy has been hunting for bargains in other places such as Greece.

That said, the centre-right government of Antonis Samaras has surprised observers at home and abroad by its ability to continue with the fiscal and structural reforms started by his predecessors. The most important successes have been reform of the labour market, which has restored Greece’s competiveness, and the achievement last year of a “primary” budgetary surplus before interest payments.

I don’t have anything to say about this, but once a narrative takes hold we sometimes don’t realize it when things change. If you had asked me last week how Greece was doing, I would have answered, “Oh, they’re still screwed.” But apparently they’re doing better. Not out of the woods yet, but doing better. Update your priors.

POSTSCRIPT: If this keeps up—and that’s still a big if—it also might be a lesson in the virtue of kicking the can down the road. Back in 2012, lots of commenters, including me, believed that the eurozone had deep structural problems that couldn’t be solved by running fire drills every six months or so and then hoping against hope that things would get better. But maybe they will! This probably still wasn’t the best way of forging a recovery of the eurozone, but so far, it seems to have worked at least a little better than the pessimists imagined. Maybe sometimes kicking the can is a good idea after all.

See the original post: 

Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

Conflict in Crimea: First Referendum Results Show Crimea Has Voted to Join Russia

by VirginiWicken Posted on March 14, 2014

Mother Jones

This article is being updated as news breaks. Click here for the latest.

Russia has deployed 10,000 troops to multiple locations along the Ukraine-Russia border, deepening fears that the simmering crisis in the Crimean peninsula is about to escalate into full-scale warfare. In London on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to broker a last-minute deal with Russia’s foreign minister to ratchet down the crisis, but their talks “ended inconclusively,” according to the New York Times. This weekend, voters in Crimea, an autonomous region of about 2 million in southeastern Ukraine, will vote on a referendum that would give citizens the option of asserting independence from Ukraine, or becoming part of Russia. (Remaining part of Ukraine isn’t an option.) The United States and European Union leaders have called the referendum back-door annexation,” which would bring international consequences. Here’s what you need to know about the current state of play. Check back frequently, since we’ll update this post as events unfold.

Western leaders are furious: On Thursday, German Chancellor enacted as early as Monday, if Crimea chooses to secede.

If Crimea joins Russia, it could take Ukrainian gas and oil reserves with it: Russian exports account for about one-third of Europe’s gas consumption and those pipelines run smack through Ukraine. As Mother Jones‘ James West points out, “Russia has long been able to use Ukraine as an energy choke point.” On Thursday, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported that authorities in Crimea have been securing offshore gas and oil in the region. Crimean parliamentary speaker Vladimir Konstantinov reportedly said: “These deposits and the platform fully become the property of the Republic of Crimea…We have guarded them. These are our fields and we will fight for them.”

Putin is cracking down on Russian press: Julia Ioffe reports in The New Republic:

What began just days before the Olympics with a Kremlin attack on Dozhd, the last independent television station in Russia, has now extended to Lenta.ru, arguably the best news site in Russia. On Wednesday, the site’s editor-in-chief was fired and replaced with a Kremlin loyalist, and the whole staff quit in protest. Yesterday, the Kremlin went full-China on the Internet, the holy of holies of the Russian opposition. Using some flimsy legal pretexts, it banned access to various oppositional news sites, to the website of Moscow’s biggest radio station, and to the blog of Alexey Navalny, who is currently under house arrest.

Russia maintains that it’s not going to invade: Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is not planning to annex Crimea and he would leave it up to citizens in the region to determine their future. He also said force would only be used as “a last resort.”â&#128;&#139; As recently as Friday, Russian officials have maintained that an invasion is still off the table:

But Western leaders aren’t optimistic that Putin will back down from annexing Crimea, after the referendum vote. According to the New York Times, “As of Friday, there had been no sign that President Vladimir V. Putin was prepared to take the ‘off ramp’ that the Obama administration has repeatedly offered.â&#128;&#139;” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov declared on Friday that Russia and the United States “have no common vision” about the crisis.

UPDATE, March 14, 2014, 3:00 PM EDT (Dana Liebelson): The Pentagon is sending 25,000 ready-to-eat meals to Ukraine, according to the Associated Press. Two US representatives have asked President Obama to put names of Russian officials responsible for human rights abuses on the Magnitsky list, a public list of Russians created in 2012 as part of the Magnitsky Act, to punish Russian officials who have committed human rights violations. Members of the list are prohibited from entering the US or using the US banking system.

UPDATE 2, March 14, 2014, 3:35 PM EDT (Hannah Levintova): Mimicking the language used to justify their invasion of Crimea, the Russian foreign ministry has issued a warning that they reserve the right to intervene in the city of Donetsk to protect lives after a series of clashes Thursday night led to at least one death and dozens of injuries.

Donetsk is a primarily Russian-speaking city in eastern Ukraine, not far from the Russian border. The clashes began yesterday after hundreds of demonstrators chanting Pro-Russian slogans broke through a police cordon and stormed a separate group protesting Russia’s invasion of Crimea and calling for “a united Ukraine.”

Here’s video of the incident heating up:

UPDATE 3, March 14, 2014, 8:06 PM EDT (Eric Wuestewald): Another two people were reportedly killed and five injured during clashes in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv Friday. There have been conflicting reports over who was injured and who was responsible for the attack, but many are alleging armed pro-Russian groups or the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector may have provoked it.

Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city after Kiev, and historically, was the country’s first Soviet capital. Like Donetsk, it’s also close to the Russian border. As a result, large pro-Russian rallies have been common, which some are predicting could become a litmus test for the future direction of the country.

Update 4, March 15, 2014, 4:15 PM EDT (Dana Liebelson): 60 Russian troops in six helicopters have crossed into Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, taking control of the village of Strilkove and leading to the first reports of Russian invasion outside of Crimea. The New York Times reports that troops also seized a gas plant and “the action was Russia’s most provocative since its forces took over Crimea two weeks ago.” Ukraine’s acting leader Oleksander Turchinov said: “The situation is very dangerous. I’m not exaggerating. There is a real danger from threats of invasion of Ukrainian territory. We will reconvene on Monday at 10am.”

Update 5, March 15, 4:45 PM EDT (Hannah Levintova): Earlier today, 50,000 people took part in a “peace march” in Moscow against Russia’s intervention in Crimea. Protestors marched waving both Russian and Ukrainian flags, and then gathered on the Prospect Sakharova, where massive anti-Putin rallies took place in 2012. Some protestors chanted: “The main enemy is the Kremlin. No to fascism, no to imperialism.”

Here’s a Russian-language newscast showing the march:

Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who stepped down from his post in February, wrote a statement today about the situation in Ukraine on Facebook. Here’s an excerpt:

Putin’s recent decisions represent a giant step backwards. Tragically, we are entering a new period with some important differences, but many similarities to the Cold War. The ideological struggle between autocracy and democracy is resurgent. Protection of European countries from Russian aggression is paramount again. Shoring up vulnerable states , including first and foremost Ukraine, must become a top priority again for the US and Europe. And doing business with Russian companies will once again become politicized. Most tragically, in seeking to isolate the Russian regime, many Russians with no connection to the government will also suffer the effects of isolation. My only hope is that this dark period will not last as long as the last Cold War.

Update 6, March 16, 5:30 AM EDT (Hannah Levintova): Several NATO websites were hit by cyber-attacks in the hours preceding the start of referendum voting in Crimea. A group calling itself “cyber-berkut” took credit for the attack, saying they targeted NATO for its interference in Ukraine. “We will not allow NATO occupiers in our homeland,” the collective wrote on their site. Their name references the berkut, an especially-feared faction of Ukraine’s police force used by ousted President Viktor Yanukovych that has since been disbanded. A NATO spokeswoman wrote on Twitter that the integrity of NATO data and systems was not effected and that experts were working to restore the sites.

Update 7, March 16, 11:30 AM EDT (Dana Liebelson): As the referendum vote wraps up in Ukraine, a German research group, GfK, has conducted early polling that anticipates a landslide vote for secession, with 70% of Crimeans participating in the vote choosing to join Russia; 11% choosing increased autonomy within Ukraine. There are also reports of Russian and Ukrainian troops building up near the border. Here is a video posted by The Wire of Russian tanks moving towards southwest Russia:

Update 8, March 16, 2:15 PM EDT (Eric Wuestewald): RT is reporting that 93% of those who participated in the Crimean referendum voted to seceed from Ukraine and become part of Russia, according to exit polls. Official results are expected later. Crimea’s Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov has responded to the news by announcing Crimea would join Russia in “as tight a timeframe as possible.”

The White House released a statement reaffirming its opposition to the referendum and called on members of the international community to condemn and “impose costs” on Russia’s actions:

The United States has steadfastly supported the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine since it declared its independence in 1991, and we reject the “referendum” that took place today in the Crimean region of Ukraine. This referendum is contrary to Ukraine’s constitution, and the international community will not recognize the results of a poll administered under threats of violence and intimidation from a Russian military intervention that violates international law.

Update 9, March 16, 4:50 EDT (Hannah Levintova): The AP, along with several of Russia’s state-funded news networks, are reporting that with about 50 percent of ballots counted, more than 95 percent of Crimea’s voters have opted to join Russia and secede from Ukraine.

Reports are also coming out saying that some journalists were prohibited from entering the polling stations to observe the vote count.

Continued here:

Conflict in Crimea: First Referendum Results Show Crimea Has Voted to Join Russia

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Cyber, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Conflict in Crimea: First Referendum Results Show Crimea Has Voted to Join Russia

The Whimsical Fascists of Wes Anderson’s "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

by JCNCharole Posted on March 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is very, very Wes Anderson—which is to say that the colors pop, the quirky humor abounds, and your emotions are sneakily toyed with. Few directors have the kind of total control over the way their actors talk, move, and express quite like Anderson does. Anderson’s singular style and eccentricities make virtually everything in his films (even harrowing elements such as suicide and war) oddly whimsical. And in The Grand Budapest Hotel, a Nazi analog is made into something of a goofy villain.

The comedy is set primarily in the 1930s in Zubrowka, a fictional central-European republic that has endured European totalitarianism and world war (the movie was shot on location in Germany, but the setting, sounds, and visuals were, in Anderson’s words, “a pastiche of the greatest hits of…Eastern Europe”). The core of the narrative (starring Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Harvey Keitel, and several Anderson regulars) is a murder mystery, but the backdrop routinely advances to the fore as the grip of a fascist party grows more and more clenched. “Part of why I feel the impulse to reimagine World War II rather than just do it is because it’s been done so many times before,” Anderson told NPR.

Continue Reading »

Visit source: 

The Whimsical Fascists of Wes Anderson’s "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Whimsical Fascists of Wes Anderson’s "The Grand Budapest Hotel"