Former British PM Gordon Brown has written an article which hopefully will be read and understood also in the Kemlin:
Anna Politkovskaya's death in the first decade of the 21st century is a story that could have been foretold, but a tragedy that should be unthinkable in a free world.
At this stage it is, of course, impossible to know what the consequenses of the damaged Japanese nuclear reactors will be. Hopefully there will be no serious radioactive leaks.
However, one consequence, seems likely: there will probably be no nuclear power renaissance in the world - or at least not in Europe.
A representative for the anti-Gaddafi movement in Libyahas appealed for military action against madman Gaddafi´s superior military force:
Libya's revolutionary leadership has appealed for France and Britain to launch air strikes against an intensive assault by Muammar Gaddafi's forces that has forced the rebel army to retreat towards its eastern stronghold of Benghazi.
The Provisional Transitional National Council said that calls by European leaders for Gaddafi to quit and the threat of more sanctions were not enough as the regime regains its footing after the initial shock of the popular uprising. The revolutionaries fear that the hesitation by most European states and the US to take direct action is providing a breathing space for Gaddafi to continue his attempts to crush the uprising in areas around Tripoli and to move toward Benghazi. "If you don't want to do something, you rely on the diplomatic side. It is not enough when people are dying," said Iman Bugaighis, spokeswoman for the revolutionary council. "We need more than diplomacy. We need a no-fly zone but we need more than that. We need air strikes. I think they know where to bomb if they want to bomb. They know how to intervene. It's urgent."
The sad truth is, however, that neither the EU, US or NATO are prepared to offer anything else than words - at this stage anyway. Only if the Gaddafi mercenaries perpetrate a bloodbath which can be shown on television is it likely that the West will act. But because there are not enough journalists and cameras in large areas of Libyea right now, the Gaddafi mercenaries seem to be able to operate rather freely. In addition, western news media coverage is for the time being dominated by reports from Japan.
There was a time when the US had a leader who was prepared to act:
Gordon C. Chang, the author of the book "The Coming Collaps of China" has written a lengthy, but interesting article for the World Affairs Journal. Chang´s analysis most certainly will add to the nervousnesss of China´s present communist leaders:
As the acceptability of protest grows in China, the popularity of the Chinese government slides. “I don’t know anyone who believes in the party anymore,” one Shanghai resident said to me a few years ago. The strength of the Communist Party has been eroded by widespread disenchantment, occasional crises, continual restructuring, and the enervating effect of the passage of time. Although it is big, it is also corrupt, reviled, and often ineffective. In some parts of the countryside it no longer operates, having been replaced by clans and gangs with loose ties to officials. It’s doubtful the party even commands the loyalty of its own members. Many cadres are opportunistic careerists and many, for good or ill, disregard orders from the center. “Now, no Communist official is loyal to or will sacrifice for the party,” said democracy activist Peng Ming, just after he was released by the regime. “When I was in jail, the prison warden and guards were very respectful to me. Even when I criticized them, they would not criticize me back. Why? They said, ‘This regime will not last long. Who knows you won’t be our next leader? If we mistreat you now, you will come after us when you come to power.’”
People’s intense devotion to their rulers—evident during the eras of Mao and Deng—is noticeably absent from China today. The change in attitude has even affected the People’s Liberation Army, last line of defense for the party. Last July, in an extraordinary incident, junior Chinese officers openly complained about the corruption and failings of their country’s civilian leadership to their Russian counterparts during joint “antiterror” exercises.
If revolution is merely “a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering,” as playwright Tom Stoppard once noted, the silent, slow-motion crisis of legitimacy in China could have real consequences. Anything can happen in a country filled with secret societies, revolutionary cells, private armies, illegal political parties, underground congregations, and clandestine triads. The risk for the regime is that one of these groups will launch an insurrection—some mass incidents already come close to rising to that level—or that some minor incident will trigger a fight that becomes a conflagration.
Under such a scenario, the party could be confronted with another million singing, shouting, chanting souls in Tiananmen Square. Deng Xiaoping preserved the regime last time by employing brute force, but it’s unlikely that a weakened party would have the ability to get away with another slaughter in the future. Ordinary soldiers probably would not kill fellow citizens on behalf of a regime that has lost the love and loyalty of most of its people.
The latest version of the German-French "competitiveness" pact to save the euro, does not seem to convince the Economist´s columnist Charlemagne:
Yet to get this, Mrs Merkel has struck a Faustian bargain with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. He does not care for her economic medicine, but wants a euro-zone “economic government” to restore lost French influence (one senior Eurocrat remarks that France needs Germany to disguise its weakness, and Germany needs France to disguise its strength). But as the pact is made more palatable to others, it may get less appealing to Mrs Merkel. And that may make her even more reluctant to open her purse.
The danger is that the pact may make the crisis worse. In the short term, a less-than-grand bargain could trigger a new bout of market nerves. In the longer term the pact may lead not to competitiveness but to divisiveness. What to do? Mr Tusk and others might end up joining the pact, if only to preserve the single market—Europe’s biggest competitive advantage.
The common mobile phone charger. The EU´s finest hour in 2010?
(official EU image)
As a European citizen I have often been wondering, what the European Union actually has been doing for me recently. Therefore I was positively surprised to find a clear and concise answer to my questions at the official European Union website.
The following text is attached to the EU video "Europe and you":
Have you ever wondered what exactly is that the European Union does for you? If so, this video provides the answer with a brief glimpse at 10 actions that have been put in place over the past year and that will make a real difference in the lives of each and everyone of us.
The first - and probably the most important - point in the "documentary" is:
"Securing a sound economy and stronger financial markets".
That´s really great, I thought. While e.g. the US has had to deal with the consequenses of the financial crisis, at least Brussels last year "secured a sound economy" and even "made the financial markets stronger".
Then I happened to see this article in the Economist:
Real output in the euro zone remains well below the pre-recession peak. Even in Germany, a rapid recovery has left a big GDP hole, and the euro zone ex-Germany has very nearly been moving sideways. A lacklustre output recovery has translated into lagging labour markets. Germany's unemployment rate fell in September, but joblessness for the euro zone as a whole rose, from 10% to 10.1%. The pain is worst in the struggling peripheral economies; in Spain the unemployment rate has risen steadily since April and is now at 20.8%.
At the same time workers are struggling, governments are pushing through painful austerity packages. Some of the countries battered by bond markets began cutting in 2010. But as the chart at right indicates, everyone gets into the game in 2011, and cuts in most countries will intensify. Across the whole of the euro area, cuts worth about 1% of GDP will be pushed through, but the austerity will be focused on the parts of the euro economy that are performing the worst—Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Greece
Well, people make mistakes. In a huge bureaucracy like the EU, video producers might inadvertently have ended up using some not quite fresh material. They would not make things up, would they?
The other really important EU achievement in 2010 was this, according to the EU video:
"creating new jobs"
Great, I thought. At least the EU in 2010 created a lot of new jobs in a crisis-ridden world. Then I went to the official Eurostat website, and found the following information for 2010:
Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in eleven Member States, remained stable in two and increased in fourteen. The largest falls were observed in Estonia (16.1 % to 14.3 % between the fourth quarters of 2009 and 2010), Malta (7.2 % to 6.1 %) and Sweden (8.9 % to 7.9 %). The highest increases were registered in Greece (9.7 % to 12.9 % between the third quarters of 2009 and 2010), Hungary (11.0 % to 12.6 %) and Lithuania (15.9 % to 17.4 % between the fourth quarters of 2009 and 2010). Between January 2010 and January 2011, the unemployment rate for males fell from 9.9 % to 9.8 % in the euro area and from 9.7 % to 9.6 % in the EU-27. The female unemployment rate increased from 10.0 % to 10.1 % in the euro area and from 9.3 % to 9.5 % in the EU-27. In January 2011, the youth unemployment rate (those aged below 25) was 19.9 % in the euro area and 20.6 % in the EU-27. In January 2010 it was 20.2 % and 20.7 % respectively. The lowest rates were observed in the Netherlands (7.8 % ), Austria (8.0 % ) and Germany (8.3 % ), and the highest in Spain (43.1 % ), Slovakia (37.7 % ) and Lithuania (34.4 % in the fourth quarter of 2010).
Not a lot of jobs created: unemployment fell in nine member countries and increased in fourteen.
For me, this was enough. The Brussels gravy train eurocrats seem to be so blinded be their own cosy and luxurious world, that they think ordinary people are prepared to accept any dishonest "facts" they try to peddle.
Maybe that the "common charger" for mobile phones - one of the points in the video - actually was the single most important EU achievement last year? (I don´t know, and I don´t care, since I am able to charge my old Nokia quite well with the original charger. And by the way, has anybody seen the beautiful new eurocharger after the PR-picture was taken?)
I know that the EU "achievments" video must have been discussed at a great number of lengthy eurocrat "working group" meetings in Brussels. The representatives of all the different "DG´s" were asked to contribute "achievements" that would be popular among ordinary Europeans. Finally an "über" working group chose the most appealing proposals to be included in the video. The video is certainly considered to be an important part of the EU´s campaign to "reach out". After all the arduous work, one can only wonder, why the final product is less than impressive. Could it be, that there actually is not very much to boast with in addition to the common charger?
