The International observers are in no doubt:
International observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said there were "serious problems" with the election, which meant that the result was "never in doubt". Independent Russian election monitors said there were widespread violations including ballot stuffing and "carousel voting" - packing vans with voters and bussing them to several polling sites to cast numerous votes.
However, this is how the Putin regime describes the election and the European observers:
The controversial head of Russia's Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, accused the international observers of being spies. He also said the election was the world's most honest.
Read the entire article here
Remember, Putin´s Russia is the European Union´s strategic partner and Obama´s "reset" partner!
Monday, 5 March 2012
The EU´s "Fiscal Treaty" is dead
The Spanish Rebellion has begun, according to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:
As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission and the European Council (hijacked by Merkozy).
Taking what he called a "sovereign decision", he simply announced that he intends to ignore the EU deficit target of 4.4pc of GDP for this year, setting his own target of 5.8pc instead (down from 8.5pc in 2011).
In the twenty years or so that I have been following EU affairs closely, I cannot remember such a bold and open act of defiance by any state. Usually such matters are fudged. Countries stretch the line, but do not actually cross it.
With condign symbolism, Mr Rajoy dropped his bombshell in Brussels after the EU summit, without first notifying the commission or fellow EU leaders. Indeed, he seemed to relish the fact that he was tearing up the rule book and disavowing the whole EU machinery of budgetary control.
He is surely right to seize the initiative. Spain’s economy will contract by 1.7pc this year under his modified plans and unemployment will reach 24pc (or 29pc under the 1990s method of counting). To compound this with manic fiscal tightening – and no offsetting devaluation – is intellectually indefensible.
There comes a point when a democracy can no longer sacrifice its citizens to please reactionary ideologues determined to impose 1930s scorched-earth policies. Ya basta.
Frau Merkel and the commissars in Brussels must be furious. Mr. Rajoy´s action means that the much hyped "fiscal treaty" is - what it has been from the beginning - just a worthless piece of paper.
Here is the first reaction from Bussels:
Altafaj said Rehn already asked Spain for "clarity" on the figures during talks among eurozone finance ministers last Thursday and is still waiting.
"It's clear we need these hard figures, validated, in order to do a full assessment," he said.
As a eurozone state, Spain risks a cash fine worth between 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent of GDP depending on the severity of the circumstances under new laws meant to tighten budgetary discipline that came into force at the start of the year.
"Once we have clarity," Altafaj said of the detailed figures and analysis wanted in Brussels, "we will do our analysis and make our recommendations.
To think that Spain would pay that kind of a "cash fine" is, of course, a joke.
As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission and the European Council (hijacked by Merkozy).
Taking what he called a "sovereign decision", he simply announced that he intends to ignore the EU deficit target of 4.4pc of GDP for this year, setting his own target of 5.8pc instead (down from 8.5pc in 2011).
In the twenty years or so that I have been following EU affairs closely, I cannot remember such a bold and open act of defiance by any state. Usually such matters are fudged. Countries stretch the line, but do not actually cross it.
With condign symbolism, Mr Rajoy dropped his bombshell in Brussels after the EU summit, without first notifying the commission or fellow EU leaders. Indeed, he seemed to relish the fact that he was tearing up the rule book and disavowing the whole EU machinery of budgetary control.
He is surely right to seize the initiative. Spain’s economy will contract by 1.7pc this year under his modified plans and unemployment will reach 24pc (or 29pc under the 1990s method of counting). To compound this with manic fiscal tightening – and no offsetting devaluation – is intellectually indefensible.
There comes a point when a democracy can no longer sacrifice its citizens to please reactionary ideologues determined to impose 1930s scorched-earth policies. Ya basta.
Frau Merkel and the commissars in Brussels must be furious. Mr. Rajoy´s action means that the much hyped "fiscal treaty" is - what it has been from the beginning - just a worthless piece of paper.
Here is the first reaction from Bussels:
Altafaj said Rehn already asked Spain for "clarity" on the figures during talks among eurozone finance ministers last Thursday and is still waiting.
"It's clear we need these hard figures, validated, in order to do a full assessment," he said.
As a eurozone state, Spain risks a cash fine worth between 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent of GDP depending on the severity of the circumstances under new laws meant to tighten budgetary discipline that came into force at the start of the year.
"Once we have clarity," Altafaj said of the detailed figures and analysis wanted in Brussels, "we will do our analysis and make our recommendations.
To think that Spain would pay that kind of a "cash fine" is, of course, a joke.
The Putin regime tries to appease the opposition
“Nothing has changed. You cannot call what just happened elections.”
Alexei Navalny
Vladimir Putin, the "winner" of Russia´s presidential "election" is desperately trying to appease the growing number of critics against his criminal rule; Today he authorized the current puppet president Medvedev to ask the prosecuter general to study the legality of the criminal cases against the jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia´s most wellknown political prisoner.
With Putin and the opposition on collision course, the Kremlin issued a statement that could be intended to take the sting out of the protests which began over alleged fraud in a parliamentary poll on December 4 and increasingly target Putin.
Medvedev, who will stay in office until early May and is expected to swap jobs with Putin, told the prosecutor general to study the legality of 32 criminal cases including the jailing of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Khodorkovsky, who headed what was Russia’s biggest oil company, Yukos, and was once the country’s richest man, was arrested in 2003 and jailed on tax evasion and fraud charges after showing political ambitions and falling out with Putin.
The Kremlin said Medvedev had also told the justice minister to explain why Russia had refused to register a liberal opposition group, PARNAS, which has been barred from elections.
The order followed a meeting last month at which opposition leaders handed Medvedev a list of people they regard as political prisoners and called for political reforms.
Medvedev’s initiatives “have only one goal: To at least somehow lower the scale of dismay and protest that continues to surge in society,” Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Zyuganov is of course right. And one thing is certain: The growing opposition against the Putin regime will not take the puppet president´s initiatives seriously.
Alexei Navalny
Vladimir Putin, the "winner" of Russia´s presidential "election" is desperately trying to appease the growing number of critics against his criminal rule; Today he authorized the current puppet president Medvedev to ask the prosecuter general to study the legality of the criminal cases against the jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia´s most wellknown political prisoner.
With Putin and the opposition on collision course, the Kremlin issued a statement that could be intended to take the sting out of the protests which began over alleged fraud in a parliamentary poll on December 4 and increasingly target Putin.
Medvedev, who will stay in office until early May and is expected to swap jobs with Putin, told the prosecutor general to study the legality of 32 criminal cases including the jailing of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Khodorkovsky, who headed what was Russia’s biggest oil company, Yukos, and was once the country’s richest man, was arrested in 2003 and jailed on tax evasion and fraud charges after showing political ambitions and falling out with Putin.
The Kremlin said Medvedev had also told the justice minister to explain why Russia had refused to register a liberal opposition group, PARNAS, which has been barred from elections.
The order followed a meeting last month at which opposition leaders handed Medvedev a list of people they regard as political prisoners and called for political reforms.
Medvedev’s initiatives “have only one goal: To at least somehow lower the scale of dismay and protest that continues to surge in society,” Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Zyuganov is of course right. And one thing is certain: The growing opposition against the Putin regime will not take the puppet president´s initiatives seriously.
Are U.S. taxpayers funding research which helps African dictators to stay in power?
Are U.S. taxpayers funding research that will help African dictators cling to power?
That should, of course, not be the case, but take a look at what the Strauss Center Program on Climate Change and African Political Stability (funded by the U.S. Department of Defense´s Minerva Initiative) says in its Policy Brief NO 3:
In poor, fragile states—like many of those in Africa—
climate shocks and swift-onset meteorological hazards
can pose severe threats to domestic security by
compromising a state’s monopoly of force within its
borders. In the absence of effective humanitarian relief,the destruction of infrastructure and interruption of
services can trigger such desperation that the populace
resorts to stealing or rioting to secure necessities. These
risks to state control are compounded if citizens exploit
the absence of a security presence to loot for personal
gain. Moreover, disasters may provide focal points
around which government opponents may rally.
concerns for external actors, with militaries frequently
deployed to provide humanitarian relief. This diversion
of military resources represents an opportunity cost by
preventing troops and equipment from being deployed
for other purposes.
Link to the Policy Brief on this page.
With that kind of research funding, maybe it is not so surprising that the Minerva Initiative website has this to say:
Mauritius will celebrate Earth Hour in grand style - key landmarks will light up!
We are told that preparations for the 2012 Earth Hour celebration in Mauritius are going full steam ahead. This year the Mauritians have decided to celebrate "the largest environmental event in history" in a truly grand way: The official Earth Hour website informs us that the main historical street in the beautiful town of Curepipe and key landmarks will light up at night!
Earth Hour was pioneered by ACM and later on ANPRAS stepped in as a major promoter of the event. The theme “Une Heure pour notre Terre” (literally meaning One Hour for Our Earth) was coined by Dr Raj Chintaram. Mauritius will be organising its 6th consecutive Earth Hour in 2012. The national celebrations, also known as National Earth Hour Mauritius, will be held in the beautiful town of Curepipe where the Queen Elizabeth Avenue (main historical street) and key landmarks will light up at night.
Congratulations Mauritius! Let´s hope your innovative initiative will inspire many other Earth Hour organizers around the Globe to follow your example!
Earth Hour was pioneered by ACM and later on ANPRAS stepped in as a major promoter of the event. The theme “Une Heure pour notre Terre” (literally meaning One Hour for Our Earth) was coined by Dr Raj Chintaram. Mauritius will be organising its 6th consecutive Earth Hour in 2012. The national celebrations, also known as National Earth Hour Mauritius, will be held in the beautiful town of Curepipe where the Queen Elizabeth Avenue (main historical street) and key landmarks will light up at night.
Congratulations Mauritius! Let´s hope your innovative initiative will inspire many other Earth Hour organizers around the Globe to follow your example!
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Putin declares "victory" - But soon he will be in trouble
 |
| Putin will soon be in trouble |
Vladimir Putin has claimed "victory" in the presidential election. But he will soon be in trouble:
His greed means public revenues that should have gone to ease life in the former Soviet Union have actually gone to line his pockets — and that of his former KGB (now FSB) cronies. The road system remains farcical, but Putin has a palace in the south of France; the price of oil has shot up, but the Russian people can't educate their children properly; and so forth. Suddenly, Russian voters feel they've been taken for a ride — and, in a remarkable episode last November, they booed their PM when he appeared at a wrestling match: it had never happened to him before, and if you look at this video, you can see how shocked he was by the hostility. Worse was to follow: in a wintry version of the Arab Spring, Russians started pouring into the streets and the squares, clamouring for his removal.
Putin may well wish to please them and go: why stay in cold, hostile, run-down Russia when he could bask in the sunny welcome that the west (especially the UK) regales Russian oligarchs with? But unfortunately the man who spun the cleverest of red webs has been caught in his own deceptions. Putin 's rise to power is down to a Mafia of spies; his continued success is guarded by thugs. Too many sinister figures have a vested interest in his being at the helm; if he lets them down, he's history.
So Putin goes through the motions of an election like today's. And he makes a fuss about foiled assassination attempts like the one "foiled" by his security police last week. But in the end, Putin will be caught in a messy plot: the opposition wants him out, and the men who put him at the top want him silent. Not an easy place to be.
Read the entire Telegraph article by Cristina Odone here
Michael Mann: Climate sceptics are "a few marginal individuals largely affiliated with special interests"
The warmist National Public Radio is doing its best to promote Michael Mann´s book The Hockey Stick And The Climate Wars.
Considering Mann´s role in Climategate, it is rather amusing to hear him speak about those, who "don´t play by the rules":
But unfortunately, scientists are ill-equipped to deal with those who, like I said, don't play by the rules. They are more than happy to make disingenuous and sometimes, frankly, quite dishonest allegations and arguments against the scientists.
--
And we can't play by the rules of knife-fighting ourselves, because, you know, science is about being honest, about following the data and your hypotheses, where they lead you, by changing your, you know, conclusions when led to do so by the data.
So we can't engage in the dishonest tactics that those looking to discredit us may be willing to engage in. But we can try to become better communicators of the science, try to find novel ways to explain to the public the fact that the science is solid, that this is a real problem. We can't just bury our heads in the sands and pretend it doesn't exist. And there is a good-faith debate to be had about what to do about this problem.
But there can no longer be a good-faith debate about the reality of the problem, and unfortunately, there are still those who are trying to have that debate.
---
And so I think we have to get away from this idea that in matters of science, it's, you know, that we should treat discussions of climate change as if there are two equal sides, like we often do in the political discourse. In matters of science, there is an equal merit to those who are denying the reality of climate change who are a few marginal individuals largely affiliated with special interests versus the, you know, thousands of scientists around the world. U.S. National Academy of Sciences founded by Abraham Lincoln back in the 19th century, all the national academies of all of the major industrial nations around the world have all gone on record as stating clearly that humans are warming the planet and changing the climate through our continued burning of fossil fuels.
Read and listen to the entire interview here
PS
Here is an account of how the great scientist and humanist Mann treats his critics.
Considering Mann´s role in Climategate, it is rather amusing to hear him speak about those, who "don´t play by the rules":
But unfortunately, scientists are ill-equipped to deal with those who, like I said, don't play by the rules. They are more than happy to make disingenuous and sometimes, frankly, quite dishonest allegations and arguments against the scientists.
--
And we can't play by the rules of knife-fighting ourselves, because, you know, science is about being honest, about following the data and your hypotheses, where they lead you, by changing your, you know, conclusions when led to do so by the data.
So we can't engage in the dishonest tactics that those looking to discredit us may be willing to engage in. But we can try to become better communicators of the science, try to find novel ways to explain to the public the fact that the science is solid, that this is a real problem. We can't just bury our heads in the sands and pretend it doesn't exist. And there is a good-faith debate to be had about what to do about this problem.
But there can no longer be a good-faith debate about the reality of the problem, and unfortunately, there are still those who are trying to have that debate.
---
And so I think we have to get away from this idea that in matters of science, it's, you know, that we should treat discussions of climate change as if there are two equal sides, like we often do in the political discourse. In matters of science, there is an equal merit to those who are denying the reality of climate change who are a few marginal individuals largely affiliated with special interests versus the, you know, thousands of scientists around the world. U.S. National Academy of Sciences founded by Abraham Lincoln back in the 19th century, all the national academies of all of the major industrial nations around the world have all gone on record as stating clearly that humans are warming the planet and changing the climate through our continued burning of fossil fuels.
Read and listen to the entire interview here
PS
Here is an account of how the great scientist and humanist Mann treats his critics.
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