Eh, too: Canadians will also suffer under the EU’s proposed copyright

boingboing.net

June 13, 2018

I appeared on CBC Radio’s national flagship news programme As It Happens last night, talking about the EU’s Article 13 proposal to use AI algorithms to spy on and judge everything posted online for potential copyright infringements.

As I pointed out in the interview, the EU proposal creates a permanent advantage for the giant US internet companies, who’ll be able to use their money and clout to comply with these rules, while leaving everyone else (Europeans, Canadians and the rest of the world) without the services that Europeans might found, with better policies on privacy, speech, cyberbullying and all the other issues you might not agree with US giants on.

An unintended consequence might be something like joining a European dating service, some future equivalent of Tinder, and having your Tinder profile taken down because you’re wearing a band T-shirt that has a copyrighted photo on it.

The malicious consequences would be something like in the run-up to a debate over, say, Greece leaving the European Union or a new Catalan independence referendum, someone might maliciously upload Wikipedia articles or other key news articles to WordPress or other large blogging platforms so that you couldn’t write about them.

Every time you try to quote those articles, it would show up as having been copyrighted and not something that you’re allowed to quote from.

How Canadians could get caught up in the EU’s proposed copyright law [As It Happens/CBC]

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2018 Summarized In Two Photos

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by Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/11/2018

Nothing lasts forever...

And these two photos (no matter how coincidental or misconstrued), appear to sum up the quo’s shifting status and the accelerating demise of the unipolar order (or at least that’s the way Chinese state-owned media would prefer you think about it).

An editorial (link in Chinese) in state-owned tabloid Global Times published yesterday (June 10). proclaimed…

“Against the backdrop of the chaotic meetings of the G7 of the West…”

“the SCO summit in Qingdao was particularly fruitful, and caught the world’s attention…”

“Unilateralism is strong on the surface, but in reality it’s difficult to sustain…”

Difficult indeed.

Slavoj Žižek: EU must create a new world order to stop Donald Trump

One day Trumpster, the entire world is going to get rid of the USA.

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http://www.rt.com

12 Jun, 2018

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to US President Donald Trump during G7 meeting in Quebec, Canada. June 9, 2018 / Reuters

While most other western leaders fiddle and seethe, Donald Trump powers ahead as bully-in-chief. A genuine new world order is the only way to stop him.

Trump’s impulsive decisions, such as his refusal to endorse the G7 declaration agreed upon in Quebec, are not just expressions of his personal quirks. Instead, they are reactions to the end of an era in the global economic system, reactions which are sustained by an incorrect understanding of what is happening. However, Trump’s misguided vision is nonetheless based on the correct insight that the existing global system no longer works.

An economic cycle is coming to an end, a cycle which began in the early 1970s, the time when what Yanis Varoufakis calls the “Global Minotaur” was born, the monstrous engine that was running the world economy from the early 1980s to 2008. The late 1960s and the early 1970s were not just significant for the oil crisis and stagflation; Nixon’s decision to abandon the gold standard for the US dollar was the sign of a much more radical shift in the basic functioning of the capitalist system.

Indeed, by the end of the 1960’s, the US economy was no longer able to continue the recycling of its surpluses to Europe and Asia because its surpluses had mutated into deficits. As a result, in 1971, the US government responded to this decline with an audacious strategic move: instead of tackling the nation’s burgeoning deficits, it decided to do the opposite, to boost deficits.

And who would pay for them? The rest of the world!

Centre Stage

How? By means of a permanent transfer of capital that rushed ceaselessly across the two great oceans to finance America’s deficits. And these deficits thus started to operate “like a giant vacuum cleaner, absorbing other people’s surplus goods and capital.

While that ‘arrangement’ was the embodiment of the grossest imbalance imaginable at a planetary scale, nonetheless, it did give rise to something resembling global balance; an international system of rapidly accelerating asymmetrical financial and trade flows capable of providing a semblance of stability and steady growth.

Powered by these deficits, the world’s leading surplus economies (e.g. Germany, Japan and, later, China) kept churning out the goods while America absorbed them. Almost 70% of the profits made globally by these countries were then transferred back to the United States, in the form of capital flows to Wall Street. And what did Wall Street do with it? It turned these capital inflows into direct investments, shares, new financial instruments, new and old forms of loans etc,” as Varoufakis noted in “Global Minotaur.”

This growing negative trade balance demonstrates that the US is the non-productive predator: in past decades, it had to suck up a 1 billion dollars daily influx from other nations to buy for its consumption and is, as such, the universal Keynesian consumer that keeps the world economy running. (So much for the anti-Keynesian economic ideology that seems to predominate today!)

This influx, which is effectively like the tithe paid to Rome in Antiquity (or the gifts sacrificed to Minotaur by Ancient Greeks), relies on a complex economic mechanism: the US is “trusted” as the safe and stable center, so that all others, from the oil producing Arab countries to Western Europe and Japan, and now even China, invest their surplus profits in the US.

Friendly Division

Since this “trust” is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the problem for the US is how to justify its imperial role – and it manages this through a permanent state of war.

For this reason, it had to invent the “War on Terror,” offering itself as the universal protector of all other “normal” (as opposed to “rogue”) states. Thus the entire globe tends to function as a universal Sparta with its three classes, now emerging as the First, Second, Third world: (1) the US as the military-political-ideological power; (2) Europe and parts of Asia and Latin America as the industrial-manufacturing region (crucial here are Germany and Japan, long the world’s leading exporters, plus, of course, now the rising China); (3) the undeveloped rest, today’s helots, those “left behind.” In other words, global capitalism brought about a new general trend to oligarchy, masked as the celebration of the diversity of cultures: equality and universalism are more and more disappearing as actual political principles.

From 2008 on, this neo-Spartan world system is breaking down. In Obama years, Paul Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave another breath of life to this system: ruthlessly exploiting the fact that the US dollar is the global currency, he financed imports by massively printing money.

READ MORE: US has largest debt in world history, dollar to lose status as No.1 currency – Jim Rogers

However, Trump has decided to approach the problem in a different way: ignoring the delicate balance of the global system, he focused on elements which may be presented as “injustice” for the US: gigantic imports are reducing domestic jobs, etc. But what he decries as “injustice” is part of a system which profited the US: the Americans were effectively “robbing” the world by importing stuff and paying for it by debts and printing money.

Inside Outside

No wonder Trump addresses Kim Yong-un in far more friendlier terms than his big Western allies: here also, extremes meet. With the disintegration of the system that dominated world trade from 1970, the US is increasingly becoming the disruptor of world trade. In contrast to 1945, the world doesn’t need the US, it is the US which needs the world. Two outcasts are thus meeting in Singapore: the excluded outcast (Kim) and the outcast in the very fulcrum of the system.

Trump’s goal is to make trade deals with single partners who can all be blackmailed into submission, so it is of utmost importance that Europe acts as a unified economic and political force. Full of dangers as this new situation is, it opens up a unique chance for Europe: to engage itself in the formation of a new global economic system that will no longer be dominated by US dollar as the global currency.

In global economic terms, it’s war, so it’s time for radical measures. Europe should be aware that there is no return to the status quo.

Instead, a truly new world order is needed for Trump to get his comeuppance. And it is here that the response of EU members and Canada is insufficient: instead of advocating a new vision, they act as an offended party complaining that the US broke the established rules.

Thus, in the last decade or so, the EU more and more acts like the PLO ex-leader Yasser Arafat: about whom it was said that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

As the immigrant crisis and Catalonia, among other events prove, it’s probable that Europe will again miss the chance.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Read more

‘Depressing’: Merkel slams Trump’s ‘withdrawal in tweet’ following G7 summit fallout

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Historic handshake: Kim, Trump face off at Singapore summit (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Germany Was Defeated on the Eastern Front, Not Normandy

“Of Germany’s 10 million casualties in WWII, 75% were inflicted by the Red Army.”

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http://www.strategic-culture.org

EDITOR’S CHOICE

ericmargolis.com

Eric margolis

10.06.2018

Germany Was Defeated on the Eastern Front, Not Normandy

On my many walking visits to the vast Normandy battlefield in France, I kept recalling the ever so wise dictum of Prussia’s great monarch, Frederick the Great:  ‘he who defends everything, defends nothing.’  On this 74^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, it’s well worth recalling the old warrior-king.

Adolf Hitler, a veteran of the infantry, should certainly have known better. Defending the European coast from Brittany to Norway was an impossibility given Germany’s military and economic weakness in 1944. But he did not understand this. Having so brilliantly overcome France’s Maginot Line fortifications in 1940, Hitler and his High Command repeated the same strategic and tactical errors as the French only four years later: not having enough reserves to effectively counter-attack enemy breakthrough forces.

Germany’s vaunted Atlantic Wall looked formidable on paper, but it was too long, too thin, lacked defensive depth and was lacking in adequate reserve forces.  The linear Maginot Line suffered the same failings. America’s fortifications protecting Manila and Britain’s ‘impregnable’ fortifications at Singapore also proved worthless. The Japanese merely marched into their undefended rears.

In 1940, the German Wehrmacht was modern history’s supreme fighting machine.  But only four years later, the Wehrmacht was broken.  Most Americans, British and Canadians believe that D-Day was the decisive stroke that ended WWII in Europe. But this is not true.

Germany’s mighty Wehrmacht, which included the Luftwaffe, was destroyed by Stalin’s Soviet Union.  The Red Army claims to have destroyed 507 German divisions, 48,000 German tanks, 77,000 German aircraft, and 100 divisions of Axis troops allied to Germany from Italy, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia,  and Finland.

Few Americans have ever heard of the Soviet Far East offensive of 1945, a huge operation that extended from Central Asia to Manchuria and the Pacific.  At least 450,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, wounded or captured by the Red Army, 32% of Japan’s total wartime military losses.  The Soviets were poised to invade Japan when the US struck it with two nuclear weapons.

Of Germany’s 10 million casualties in WWII, 75% were inflicted by the Red Army.  The once mighty Luftwaffe was decimated over Russia.  Almost all German military production went to supplying the 1,600 km Eastern Front where Germany’s elite forces were ground up in titanic battles like Kursk and Stalingrad that involved millions of soldiers.

Soviet forces lost upwards of 20 million men. Total US losses, including the Pacific, were one million.  To Marshal Stalin, D-Day, the North African and Italian campaign were merely diversionary side-shows to tie down Axis forces while the Red Army pushed on to Berlin.

D-Day was without doubt one of the greatest logistical feats of modern military history. Think of General Motors versus the German warrior Siegfried.  For every US tank the Germans destroyed, ten more arrived.  Each German tank was almost irreplaceable.  Transporting over one million men and their heavy equipment across the Channel was a triumph.  But who remembers that Germany crossed the heavily defended Rhine River into France in 1940?

By June, 1944, German forces at Normandy and along the entire Channel coast had almost no diesel fuel or gasoline. Their tanks and trucks were immobilized. Allied air power shot up everything that moved, including a staff car carrying Marshal Erwin Rommel strafed by Canada’s own gallant future aviator general, Richard Rohmer.  German units in Normandy were below 40% combat effectiveness even without their shortages in fuel.

The Germans in France were also very short of ammunition, supplies and communications.  Units could only move by night, and then very slowly.  Hitler was reluctant to release armored forces from his reserves. Massive Allied bombing of Normandy alone killed 15,000 to 20,000 French civilians and shattered many cities and towns.

Churchill once said, ‘you will never know war until you fight Germans.’  With no air cover or fuel and heavily outnumbered, German forces in Normandy managed to mount a stout resistance, inflicting 209,000 casualties on US, Canadian, British, Free French and allied forces.  German losses were around 200,000.

The most important point of the great invasion is that without it, the Red Army would have reached Paris and the Channel Ports by the end of 1944, making Stalin the master of all Europe except Spain. Of course, the Allies could have reached a peace agreement with Germany in 1944, which Hitler was seeking and Gen. George Patton was rumored to be advocating.  But the German-hating Churchill and left-leaning Roosevelt were too bloody-minded to consider a peace that would have kept Stalin out of at least some of Eastern Europe.

 

Chernobyl contaminating cow milk 30 years after nuclear meltdown – study

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Rt.com

9 Jun, 2018

Cooling towers stand at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. / Getty Images

More than 30 years after its catastrophic meltdown, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is being blamed for high radiation levels discovered in local cow’s milk.

Sampling milk from private farms in the Ukraine’s Rivne region, scientists from Exeter University and the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences made a startling find –  radioactive material from more than three decades ago has leached into the livestock.

The lingering nuclear fallout from 1986 means farmers are unwittingly producing milk with radioactive caesium levels above the Ukraine safety standard of 100 becquerel per litre. The becquerel is a unit of radioactivity, with the new report documenting how some farms had milk with a radioactivity concentration of around 500 becquerel per litre.

One of the researchers, Dr Iryna Labunska, of the University of Exeter, believes the issue warrants government intervention. She said that while soil contamination in the Rivne region is not particularly high, the milk study shows how nuclear accidents have a long lasting legacy.

“More than 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, people are still routinely exposed to radioactive caesium when consuming locally produced staple foods, including milk, in Chernobyl-affected areas of Ukraine,” said Dr Labunska, of Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter.

On April 25, 1986, the reactor core at Chernobyl nuclear power plant near the now desolate town of Pripyat went into meltdown. Considered to be one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, Chernobyl’s radioactive exposure could end up claiming the lives of up to 4,000 people through various diseases, according to the World Health Organisation.

The area surrounding the former power plant is not expected to be habitable again from another 150 to 300 years.

“Many people in the area we studied keep cows for milk, and children are the main consumers of that milk. Government and international monitoring needs to take place, along with help for people affected by this radiation,” Dr Labunska added.

“Without adequate countermeasures, what may now seem a purely historical event will remain a daily reality for those communities impacted.”

Democracy Is Fighting to Survive the Rise of Western Authoritarianism

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With permission from

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Paul Craig Roberts

June 1, 2018

The European peoples whose governments were paid to sell out the sovereignty of their nations to the EU are experiencing great difficulties in being permitted to govern themselves.

As the result of Italians’ frustration with the self-serving elite who have ruled Italy for decades, the recent democratic elections in Italy brought to power two anti-establishment political parties, Five-Star and Lega (League), that have solid majorities in both houses. However, the Italian president, an operative for the EU, attempted to appoint the prime minister independently of the election results, tried to himself appoint a “technocratic cabinet” that would ignore the democratic outcome, and succeeded in blocking the anti-establishment winners of the election from forming a government for three months.

EU official Gunther Oettinger said that it was “not acceptable” for Italians to vote for anti-establishment parties and threatened Italians with financial destabilization that would “teach them how to vote.”

Previously, in the wake of the international economic crisis brought on by the “banks too big to fail,” the Italians and the Greeks attempted to govern themselves democratically, but it was not permitted. The European Commission appointed Mario Monti, a banker, to be Italy’s prime minister. Monti, a member of Goldman Sachs Board of International Advisers, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, and a member of the Bilderberg Group, was appointed by the elite, not elected by the people. His cabinet did not include a single elected politician.
(See my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.)

Greece suffered the same fate of having an unelected banker appointed prime minister of Greece. Later when the Greeks succeeded in electing an anti-establishment government, the EU used economic threats and punishments to prevent the Greek government from governing.

In the US the Democratic Party, presstitute media, and the security agencies have made a strenuous effort to overturn the election of Donald Trump. They have failed to evict him from office, but they have turned him away from his goal of normalizing relations with Russia and withdrawing militarily from the Middle East. In effect, Trump has been forced into the position of being the agent for what he campaigned against.

In the West and among Western funded NGOs that operate in Russia and China, there is mindless talk about Russian and Chinese authoritarianism. Yet, democracy is far more alive in Russia and within the Chinese Communist Party than it is in the West.

Western democracy has been dying for a long time. In the course of forming the EU, populations in some countries voted down membership. The vote was not permitted to stand. After a period of propaganda to instill fear of being “excluded from Europe,” populations were made to vote again. In this way they were strong-armed into sacrificing sovereignty to the EU.

It remains to be seen if the British vote to exit the EU will actually be implemented.

The Western elites despise democracy. They tolerate it only as a cover for their self-dealing when it can be manipulated to serve their interests. The Russians who want to join Western Democracy are clearly lacking in understanding.

Considering the seeds of crisis that the self-serving policies of the Western elites have sowed, the responses to the crises will be calls for and acceptance of authoritarian rule. It is entirely possible that the democratic era is approaching its end.

Trump Gives Merkel An Ultimatum: Drop Russian Gas Pipeline Or Trade War Begins

Oil pipelines in Europe

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http://www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden

05/17/2018

It became clear just how important it is to the US for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project to fail two months ago when, as we described in “US Threatens Sanctions For European Firms Participating In Russian Gas Pipeline Project“, the U.S. State Department warned European corporations that they will likely face penalties and sanctions if they participate in the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 on the grounds that “the project undermines energy security in Europe”, when in reality Russia has for decades been a quasi-monopolist on European energy supplies and thus has unprecedented leverage over European politics, at least behind the scenes.

“As many people know, we oppose the Nord Stream 2 project, the US government does,” State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert said during a late March press briefing adding that “the Nord Stream 2 project would undermine Europe’s overall energy security and stability. It would provide Russia [with] another tool to pressure European countries, especially countries such as Ukraine.” And speaking of Ukraine, recall that in 2014, shortly after the US State Department facilitated the presidential coup in Ukraine, Joe Biden’s son Hunter joined the board of directors of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest oil and gas company. Surely that was merely a coincidence.

Nauert also said that Washington may introduce punitive measures against participants in the pipeline project – which could be implemented using a provision in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Fast forward to today, when the dreadfully named CAATSA act just made a repeat appearance; around the time Europe made it clear it would openly defy Trump’s Iran sanctions, the WSJ reported that Trump told Merkel that if she wants to avoid a trans-Atlantic trade war, the price would be to pull the break on Nord Stream 2, according to German, U.S. and European sources.

The officials said Mr. Trump told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in April that Germany should drop support for Nord Stream 2, an offshore pipeline that would bring gas directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea. This would be in exchange for the U.S. starting talks with the European Union on a new trade deal.

While it had long been suspected that Trump would push hard to dismantle Nord Stream 2 just so US nat gas exporters could grab a slice of the European market pie, the aggressive push comes as a surprise, and as the WSJ notes, “the White House pressure reflects its hard ball tactics on trade, moves that have contributed to rising tensions between Europe and the U.S. and raised fears in export-dependent Germany of a tit-for-tat on tariffs that could engulf its car industry.”

The Nord Stream II (or NS2) project was started in 2015 is a joint venture between Russia’s Gazprom and European partners, including German Uniper, Austria’s OMV, France’s Engie, Wintershall and the British-Dutch multinational Royal Dutch Shell. The pipeline is set to run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea – doubling the existing pipeline’s capacity of 55 cubic meters per year, and is therefore critical for Europe’s future energy needs.

NS2 is the second phase of an existing pipeline that already channels smaller amount of gas from Russia to Germany. Construction for the second phase started this week in Germany, after investors committed €5 billion ($5.9 billion) to the venture.

Trump has publicly criticized the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, saying at a meeting with Baltic State leaders at the White House this year that “Germany hooks up a pipeline into Russia, where Germany is going to be paying billions of dollars for energy into Russia…That’s not right.”

“Donald Trump is a deal maker…there is a deal to be made if someone (in Germany) stood up and said ‘Help us protect our auto industry a little bit more, because we’re great at it and we’re going to help you on Nord Stream 2’,” said one U.S. official, who was present at the April meeting between Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trump.

Raising the pressure further, Sandra Oudkirk, a senior U.S. diplomat, told journalists in Berlin on Thursday that as a Russian energy project the pipeline could face U.S. sanctions, putting any company participating in it at risk.

* * *

The Kremlin shot back immediately as spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the U.S. efforts “a crude effort to hinder an international energy project that has an important role in energy security.”

“The Americans are simply trying crudely to promote their own gas producers,” he said.

He is, of course, right, even if the official explanation is that Washington opposes the pipeline because it would make Ukraine—currently the main transit route for Russian gas headed west—and other U.S. allies in the EU more vulnerable to Russian pressure. German officials also say the U.S. is eager to displace Russia as a provider of gas to Europe, hence confirming with the Russian said.

Of course, in the end it’s all a question of leverage, and who has more, and right now Trump believes that by threatening European auto exports hostage, he has all of it.

* * *

Still, that Trump thinks he can interject after three years of trade negotiations with an abrupt demand while providing no alternatives, is rather stunning, but understandable. As Alex Gorka of the Strategic Culture Foundation wrote, on March 15, a bipartisan group of 39 senators led by John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to the Treasury Department.

They oppose NS2 and are calling on the administration to bury it. Why? They don’t want Russia to be in a position to influence Europe, which would be “detrimental,” as they put it.  And, as Gorka wrote, their preferred tool to implement this obstructionist policy is the use of sanctions, precisely what we are seeing currently.

To be sure, 39 out of 100 is a number no president can ignore as powerful pressure emanating from US corporations and lobbies was being applied on the administration. Even before the senators wrote their letter, Kurt Volker, the US envoy to Ukraine, had claimed that NS2 was a purely political, not commercial, project.

As we said in March, “No doubt other steps to ratchet up the pressure on Europe will follow.” Little did we know that less than 2 months later, the US and Europe would be embroiled in a bruising trade war in which the fate of NS2 is suddenly the key variable.

* * *

So will Trump win, and will US LNG replace Russian exports?

While Merkel hasn’t yet dropped her support for the pipeline, she said on Thursday the EU had agreed at a summit Wednesday night to offer the U.S. “closer cooperation” in the field of gas in exchange for a permanent exemption from the steel and aluminum tariffs, suggesting that Nord Stream 2 may soon be a trade war casualty.

Should Europe fold, it should expect a surge in energy inflation: Liquefied gas from the U.S. needs to be shipped over the Atlantic and would be considerably more expensive than Russian gas delivered via pipelines. A senior EU official working on energy regulation said Russian gas would be at least 20% cheaper.

“Trump’s strategy seems to be to force us to buy their more expensive gas, but as long as LNG is not competitive, Europe will not agree to some sort of racket and pay extortionate prices,” an EU official said.

Which, amusingly, is precisely what Trump’s brute trade overture is: an global racket.

Germany’s pipeline plan has long been controversial with Ukraine, as well as several EU countries on the bloc’s eastern edge who fear it gives Russian President Vladimir Putin power over gas deliveries—which Berlin has so far largely ignored.

Trump has been pushing for better access for U.S. companies to an EU market he has criticized as over-protected. Barring an EU offer to address Mr. Trump’s grievances, the U.S. will hit Europe with punitive steel and aluminum tariffs on June 1. The EU has promised retaliatory tariffs.

* * *

So now that the ball is in Merkel’s court, how will she respond?  On Friday, the German chancellor is traveling to Russia on Friday to meet Vladimir Putin in hopes of brokering a compromise that would satisfy the U.S. and her European partners.

She will ask Mr. Putin for a deal that would preserve the lucrative transit trade—Ukraine gets a fee for letting Russian gas through its territory on the way to eastern Europe—even after Nord Stream 2 comes online in 2019, a German official said.

Meanwhile, German government officials say that since all the permits for Nord Stream 2 have been issued, the WSJ notes that there is no legal way to stop the project, which is run by Gazprom , the Russian energy giant, under financing agreements with international companies such as Engie, OMV, Shell, Uniper and Wintershall.