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.

NEWS,31.05.2013

Opec set to hold oil output

OPEC ministers said they expected to keep oil output levels unchanged despite concern about demand in view of the weak economic outlook, as they started a crucial meeting in Vienna on Friday.
The 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), comprising nations from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is mindful that cutting production could raise prices and boost their incomes but that this could also boomerang by hampering fragile global recovery.
The outlook for global economic growth, and demand for oil, has been clouded by the combined impact of Chinese inflationary pressures, the long-running eurozone sovereign debt crisis and uncertainty over policy for the US economy, Opec says.
Questioned about whether the cartel would seek to roll over its daily output target of 30 million barrels per day, Angolan Oil Minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos said that this was likely.
"We are producing about 30 million barrels (per day). I think we will take the decision to maintain the situation," he told journalists at the start of the meeting in Vienna, where the cartel is headquartered.
He also expressed satisfaction with the current price level, noting: "$100 per barrel is good."
In reality, actual output exceeds 30 million mbpd.
United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei added: "There's nothing controversial (at this meeting), the levels of production being good and adequate to the market and the prices are appropriate."
Kuwait's OPEC governor Siham Abdulrazzak Razzouqi also said she expected no change, saying: "We think that the market is very stable."
"Supply and demand are in balance, prices are at a good level. Everything seems to be fine."
Even ahead of the meeting, there were indications that Opec - which pumps about 35% of global oil supplies would leave its official oil output ceiling at 30 mbpd, where it has stood since the end of 2011.
That OPEC produces above that level is partly thanks to a higher production from kingpin Saudi Arabia, which is the biggest producer in the cartel. It has also risen in recent times due to recovering production from Iraq and Libya.
"We are going to call for members to respect the ceiling," added Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, signalling concern about overproduction.
Meanwhile Iran, which in the run-up to the meeting had pushed for lower output, seemed to have joined the consensus for maintaining the status quo.
"I think the current ceiling is logical, rational, reasonable," he said Friday as Opec members began their meeting.
"At the closed-door session we will recommend (to member countries) to keep maintaining their production (and) not surplus," he said.
Iran has been hit by international oil sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme which has seen it drop from second to fifth largest OPEC producer in the last two years.
Opec countries have been generally satisfied with the price of $100 per barrel, although Algeria and Qatar on Friday appeared flexible on the price.
"We dont have any price target, we are following the market," Algerian Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi told journalists.
Ahead of Opec's ministerial meeting, Brent oil prices stood at $101.60 in late morning trading in London.
Demand is being contained by weak growth in many advanced economies and by the boom of oil and gas production from shale resources in North America.
Opec's Secretary-General Abdullah El-Badri added that the cartel predicted an upswing in energy demand growth in the third and fourth quarter of this year.
However, he sounded a gloomy warning over the world economy.
"For demand growth, we have to look to the world economy. Some countries are fine, some countries are not really fine," El-Badri said.
"We have to watch out for demand ... because the United States has fiscal problems, China is also struggling with their inflation and, of course you know the problems of Europe."
Friday's gathering will also seek to identify the criteria under which members will decide their next secretary general at the next scheduled meet in December.

Record unemployment in the eurozone

Unemployment has reached a new high in the eurozone and inflation remains well below the European Central Bank's target, underscoring just how severe a challenge EU leaders face to revive the bloc's sickly economy.
Joblessness in the 17 nation currency area rose to 12.2% in April, statistics agency Eurostat said on Friday, marking a new record since the data series began in 1995.
With the eurozone also in its longest recession since its creation in 1999, consumer price inflation was far below the ECB's target of just below 2%, coming in at 1.4% in May, slightly above April's 1.2% rate.
That rise may quieten concerns about deflation, but the deepening unemployment crisis is a threat to the social fabric of the eurozone, with almost two-thirds of young Greeks unable to find work exemplifying southern Europe's threat of creating a 'lost generation'.
Economists and policy makers have expressed concern that the greatest threat to the unity of the eurozone is now social breakdown from the crisis, rather than market-driven factors.
In France, Europe's second largest economy, the number of jobless rose to a record in April, while in Italy, the unemployment rate hit its highest level in at least 36 years, with 40% of young people out of work.
Some economists expect the ECB, which meets on June 6, to act to revive the economy and go beyond another interest rate cut to consider a US-style money printing programme known as quantitative easing.
"We do not expect a strong recovery in the euro zone," said Nick Matthews, a senior economist at Nomura International in London. "It puts pressure on the ECB to deliver even more conventional and non conventional measures."
In the past, the euro zone has needed economic growth of around 1.5% to create new jobs, according to Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING. With the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecasting this week that the euro zone economy would contract by 0.6% this year, unemployment is set to worsen long before it turns around.
"We do not see a stabilisation in unemployment before the middle of next year," said Frederik Ducrozet, an economist at Economist at Credit Agricole in Paris. "The picture in France is still deteriorating."
5.6 million young jobless
ECB President Mario Draghi, whose bold decision-making helped protect the eurozone from break-up last year with a plan to buy the bonds of governments in trouble, has so far preferred to leave the onus on euro zone governments to reform.
A majority of economists polled by Reuters do not expect the ECB to cut its deposit or main refinancing rates in the coming months, although the OECD this week called for the bank to consider quantitative easing.
The Commission, the EU's executive, told governments this week they must focus on reforms to outdated labour and pension systems to regain Europe's lost business dynamism, a move to shift focus away from debilitating budget cuts towards growth.
EU leaders meeting at the end of June in Brussels are expected to put the problem of joblessness at the forefront of their summit.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who chairs the meetings, said last week youth unemployment was one of the most pressing issues for the 27-nation European Union as a whole.
Ministers from France, Italy and Germany, meeting in Paris this week, called on their counterparts to help tackle youth unemployment, with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble describing it as a "battle for Europe's unity".
In April, 5.6 million people under 25 were unemployed in the European Union, with 3.6 million of those in the eurozone.
Even if governments take on unions and vested interests to enact reforms, they will take time to produce benefits.
The impact of the eurozone's debt and banking crises has been sapping confidence from companies and households.
Private consumption saved Germany from slipping into recession in the first three months of this year, but retail sales still fell unexpectedly in April because of the cold European winter.
Meanwhile, French consumer spending dropped again in February, falling by 0.2% after contracting in January. French household purchasing power contracted in 2012 for the first time since 1984.

N Korean farmers plant rice for bonuses

North Korean farmers knee deep in muddy paddies across the country have a new incentive during this year's crucial rice planting season: Possible bonuses that are part of an economic shift echoing ally China's steps three decades ago toward embracing capitalism.

Details about the changes are emerging nearly two months after the regime unveiled dual goals of building the economy and nuclear weapons in the first concrete economic policy laid out by leader Kim Jong-un, since he took power in December 2011.

Farmers say they have begun working under the new policies, which are designed to boost production by giving managers and workers financial incentives.

Foreign analysts say the moves to spur North Korea's moribund economy suggest Pyongyang is taking cues from Beijing on how to incorporate free market ideas within its rigid socialist system.

The North's policy enshrining its provocative push to build atomic weapons as a national goal has complicated efforts to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme and dominated international discussion about the country.

Pyongyang's economic priorities have drawn far less attention but some experts think important reforms could be unfolding.

Lifting living standards

Impoverished North Korea suffers chronic food and power shortages and has not released economic data for decades.

South Korea's central bank estimates the North's gross national income, an indicator of the average standard of living, was $1 250 per person in 2011 compared with $23 400 for South Korea.

In the past, the North Korean state set workers' salaries. Under new measures announced on 1 April, the managers of farms, factories and other enterprises have been given leeway to set salaries and offer bonuses to workers who help drive up production.

"This is definitely significant," said John Delury, an assistant professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Providing material incentives and loosening central control over economic decision making are two key elements in the transition from a command economy to a market-based system, he said.

Also announced on 1 April: The reappointment of Pak Pong Ju as premier after his dismissal from the post in 2007. Pak was central to attempts at economic change more than a decade ago.

"You just wouldn't bring back Pak Pong Ju unless you were going to try readjusting economy policy. There would be no reason to do that," said Delury, calling it a strong sign of Kim Jong Un's interest in lifting living standards.

Economic reform

North Korea's policy changes find an echo in China's market reforms that have transformed it into a manufacturing powerhouse and world's second-largest economy, while also lifting several hundred million out of grinding poverty.

Beijing dismantled the centrally planned economy slowly. In the 1970s, it began allowing farmers to keep more of their harvests, giving them an incentive to grow more to sell on newly permitted free markets. Food production soared.

In the mid-'80s, the government gave state enterprises the authority to link bonuses and salaries to better performance. Those changes were mostly aimed at managers, but they cracked a communist-era preference for egalitarianism.

New rules in the early 1990s gave state enterprises full flexibility to set wages, widening the use of performance incentives. In that decade, China truly broke away from its centralised "iron rice bowl" system of guaranteed employment and state-set incomes.

Delury and others cautioned that if the North is intent on economic reform, it is likely to be a fitful process.

"We have to be careful not to say: Aha, it's all change, it's finally here," he said. "The point is, and we see this from the Chinese case, this is a process that unfolds over time and there are starts and stops, too. But this is a strong signal of a push."

‘Greater profits’ 

AP reported last September that farmers were notified of upcoming management changes at collective farms that would put decision-making and responsibility for crops in the hands of local officials and give farmers the right to hold onto surpluses.

"Last year, we studied reasonable economic management methods in different fields of economic work, and introduced it to some units on a trial basis," Ri Ki Song, an economist from North Korea's Academy of Social Sciences, told AP this week.

North Korea formally announced the policy, and its expansion to include factories and other enterprises, a day after holding a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party. Rodong Sinmun, the party paper, called it a "new strategic line".

Ri, however, dismissed characterisations of the changes as reform.

What's new, he said, is allowing managers to dole out goods and cash as incentives. In addition, after meeting a state quota, managers can set their employees' salaries and offer bonuses to those who help drive up production, he said.

The main goal: to encourage "greater profits" and solve North Korea's chronic food shortage, Ri said.

‘Repay’ the state

Ri said North Koreans work hard, but the new incentives give them motivation to work even harder. "They are saying that higher salaries and shares will improve their life."

Political and military expert Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Hawaii, noted that North Korea has rolled back past attempts at economic reform.

"The North Koreans have played reform games before and then just sort of pulled the rug out from under it," he said. Cossa cited NGOs as saying the military is pressuring farmers to donate their portion to the army.

Last year, a farmer's wife in Sariwon, south of Pyongyang, told the AP she planned to donate any surplus harvest to the state as a token of her patriotism.

At the Tongbong farm in the eastern city of Hamhung, farmers are in the midst of a busy rice planting season after a long, cold winter.

This year, things are being managed differently, said Kim Jong Jin, deputy chairperson of the farm's managing committee.

He said the state provided the farm with the rice seedlings, which farmers are now transplanting to paddies by hand. Farmers are on smaller teams that have direct responsibility over their plots.

After the rice is harvested, farmers must "repay" the state for the seeds. At Tongbong that means giving the state about 193kg of rice as payback for every 140kg of seedlings they received.

But any surplus can be kept by the team to sell, barter or distribute - a change from past policies that required farmers to turn all harvests over to the state.

"This encourages enthusiasm for production and we get more of what's produced," Kim said.

Police clash with Istanbul protesters

Riot police fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators on Friday, injuring at least a dozen people, in a bid to break up a four-day protest against a major construction project in Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square.

Several of the wounded were left lying on the ground unconscious after they were hit with large quantities of tear gas and pepper spray, while two people were hospitalised with injuries to the head, an AFP photographer witnessed.
Some protesters were also hurt when a scaffolding collapsed as they tried to escape the police intervention on the square.
Construction had began in November to pedestrianise the zone surrounding the famous square, a traditional gathering point for rallies and protests as well as a popular tourist destination.
The controversial project is aimed at easing the chronic congestion in the roads around the square.
Demonstrators have been trying to prevent workers from razing Taksim Excursion Park, which lies across from the square's centrepiece, the Ataturk monument. In place of the park, a shopping mall is to be built.
Critics say the project would turn the square into yet another soulless concrete commercial zone aimed at making money while driving away residents who use it as a meeting point.
Taksim Square has for decades been the rallying point for millions of Istanbul residents, as well as the political stage for demonstrators who pour in on a daily basis to make their views on different causes heard.

Notes to Obama, mayor had gun threats

A suspicious letter mailed to the White House and intercepted this week was similar to two threatening, poison-laced letters on the gun law debate sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation's most potent gun-control advocates, officials said on Thursday.
Yet another letter became known publicly on Thursday, one tainted with the poison ricin and mailed to President Barack Obama from Spokane, Washington, the FBI said. Authorities have arrested a man in Spokane in connection with that letter, which was intercepted on May 22.
The Secret Service said the White House-bound letter similar to the ones Bloomberg was sent was intercepted by a White House mail screening facility. Two similar letters postmarked in Louisiana and sent to Bloomberg in New York and his gun control group in Washington contained traces of the deadly poison ricin.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the letter sent to Obama contained ricin. It was turned over to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for testing and investigation.
The two Bloomberg letters, opened Friday in New York and Sunday in Washington, contained an oily pinkish-orange substance.
New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Thursday the same machine or computer had produced the two letters to Bloomberg and the similar one to Obama and that they may be identical. He referred specific questions to the FBI.
The FBI said in a statement that field tests on the letters were consistent with the presence of a biological agent, and the letters were turned over to an accredited laboratory for the kind of thorough analysis that is needed to verify a tentative finding. "More letters may be received," the statement said, without elaboration.
The body of the letter mailed to New York was addressed to "you" and referenced the gun control debate. Kelly said the unsigned letter says, in so many words: "Anyone who comes for my guns will be shot in the face." He refused to quote directly from the letter, saying he didn't want to do the author's bidding.
Second letter
Bloomberg has emerged as one of the country's most important gun-control advocates, able to press his case with both his public position and his private money.
The New York letter was opened at the city's mail facility in Manhattan in a biochemical containment box, which is a part of the screening process for mayor's office mail.
"In terms of the processes and procedures that are in place now we think they worked," Kelly said. "This is sort of an effect of the post-9/11 world that we live in that these checks and facilities are in place and the system worked."
The second letter was opened on Sunday by Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Washington-based nonprofit Bloomberg started.
The letter Glaze opened tested positive for ricin initially. The other letter to Bloomberg at first tested negative but tested positive at a retest Wednesday.
The postal workers union, citing information it got in a Postal Service briefing, said the letters bore a Shreveport, Louisiana, postmark. Kelly would not comment on the origin of the letter.
Louisiana State Police spokesperson Julie Lewis said state authorities have deferred to the FBI and have not opened an investigation. The Shreveport postal center handles mail from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, so the letter could have come from any of those states, Lewis said.
The people who initially came into contact with the letters showed no symptoms of exposure to the poison, but three officers who later examined the New York letter experienced minor symptoms that have since abated, police said. The mayor visited the mailroom on Thursday but made no public comments on the topic.
Background checks
On Wednesday, he said he didn't know why they were sent.
One of the letters "obviously referred to our anti-gun efforts, but there's 12 000 people that are going to get killed this year with guns and 19 000 that are going to commit suicide with guns, and we're not going to walk away from those efforts", said Bloomberg, adding that he didn't feel threatened.
According to the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. Symptoms can include difficulty breathing, vomiting and redness on the skin depending on how the affected person comes into contact with the poison.
The letters were the latest in a string of toxin-laced missives, but authorities would not say whether the letters to Bloomberg and Obama were believed to be linked to any other recent case.
In Washington state, a 37-year-old was charged last week with threatening to kill a federal judge in a letter that contained ricin. On Thursday, the FBI said a suspicious letter containing ricin was mailed to Obama from Spokane on the same day similar ricin-tainted letters were mailed to the judge and to a post office. A fourth letter, sent to nearby Fairchild Air Force Base, continues to undergo testing, officials said.
About a month earlier, letters containing the substance were addressed to Obama, a US senator and a Mississippi judge. One of the letters postmarked in Memphis, Tennessee, was traced back to Tupelo, Mississippi, and a Mississippi man was arrested.
Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which now counts more than 700 mayors nationwide as members.
It lobbies federal and state lawmakers, and it aired a spate of television ads this year urging Congress to expand background checks and pass other gun-control measures after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
The background check proposal failed in a Senate vote in April, and other measures gun-control advocates wanted including a ban on sales of military-style assault weapons have stalled.
Separately, Bloomberg also has made political donations to candidates who share his desire for tougher gun restrictions. His super PAC, Independence USA, put $2.2m into a Democratic primary this winter for a congressional seat in Illinois, for example. Bloomberg's choice, former state lawmaker Robin Kelly, won.

Hagel to discuss cyberthreat with Chinese

The United States must develop "rules of the road" with China and other countries to mitigate cyber threats, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said on Thursday.

The defence secretary spoke after a Pentagon report found that Chinese hackers have gained access to secret designs for a slew of sophisticated US weapons programs, possibly jeopardising the American military's technological edge.

Officials say the breaches described in the Defence Science Board paper were part of a broad Chinese campaign of espionage against top US defence contractors and government agencies.

"The United States knows where many of these incursions come from," Hagel told reporters on his plane as he travelled to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, an international security conference in Singapore.

"It's pretty hard to prove that they are directed by any specific enemy but we can tell where they come from and we've got to be honest about that."

Cyber security is set to be discussed for the first time at a meeting of Nato defence ministers next week.

"We've got to find ways, working with the Chinese, working with everybody, [to develop] rules of the road, some international understandings," Hagel said.

Relationship

The Pentagon chief said Washington would press Beijing using both public diplomacy and private talks.

"I think it's always important when dealing with other nations that you use a very significant range of options," he added.

"I've rarely seen that public engagement resolves the problem but it's important that people state where they are on these issues."

During his stay in Singapore through Monday, Hagel plans to hold multiple bilateral talks with his Asian counterparts.

He pointed to an "evolving" military-to-military relationship with China.

The top US uniformed military officer, chairperson of the joint chiefs of staff General Martin Dempsey visited Beijing in April and Hagel has invited his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan to Washington in August.

President Barack Obama is set to meet with new Chinese leader Xi Jingping next week in California.

NEWS,17.05.2012.

Plans to strike Iran 'ready', says US Israel envoy

 

US plans for a possible military strike on Iran are ready and the option is "fully available", the US ambassador to Israel said, days before Tehran resumes talks with world powers which suspect it of seeking to develop nuclear arms.Like Israel, the United States has said it considers military force a last resort to prevent Iran using its uranium enrichment to make a bomb. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes."It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically and through the use of pressure than to use military force," Ambassador Dan Shapiro said in remarks about Iran aired by Israel's Army Radio today."But that doesn't mean that option is not fully available - not just available, but it's ready. The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it's ready," said Shapiro, who the radio station said had spoken on Tuesday.The United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany have been using sanctions and negotiations to try to persuade Iran to curb its uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for reactors, medical isotopes, and, at higher levels of purification, fissile material for warheads.New talks opened in Istanbul last month and resume on May 23 in Baghdad.Israel, which is widely assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, feels threatened by the prospect of its arch-foe Iran going nuclear and has hinted it could launch preemptive war.But many analysts believe the United States alone has the military clout to do lasting damage to Iran's nuclear programme.In January, Shapiro told an Israeli newspaper the United States was "guaranteeing that the military option is ready and available to the president at the moment he decides to use it".US lawmakers are considering additional legislation that would increase pressure on Iran, with further measures to punish foreign companies for dealing with Iran in any capacity.

Chinese boats seized by North Koreans in rare spat

 

North Korean officials have demanded payment before they will release Chinese fishing boats with a total of 29 men on board, Chinese media reported today, in a rare public spat between the neighbours and longtime allies.The Chinese owners of the boats said they were seized by a North Korean gunboat on May 8 in the Yellow Sea, between China and North Korea, the Beijing News reported.The owners said the vessels were fishing in Chinese waters. North Korea has not made any public comment on the case.The North Koreans holding the boats and sailors demanded payment of 1.2 million yuan ($NZ247,819) for releasing them, then cut their price to 900,000 yuan and set a deadline of today, Zhang Dechang, owner of one of the captured boats told the newspaper, which called the demand a "ransom".The 29 sailors who were on board the boats are now in North Korea, said one captured seaman in a call with an owner, the newspaper added.The Chinese government would not publicly confirm any details about the reported incident."China is maintaining close contact with North Korea through the relevant channels, and we hope this problem will be appropriately solved as soon as possible," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily briefing."We have also stated to North Korea that it should ensure the legitimate rights of Chinese ship personnel."China is the key economic and diplomatic backer of North Korea, seeing it as a buffer against US influence in the region. Beijing is a major supplier of food aid and oil to the North, which remains isolated by sanctions over its nuclear ambitions and rocket launches.China has been quietly pressing North Korea to scrap plans for a third nuclear test, sources with knowledge of closed-door talks between the countries have told Reuters.Pyongyang has sought to strengthen ties with Beijing through frequent visits and praise of their friendship, but the North can also be resentful about what it sees as infringements of its territory, and Chinese dominance of relations.It was unclear whether the seizure of the boats was authorised by the North Korean government, or was the initiative of local officials.The Chinese Foreign Ministry told the Beijing News the incident was a "fisheries case", and will be resolved as soon as possible.