Stephan: This is a very important assessment of a new geopolitical trend that, I think, as does the author, has enormous implications. Whether the military industrial, intelligence establishment is agile enough to adapt is a real question.
Q: What do the following events in these former Soviet republics have in common?
Uzbekistan requiring all television and radio transmitters to be equipped with “self-destructing devices.” Tajikistan mandating that old car tires be disposed of not in the capital city, but in a dump 25 miles away, lest they be used by protesters in flammable barricades. Latvia joining Lithuania in banning Russian state TV broadcasts. Kazakhstan passing a law permitting censorship and limiting protests during states of emergency.
A: They’re all meant to prevent Russia from doing to those countries what it’s done to Ukraine.
If it isn’t immediately clear how those arguably wacky measures are supposed to help guard against… whatever it is that Russia is doing, that’s because events in Ukraine have ushered in some pretty dramatic changes to what constitutes an invasion and/or a war. And so the leaders of the former Soviet republics are reacting unevenly and abruptly to a new and unprecedented threat for which they’re totally unprepared.
Russian thinkers have long observed that the West generally underestimates the importance of political and psychological factors in war. Maybe they’re right; experience with counterinsurgencies and other flavors of low-intensity warfare, particularly since 9/11, has demonstrated that the socio-political elements […]
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, - Reporters Without Borders
Stephan: One of the favorite illusions to which Americans subscribe is that we have a vital and independent free press. The fact is we are not even in the top 25. We are, in fact 32nd place -- although that is an improvement. The last time the survey was done we were 47th. Ghana though has a freer press than America.
Click through to see tables and to download the full report.
After the ‘Arab springs” and other protest movements that prompted many rises and falls in last year’s index, the 2013 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index marks a return to a more usual configuration.
The ranking of most countries is no longer attributable to dramatic political developments. This year’s index is a better reflection of the attitudes and intentions of governments towards media freedom in the medium or long term. The same three European countries that headed the index last year hold the top three positions again this year. For the third year running, Finland has distinguished itself as the country that most respects media freedom. It is followed by the Netherlands and Norway.
Although many criteria are considered, ranging from legislation to violence against journalists, democratic countries occupy the top of the index while dictatorial countries occupy the last three positions. Again it is the same three as last year – Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.
‘The Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders does not take direct account of the kind of political system but it is clear that democracies provide better protection for the freedom to produce and circulate accurate news and information than countries where human rights […]
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Stephan: Increasingly other countries, for their own reasons, are simply going to bypass the U.S.. Another part of this will be the end of the dollar as the reference currency. When one major party is willing to damage the country as a whole to retain power, and is unwilling to pass meaningful legislation, everything just grinds to a halt -- as it has.
SANTIAGO, CHILE — The United States government is taking a strong public position on climate change.
By now everybody’s heard it: The White House has recognized that climate change is already being felt in many corners of the US, and the worst is yet to come. One of Barack Obama’s major plans for cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions is to wean the country off oil. The president even flew to California to get people revved up about renewable energy.
But the US had a very different message down in Chile, where a diplomat’s comments on a local carbon tax created a huge controversy – one largely ignored by the superpower way up north.
The US ambassador in Santiago, Michael Hammer, publicly commented in a meeting with Chilean lawmakers and business owners earlier this month on a planned fiscal overhaul that includes a carbon tax: ‘In order to continue contributing to the economy and society, US companies need, in fact all companies need, political and economic stability, in addition to clear rules.”
Some brushed it off. But others called it an attempt at meddling in Chilean politics, which remains a sore spot here even two decades after Chile transitioned from the Pinochet dictatorship the CIA […]
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ALAN PYKE, - Think Progress
Stephan: Once again we have a data point showing that the economic theories of the Theocratic Right are nothing but nonsense and that the result of implementing them is damage to the many.
In a time of slack economic growth and high unemployment around the country, Kansas lawmakers thought they had the solution: massive tax cuts for the wealthy would lure economic activity and jump-start the state’s economy. But after Gov. Sam Brownback (R) signed $1.1 billion worth of tax cuts into law over the past two years, the state is behind the national average for economic growth.
A new forecast from Kansas’s budget officials projects that ‘personal income in Kansas will grow more slowly than U.S. personal income in 2014 and 2015,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) writes. The projections come from Brownback’s own Division of the Budget, which expects personal income growth of 3.8 percent this year and 4.2 percent next year. The state’s overall economic growth is now projected to fall behind the nation’s after two decades of keeping pace, the think tank adds.
At the same time that Brownback’s promised economic growth is failing to materialize, his critics” predictions about the tax cuts are largely coming true. The tax package is starving the state of revenue. With less money coming in, Kansas is cutting public services. The state Supreme Court has ordered lawmakers to restore funding to poor […]
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RONALD BROWNSTEIN, - National Journal
Stephan: Here, I think is the truth about the American Congress. The oligarchy simply will not let them act. So you should plan accordingly.
Miami will likely be underwater before the Senate can muster enough votes to meaningfully confront climate change. And probably Tampa and Charleston, too-two other cities that last week’s National Climate Assessment placed at maximum risk from rising sea levels.
Even as studies proliferate on the dangers of a changing climate, the issue’s underlying politics virtually ensure that Congress will remain paralyzed over it indefinitely. That means the U.S. response for the foreseeable future is likely to come through executive-branch actions, such as the regulations on carbon emissions from power plants that the Environmental Protection Agency is due to propose next month. And that means climate change will likely spike as a point of conflict in the 2016 presidential race.
President Obama, from his first days in office, made it clear to intimates that he believed a legislative solution to climate change would provide a more stable, broadly accepted response than executive action. But his experience has highlighted the structural forces that make a legislative agreement so unlikely, especially in the Senate.
Reaching agreement on any issue has become increasingly difficult in a Congress deluged by partisan polarization and money from interest groups. But climate change faces two other headwinds that make the path […]
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