The Raw Story

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Ukraine owes China billions that it will not pay back

Russia's RIA Novosti News Agency reported, on January 17th, that China is demanding refund of $1.5 billion in cash and of an additional $1.5 billion in Chinese goods that were paid in advance by China (in 2013), for a 2012 Chinese order of grain from Ukraine, which goods still have not been supplied to China.

According to RIAN, "State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine (STATE FOOD) supplied grain in 2013, elsewhere, but not to China. The new Kiev authorities had an opportunity to fix the short-sighted actions 'of the [previous] Yanukovych regime,' and to present a positive economic image to the Chinese." But it didn't happen.

Furthermore: "Prior to the Presidency of Yanukovych [which started in 2010], China's leadership had simply refused to do business with the pre-Yanukovych Administration's Yulia Tymoshenko, and they planned to wait until Yanukovych became President. He then came, and since has been ousted, and yet still only $153 million of grain has been delivered." (None of the $1.5B cash that China advanced to Ukraine to pay for growing and shipping grain has been returned to China, but only the $153M that had essentially been swapped: Chinese goods for Ukrainian grain.) This $153 million was approximately as much as the interest that would be due on China's prepayment, and so Ukraine still owes China the full $3 billion ($1.5B in cash, + $1.5B that China supplied in goods).

The RIAN report goes on to quote Alex Luponosov, a Ukrainian authority on Ukraine's banking system, who says, "Ukraine won't be able to supply the grain to China, because we don't have it." The reason he gives is that "there is a big shortage of technicians: combiners, adjusters, mechanics, farm-machinery operators - all of them were taken by the army." Those men are being required to fight in Ukraine's 'ATO' or 'Anti Terrorist Operation,' that's occurring in Ukraine's former Donbass region (the far-eastern tip of Ukraine), the place where the residents don't accept the new Ukrainian Government's legitimacy, and they are therefore being called 'Terrorists' by this new Government, which is thus bombing them, supposedly in order to convince them that this new Government's authority over them is legitimate (even though the residents there never participated in its selection, and have been cut off even from Ukraine's social-security payments).

The Russian news report continues by quoting Luponosov again: "If the declaration of mobilization will take place in the planned figures, up to 100 thousand people in three stages, the sowing campaign cannot take place, either on the farms or at the grain traders." As part of Ukraine's military mobilization - the new phase of which which started on January 20 - military offices take first the rural male population of the country, and farm-production must therefore suffer.

Luponosov was quoted: "Now try to tell Parliament to amend the war-legislation so that these people won't be taken from their villages. No one will deny the military. Parliament thus cannot do anything [to fulfill on Ukraine's grain-contract with China]."

The RIAN report says that, "China is angry," and it closes: "By the way, in addition to China's $3B loan that's to be repaid with grain [which cannot be supplied], Ukraine also received from China a $3.6 billion loan to pay for the gasification of coal, by Ukraine's gas company, Naftogaz, which the Ukrainian Government has guaranteed up to 2.3 billion dollars. Information on the implementation of the coal-gasification project has not been made available, but there seems to be a high probability that this matter too will be decided in a court. If China decides to call in that loan, then the result will be the bankruptcy of either Naftogaz, or the Ukrainian Government."

On January 9th, Ukraine's Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, reassured the IMF, EU, and other investors of all funds that are being loaned to Ukraine, that Ukraine is doing everything possible to fulfill on its financial obligations to all investors:

"I would also like to note that the money that we get in the framework of international financial assistance, does not go to finance the state budget deficit, it does not go to the payment of pensions, it does not go to the payment of wages. All of this is happening in the first place, solely to perform our external obligations." On 1 May 2014, the IMF (whose money comes from taxpayers in U.S. and the EU, not from the aristocrats whose investments the IMF protects and whom the IMF actually serves) had stated that Ukraine's first obligation, without which the IMF would lend no more money, is to win the war against Donbass. Yatsenyuk, thus, is here reassuring the IMF, and other investors in Ukraine, that their money will not go to pay for anything but winning this war.

The IMF, and other lenders, require Ukraine to win this war, because, if the Ukrainian Government doesn't win, then the natural gas and other assets that are in the ground in that region will not become available to be sold off by the Ukrainian Government in order to pay-off those investors; instead, the residents there (the people whom the Ukrainian Government is now trying to eliminate) will control those assets, as being assets of a separate state - one which has not borrowed from these investors. The IMF wants the assets that are in the ground, not the people who are living on it. That is why it demands victory (elimination of the people in Donbass) - or else Ukraine will promptly go bankrupt. (And, perhaps, so too will some of those investors.)

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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I think probably the most often asked question about the show is: Why the Star Trek Phenomenon?

And it could be an important question because you can ask:

How can a simple space opera with blinking lights and zap-guns and a goblin with pointy ears reach out and touch the hearts and minds of literally millions of people and become a cult in some cases?

Obviously, what this means is, that television has incredible power.

They are saying that if Star Trek can do this, then perhaps another carefully calculated show could move people in other directions as to keep selfish interest to creating other cults for selfish purposes: industrial, cartels, political parties, governments.

Ultimate power in this world, as you know, has always been one simple thing: the control and manipulation of minds.

Fortunately, in the attempt however to manipulate people through any so called Star Trek Formula , is doomed to failure, and I'll tell you why in just a moment. First of all, our show did not reach and affect all these people because it was deep and great literature.

Star Trek was not Ibsen or Shakespeare. To get a prime time show -- network show -- on the air and to keep it there, you must attract and hold a minimum of 18 million people every week.

You have to do that in order to move people away from Gomer Pyle, Bonanza, Beverly Hill Billies and so on. And we tried to do this with entertainment, action, adventure, conflict and so on.

But once we got on the air, and within the limits of those accident ratio limits, we did not accept the myth that the television audience has an infantile mind. We had an idea, and we had a premise, and we still believe that.

As a matter of fact we decided to risk the whole show on that premise.

We believed that the often ridiculed mass audience is sick of this world's petty nationalism and all it's old ways and old hatreds, and that people are not only willing but anxious to think beyond most petty beliefs that have for so long kept mankind divided.

So you see that the formula, the magic ingredient that many people keep seeking and many of them keep missing is really not in Star Trek.

It is in the audience. There is an intelligent life form out on the other side of that television too.

The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.

We tried to say that the worst possible thing that can happen to all of us is for the future to somehow press us into a common mould, where we begin to act and talk and look and think alike. If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.

And I think that this is what people responded to.

The result of that was that seven years after being dropped by the network because of saying those things, there are now more people watching it than ever before.

And if you ascribe those things to any mystic or scriptural brilliance in Star Trek, you miss the entire point.

For Star Trek proofs, as faulty as individual episodes could be, that the much-maligned common man and common woman has an enormous hunger for brotherhood. They are ready for the 23rd century now, and they are light-years ahead of their petty governments and their visionless leaders.

Dozens of US law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have used radar devices that allow them to "see" through walls of buildings to monitor human activity, a new report states. This has led to questions regarding how legal these tactics are.

The policing agencies began using the radar device more than two years ago without public disclosure and little notice from courts until a recent case in Colorado revealed its use to catch a parole violator, according to USA Today. The device's clandestine use has raised questions about Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted police searches.

"The idea that the government can send signals through the wall of your house to figure out what's inside is problematic," said Christopher Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Technologies that allow the police to look inside of a home are among the intrusive tools that police have."

Reminiscent of the heat-seeking extraterrestrial in the Hollywood movie 'Predator,' the device, known as the Range-R, uses radio waves to detect the exact location of movements, even breathing, from more than 50 feet away.

The Range-R, made by arms company L-3 Communications, displays three-dimensional movement detection from the other side of a wall, indicating how far away any motion is, though it does not offer a picture of the action inside. L-3 Communications said it has sold approximately 200 Range-R devices to 50 law enforcement agencies for about $6,000 each.

FEDERAL COP AUTONS HAVE DECIDED TO IGNORE SUPREME COURT RULING AGAINST USING RADAR DEVICES TO SEE INSIDE YOUR HOME: http://bit.ly/1unBENB

- THE REPUBLICAN DALEK (@RepublicanDalek) January 20, 2015

Federal records indicate that the US Marshals Service began purchasing the radars in 2012, according to , and have been spending $180,000 on them ever since.

The device's use, though, went unnoticed until December, when a federal appeals court in Denver discovered that police officers had used the radar device without a search warrant to enter a house in order to find a truant parolee. The panel judges warned, "the government's warrantless use of such a powerful tool to search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions."

You know what happens when police officers ignore the highest law of the land? Absolutely nothing. http://bit.ly/1CiWeVQ #privatelaw

- Quinn Norton (@quinnnorton) January 20, 2015

While use of the device alarmed the judges in that case, it was first time an appellate court had even referenced the technology.

US Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said officials are reviewing the court's decision, adding that the Marshals Service "routinely pursues and arrests violent offenders based on pre-established probable cause in arrest warrants" for major crimes.

I predict a new market for wallpaper made from tin foil. http://bit.ly/1CiWdkJ

- JLLLOW (@JLLLOW) January 20, 2015

According to USA Today, the Justice Department is actively funding development of systems that aim to map building interiors in order to find people inside.

The devices, according to the report, were first used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, marking yet another tool fostered for US military uses and later passed off to US law enforcement for use in everyday policing situations.

The US Supreme Court has generally barred the police use of such technology to monitor the inside of one's home without a warrant.

In a 2013 case that limited use of drug dogs to sniff the exterior of homes, Justice Antonin Scalia reaffirmed the Fourth Amendment as "the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion."

Bogumila recalls how as a small girl growing up in the Polish town of Oswiecim she saw prisoners beaten by Nazi guards and watched with her mother the distant glow of the crematorium fires of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

"Everyone sat in their homes in silence, windows shut as tightly as possible," she said.

The 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to be attended by world leaders and survivors, raises painful questions for residents of Oswiecim where Nazi occupiers created one of the most relentless extermination machines in history, claiming the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people.

How did their parents go about their daily business when such inhumanity was taking place just the other side of a barbed wire fence? How much did they know of what was going on?

"Of course people knew what was going on," said Bogumila, who lived through the occupation as a child.

The mass extermination of prisoners and the incineration of thousands of bodies, she said, were no secret. Some describe having to live with the stench from bodies being incinerated at Auschwitz, but keeping quiet to survive.

"Every now and then, my mum and I would walk toward the camp, and see the disgusting glow on the horizon," she said.

But during the war, survival was uppermost in the minds of most of the town's population. The occupation was brutal.

While some local people recall residents bravely sheltering Jews in their homes, others speak of Jews betrayed to the Nazis by their neighbors.

"Most of them did nothing, because they were scared," said Bogumila.

Bogumila was one of four women, meeting in a cafe in Oswiecim this month, sharing memories of growing up in Oswiecim at the time and of what their parents told them about it.

They declined to give their family names, fearing that by speaking candidly they would anger other people in the town who prefer not to dwell on their wartime past.

Between 1940 and 1945, Auschwitz developed into a vast complex of barracks, workshops, gas chambers and crematoria.

PROTECTION, BETRAYAL

Despite extremely strict laws against those aiding Jews in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany, some Poles still risked their lives trying to help.

Today, Poland boasts the highest number of rescuers who were granted the Righteous Among the Nations title by the Israeli Holocaust research institute Yad Vashem, with 6,454 Poles officially recognized for their efforts to save Jews.

"My aunt was hiding a Jewish girl in her house in Oswiecim during the war," said Wanda, a retired hairdresser.

But with Jews making up around 10 percent of the country's pre-war population, anti-Semitism was also rife among Poles.

The Jewish girl whom Wanda's aunt was trying to protect was captured and killed after two young Polish women spotted her in the street and pointed her out to German soldiers, Wanda said.

Some also tried to benefit from the situation financially, either by trading information to the Germans, or by blackmailing Jews in hiding. This was punished by death by the Polish underground.

Some Poles also benefited from the death of Jewish countrymen by acquiring their property. Joanna, a retired accountant born shortly after the war, grew up hearing tales of people digging around the camps after 1945, searching for gold.

"We know people who got rich, who made the money they have today from it," said Ewa, a Polish woman of Jewish descent, who was two years old when the war ended.

Born in Oswiecim to a Jewish mother and a Polish father, she decided to stay in her hometown after the war. Today, she says she is one of the very few Jews remaining there.

"Mum was kept in the camp for three months," Ewa said. "She was smuggled out for money, hidden under a cart full of beans."

"She only survived thanks to a Volksdeutcher, who was paid off by my father," she said, referring a group of people considered ethnically German by the Third Reich.

"He worked closely with the Germans, so he would come to my father and say: make her disappear for two weeks."

"How many he sent to the camp - that I don't know. But I know he helped my mum. That he did it for money? Tough. Back then this was something you had to pay for."

Seven decades on, Oswiecim is trying to put the bleak past behind it, a giant "City of Peace" banner displayed next to the main railway hub, which once saw hundreds of thousands transported in cattle wagons into the camp's gas chambers.

Oswiecim's residents are also trying to move on. "Subconsciously, all of that is still with me," said Ewa. "But I never talk about it. Best to draw a veil of silence over it."

Dozens of unvaccinated students have been banned from an Orange County high school after being exposed to measles by an infected classmate.

The 24 students cannot return to Huntington Beach High School until Jan. 29, according to district officials. "There's been some kids absent from my class," Jordian McCutch said. The infected student was on campus from Jan. 6 to Jan. 8.

The move is part of an effort to slow the measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in December. Orange County has 16 confirmed cases of the viral infection, six of which are not connected to the Disneyland outbreak. "It doesn't worry me that much because I've had the vaccination," a female student said.

Measles is highly contagious and can spread easily through the air.

"Simply being in the same room with someone who has measles is sufficient to become infected," the Orange County Health Care Agency said in a letter to parents in the district.

California state laws require children to be vaccinated with the MMR vaccine before enrolling in school. Some parents believe the shots are linked to autism and other medical conditions and have signed medical-exemption forms.

A Michigan man was sentenced to six months in jail this week for domestic violence after he punched his then-girlfriend, and beat her with a puppy until the animal died.

MLive reported that after Timothy Tucker punched his girlfriend in the eye in November, he began to assault her with a 2-week-old puppy.

Court documents said that the woman found fecal matter from the dead dog on her after the attack.

In court on Tuesday, the victim told Circuit Judge Alexander C. Lipsey that she was blind for weeks after the assault. She said that she struggled with depression, and that the attack "put me in a real dark place."

"I was hurt, scared in my own house, being attacked in my own house," the woman explained. "I'm still scared and I shouldn't have to feel like that from someone I cared about, someone I loved."

"He's going to find the wrong broken person and either they're going to kill him or he's going to kill them," she added.

As part of a plea deal, Lipsey sentenced Tucker to six months in jail and four years of probation. He will also be required to pay restitution, and entered into the Swift and Sure Sanctions Program, which is a stricter version of probation. One count of killing/torturing animals was dropped as part of the deal.

Lipsey pointed out that Tucker had three previous domestic violence convictions, and one conviction for illegal entry and destruction of property.

"The court looked fairly extensively at the history in this particular matter and it does appear the defendant has potential anger issues," Lipsey said. "There is a point at which the system can help but help is the operative word. The initiative has to come from the defendant, he has to be able to figure out if he's willing to accept help and act on it."

Kalamazoo County Assistant Prosecutor Mike Reisterer said that he had prosecuted a lot of cases in his 25-year career, but this attack shocked him.

"This is one of the few cases that turns my stomach. To take a two-week-old puppy and bludgeon his significant other to the point that she requires hospitalization and the puppy is dead ... is incomprehensible," Reisterer observed.

Watch this video from WXMI, broadcast Jan. 21, 2014.

[embedded content]

© AFP Photo / Javier Soriano

A thousand people gather in front of fences blocking the street leading to the Spain's parliament (Las Cortes) during an anti-government demonstration in Madrid

Spain's unemployment rate rose to 23.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, up from 23.67 percent in the third quarter, National Statistics Institute (NSI) data showed Thursday, Reuters reported.

The Madrid-based Institute's figures showed that the number of jobless rose 30,100 from October to the end of December 2014, bringing the total number of unemployed to 5.46 million people. An earlier forecast by the NSI projected the unemployment rate to fall to 23.53 percent, due to increased hiring in manufacturing, agriculture and construction. Total hires in these three sectors amounted to 82,300, with the service sector suffering a loss of 17,200, but the growth wasn't enough to compensate for the growing labor force.

An earlier report published Tuesday by the International Labor Organization (ILO) expects unemployment to fall to 23.6 percent by the end of 2015, and projects that by 2019 it may fall to 21.49 percent, The Guardian explained.

The country's woefully high unemployment rate is down from a high of 25.7 percent in 2013, but remains among the highest in the developed world. The ILO notes that in Europe, only Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia have higher unemployment rates. Among Spaniards under 25 years old, 53.3 percent remain unable to find work, which Bridgewater Associates investment head Ray Dalio says has led to "a lost generation" which may get caught up in "political extremism," The Irish Times explains.

Spain's five year, financial-crisis and housing-bubble-fueled recession more than tripled its pre-crisis unemployment figures, which stood at 8.4 percent in 2007.

While the country is said to have officially exited its recession in 2013, its Q4 2014 growth rate of 0.5 percent outpaced the Eurozone's 0.2 percent rate; massive unemployment, stagnant wages and now the prospects of deflation have put a damper on the hopes of economists and ordinary citizens alike.

NPR has explained that the prospects of wage cuts, the threat of job loss, and a price war between small businesses are hitting ordinary people hard. Madrid resident Luis Fernandez told NPR that while the economy "is growing [and] the figures say that...it is very slow, really slow."

CNBC points out that the country's CPI slipped to - 1 percent in 2014, the lowest figure since July 2009. "While Spain's economic recovery remains solid, its high unemployment and large degree of spare capacity make it vulnerable to a prolonged bout of deflation," Capital Economics economist Johnathan Loynes told CNBC. Economists also fear that a deflation-based delay in increased consumer spending could lead to a deflationary spiral like the one experienced in Japan in the 1990s.

Deflation also threatens to negatively affect attempts at debt consolidation, both of government and private debt. With Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy facing political challenges from anti-austerity parties including the leftist Podemos Partyduring upcoming elections this year, the government may be unable to carry out what are perceived as the necessary austerity measures to deal with growing debt, Dalio notes.

On the plus side, the expected depreciation in exchange rates, and the last six months' drastic decline in oil prices are expected to reduce production costs, make Spanish goods more competitive, and increase consumer spending power, Spanish Secretary of Trade Inigo Fernandez de Mesa told CNBC last week. Rajoy's government projects 2.0 percent growth, along with the creation of about a million jobs between 2014 and 2015, Rajoy told the Spanish news agency EFE earlier this week.

Rajoy's People's Party government has been plagued by corruption scandals and unpopular austerity reforms, including measures which make it easier for employers to fire workers, Business Week has explained.

The Raw Story

Focused on providing independent journalism.

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What I did after police killed my son

Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Ukraine owes China billions that it will not pay back

A message from Gene Roddenberry to the world

U.S. law enforcement using radar device that can look through walls to monitor human activity

Memories of Auschwitz haunt a Polish town

High school bans 24 unvaccinated students after measles outbreak

Sick society: Michigan man gets 6-months in jail for blinding girlfriend, bludgeoning her with 2-week old puppy until it dies

Spain's unemployment rate among the highest in the 'developed' world

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