Author Archives: News Sources

Big data has outpaced our legal system’€™s ability to control it

f13-iconNeil Richards writes: These days, everyone seems to be talking about “big data.” Engineers, researchers, lawyers, executives and self-trackers all tout the surprising insights they can get from applying math to large data sets. The rhetoric of big data is often overblown, exaggerated and contradictory, but there’s an element of truth to the claim that data science is helping us to know more about our world, our society and ourselves.

Data scientists use big data to deliver personalized ads to Internet users, to make better spell checkers and search engines, to predict weather patterns, perform medical research, learn about customers, set prices and plan traffic flow patterns. Big data can also fight crime, whether through the use of automated license-plate readers or, at least theoretically, through the collection of vast amounts of “metadata” about our communications and associations by the National Security Agency.

Big data allows us to know more, to predict and to influence others. This is its power, but it’s also its danger. The entities that can harness the power of math applied to large sets of personal information can do things that used to be impossible. Many of these new uses are good, but some of them aren’t. For example, if our “personalized prices” can be based on our race or sex, or if our college admissions are based on things like ZIP code or car ownership, we might want to think more deeply about the kinds of big decisions our big data can be used for. We’re creating a society based on data, and we need to make sure that we create a society that we want to live in. [Continue reading…]

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What’s behind the ‘Jewish state’ idea?

o13-iconRami G. Khouri writes: In my discussions on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations with various informed audiences around the United States during the past month, the question that comes up most often is about how the Palestinians can, should or will respond to the Israeli government demand that they must recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” The prevalent Arab and Palestinian demand is to rule out any such recognition, on several valid grounds, such as: The Jewish state concept is not defined, it does not take account of the Palestinian Arab and other non-Jewish Israelis, it does not address the implications of such recognition for the U.N.-acknowledged rights of Palestinian refugees, and it does not have any basis in international law or diplomatic norms related to how states recognize each other.

These points do not seem to impress the Israelis, who have made this more central to their demands for any permanent peace agreement. Israel also seems to have convinced the United States to come down on its side, as the American president, secretary of state and other senior officials have routinely referred to Israel as “the Jewish state of Israel” or some other such formulation.

It is not clear if Palestinians will cave in and accept the Israeli-American demand as they usually do, for three main reasons. First, the demand comes in the context of final-status negotiations that aim to resolve all outstanding disputes, so there is likely to be some room for give-and-take in any final agreement. Second, the “Jewish state” concept remains undefined, and its clear definition, coupled with agreement on the rights of the Palestinians and non-Jewish Israelis, could pave the way for some mutual acknowledgments that satisfy both sides. Third, a central negotiating demand such as this that springs up suddenly after over six decades of warfare seems to be a proxy concept that reflects deeper issues that must be resolved. [Continue reading…]

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Crisis over Crimea steals thunder from AIPAC conference

n13-iconHaaretz reports: The recent losses of face over the Syria and Iran issues had already cast a pall on the mammoth annual conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which opens Sunday in Washington. But the crisis in the capital over Russia’s move into Crimea, which threatens to reignite the Cold War, has infused the America Israel Public Affairs Committee confab with a strong sense of anticlimax.

If a week ago the question before the 14,000 delegates was whether AIPAC could regain the full fearsomeness of its reputation in Washington, the question now appears to be: Will anybody be paying attention? [Continue reading…]

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The Crimean invasion will increase the polarization inside Russia

o13-iconMasha Gessen writes: Can something be evident and incredible at the same time? Certainly, if you are in denial. Until Russian troops landed in the Crimea many Russians were in denial about Vladimir Putin. They believed he was all bark and no bite.

Not that Putin had kept his intentions secret. He has always denied the idea that the Soviet Union was a colonising power; furthermore, he called the breakup of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of our time”.

He has annexed chunks of Georgia, most recently by means of a military invasion in 2008. But there are two differences between now and the war in Georgia. Technically, it was not Putin but Dmitry Medvedev who was nominally president when Russia invaded Georgia. More importantly, Russian liberals were not rooting for their fellows in Georgia during that war; indeed, they were scarcely aware of the political struggles within the country.

Ukraine is different: for three months, Russians had been watching the stand-off, and the oppositionally minded were strongly identifying with the anti-Yanukovych forces in Kiev.

Perhaps the last time the Russian intelligentsia watched the internal struggle in another country this intently was in 1968 during the Prague Spring, when they hoped the Czechs would succeed in building what they called “socialism with a human face”. They also believed it would hold out the promise of something better for life in the Soviet Union. In August 1968, the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, quashing the Prague Spring. In Moscow, seven people came out to protest against the invasion; they were arrested and the modern dissident movement was born.

The parallels end there. It’s unlikely that what’s happening in Ukraine will foment a new protest movement in Russia: the ongoing crackdown on civil society makes the cost of protest too high. Still, the Crimean invasion is a landmark in Russian domestic politics.

It signals a loss of innocence: no longer will Russians be able to think that Putin merely feels nostalgic for the USSR. It also signals ever greater polarisation of Russian society: in addition to all the other lines along which Russians are divided and across which civilised dialogue is impossible, there is now the chasm between supporters and opponents of the planned annexation. It also means the political crackdown in Russia will intensify further. [Continue reading…]

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Putin ready to invade Ukraine; Kiev warns of war

n13-iconReuters reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded and won his parliament’s approval on Saturday to invade Ukraine, where the new government warned of war, put its troops on high alert and appealed to NATO for help.

Putin’s open assertion of the right to send troops to a country of 46 million people on the ramparts of central Europe creates the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, leading a government that took power after Moscow’s ally Viktor Yanukovich fled a week ago, said Russian military action “would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations between Ukraine and Russia”.

Acting President Oleksander Turchinov ordered troops to be placed on high combat alert. Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said he had met European and U.S. officials and sent a request to NATO to “examine all possibilities to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine”. [Continue reading…]

I guess Russia’s move will render most of the anti-interventionists mute since the only interventions anyone feels moved to speak out against are those backed by the United States. “Down with American intervention!” “Intervention by anyone else — who cares?”

AFP adds: On Kiev’s now iconic Independence Square, bare-chested Cossacks fiercely beat the war drums: Ukrainian authorities have just put the army on high alert in the face of a threat of a Russian invasion.

“They have de facto declared war on us,” former interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko shouts to a crowd of thousands on the central stage nearby, not far from where dozens of anti-government protesters fell under the bullets of riot police last week in bloodshed that precipitated the fall of Russia-backed president Viktor Yanukovych.

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Crimea’s Putin supporters prepare to welcome possible Russian advance

The Observer reports: “The people of Sevastopol are the most patriotic on the planet,” says Dimitry Sinichkin, the leather-jacketed leader of a fearsome Crimean biker gang known as the Night Wolves. “They have come out to defend their families and country.”

As Ukraine’s stability continues to unravel, Sinichkin and his pro-Russian Night Wolves, a squad of tattooed men who sit astride powerful Harley-Davidsons, have become apparent outriders for what could be a full-scale Russian military advance on the Crimean peninsula.

Sevastapol is at the sharp end of what increasingly resembles a cold war-style crisis. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, won parliamentary approval on Saturday to send troops into Ukraine as Moscow looked set to recall its ambassador from the United States. Throughout Crimea it is now a question of waiting for the troops who will surely follow in the wake of that decision.

With muscular factions such as the Night Wolves already on the ground and Kremlin supporters staging violent demonstrations in major cities of eastern and southern Ukraine, there are already plenty of would-be “patriots” prepared to welcome them. Unidentified gunmen, some reportedly linked to Russian military units, have besieged airports and the local parliament in Crimea over the past few days, raising international tensions over Moscow’s intentions.

Armoured personnel carriers are seen rolling along the highways, while Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Russian hardliner and Kremlin politician, has been rousing crowds by bellowing into microphones about Moscow’s military might. In town centres, crowds of babushkas, their fur hats askew, can be heard chanting: “To Russia, to Russia.”

The Night Wolves are the latest addition to this circus. They say they are ready to defend Crimea against all unwanted intrusions, namely western authorities and the new administration in Kiev, seen by many in the region as bandits and terrorists who seized power illegally.

The Crimean peninsula is predominantly Russian-speaking, and despite splitting away from their eastern neighbour 60 years ago, many in the region still look longingly over the border to what they see as their motherland. Strong geographical and historical ties to Russia are bolstered by the presence of Moscow-run naval and military bases dotted around the region.

With the emergence of pro-Russian military groups and the looming threat of deployments from across the border, the question of who exactly is now in charge here is unclear. Yesterday Sevastopol’s new mayor, Aleksei Chaliy, pledged to subordinate himself to the local security forces – among them, presumably, the Night Wolves. [Continue reading…]

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How Russia is stoking the fears of Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority

Simon Shuster reports: To many in Ukraine, a full-scale Russian military invasion would feel like a liberation. On Saturday, across the country’s eastern and southern provinces, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to welcome the Kremlin’s talk of protecting pro-Russian Ukrainians against the revolution that brought a new government to power last week. So far, that protection has come in the form of Russian military control of the southern region of Crimea, but on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin got parliamentary approval for a broad military intervention in Ukraine. As that news spread, locals in at least four major cities in the east of Ukraine climbed onto the roofs of government buildings and replaced the Ukrainian flag with the Russian tricolor.

For the most part, what drove so many people to renounce their allegiance to Ukraine was a mix of pride and fear, the latter fueled in part by misinformation from Moscow. The most apparent deception came on Saturday morning, when the Russian Foreign Ministry put out a statement accusing the new government in Kiev of staging a “treacherous provocation” on the Crimean peninsula. It claimed that “unidentified armed men” had been sent from Kiev to seize the headquarters of the Interior Ministry police in Crimea. But thanks to the “decisive actions of self-defense battalions,” the statement said, the attack had been averted with just a few casualties. This statement turned out to be without any basis in fact.

Igor Avrutsky, who was the acting Interior Minister of Crimea during the alleged assault, told TIME the following afternoon that it never happened. “Everything was calm,” he says. Throughout the night, pro-Russian militiamen armed with sticks and shields had been defending the Crimean Interior Ministry against the revolutionaries, and one of the militia leaders, Oleg Krivoruchenko, also says there was no assault on the building. “People were coming and going as normal,” he says.

But the claims coming from Moscow were still enough to spread panic in eastern and southern Ukraine. [Continue reading…]

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‘There’s no hope left’: the Syrian refugee camp that is becoming a township

f13-iconRobin Yassin-Kassab writes: This must be how the Palestinian camps began their slow transformation into towering townships. The Syrian families here are still living in canvas or plastic tents, but the little shops selling falafel and cola on the Atmeh camp’s “main street” are now breeze-block and corrugated-iron constructions. And now nobody dares talk about going home.

Atmeh camp, just inside Syria, hugs the Turkish border fence. It is December, and the population has risen in the six months since I was here in June, from 22,000 to almost 30,000. This new settlement is one of many – there are more than 6 million people displaced inside Syria, and more than 2 million in neighbouring states. The camp’s population dwindles and swells according to the vicissitudes of battle. When the regime reconquered (and obliterated) the Khaldiyeh quarter of Homs last July, an additional 50 to 60 families a day arrived.

Six months ago, when I last visited, I was able to travel deep into liberated Syria – as far as Kafranbel in the south of Idlib province – with nothing to fear from the Free Army fighters manning checkpoints. This time I don’t dare go as far as Atmeh village, sitting on the nearby hilltop, because it is occupied by al-Qaida franchise the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). Last June the camp’s residents referred derisively to the mainly foreign jihadists as “the spicy crew”. Now they are a real threat – abducting and often murdering revolutionary activists, Free Army fighters and journalists. This development contributes greatly to the gloom of the camp’s residents.

In the camp, the steaming vats of the Maram Foundation’s charity kitchen are cooking the same meal they were six months ago: lentil soup. Children wait with buckets in the red mud outside for lunch to be distributed. Also on the main street is a new clinic and one-room dentist (funded by the Syrian-American Medical Society). Dr Haytham grins as he complains about the conditions. The roof leaks, and the recent snowstorm has flooded his crowded space, destroying electrical equipment. As he serves us tea, a boy called Mahmoud, aged about five, walks in to observe us, his face marked by post-treatment leishmaniasis scars (a resurgent disease caused by the sand flies which prosper in uncollected rubbish). Mahmoud seems a pleasant child at first, but after a smiling photograph with one of our group his mood flips; he violently pinches the hand of the man he’d been cuddling up to and then takes to whipping his older sister with a cable. “Nobody can control him,” somebody remarks. “He doesn’t have a father.”

Fatherless, husbandless, homeless … When I ask a man where he’d come from he changed the name of his town from Kafranboodeh to Kafr Mahdoomeh, “the Demolished Village”. I ask him why. “Because they haven’t left one house standing, nor any animals in the fields. What will we ever return to? The whole town’s gone.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s nebulous definition of sovereignty

a13-iconJames Meek writes: Over the past twenty years Russia has removed a set of territories from other countries. It removed the eastern part of Moldova, now known as Transdniestria; it removed the north-western Black Sea part of Georgia, Abkhazia; and it snipped away the territory controlling Georgia’s main road to the Caucasus mountains, South Ossetia. The intention now appears to be to carry out the same operation in Crimea, removing it from Ukraine.

In each case, the procedure, not necessarily planned as such, has nonetheless followed a similar pattern. The territories contain large populations who, with varying degrees of justification, objected to the governments handed them in the post-Soviet order of newly independent states. The Slavs of Transdniestria feared Moldova would force them to speak Moldovan, and would unite with Romania. The Abkhazians wanted greater autonomy within, or independence from, Georgia. The South Ossetians, historically close to Russia, feared being cut off, within Georgia, from their northern kin in Russia, on the other side of the mountains.

In each case, clandestine Russian military support, helped by the presence of Russian bases in or near the territories concerned, found willing takers in the form of local military, paramilitary forces and self-proclaimed ‘Cossacks’; Russian troops only became involved openly as ‘peacekeepers’. In each case, the internationally recognised governments supposedly in charge of the discontented territories took military steps to enforce their claim. The presence of ‘peacekeepers’ and Russian-armed militias led to clashes, giving the Russian military cause to intervene decisively on the side of the separatists. (Newly independent Georgia’s first military response to Abkhazian separatism was particularly heavy-handed.)

Russia’s explanation is that the territories concerned should never have been allowed to go beyond Moscow’s caring embrace, and that in each case, they are fulfilling the wishes of, and protecting, the majority of the territories’ inhabitants. There is some truth in the latter point; but it is a dangerous argument for Moscow to make, given that it could be equally applied, against Russia, to Chechnya. [Continue reading…]

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Ukraine says Russia sending ‘thousands’ of troops to Crimea

n13-iconAFP reports: Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of sending thousands of extra troops into Crimea as the Kremlin vowed to help restore calm on the flashpoint peninsula and Washington warned of “costs” to Moscow should it use force.

Defence Minister Igor Tenyukh told the Ukrainian government’s first cabinet session that Russia’s armed forces had sent 30 armoured personnel carriers and 6,000 additional troops into Crimea in a bid to help local pro-Kremlin militia gain broader independence from the new pro-EU leaders in Kiev.

Tenyukh accused Russia of starting to send in these reinforcements on Friday “without warning or Ukraine’s permission.”

The defence chief spoke as dozens of pro-Russian armed men in full combat gear patrolled outside the seat of power in Crimea’s capital Simferopol. Similar gunmen had seized the city’s parliament and government buildings on Thursday and taken control of its airport and a nearby military base on Friday.

Ukraine’s border guard service also reported that about 300 armed men dressed in “full battle fatigues” were trying to seize its main headquarters in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol under orders from Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The rugged peninsula jutting into the Black Sea — host to a Kremlin fleet and with an ethnic Russian majority — has now been effectively cut off from the mainland. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS retreats from key Syrian town

n13-iconThe Washington Post reports: Radical fighters staged a strategic retreat from a key Syrian town on the Turkish border Friday amid growing tensions with rival rebel factions that threaten to erupt in a new war.

The retreat from Azaz of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ended a five-month reign of terror by the renegade al-Qaeda faction, which has used its position in the town to control access to Turkey and compromise supply routes for more moderate rebels.

The withdrawal could signal a new phase in the intra-rebel fighting that has pitted more moderate factions against extremists across northern Syria in the past two months, undermining the wider battle against forces loyal to President Bashar ­al-Assad.

The exit came a day ahead of a deadline issued by Jabhat ­al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, for ISIS to cease confronting rival rebels or face a new war. Commanders speculated that the ISIS fighters, who have resisted previous attempts at mediation, chose to pull out from Azaz to reinforce strongholds elsewhere in preparation for further conflict. [Continue reading…]

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British ex-Guantanamo inmate denies Syria-related terror charges

n13-iconReuters reports: A British man once held at Guantanamo Bay turned human rights campaigner told a court in London on Saturday he would plead not guilty to providing training and funding terrorism in Syria, police said.

Moazzam Begg, 45, who was released without charge from the U.S. military prison in Cuba in 2005, was detained at his home in Birmingham in central England last week and charged with terrorism offences dated between October 2012 and April 2013.

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on Saturday and was remanded in custody to appear at London’s Old Bailey criminal court on March 14.

It is the first time he has ever faced any charges.

Begg was held by the U.S. government at Bagram detention center in Afghanistan, then Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, for nearly three years after being arrested in Pakistan in February 2002 suspected of being a member of al-Qaeda.

After his release, he founded Cage, a human rights organization that campaigns for the rights of people detained during counter-terrorism operations.

Cage accused British authorities of “retraumatising” Begg by refusing to grant him bail, saying this was part of a campaign to criminalize legitimate activism. [Continue reading…]

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Erdogan recordings appear real, analyst says, as Turkey scandal grows

n13-iconMcClatchy reports: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan tightened his grip Wednesday on the judiciary and the Internet in an effort to tamp down a corruption scandal that’s rattled his government and now appears to implicate his immediate family and him.

Evidence mounted that a series of audio recordings in which Erdogan can be heard instructing his son, Bilal, to get rid of enormous sums of money are authentic, with the government firing two senior officials at the state scientific agency responsible for the security of encrypted telephones and a U.S.-based expert on encrypted communications, after examining the recordings, telling McClatchy that the recordings appear to be genuine.

Erdogan on Tuesday called the five purported conversations an “immoral montage” that had been “dubbed.” But he acknowledged that even his secure telephone had been tapped.

The only apparent “montage” was combining the five different conversations into one audio file, said Joshua Marpet, a U.S.-based cyber analyst who has testified in court on the validity of computer evidence in other Turkish criminal cases. He said there was no sign that the individual conversations had been edited. [Continue reading…]

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Climate change and world history

f13-iconChristopher Rose, Outreach Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas, Austin, interviews Sam White, Department of History, the Ohio State University:

Rose: Your first book, which is called The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, explores the far reaching effects of the severe cold and drought in the Middle East during the so-called Little Ice Age, and your current research looks at how New World settlement was affected during the same period. I want to start off by asking a really broad question: what is the importance of understanding climate and climate change in the broader field of world history?

White: That’s an excellent question. The importance is really twofold. One point is the importance of climate for history as history. Climate was something that past historians generally were not focused on, they were looking for political history, for social history, for economic history, really looking for everything but the environment. Environmental history as a field has really taken off over the past generation, that is to say, looking at ways that humans have changed the environment in the past, and the ways that environmental factors have affected the course of human history.

Climate, though, was not a large part of that discussion. There were some exceptions — I could name some important scholars of the past couple generations who have looked at it — but in the mainstream, even of environmental history, climate was not much considered. Now, though, with rising concern over global warming, climate is really starting to enter the picture. This is for two reasons. One is that historians, like all other people, have become aware of climate simply as a force in human affairs. Second is that, along with the rising concern over global warming, there has been a great deal more research into reconstructing past climates, so that we can know about climate much more than every before.

Now, with that greater understanding, we can see ways that climate fits into greater history in much more details and a much more convincing way than ever before. We can see how large scale climate changes have affected large scale developments, particularly in more extreme climates, particularly at the edges of settlement or agriculture, either in Arctic lands or deserts, and also in more particular short term ways as major climatic extremes have influenced the course of human events, as I discussed in my book about the Ottoman Empire. So, with that in mind, we can see climate really as an actor in history for really the first time.

The other part of this equation, too, is what does looking at the climate of the past — what does looking at the past experience of climate change help us understand about our current predicament, about how the world will face global warming now. Here, I have to say, we’re not going to give exact policy predictions. We can’t raise the bar too high, as it were. But, I do think there are wider lessons — wider parables, perhaps, that we can gather from looking at the experience of climate change in the past. With that in mind, we can look to see if there are bigger patterns in how people handle climate change and whether we can relate that to the present day. [Continue reading…]

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Russia accused of invading Crimea as U.S. warns against ‘grave mistake’

n13-iconThe Guardian reports: Russia and the west are on a collision course over Crimea after Moscow was accused of orchestrating a “military invasion and occupation” of the peninsula, as groups of apparently pro-Russian armed men seized control of two airports and Russian troop movements were reported across the territory.

The new authorities in Kiev, installed following the removal of the pro-Moscow president this week, accused Russia of “an attempt to seize airports”, and on Friday evening the main Crimean air hub at Simferopol was still guarded by unidentified, uniformed men. Later it was announced that the airport had been closed and incoming flights diverted.

“I see what has happened as a military invasion and occupation in violation of all international treaties and norms,” said the new Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov. “This is a direct provocation aimed at armed bloodshed on the territory of a sovereign state.”

The White House warned that any Russian military intervention in Ukraine would be a “grave mistake”. The UN security council took up the issue at a session last night. The sudden escalation of the crisis amounts to the most dangerous stand-off in the former Soviet Union since the Russia-Georgia war six years ago. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast adds: Private security contractors working for the Russian military are the unmarked troops who have now seized control over two airports in the Ukrainian province of Crimea, according to informed sources in the region. And those contractors could be setting the stage for ousted President Viktor Yanukovich to come to the breakaway region.
[…]
Paul Saunders, the executive director of the Center for the National Interest, said that the Obama administration faces a particularly bad set of choices when it comes to responding to the airport takeovers, especially if is confirmed they are Russian government controlled security contractors.

“If the Obama administration takes a public position that they are Russian forces, then they need to explain what they plan to do. This will be quite similar to the red line in Syria, in that they will have to choose between imposing the ‘consequences’ that administration officials have warned about, repeating statements that have been ignored, or saying that it is not really an ‘invasion,’” he said. [Continue reading…]

Luke Harding writes: Moscow’s military moves so far resemble a classically executed coup: seize control of strategic infrastructure, seal the borders between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, invoke the need to protect the peninsula’s ethnic Russian majority. The Kremlin’s favourite news website, Lifenews.ru, was on hand to record the historic moment. Its journalists were allowed to video Russian forces patrolling ostentatiously outside Simferopol airport.

Wearing khaki uniforms – they had removed their insignia – and carrying Kalashnikovs, the soldiers seemed relaxed and in control. Other journalists filming from the road captured Russian helicopters flying into Crimea from the east. They passed truckloads of Russian reinforcements arriving from Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in this very Crimean coup. But Putin’s playbook in the coming days and months is easy to predict. On Thursday, the Crimean parliament announced it would hold a referendum on the peninsula’s future status on 25 May. That is the same day Ukraine goes to the polls in fresh presidential elections.

The referendum can have only one outcome: a vote to secede from Ukraine. After that, Crimea can go one of two ways. It could formally join the Russian Federation. Or, more probably, it might become a sort of giant version of South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Georgia’s two Russian-occupied breakaway republics – a Kremlin-controlled puppet exclave, with its own local administration, “protected” by Russian troops and naval frigates. Either way, this amounts to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, de facto or de jure.

Ewen MacAskill adds: But a Russian takeover of the Crimea could turn out to be disastrous in the long run. The Kremlin would be underestimating the impact of the sizeable population of Tartars who were forcibly deported from the Crimea by Stalin in 1944 and not allowed to return until the beginning of Perestroika in the 1980s.

[Igor] Sutyagin, who is at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said: “The Tartars are very anti-Russian. They will do anything not to be under the Russians. They will be determined to fight for Ukraine. It would be a second Chechnya. There are a lot of mountains in Crimea, just as in Chechnya.”

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The threat to rhinos also endangers their habitat

rhinos

Rachel Nuwer reports: Some large animals influence their surroundings more than others. Elephants are known as ecosystem engineers for their tendency to push over trees and stomp shrubby areas in the savannah into submission. This keeps forests at bay, which otherwise would overtake open grasslands. Wolves, on the other hand, are apex predators. They keep other species like deer in check, preventing herbivore populations from getting out of hand and eating all the plants into oblivion. Both elephants and wolves are keystone species, or ones that have a relatively large impact on their environment in relation to their actual population numbers.

African rhinos, it turns out, also seem to be a keystone species. According to a recent study published by Scandinavian and South African researchers in the Journal of Ecology, rhinos maintain the diverse African grasslands on which countless other species depend.

Surprisingly, prior to this study no one had looked closely rhinos’ roles in shaping the ecosystem. Most researchers focused on elephants instead. Suspecting that these large animals influence their environment, the authors took a close look at rhinos in Kruger National Park in South Africa. [Continue reading…]

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Monsanto blamed for kidney disease epidemic in Sri Lanka

n13-iconOOSKAnews reports: New research by Sri Lankan medical professionals has identified high amounts of the herbicide glyphosate as the culprit behind the high levels of chronic kidney disease in the country’s North Central province and other key rice-producing areas.

The researchers found that glyphosate, which is widely used in paddy cultivation to prepare the soil, has the capacity to retain arsenic and other heavy metals in water.

Their report was presented to Special Projects Minister S. M. Chandrasena on February 5. The researchers urged the government to take immediate action to ban imports of the harmful agro-chemical. They said the prevalence of end-stage renal failure is reaching epidemic levels in the country.

Dr. Channa Jayasumana, a senior lecturer at the Medical Faculty of Rajarata University and the lead researcher, said: “The chemical glyphosate mixed with hard water lasted for about 20 years.”

“The toxins contained in agro-chemicals are deposited in hard water found in North Central Province, and they will remain in the human body for over six years,” he added.

Jayasumana said that in 2012, Sri Lanka had imported nearly 500,000 metric tonnes of glyphosate, which was developed by US-based international agricultural giant Monsanto. Monsanto’s patent for the broad-spectrum herbicide, marketed under the brand name “Roundup,” expired in 2000.

Jayasumana claimed Monsanto was aware of the health risks, but had not educated poor farmers and people living in areas where rice is cultivated to take precautions to prevent disease. [Continue reading…]

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The new Great Game: Why Ukraine matters to so many other nations

a13-iconBloomberg Businessweek reports: Ukraine doesn’t seem like the kind of place that world powers would want to tussle over. It’s as poor as Paraguay and as corrupt as Iran. During the 20th century it was home to a deadly famine under Stalin (the Holomodor, 1933), a historic massacre of Jews (Babi Yar, 1941), and one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters (Chernobyl, 1986). Now, with former President Viktor Yanukovych in hiding, it’s struggling to form a government, its credit rating is down to CCC, a recession looms, and foreign reserves are running low. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, head of the opposition party affiliated with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said on Feb. 24 in Parliament, “Ukraine has never faced such a terrible financial catastrophe in all its years of independence.”

But Ukraine is also a breadbasket, a natural gas chokepoint, and a nation of 45 million people in a pivotal spot north of the Black Sea. Ukraine matters—to Russia, Europe, the U.S., and even China. President Obama denied on Feb. 19 that it’s a piece on “some Cold War chessboard.” But the best hope for Ukraine is that it will get special treatment precisely because it is a valued pawn in a new version of the Great Game, the 19th century struggle for influence between Russia and Britain.

Russia, which straddles Europe and Asia, has sought a role in the rest of Europe since the reign of Peter the Great in the early 18th century. An alliance with Ukraine preserves that. “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire,” the American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1998. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to join his Eurasian Union trade bloc, not the European Union. Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet is headquartered in Sevastopol, a formerly Russian city that now belongs to Ukraine. [Continue reading…]

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