Russia Continues Criticism of Missile Shield During Poland Talks | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 11.09.2008

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Polish counterpart Radek Sikorski in Warsaw Thursday, Sept. 11 for "confidence building" talks in the light of tensions over issues including the planned US missile shield.

During the talks, Lavrov said Russia did not see a threat from Poland, but simply could not ignore a US anti-missile system - to be hosted in Poland and the Czech Republic - so close to its borders.

Russia believed the anti-missile shield to be an "integral part" of a planned US system throughout the globe and in space, Lavrov said.

"The US is currently working on a global lightning strike project," against which numerous countries and several EU nations have spoken out, he said.

For his part, Sikorski said the meeting helped him "better understand" the Russian stance.

EADS Distressed by Pentagon's Contract About-Face | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 11.09.2008

The European aerospace concern EADS said it was disappointed at the US decision to cancel a competition to build the next generation of Air Force tanker refuellers.

EADS had initially won the $35-billion (25 billion euro) contract in partnership with US aviation concern Northrop-Grumman -- only to see it put on ice after a congressional oversight agency upheld a protest by rival bidder Boeing.

"We have a contract and we are striving for an appropriate fulfilment of this contract, EADS chief Louis Gallois said. "We believe that the KC-45 is the best tanker for the US military and we stand behind our partner Northrop-Grumman," he said.

EU condemns OPEC oil production cut - EUobserver

A surprise decision by OPEC, the group of major oil-exporting countries, to lower its oil production by 520,000 barrels a day has sparked criticism from the EU and the US.

EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs said that OPEC's decision to cut back supplies - the first such cut since December 2006 - increases volatility and is bad for the market. Speaking to reporters in Abuja, Nigeria, on Wednesday (10 September) he suggested leaving the price determination to market forces.

Commissioner Piebalgs said oil prices should be left up to the market to decide

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also described the move as "counterproductive and unhelpful, raising concerns over the impact the move will have on growth and inflation.

"We are concerned about the potential of oil prices to remain at very high levels. At $100, the price of oil remains very high," David Fyfe, the head of the IEA's oil industry and markets division, was cited as saying by the Financial Times.

Poland sets out plan to join euro by 2011 - EUobserver

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has confirmed he is planning to lead his country into the eurozone by 2011, with a view to follow Slovakia as the second and largest central European country to join the single currency bloc. He admitted that meeting entry criteria will be "difficult," however.

Speaking at the launch of an economic forum in a Polish resort of Krynica on Wednesday (10 September), Mr Tusk said: "Today I can confirm that our goal [for switching to the euro] is 2011. It is a tough task, but we believe it is possible," the PAP agency reported.

Poland is ready to apply for euro membership, Donald Tusk says

Up to now, Warsaw has avoided the question of a concrete timetable for entry into the monetary union, which Poland is obliged to do when ready under its EU accession treaty, just as with all the other new member countries.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski sparked concerns in Brussels quarters in 2006 when he openly expressed his distaste for the euro and hinted that Warsaw could hold a popular vote ahead of abandoning its national currency, the zloty, in 2010, close to the end of his presidency.

Combating Climate Change: EU Committee Votes to Cut Biofuels Goal - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

A committee of the European Parliament has voted to cut the EU's target for using traditional biofuels for road transport by 2020. The move has been welcomed by environmental and aid groups concerned that the growth in biofuels has been boosting food prices and causing deforestation.

 A worker in Guatemala cuts sugar cane to make biofuel. They had been hailed as the answer to the world's climate change problem but enthusiasm for biofuels has waned in recent months.

Now the European Union seems to be backing away from its ambitious targets to use crop-based biofuels for 10 percent of transport needs by 2020.

An important panel of European Union lawmakers voted on Thursday to reduce the EU's target for using traditional crop-based biofuels following criticism from environmental groups that biofuels from grains and oil seeds lead to rising food prices and deforestation.

Cyprus in 'fruitful' power-sharing talks | The Australian

NICOSIA: Rival Cypriot leaders began talks yesterday on how they would share power in a future unified state, their first substantive negotiations in a bid to end the Mediterranean island's 34-year division.

Cypriot President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat discussed power-sharing and governance during what UN envoy Alexander Downer described as "productive and fruitful talks".

The four-hour meeting at Nicosia's abandoned airport in the UN-patrolled buffer zone followed the launch last week of official negotiations that are seen as the best chance of peace

for years, despite entrenched differences.

"We began negotiations on the substance of governance and power-sharing.

"The talks have been productive and ... fruitful," Mr Downer said, adding that the leaders would meet again on September 18.

"There are no particular timelines agreed, but the two leaders are doing what they can to push the process ahead at the appropriate speed.

"There's a long way to go."

[Murdoch Alert]

German Leadership Enjoys Fairly High Approval Globally

Suggests Germany could play major role managing Russian-West relations

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Results from Gallup Polls conducted in 141 countries, including European Union (EU) member countries, G8 members, and former Soviet states, suggest that Germany may be poised to be a major player in mending relations between Russia and the West after Moscow's recent clash with Georgia over South Ossetia. Among residents of five of the G8 countries, which include Russia, Germany's leadership is viewed more favorably than the leaderships of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Ukraine PM quizzed over poisoning

Ukraine's prime minister is being questioned as a witness by prosecutors investigating the unsolved poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004.

The suspected dioxin poisoning - in the run-up to the presidential election - made Mr Yushchenko seriously ill, and left his face disfigured.

PM Yulia Tymoshenko said it was a shame his health had become politicised.

She hinted her summons was political manoeuvring before the 2010 elections, when she may run for the presidency.

Spanish town still haunted by its brush with Armageddon - International Herald Tribune

PALOMARES, Spain: The rest of the world has mostly forgotten, but the brush with nuclear Armageddon is seared on the minds of locals here and still niggles, 42 years later.

On the morning of Jan. 11, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine Cold War alert mission exploded during airborne refueling, sending its cargo of B28 hydrogen bombs plummeting toward earth. One went into the azure waters of the Mediterranean and three others fell around this poor farming village, about 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, east of Granada.

Seven crew members on the air force planes perished in the fireball, while four parachuted to safety. No one on the ground was killed. The nuclear warheads, many times more powerful than those that fell on Hiroshima, did not go off -  exactly.

Parachutes failed to deploy on two of the bombs, resulting in high-explosive detonations that, although non-nuclear, spread radioactive material across a wide area of steep and rugged terrain.

Italian law would make street prostitution a crime - International Herald Tribune

ROME: The Italian Cabinet approved a measure Thursday to outlaw street prostitution in an effort to dismantle prostitution rackets.

Currently, prostitution is legal in Italy although the exploitation of prostitutes is a crime. Brothels were outlawed 50 years ago, pushing prostitutes onto the streets and making a common site of skimpily clad women on the edges of Italy's major cities.

Many of them are minors, and many are foreign victims of human trafficking.

The bill approved Thursday by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Cabinet, would outlaw prostitution in public places, like streets and parks. It includes no ban on prostitutes operating behind closed doors.

Germany to Provide One-fifth of Georgia Observers, Merkel Says | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 11.09.2008

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday Germany is ready to provide about 40 of the 200-odd EU observers to be deployed in Georgia under a new EU-brokered peace plan.

"Germany will not shirk its responsibilities in the Caucasus conflict," Merkel's office said, summarizing remarks she made late  Wednesday at an awards ceremony held by a publishing house.

"About one-fifth of the EU observers in Georgia are to come from Germany," the statement added.

Merkel said the exact division of labor between the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), with their parallel observer missions in Georgia still had to be determined.

Ministers Call for Arctic Initiative to Fight Climate Change | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 11.09.2008

International delegates ended three days of meetings in Greenland on the Arctic region's importance in forecasting global climate change. They called for the harmonizing of international Arctic policies.

The conference aimed to increase awareness of how European Union policy affect conditions in the Arctic and around the rest of the world, according to Halldor Asgrimsson, Secretary-General of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Scientists have said the Arctic climate is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet.

Laurent Stefanini, one of the European Union's representatives to the meeting of Nordic countries and nations that border the Arctic Ocean, called climate change is one of the top priorities of the French EU presidency."

THE WINDS OF THE RIGHT OVER EUROPE

But how did it happen that the left-wing parties which for over a century fashioned social Europe have now lost out to the neo-liberal Center Right? And what about the European Social Idea? One answer is the sad reality that human beings maybe are conservative. People want to be led, led well and honestly, but led by the hand. In general, people just want to be "happy." As a rule the Right is adept at making illogical impossible promises of happiness and creating the sense of false consciousness of happiness. People need and want to hear those promises, as unlikely as they may be, of good times to come.

Europe is again rich. And as a result daily life is more and more "bourgeois." For the conservative majority, red flags and the hammer and sickle mean bloodshed, uncertainty and disorder. Some members of the European Parliament recently went so far as to propose a ban on the hammer and sickle symbol. Bourgeois values have never left much space for leftist ideas.

Once creative and innovative, in 1789 the maker of revolutions, the European bourgeoisie is today-consistent with its natural social dynamics-largely Right. Especially in Italy and France. We don't forget that the European bourgeoisie permitted Fascism and Nazism, created it in fact, in order to preserve its social rule, private property and the capitalist system threatened by the Revolution that Western Socialists were never able to pull off. To many, Fascism was merely an annoyance that saved the bourgeois system. In fact Fascism tempted the bourgeoisie in all of Europe. In that sense, the European bourgeoisie continues to believe--in its overwhelming self-serving false consciousness, as moneyed elites tend to think everywhere--that the government exists for it and for its interests. In today's European showcase, bourgeois Liberals, who across Europe as a rule vote Right, are Power's ally and stand in the way of genuine social progress and effective redistribution of wealth.

people just want to be happy...that implies they don't want to worry about politics, they'd rather have big daddy take care of that so they can get on with the real business of living.

the price of that is creeping authoritarianism, again, as we become 'good europeans', unless more people want to responsibilise themselves.

i sense the energy issue is the one to unite people in common sense, which will ultimately transcend L/R politics, taking much of the polemic toxicity out, hopefully.

there is no effective left in europe, the right have successfully neutered it, and people will vote in big daddy over and over, until they /we realise big daddy is in bed with the sluts who would rather continue polluting our way to oblivion, (and the left, such as it is, is pretty squelched by tradmed narratives and agendas).

to resurrect lefty politics may be pointless, the best we can hope for is responsible technocracy that reins in the more rabid, predatory neo-libs, but without banners or ideology, just simple common sense.

 idly musing...

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

Russia and Turkey tango in the Black Sea - Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News and current affairs, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan

Amid the flurry of diplomatic activity in Moscow last week over the Caucasus, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took time off for an exceptionally important mission to Turkey, which might prove a turning point in the security and stability of the vast region that the two powers historically shared.

Indeed, Russian diplomacy is swiftly moving even as the troops have begun returning from Georgia to their barracks. Moscow is weaving a complicated new web of regional alliances, drawing deeply into Russia's collective historical memory as a power in the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht would have marveled at Lavrov's diary, heavily marked with "Caucasian chalk circles" through last week, with intertwining plots and sub-plots - an Extraordinary European Council Meeting taking place in Brussels; a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Moscow; three foreign counterparts to be hosted in Moscow - Karl de Gucht of Belgium, Franco Frattini from Italy and Azerbaijan's Elmar Mamedyarov; visits by the presidents of the newly independent republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and consultations with the visiting United Nations secretary general's special representative for Georgia, Johan Verbeke.

Yet, Moscow signaled the highest importance to consultations with Turkey. Lavrov summarily dropped all business at home and hurried to Istanbul on Tuesday on a working visit, essentially aimed at catching a few hours' urgent confidential conversation with his counterpart, Ali Babacan. Lavrov's mission underscored Russia's acute sense of its priorities in the current regional crisis in the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

Norbert Pflüger was the federal CDU's foreign policy expert promoted by Merkel. He is THE top Atlanticist ideologue of the party. But later he drifted out of sight, and was then paracuted upon the Berlin CDU. But the locals didn't like him at all, and now fired him as faction leader. However, the federal CDU wasn't amused, and grabbed the locals by their balls. Pflüger is likely to be further parachuted into the EU as MEP.

With some more background details I think this is prime diary material, but I won't have the time with other commitments - anyone else willing (nanne, Martin)?

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Vladimir Putin: 'Georgia? We couldn't just let Russia get a bloody nose' - Europe, World - The Independent

In a blunt three-hour interview over lunch, Vladimir Putin turned the air blue and denied claims he is building a new Soviet empire as he defended his 'embattled and encircled' country

Whether prime Minister or President, the man holding forth across the vast dining table was unmistakably Vladimir Putin. Wagging his finger and occasionally clenching his fist, the man who many believe retains the real power in Russia denied that the world was entering a new Cold War, rejected claims that he wanted to restore the Soviet empire and insisted that a fresh arms race in Europe was avoidable.

His immediate concern, he made clear, was to defend his country's much-criticised action in Georgia. He stressed that Russia had no choice. "They attacked South Ossetia with missiles, tanks, heavy artillery and ground troops. What were we supposed to do?"

If his country had not invaded, he said, it would have been like Russia "getting a bloody nose and hanging its head down", and there would be a "second blow" into the north Caucasus.

Energy giants clash with Brown over costs of saving fuel - UK Politics, UK - The Independent

Gordon Brown's £1bn package to help people cut soaring fuel bills ran into immediate controversy yesterday after electricity companies refused to rule out passing on the cost of the scheme to customers.

Under the plans, power companies will be required to fund a big programme of energy efficiency measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation which the Government said could cut home energy bills by £300 a year. But suppliers pointedly refused to guarantee that the cost would not fall on the consumer.

Ministers faced further criticism because they could not say how many people would be helped this winter under the three-year programme.

Somebody put together a spoof Repubblica front page for yesterday.

Some headlines:

• La fine del mondo tra 24 ore L'Universo sarà risucchiato dal buco nero del CERN

• Bush: Svizzera stato canaglia nascondeva armi di distruzione di massa

• Benedetto XVI: "Una scienza senza Dio ci ha portati alla catastrofe"

• Berlusoni: "E un complotto comunista contro i successi del governo"

• George Clooney rivela: Sono gay. Outing in extremis sul lago di Como

• La fuga sull'autostrada. Esodo verso Losanna. Ma dove pensano di andare.

• E tutto per un bosone. Almeno l'avessero trovato!

• Veltroni: Siamo dalla parte della scienza ma anche contro gli effetti imprevisti

and many more...

Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON -- President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials. Skip to next paragraph Related Pakistan's Military Chief Criticizes U.S. Over a Raid (September 11, 2008)

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants' increasingly secure base in Pakistan's tribal areas.

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

"The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable," said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. "We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued."

Seven Years after 9/11: How Dangerous Is Al-Qaida? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

After seven years, and a much-trumpeted war against terrorism, the organization that toppled the World Trade Center has not been defeated. SPIEGEL ONLINE talks to seven experts about how much of a threat al-Qaida still poses.

September 11, 2001. But where is al-Qaida now? Most people in the world can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the planes terrorists flew into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. This Thursday marks the seventh anniversary of the disaster, and since then a global "war on terror" has been waged -- but not won.

With NATO support, the US has toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and established a new government, but not stabilized the country. A second war was started in Iraq with 9/11 as a justification -- but on false premises, as most of the world knows now and many people already understood in 2003.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | No victory in Iraq, says Petraeus

The outgoing commander of US troops in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has said that he will never declare victory there.

In a BBC interview, Gen Petraeus said that recent security gains were "not irreversible" and that the US still faced a "long struggle".

When asked if US troops could withdraw from Iraqi cities by the middle of next year, he said that would be "doable".

In his next job leading the US Central Command, Gen Petraeus will also oversee operations in Afghanistan.

that is the only hope.

ABC News: Sarah Palin Defends Experience, Takes Hard Line Approach on National Security

The governor advocated for the admittance of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.

When Gibson said if under the NATO treaty, the United States would have to go to war if Russia again invaded Georgia, Palin responded: "Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

"And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable," she told Gibson.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

China Tells Businesses to Unionize - NYTimes.com

Some of the world's biggest corporations are facing intense pressure from China to allow the state-approved union to form in their Chinese plants and offices. But many companies fear admitting the unions will give their Chinese employees the power to slow or disrupt their operations and will significantly increase the cost of doing business here.

The companies, many of which moved to China to lower manufacturing costs and some to avoid unions in their home countries as well, are now being asked to meet a Sept. 30 deadline to make their offices and factories union shops.

Companies that do not comply risk being publicly vilified or blacklisted by the union, and perhaps penalized by the government, since businesses are required by law to allow unions to form.

<...>

Up until now, though, the state-controlled union has done little to agitate on behalf of workers, legal experts say, and has often done more to control workers than to benefit them. The union's reputation for allowing abuses to exists has led some to doubt whether it can properly represent workers.

But the union, which says it already has 200 million members, is promising to truly represent workers, and is gaining standing with Communist Party leaders.

In 2004, the National People's Congress, the state legislative body, carried out inspections of companies operating in China to ensure that they were following labor laws and had dues-paying union members. Union officials, using increasingly bold tactics, have zeroed in on the China operations of the 500 biggest global corporations, which would mean millions of new union members. The union says it intends to combat worker exploitation.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Washington expels Bolivian envoy

The US says it is expelling Bolivia's envoy in Washington, a day after the US ambassador was told to leave Bolivia.

The US move comes after Bolivian President Evo Morales blamed the US envoy for inciting protesters in Bolivia - a claim denied by Washington.

And Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez now says he will expel the US envoy in Caracas, in solidarity with Mr Morales.

In Bolivia, at least eight people were killed in clashes between pro- and anti-government groups on Thursday.

The fighting between rival supporters took place in the remote northern province of Pando, officials said. At least 20 people were injured.

Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke Welcome You to the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America)

Nouriel Roubini | Sep 9, 2008

The now inevitable nationalization of Fannie and Freddie is the most radical regime change in global economic and financial affairs in decades. For the last twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the economic reforms in China and other emerging market economies the world economy has moved away from state ownership of the economy and towards privatization of previously stated owned enterprises. This trend was aggressively supported the United States that preached right and left the benefits of free markets and free private enterprise.

Today instead the US has performed the greatest nationalization in the history of humanity. By nationalizing Fannie and Freddie the US has increased its public assets by almost $6 trillion and has increased its public debt/liabilities by another $6 trillion. The US has also turned itself into the largest government-owned hedge fund in the world: by injecting a likely $200 billion of capital into Fannie and Freddie and taking on almost $6 trillion of liabilities of such GSEs the US has also undertaken the biggest and most levered LBO ("leveraged buy-out") in human history that has a debt to equity ratio of 30 ($6,000 billion of debt against $200 billion of equity).

So now Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke (as originally nicknamed by Willem Buiter) have now turned the USA into the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America). Socialism is indeed alive and well in America; but this is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street. A socialism where profits are privatized and losses are socialized with the US tax-payer being charged the bill of $300 billion.

This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed - untempered by fear of loss or of punishment - leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Hillary may be a more qualified VP than me, Biden admits - Americas, World - The Independent

It was a gift that the McCain campaign could not resist pouncing on. Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, admitted in an unguarded moment that Hillary Clinton may be more qualified to be vice-president than he is.

Mr Biden was probably acknowledging what many Democrats privately believe to be true. Some of the party's most experienced operatives are now fearful that the Republicans are controlling the election.

"Let's get that straight," Mr Biden said, while campaigning in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. "[Hillary's] a truly close personal friend; she is qualified to be president of the United States of America. She's easily qualified to be vice-president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me, but she is first-rate."