Archive
Cell Phone Trap
A wireless walky talky thingy dingy.
Joel S. Hirschhorn
It is now inconceivable that our world could function without the 5 billion cell phones used globally. The new book by Devra Davis “Disconnect” deserves your attention. Indeed, if you use a cell phone a lot it should be mandatory reading.
It also seems inconceivable that the trillion dollar cell phone industry and governments worldwide could have pushed this technology without ever having solid research results proving the safety of cell phones. If true that would be deadly frightening. But that is exactly the reality.
Is this a bizarre slip up or an intentional conspiracy between corporate and government interests? The more you learn the more you fear. Nightmarishly, cell phone technology has become too big to fail, no matter its deadly risks. Government won’t protect you, so you have to protect yourself.
Let me note that I rarely use my cell phone. Very few people have my number and I rarely turn it on, except when I need to make a call. As a former professor of engineering I have always seen technology as offering risks, not just heavily commercialized benefits. The risks are often dismissed, poorly studied or just plain ignored.
And by now everyone should be concerned that neither government regulations nor corporate responsibility protect us very well from harmful foods, prescription drugs and manufactured products.
Facing the truth is often painful, but if you care about protecting your health and the health of people you love, then this is a book you definitely want to read and get others to read. Make no mistake, what you learn will upset you, but beyond getting angry at companies and the government for not adequately protecting against a man made public health disaster, you will be motivated to change your behavior. The subtitle sums up the theme: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.
Here are some of the eye-popping facts and insights I picked up from reading of this book.
Tests show young men who keep their phones in a pants pocket have reduced sperm counts.
Some scientists have, for decades, known about the adverse effects that radio-frequency causes in the brain. For example, radio-frequency allows chemicals and toxins from the blood, which are normally kept away from the nervous system, to enter the brain and cause disease.
The work of Dr. Lennart Hardell in Sweden should make cell phone users reconsider their practices. Swedes who have used cell phones the most and for the longest times have more malignant brain tumors than others. After a decade of use the risk of brain tumors is doubled. Similar results were found by scientists in Israel, Finland, Russia and England. Hardell has also found that teenagers using cell phones end up after a decade with four times more brain cancers.
The book highlights what the distinguished research scientist Dariusz Leszczynski said: “we clearly showed that radiation from a phone had a biological impact. After this work, which in fact repeated that of many others…the world could no longer pretend that the only problems with cell phones occurred after you could measure a change in temperature. This view was always mistaken, of course, and our work showed that.” In other words, much lower power than in microwave ovens does not mean the absence of effects on our bodies.
Davis makes the inescapable point at the end of the book that “we need to invest in cell phones’ safety as we do with other modern technologies.” But it is not clear whether that is proceeding as it should. Do you think industry and government will do the right thing and risk getting research results that could devastate cell phone usage? With corporate interests corrupting Congress it is highly unlikely that what is needed in terms of research and regulation will happen.
What should cell phone users do? They and children in particular should not be using cell phones without “ear buds.” They should not keep cell phones that are turned on in their clothing next to their body. Use the speaker option. Recognize that texting and other phone functions can be less dangerous than holding a phone next to your head to hear. Remember that cordless phones also pose similar radiation hazards, so minimize their use at home.
I wonder whether the richest and most powerful people in society, like President Obama (and his children), have been strongly advised to not hold cell phones next to the head.
Bottom line: Your addiction to cell phone use just might be your downfall. How much risk do you want to take? Smart phones are the rage. Now we need a lot more smart people. Disconnect. The more you use your cell phone, the more trapped you are.
[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]
There is wheat, but how to get it?
Ukraine Minister supports tourism in Chernobyl area
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17.11.2010, 12:53
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Ukraine’s Emergency Minister Vikor Baloga advocates for the development of tourism in the Chernobyl zone. “If there is an interest among people we should let them visit the area”, he told reporters in Kiev.
Source: Voice of Russia.
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Obama returns fire after China slams Fed’s move
p>By Patricia Zengerle and Krittivas Mukherjee Patricia Zengerle And Krittivas Mukherjee Mon Nov 8, 8:59 am ET
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – President Barack Obama defended the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing dollars on Monday after China and Russia stepped up criticism ahead of this week’s Group of 20 meeting.
The G20 summit has been pitched as a chance for leaders of the countries that account for 85 percent of world output to prevent a currency row escalating into a rush to protectionism that could imperil the global recovery.
But there is little sign of consensus.
The summit has been overshadowed by disagreements over the U.S. Federal Reserve‘s quantitative easing (QE) policy under which it will print money to buy $600 billion of government bonds, a move that could depress the dollar and cause a potentially destabilizing flow of money into emerging economies.
“I will say that the Fed’s mandate, my mandate, is to grow our economy. And that’s not just good for the United States, that’s good for the world as a whole,” Obama said during a trip to India.
“And the worst thing that could happen to the world economy, not just ours, is if we end up being stuck with no growth or very limited growth,” he said.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said all participants at a meeting of the world’s central bankers in Basel, Switzerland had insisted they were not pursuing weak currency policies.
“We’re attached to avoiding excessive volatility. It’s very counterproductive for global growth and global stability,” he told a news conference.
CHINA, RUSSIA ATTACK FED MOVE
Washington has frequently criticized China, saying it deliberately undervalues its currency to boost exports.
China says the United States, via the Fed, is engaged in the same thing that it stands accused of, and some emerging nations have already acted to curb their currencies’ rise.
Resentment abroad stems from worry that Fed pump-priming will hasten the U.S. dollar’s slide and cause their currencies to shoot up in value, setting the stage for asset bubbles and making a future burst of inflation more likely.
“As a major reserve currency issuer, for the United States to launch a second round of quantitative easing at this time, we feel that it did not recognize its responsibility to stabilize global markets and did not think about the impact of excessive liquidity on emerging markets,” Chinese Finance Vice Minister Zhu Guangyao said on Monday.
The Fed’s quantitative easing policy was unveiled last week to jeers from emerging market powerhouses from Latin America to Asia. Russia renewed its assault on Monday.
“Russia’s president will insist …. that such actions are taken with preliminary consultations with other members of the global economy,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, a Russian official who is preparing the country’s position in Seoul.
Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hirohide Yamaguchi said on Monday that it too was ready to boost its asset-buying scheme if it saw clear signs of a downturn. Worth 5 trillion yen ($62 billion), it is so far just a tenth the size of the Fed’s.
U.S. DROPS KEY DEMAND
India is Obama’s first stop in a 10-day trip to Asia that will include Indonesia and Japan.
He will arrive in Seoul for the November 11-12 summit weakened by a crushing congressional election defeat for his Democratic Party and under fire from all sides. Germany described U.S. economic policy as “clueless” last week.
The U.S. has already all but dropped its centerpiece proposal for the G20 — a measure that would cap current account balances at 4 percent of gross domestic product, something economists said was clearly aimed at China.
At the weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner backed away from the numerical target that had been rejected by China, Germany, Japan and others in a sign that global financial power had slipped from U.S. hands.
On Monday, he was putting on a brave face, saying China was supportive of the G20’s framework for rebalancing the global economy, and that he expected broad consensus on it at the summit.
The risk of a negative outcome in Seoul appears to be increasing, or at the very least, an agreement that merely papers over the huge gaps and allows countries to pursue their own economic policies whether it be intervening in currency markets like South Korea and Japan or printing dollars.
“Judging by the critical response of emerging market governments to QE, the likelihood of a ceasefire in the currency war is slim,” RBC Capital markets said in a report published on Monday.
(Writing by David Chance and Mike Peacock; editing by Stephen Nisbet)
Reiman Starts a Free Software Development Center
Image via Wikipedia
Former presidential IT and telecommunications adviser Leonid Reiman has started a new company, ROSA, that will develop free software.
When Reiman worked for the Kremlin, President Dmitry Medvedev often said Russia badly needed its own software for the sake of national security and cost savings.
Reiman’s new initiative — which his representative announced last week, RIA-Novosti reported — comes as his first public move after he abruptly resigned in early September. He said at the time that he would focus on using his expertise and not take any government jobs.
According to the ROSA web site, the company is planning to work with medium-sized to large companies “fully or partially migrating to free software use.” Its potential customers may also include original equipment manufacturers to sell them desktop and server operating systems.
Free software, such as the popular OpenOffice.org office suite, is the opposite to proprietary software and allows for penalty-free distribution. It has come in vogue in the United States not long after it began as a movement 15 years ago.
In Russia, which President Dmitry Medvedev hopes will soon be home to a Silicon Valley of its own, the use of free software has been a subject of controversy: Companies contracted to distribute CDs with operating systems in schools had failed to do so without errors.
Reiman’s representative, whom RIA-Novosti didn’t identify, said ROSA would develop free software for the Russian market and then work with foreign companies, such as Mandriva, a free software distributions developer that is controlled by NGI fund. Reiman, who also served as communications minister between 1999 and 2008, is an investor of the 20 million euro ($28 million) fund, his representative said.
Yevgeny Savin, who heads UNOVA, a web site that specializes in innovations and venture capital news, said ways of monetizing free software include advertising and creating free and proprietary versions of the program.
“This market is growing and with telecoms, well, its boom days are gone,” Savin said, referring to Reiman’s telecoms background.
Reiman could tap into the market for free software for mobile phones, possibly developing a project similar to Google‘s Android operating system, Savin said.
According to National Purchase Diary’s Mobile Phone Track, Android is installed on 44 percent of all smartphones that were sold in the United States in the third quarter of 2010, up from 33 percent three months earlier.
Cell Phone Trap
Cell phone tower cleverly disguised to look like an evergreen tree. Located in New Hampshire.
It also seems inconceivable that the trillion dollar cell phone industry and governments worldwide could have pushed this technology without ever having solid research results proving the safety of cell phones. If true that would be deadly frightening. But that is exactly the reality.
Is this a bizarre slip up or an intentional conspiracy between corporate and government interests? The more you learn the more you fear. Nightmarishly, cell phone technology has become too big to fail, no matter its deadly risks. Government won’t protect you, so you have to protect yourself.
Let me note that I rarely use my cell phone. Very few people have my number and I rarely turn it on, except when I need to make a call. As a former professor of engineering I have always seen technology as offering risks, not just heavily commercialized benefits. The risks are often dismissed, poorly studied or just plain ignored.
And by now everyone should be concerned that neither government regulations nor corporate responsibility protect us very well from harmful foods, prescription drugs and manufactured products.
Facing the truth is often painful, but if you care about protecting your health and the health of people you love, then this is a book you definitely want to read and get others to read. Make no mistake, what you learn will upset you, but beyond getting angry at companies and the government for not adequately protecting against a man made public health disaster, you will be motivated to change your behavior. The subtitle sums up the theme: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.
Here are some of the eye-popping facts and insights I picked up from reading of this book.
Tests show young men who keep their phones in a pants pocket have reduced sperm counts.
Some scientists have, for decades, known about the adverse effects that radiofrequency causes in the brain. For example, radiofrequency allows chemicals and toxins from the blood, which are normally kept away from the nervous system, to enter the brain and cause disease.
The work of Dr. Lennart Hardell in Sweden should make cell phone users reconsider their practices. Swedes who have used cell phones the most and for the longest times have more malignant brain tumors than others. After a decade of use the risk of brain tumors is doubled. Similar results were found by scientists in Israel, Finland, Russia and England. Hardell has also found that teenagers using cell phones end up after a decade with four times more brain cancers.
The book highlights what the distinguished research scientist Dariusz Leszczynski said: “we clearly showed that radiation from a phone had a biological impact. After this work, which in fact repeated that of many others…the world could no longer pretend that the only problems with cell phones occurred after you could measure a change in temperature. This view was always mistaken, of course, and our work showed that.” In other words, much lower power than in microwave ovens does not mean the absence of effects on our bodies.
Davis makes the inescapable point at the end of the book that “we need to invest in cell phones’ safety as we do with other modern technologies.” But it is not clear whether that is proceeding as it should. Do you think industry and government will do the right thing and risk getting research results that could devastate cell phone usage? With corporate interests corrupting Congress it is highly unlikely that what is needed in terms of research and regulation will happen.
What should cell phone users do? They and children in particular should not be using cell phones without “ear buds.” They should not keep cell phones that are turned on in their clothing next to their body. Use the speaker option. Recognize that texting and other phone functions can be less dangerous than holding a phone next to your head to hear. Remember that cordless phones also pose similar radiation hazards, so minimize their use at home.
I wonder whether the richest and most powerful people in society, like President Obama (and his children), have been strongly advised to not hold cell phones next to the head.
Bottom line: Your addiction to cell phone use just might be your downfall. How much risk do you want to take? Smart phones are the rage. Now we need a lot more smart people. Disconnect. The more you use your cell phone, the more trapped you are.
[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]
Millions of people “vanished” in U.S. – historian (Did 7,000,000 Die?)
Great Depression: man dressed in worn coat lying down on pier, New York City docks. (53227(2060), 00...
While America lectures Russia on the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine, Russian historian Boris Borisov asks what became of over seven million American citizens who disappeared from US population records in the 1930s.
RT: What made you research the history of what you call ‘American Holodomor’?
B.B: It was very simple. As I was doing comparative research of the American Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Depression of the 1990s in Russia, I grew interested in the social dimension of the tragedy. It was logical that I looked up official American documents and found out that the discrepancies were so obvious that any independent researcher would not but have doubt about the official U.S. statistic data. All appears to be rather interesting. I will come to that later.
The U.S. Congress added fuel to the fire by adopting resolutions nearly every year blaming the Soviet government for alleged staged famine in the 1930s in Ukraine. The first resolution came in 1988, 50 years after the events described. The current members of Congress wonder about the following, and I quote, “people in the government were aware of what was going on, but did not do anything to help the starving”.
At that very period of 1930s, the wealthy city of New York saw kilometre-long lines of people for free soup. There were no queues on the city’s main streets though, but not because there were no hungry people but because most of the cities did not have any money – they were just bankrupt.
So, I became curious about that and carried out some research that brought about interesting results.
RT: You say that America of the early 1930s made over seven million people perish. It’s a horrifying figure and it needs an explanation. What do you base your research on and why do you say the population statistics of the U.S. government of 1932-33 was falsified?
B.B.: Seven and a half million people does not mean the number of particular victims of the famine, but a general demographic loss, or the difference between the supposed population on the date of the census that was due to be held in 1940 and the factual number of people. In reality, the total demographic loss is bigger. The fact is not contested by anyone. The figure is more than ten million people.
The front page of a 1940 statistical report Borisov used in his study The front page of a 1940 statistical report Borisov used in his study However, when you start researching the subject, you find that there is a migration component – people were coming to the country and leaving. All can be calculated. It turns out then, that three million people can be subtracted at the cost of migration – in approximate figures, as it is not a scientific report.
What’s left is 7.5 million people still missing. The question is: where are they?
Voluntary defenders of U.S. values who venture to discuss the matter with me, normally begin with a statement that those people were simply not born. However, if we take the age pyramid and distribute the people according to their dates of birth, it becomes apparent that 5.5 million children and two million grown-ups are missing from the 7.5 million. So, those two million people could not have been non-existent – as they had been born. They could only die.
As a result, I consider the two million of grown-up victims as the limit proved from the bottom – for 10 years, let me emphasise this.
Could the remaining children out of those 5.5 not have been born? The U.S. statistics does not answer this question. If we use the method of international juxtapositions and see how demography reacted to similar disastrous events in other countries, we will see that the distribution of the demographic was divided between the children who had died and had not been born in the ratio of f9; to f9;. In other words, it’s from 2 to 4 million extra losses.
The overall loss in ten years could be estimated as being from four – or slightly fewer – to six – or slightly more – million.
Let me quote some figures, if you don’t mind – demonstrating how other countries reacted to the similar situation. If you believe that four or six million people is a terrible number, let me quote this: male mortality rate in Russia: 810,000 in 1984; 1,226,000 in 1994 – whereas the population is the same. In other words, as compared with 1984, the year 1996 had an additional number of 416,000 dead males. You have to add females and children to that figure.
As of now the prevalence of the death rate over birth rate yet remains, although smaller. Some say it is horrible, others say it’s normal as the country is developing. So there are different takes about there being half a million dead. Nobody tears his or her hair out to discuss this.
Likewise, there were opposing viewpoints in the USA. Some said it was horrible – “We had millions of people deprived of their land!” – those who read Steinbeck well knew the situation from his documentary-authentic novels depicting starving children. Others say, “No, it’s all right. We’re fighting depression and all is as scheduled.” Like here today, I think.
RT: Imagine the so-called “hungry marches” in the times of President Hoover and quote memories of a child about those events. Did you actually find any survivors still alive to tell the story and confirm the fact of ‘American Holodomor’?
B.B.: Let me draw your attention to the fact that it was not me who called those marches “hunger marches”. They were called so by the participants. When someone goes marching in protest against war, they protest against war because people get killed there. When someone protests against hunger, it means they protest against dying of starvation, and the people are ready for social unrest. You may know that not only the police but also regular military troops were used to disperse those marches.
There is a huge amount of evidence. Let me quote some. For example. The thing is that in summer an article by Dmitriy Lyskov was published in the English translation, with some conclusions drawn from my research. That caused active discussion in English-language blogs, also in the USA, which is understandable.
What do Americans write in their stories? Just three quotes:
1) The ancient members of my family told me how people used to come to the door asking to do a day’s work for only a meal.
2) If this story is true and our federal government knew the enormity of the crisis during the 30s, then it might explain their silence about the famine in Ukraine during the same time.
3) It’s a good argument… I heard lots of stories about the Depression from all my relatives, and especially from my mother and father. People were starving, I don’t dispute that. But I don’t think it would have been seven million.
We can see flat ideological statements about democracy and freedom in the USA then, therefore such things just could not have been there. However, we have authentic stories, so numerous that one could make volumes out of them and put them on a shelf.
RT: Such outstanding historical moments are usually reflected in literature, films, and, of course, journalist reports and research articles. The American depression is definitely one of those remarkable periods. Is there any proof of your theory in an article of a newspaper of that time?
B.B.: They did write about it, of course, but in a style similar to that used in our newspapers about the 1990s. They criticised the government, parties fought each other, someone criticised local authorities, someone insisted on their programmes, others on the opposite. As a whole, however, the bigger picture of the epoch will be seen only in a while. As for sources, they can be used for reference about those real events that were happening there.
Of course, journalists may be interested in a fact about a tractor that pulled down a farm. There are many facts of this kind – Steinbeck eloquently tells a lot about such things. But as to what happened to that farm later, the fact being that ten people left but only eight came back, is seldom told – both then and now. It’s not something of big interest to journalists.
For instance, who died in your family in the past two years?
You must bear in mind that those who died are in the lowest stratum of the American society – either had been poor, or became poor and failed to get out of this level. Try to find research details about the death rate among homeless people in Russia now – you will encounter big difficulties. You may find, but that may take a long time. And you will hardly find anything in newspapers, despite the fact that mortality among the homeless is there. And it’s about citizens of Russia and most likely the number of those dying is big. Perhaps the factor that not all of them volunteered to become homeless is the answer.
RT: In your article, you write about the agrarian business lobby you claim is guilty of destroying the state food resources. Can you please tell more about it and maybe compare it to any instance of more recent economic wars or lobbies, maybe?
B.B.: The modern example is obvious – it’s a modern programme of producing fuel from food. It’s not by chance, that the Cuban leader Fidel Castro raised this question, thus dotting the ‘i’s’ and crossing the ‘t’s’. As a matter of fact, producing fuel from food is something to enrich someone, whereas impoverishing dozens of millions of others. The process is already there and the current increase of food prices is already causing political unrest and more deaths. Medical specialists don’t do this in third-world countries nor in rich countries so far. The process is under way. Unless stopped, by the end of the 21st century, the programme of obtaining fuel from food will be studied in history books on pages next to Hitler and concentration camps. The scale of the consequences would be comparable, in terms of the number of victims.
This is what concerns the current situation.
RT: We had these discussions in the time of chaos and depression in the world’s financial markets. Hundreds of people are losing their jobs, credits are not paid back, the mortgage crisis is on. As an economist, do you see this as the beginning of a new great depression and, actually, a new Holodomor?
B.B.: Comparing the current crisis with the Great Depression has become commonplace in economic discussions. I would rather not over-load you with some economic terms but let me give you a simple example. The modern crisis radically differs from the one in the early 20th century. Whereas that crisis was of an industrial society, this one is of a post-industrial society and the economy of services.
What does that mean? Imagine yourself a highly-paid specialist in securities. You strike deals and earn a lot. You’re sure you’re worth it, because the deals yield good profits. Who do you need? A legal adviser. Many of them, with an office, secretaries, clerks – all of whom help you not to lose your money and do your business. Who do the legal advisers need? They need bank employees who take their lucrative salaries and deposit them at advantageous terms. This is what makes up the first financial circle.
The first circle is followed by another one, where people need property dealers, as they are very busy themselves and would not build homes on their own. They would need a tourist agent to quickly arrange that their bottoms could be warmed up in Hawaii. And they need transfer agents to arrange all the transportation.
Then follows the third circle of the services industry – including cafes where the guys from the first and second circles have coffee, restaurant where they dine, fitness centres to make them fit sometimes – an they’re necessary in the centre of the city, because they cannot afford getting away from the money source spring as someone else can crawl up and scoop from it. Ninety per cent of the fee is taken by the rent of the premises in the prestigious locations.
All the rest is arranged likewise.
Now, imagine that the stock market has collapsed. You have no job and no revenue. So you pack to leave – Lehman Brothers all pack. You don’t need legal advisers anymore. If you do, however, you have no money to pay them with. No bank specialists are required. That is followed by no need for a property agent, and all the rest down the chain.
What have we got as a result? In an industrial economy, an enterprise has some safety factor – some reserves, long-term contracts, some property they can sell or mortgage at the end of the day. There is no such safety margin in the services industry. As soon as the money source stops, the services industry rumbles like a house of cards.
So, things may be developing now much faster than in the pre-WWII times. This is what we can see happening now during a very short period of time, much shorter than in the time of the Great Depression, major financial institutions collapsed, which set the alarm bells ringing, as French President Sarkozy put it, making the economy a little smarter. This is well understood by the leaders, but nobody says how to do this.
Battered Sarkozy finds temporary refuge in world affairs
Nicolas Sarkozy, a watermark was present that said « Photo : Jean-Louis Aubert ».
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hosted a trilateral summit with Germany and Russia to prepare for his country’s G20 presidency, finding temporary refuge in world affairs as more than a million people took to the streets of France over planned reform of the pension system.
Background
France and Germany often hold meetings ahead of EU summits. EU leaders will meet in Brussels next week, on 28-29 October.
This time, the Deauville summit was held in two formats – a bilateral one between France and Germany and a trilateral, with Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev.
The main goal of the trilateral summit was to help prepare the NATO summit on 19-20 November in Lisbon, but also to advance EU-Russia relations, as well to coordinate positions ahead of the French Presidency of the G20, which starts in January 2011.
Sarkozy‘s popularity ratings are dismal 18 months before a presidential election. Officially he has not made public his intention to run, but everyone expects him to seek a second mandate.
The quiet atmosphere of the Deauville summit, which brought together German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Dmity Medvedev and the French president, contrasted sharply with TV footage from across the country, which showed mass protests, including violence in some suburban areas.
Meanwhile, the country was gripped by strikes and unprecedented fuel shortages following blockades to refineries.
More than three million people (according to trade unions) and 1.2 million (according to police) joined marches across the country against Sarkozy’s plans to raise the retirement age to 62. The retirement age is currently 60.
One novelty of this week’s unrest is that the mass protests are being attended by students and young people from schools, who say they are not indifferent to plans to raise the retirement age.
France2, the publicly-funded TV channel, showed youngsters displaying banners reading ‘Sarkozy, you are screwed up, the youth is in the streets’. According to students’ unions, more than 1,000 schools were blocked.
These were not the only images that brought to mind the notorious student protests of May 1968, which ignited a general strike. That strike was the only time in history that France has had to use its strategic fuel reserves.
This time, the government has denied that it is about to resort to its strategic supplies, but many filling stations were ordered by local authorities to supply only the police and municipal services. Some 4,000 of the 12,000 filling stations across the country are experiencing fuel shortages.
Russian agenda
In spite of the international character of the Deauville summit, the press asked Sarkozy to comment on the internal developments.
He appealed to demonstrators to show restraint and insisted that pension reform should proceed, as it had been delayed for too long in France.
On the international side, Sarkozy secured Medvedev’s agreement to be present on the sidelines of a NATO summit on 19-20 November in Lisbon. On the controversial plans for a US missile shield in Europe, Medvedev said his country needed more information.
“We are now evaluating the idea of this proposal, but I think that NATO itself needs to understand in what form it sees Russia joining this system, what it will bring, in what manner an agreement can be reached, and how to proceed further,” he said. “Only based on the evaluation of this proposal can we give an answer on how we will proceed with regard to the idea of European missile defence,” Medvedev was quoted as saying.
Under pressure from Moscow to lift EU visa requirements for Russian citizens, Sarkozy apparently disappointed his guest, indicating that a solution could come in the long term.
“From my point of view, in 10 to 15 years the vision that we should have is a common economic EU-Russia space, the end of visa requirements and a common security concept,” Sarkozy was quoted as saying.
But Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the State Duma’s foreign relation committee, the lower chamber of parliament, said the visa problem would be solved much more quickly.
According to Kosachev, the 10-15 year timeframe is for the establishment of full-scale economic and security cooperation between the two sides, while the visa issue could be resolved sooner.
Appeasement over Roma case
A Commission decision to drop a threat of legal action against France regarding the controversial expulsions of Roma provided some comfort to Sarkozy.
Justice and Fundamental Rights Commissioner Viviane Reding said yesterday (19 October) in Strasbourg that France had met the Commission’s demands to modify its national legislation in order to better apply EU law on the free movement of EU citizens.
The information on the plans to align French legislation with EU law was reportedly supplied by Paris one hour before a midnight deadline on 15 October.
“I am very happy that reason has prevailed,” Sarkozy told reporters in Deauville.
However, a Commission spokesperson explained that that the case with France had two dimensions. The first was the alignment of its legislation with EU law, on which Paris had until 15 October to make its intentions clear.
The second dimension is whether the expulsion policy was targeted at the Roma minority, amounting to discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity.
On this aspect, he said there was no deadline, meaning France is still under Commission scrutiny.
A five-page Commission internal paper called “Transposition by France of Procedural Safeguards Related to EU Free Movement Rules” dated 19 October and seen by EurActiv says that the EU executive expects that the transposition will take effect in accordance with the timetable communicated by the French authorities, that is, in the spring of 2011.
Some clarifications are however still required, the Commission writes.
Also, the EU executive reserves itself the right to seek further information and says it will continue to monitor the situation in France, as well as in other member countries.
Positions
Next Steps
- 28-29 Oct.: EU summit, Bussels.
- Nov. 19-20: NATO summit, Lisbon.
- Nov. 2010: G20 meeting in Seoul (South Korea).
- Jan. 2011: France takes over presidency of G20.
Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way (To Europe)
Gulf Stream on a Cold Day
http://rt.com/prime-time/2010-10-04/coldest-winter-emergency-measures.html?fullstory
After the record heat wave this summer, Russia‘s weather seems to have acquired a taste for the extreme.
Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.
The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.
So far, the results have been lower temperatures: for example, in Central Russia, they are a couple of degrees below the norm.
“Although the forecast for the next month is only 70 percent accurate, I find the cold winter scenario quite likely,” Vadim Zavodchenkov, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center, told RT. “We will be able to judge with more certainty come November. As for last summer’s heat, the statistical models that meteorologists use to draw up long-term forecasts aren’t able to predict an anomaly like that.”
In order to meet the harsh winter head on, Moscow authorities are drawing up measures to help Muscovites survive the extreme cold.
Most of all, the government is concerned with homeless people who risk freezing to death if the forecast of the meteorologists come true. Social services and police are being ordered to take the situation under control even if they have to force the homeless to take help.
Moscow authorities have also started checking air conditioning systems in all socially important buildings. All the conditioners are being carefully cleaned from the remains of summer smog.
My Comment:
This will sharply increase the cost of food very soon..
Videos From The AfPak Front
Map of Afghanistan showing the security situation by district and opium cultivation by province in t...
Source
AfPak is the abbreviated name for the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Things are going no better for the Americans there than for the Russians and the British who also foolishly attempted to occupy that nation.
First up is
this report that Pakistan is cutting off NATO supplies to Afghanistan because America is killing too many innocent people while it refuses to negotiate with the Pashtun tribesmen.
All of this killing and dying is done to justify holding prisoners, torturing them and torturing their children.
The US as I have explained before has been shipping Afghan opium paste out of Baluchistan Pakistan using Global Hawk drones which cost taxpayers $35,000,000 each.
Russia has lost 30,000 young people every year from heroin overdoses. It is possible that this plant disease killing Afghan opium poppies was designed in a Russian lab.
The use of drones to make targeted assassinations is expressly forbidden by international law. It has been estimated that we are killing 37 innocent civilians for each person we killed for resisting the occupation of their homeland.
The Taliban have never attacked Americans outside of occupied territory. It is lawful under international law to resist an invasion.
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