Dictators and authoritarian regimes are desperately trying to prevent access to the internet. Fortunately, it is not very difficult to circumvent politically motivated internet shutdowns, reports The Economist:
WITH a tin can, some copper wire and a few dollars’ worth of nuts, bolts and other hardware, a do-it-yourselfer can build a makeshift directional antenna. A mobile phone, souped-up with such an antenna, can talk to a network tower that is dozens of kilometres beyond its normal range (about 5km, or 3 miles). As Gregory Rehm, the author of an online assembly guide for such things, puts it, homemade antennae are “as cool as the other side of the pillow on a hot night”. Of late, however, such antennae have proved much more than simply cool.
According to Jeff Moss, a communications adviser to America’s Department of Homeland Security, their existence has recently been valuable to the operation of several groups of revolutionaries in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. To get round government shutdowns of internet and mobile-phone networks, resourceful dissidents have used such makeshift antennae to link their computers and handsets to more orthodox transmission equipment in neighbouring countries.
The pro-EUEUobserver is trying to give the false impression that the coalition against Gaddafi is "EU-led":
EU-led coalition strikes first Gaddafi target "A French jet fired on one of Colonel Gaddafi's tanks at 18.45 Libyan time on Saturday (19 March) in the first strike by an EU-US-Arab coalition put together to protect Libyan civilians."
It is true that there are 10 EU countries in the "alliance" - including even Germany, which did not support the UN Security Council resolution! - but in no way is it "EU-led".
Here is some background to the Paris summit on Saturday:
The original invitation from the French and British leaders snubbed Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, after Berlin stunned other Western powers by siding with Russian and China during the UN Security Council vote on Thursday night.
Last week at a summit in Brussels, Germany had refused to heed calls from the Prime Minister and French President for EU backing for a no-fly zone, delaying the measure until the United States swung behind Britain and France on Thursday.
President Sarkozy extended his initial Friday morning invitation to Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Qatar, the Arab League, UN and African Union, only passing the invitation to the EU via Herman Van Rompuy during telephone calls that pointedly neglected Baroness Ashton, Europe's foreign minister.
In desperate bid to avoid being completely pushed out of the new Anglo-French military alliance, Chancellor Merkel was forced to pledge extra German military support in Afghanistan to free up Nato aerial surveillance forces for operations in Libya before inviting herself.
EU "president" Herman Van Rompuy and "foreign minister", Baroness Ashton - both unelected - were allowed to participate in the Paris summit, but it is quite clear that their presence was in essence symbolic - they certainly did not have any common EU position on the no-fly zone operations to convey to the other participants. Maybe the duo was there to project the famous EU "soft power"? Or maybe Van Rompuy, also known as Haiku Herman, read his latest haiku: Winter fades away Spring not yet alive A time in between.
However, Van Rompuy´s PR-department is to be congratulated for the quickness in letting us share his and the Baroness´s arrival - and even the "president´s" departure - on YouTube:
Angel Merkel is now participating in the international Libya no-fly zone meeting in Paris trying to look like a serious international actor. But Der Spiegel gives us the true picture:
When it came down to the crunch, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle decided that Germany should side with China and Russia. Together, the three members of the United Nations Security Council abstained from Thursday's vote on a resolution to impose a no-fly zone on Libya. It is a curious political development, to say the least.
The trio makes for strange bedfellows. There is Germany, a democracy which puts great store in the rule of law and human rights, siding with a communist, one-party dictatorship and a country with a dubious track record on political freedoms. On the other side are Germany's traditional allies -- the United States, France and Britain -- not to mention parts of the Arab and African world. Lebanon had been one of the countries presenting the resolution, which was backed by the Arab League. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have already said they would take part in a military operation, according to UN diplomats. And despite the Libyan regime's move on Friday afternoon to declare a cease-fire -- at least for now -- and inviting international observers into the country, Berlin's move could have lasting repercussions. Although Berlin has not blocked military action by abstaining, the German government has marginalized itself. It is effectively telling its allies: You will have to deal with this one alone -- we're not going to help you.
Reuters: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces pushed into the rebel-held city of Benghazi on Saturday, defying world demands for an immediate ceasefire and forcing rebels to retreat.Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces pushed into the rebel-held city of Benghazi on Saturday, defying world demands for an immediate ceasefire and forcing rebels to retreat.
Where are the jet fighters that were supposed to prevent madman Gaddafi from doing this? It is extremely disappointing that the international community will have to wait for a meeting in Paris before taking action!
Vikram Mansharamani, equity investor and Yale lecturer, is convinced that there is a big bubble waiting to burst in China:
"China is exhibiting all the signs you would expect from an unsustainable boom." He first points to the housing market, where investment hit the inauspicious market of 6% of GDP -- the same mark the U.S. hit in 2006 as the bubble was bursting. What's more, outstanding loans for developers and residential mortgages in China have increased by a factor of FIVE in the last decade. Loan balances have nearly doubled in the last three years alone.
Even worse, Mansharamani says, the Chinese government has spent lavishly to create demand that never materialized. He points to ghost towns like Qungbashi, in Inner Mongolia, a city designed for 1.5 million residents, but drew only 20,000 -- hardly one percent. He points to the New South China Mall, not far from Guangzhou, which was built to handle 1,500 tenants. Instead, it houses a few dozen -- hardly one percent. This sort of one-percent success rate creates ludicrous overcapacity that is eerily reminiscent of the empty homes and strip malls lining recession ghost exurbs in Arizona and Nevada. Mansharamani sees it as the prelude to a dramatic slowdown in government spending on buildings and infrastructure.
--- If China slows down even to 5% growth a year, that will take a booming commodities market down with it.
THE NEXT FEW MONTHS
In the short term, Mansharamani told me in a follow-up interview, the commodities story could hold together longer thanks to new demand out of Japan to rebuild after the quake and tsunami. If a spending binge in Japan increases real demand for metals, it could justify ongoing speculation in metals prices.
But like a balloon batted in the air one last time, this might serve to only make the fall more dramatic, Mansharamani says. "This will temporarily hide the unsustainability of the Chinese investment boom," he wrote to me in an email. "It will embolden mining companies to expand more rapidly. This will likely make the eventual correction more extreme than if the excesses were revealed today."
Read the entire article here.
A Belgian court has handed down a one-month suspended jail sentence + fines of €1,100 to ten Greepeace activists who staged a protest during an EU summit in 2009. Eleven activists were charged with using fake IDs, but one of them was cleared, as he held a valid press card. The sentenced activists were able to join an official motorcade and use the VIP entrance before they were seized by security forces.
Another eleven Greenpeace activists are also facing a similar trial in Denmark for a protest they staged at a banquet hosted by the Danish queen during the Copenhagen climate summit. After dressing up as gala guests and suddenly displaying banners with "Politicians talk. Leaders act", four of them were arrested and held for 20 days.
Earlier this month, the Danish public prosecutor charged them with trespassing, falsification of documents, impersonating a public official and offences committed against the Danish queen.
In another precedent in Belgium, the green NGO faced organised crime charges after a series of protests against the local power giant Electrabel. Of the seven pending criminal investigations, six were dismissed. Japanese and US courts have also given Greenpeace activists suspended jail sentences on similar grounds.
It is about time that courts start getting tougher on Greenpeace activists. In many countries they have been allowed to break laws without having to face the consequences like other people.
Ashot Yegiazaryan, who has served as deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party in the State Duma since 1999, describes the absence of rule of law in Russia in an article in the Moscow Times:
Perverting the judicial system to abuse private property rights is, of course, not uncommon in countries with weak rule of law. But in Russia, it has been raised to an art form through a heavily centralized political system and a fusion of business and state interests clouded within an opaque environment. The loss of a distinction between personal interests and state interests at such a high level makes corporate raiding more efficient and devastating. In a seminal 2008 article, “Criminal Corporate Raiding in Russia,” Thomas Firestone, legal adviser for the U.S. Justice Department at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, writes that Russia’s raiding relies on “criminal methods such as fraud, blackmail, obstruction of justice and actual and threatened physical violence.” He notes that the raiders “rely on court orders, resolutions of shareholders and boards of directors, lawsuits, bankruptcy proceedings and other ostensibly ‘legal’ means as a cover for their criminal activity.” Firestone defines the typical corporate raid in Russia:
the acquisition by the raiding company of a substantial portion of the target company’s debts;
the corrupt acquisition of control over the target company by falsifying internal corporate documents;
the filing of civil suits and “contracted” criminal cases against the target company;
the use of siloviki, including the police, private security forces, court bailiffs and hired thugs;
the transfer of illegally seized assets to a “good faith purchaser”’ using shell companies;
“black PR” involving the distribution of false information about the target through the media.
These tools will be sharpened and applied with greater vigor if the target tries to resist. After I started to fight back against the scheme to steal my assets, the authorities opened a criminal case against me, heightened physical threats against me and my family and initiated a vicious PR campaign branding me as a criminal. It is a tragedy that Russia has created a business environment that is so open to abuse, one that has ruined the country’s investment climate. This model of government-organized crimeis doomed, and the efforts to modernize Russia are a sham used to mask the status quo of rampant state corruption. To create a genuine basis for development, Russia urgently needs to separate business from executive power.
It is becoming more and more evident that corruption and the lack of rule of law is keeping international investors away from Russia:
Ikea, the world’s biggest home-furnishings retailer, is just the type of investor Russia needs — and isn’t getting — to overcome the lowest foreign investment rate among leading emerging-market economies. The Swedish company says it won’t build more stores outside the Moscow region until local officials stop withholding permission for two outlets in the central cities of Samara and Ufa. After investing $4bn in Russia over 10 years, Ikea placed a freeze on expansion in June 2009.
The reason the stores aren’t opening is that Ikea is refusing to pay bribes to safety inspectors, said Kirill Kabanov, head of the non-governmental National Anti-Corruption Committee in Moscow. “We have a zero tolerance on corruption and we have a very clear policy, and then things must take the time they take,” Ikea Russia Managing Director Per Wendschlag said in an interview. He said he had no specific complaint on the delay in permits in the two cities.
At stake is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s goal, expressed in a January 26 interview with Bloomberg Television, to match the economic growth rates of other BRIC nations. With barely more than one-tenth the population of China and India, Russia needs to attract non-energy investors to grow and diversify. Corruption has “penetrated all branches of power,” Medvedev said in the interview.
The president’s credibility as a graft-busting former lawyer working to improve the business environment was tarnished in December when a Moscow court handed a new jail sentence to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos Oil billionaire, said James Beadle, a Britain-based consultant for investors in Russia. Lack of progress risks harming Medvedev’s prospects a year ahead of presidential elections.
Foreign companies have repeatedly faced difficulties in Russia. Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, in 2006 ceded control to state-run OAO Gazprom of its biggest project in the country, the $22bn Sakhalin-2 oil and gas development, amid threats by regulators to revoke the permits on environmental grounds. Russian health officials last year warned Nestle, the world’s largest food company, that it was violating safety rules at its Russian plants. A spokesman confirmed the warning last month. It was a move to favor local rivals or extort money, according to the anti-corruption committee’s Kabanov.
Kristiina Ojuland, Member of the European Parliament and foreign minister of Estonia from 2002 through 2005., has been very outspoken about the lack of human rights, rule of law and corruption in Russia. However, due to its energy dependence, the European Union has regrettably not been in the forefront in the fight against the rotten Russian system:
