Eideard

Haven’t we been here before?

Under the pressure of financial crisis and with the euro currency at stake, the two key leaders of the euro zone said Monday that they would together push to remake the European Union into a more integrated political and economic federation, with tight legal restraints on how much debt national parliaments can issue.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, meeting here at the start of a crucial week that will end with a European Union summit meeting on Thursday and Friday, called for amendments to European treaties that would include centralized oversight over budgets and automatic sanctions against countries that violate firmer rules on deficits…

The automatic sanctions – or threat of – are the most Neverland part of the proposals, of course. Who expects a country unable to pay sufficient bills to pay a fine for not paying those bills?

“We want to make sure that the imbalances that led to the situation in the euro zone today cannot happen again,” Mr. Sarkozy told a joint news conference. “Therefore we want a new treaty, to make clear to the peoples of Europe that things cannot continue as they are.”

Mrs. Merkel, warmly embracing the French president despite their often testy relationship, insisted that the euro zone must be effectively reestablished under a different set of rules. “We want structural changes that go beyond agreements. We need binding debt brakes,” she said…

The two leaders are aiming to develop a clear consensus among the other members of the euro zone that they will push ahead with a new treaty. They appear to be calculating that such a signal of solidarity will be enough to persuade the European Central Bank, the only institution in Europe with enough financial firepower to defend the ability of member states to raise money on bond markets, that it has enough political cover to move more aggressively to protect vulnerable countries like Italy and Spain.

RTFA for the details, anecdotal hogwash, hopeful analysis – all of which ignores the fact that standards meant nothing for the several nations brought into the EU in the first place though they didn’t really meet standards. Creative analysis, voodoo economics were used to justify including countries like Greece into the club although they were miles and years away from realistic qualification.

Removing Israeli cluster bomblets in Lebanon

A global treaty banning cluster munitions has gone into force.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which became binding international law today, prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of the weapon, which is blamed for killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians…

The treaty requires signatories to destroy stockpiled cluster munitions within eight years, clear contaminated areas within 10 years and help affected communities and survivors…

Cluster bombs are dropped from planes or fired by mortars before the canisters open mid-air, releasing bomblets that scatter over a wide area. Most explode immediately, but those that fail to detonate on impact can claim victims many years after the end of the conflict…

More than two dozen countries have been affected by cluster bombs and activists say three out of five casualties occur during day-to-day activities.

Most of the victims are children and some are killed when they mistake the bomblets for toys.

The United Nations estimates almost half of all casualties are from Laos, where people are still at risk of being injured from unexploded bomblets.

Between 1964 and 1973, at the height of Vietnam War, the US military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions, mainly to disrupt enemy supply lines that passed through Laos.

It is thought that around 30 per cent of bomblets failed to explode on impact, and over two-thirds of the country is still contaminated. Experts say they kill or injure about 300 people a year.

Thank you – to the nations with stockpiles of these weapons – who nevertheless signed the treaty, will eliminate these anti-civilian weapons and respect the ban: UK, France, Germany and Japan.

China, Russia and Israel have not signed on either. I hope you’re all happy in bed together.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy believes the idea of Russia and Europe building up defenses against one another is something that should remain in the past.

The announcement came during Sarkozy’s speech at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg on Saturday.

“The idea that Russia should protect itself from Europe and that Europe should protect itself from Russia is a thing from the far past,” Sarkozy said, adding: “We must believe that we are fighting against one and the same threats.”

He said that terrorism and mafia are identical threats and that Russia and Europe must jointly fight against them.

Russian President Medvedev announced his initiative to draw up a new pan-European security pact in May 2008, and the first real draft was presented by the Kremlin in November 2009. It got responses from more than 20 governments and their administrations. The European Union and NATO have also studied the draft.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said such a treaty was unnecessary.

Her position was echoed by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who has stated repeatedly that the West is no threat to Russia and that extra security guarantees are uncalled for.

Unless, John McCain had won the 2008 election and appointed George W. Bush secretary of state and Dick Cheney secretary of war. All bets would have been off.

Demonstration in East Jerusalem against Natanyahu’s latest land grab
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has withdrawn from a nuclear security summit in Washington next week, fearing Muslim delegates will demand Israel give up its assumed atomic arsenal.

If the diplomats attending had more than the accepted modicum of integrity, they all would censure Israel.

Netanyahu, who plans to send a deputy and two senior advisers to the April 12-13 conference instead, canceled “after learning that some countries including Egypt and Turkey plan to say Israel must sign the NPT,” an Israeli official said.

By staying outside the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel has not had to forswear nuclear arms nor admit international inspectors to its Dimona reactor, which experts believe has produced plutonium for between 80 and 200 warheads…

The Foreign Ministry in Ankara confirmed that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has sharply escalated criticism of Israel since last year’s Gaza war, would demand at the summit that it disarm as part of a nuclear-free Middle East…

“Israel has nuclear weapons but doesn’t belong to the NPT. Does that mean that those who don’t sign the NPT are in a privileged position..?”

Israel says its nuclear secrecy helps ward off enemies while avoiding the kind of provocations that can trigger arms races…

What a crock! There never has been an arms race which didn’t result in one faction feeding off another.

Israel was the first nation in the whole of the Middle East to commit to nuclear arms. They have continued to stockpile atomic weapons with the tacit approval of the White House and Congress every step of the way.

Sato and Nixon in 1967

Documents belonging to the surviving family members of former Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato revealed that an agreement was signed between the Washington and Tokyo that allowed nuclear weapons to come on Japanese soil, according to the Daily Yomiuri newspaper.

The agreement was signed by former U.S. President Richard Nixon and Sato on Nov. 19, 1969, and was marked “top secret”.

The two-page document is currently being checked for authenticity, but could signal the first discovery of papers relating to secret pacts between Japan and the United States that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has said it wants to make public.

Since coming to power in September, the DPJ Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has instructed his department to search for evidence of pacts that have long been denied by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which governed Japan almost interrupted for more than half a century.

The documents are likely to have a huge impact in Japan, where the government is amid negotiations with the United States about a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between the two nations in 2006. Under that agreement, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are set to remain in Okinawa after 2014, when 8,000 were to be moved to Guam.

On the SOFA issue, Okinawan residents have made their feelings known by protesting against the U.S. troops on their soil. If the document signed by Nixon and Sato turns out to be true, it is likely to exacerbate tensions between locals and U.S. military personnel in Japan’s southernmost prefecture.

Nice to see that Japan has acquired an administration that’s beginning to work at openness. Even though it requires admitting their government was in bed with crooks like Richard M. Nixon.

This 12-year-old threatened the Homeland Security of Israel

Certainly the treaty is ambitious in scope. Not only does it ban the stockpiling, use and transfer of virtually all existing cluster bombs, but it also provides for the clearing up of countries littered with unexploded munitions. And all of it to be achieved within the next eight years.

Although some countries argue cluster munitions still have continued military utility, critics say they are outmoded and immoral. They are regarded as outmoded because of the urban nature of many modern wars, and as immoral because of the failure of some sub-munitions to explode initially. Many of those munitions later kill or injure civilians who pick them up or tread on them.

Campaigners certainly hope the treaty will signal the end of this particular weapons system.

Most of the world’s biggest stockpilers will not sign the treaty – including the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel – backers argue the treaty will stigmatise the use of cluster bombs even for those who do not sign up.

They say that was the pattern with the landmine treaty, which many stockpilers also failed to sign.

Rationales, lies, denial and delusion characterize the thugs who continue to rely on death and destruction to enforce their will. Almost always in the name of homeland security.

History will judge them all.

The European Union, reeling from Ireland’s “No” vote to its reform treaty, has acknowledged that another member state, the Czech Republic, has a problem with ratifying the text for the moment.

“The European Council noted that the Czech Republic cannot complete the ratification process until the constitutional court delivers its positive opinion on the accordance of the Lisbon Treaty…,” the leaders agreed to say in a footnote to a final statement at a two-day summit, diplomats reported…

All 27 member states must ratify for it to take effect. The Czechs had sought to prevent any call for continued ratification after the June 12 Irish referendum defeat…

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek — seen as less keen on the treaty — said on Thursday night: “If the vote was today, I would not bet 100 crowns on the outcome.”

Neither would I.