Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 5 March 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 04 Mar 2015 06:07 AM PST


The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s chairman has been removed from his post for the first time in the award’s 114-year history. He’s been criticized over a number of the panel’s controversial picks, like US president and the EU.
Ousted Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian Labor prime minister, had been in charge of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for six years before he was voted out on Tuesday. He will remain a member of the committee, but the leading role has been passed on to the panel’s deputy chairman, Kaci Kullmann Five, a former conservative party leader.
“There’s a new committee with new people, and new people can always lead to new considerations,” Kullmann Five told journalists. “Jagland has been a good leader for the committee for six years.”
Three out of six prize winners chosen under Thorbjoern Jagland have raised controversy.
Jagland’s first year as chairman in 2009 saw the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to US President Barack Obama, who at that time had only been in office for nine months.
Obama won the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” while the US was engaged in two lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as heightened US drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.
A Norwegian diplomat revealed in 2014, that the Obama administration itself was not happy with being given the award.
“My colleague in Washington received a reprimand from Obama’s chief of staff [Rahm Emanuel, at the time]. The word ‘fawning’ was used,” Morten Wetland, who was Norway’s United Nations delegate from 2008 to 2012, wrote in an article published in the Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv and cited by AFP.
The Nobel Prize Committee’s 2012 choice of the European Union as the winner of the award has also raised quite a few eyebrows. Critics pointed out Jagland’s other role as head of the European Council as a potential conflict of interest. Many argued the prize was undeserved because of the EU’s economic and foreign policy failures.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and two other Nobel Peace Prize-winners protested the decision in an open letter.
“The EU is clearly not ‘the champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will,” the letter read. “The Norwegian Nobel committee has redefined and remodeled the prize in a manner that it is not consistent with the law.”
A 2010 award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo led to Beijing freezing diplomatic relations with Oslo.
Jagland’s removal has led to speculations over how much the prize is influenced by politics, having been replaced by another former party leader.
Nobel Committee members are appointed by Norway’s parliament according to the power balance there. Right-wing parties won elections in 2013, which gave them a 3-2 majority over Labor on the Peace Prize panel.
“This can be interpreted as an attempt by the rightist government to exert more political control over the committee than has been customary,” Nobel historian Asle Sveen told AFP.
There have been calls for the Nobel committee to be open to foreigners to boost its scope and preserve its independence from shifts in Norwegian politics.
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Posted: 04 Mar 2015 06:01 AM PST
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying
China has slammed the Unites States after Washington criticized a Chinese anti-terror law that would force tech firms to surrender key information to Communist authorities.
The law, which was made public for consultation last November, would require all telecommunications and Internet service providers to help the Beijing government in preventing the spread of terrorism-related content.
Beijing’s Foreign Ministry defended the law on Tuesday as purely internal and “a requirement for the Chinese government to prevent and combat terrorism,” AFP reported.
“The legislation is China’s domestic affair,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news conference, calling on Washington to “view it in a correct and objective way.”
Hua also noted that “not too long ago, it was disclosed that some countries embedded spying software for surveillance in SIM card makers.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s reaction came after Obama said in an interview with Reuters on Monday that Washington has “made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States.”
The Human Rights Watch has also urged the Chinese government to revise the draft legislation of the law. In January, the group’s China director, Sophie Richardson, called for the draft law to be brought in line with international legal standards.
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Posted: 04 Mar 2015 05:58 AM PST


Russian fighter jets are practicing attacking NATO ships in the Black Sea in another dramatic sign that tensions over Ukraine continue to build despite a fragile ceasefire agreed last month.
“Russia’s newest Su-30 fighter jets and Su-24 attack bombers are using two NATO ships in the Black Sea to practice penetrating anti-air systems,” reports Sputnik, citing a source at the Sevastopol naval base.
Asserting that the NATO ships are conducting drills based around “repelling air attacks,” Moscow is taking the opportunity to practice “maneuvering and conducting aerial reconnaissance” outside the range of the ships in order to “practice attack scenarios”.
The report also states that Russia is closely monitoring the movements of the ships, namely the USS Vicksburg missile cruiser and the Turkish TCG Turgutreis frigate, and the assignments they are performing.
Three Su-30 jets and four Su-24 bombers carried out reconnaissance on the ships yesterday.
The exercises coincide with an unannounced test of nuclear weapons near the central Russian city Yoshkar-Ola. Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) said the exercise was based around an assessment of the “condition and security provisions” of nuclear weapons in the Yoshkar-Ola Missile Unit, which is armed with the Topol intercontinental nuclear-capable ballistic missile complex.
Russia has also sought to demonstrate its military might with a series of maneuvers over sovereign European airspace. The latest incident involved two Tu-95 ‘Bear’ long-range strategic bombers which flew 40 kilometers off the Irish coast with their transponders turned off, forcing air traffic control to re-route commercial flights to avoid a collision.
Sporadic fighting in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian rebels and Kiev forces continues to be reported despite an agreement from both sides to withdraw heavy weapons from the region. At least 6,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted last year.
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Posted: 04 Mar 2015 05:39 AM PST


Authorities in southern Australia have killed about 700 koalas in a move aimed at controlling their population and its starvation problem.
On Wednesday, Victorian Environment Minister Lisa Neville said a total of 686 koalas were euthanized in the state of Victoria’s Cape Otway area by wildlife experts during 2013 and 2014.
“It is clear it’s an overpopulation issue and it is clear that we have had koalas suffer in that Cape Otway area because of ill health and starvation,” the minister said, adding that “the intervention was necessary to prevent suffering of koalas because they weren’t able to find enough food.”
According to Neville, Koala population densities are reaching up to about 20 animals per hectare.
She further said that the relocation of the koalas has shown to be ineffective in the past and “can in fact cause even greater suffering.”
Meanwhile, head of the Bimbi Park Caravan Park at Cape Otway, Frank Fotinas, said many of the furry animals were sick or dying from starvation and the area “smelled of dead koalas.”
A Koala management program is expected to be put in place for the native animals.
Koalas have been threatened by factors such as habitat loss, disease, and bush fires in Australia.
Although it has been said that the number of Koalas in Australia exceeded 10 million before British settlers arrived in 1788, official estimates show that there are currently less than 100,000.
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Posted: 04 Mar 2015 04:49 AM PST


The UK Independence Party (UKIP) plans to ban unskilled immigrants from working in Britain, and launch a new watchdog to bring down net migration figures, party leader Nigel Farage announced on Wednesday.
Speaking in central London, Farage called UKIP’s policy “common sense”, saying the electorate does not trust any other party on the matter, adding that 77 percent of the public wanted the UK to take greater control of the border.
He pledged a “return to sanity”, promising “sensible and controlled numbers” to turn “what has become a negative issue in our society, into a positive one”.
Farage added that the current immigration “crisis” was having an impact on schools, the NHS, and “changes in the community”.
The figures released last week show that net immigration stands at nearly 300,000, three times higher than Cameron’s original pledge to cap immigration at 100,000, a great embarrassment for the current government.
Farage said he would not set out an “arbitrary” target ahead of the general election, but focus on giving highly skilled workers and “our Commonwealth friends” priority over unskilled immigrants.
UKIP has previously said it wants to set the cap at 50,000, but the leader insists this is not a “u-turn” in policy
His suggestion of a moratorium on unskilled worker visas for five years and a points-based system, to “do as the Australians do”, was met with rapturous applause at the church in central London where the speech took place.
He further believes new arrivals should not have access to the National Health Service, therefore requiring private health insurance.
UKIP spokesperson Steven Woolfe also spoke at the event.
He said the party would abolish the rules which give EU citizens preference over non-EU citizens, adding that UKIP would provide an extra 2,500 border staff to implement new changes.
Woolfe further controversially claimed that giving an amnesty to asylum seekers would support trafficking organisations which supply funds to terror organisations like Islamic State.
On Tuesday night, Farage called the current system “unsustainable, unfair and unethical,” saying it gives preference to EU migrants over those from outside Europe.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the speech, Farage said he wanted to bring immigration levels “back to normality.”
“Normality was what we had from Windrush right up until the year 2000, where we had net migration into Britain … between 20,000 and 50,000 people a year.”
He added that since then “we have gone mad, we opened the doors to much of the world but in particular we opened up the doors to 10 former communist countries, and as a result of our EU membership we have absolutely zero control over the numbers who come.”
The party leader said caps are arbitrary, and the approach to reducing immigration should be more flexible.
“I’m not putting caps or targets … you need to have more flexibility than that. The point is this: we currently have no control over the numbers, we are incapable of debating anything now in politics without caps and targets and I think the British public are bored with it.”
“In the end we can talk about numbers, we can talk about money, we can talk about the impact on wages … but in the end there is something about this immigration debate which is about more than money. It’s about communities, it’s about the country in which we live,” he added.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 10:51