Analysis: EU Under Pressure to Be Tough With Russia | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 13.08.2008

The EU is under pressure from new members, and a few old ones, to drop its usual diplomatic approach towards Russia and deal more forcefully with its biggest neighbor after Moscow's military campaign in Georgia.

Ever since the European Union expanded deep into former-Soviet territory in 2004, the debate over how it should deal with Moscow has been stormy.

 

Even in times of peace, the disputes within the bloc have been obvious, with newcomers such as Poland repeatedly urging it to crack down on what it sees as unacceptable Russian behavior, and Western powers equally keen to maintain cordial diplomatic ties.

 

After the conflict between Georgia and Russia, which broke out on Aug. 8, the internal EU dispute over how to deal with Moscow seems to be threatening a genuine autumn tempest.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

RFI - Kouchner to meet Dalai Lama in government U-turn

French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner will meet the Dalai Lama on Wednesday 20 August, according to the Tibetan Buddhist leader's interpreter, during his 11-day visit to France. The Foreign Affairs Ministry has not confirmed the claim. The opposition Socialist Party called the move a "belated improvisation".

Interpreter Matthieu Ricard told the news-media that Kouchner phoned on Wednesday evening to fix a rendezvous in the western French town of Nantes next Wednesday, 20 August.

The Dalai Lama had addressed 4,000 people at a Buddhist centre south of Paris, where he had expressed the fear that "Tibetan heritage, culture and civilisation are dying".

Earlier, the Socialist candidate in the last presidential election, Ségolène Royal, announced that she will meet the Dalai Lama in Nantes on Saturday.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

FT.com / World - Liechtenstein to act on banking secrecy

Prince Alois, hereditary ruler of Liechtenstein, confirmed on Friday that his tiny Alpine state was poised to seize the initiative after mounting international challenges to its financial sector's controversial bank secrecy.

"The time has come for us to base our system of mutual legal assistance and administrative assistance in tax matters on a new foundation," he said in his traditional national day speech to the people.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

It's one thing to publish Kagan's inanities on the pages of Le Monde.

But to pass him off simply as

Robert Kagan, politologue, chercheur au Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ?

That's leaving quite a bit out....

"C'est un scandale !"

News from The Associated Press

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- A reluctant Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Friday he signed a cease-fire agreement with Russia and declared in the presence of the chief U.S. diplomat that the West had behaved in ways that invited the invasion.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had been assured that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign an identical document. The United States says the pact protects the former Soviet republic's interests despite concessions to Moscow.

"With this signature by Georgia, this must take place and take place now," Rice said. She did not say what, if anything, the United States would do if Russia defies the truce.

An emotional Saakashvili said he will "never, ever surrender" in the showdown with much-larger Russia.

"You are dealing with a people who despise anyting human," Saakashvili said of invading Russian forces.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Merkel, Medvedev Clash Over Russia's War in Sochi Talks | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 15.08.2008

Angela Merkel clashed with an unapologetic President Medvedev over the recent Georgia conflict during talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Merkel criticized much of Moscow's war while Medvedev again warned Georgia.

Medvedev stood firm and justified Russia's military action in Georgia, calling it humanitarian intervention and warned that if pressed Russia would respond in the same way again.

"If our peacekeeping troops and our citizens are attacked, we will respond in the future in the same way that we have responded. Let there be no doubt about this," Medvedev said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Friday, Aug. 15.

Medvedev insisted that Russia was "the guarantor of security in the Caucasus and the region" and that Russian troops would remain in Georgia.

The Russian president expressed renewed support for the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Russian troops are stationed.

"After what has happened, Ossetians and Abkhaz will scarcely be able to live in one state with the Georgians," he said.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

China's quake reconstruction to cost nearly 150 billion dollars: govt

Nearly 150 billion dollars are needed to rebuild areas in southwest China devastated by a massive earthquake in May, the government said on Thursday.

The 51 worst-hit counties and cities will need about one trillion yuan (145.7 billion dollars), said the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning agency, in a statement on its website.

That was more than one fifth of the 4.9 trillion yuan of tax revenue that the government was able to collect nationwide last year.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Guerrilla chief to head government in Nepal - International Herald Tribune

The leader of the decade-long Maoist rebellion in Nepal was finally elected prime minister on Friday, after four months of political wrangling. His victory sets the stage for the former rebels' toughest challenge: how to uplift the lives of 27 million people in one of the poorest countries in the world, at a time of soaring food and fuel prices.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who goes by the nom de guerre Prachanda, or "the fierce one" in Nepali, won more than two-thirds of 577 votes cast in the Constituent Assembly.

The election of the prime minister opens the way to establish a democratically elected government in Nepal. That will be a milestone in resolving the decade-long civil war, a conflict that claimed the lives of an estimated 13,000 people before it ended with a peace accord in 2006.

The Maoists have already achieved their main goal, the ending of 239 years of Hindu monarchy. At its first session, in May, a constituent assembly declared Nepal a federal republic. The former king, Gyanendra, the world's last Hindu monarch, was forced to vacate the main palace here and live as a commoner.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

'Bishop of the poor' takes oath as president of Paraguay - International Herald Tribune

Fernando Lugo, "the bishop of the poor" as he is known here, was sworn in as president of Paraguay on Friday, ending six decades of one-party rule and promising to give land to the landless and to end the nation's entrenched corruption.

But despite his remarkable victory in April, Lugo, a 57-year old former Roman Catholic bishop, faces a challenging road in pursuing his agenda, knowing that the Colorado Party, which ruled Paraguay for 61 years, is still very much ingrained in politics here.

For 35 of those years, the party was dominated by one man, General Alfredo Stroessner, a dictator known for many human rights atrocities. For the past five years it was controlled by the departing president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, who expanded an already bloated and inefficient government bureaucracy.

The election of Lugo, the ultimate outsider who spent 11 years as a priest living in the countryside and working with peasant movements seeking land reform, was a dramatic break with the past for this landlocked country of six million hamstrung by massive inequality and rural poverty.

He was elected promising change on an ill-defined socialist platform and will have to manage the soaring expectations of Paraguayans in what by law is a single five-year term.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

FT.com / Companies / Financial services - Lehman in talks to sell $40bn in real estate

Lehman Brothers is in talks with potential buyers over the sale of its $40bn portfolio of commercial real estate assets and securities in an effort to replenish its balance sheet.

People who have been in the discussions say the troubled investment bank wants to sell the assets either as a whole or in pieces but added there was a gap between Lehman's perception of the value of the portfolio and that of buyers.

In a move to lure buyers, Lehman has offered to shoulder the first $5bn of any losses suffered on the portfolio's assets following a sale, they said.

If the sale talks fail, Lehman is believed to be considering spinning off the entire commercial property division and listing it separately, people close to the discussions said.

Such a move might not raise much fresh capital but could help Lehman to dispel the concerns over its balance sheet and financial health that have dogged it for the past few months.

Since May 15 its shares have fallen by about 63 per cent while the S&P 500 index of financial stocks has dropped about 20 per cent.

Lehman, which has raised more than $13bn in capital after suffering credit-related writedowns and losses of more than $8bn, is expected to make a decision by the time it reports third-quarter results next month.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Asia Times Online : Is perpetual war our future?

Is perpetual war our future?
To the problem of an overstretched, over-toured military there is but one answer in Washington. Both US presidential candidates want to significantly expand the army and the marines. In this article adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism, historian and retired colonel Andrew Bacevich argues that the US does not need a bigger army, it needs a more modest foreign policy.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Files from WWII Office of Strategic Services are secret no more - Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Before she became a famously untidy television chef, Julia Child had a secret career as an American spy, winning praise for her attention to detail as she managed the flow of classified communications from remote posts in Ceylon and China during World War II.

Long before he appeared on screen as a lunatic general in "Dr. Strangelove" and a corrupt cop in "The Godfather," Sterling Hayden was parachuting into fascist Croatia as a secret operative for America's fledgling espionage service.

 And decades before he was named CIA director, William J. Casey was running clandestine operations for the agency's predecessor -- the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS -- from its European headquarters in London.

The U.S. government pulled back the covers on these careers in espionage and thousands of others Thursday, granting public access for the first time to previously classified personnel files of Americans who served in the OSS.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Oceans On The Precipice Of Mass Extinctions And Rise Of Slime

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.

Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a bold new assessment of the oceans and their ecological health.

Publishing his study in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Jackson believes that human impacts are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions in the oceans on par with vast ecological upheavals of the past.

He cites the synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, ocean warming, increased acidification and massive nutrient runoff as culprits in a grand transformation of once complex ocean ecosystems. Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish and disease.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Anti-Noise Silences Wind Turbines

If wind turbines clatter and whistle too loudly, they are only permitted to operate under partial load to protect the local residents - but this also means a lower electricity output. An active damping system cancels out the noise by producing counter-vibrations.

<...>

However, the effectiveness of the passive damping systems used until now is somewhat limited: They only absorb noise at a certain frequency. Since modern wind energy converters adapt their rotational speed to the wind velocity in order to generate as much electricity as possible, however, the frequency of the humming sound also varies. Despite noise attenuation measures, humming noises penetrate the surrounding area.

In a joint project with colleagues from Schirmer GmbH, ESM Energie- and Schwingungstechnik Mitsch GmbH and the Dr. Ziegler engineering office, IWU researchers have developed an active damping system for wind turbines. The project is being funded by the Â"Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt".

"These systems react autonomously to any change in frequency and damp the noise - regardless of how fast the wind generator is turning," says Illgen. The key components of this system are piezo actuators. These devices convert electric current into mechanical motion and generate "negative vibrations", or a kind of anti-noise that precisely counteracts the vibrations of the wind turbine and cancels them out.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Great Planet Debate ends in stalemate - space - 15 August 2008 - New Scientist Space

A lively debate over how to define planets failed to forge a common set of criteria on Thursday. Astronomers Neil deGrasse Tyson and Mark Sykes did however agree that the issue is much broader than deciding Pluto's status, with our basic perspective on the solar system in flux.

Pluto was kicked out of the planet club in August 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefined the term planet. Although Pluto met two requirements - it orbits the sun and is massive enough for its gravity to pull it into a round shape - it failed to meet a third stipulation that to be a planet, an object has to have cleared its neighbourhood of other objects.

Pluto's neighbourhood is swarming with other icy objects. In fact, it was the discovery that one of them, the dwarf planet Eris, previously nicknamed Xena, is bigger than Pluto that set astronomers re-examining the planet definition to begin with.

The new IAU definition set off a storm of controversy.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

I do not think that word means what you think it means | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

This should be obvious, but of course you never hear it mentioned in stories about carbon capture and sequestration (CCS): capturing and sequestering carbon requires lots of energy; thus, plants that do it have to burn more coal to create that extra energy; thus, the other pollutants created by mixing, transporting, and burning coal will increase if CCS is widespread.

It follows just based on logic, but if you prefer peer-reviewed scientific studies, here's one for you:

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

How U.S. banks sold home equity loans - International Herald Tribune

"Live Richly." That catchy slogan, dreamed up by the Fallon Worldwide advertising agency, was pitched in 1999 to executives at Citicorp who were looking for a way to lure Americans to financial products like home equity loans. But some in the room did not like it. They worried that the phrase would encourage people to live exorbitantly, says Stephen Cone, a top Citi marketer at the time.

Still, "Live Richly" won out. The advertising campaign, which cost about $1 billion from 2001 to 2006, urged Americans to lighten up about money, and helped persuade hundreds of thousands of Citi customers to take out home equity loans - that is, to borrow against their homes. As one of the ads proclaimed: "There's got to be at least $25,000 hidden in your house. We can help you find it."

Not long ago, such loans, which used to be known as second mortgages, were considered the borrowing of last resort, to be avoided by all but people in dire financial straits. Today, these loans have become widely accepted in the United States, their image transformed by ubiquitous ad campaigns from banks.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Spanish airports hit turbulence in second quarter of 2008; High-Speed Rail taking 30% of MAD-BCN market | anna.aero

The latest data from AENA indicates that the new high-speed rail service between Madrid and Barcelona has reduced air travel demand between the two cities by around 30%. In 2007 the route carried almost five million passengers. This year the figure is likely to fall to around 3.5 million.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

Fran's now away on her travels, so we have a DIY fortnight ahead... Onward!

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Quote of the Month

"The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community; a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.

A good preliminary meeting last night with InWales, Migeru, Nanne, Metatone and myself in a cellar drinking good beer and chomping on piles of food.

Then we were going to one pub, but we passed a spanish bar which we had to enter to satisfy Migeru's curiosity. InWales got to try the local hooch called Becherovka because it was "recommended" to her. I suspect by somebody who doesn't like her given the face she pulled when she drank it. It smelt like Bulgarian rakia, which is equally foul.

keep to the Fen Causeway

CNN have just shown huge storms across Illinois last night that apprently were pretty scary in chicago with lots of trees down and windows blown in and a ridiculous number of lightning strikes.

So poemless, you okay ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

Just an overnight thought.  With the Clintons (Hillary, Bill, even Chelsea) having such a big role in the upcoming Dem convention, Fox Noise should hire ... wait for it ... MONICA LEWINSKI as a "special commentator" on their station for all Clintonesque moments.  I NEVER watch FOX but even I would tune in to watch "the Lewinski Chronicles".  They should hire her some good writes; can't expect her to come up with great material.  Get some of the Daily Show/Colbert folks.  Pay 'em enough, they'll do it.  During the Bill moment, Moanica can be seen in split screen sucking on ... (fill in the blank).  It would be a hoot.

McCain/Palin ... total sacks of SHIT!