Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 05 May 2014 03:15 PM PDT

Russia has filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the EU’s so-called ‘Third Energy Package,’ according to media reports.
“This procedure is provided for in the rules of the Organization,” a source said, adding that “Russia sent a note to the EU Mission at the WTO and notified the WTO Secretariat thereof,” Itar-Tass news agency reported.
A second news agency, Interfax, stated that a “source close to WTO” spoke of “the start [of a] court examination.” The agency said it obtained confirmation from the director of the Ministry of Economic Development’s department of trade negotiations, Maksim Medvedkov.
Signed in 2007, the Third Energy Package outlines a set of rules regulating the European gas and electricity market. The European Commission insists the Third Energy Package was aimed at increasing competition on the energy market, allowing other players to join the sector and liberalizing energy prices.
One of the core elements prohibits a single company from both owning and operating a gas pipeline and contains rules on third party access to the natural oil transportation grid.
“These and other elements of the Third Energy Package, in the opinion of Russia, contradict the obligations of the EU in WTO on basic principles of non-discrimination and market access…the Third Energy Package creates serious obstacles to ensure a stable supply of Russian gas to the EU, including a threat to the construction of new transport infrastructure, for example, in the framework of the ‘South Stream,’” Medvedkov told Interfax.
Moscow broke ground on the South Stream project after securing agreements with intergovernmental agreements with all countries which the pipeline would pass through: Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia.
The Third Energy regulation mandates 50 percent of the pipeline can be operated by Russia’s Gazprom, but the other 50 percent must be operated by a third party, a condition Russian energy ministers do not accept, as Gazprom is the only company that has the right to export gas via pipeline.
Russian President Vladimir Putin previously stated that the “Third Energy Package” and other documents “should not be backdated to the contracts that were signed before the decision on the Third Energy Package came into force.”
Medvedkov has stressed that Russia has unsuccessfully tried to solve “emerging problems” on a bilateral level.
Now, under WTO rules, Russia and the EU have 60 days to hold joint consultations. If no solution is found during this time, Moscow can demand the right to initiate the creation of a group of independent arbitrators to look into the case.
However, Medvedkov has not ruled out the possibility of Russia and the EU reaching an agreement during consultations.
“We do not aim to have legal proceedings with Brussels for the sake of the judicial process, we want to ensure predictable conditions for export to the EU under WTO rules,” he said.
The Third Energy Package is a set of regulations for an internal gas and electricity market in the European Union. Its purpose is to further expand the gas and electricity markets in the European Union. The package was proposed by the European Commission in September 2007 and adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in July 2009. It entered into force on September 3, 2009.
In late 2013, Russia filed a lawsuit against the EU over energy adjustments.
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Posted: 05 May 2014 03:04 PM PDT

Without his teleprompters, Obama makes many gaffes and also slips some truths.
President Barack Obama made an embarrassing blunder earlier today during his press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he described the post-coup government of Kiev as “duly elected”.
While Obama himself along with other members of the administration have repeatedly complained about pro-Russian “propaganda” clouding the Ukraine crisis, the President’s characterization of a government that came to power as a direct result of a violent overthrow of the democratically elected Yanukovich administration as “duly elected,” when no democratic vote of any kind took place, is either a huge gaffe or a flagrant act of deception.
Here’s the full quote in context from the transcript (emphasis mine);
“What they cannot accept, understandably, is the notion that they are simply an appendage, an extension of Russia, and that the Kremlin has veto power over decisions made by a duly elected government in Kiev.”
Of course, the government in Kiev is anything but duly elected since it was installed with the aid of the United States itself after a violent uprising that unseated the previous government which actually was duly elected.
The stage was set for the Ukraine revolt to become violent in December when US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland announced that the U.S. would invest $5 billion in order to help Ukrainians achieve “a good form of government.”
The true nature of that government was subsequently revealed when leaked phone conversations emerged of Nuland conspiring with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt to pick Ukraine’s future puppet leaders, personally recommending Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who soon became interim Prime Minister for the post-coup regime.
Documents also emerged confirming that the Euromaidan uprising was largely financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in concert with numerous American NGOs.
To describe the Kiev government as “duly elected” is almost as silly as saying that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un was voted into office, but not a single member of the press who was at the event picked Obama up on this huge faux pas.
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Posted: 05 May 2014 02:51 PM PDT

706 people continue fighting for four places in the Mars colonization program Mars One, a participant of the project, resident of Los Angeles, Sue Ann Pien said on Friday.
More than 202 thousand people filed applications for participation in the first stage of the selection program, which ended in September, 2013.
The first six groups of Martian colonists – consisting of four people each – should be formed in 2015; after that, they will begin their seven-year preparation for the mission.
It is supposed that at first, several robots will be sent to Mars and from 2016 to 2020, they will construct residential and service modules.
The launch of the spacecraft with colonists on board is planned for 2022, and their arrival on Mars – for 2023.
The one-way flight will take about seven months. The first group will consist of two men and two women. After that, every second year, other colonists will be sent to Mars.
According to General Director of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp, English will be the official language on Mars.
The Mars One project was launched in 2011; the idea belongs to the homonymous Dutch company.
The goal of the project is to conduct a manned mission to Mars followed by foundation of a colony and to broadcast all events on television.
Mars One expects to receive a part of funds necessary for the project from sponsors and another part – from the income from the interactive reality show featuring all the aspects of the planned mission, starting from the selection of colonists to the flight to Mars.
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Posted: 05 May 2014 07:28 AM PDT

South Korean rescue teams and divers still struggle to gain access to blocked cabins of the ferry that capsized three weeks ago.
Six more bodies were recovered early Sunday, 18 days after the 6,825-ton passenger ferry, Sewol, capsized and sank with 476 people on board while 60 passengers are still unaccounted for.
So far, 242 bodies have been recovered from the submersed vessel.
One body was reportedly retrieved on Friday by a fishing vessel four kilometers away from the recovery site, and another was found nearly two kilometers away on Wednesday, fueling fears that the remains of some victims could never be recovered.
The search has been hampered by fast currents and high waves as divers have been working in difficult and occasionally hazardous conditions.
The divers have to grope their way down guiding ropes to the sunken ship, struggling through narrow passageways and rooms littered with floating debris in salty water.
Personal belongings and other items from the sunken ferry have been spotted much further away from the disaster site.
Bedding materials from the ship were found as far as 30 kilometers from the disaster site on Friday.
It is one of South Korea’s worst peacetime disasters, made all the more shocking by the loss of so many young lives.
Of those on board, 325 were students from the same high school in the city of Ansan, just south of the capital, Seoul.
The captain and 14 of his crew have been arrested.
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Posted: 05 May 2014 07:16 AM PDT

Government surveillance no longer targets individuals, but entire populations, former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has said. The whistleblower appeared via video link in a Toronto debate over the NSA intelligence gathering programs.
Commenting on the antics of the National Security Agency, which have been described in the past as “Orwellian in nature,” Snowden said every citizen is affected by intelligence gathering programs
“It’s no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing,” Snowden said in the brief video. “It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.”
Snowden’s video link was screened during a Munk debate in Toronto, where former US National Security Administration director General Michael Hayden and Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz went head to head with Glen Greenwald and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian over government surveillance.
Greenwald, who worked with Snowden publishing the classified material he leaked on the NSA, argued that governments should use targeted surveillance, not the indiscriminate, dragnet method currently in use. Hayden and Dershowitz, however, stuck to the American government stance, maintaining that surveillance is necessary to ensure national security.
Snowden addressed the debate from Russia, where he is currently residing after being granted temporary political asylum in the country in June of last year. The whistleblower was forced to stay in Russia after Washington issued an extradition order against him and charged him under the Espionage Act.
Since Snowden’s security links revealed the NSA targets millions of citizens as well as foreign governments with its surveillance, world leaders have leveled criticism at Washington. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House on Friday for the first time since she discovered her personal communications were being targeted by the NSA last year. The revelations initially triggered firebrand rhetoric from the German leader, who likened the agency to the Stasi secret police of East Germany.
This latest visit saw Merkel adopt a more tentative stance to the issue and said that “under present conditions” the US and Germany have “differences in opinion” to overcome.
Washington claims it has made some changes to its domestic and international espionage policies following the Snowden revelations.
“Domestically, we tried to provide additional assurances to the American people that their privacy is protected. But what I’ve also done is taken the unprecedented step of ordering our intelligence community to take the privacy interests of non US persons into account in everything that they do,” said Obama on Friday.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 00:52