Death-Toll From European Deep Freeze Hits 540 As Danube Freezes Over

Before It's News

GERMANY – Thick ice closed vast swathes of the Danube on Thursday, crippling shipping on Europe’s busiest waterway, as the death toll from bitter cold across the continent rose to at least 540.
As it has every day for nearly two weeks, the brutal cold claimed lives in several countries and killed dozens more in weather-related accidents. The 2,860-kilometre (1,780-mile) Danube, which flows through 10 countries and is vital for transport, power, irrigation, industry and fishing, was wholly or partially blocked from Austria to its mouth on the Black Sea. Navigation was impossible or restricted in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, as ice covered the river or formed dangerous floes in shipping lanes. An official from the Serbian economy ministry said the commercial repercussions “could be very bad,” while infrastructure ministry official Pavle Galico said shipping would not resume for 10 days.

Bulgarian authorities, who have banned all navigation on the river, reported 224 vessels stuck in ports, and Ukrainian rescuers in Croatia reached three crew members on a ship trapped in the ice since Friday. Temperatures in Bulgaria dropped to a new record low Thursday of minus 28.6 degrees Celsius (minus 19.5 Fahrenheit) in the northwestern town of Vidin. The country has halted all power exports due to the cold snap. So far, 28 people have been killed in Bulgaria as a result of the weather, including eight who drowned when the icy waters of a small dam swept through their village of Biser in the southeast. Serbian railways, meanwhile, said the famed Balkan Express train that runs from Belgrade to Istanbul would only go as far as Sofia for now because of the flooding in Bulgaria.

USA and Romania target missile defense against Russia

Pravda

The elements of the U.S. missile defense system will appear at the former Soviet military base in the Romanian town of Deveselu in some five hundred kilometers from the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This was stated by President Traian Basescu, who stressed that the two states have already agreed on everything.

"We have chosen and agreed upon the former air base Deveselu as the site for the deployment of a missile defense system," Basescu stated in a Romanian television broadcast. According to him, approximately 200 American troops would be stationed there, but if necessary their number will increase to 500. They will be supported by radar complex "Aegis", the center of operational control and missile defense batteries, and mobile batteries with interceptor missiles "Standard-3".

Which country is located not far from this military facility? The distance from the base to the Black Sea coast is approximately eight hundred kilometers, but the base of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol is closer - approximately five hundred kilometers. Foreseeing Russia's discontent, Basescu repeated what has in recent years become nearly a spell: "the ABM Treaty is not directed against Russia."

Strictly speaking, the decision to deploy the elements of the U.S. missile defense system in Romania was not a surprise. Even last year, President Basescu said that in his country there will be three batteries of a new missile defense system with 24 launchers. He also noted that the Romanian authorities were ready to deploy the "ground medium-range interceptor missiles that will be in a state of alert by 2015."

The missile defense elements in Romania will be a part of a new American missile defense elements expected to be placed in close proximity to the Russian borders. The U.S. has already agreed with Poland to deploy anti-missile complexes "Patriot" on the Polish territory. They will be placed on combat duty in the town of Morong, less than a hundred kilometers from the main base of the Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad region. In addition, some elements of the missile defense may appear in Bulgaria.

Back then Russia has expressed its dissatisfaction with the behavior of the United States. American ambassador in Moscow John Byerly responded that the missile SM-3 interceptors were needed in Romania to defend against medium-range missiles, and Russia is not threatened. Americans, Romanians, Poles and Bulgarians replied in the same spirit. Meanwhile, the AMD was progressing.

In April, U.S. Assistant Secretary Philip Gordon said that the missile defense system in Eastern Europe will be deployed in four stages. First, by the end of this year the existing missile defense system - such as weapons control system of sea-based Aegis - will be deployed on the Black Sea and Baltic Sea. By 2015 Romania will host a more powerful version of the interceptor missile SM-3 (marine and land-based) and new RLM to protect a given area from the ​​missiles of near and medium range.

Ultimately, by 2020, SM-3 missiles should be improved so that they can effectively deal with missile threats of medium and long range and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russia is the only country that has such weapons in the area. This makes the statements of the Americans and Romanians unconvincing.

It is not surprising that Russia's reaction to the statement of Romania's president was harsh. Russian Foreign Ministry noted that the U.S. is creating a missile defense system in Europe, irrespective of the US-Russian dialogue on missile issues initiated by the president Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama and the work on the project of a possible EUROPRO.

"The missile defense system that Americans are placing in Romania is designed to destroy ballistic and tactical goals," Konstantin Sivkov, a military expert and Senior Vice President of the Academy of Geopolitical Issues, commented on the American-Romanian plans for Pravda.ru. "If you look at the map of the region, the Romanian base can be used for only one goal: to keep southern regions of Russia at gunpoint and enable hitting our cruise missiles.

Missile defense elements in Romania are a part of the U.S. plan to encircle Russia with military bases. There are no other potential threats to the U.S. in this region. Turkey is a NATO member, Ukraine is actively cooperating with NATO. There are potential "hot spots" - the Crimea, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The Americans are arming Georgia and pulling together the forces to the region - quite probably in anticipation of worsening of the conditions in this part of the world.

Contrary to the statements of the President of Romania, the missile defense deployment is directed precisely against Russia. We could take retaliatory measures such as deploying Iskander and transferring fighter bombers in the area. However, this requires political will. The pro-Western lobby in the Russian elite is too strong, and they prefer to buy NATO weapons we do not need like "Mistral" ships. It is unlikely that we will respond to the missile defenses in full. "

The U.S. policy is clear. However, the emergence of elements of American missile defense system in Romania would not be possible without the consent of Romania itself, that many simply cannot see behind the mighty backs of the U.S. President Basescu is a pro-American politician, but he is not a "chain dog" of Washington. He was not afraid, for example, to say "no" to the recognition of Kosovo's independence. However, in terms of Russia the interests of the United States and Romania are clearly the same.

Basescu kept repeating that Moldova should again become a part of Romania. He believes that a major obstacle for this is Russia that has repeatedly complained about the Romanian great plan. For him, the elements of missile defense are an additional opportunity to put pressure on Russia to make Russia more agreeable on the issues of Moldova and Transdniestria.

In this case, the United States and Romania, as they say, found each other. Russia will have to respond not only to the Americans but also to the Romanians. There is no guarantee that it will be one and the same response. For example, the deployment of Iskander in Transnistria is unlikely to impress Washington, but would be a different story for Bucharest.

Vadim Trukhachev
Pravda.Ru

It's not radical Islam that worries the US – it's independence

Noam Chomsky
Guardian

The nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control.  Subjects are ignored until they break their chains.

'The Arab world is on fire," al-Jazeera reported last week, while throughout the region, western allies "are quickly losing their influence". The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator's brutal police.

Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless properly tamed.

One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt's vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.
A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).
"The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control," says Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. "With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground."
Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalises worldwide, to US home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.

The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against "a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems", ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. So said US ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.

Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks "documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren't asleep at the switch" – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of US policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)

"America should give Assange a medal," says a headline in the Financial Times, where Gideon Rachman writes: "America's foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the US on any given issue is usually the private position as well."
In this view, WikiLeaks undermines "conspiracy theorists" who question the noble motives Washington proclaims.

Godec's cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do,, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec's information in hand, Washington provided $12m in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most US military aid in the hemisphere.

Heilbrunn's exhibit A is Arab support for US policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.
Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).
Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington's policies that a majority (57%) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, "there is nothing wrong, everything is under control" (as Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.

Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington's nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of "legal and constitutional issues surrounding the 28 June forced removal of President Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya."

The embassy concluded that "there is no doubt that the military, supreme court and national congress conspired on 28 June in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the executive branch". Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.
Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.

The cables reveal that the US embassy is well aware that Washington's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also "risks destabilising the Pakistani state" and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Again, the revelations "should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch" (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.