We received the following invitation to a full day conference – the enticing title:

“THE UKRAINE – ITS ORIENTATION TO THE EU OR RUSSIA OR TO BOTH?”

organized by the Danube Region Institute of the Austrian Social Democratic Party (Long-standing member party of Austrian Governments) Karl Renner Think-Tank and held at the Vienna home of the EU offices.

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Das Karl-Renner-Institut und das Institut für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa – IDM laden ein zur

Konferenz -  DIE UKRAINE – ORIENTIERUNG RICHTUNG EU UND/ODER RUSSLAND?

Termin -  Freitag, 22. März 2013, 9.00 – 16.00 Uhr

Ort – Haus der Europäischen Union  – Wipplingerstraße 35, 1010 Wien

PanelistInnen (u.a.)
WINFRIED SCHNEIDER-DETERS – 1995 bis 2000 Leiter des Büros der Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Kiew,
Autor des Buches „Die Ukraine: Machtvakuum zwischen Russland und der Europäischen Union“
GABRIELE BAUMANN, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Kiew
VOLODYMYR OGRYSKO, 2007-2009 Außenminister der Ukraine
MYKOLA RJABTSCHUK, Schriftsteller und Journalist
HANNES SWOBODA, MEP, Präsident der S&D-Fraktion
YURIY YAKYMENKO, Stv. Generaldirektor des Razumkov-Zentrums für politische und ökonomische Studien, Kiew

Konferenzsprachen: Deutsch und Englisch

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The Karl Renner Institute is the political academy of the Austrian Social Democratic movement. In this capacity, it foremostly aims at

• involving experts from various fields in the development and realization of new political positions by establishing a discourse between experts from various fields and the Austrian Social Democratic Party;
• generating a forum for political discussion and thus helping to introduce social democratic positions into public discussion;
• training representatives of the Austrian Social Democratic Party so that they are optimally prepared for their present and future tasks;
• fostering the organizational development of the Austrian Social Democratic Party in order to open up and modernize party structures.

These days, together with its foreign sister organizations, the Karl Renner Institute especially tries to support the young Central and Eastern European democracies and to help their integration into the mainstream of European political life. So it was not surprising that it brought its representative to the European Parliament, Mr. Hannes Swoboda, to be part of the discussion.

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The Keynote speaker was – the 1995-2000 Head of the parallel German Social Democrat Think Tank – the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Kiew offices – and author of the volume: “The Ukraine Power Vacuum between Russia and the European Union”and from that point on the rest of the meeting just went on to justify that title.

The three panels were:
I      Ukraine Inner politics,
II    The Ukraine and Russia
III   The Ukraine and the EU

Each of these panels was moderated by an editor of one of the most important print media in Austria – “Der Standard”, “Profil”, and “Die Presse,”
and the panels well balanced in right/left context – so there was a representative of the Right-of Center Konrad Adenauer Foundation office in Kiew, The Ukraine Foreign Ministry, the Russian Institute for Foreign Relations MGIMO, The Helsinki University, The Vienna University, and the Head of the Information Center of the EU representation in Kiew. It was clear that a lot of work went into preparing for this meeting – and we expect to get eventually printed concluding remarks.

So why am I disappointed? And disappointed I was. The answer is simple – I found more valuable information in a copy of “The Ukrainian Week” -
a December 2012 issue “Customs Union – Why Ukraine should avoid the trap by all means” featuring content from “The Economist” that I picked up at the information desk, then I got from the presenters.

The problems were two-fold. No presenter went into depth in describing the economics situation – it mainly was a debate about culture and where does Ukraine stand versus the cultural invasion from Russia. The fact that Russia never recognized that the Ukrainians have their own language and culture that are different from Russian. The fact that the Ukrainian elite knows only one foreign language – Russian. This while the Russian elites know western languages. The Ukrainians feel suffocated under the Russian onslaught but do not know any better. When they reached out to the West – they were not received – just because of this – they did not comply with Western ideals.

So, what we got was not real interests but perceived interests – with the Ukrainians actively shooting themselves in the foot.

When I went to the conference, as we posted many times on SustainabiliTank, I felt that The Ukraine will eventually have to split amicably like the old Czechoslovakia did – The Western Ruthenians that still remember their links to Poland – even though they never liked to be under Polish rule – belong to the EU, while the East and South – heavily Russian speaking – join Russia. But when others actually made this argument in the Q&A they were told that 80% of the citizens are Ukrainians – even those that speak Russian – and they want to stay in the Ukraine.

Further, when the previous government did serious and painful steps to adjust to the EU they were rebuffed anyway – so now there is a turn back to Russia.

a. Ukraine is too big to slip into the EU without being noticed
b. The Ukrainians want to stick together even if they look to the East – they want the West.
c. Not having been offered an alternative economically they want to look to the East because their economy is all run by the Russians – this even though the coal industry of East Ukraine has collapsed.

That reminded me of the Turkish experience – too big and too different.

The Turks tried to westernize under Ataturk – but still were Turks. The Ukrainians – or at least part of them could be accepted by the EU but they are not ready to make the Czechoslovak sacrifice. Actually they are much worse off then the Turks. There the decisions were in their own hands – no outside pull to the East. Here, the Russians want a buffer State between them and the West – so they will be kept in limbo if not ready to make their own decisions. So here comes the Custom Union with Russia that will leave them totally in continuing dependence on Russia. Could they aim at a Custom Union with the EU as well – and stay on as a buffer – in global limbo? The danger is – like Turkey – they eventually turn into a spinning top – just spinning around themselves. Not a great future in this.

Russian PM lectures Barroso on Cyprus.

Medvedev: ‘The euro crisis has strengthened ideas that Europe is in decline.’

21.03.13

By Andrew Rettman
 euobserver.com/economic/119525

BRUSSELS - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev humbled European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso in public remarks on Thursday (21 March) over the EU’s handling of Cyprus.

Speaking alongside Barroso at a conference in Moscow, he called the EU’s original Cypriot bailout idea “to put it mildly, surprising … absurd … preposterous.”

“The situation is unpredictable and inconsistent. It [the bailout model] has been reviewed several times. I browsed the Internet this morning and I saw another Plan B, or a Plan C or whatever,” he noted.

He upbraided EU institutions for failing to give Moscow due notice of its decision.

“The system of early warning did not work very well … that means we need to work on it,” he said.

He also quoted unnamed Russian “eurosceptics” as saying: “The euro crisis has strengthened ideas that Europe is in decline in the 21st century … that the European project has turned out to be too cumbersome.”

Earlier the same say, he told Russian newswire Interfax that he is thinking of reducing Russia’s holding of euro-denominated currency reserves.

In a sign of broader Russian upset, Leonid Grigoriev, an academic and a former Russian deputy finance minister, told a separate news conference that Russian money is no longer safe anywhere in the EU.

“The Cyprus situation has created new uncertainty in the banking sector. People have started thinking whether the same can happen elsewhere, in Spain, Portugal, Ireland?” he said.

The EU’s Plan A for Cyprus was to lend it €10 billion, but to impose a 7-to-10 percent levy on all Cypriot savers, including Russian expats, who alone stood to lose €2 billion.

It has now been scrapped.

It is unclear what new model might be found.

But the Cypriot finance minister, Michael Sarris, also in Moscow on Thursday, said he is in talks to give Russia shares in Cypriot “banks, natural gas [reserves]” in return for Russian bailout money.

For his part, Barroso told Medvedev that the EU could not have warned Russia even if it wanted to.

“Regarding the conclusions of the last Eurogroup [euro finance ministers, who drew up Plan A], Russia was not informed because the governments of Europe were not informed – let’s be completely open and honest about that issue. There was not a pre-decision before the Eurogroup meeting. The Eurogroup meeting concluded, I think, in the very early hours of Saturday and the decision was the result of a compromise,” he said.

He added: “Don’t believe in this idea of the decline of Europe … The European Union is stronger than it is today fashionable to admit.”

Leaked documents on internal EU talks seen by the Reuters news agency give substance to Russia’s criticism, however.

The notes record remarks by finance officials from euro-using countries during a panicky conference call about Cyprus held on Wednesday.

According to Reuters, a French official said Cyprus’ decision not to take part in the phone-debate is “a big problem … We have never seen this.”

A German official said Cyprus might quit the euro and there is a need to “ring-fence” other countries from contagion.

A European Central Bank official said there is a “very difficult situation” because savers might pull money from the island if banks re-open next week.

Meanwhile, Thomas Wieser, an Austrian-origin EU official who chaired the phone-meeting, described the situation as “foggy.” He added: “The economy is going to tank in Cyprus no matter what.”

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To the above we add that Turkey, its holding onto North Cyprus, and its interest in the gas fields that stretch from Cyprus to Israel and Lebanon, having first development seen by Israel, are part of the larger scope of the Cyprus potential move away from the EU. But, In effect, these other aspects might make the EU stiffen up in a bailing out effort conditioned only on reorganizing some of the Cypriot Banks – letting Russian oligarchs foot part of the bill – without selling to Russia port holdings in the Mediterranean. Seeing a Syria solution that drives out Russia from its port facilities there, may be part of the American interest in the region as well. In short – Cyprus is not Iceland – this because it is geographically located in a very complicated region of the Outer EU. Is it so that an Obama trip could help by forcing a Cyprus-Turkey reconciliation first?

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We just found out that The New York Times is catching up:

Russian Ties Put Cyprus Banking Crisis on East-West Fault Line By ANDREW HIGGINS, The New York Times, March 24, 2013 With Cyprus’s role as a provider of financial services for Russians, what began as another episode in a familiar narrative has escalated into a drama with geopolitical implications.   ============================================================================================== Also, we know that Oligarch Abramowich is overexposed in Cyprus banks, is this also the case of Mr. Berezowski who just committed suicide at his home near London? Were there politics involved and this was a Russian in-fight? The coincidence of the timing will create rumors – we say. Russian Oligarch and Critic of Putin Dead in Britain. Stefan Wermuth/Reuters Boris Berezovsky in London in last year. He is said to have committed suicide on Saturday. By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN Published: March 23, 2013 MOSCOW — Boris A. Berezovsky, once the richest and most powerful of the so-called oligarchs who dominated post-Soviet Russia, and a close ally of Boris N. Yeltsin who helped install Vladimir V. Putin as president but later exiled himself to London after a bitter falling out with the Kremlin, died Saturday. He was 67 and lived near London, where last year he lost one of the largest private lawsuits in history — an epic tug-of-war over more than $5 billion with another Russian oligarch, Roman A. Abramovich, in which legal and other costs were estimated to be about $250 million. Mr. Berezovsky’s death was first reported in a post on Facebook by his son-in-law Egor Schuppe and was confirmed by Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented him. Mr. Dobrovinsky wrote in Russian on his Facebook page: “Just got a call from London. Boris Berezovsky has committed suicide. The man was complex. An act of desperation? Impossible to live poor? A series of blows? I am afraid that no one will know the truth.” The Thames Valley police in Berkshire, an hour from London, said Saturday that they were investigating the “unexplained” death of a 67-year-old man, apparently Mr. Berezovsky, in Ascot. The police statement did not name Mr. Berezovsky, but British news reports said an investigation was under way at his home. “Specially trained officers are currently at the scene, including C.B.R.N.-trained officers, who are conducting a number of searches as a precaution,” said a spokeswoman for the Thames Valley police, referring to the force’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear team. “This is to enable officers to carry out an investigation into the man’s death. The body of the man is still in the property at this time.” In London, Mr. Berezovsky had adopted much the same style as an oligarch in Russia, with chauffeurs and bodyguards. But recent news reports said Mr. Berezovsky had begun to sell personal assets, including a yacht and a painting by Andy Warhol, “Red Lenin,” to pay debts related to the lawsuit. The lawsuit, in which Mr. Berezovsky brought a claim against Mr. Abramovich in a dispute over the sale of shares in Sibneft, an oil company, and other assets, ended in a spectacular defeat. In her ruling, the judge in the case, Elizabeth Gloster, called Mr. Berezovsky an “unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness” and at times a dishonest one. By contrast, the judge said Mr. Abramovich had been “a truthful, and on the whole reliable, witness.” Mr. Berezovsky’s legal troubles worsened recently with a claim by his former girlfriend, Elena Gorbunova, that he owed her about $8 million from the sale of a house they owned in Surrey, England. The judge also ordered him to pay more than $53 million of Mr. Abramovich’s fees. A friend of the tycoon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said Mr. Berezovsky said he had been “extremely depressed” for at least six months since losing his case. “He was a great believer in British justice, and he felt it let him down,” the friend said. A spokesman for Mr. Putin said Mr. Berezovsky had recently sent a letter asking President Putin for forgiveness and permission to return to Russia. “Some time ago, maybe a couple of months, Berezovsky sent Vladimir Putin a letter, written by himself, in which he admitted that he had made a lot of mistakes,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on the Russia 24 television channel. “He asked Putin for forgiveness for the errors to be able to return home.” Mr. Peskov said that he did not know Mr. Putin’s reaction, but that “news of anyone’s death, no matter what kind of person they were, cannot arouse any positive emotions.” Mr. Berezovsky was a Soviet mathematician who after the fall of Communism went into business and figured out how to skim profits off what was then Russian’s largest state-owned carmaker. Along with spectacular wealth, he accumulated enormous political influence, becoming a close ally of Mr. Yeltsin’s. With Mr. Yeltsin’s political career fading, Mr. Berezovsky helped engineer the rise of Mr. Putin, an obscure former K.G.B. agent and onetime aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg who became president of Russia in 2000 and last May returned to the presidency for a third term. After his election, Mr. Putin began a campaign of tax claims against a group of rich and powerful Russians, including Mr. Berezovsky and Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon, who remains jailed in Russia. Mr. Berezovsky fled to London, where he eventually won political asylum and at one point raised tensions by calling for a coup against Mr. Putin. David E. Hoffman, the author of “The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia,” an exploration of the role of such magnates in the era after the breakup of the Soviet Union, said Mr. Berezovsky stood out for seeking not only wealth but political clout. “Boris Berezovsky was among that wave of oligarchs who realized that great fortunes were to be made in the massive sell-off of assets in the new Russia,” Mr. Hoffman said by e-mail on Saturday. “While many of his peers also saw the opportunity, Berezovsky was more focused than most on the role that politics would play. He realized the need to co-opt those in power in order to make deals. He did it from the early days with automobiles and later with oil.” Mr. Berezovsky had an outsize, if hardly always benevolent, role in post-Soviet Russia. George Soros, a financier and a critic of the Russian oligarchs, had likened them to 19th-century American robber barons. But if that was an apt metaphor, the power and influence of these new tycoons was amplified by the legal and political vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Berezovsky amassed his fortune at first in automobiles, including a business he formed in 1993 with Aleksandr Voloshin, who would later become Mr. Yeltsin’s chief of staff. But like other oligarchs, Mr. Berezovsky’s interests spread across many sectors of the post-Soviet Russian economy, to oil; media; and Aeroflot, the Russian airline. He survived an assassination attempt in 1994, a car bombing in which his driver was killed.   The assassination attempt connected him to a K.G.B. officer, Alexander V. Litvinenko, who was poisoned by the radioactive isotope polonium 210 in London in November 2006. Mr. Litvinenko, then working for the F.S.B., the domestic successor to the K.G.B., was assigned to investigate the blast, and Mr. Berezovsky became his mentor and later his employer. Mr. Berezovsky helped Mr. Litvinenko flee Russia in 2000 before he, too, left the country to seek asylum in London. On the day he was poisoned, Nov. 1, 2006, Mr. Litvinenko went from a meeting with several Russians at a hotel in central London to Mr. Berezovsky’s nearby office. There he met with a Chechen exile, Akhmed Zakayev, another Berezovsky protégé, and the two drove together to adjacent homes financed by Mr. Berezovsky, in North London. After Mr. Litvinenko’s death, and with his wealth dwindling during his time in London, Mr. Berezovsky slowly withdrew his financial support for Mr. Litvinenko’s widow as she pressed for an inquest into the death, now scheduled to begin in May. Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in Moscow on Jan. 23, 1946, to Abram Berezovsky, a civil engineer who worked in construction, and Anna Gelman, at a time when the Soviet Union was recovering from World War II. He studied forestry and mathematics at the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute. He worked as an engineer and researcher until the late 1980s. In the mid-1990s, Mr. Berezovsky served on Russia’s security council, only to be dismissed from that post by Mr. Yeltsin in 1997. Mr. Berezovsky and Mr. Putin had been close, and Mr. Berezovsky aided Mr. Putin’s rise to the presidency. But signs came quickly that Mr. Berezovsky had fallen out of favor. In October 2000, just 10 months after Mr. Yeltsin’s resignation, Mr. Berezovsky was ordered to vacate a spacious government country house and to return the government plates on his limousine. He left Russia for Britain that year. In March 2003, the British authorities arrested Mr. Berezovsky and said they were beginning a process that could lead to his extradition. But he was granted political asylum later that year apparently after the British determined that Russia sought him solely on political grounds. In 2007, he was convicted of fraud charges by a Russian court in absentia and sentenced to six years in prison, and had potentially faced prosecution in at least 10 other cases. The sharpest blow to his wealth came from the failed lawsuit against Mr. Abramovich. On the day last August when the court ruled against him, Mr. Berezovsky attempted an air of nonchalance. “Life is life,” he said, flanked by bodyguards, before driving off in a Mercedes. Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Venice, and Ravi Somaiya from New York.

Energizing our Built-In Optimism and Renewing our Hopes.

Dear Compatriots,

It just dawned on me that the New Year will bear the number 13, which in
most of the world is perceived as good luck. I hope that it will indeed bring
us the luck we all so badly need.

Let us hope for a more peaceful year, a year with less gun violence, with less
natural disasters, with less hatred in our country and in the entire world.

May you all enjoy good health, good laughs, good spirits and much love.

Affectionately,

Ruth

P.S. Relax!   I don’t expect an individual  answer from all List members.

Ruth Glasberg Gold

==========================

An after-thought: In Chinese tradition the outgoing year that started January 23, 2012, is the YEAR OF THE DRAGON
- and the Year that starts at the Spring Festival February 10, 2013, will be known as the YEAR OF THE SNAKE.

Yesterday I saw on TV a series of interviews in a hamlet in Texas where President Obama got only 5 votes while his opponent got 239 votes. It was said that this was the most one-sided voting-booth in the recent elections.The only person the journalist found who voted for Obama was afraid to give his name. Those that proudly acknowledged voting for Mr. Romney – simple people and not of high income – contended that the President was dictatorial, not a true American, not a Christian believer, he allows immigration that dilutes the values of the country … etc. This reminded me about The New York Times article that looked at the voting in the Ukraine. Antisemitism, not a factor yet in the US – but it can be banked upon that this sort of evolution will make it a factor as well. The attack on US military leadership and on the performance of the US government after the very serious mishap in Benghazi may be further proof that ultra-Nationalist elements in the US are on a roll again. The foot soldiers in such movements obviously do not come from the 1% of the extreme rich that help finance this.

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Ukraine’s Ultranationalists Show Surprising Strength at Polls.

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: November 8, 2012

Eight years later, Mr. Tyagnibok is preparing to return to Parliament, not as a lone member of a broader coalition, as he was when he was ejected, but as the leader of Svoboda, the ultranationalist, right-wing party that will control 38 of 450 seats, or about 8.5 percent of the national legislature.

Svoboda’s surprising show of strength in the Oct. 29 election — polls had predicted that the party would fail to meet the 5 percent threshold to enter Parliament — has stirred alarm, including warnings from Israel about the rise of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic and a place with a firsthand knowledge of ethnic violence and genocide.

But in an interview in the downtown office building that Svoboda shares with an insurance company and a dental clinic named Smile, Mr. Tyagnibok said that fear of his party was misplaced and the accusations of racism and extremism unfounded.

“Svoboda is not an anti-Semitic party,” he said, seated behind a desk, a sport jacket stretched by his barrel-sized chest, his huge hands folded in front of him, speaking slowly and firmly in Ukrainian. “Svoboda is not a xenophobic party. Svoboda is not an anti-Russian party. Svoboda is not an anti-European party. Svoboda is simply and only a pro-Ukrainian party. And that’s it.”

Of course, that was not it.

Mr. Tyagnibok was just beginning to demonstrate the smooth charm that has helped Svoboda, which means “Freedom,” build support beyond its traditional stronghold in the Ukrainian-speaking west.

Tall, with beefy good looks, Mr. Tyagnibok, 44, who is a urological surgeon by training, has used his party’s pro-Ukrainian message to tap into frustration over the country’s stalled economy and growing disillusionment with the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovich.

From Mr. Tyagnibok’s frequent appearances on television talk shows, emphasizing national sovereignty and warning of encroachment by neighboring Russia, most viewers might never discern that some of his party’s members are unabashed neo-Nazis, while others shun the label but nonetheless espouse virulent hatred of Jews, gays and especially Russians.

Researchers who specialize in extremism say it is a talent shared by other leaders of far-right parties and has helped bring them into the mainstream in many European countries, including Hungary, Poland and Romania.

“This is a common phenomenon within these parties, that they have a front-stage image and a backstage agenda,” said Andreas Umland, an expert at the National University in Kiev. “The internal discourse, from what we can only suspect, is much more radical and xenophobic than what we see.” He added, “This is all much more radical.”

In the interview at his office, Mr. Tyagnibok said Svoboda’s message was only positive. “We do call ourselves nationalists,” he said. “Our view is love. Love of our land. Love of the people who live on this land. This is love to your wife and your home and your family. So, it’s love to your mother. Can this feeling be bad?”

“Our nationalism does not imply hatred to anybody,” he continued. “We formed a political party to protect the rights of Ukrainians, but not to the detriment of representatives of other nation.” He added, “So, if you ask about philosophy to be explained in two words: We are not against anyone. We are for ourselves.”

For a long time, they were for themselves and mostly by themselves. In the previous parliamentary election, in 2007, Svoboda received less than three-quarters of 1 percent of the vote, and that was an improvement. Until 2004, Svoboda was called the Social-Nationalist Party, which critics said was just a word flip of its true ambitions.

Born in Lviv, sometimes called the capital of the western, Europe-oriented Ukraine, Mr. Tyagnibok said he was raised to hate Communists, in part because his paternal grandfather was a victim of oppression under Stalin. He got his start in politics as a student organizer in the late 1980s, attended medical school and has been a member of the nationalist party from its inception in the early 1990s.

He served six years in Parliament, from 1998 until he was ejected in 2004. In 2001, with Ukrainian voters growing increasingly frustrated with the status quo, Svoboda made major gains in local and regional elections. Some voters who supported Svodboda said they believed that the party could present the strongest challenge to President Yanukovich. Many said they did not view the party as extreme.

“Those people who supported Svoboda in these elections, they don’t support racism, anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism,” said Vyacheslav Likhachev, who monitors extremism for the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. “They support Svoboda because every vote for Svoboda was a vote against the ruling government.”

Still, Mr. Likhachev said, Svoboda’s rise was not a positive development for Ukraine. “It is bad for society,” he said.

In the days before the vote, Mr. Tyagnibok signed an agreement to work with other opposition parties, including the Fatherland party of the jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko. Ms. Tymoshenko, who was barred from the ballot this year, recently began a hunger strike to protest what she said was fraud in the elections.

Mr. Tyagnibok’s ties to Ms. Tymoshenko and former President Viktor Yushchenko date to before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, which Mr. Tyagnibok and other nationalists supported. Critics of the alliance say that it will give Svoboda more power than it would have on its own, and grant it further legitimacy as a mainstream faction.

Although his occasional use of ethnic and religious epithets is well documented — there was the 2004 speech to supporters, and in 2005, his public signing of an open letter to President Yushchenko and others demanding an end to “criminal activities of organized Jewry in Ukraine” — Mr. Tyagnibok called the allegations of hate speech “a fantasy and a serious exaggeration.”

The general prosecutor charged him with inciting ethnic hatred, but the case was dropped after the Orange Revolution. “In 2004, I was accused of anti-Semitism, but I won in all the court cases,” Mr. Tyagnibok said.

Mr. Tyagnibok said nationalist parties were enjoying a renaissance in Europe because of the Continent’s financial problems, as well as conflicts with Muslim immigrants in countries like Italy, France and Spain. “Europe is change,” he said. “Economic failures make people look for reasons.”

But he said it was all for the best. “In our view the ideal is to see Europe as one big flower bed full of different flowers, with Ukraine as one of the most beautiful flowers in it,” Mr. Tyagnibok said. “It has its own scent, its own beauty. It is different from other flowers, but it is in the same flower bed.”

He waved away any thought of nationalist strife. “Just imagine one nationalist talking to another nationalist,” he said. “There should be no problems between them. Everybody respects their interests, and everybody understands we live in one big world.”

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Also today’s:

Veteran F.B.I. Agent Helped Start Petraeus E-Mail Inquiry.

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, SCOTT SHANE and ALAIN DELAQUÉRIÈRE

Published: November 14, 2012

The agent, Frederick W. Humphries II, 47, is also described by former colleagues as relentless in his pursuit of what he sees as wrongdoing, which appears to describe his role in the F.B.I. investigation involving Mr. Petraeus. Suspecting that the case involved serious security issues and was being stalled, possibly for political reasons — a suspicion his superiors say was unjustified — he took his concerns to Congressional Republicans.

“Fred is a passionate kind of guy,” one former colleague said. “He’s kind of an obsessive type. If he locked his teeth onto something, he’d be a bulldog.”

The question of how and why the F.B.I. opened the investigation that has had such momentous consequences has been central from the moment Mr. Petraeus stepped down Friday. The emerging portrait of the agent who initiated the inquiry is another step toward an answer.

Mr. Humphries, who was identified on Wednesday by law enforcement colleagues, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley, a Tampa woman active in local military circles and a personal friend, about anonymous e-mails that accused her of inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus.

The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after F.B.I. agents discovered what a law enforcement official said on Wednesday were sexually explicit e-mail exchanges between him and Ms. Kelley.

A spokesman for Ms. Kelley provided her version of events in two conference calls with reporters on Wednesday. Ms. Kelley’s concern when she took the e-mails to Mr. Humphries was that she feared the sender was “stalking” Mr. Petraeus and General Allen, said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

“She asks the agent, ‘What do you make of this?’ ” the spokesman said. “The agent said: ‘This is serious. They seem to know the comings and goings of a couple of generals.’ ”

General Allen himself had received a similar anonymous e-mail message, sent by someone identified as “kelleypatrol,” advising him to stay away from Ms. Kelley. The general forwarded it to Ms. Kelley, and they discussed a concern that someone was cyberstalking them.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he had asked the Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing for General Allen’s next assignment while the department’s inspector general reviewed his e-mail correspondence with Ms. Kelley, which was discovered by F.B.I. agents investigating her initial complaint.

Pentagon officials said the review covered more than 10,000 pages of documents that included “inappropriate” messages. But associates of General Allen have said that the two exchanged about a dozen e-mails a week since meeting two years ago and that his messages were affectionate but platonic.

A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, disputed that assertion on Wednesday, saying some messages were clearly sexual. Investigators were confident “the nature of the content warranted passing them on” to the inspector general, the official said.

In a statement on Wednesday, General Allen’s military counsel said he intended to cooperate fully with the inspector general’s investigation. “To the extent there are questions about certain communications by General Allen, he shares in the desire to resolve those questions as completely and quickly as possible,” said the statement from Col. John G. Baker, the chief defense counsel of the Marine Corps.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and the deputy director, Sean Joyce, briefed leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees about the investigation. Mr. Petraeus is expected to speak to the panel behind closed doors on Friday about the attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya. The events leading to his resignation are certain to come up.

A Pentagon official said the security clearance of Ms. Broadwell, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army Reserve, had been suspended pending the outcome of the F.B.I. investigation. F.B.I. agents on Monday night carried boxes of documents and a computer out of the house she shares with her husband and two sons. The law enforcement official said that Ms. Broadwell had cooperated with investigators in their effort to remove all classified material, which by law cannot be kept in an insecure facility.

The officials said Ms. Kelley was no longer permitted to enter MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa “with a wave,” as she has for years as a regular volunteer and visitor to ranking officers there. Now she has to get approval and sign in at the visitor’s gate, the official said.

Ms. Kelley, whose house has been besieged by reporters and television crews, has called 911 several times to complain about snooping reporters, according to tapes and transcripts of the calls posted on the Web. In at least one call, she asked for “diplomatic protection,” saying she is an “honorary consul general,” a designation she reportedly received from South Korean diplomats.

By all accounts, Mr. Humphries doggedly pursued Ms. Kelley’s cyberstalking complaint. Though he was not assigned to the case, he was admonished by supervisors who thought he was trying to improperly insert himself into the investigation.

In late October, fearing that the case was being stalled for political reasons, Mr. Humphries contacted Representative Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington State, where the F.B.I. agent had worked previously, to inform him of the case. Mr. Reichert put him in touch with the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, who passed the message to Mr. Mueller.

Lawrence Berger, the general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, who spoke with Mr. Humphries, said Mr. Humphries only received the information from Ms. Kelley and never played a role in the investigation.

Mr. Berger said Mr. Humphries and his wife had been “social friends with Ms. Kelley and her husband prior to the day she referred the matter to him.”

“They always socialized and corresponded,” he said.

Mr. Berger took issue with news media reports that said his client had sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley.

“That picture was sent years before Ms. Kelley contacted him about this, and it was sent as part of a larger context of what I would call social relations in which the families would exchange numerous photos of each other,” Mr. Berger said.

The photo was sent as a joke, he said, and was of Mr. Humphries “posing with a couple of dummies.” Mr. Berger added that it was not sexual in nature.

Two former law enforcement colleagues said Mr. Humphries was a solid agent with experience in counterterrorism. He has conservative political views and a reputation for being aggressive, they said.

Colleagues and news reports described the role of Mr. Humphries, who in 1999 was in his third year at the F.B.I., in building the case against Ahmed Ressam, who was detained as he tried to enter the United States from Canada with a plan to set off a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport.

In May 2010, after he had moved to the Tampa field office, Mr. Humphries fatally shot a knife-wielding man near a gate of MacDill Air Force base. A state prosecutor declined to prosecute the case, and the Justice Department’s civil rights division and an internal F.B.I. review board each also found that the use of force had been justified, according to bureau records.

A large American flag was flying on Wednesday in front of Mr. Humphries’s house in Dover, a half-hour drive from Tampa. A man standing in the driveway who appeared to be Mr. Humphries, approached by a reporter seeking comment, said his first name was not Fred. The man then walked into the house, closed the front door and did not respond to the doorbell.

In regard to his client’s speaking with Mr. Cantor, Mr. Berger declined to address the issue, saying only that his client “had followed F.B.I. protocols.”

“No one tries to become a whistle-blower,” he said. “Consistent with F.B.I. policy, he referred it to the proper component.”

A law enforcement official said disclosing a confidential investigation even to Congress members could sometimes violate F.B.I. rules. The official said that Mr. Humphries’s conduct was under review and that he had not been punished in any way.

On Wednesday, Mr. Cantor said he had no intention of “politicizing” the tip from Mr. Humphries, whom he did not name. “The information that was sent to me sounded as if there was a potential for a national security vulnerability,” Mr. Cantor said.

From the Czernowitz Internet List that provided us with the jewish-voice-from-germany.de/cms/  and

ARTS AND CULTURE A Jewish Berliner in Wagner’s Bayreuth

An interview with mezzo-soprano Nadine Weissmann…

A Jewish Berliner in Wagner’s Bayreuth.

ic.pics.livejournal.com/whasup/9748234/6126780/original.jpg

The  old Czernowitz we see today was built in
the second half of the 19 th century by the Austrians.
Beautiful facades but shabby backyards to accommodate
as many lower middle  working class population as possible.
Mostly Jewish.

Czernowitz was getting industrialized.
New factories were popping up every other day:
Saw mills, textiles, breweries, soap, sausage, matzes,   lapzedeckel and laptops.
New shops , eateries , beerhalls ,hotels were created.
The Jews were moving up from the  Judenstadt.
Nothing could stop them.
Unchanged it stands so up to now.
If you visit Czernowitz go and see them.
In some court you may find my slingshot.

From the internet chatter we learned these very interesting news at a time The Rumanian Government under Prime Minister Victor Ponta (after trying to oust  President Traian Basescu, an EU NO!-NO! – specially as the population sees in Basescu the guarantor of democracy in Romania) is now bringing in a Holocaust denier, Senator Dan Sova, as part of his team of Ministers – “Liaison Minister between the  Government and the Parliament of  Romania.”

Recently on the other hand, a committee centered around the Holocaust museum of the United States sponsored, with the agreement of the local Administration of Chernivtsi (the former Czernowitz), the marking of the house where Traian Popovich lived, with an official memorial plaque.

“This is such good news. Thank you Mimi and all others who contributed to making this happen!” – writes Eytan Fichman, the son of one of the survivors, Pearl Fichman (born Spiegel).

—–Original Message—–
From: Miriam Taylor <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>
To: Czernowitz Genealogy and History <czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu>
Sent: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:06 am
Subject: [Cz-L]Popovici plaque more…

More information about the approval of the plaque:
This was sent to me bu Luda Aliyeva, member of our list in Chernivtsi:

The press-centre of the City Council has issued a press-release stating  That they approved the plaque to T.Popovici. The following information  appeared in the largest Chernivtsi newspaper. The E-version of the news can  be accessed at:
www.molbuk.com/news/17787-u-chernivcjakh-vstanovljat-memorialnu-doshku-na.html

It says:
Title: The Mayor saving thousands of Jews will get a memorial plaque.

Text:
“The Jewish community of Bukovina received approval to install at their own expense a memorial plaque in honor of Traian Popovici of the facade of the building at #6 Zankovetska Street. The memorial plaque will state in Ukrainian, English and Romanian the following text:

“In this building lived Traian Popovich (1892-1946). As mayor of Chernivtsi
in 1941, he saved 19600 Jews from deportation to Transnistria and probable
death. In sincere gratitude and eternal memory. Jews of Chernivtsi”.

The decision was taken considering applications of the Director of Department of International Archival Programs of the Holocaust Museum of the USA, R.Ioanid and the Head of Jewish community of Chernivtsi Oblast L. Kleyman. The press-centre for the City Council reported on that.”

I believe that there will be an official unveiling and will start making  arrangements for it. I would like to suggest to the city officials and the Chernivtsi Jewish community, that the unveiling take place either on March 30 or 31, or on April 21st. Any members of the list who would like to be present at the unveiling, please write me no later than Jan. 5th, to let me know whether you have a preference for either one of the March dates or the April date.

About the cost and payment for the plaque: At this time, I as yet do not know the exact cost of having the plaque made. The estimate WAS between 2320 and 2760 UAH. I was given this estimate in August of this year. At that time the exchange rate of the Hrivna was about 4 Hrivna = $1, so that the total cost estimate was between $600 and $700. I will look up the exact rate of exchange at the time and will pay the designer and engraver accordingly.
Once I know the exact cost, I will let you know and ask for contributions.

Mimi

================================================——————————-

AND THIS WEEK:

Hi CZ’ers…Just heard from Zoya that last night  on Russian
>> television
>> they announced that American actor, Dustin Hoffman (age  75) is
>> beginning to
>> shoot a new film where he will be playing Trian Popovich!  The
>> movie will be
>> partly made on location in Chernowitz!! Does anyone else know
>> about this?
>> So exciting…and I can almost see him playing  Popovich…

Well!!!  Romania as much as other countries has selective amnesia and a talent of denial.
Sadly Trajan Popovici was a Jewish hero deserving accolades, to the Roumanians he is tainted
because he saved Jews. As recently (last week he renewed the claim) one Roumanian Minister Sava expressed his
convincing doubt about the barbarous massacre in Jasi as an exageration.

Probably Antonescu. He is their REAL hero, if you ask quite a few of
them.

================================

ABOUT CZERNOWITZ:

The pearl of the Carpats, Little Vienna, Little Paris .
These and many more accolades were attributed  to our
little home town.
Of all these I was not aware during my stay in Czernowitz.
Houses? Yes there were some beautiful houses, streets in
our town but this was not the cause of our affection.
What then  made the Jews to so much love  the town ?
The answer is simple : We felt good.
With such an overwhelming majority the Jews felt secure.
In the city center and main streets mostly Yiddish was heard.
This made us feel safe.The rich as the poor.
We felt good.
This made Czernowitz our city .
Not buildings, not streets ,synagogues and Temples.
All these are empty shells.
Without the Jews Czernowitz  lost its aura.
Now it is one more town where Jews used to be.
An empty oyster shell.
The pearl fled in 1946.

by Hardy Breier

——-

Being the majority of the population in Czernowitz, certainly
made our parents, grandparents and us feel good.
But that was not the only reason for our feeling of well being
and love for the city.

But I think that the Ukrainian,German and Romanian inhabitants
of the city were just as proud of Czernowitz as the Jews.
Compared to many cities of the same size, in Romania, Poland
and Ukraine, Czernowitz was more progressive, better maintained
and better planned.

Mimi

Energy Crisis Looming in the European Deep Freeze

U.N. faults Japan for weak crisis prep: Says according to Kyodo - Projections for nuclear accidents were “too modest”

 search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20…

Friday, Sep. 16, 2011

NEW YORK — The United Nations says Japan was “too modest” in projecting potential accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled the facility.

“The principal lesson of the Fukushima accident is that assumptions made concerning which types of accident were possible or likely were too modest,” the United Nations said in a report released Wednesday on the nuclear crisis.

“Those assumptions should be reviewed for all existing and planned reactors, and the possible effects of climate change should be taken into account,” the report says.

The report was compiled by 16 U.N. organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization.

It was prepared for a high-level meeting on nuclear safety and security to be held Sept. 22 during the U.N. General Assembly.

The report calls for the IAEA to “establish a global radiation monitoring platform to display real-time data on radioactive releases and integrate data from international and national monitoring and early warning systems.”

It also proposes that the preparatory commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization “provide its expertise and radionuclide data for that purpose.”

The report says the Fukushima accident also has implications for nuclear security as both accident and sabotage could cause similar problems “through the loss of power, communications, computer, safety and physical protection systems, and the loss of key operating, safety and security personnel.”

The report strongly calls for facilitating “coordinated support to national, regional and international food and agriculture response planning to nuclear emergency.”

“Contaminated areas may not be able to grow crops or support livestock grazing as a result of the persistence of radionuclides such as cesium-137 for decades,” it says.

A nuclear accident could have an impact on food trade, “which arises not only from imposed food restrictions in certain areas, but also from consumers’ reluctance to consume some foods because of public fears of radioactive contamination,” it says.

In its reference to the risks that climate change pose to nuclear power plants, the report says climate- and weather-related risks for nuclear power plants are “not insurmountable” as knowhow and technologies can significantly reduce or eliminate them.

The report expresses appreciation for Japan’s measures on public health, saying steps to protect public health were quickly implemented and residents in the affected areas were evacuated in a timely manner.

But the report adds: “Physical and prolonged stress among the evacuees has had significant health impacts.

“The disruption in their lives, breakdown of social contacts, long detention at evacuation sites with little privacy and crowded conditions, and sharp changes in their social environment have all contributed to grave stress, causing mental trauma.”

We were informed of a Press Briefing

at the Vienna International Cenre, Thursday, September 8, 2011, 1:30 p.m. on

Adaptation to Climate Change by Spatial Planning in the Alps.

This was to be about: The main results and outcomes achieved under the CLISP Project “Adaptation to Climate Change by Spatial Planning in the Alpine area” will be discussed at the CLISP international final conference organized by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Federal Environment Agency Austria, held at the Vienna International Centre at that date – on 8 September 2011, at which the Head of the UNEP Vienna Office, Harald Egerer, stressed the importance of the particular study as a platform for the development of an integrated, transnational approach toward adaptation to impacts of climate change in the highly sensitive area of the Alps.

It also said  at the margins of the Conference, high level representatives from the European Union, the Alpine Convention and Austrian agencies will take part at the Press Briefing with the purpose of illustrating present and future strategies to tackle negative effect of climate change in the Alpine space.
Speakers include:

Rosario Bento Pais
DG Climate Action, European Commission

Andre Jol
Head of vulnerability group, European Environment Agency

Marco Onida
Secretary General, Alpine Convention

George Reberning
Managing Director, Federal Environment Agency Austria

————-

Having shown interest, later we also received a Press Release:

Climate Change Adaptation by Spatial Planning in the Alpine Space.

At the Press Conference there were just two journalists – myself and the Vienna editor for an industry magazine 4C, Ms. Margarette Endl who came as a guest of the organizers of what turned out to have been the “graduating” event – the release of the final documents of this stage inthe CLISP Project.

Other people in the room were part of the conference and thus asked no questions. Ms. Endl asked questions on the basis of her attendance at the morning session.
I ended up asking on the base of my general interest in the subject, and learned that since the three poles concept the subject has evolved, and I have now much more to learn about the mountain regions. As evidence of this large area – I already posted several items today based on other sources of information.

Coincidently, years ago, I was present when Ambassador Dr. Irene Freudenschuss-Reichl  introduced for Austria and UNIDO the subject of Mountain Regions to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. At the UN Mountains were always a synonym to the Himalayas like deserts, arid and semiarid lands are a synonym to Africa – but she was already then speaking about Austria and the Alps. Now the subject has evolved and we speak of regions within this large area previously included in the Alpine region.

I mentioned the three poles where the Himalayas are the third pole – and asked if we should talk now of five poles – including the Alps and the Andes – while leaving out the lesser areas like the mountains of New Zealand – because the region is rather small or Africa where the melting of the snows of Kilimanjaro has sort of eliminated the problem. I knew this was a rather provocative question and got a very good answer from Mr. Pier Carlo Sandei where he explained that the mountain regions are not just about the disappearance of the glaciers – but rather about the moving up of vegetation lines – thus a general  changing in the nature in the mountains because of Climate Change and other reasons. This is a general UNEP interest and the subject has progressed through a series of Conventions.

I stayed for the afternoon sessions that were chaired by Ms. Sabine McCallum, the department head for the subjects of Environment Impact Assessment & Climate Change of the Austrian Department of the Environment. she was actually the head of the project and her Minister – Helmut Hojesky, Federal Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment, and Water Management, was the main speaker at the High-Level Panel Discussion: “Taking action towards climate-proof spatial development – What is the way forward?”

Others on the panel were Thomas Probst, Swiss Federal Office for the Environment; Rosario Benito Pais and Jose Ruiz de Casas, both from the European Commission one from  Climate Action and the other from Regions; Andre Jol, Head of group Vulnerability and Adaptation, European Environment Agency; and Marco Onida, Secretary General of the Alpine Convention.

What happened here was that the area of the Alpine Convention has been divided into 10 regions that the study dealt with separately. It is obvious that the problems of the Swiss Alps that are dedicated mainly to tourism are very different from the problems in the newer members of the EU from the Balkans and the Carpathian regions where there are also States that do not belong to the EU altogether. The project did not just reshuffle data – but produced data and starts proposing plans of action – this being the ultimate goal of the project that after being absorbed by the States involved – will then be continued in order to come up with further plans of action.

We were told not to forget mitigation. While adaptation is a defense for the countries here – if there are no tangible results on mitigation here and elsewhere – there will be need for more adaptation in the future.

The European Commission told us that CLIMATE ACTION is now a new DG (that means a Department with Department Head and Stuff and a mandate to act). All these studies and Plans of Axtion will be under this department.

THE minister said that his people learn the Swiss and German experience – AND WE HAVE TO ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE – BECAUSE IT WILL HAPPEN – WHATEVER WE DO.

UNEP declared that they are here because they want to learn from the A-B-C … the Alps, Balkans, Carpathian regions. The countries that were parts of Yugoslavia and Albania have lot of historic experience but having become independent of each other, whatever centralized poiicy there was it is now worse – there is no communication between them. Cooperation is needed and this project provides a unified platform and future regional adaptation. The Balkan region is actually a Balkan and Dinaric Arc Region that covers the Adriatic Coast.

So far as Vienna goes – as always – it finds itself in the middle – this time in the middle between the Alps and the Carpatians with the “B” region to the South.

There was the need for a Carpathian Convention in addition to the Alpine Convention. The Carpathian Convention includes The Ukraine and Serbia that are not part of the EU. 66% of the Carpathian region is still covered with forests – this provides extra-potential to preserve biodiversity, landscape and quality of air.

Pier Carlo Sandei spoke of SUSTAINABLE GROWTH in the context of the 21st Century – rather then the 20th Century. He gave me the feeling that Sustainable Growth as understood earlier is a no=no today when we must think of TRANSNATIONAL REGIONS that will aim by 2020 to be sustained by 20% Sustainable Energy.

He also used in the summary the conclusion: MITIGATION IS GLOBAL – ADAPTATION IS LOCAL & REGIONAL. One will have to look at climate costs – if you invest or you do not invest. This reminds us of the situation that compares the way industry looks at their strategy to answer CO2 emissions decrease requirements.

If you do something overseas – you get the credits and you can apply the full amount right now – but if you reduce your own emissions at home, you do not get the immediate full credit – you rather get the credit apportioned for the long range of the project – and that is what sends corporations to buy credits overseas. AHA! You Kyoto Protocol; affectionados – hear it from us = we warned you that the system never made sense!

——————————

Looking at the nice collection of material I took along – I would like to give here references for the benefit of our readers:

A – ALPINE CONVENTION, 2nd efition, January 2011, Permanent Secretariat of the Alpine Convention, Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse 15, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria with a branch office in Bolzano-Bosen, Italy.  www.alpconv.org

B – BALKAN VITAL GRAPHICS – Environment Without Borders. Published by UNEP/GRID=Arendal in 2007. It was backed by Austria and canada and was used as part of the Belgrade October 10-12, 2001 Ministerial Conference on Building Bridges To The Future Environment For Europe. It deals with mining, water and nature.

C – A COLLECTION ON THE CARPATHIAN CONVENTION, material prepared for the Second Convention of the Parties, Bucharest, June 17-19, 2008. Published in
Bolzano, Italy. www.carpathianproject.eu  —– This material was followed by the Carpathian Project headed by Mr. Harald Egerer of UNEP Vienna. www.carpathianconvention.org … Harald.Egerer@unvienna  … The Partners to the project are institutions from Austria, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, The Ukraine.

We know it – The global economic crisis has its roots in Europe - dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/d…

While we read about Warren Buffett buying in this down market, and the Chinese snap up New York real estate, but, here we find that some are still trying to join the Eurozone.

A Russian Tycoon offers himself for premier and wants to dump ruble for euro!! – this is metal tycoon and New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail D. Prokhorov –  http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

In the Ukraine, Vitali Klitchko, a world boxing champion, who wants to enter politics and run for the presidency, wants tp join the EU,

THE SWISS WEIGH THE UNTHINKABLE: A EURO PEG. www.gainesville.com/article/20110…

But Mauritius is increasing its gold holdings, reducing its exposure to the US dollar and the euro, and switched to the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar.

The Chinese must seriously consider now the upgrading of their world status – they have earned it.

This is the 13th posting in our Israel Summer of 2011 series.

————————-

Yesterday I went from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – in many ways this was also a trip to visit the unreal real.

This was my Second trip to Jerusalem this summer. The first trip was pure personal i visited my parents’ tomb, saw that the space reserved for me and my wife is still unoccupied and passed by old joints and visited otherwise old connections. This second trip was different.

If you use public transportation – you can go by bus and it takes one hour or by train and it takes more then two hours. I chose the bus that brings you to the Western entrance to town. The road threads right under the large city cemetery – the tombs in the right position to be the first to see the arrival of the Messiah. This is an ultra-orthodox part of town. The men, with dreadlocks flowing in the wind, dressed in black garb, some with tall white socks, and all with black hats on their head – look like knights of a secret medieval ghetto order. The women covered from toe to head as well. Families with a minimum of 5 children stroll around – you know – even that you can not ascertain this from their looks – not much productive work and income is the lot of these families – it is the hand out of government that keeps them going.

Now, mind you, most of these folks do not believe in Zionism because they do not believe in man forging ahead his fate – according to them, it is God-Willing when a Jewish State is to come around – and this will happen with the coming of the Messiah. But then money has no odor. Already that great enemy – Vespasianus – used to say that when he taxed the urinals. So, you vote for the party that will dish out the money – be this the Shas or the Aguda – and you make sure that they stick in that hated Zionist Government. Nu – that is where I landed the moment I left the bus from secular Tel Aviv. Had I taken the train I would have landed at the new station at Malcha in a more secular – or at least less orthodox – part of town.

When I left the bus I first went up the hill near the “Buildings of the Nation” (Binyanei Hauma) to the Crown Royal Hotel in order to get myself newer maps, and then I followed on foot to the old city-market at Machane Yehuda (the camp of Judah) in order to get myself the Divine Jerusalem Mix (Meurav Jerushalmi) in a Pita bread. That is a mix of chicken livers, eggs that were not born, other chuncks of chicken innards prepared with lots of onion. The place was so full young people and old-timers as well, that I had to eat standing in order to avoid losing time. On the way I saw the new toy of Jerusalem – the light rail train – that will be starting tacking passengers only this coming Friday. So far it is just in empty training. One of the black knights so my wonder looking at these trains on Jaffa street and volunteered – who needed this?

Fortified, I continued to the main street King George  where, next to the old Parliament (Knesset) building used to be a huge hole in the ground with the Menora (State Candelaber) placed in it. Years ago, the Menora was moved to the new Knesset building but that hole was still called the Park of the Menora – that is until 1997, when as part of the celebration of the 3000 years anniversary of Jerusalem, the Slovenian Republic made a statue of a horse as a present to the people of Jerusalem. That horse by Oskar Kogoj – Slow Venetian Horse – “Cavalla sella Pace” – was placed at the upper entance to the hole and the park is now derogatorily called the Park of the Horse. Hobestly, I am not making this up – the horse has no genitalia, but its head – sort of a unicorn – looks like a circumcised male organ. I am sure it must mean something. While I was admiring the horse a very loud Chabad vehicle passed by and it had written on it – “I AM THE KING AND ALL MUST ACCEPT THIS.” The Old Knesset building is now the Rabinic Courts of Jerusalem and they are out on summer vacation July 19 – September 4, 2011. Women that usually have a hard time getting a divorce need not apply during the summer.

I went to the Park of the Horse to visit with the headquarters of the Jerusalem Welfare protest located next to that horse. As I did not know that there actually was a horse there – hidden by a large meeting tent – a young man took me around that tent to show me the horse – “I do not know why he is here he said.”

The leaflet I picked up  ”WE ARE FIGHTING FOR THE HOME” said: Lately we are witnesses to the wave of social protests against the economic policy of the government. Protest against the price of fuel, the cottage cheese, and now lodging, the strike of the social workers and the medical doctors. All these are not independent events – but an expression of a Nation that says – enough – it is not ready anymore to accept the government policy that cares only for the rich so they get richer and leaves all the rest behind. We all come here today to say – NO MORE.

When I felt I had enough at this location, I followed further up King George Street to the bigger City Park to look also at the tents there – the cildren crawling on the grass and the people milling around those tents.

From there I continued on foot along that same street, past the Terra Sancta building, former home of famous Professor Biochemist and Philosopher – Multiple PhD Yeshaiahu Leibowitz who passed away at 91, exactly 17 years ago. He was an Orthodox believer but wanted a division between State and Religion – if there ever was something like a secular Orthodox – that was him. I continued on foot viewing Mt. Zion, the Chan Theater, the Old Railroad Station, and via the Hebron Road I finally reached my next target – 16 Joseph Klausner Street in Talpiot, next to Kibbutz Ramat Rachel.

One of the most influential books of Joseph Klausner was about Jesus. The book Jesus of Nazareth, and its sequel, From Jesus to Paul, gained him some celebrity. In it, Klausner described how Jesus was best understood as a Jew and Israelite who was trying to reform the religion, and he died as a devout Jew. He was attacked about this issue as much by Christians as by Jews. The book was considered to be so informative by Herbert Danby, an Anglican priest, that he translated the work from Hebrew into English so that English scholars might avail themselves of the information contained within this book. A number of clergymen were so incensed at Danby for translating this controversial work that they demanded his recall from Jerusalem. Later in his career, he was given a chair in Jewish history. Klausner was an ardent Zionist, but had numerous disagreements with Chaim Weizmann. The two were candidates in the presidential election of 1949; Weizmann was declared the first President of Israel.

But above was a digression – I went to 16 Joseph Klausner Street to visit the home of S.Y. Agnon about whom I wrote in my first posting of this series.

Agnon was probably the most knowledgeable writer in the Hebrew language and was recognized as such with the award of the Nobel prize. Last night was a unique opportunity to visit the house where he lived and to see a performance about him by Lior Ben Avraham, assisted by musician Uri Weiss.

Agnon lived a very simple life but was not timid when it came to show off his knowledge. Having been born on 8 of Av, and by tradition the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av, he would say that he is quite close to it – we think indeed that this is closer then the 18th of Av of Rabbi Schneierson (18 is Chai or life) who is considered therefore by followers as a Messiah. Anyway – in this then quiet home, with the views of the Dead Sea and the Old City, much of Agnon’s oeuvre was written with a stone supposedly from the Temple sitting on his desk. Agnon wrote short stories but said he was a poet – and yet, when you read his stories it sounds like poetry. It is this total hold on language that is admirable. People just have a problem today with his language – they miss the wide knowledge of word use that he had.

He moved to where he found better learning experience even if that meant him leaving his wife and two children in vienna, and later when they joined him in Jerusalem he left for Heidelberg and Berlin. The greatest Jewish scholars of his time were his friends and he cooperated with Martin Buber.

Some of the stories played out by Lior Ben Avraham were:

The story about a father and 5 sons who were business people and had a good day in the market were they sold all their goods. At night the father says to the older son that he is thirsty and wants some water. The son decides that it is a Mitzwah (good deed) to supply the water to the father and wakes up his brothers saying that they should bid for the Mitzwah – and the highest bedder will get it and the money will be used for a dinner for all of them – thus doing that Mitzwah and also enjoying it.

The story about the goat that finds a way to get through some tunnels from their Stetl to Tzfat in the Holy Land – the city of the Kabbalists. A son finds a way to discover the goat’s secret and writes to the father by putting a note in the goat’s ear. But then the father does not find the note and the goat is killed. The note is found too late to follow the secret path.

The story of the Witch and the Salesman. Like in all forest stories in Europe – an itinerant peddler sees light in the forrest  and that pretty young woman opens the door – buys a knife from him, gives him some work and starts to fatten him up. Eventually he asks about her husband and she says she has had seven of them and ate them all. To escape he has to get back to himself after realizing that for days he did not say his prayers.

To understand some more about Agnon – all you need is to see the big poster the city established at the entrance to the house – words taken from Agnon’s writings:

I built me a house and planted a garden at this place were the enemies wanted to chase me away from.

I built my home against the temple – I built it – this in order to bring up always on my heart the love that was destroyed.

(This is from THE SIGN – the Fire and the Trees).

—

The Agnon House is run now by the Jerusalem Municipality. Among the many activities here there is also a travel outlet that organizes yearly trips to Eastern Galizia run by writer Haiim Beer and Ms. Ruhama Elbaz. These trips visit and take care of places where people like S.Y.Agnon came from. The Performer last night went on last year’s trip to get closer to his topic.

—

Last note  - my next trip to Jerusalem will be August 24, 2011 – this in order to see first hand what mischief evangelist Glenn Beck will be up to.

Poland takes over EU presidency can it help save the EU from its Member States? From Poland itself?

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Polish minister pledges loyalty to EU’s Ashton.

by ANDREW RETTMAN, 02.07.2011

EUOBSERVER / WARSAW - Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski has promised to be EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton’s “loyal deputy.” But his outspoken ways could upstage her despite his best intentions.

Sikorski made the pledge at a press briefing in Warsaw on Friday (1 July) as Poland took over the rotating EU presidency.

Sikorski and Ashton in Brussels:  Who will stand out as the top EU personality on foreign affairs in the next six months?

Under the Lisbon Treaty, Ashton became the official figurehead for EU foreign policy. But she has found it hard to assert her role as big EU countries take the lead on major developments such as Libya and amid grumbling that she is not cut out for the job.

Sikorski in deference to Ashton on Friday declined to say if Poland would back the Palestinians if they apply for UN membership in September. “We [EU foreign ministers] have agreed to withhold our national positions to help Cathy Ashton reach a consensus. There is a need for the EU to speak on this with one voice,” he said.

He also defended her against criticism that she is not active enough.

“She has an impossible portfolio. She has taken over the portfolios of two previous commissioners. She’s trying to co-ordinate the positions of 27 countries on difficult issues such as the Middle East and she is trying to create her own ministry from scratch. On any given day, she should be in five places at once.”

His deputised tasks are to include a trip in Ashton’s name to Afghanistan and India. He will also help her put together EU aid for post-war governance in Libya and new ways of funding NGOs in repressive countries.

Minor tension has already emerged on the Middle East, however.

An EU diplomatic source said Ashton asked Poland not to call an informal EU foreign ministers’ meeting in September in case ministers go off message on the Palestine question at a sensitive moment. But Poland called the meeting anyway, to take place one week before the UN event.

Meanwhile, Ashton’s cautious approach to media could see the more flamboyant Polish minister put her in the shade over the next six months.

Reacting to press questions about Libya and Belarus on Friday, Sikorski could not resist making risque jokes.

On whether Colonel Gaddafi should step down, Sikorski said: “If he were to ask for transit over Polish territory to seek asylum in Belarus, we would be helpful … I think he [Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko] and Gaddafi would get on like a house on fire.”

With Ashton’s attention on the Middle East, Poland is also likely to play a leading role on EU relations with post-Soviet countries.

Ukraine’s EU ambassador recently complained that he has been asking Ashton to come to Kiev for the past year to no avail. When asked by EUobserver about prospects for ending the frozen conflict in EU-aspirant Moldova, a diplomat in Ashton’s service said: “Frankly, we don’t care.”

For his part, Sikorski on Friday noted that the Polish presidency is looking to clinch an EU association pact with Ukraine and to make progress on a similar deal with Molodva as two top priorities.

He also made clear that Poland wants to make a historic mark on EU affairs during its six-month tenure.

Looking to plans to sign an accession treaty with Croatia in autumn, the minister said: “The options [for a venue for the treaty ceremony] are Brussels, Warsaw and Zagreb. We like Croatia but we wouldn’t mind the accession treaty for Croatia being known as the Warsaw Treaty.”

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AND WHAT ABOUT POLAND HEADING THE EU AT A TIME THERE IS A NEED TO DEFEND THE EU FROM THE EURO CRISIS AND POLAND IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE EUROZONE? HOW WILL THIS WORK OUT IN WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A UNION BETWEEN EUROZONE STATES AND THOSE THAT HVE NOT OPTED YET FOR THE EURO?

Poland takes part in eurozone meeting amid worry ‘if it’s safe to join’ – 03.07.2011
—————————————————————————-
Non-eurozone country Poland has managed to get into what is normally an
exclusive meeting of euro-using finance ministers, as Warsaw wonders “if
it’s safe to join.”

euobserver.com/9/32581/?rk=1

The two days Vienna Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia World Economic Forum, that opened officially Wednesday June 8th, discussed Energy and the Arab Spring.

Chancellor Faymann (SPÖ) of Austria, the host of the Forum,  stressed especially the importance of the Nabucco gas pipeline that goes through Turkey for gas originating in Central Asia.

Austrian  Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger (ÖVP), who is in the middle of a spat with Turkey because of their rejection of an Austrian candidate for the post of Secretary General of the OSCE –  former Foreign Minister, and member of the same party, Ms. Ursula Plassnik, –  said that Europe and the Eurasian space would have much to offer each other.

The Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva, whose sister I was told is married to the Austrian Ambassador to China, said her country was a model for the “Arab Spring.” Roza Otunbayeva was one of the leaders of the “Tulip Revolution” of March 2005 that is credited with the start of democratization in her country. President Otunbayeva spoke already on Tuesday evening at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International events. Her topic was – KYRGYZSTAN ON ITS WAY  TO FREEDOM OF DEMOCRACY.

(Just watch here please that it goes in stages and it is not a smooth transition – do not expect miracles in the short term – this is our own comment – in the meantime the world will rather be interested in the region’s oil.)
 www.davienna.ac.at/jart/prj3/dipl…

Chancellor Faymann stressed the need for “stable and secure energy supply” and praised the growing cooperation between Europe and the States in the Caucasus and Central Asia. He stressed the importance of the Austrian oil company –  the OMV – for responsible planning the Nabucco gas pipeline to “stabilize the European gas supply, and relations between Europe and Central Asia and the Black Sea region, strengthened thereoff”.

He was seconded on energy import by On Ukraine President Mykola Azarov who criticized the Russian energy policy. The energy dependence of Ukraine on Russia was “not good”, as the oil and gas prices, the Russian government-related utilities are not “what we consider to be optimal. Therefore Kiev cooperation projects with Azerbaijan and other countries have been addressed.”

Austrian Federal President Hans Fischer spoke of the need for social impact of economic transformations in post-Soviet  States. Spindelegger said that the Central Asian region will continue with its wealth of resources to a new focus of the global economy – Austria can offer to these countries innovative products, he said. “If we find ways to increase cooperation, the conference will have been successful.”

Otunbayeva, who on her trip to Vienna also stopped in Budapest, expressed the hope that Central Asia in the future will get more attention in the West. She passed out in her speech, the political foundations for economic development. The downfall of the autocrat Kurmanbek Bakiyev in early 2010 had mapped out the current revolutions in the Arab world. “We could no longer afford the corrupt regime,” she said.

CEOs and Muslim economists called on Europe to support the current upheavals in the region, but sounded caution. The Dubai economist Tarik Yousef L. lamented that Europe in recent years rehabilitated the Libyan regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi. He spoke of European “guilt” because of the slow reaction to the upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia that should help these countries now. From the Central Bank of Tunisia Mustapha Kamel Nabli – the governor –  demanded above all, a closer cooperation with Europe in migration. Europe must assume a share of the costs incurred by the flow of refugees, he said. The Bahraini banker Khalid Abdullah-Janahi, said about Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood will continue to take the central role. They would get from the upcoming legislative choice between 40 and 50 percent of the vote, he said.

The Kazakh Vice Premier Yerbol Orynbayev and Turkmenistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Akylbek Japarov stressed the need for economic development “to solve their common problems” – such as in the fight against drug crime and poverty. “Poverty is a problem that not all states in the region are equally capable of solving” said Orynbayev. The Turkmenistan speaker Japarov spoke of his country’s economic aid for the unstable neighbors like Afghanistan. Turkmenistan Oil prices were discounted to them. “This contributes to the development of the country and thus to peace in the region,” said Japarov.

Chancellor Faymann met on the margins of the WEF yesterday with six heads of state and government for bilateral talks.

Emphasis during the discussions with the Heads of State of Hungary (Viktor Orban), Armenia (Tigran Sarkisian), Montenegro (Igor Luksic), Ukraine (Azarov) and Georgia (Nikoloz Gilauri) and with Otumbajewa, was the energy policy and EU issues. Faymann confirmed its rejection of the nuclear power policy and referred to his meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister. “Premier Azarov has invited me to the Ukraine to show me the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster from today’s perspective may have been his words -” This has to be seen with my own eyes. “

The World Economic Forum on Europe and Central Asia will be held in Vienna, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday June 7-9, 2011.

Above is the Vienna venue for the WEF meeting – the place will be surrounded by security forces to make it sure the place does not turn into a demonstrators haven. Vienna just survived attacks by German hooligans that came over to accompany the German soccer team playing the Austrians. Papers called them neo-Nazis making the Hitler salute. But those were just one segment of a possible barrage by protesters invoking financial reasons for disaffection with the EU, the US, and the results of government sponsored capitalism. Seattle comes to mind of what Vienna might look in a few days.

So, Schengen or no Schengen Austria took note of Denmark closing its borders for immigration reasons and closed its borders as well for Global Economics reasons as per this conference. In the Europe of today – what this means is that vehicles at border crossings will form long lines and have delays with border police checking papers. Same at airports, train crossings and boat landings. What do you do with those crossing on foot on village roads? Oh well – solutions will be found for them too and the idea of a united Europe is out the window because of mutual mistrust. How do you decide that someone is unwanted? Do you check their tatoos or haircuts? Do you have a policy discussion with them or take the example from Turkey and look up past records that made them deny to former Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik her job as head of the OSCE - Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Will they let in UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, if he decides to show up, considering his leniency on UN member States positions on Human Rights? He will have declared his running for reappointment to his position for a new term by the beginning of the week and might indeed find this conference as a good venue for a revisit. He was years ago Korea’s Ambassador to Vienna and has friendly relations to Austria.

The Kronen Zeitung of Sunday June 5th carries two revealing pieces of “Readers Mail” that stress the difference between Denmark and Austria. In both cases the argument goes that Denmark is closing its borders in order to safeguard its own citizens from the effects of migration caused by the events in the Arab World, in the Austrian case this happens always – the Austrian taxpayers’ money is used in order to safeguard foreign political and economic leaders and nothing is done when the issue is the security of the Austrian citizen. This comment hides the fact that Austria is suffering from bands of EU citizens from Eastern countries that come to enrich themselves from break-ins here but nothing is done to check their entree. Oh well, what do you do with the fiction of this Union?

The above mention of the closing of Austria’s borders officially is because of the  June meeting of the World Economic Forum will convene more than 500 leaders from business, government and civil society to discuss policies and reforms aimed at their views of rebalancing the global economy.

The diverse yet highly interdependent economies of Europe and Central Asia have reached a critical juncture, according to experts at the World Economic Forum.

While the advanced economies of the European Union are experiencing fiscal austerity and slower growth, emerging economies further east and in Central Asia are grappling with the pressures of rapid growth.

In addition to these regional challenges, Europe and Central Asia must respond to far-reaching global events such as the ‘Arab Spring’ and the earthquake in Japan.

The objective of the Vienna meeting is set out in the statement from the European Commission’s Communication on Innovation Union: “Europe’s competitiveness, our capacity to create millions of new jobs to replace those lost in the financial crisis and, overall, our future standard of living depend on our ability to drive innovation in products, services, business and social processes and models,” it says.

Will the Washington of President Obama push for a similar meeting between the USA and the fast growing economies of Latin America – the backyard in the Western Hemisphere ?

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The Underground open protests are being organized:

For the full article please see: www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/d…

in summary it says:  In the midst of chaotic upheavals in neighboring countries like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, and local conflicts of smaller or greater degree in Russia, what Lukashenka offered his people was an oasis of financial and political stability with guaranteed wages and pensions: what he termed the “social contract.”  In short, they could live life as in the past without resorting to such evils as shock therapy or military alliances with either NATO or the CIS.

Today that oasis has been transformed into the most arid part of the desert, from which Belarus lacks the resources to extricate itself.  Lukashenka’s position might make sense if the Communist Party controlled Russia, but Moscow’s rulers are committed capitalists. All he can do henceforth, unless he concedes completely to Russia’s economic barons, is postpone the inevitable through more loans and short-term crisis measures, and specifically from the IMF, one organization that has not infrequently emphasized financial stringency and economic pragmatism rather than a free or democratic society.

YES, WE KNOW, THE UKRAINE WANTS MONEY – JAPAN IS NOT READY YET TO RECOGNIZE THE EXTEND OF ITS 2011 SELF INFLICTED NUCLEAR CATASTROPHY.

WILL THE UN SPEAK UP TRUTH TO THE NUCLEAR DISASTER CREATORS?

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UN DAILY NEWS from the  UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
20 April, 2011

AT CHERNOBYL DISASTER SITE, BAN STRESSES NEED FOR ‘NEW CHAPTER’ FOR AFFECTED REGION:

Making the first visit by a United Nations Secretary-General to Chernobyl, the site of the April 1986 nuclear accident, Ban Ki-moon today paid tribute to the many victims of the disaster and called for a “new chapter” to begin in the areas still affected.

“It is one thing to read and hear about Chernobyl, and it is a completely different story to see for myself,” Mr. Ban told a conference in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, after his “extremely moving” visit to the site accompanied by President Viktor Yanukovych.

He recalled the sacrifice of the firefighters “who lost their lives, quite literally, saving the world” in the wake of the accident, as well as the 6,000 children who developed thyroid cancer and the hundreds of thousands of people who had to leave their homes or who served as recovery workers.

Mr. Ban said the suffering went beyond the estimated 6 million people who still live in affected communities in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia to “countless others haunted by fears of their health, their livelihoods, and their family’s future. We honour their pain.”

The Secretary-General said it was important to try to overcome perceptions that the affected region in the three countries “is poisoned forever” and to instead start a “new chapter, with new understanding.

“Science has shown that normal life is fully possible for most people living in area affected by the Chernobyl disaster. What these areas need most is recovery and development: new jobs, fresh investment, the restoration of a sense of community.”

Mr. Ban told the conference – whose theme was “25 years After Chernobyl Catastrophe: Safety for the Future” – that the UN Action Plan on Chernobyl reflected the world body’s commitment to shared principles and priorities to address recovery in affected areas, as well as to lessons learned from Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents.

“Together, we are working with officials, local communities, and other partners to improve infrastructure, promote small businesses, improve health systems, and spur job creation.”

Echoing his address to the Kiev Summit on the Safe and Innovative Use of Nuclear Energy yesterday, the Secretary-General emphasized the need for better international standards for the construction of nuclear power plants, agreed guarantees on public safety and full transparency and information-sharing.

“Nuclear accidents respect no borders. We owe it to our citizens and the world to practice the highest standards of emergency preparedness and response, from the design of new facilities through construction and operation to their eventual decommissioning.”

He said he was impressed by the Chernobyl Command Centre and the ongoing work of building a new shelter for the damaged nuclear reactor.

Speaking also to reporters in Kiev, Mr. Ban said that the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, which was badly damaged by the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, had sent a strong message to the world on the need to upgrade safe standards.

“We have to strengthen these nuclear safety standards both at national and international levels,” he said, noting that the Director General of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, will convene a ministerial meeting on the issue in June.

The UN chief, for his part, will hold a high-level meeting with world leaders in September to discuss in depth the strengthening of nuclear safety at both the national and international levels.

From Hiroshima 1945 to Fukushima 2011 – it is “Cukooshima!”

Let me start by saying that this posting is not an expression of any arrow shooting at Japanese that acted for all those years against their best interests. Yes – but sorry – it was Cukoo.

It all started with Japan believing it can stop US expansion in East Asia, and Japan picking the losing side in WWII. This led to the dropping of two nuclear bombs over Japan. Then Japan decided to compete with the US economy and went the way of nuclear energy for peaceful use. Now we see that this was as disastrous as their first encounter with nuclear technology – but this time by their own choice.

We love Japan. For one – I spent three weeks in Kyoto in 1997 with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting that gave birth to the failed Kyoto Protocol. At that time I got to know the Kyoto – Nara – Osaka triangle. But this was not my only encounter with the Japanese. In effect, with my family, we spent two weeks staying with Japanese in their homes thanks to the Ryokan hospitality system, and we exchanged our time-share at the Krystal Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a week at the Resorpia Hakone Japanese Business Class Resort at Hakone, at the foot of the Fiji Mountain. We got to know two different levels which sandwich the Japanese society.

With this said – let me add that I write now from Vienna and that the Austrian people have voted down the opening of an atomic plant as they understood the terrible danger of living with an atomic monster-plant in your backyard. Austria has not even one nuclear plant but gets part of its electricity from the European grid that includes nuclear plants. The Austrians are thus not clean of nuclear energy either – this unless they disengage from the European grid and run their own separate grid for which they have enough hydro-power to provide over 80% of electricity need and could easily supply the remaining part with biomass, biofuels, solar and wind energy. Clearly no real need for nuclear power and the possibility to achieve this without empty posturing based on the truth that once in the past they voted down the opening of the Zwentendorf nuclear plant.

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The Donella Meadows Archive – Voice of a Global Citizen – wrote:
Zwentendorf, a Nuclear Plant That Will Never Be Turned on.

On the bank of the Danube 20 miles northwest of Vienna stands a
completed nuclear power plant, loaded with fuel, ready to start up. It
has stood there, just so, for 9 years, while the Austrians argue about
what to do with it. The most popular plan is to turn it into a museum
for obsolete technology.

The plant, called Zwentendorf, was intended to be the first of six
Austrian nuclear plants. It was begun in 1970 and completed in 1978 at
a cost of 8 billion Austrian schillings — at present value about a
billion dollars. It is rated at 700 megawatts, about two-thirds the
size of Seabrook and Shoreham, two American nuclear plants that are
also ready to go and hotly contested.

“When Zwentendorf began, we didn’t know anything,” an Austrian
environmentalist told me. “Nuclear power sounded better to us than a
coal plant or another hydropower dam on the Danube. If only we had
known then what we know now.”

They know now that two of the four German plants with the same design
as Zwentendorf have been shut down permanently by mechanical problems.
They know now that Zwentendorf is located squarely on an earthquake
fault zone. And during a Danube flood, water seeped into its
containment vessel, so now they know that the groundwater is not
protected from contamination in case of a meltdown.

Furthermore Austria, like every other country with nuclear power, has
no plan for the disposal of nuclear waste. The original idea had been
to bury it in deep granite under the Alps. But the villages at the
chosen site vehemently rejected this plan, and by Austrian law a
locality cannot be forced to accept such an imposition from the
federal government. The Austrians offered the waste to Hungary, Egypt,
and China, but all refused. The Shah of Iran was eager to have it, but
then he fell from power. The Ayatullah wasn’t interested.

By the time Zwentendorf was finished, so many doubts had been raised
that the government was forced to hold a referendum to decide whether
to start the plant. During the weeks preceding the vote, the argument
raged — the same one that polarizes every country that permits public
discussion of nuclear power. People were told they had to choose
between progress and safety, between jobs and the environment, between
present brownouts and future contamination. Bruno Kreisky, then
Chancellor, declared Zwentendorf a top priority and appealed for a yes
vote. Austrians still do not agree whether he caused more
anti-Zwentendorf pro-Kreisky people to vote yes than he did
pro-Zwentendorf anti-Kreisky people to vote no.

At any rate, on November 5, l978, 50.5% of the voters said no to
Zwentendorf. The Austrian nuclear power program came to a halt.

This is part of an article from The Donella Meadows Archive, for
further information please contact Sustainability Institute, 3 Linden
Road, Hartland, VT 05048

Today – that is in 2011 – the Zwentendorf  facility serves as a source
of spare parts for the five German atomic power plant of the same
design, and is used for training purposes. Visits are possible only in
exceptional cases.

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Austrians understand the pain of Japan and the papers are full with articles and letters regarding the nuclear events unfolding in Japan.

The PolitikHeute page of the popular free-of-charge Vienna Heute daily, March 18, 2011, has two out of the three letters from readers, dealing with the EU “Stress Tests for EU Nuclear plants, or the EU and the Atomic Power Plants (the German word AKW):

H. Fruhwirth from Hoenbach reminds us that it is Austrian Environment Minister Nikolas Berlakovich who suggested the stress-tests for all EU AKWs and thinks that had one done so with the Fukushima plants perhaps they would have been stopped before disaster stroke. The mentioned stress tests have already led Germany to announce the non renewal of the operating licenses for as many as 12 plants – this to take effect in a month or two.

Further, the letter points out that politicians, and those that favor nuclear power, finally were driven by what happened in Japan to the realization that humanity is helpless before environmental inputs.

S. Hauer writes a short note asking why the EU deals with crooked bananas and crooked cucumbers, but has no decisions regarding the AKWs, airplane accidents, acts of terror, earth-quakes – even though it is clear that 100% safety does not exist?

On the following page there is an article titled ANSWERS, by Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

The Cardinal announces  that tonight, Friday March 18th, 7 pm, he will hold at the Stephansdom (clearly most important Cathedral in Austria) – a special service for Japan.

The Cardinal writes that the Fukushima events made him think these last days of his friend, a Chemist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, Professor Max Thuerkauf, who lost his position at the university because of his criticism of the technological insufficiencies of our times and warned of dangers even of the peaceful uses of nuclear power.  His words sound prophetic these days.

Back in 1984 he was saying that the nuclear power plants were just the tip of an iceberg – the development of technologies that were unsustainable. No engine is safe he was saying to those that argued that nuclear power plants are safe. He was noting that men build them, and use them, and we know that even the impossible can happen.

Thuerkauf  said that atomic energy is a fire that cannot be extinguished – surely not by closing a faucet. There is no material that can extinguish a fire that burns a thousand time brighter then the sun – the artificially created radioactivity.  Science has no means to bottle up this artificially created radioactivity will be here for eternity,  and the Cardinal calls us to reconsider what we are doing and look at what price the poor Japanese will pay for these activities.

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But I cannot leave it at this only. I feel I must make a further comment regarding the Japanese culture that bred the reality of people committing harakiri for some National purpose. Obviously, we had no admiration for those that sacrificed themselves for their emperor and we do not admire a Prime Minister who makes now an official visit to the shrine that sort off deifies their memory, but look now at the 50 workers that still busy themselves in the pit left by the explosions at the dying reactors of Fukushima. These people know they have little chance to survive. The head of the Japanese nuclear authority did not go to inspect the disaster – right on location. He must have had years ofd good pay and it is those workers that will be his sacrificial lambs. He is no better then the US bank-directors that raked in the profits  from the financial collapse in the US or the BP officials who watched the fouling up of the US Gulf. Neigh – the Japanese energy leaders might actually prove to be much worse then these other self-gratifiers.