NEWS,02.06.2013

Police fire tear gas as protests spread

Turkish police fired tear gas at protesters in Ankara on Sunday while thousands of people occupied Istanbul's main Taksim Square on the third day of mass demonstrations against Turkey's Islamist-rooted government.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said more than 1 700 people had been arrested in the unrest that has spread to 67 cities nationwide, though most have since been released.

In Istanbul, a sea of protesters from across Turkey's political spectrum flooded Taksim a day after police pulled out of the area, waving flags and chanting "Government, Resign!" and "Istanbul is ours, Taksim is ours!"

From a nearby rooftop, a banner with the words: "Do not surrender" was unfurled.

Taksim has been at the heart of a wave of protests that have spread across the country in the biggest public outcry against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government since it took power in 2002.

Rights groups have complained about what they said were a "disgraceful" heavy-handed response by police to the demonstrations while Turkey's Western allies appealed for restraint.

The unrest began as a local outcry against plans to redevelop Gezi Park near Taksim, but after a heavy-handed police response quickly snowballed into broader protests against what critics say is the government's increasingly conservative and authoritarian agenda.

Routine

After two days of violence, the situation appeared to have calmed in Istanbul on Sunday after police pulled out of Taksim and officials adopted a more conciliatory tone.

But in Ankara police fired tear gas and used water cannon to disperse about 1 000 protesters who were attempting to march on the prime minister's high-security office, images that were shown live on a television network.

Amnesty International said some protesters had been left blinded by the massive quantities of tear gas and pepper spray used by police.

Amnesty's Europe director John Dalhuisen said police excesses had become routine in Turkey "but the excessively heavy-handed response to the entirely peaceful protests in Taksim has been truly disgraceful."

Human Rights Watch said the number of injured was higher than official figures suggested and that one protester had lost an eye.

Turkey's Nato allies Britain, France and the United States have all urged the Erdogan government to exercise restraint.

German protesters clash with cops

German police used pepper spray and batons against thousands of anti-capitalist demonstrators from the Blockupy movement on Saturday during a second day of protests in Frankfurt against Europe's austerity policies.
Planned rallies in struggling euro zone members Spain and Portugal drew fewer people than expected, but in Germany's financial capital around 7 000 protesters marched with signs reading "Make love, not war" and "IMF - get out of Greece".
The protest was initially peaceful but small groups of masked protesters then hurled stones and smoke bombs at the police who responded with force.
Several protesters and police officers were hurt before the action died down later in the evening. Police at the scene said several arrests had been made, but could not say how many.
A first day of protests on Friday in Frankfurt succeeded in paralysing some of the city's financial institutions, cutting off access to the ECB's iconic tower office building and Deutsche Bank's headquarters.
Police anger
Police angered marchers on Saturday by halting them before they could pass close to the ECB building after protesters let off firecrackers.
In a statement, Blockupy accused the police of wanting to "escalate" tensions and of blocking a legitimate protest.
"This is scandalous," spokesperson Ani Diesselmann said. "The (original) route was approved by several legal institutions."
Police said officers had been repeatedly attacked by the small group of demonstrators, making it necessary for them to use force and pepper spray.
Protests against the "troika" of international lenders that has bailed out struggling euro zone states - the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Union - were planned in several countries on Saturday.
Europe's Blockupy movement was formed after the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. They blame the budget cuts and labour market reforms supported by the ECB, the IMF and European financial and political leaders for driving the continent into a recession that has left more than a quarter of Greeks and Spaniards out of work and millions of Europe's poor worse off.
Germany's own economy has been fairly resilient to the crisis and many in Europe's struggling southern states blame Chancellor Angela Merkel for enforcing the painful policies in exchange for EU funds which largely come from Germany.
As well as the ECB, on Friday the Blockupy demonstrators targeted several large commercial banks, stores and Frankfurt airport.

Central Europe hit by floods

Authorities in parts of central Europe issued disaster warnings and scrambled to reinforce flood defences on Sunday as rivers swollen by by days of heavy rain threatened to burst their banks.

Several people have died or are missing in the floods in Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
Czech officials warned that the waters of the Vltava river could reach critical levels in Prague late on Sunday.
Interim mayor Tomas Hudecek said authorities were considering whether to shut down parts of the capital's subway network and called on people not to travel to the city.
In the nearby city of Trebenice a woman was found dead in the rubble after a summer cottage collapsed due to the raging water, Czech public television reported.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said 200 soldiers had been deployed so far to help local authorities.
In Germany, where at least four people have died or are missing, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised federal support for affected areas and said the army would be deployed if necessary.
Several cities, including Chemnitz in the east and Passau and Rosenheim in the south issued disaster warnings.
Passau, which is located at the confluence of three rivers, could see waters rise above record levels of 2002, said mayor Juergen Dupper.
A German news agency reported that large stretches of the Rhine, Main and Neckar rivers have been closed to shipping.
Evacuations are also taking place in neighbouring Austria and Switzerland.
Meteorologists are predicting the rainfall will ease in the coming days.

14 die in US storms

Tornadoes and floods in the United States killed at least 14 people, including two children, officials said on Saturday, with most of the fatalities in Oklahoma where a monster twister struck last month.
Friday night's storms battered areas in and around Oklahoma City with high winds, heavy rain and hail, much of it near where 24 people were killed in the 20 May tornado.
The Oklahoma Medical Examiner's Office announced nine fatalities in the state and said five of the victims have not been identified, while the sheriffs' offices in towns east of Oklahoma City confirmed two other people had died.
In Missouri, authorities said three people died from severe flooding in the wake of the storms.
Streets turned into rivers, with stranded cars submerged in water as high as their door handles in some places. CNN said a massive sink hole off a major road developed due to the deluge, halting traffic.
The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Centre in Norman, Oklahoma, warned that the severe weather was shifting eastward again Sunday, with damaging winds and heavy downpours and possibly small hail and isolated tornadoes expected to threaten northern Virginia through Maine.
And northern Mexico was also bracing for severe thunderstorms, strong winds, and possibly hail and tornadoes.
Local broadcaster KOCO reported that 77 people had been admitted to hospitals with storm-related injuries.
Power company OG&E, meanwhile, reported 65 000 outages by late on Saturday, down from a high of 120 000, and the American Red Cross has opened shelters for those in affected areas.

Southern California's wildfire explodes

A fire that destroyed at least five structures and threatened hundreds of others exploded in size overnight, burning dangerously close to two communities north of Los Angeles.

Erratic wind spread the blaze in the Angeles National Forest to nearly 106km² on Sunday, triggering the evacuation of nearly 1 000 homes.

Matt Corelli of the Forest Service said that five structures had been razed by the fire and at least 10 other structures were damaged.

Crews working in steep terrain expected cooler weather after temperatures above 38ºC on Saturday.

The wind pushed the fire up and down steep slopes, creating embers that sparked spot fires in different directions.

The fire was about 20% contained.

A huge plume of smoke could be seen from various parts of northern Los Angeles county and air-quality officials warned against strenuous outdoor activity.

The blaze broke out near a hydro-electric plant near the Los Angeles aqueduct on Thursday, forcing about 200 evacuations in the mountain community of Green Valley.

Evacuations remained in effect for the Cottonwood campground and two youth probation camps along Lake Hughes Canyon Road.

The flames were chewing thick, dry brush that hasn't been burned in about a dozen years.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

NEWS,01.06.2013

Turkey Protests: Erdogan Calls For Immediate End To Demonstrations As Clashes Flare

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan made a defiant call for an end to the fiercest anti-government demonstrations in years on Saturday, as thousands of protesters clashed with riot police in Istanbul and Ankara for a second day.

The unrest was triggered by government plans for a replica Ottoman-era barracks housing shops or apartments in Istanbul's Taksim Square, long a venue for political protest, but has widened into a broader show of defiance against Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Police fired teargas and water cannon down a major shopping street as crowds of protesters chanting "shoulder to shoulder against fascism" and "government resign" marched towards Taksim, where hundreds were injured in clashes on Friday.

A police helicopter buzzed overhead as groups of mostly young men and women, bandanas or surgical masks tied around their mouths, used Facebook and Twitter on mobile phones to try to organise and regroup in side streets.

"If this is about holding meetings, if this is a social movement, where they gather 20, I will get up and gather 200,000 people. Where they gather 100,000, I will bring together one million from my party," Erdogan said in a televised speech.

"Every four years we hold elections and this nation makes its choice ... Those who have a problem with government's policies can express their opinions within the framework of law and democracy," he said.

Police later pulled back from Gezi Park in Taksim, where the demonstration started peacefully on Monday with people pitching tents in protest at trees being torn up for the redevelopment.

Waiters scurried out of luxury hotels lining the square, on what should be a busy weekend for tourists in one of the world's most visited cities, ferrying lemons to protesters, who squirted the juice in their eyes to mitigate the effects of tear gas.

"People from different backgrounds are coming together. This has become a protest against the government, against Erdogan taking decisions like a king," said Oral Goktas, a 31-year old architect among a peaceful crowd walking towards Taksim.


MODERN-DAY SULTAN

Stone-throwing protesters also clashed with police in the Kizilay district of central Ankara as a helicopter fired tear gas into the crowds. Riot police with electric shock batons chased demonstrators into side streets and shops.

Protests also broke out in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir late on Friday.

Erdogan said the redevelopment of Gezi Park was being used as an excuse for the unrest and warned the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which had been given permission to hold a rally in Istanbul, against stoking tensions.

But the protests included a broad spectrum of people opposed to Erdogan and were not organised by any political party.

CHP officials called on its members not to take party flags with them to the protests, apparently concerned they would be held responsible for the violence, and party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu accused Erdogan of behaving like a dictator.

"Tens of thousands are saying no, they are opposing the dictator ... The fact that you are the ruling party doesn't mean you can do whatever you want," he said.

Erdogan has overseen a transformation in Turkey during his decade in power, turning its once crisis-prone economy into the fastest-growing in Europe.

He remains by far the country's most popular politician, but critics point to what they see as his authoritarianism and the religiously conservative government's meddling in private life in the secular republic, accusing him of behaving like a modern-day sultan.

Tighter restrictions on alcohol sales and warnings against public displays of affection in recent weeks have also led to protests. Concern that government policy is allowing Turkey to be dragged into the conflict in neighbouring Syria by the West has also sparked peaceful demonstrations.


REASONABLE FORCE

Residents hung out of windows and balconies banging pots and pans in support of the protesters in the streets below.

Medics said around 1,000 people had been injured in the clashes in Istanbul. At least four lost their eyesight after being hit by gas canisters, while four more were being treated for fractured skulls, the Turkish Doctors' Association said.

The U.S. State Department said it was concerned by the number of injuries while Amnesty International and the European parliament raised concern about excessive use of police force.

Erdogan acknowledged mistakes had been made in the use of tear gas and said the government was investigating, but said the police reserved the right to use reasonable force and vowed that the redevelopment plans for Taksim would go ahead.

"Taksim Square can't be a place where extremist groups hang around," Erdogan said of a location which has long been a venue for mass demonstrations.

First-Ever Study of Global Economic Inequality: Richest 8% Earn 50% of Earth's Incomes

The lead research economist at the World Bank, Branko Milanovic, will be reporting soon, in the journal Global Policy, the first calculation of global income-inequality, and he has found that the top 8% of global earners are drawing 50% of all of this planet's income. He notes: "Global inequality is much greater than inequality within any individual country," because the stark inequality between countries adds to the inequality within any one of them, and because most people live in extremely poor countries, largely the nations within three thousand miles of the Equator, where it's already too hot, even without the global warming that scientists say will heat the world much more from now on.
For example, the World Bank's list of "GDP per capita (current US$)" shows that in 2011 this annual-income figure ranged from $231 in Democratic Republic of Congo at the Equator, to $171,465 in Monaco within Europe. The second-poorest and second-richest countries respectively were $271 in Burundi at the Equator, and $114,232 in Luxembourg within Europe. For comparisons, the U.S. was $48,112, and China was $5,445. Those few examples indicate how widely per-capita income ranges between nations, and how more heat means more poverty.
Wealth-inequality is always far higher than income-inequality, and therefore a reasonable estimate of personal wealth throughout the world would probably be somewhere on the order of the wealthiest 1% of people owning roughly half of all personal assets. These individuals might be considered the current aristocracy, insofar as their economic clout is about equal to that of all of the remaining 99% of the world's population.
Milanovich says: "Among the global top 1 per cent, we find the richest 12 per cent of Americans, ... and between 3 and 6 per cent of the richest Britons, Japanese, Germans and French. It is a 'club' that is still overwhelmingly composed of the 'old rich'," who pass on to their children (tax-free in the many countries that have no estate-taxes) the fortunes that they have accumulated, and who help set them up in businesses of their own - often after having sent them first to the most prestigious universities (many in the United States), where those children meet and make friends of others who are similarly situated as themselves.
For example, on 22 April 2004, The New York Times headlined "As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, Concerns Grow Over Fairness," and reported that 55% of freshman students at the nation's 250 most selective colleges and universities came from parents in the top 25% of this nation's income. Only 12% of students had parents in the bottom 25% of income. Even at an elite public, state, college, the University of Michigan, "more members of this year's freshman class ... have parents making at least $200,000 a year [then America's top 2%] than have parents making less than the national median of about $53,000 [America's bottom 50%].'"
Most of the redistribution that favors more than just the top 1% has occurred in the "developing" countries, such as China. However, a larger proportion of the world's population live in nations of Central and South America, Africa, etc., where today's leading families tend overwhelmingly to be the same as in the previous generation. They, too, near the Equator, are members of the "club," but there are fewer of them.
Milanovic finds that globally, "The top 1 per cent has seen its real income rise by more than 60 per cent over those two decades [1988-2008]," while "the poorest 5 per cent" have received incomes which "have remained the same" - the desperately poor are simply remaining desperately poor. Maybe there's too much heat where they live.
This study, in Global Policy, to be titled "Global Income Inequality in Numbers: In History and Now," reports that economic developments of the past twenty years have caused "the top 1 per cent to pull ahead of the other rich and to reaffirm in fact - and even more so in public perception - its preponderant role as a winner of globalization."

Europe: A Leaning Tower of Babel

The eurozone today has become a leaning Tower of Babel. The sovereign debt crisis and the high social costs of austerity have severely weakened its foundation. Whether this tottering edifice designed to thread diversity through the needle eye of a single currency finally collapses and falls, or is able to right itself, will depend on re-founding a European narrative for the 21st century.
The project of European unity was born out of the fear of war, which devastated the continent twice in the 20th century, and the promise of prosperity. Precisely because of the last few decades of step-by-step integration, war is no longer a danger -- and thus has lost its force as the compelling raison d'etre of unity. On the other hand, if, as the current situation suggests, integration means more pain than gain, the "lost generation" of youth facing a jobless future can be forgiven for asking, "why Europe?"
At the recent town hall meeting organized in Paris by the Berggruen Institute, French President Francois Hollande called for a "new narrative" for Europe that would appeal to the "post-crisis" generation of today as the "post-war" narrative appealed to the generation that founded the European Union. Jacques Attali, the former top aide to Francois Mitterrand and mentor to Hollande, told the students of Sciences Po, where the town hall meeting was held: "Young people today are faced with three options if the current eurocrisis is not resolved -- leaving Europe, staying in Europe without hope or going into politics and starting a revolution."
As Attali's comment suggests, the despair of youth today is destroying their faith in the promise of Europe, as we see with the success of the left-populist blogger-comedian Beppe Grillo in Italy. Right-wing movements across Europe from the True Finns to the neo-fascist Golden Dawn in Greece yearn for the days before globalization, Muslim immigration, gay marriage and the Growth and Stability Pact.
The great danger is that the despair and alienation over the failure of Europe to deliver a future for its next generation will conjoin with the backward-looking, reactionary right in one great anti-European eruption. That would finally bring the historical project of European integration crashing to the ground.
In this context, pro-Europeans need to heed a truth of the human condition that Charles de Gaulle fully understood: Identity is rooted in the nation that is, belonging to a unique way of life; what Johann Gottfried Herder called "volksgeist." Papering over this truth with a currency managed (or mismanaged) by distant bureaucrats with functional acronyms in Brussels only suppressed this reality, not diminished it.
Unless de Gaulle's "certain idea of France" and its equivalent in other nations is replaced with an "a certain idea of Europe," the whole thing will shatter into shards of a once-vibrant dream.
The challenge for pro-Europeans is not to dismiss national sentiment, but seek to forge a common identity that leaves plenty of room for diversity while delivering opportunity and security through a strong but limited European government.
At the Berggruen Institute meeting in Paris, students from Sciences Po, the London School of Economics and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin proposed a narrative for their post-crisis generation founded in "freedom and solidarity." The European identity for their generation, they argued, would be bound up with the founding idea of European civilization -- the universality of reason and the free individual combined with a social model that doesn't let fellow citizens fall into the cracks as Europe faces the competitive winds of globalization.
It remains to be seen if such a narrative is convincing. Many fear that the 2014 European Parliament elections will become a platform that will give full voice to the nationalist and populist anti-European backlash. Perhaps such an eventuality ought to be welcomed, not feared, because it would force a strong redefinition of the pro-European identity in the face of an existential challenge.
When al-Qaeda took down the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, Samuel Huntington, the Harvard theorist who wrote "The Clash of Civilizations," argued that the attacks had "given back to the West its common identity." The same dynamic will take place if the European idea is thoroughly challenged in 2014.
Whether or not "a certain idea of Europe" triumphs, however, will be determined by how quickly and effectively the present European leaders and institutions stem the current crisis. The announcement in Paris of a concerted "offensive" against youth unemployment by the French, German, Spanish and Italian governments is a propitious start.
What matters now is whether they will deliver hope through concrete action instead of more empty promises between now and the 2014 election. The fate of Europe is in their hands.

 

Facing the Climate Crisis

On May 9th, NOAA reported a significant milestone: CO2 emissions had crossed 400 parts per million (ppm), a level not seen for three million years. Although this figure has since been revised to 399.89 ppm, even this lower number paints a grim picture. Heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase 50 percent by 2050, primarily due to a 70 percent growth in energy-related CO2 emissions. Average global temperature is expected to rise by 3-6 °C by the end of the century, exceeding the internationally agreed upon goal of limiting it to 2 °C above preindustrial levels. The Global Warming Potential of methane, the second most prevalent greenhouse gas after CO2, is expected to be more than 50 times greater than that of carbon dioxide over the next 20 years. The primary source of methane is industrial animal agriculture, which supports global meat consumption. Meat production has tripled during the last 40 years, up by 20 percent in the last decade alone.
Scientists warn that if current patterns of energy use continue, planetary biophysical systems could be destabilized, triggering "abrupt or irreversible environmental changes that would be deleterious or even catastrophic for human well-being." Yet even as the climate crisis intensifies, minimal efforts to address climate change through the Kyoto Protocol the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have been derailed by international economic competition. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009 failed to extract a binding agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from even a single country. The 117 countries that endorsed the target of 350 ppm were the poorest and most vulnerable countries, not rapidly industrializing countries like India and China or the "rich, powerful, and deeply fossil-fuel addicted" countries of the Global North. Developing countries want these industrial juggernauts to take the lead in sharply reducing emissions. Conversely, fearing the erosion of their competitive advantage, developed countries are retreating from earlier targets and obligations. The United States has never been a member to the Kyoto Protocol. Canada, Japan, and Russia will not take part in the second commitment period of the Protocol starting in 2013. Australia and New Zealand also remain uncommitted.
About 80 percent of the world's environmental damage is attributed to the wealthiest 20 percent of the world's population the "overconsumers" of the industrialized North, whose lives are "organized around [individually owned] cars, meat-based diets, use of packaged and disposable products." At the bottom is the poorest 20 percent, who live predominantly in the Global South in "absolute deprivation," travelling mostly by foot, eating nutritionally poor diets, drinking contaminated water, using local biomass, and producing negligible wastes. The overconsumption of the top rung and the under consumption of the bottom are both unsustainable. The middle rung, the 60 percent also living mostly in the Global South -- who travel mostly by bicycle and public surface transportation, eat healthy diets of grains, vegetables and some meat, use unpackaged goods, and recycle wastes -- represent a balanced middle that should become the global norm. Unfortunately, however, more and more countries are adopting the Western model of development and its accordant hyperconsumerism.
Renewable, clean sources of energy and solar, wind, and biomass technologies must become the means for economic growth. The average person in the developed world must "cut meat consumption in half by the year 2050" to meet the emissions reduction targets set by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Political will is necessary to effect such sweeping changes in production and consumption. However, as Dr. James Hansen, the NASA scientist who is leading the effort to reverse climate change states, "greenwash" is a "near universal response of politicians to the climate change issue." As he goes on to point out, energy lobbyists in Washington receive handsome payouts from energy companies.
At the crux of the problem is the dualism of self and other. Ultimately, all of us, self-absorbed individuals pursuing narrow self-interest over environmental sustainability and human well-being are accountable for the climate crisis to varying degrees. If we are seriously concerned about planetary survival, and thus human survival, we need to reflect more deeply on our uncritical internalization of dominant values and worldview.
Although current environmental and social collapse are attributable largely to the excesses of modern technology and economic growth, the roots of these crises go all the way back to the pre-capitalist era and the psychological and social evolution of hierarchy and domination. Over the course of history, a way of viewing reality and guiding social action defined by human domination of nature and each other has intensified; in fact, it is now being realized on a global scale. Sustainability and well-being require a shift from the prevailing system of domination and extremism to a global consciousness and a socioeconomic system based on interdependence and partnership. Adoption of appropriate technology, rational allocation of resources, and balanced and equitable consumption require a partnership ethic based on cultivating the values of moderation, tolerance, nonviolence, and compassion.