Russia has had a very checkered history and is a country that many people find interesting. It is a state in Northern Europe and shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It has shares sea borders with Japan and the United States. Its capital city of Russia is Moscow. Russia has a population of approximately 142,905,200 people and the official language of the country is Russian.

enian chess grand master Levon Aronian played a draw with Alexander Grischuk at the FIDE Candidates Match 2011 in Kazan, Tatarstan, on Friday.

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Having squandered the chance to attract skilled migrants when the EU was widened, Germany regrets a missed opportunity

One of the main benefits of being a citizen of the European Union is supposed to be the freedom to live and work in any country within its borders with no restrictions. But when Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the EU in 2004, Germany and Austria opted to make use of the maximum seven-year transition period before granting the new member states' citizens full access to their labour market.

That period has now expired: as of 1 May, Poles, Hungarians or Latvians can work in Germany and Austria without any restrictions whatsoever. The questions are: how many will want to? And how will the new reality affect the respective countries' economies?

Estimates vary as to how many Poles will eventually leave the country, but one thing everybody agrees on is that Poles will make up the largest number of the new wave of central and eastern European economic migrants. And most of them will be heading for Germany and not Austria or Switzerland, which also opened up its labour markets to the EU8 on 1 May. The European Commission predicts about 100,000 people a year will move to Germany from the CEE countries, half of them from Poland. The Polish government itself is expecting more than 400,000 Poles to leave for Germany within the next three years.

The Germans say they need the fresh blood in their thriving economy. "We really need workers. We don't lack jobs, but labour," said Ursula von der Leyen, the German labour minister, a few days before 1 May. She also promised Germans that the workers coming would be mostly young, educated and mobile.

The likelihood of hundreds of thousands of Poles flocking to Germany in the next few years is doubtful. Ironically, Germany's labour restrictions, while meant to prevent an influx of low-skilled, cheap labour, were actually more of a hindrance to highly qualified professionals. Blue-collar workers who set up their own one-man businesses in trades such as bricklaying have been able to work in Germany legally for several years now: all they needed in order to register a one-man business was a German address and the German equivalent of a national insurance number. In other words, the low-skilled workers who really wanted to work in Germany are already there.

White-collar workers, on the other hand, have faced harsher employment restrictions. If, for example, a German firm wanted to employ a Polish accountant, the firm had to prove there were no Germans capable of the job before it could secure a work permit. Some of these restrictions were relaxed a few years ago for particular professions where there was a real lack of workers in Germany, such as engineers or IT specialists, but restrictions remained in most professions.

After the 2004 accession, skilled Polish migrants mainly went to countries that opened up their labour markets immediately, such as the UK, Sweden and Ireland. Germany largely missed the opportunity to attract such workers.

Another reason Poles won't necessarily flock to Germany is that Poland in 2011 is very different from Poland in 2004. According to IMF figures its GDP per capita now stands at more than $18,000 (£11,000) as opposed to about $11,000 seven years ago. The economy has grown steadily since accession and so have wages. In fact, the World Bank now classifies Poland as a "high-income country". Of course, salaries are still much higher in Germany but they are now roughly three times higher, not six or seven times higher like in the past. And one must remember that life in Germany is decidedly more expensive than in Poland.

Talking to the president of a major Polish construction company recently, I mentioned the fear that Germany would suck in all of Poland's best workers. That's what everyone said before the 2004 accession, he said: "But where are all those rich Germans today?"

Will some of the Poles and other eastern Europeans currently living in the UK and Ireland leave those countries and move to the thriving Germany? An April report by the British thinktank, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) says the lifting of barriers could drive some eastern European workers away to Germany, but the report does not expect that number to be significant.

Germany sent the wrong signals to young, educated and mobile Poles immediately after the 2004 accession. The engineers, IT specialists and qualified medical personnel it now seeks left Poland for other countries years ago. And if those scattered around the continent do decide to pack up and leave the countries they are currently residing in, it is more likely they will be boarding a plane headed for Warsaw rather than for Berlin.

6:21 P.M. EDT

      THE PRESIDENT:  Gracias, gracias.  (Applause.)

      AUDIENCE:  USA!  USA!  USA!

      THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Gracias.  Buenas noches.  (Applause.)  Bienvenidos.  Welcome to the Cinco de Mayo at the White House.  (Applause.)   

      Nothing ruins a good fiesta like a long speech from a politician.  (Laughter.)  So I'm going to keep it short.

      MRS. OBAMA:  Keep it short.  (Laughter.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  Keep it short.  I just want to acknowledge a few proud Latinos and friends of Latinos who are here with us tonight:  A great friend to me and to the United States, Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan is here, from Mexico, with his lovely wife Verónica.  (Applause.)  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is in the house.  (Applause.)  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is here.  (Applause.)  Several members of Congress have made the trek tonight.  And everybody please join me in wishing a feliz cumpleaños to the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Charlie Gonzalez.  (Applause.)  Happy birthday, Charlie.  (Applause.)

      We are also joined by Hispanic Americans serving at every level of my administration, some who’ve contributed to a new website that we launched this week:  whitehouse.gov/Hispanic. (Applause.)  So check out the website.  And welcome to all of you who are serving on the commission to explore the creation of a new National Museum of the American Latino.  (Applause.)  Today they presented me with their final report to Congress, and I’m grateful for their hard work and hopefully we will see that museum become a reality.  So we're very grateful to them.

      Finally, I want to thank my -- my band, the United States Marine Band.  (Applause.)  And we are looking forward to hearing Javier Cortés spin some of his records, and he has done great work so I know that he’s going to keep this party lively this evening.  

      But this is really a day for commemorating our shared heritage.  Our shared heritage -- Mexicans and Americans.  It’s a day for remembering that America is a richer, stronger, more vibrant place thanks to the contributions of Mexican Americans to the life of this nation –- contributions in commerce, culture, in language and literature, in faith, and obviously in food.  (Laughter.)

      I asked Michelle the other day, I said, what’s your favorite food -- because we were sitting around with the girls.  She said, oh, Mexican food.  That's -- (applause.)  You do not want to be between Michelle and a tamale.  (Laughter.)  That is true.  That's true.  But she’s moving, though, so she can afford to have as many tamales as she wants.  (Laughter and applause.)

      It is also a day for honoring the service of the many Mexican Americans who serve proudly in our country’s uniform, and we are grateful to them.  (Applause.)

      And it’s a day we commit ourselves to advancing the aspirations of all Latinos, and reaffirm the ideals that we share as Americans.  That means improving the education that we provide to our children; strengthening the social safety net that we build for our seniors and the poor and the sick; living up to our values as a nation of immigrants that built this country into the economic powerhouse that it is and the beacon of hope that it is around the world.  (Applause.)

      I’ve talked to you in recent weeks about this immigration issue.  I strongly believe that we’ve got to fix this broken system so that it meets the needs of our 21st century economy and our security needs.  I want to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, to enforce our laws and also to address the status of millions of undocumented workers.  I want to sign the DREAM Act into law.  (Applause.)  This is not going to be easy.  It’s going to require bipartisan support.  I’m going to need your help.  We’ve got to keep doing the hard work of changing minds and changing hearts and changing votes, one at a time.  But all of you are going to be out there, and you're going to have to help make this happen.

      Let me just -- let me just wrap up by saying this.  Last week I had the honor of traveling down to Florida and delivering the commencement address at Miami Dade College.  And Dr. Eduardo Padrón is here.  (Applause.)   There he is over there.  And I want to brag on him a little bit because he’s actually a graduate of the school.

      This is a school with more than 170,000 students who come from 181 different countries, speak 94 different languages.  The graduates were so excited, they were so proud.  They spent a good portion of the ceremony dancing and doing the wave.  (Laughter.) I mean, you know, there were Cubanos there.  There were Haitians. There were -- there were Puerto Ricanos.  (Applause.)  I mean everybody was there.  (Laughter and applause.)  Everybody was there -- and everybody could dance.  (Laughter.)

      And they were excited not just to finally get their exams out of the way, but because they finally knew what it was to achieve a dream.  Many of them were the first in their families ever to graduate from college, and they overcame obstacles and defeated their own doubts to finish.  And a lot of their parents, they're crying, and they could only dream of such a day as was happening there.

      And by the way, Miami Dade is rated one of the top community colleges in the nation.  And as the ceremony -- the formal ceremony finally began, the dancing quieted down a little bit.  The students in the campus ROTC took turns marching the flags of the countries where -- of origin for each of the graduating students.  So you had 181 countries.  And the students would stand up and cheer after -- when the Haitian flag went by, or the Colombian flag went by.  You name it, right, everybody was getting up and cheering.

      Some flags received a lot of cheers.  (Laughter.)  Mexico, Guatemala.  (Applause.)  And then there were -- then there was like the Ukrainian flag.  (Laughter.)  And the Canadian flag, Estonia -- there were just a couple -- (laughter.)  But, I mean, they were proud, but it was just not as many people.  (Laughter.)
      But there was one flag that every single student and spectator cheered loudly and proudly for -- and that was when the American flag came through.  (Applause.)  The American flag.   (Applause.)  So it was a wonderful reminder -- we all come from different backgrounds, we have different beliefs, we have sometimes petty and sometimes not-so-petty political differences. But we all share a set of ideals.  We all have a common future.  We’re the heirs to mothers and fathers and grandparents, great grandparents, who struggled and sacrificed to forge and realize the American Dream.

      And that fills us with the collective responsibility to leave an even bigger and bolder, more generous, more compassionate nation for our children.  That's what drives me each day.  That's what inspires Michelle.  I know that's what drives many of you.

      So I am thrilled to have you here today where we celebrate your incredible heritage, but we also celebrate the incredible heritage of this great country of ours.  (Applause.)   

      God bless you.  Feliz Cinco de Mayo.  Muchas gracias.  Thank you.  (Applause.)

                              END                    6:32 P.M. EDT

Fukushima is not Chernobyl, Prime Minister Naoto Kan insists. His government draws comfort from the fact that Fukushima emitted only a fraction of the radiation released at Chernobyl in 1986, that Chernobyl caused a number of deaths and thousands of cancers. In Chernobyl, the exploding reactor threw radioactive material high into the atmosphere, spreading it over a wide area of Western Europe. In Fukushima, apart from the radioactivity released to the sea, the contamination is concentrated within some 400 square kilometers around the plant. Fukushima caused no deaths, at least not so far.

Photo by liebeslakritze

 

However, in some ways Fukushima looks more worrying than Chernobyl, and more hopeless.

Portrait of a pressure group: the nuclear village

The disaster at Chernobyl was triggered by a botched experiment to improve the reactor’s safety in case of an emergency shut-down. The disaster at Fukushima was triggered by a natural catastrophe, a tsunami, but it was allowed to happen, because Tepco, the plant’s operator, and subsequent Japanese governments ignored ample warnings, an earthquake or a tsunami of this magnitude might knock out the emergency back-up systems.

Tepco systematically violated safety rules. In more than 200 instances between 1977 and 2002, the utility submitted false data to the authorities, as stated by a commission of the Japanese parliament, the Diet. The nation’s nuclear safety authorities and government were complicit in Tepco’s blunders.

The Soviet Union was a system in decay, even before Chernobyl. To outside observers, it was no surprise when things went wrong. Japan sees herself at the pinnacle of technology, a major exporter of nuclear power. Despite the fact Japan’s nuclear industry has suffered a substantial number of accidents before, the country did not have any contingency plans to deal with a nuclear accident as it happened in Fukushima. Six days into the catastrophe, Japan had no idea how to get the plant under control. In a desperate attempt, seawater was dumped from a helicopter to cool spent nuclear fuel. Despite warnings, Tepco failed to prevent hydrogen-explosions.

Photo with thanks to daveeza

 

Japan, a nation proud of her safety standards and disaster preparedness, was totally unprepared for an accident that had been predicted by experts. The nation of the industrial robot did not have a single machine to mitigate the crisis. Japan has not learned anything from Chernobyl.

On March, 11, Japan suffered one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history, followed by an enormous tsunami. The three nuclear power plants located on the coast hit by the tsunami withstood the tremor, but at Fukushima I the waves knocked out all cooling systems. Although it had been suggested to Tepco, there were no mobile cooling systems on stand-bye.

To make things worse, Tepco initially underestimated the developing crisis. Knowingly or not, the utility did not react with the urgency necessary. The Kan government trusted Tepco, and, according to Japanese press reports, rejected the first offers of foreign assistance, notably from the US to help cool the reactors. It might have been possible to prevent some or all of the four hydrogen-explosions that caused major damage to unit 1,2 and 4, blew off their roofs and splattered the plant with highly radioactive debris.

Photo with thanks to daveeza

 

Fukushima I was not designed to survive a tsunami, any surge of the seawater higher than 5.7 meters would have been fatal. However, the villages and fishing harbors nearby all had tsunami-barriers.

It has been estimated that the waves that hit the plant were about 14 meters high. In some areas further north, they reached 30 meters. Tepco, the Japanese nuclear watchdogs and government officials claim such a tsunami was beyond expectation. When driving along the devastated coast on a hilly road, however, one regularly crosses the line up to which the tsunami wrecked everything. Climbing on, a few meters above that line of destruction, one encounters a road sign, “End of Estimated Tsunami Inundation Area”. In some places, the water flooded these signs, but not by much, in many others, the tsunami did not reach as high as the sign. One can but conclude that Japan’s road bureau and the local authorities knew they had to expect a tsunami the heigth of March, 11, but not Tepco and the nuclear safety authorities.

As historic evidence shows, earthquakes of a similar magnitude struck this region in the years, 869, 1498, 1896 and 1933, causing tsunamis of a comparable strength. For the Jogan-earthquake in 869, Professor Koji Minoru of Tohoku University has shown with the help of sediments that in the Sendai area the tsunami reached 4 kilometers inland. The 1933 tsunami is still remembered by surviving witnesses, there are even historical film documents.

A few years ago, it had been discussed in a Diet commission if such historical evidence of major tsunamis should be taken into account for the safety guidelines for nuclear power plants. There cannot be any doubt that the government and Tepco were aware of the risk of a major earthquake and tsunami, but ignored them to cut costs. In 2006, the guidelines for the safety of nuclear power plants were revised, but their wording remained fuzzy, the threat of a tsunami is only mentioned at on the last two of some 140 pages. Before an earlier revision, Tepco had managed to postpone their implementation so that they would not be applicable for a unit then under construction.

The most detailed warning was made in 2008 by Kobe University’s Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi. In front of a Diet commission, he drew a scenario of an earthquake knocking out all cooling systems of a nuclear power plant. This would be followed by hydrogen explosions and a massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere, said Ishibashi. That is exactly what happened at Fukushima I. Only, Ishibashi developed his scenario for the plant in Hamaoka, west of Tokyo. Hamaoka is considered to be the most dangerous nuclear power station in Japan. With certain winds, Ishibashi said, Tokyo might become uninhabitable. Despite his insistence, the majority of Diet commission saw no need to act.

The “atomic village”, as the collusion of the nuclear industry, the nuclear watchdogs and the government has come to be called, didn’t want to hear any of it. “If you were criticizing nuclear power, you were treated as an enemy of the state”, former governor of Fukushima prefecture Eisaku Sato says. He ruled the stricken prefecture from 1988 to 2006, when he was arrested for corruption – on doctored evidence, as he claims.

With a number of lawsuits, concerned citizens tried to force the operators of Japan’s nuclear power plants to improve on their security standards, notably in Fukushima. One of these lawsuits is aimed at shutting down Chubu Electric’s Hamaoka plant, the one Ishibashi developed his scenario for.

As a witness of the defense, Haruki Madarame, then a professor at the University of Tokyo, said in court: “There needs to be a line drawn somewhere. It would be impossible to design a nuclear plant if engineers had to consider every single possibility.” Last year, the same Madarame was elected to chair Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, the government’s highest body for the safety of nuclear power. Thus, the governments top expert for the safety of the nuclear plants is someone who in court said relative safety is good enough for nuclear power plants.

Japan has clearly accepted insufficient safety standards, and her nuclear authorities failed to to strictly enforce even those inadequate standards.

In Chernobyl, once the magnitude of the disaster had become obvious, the authorities acted with urgency. 36 hours after the explosion, within a period of 2 1/2 hours, they evacuated 49,000 people. In Japan, it took Prime Minister Naoto Kan more than 30 hours to declare a nuclear emergency. Only after four explosions and more than four days of disorientation, he subjected Tepco’s wanting crisis management to his direct control. It took Japan six days to effectively start cooling the reactors and the spent fuel.

For several weeks, the Japanese government refused to publish the results of SPPEDI, a computer program to determine its the effective contamination. The head of Japan’s weather service Hiroshi Niino feared, “this would cause a panic”, as he later said. When the data were finally out, the government failed to draw the obvious conclusion and adjust the zone of evacuation. Only a week after a recommendation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, it decided to do so. To this day, not all evacuation orders have been executed.

The earthquake and tsunami were natural disaster, the nuclear catastrophe could have been avoided. Tepco, Japan’s nuclear authorities and the government bear the responsibility for this calamity, particularly Japan’s previous governments. They allowed the “atomic village” to develop, a quagmire of corruption. The current government made things worse by reacting too slowly, and naively.

The clean, ignored alternatives

Japan has no alternative to nuclear energy, subsequent governments have been insisting for decades. Fact is, Japan has never seriously explored alternatives. Some Japanese companies produce world class generators for renewable power such as wind turbines and solar panels, but they sell them mostly abroad.

When the threat of CO2 to the planet’s climate materialized, Japan’s prime reaction was to redefine her nuclear program as “green”.

The main alternative to energy consumption is saving it. While Japan's industry achieves the highest efficiency in the world, the state, the service sector and the consumers are wasting electric power. Japan consumes about 15 percent more electricity per capita than Germany, a similarly industrialized country. Japanese houses, assembled from prefabricated parts, are hardly insulated at all. In winter, the Japanese are wasting electricity to keep warm, in summer, to keep them cool. In recent years, Tepco encouraged their customers to use more (nuclear) power, namely to switch from gas to electricity to increase the utility’s business.

The low quality of Japanese housing is often explained by high land prices. People who bought land do not have much money left for quality, they say. Japanese companies are manufacturing some of the best insulation windows worldwide, but almost exclusively for export.

The Japanese government justifies its prioritizing nuclear power because of its lack of oil. Japan’s substantial coal reserves are expensive to mine and in remote places. Some critics of Japan’s nuclear program stress further that, although Tokyo has no intention to acquire nuclear weapons, the possession of nuclear technology, especially its reprocessing facility, makes it a virtual member of the nuclear club.

Japan’s proponents of renewable energy believe the “atomic village” is deliberately obstructing hydro-, wind-, thermosolar-, photovoltaic- and geothermal energy.

Currently, about 2.5 percent of the worldwide electric energy is generated by wind-power, a number rapidly increasing. In Japan, a very windy country, the wind’s share is as low as 0.4 percent. To this day, the Japanese government has not adopted standards for wind power, as Eitaro Takayama of Mitsubishi Heavy, a producer of wind turbines, complained in Tokyo early this year.

Japanese companies such as Hitachi, Sharp and Sanyo were pioneering solar energy. In 1980, Japanese households had installed 2.8 million square meters of solar thermal panels. These are simple solar energy collectors used for heating water. By 2005, only a tenth of this capacity remained in place. Helped by the government, the utilities waged a price war against decentralized renewable power sources. They squeezed solar thermal energy generation out of the market. The Tokyo Institute for Sustainable Energy calls this a "political disaster".

In photovoltaic energy generation, solar panels that convert sunlight into electric power, Japan has lost its global leadership both in terms production and installation. In Europe, Japanese companies have been selling photovoltaic solar panels to retail customers for years, but not in Japan where feed-in-tariffs were abolished almost a decade ago (they were reintroduced recently).

Japan is a mountainous country. It has more than 3000 reservoirs, of which only a small fraction is used for hydroelectric power generation. The others were built for drinking water reserve and flood protection. An additional purpose of these dams was pork barrel politics, as is widely acknowledged today. The Liberal Democratic Party, LDP, that ruled Japan for 54 years, used to offer local construction companies large scale jobs. In turn, those companies secured the votes for the LDP to stay in power.

Many of these reservoirs could be used for small hydropower plants for local consumption. But Japanese bureaucrats favor grand solutions.

Japan has 108 active volcanoes, there are more than 10,000 so-called onsen, or hot springs. Geothermal Power is the most important untapped energy source in Japan. A geothermal power plant works just like an oil, coal, gas or nuclear power plant. It produces steam to drive turbines.

After the first oil crisis in 1973, geothermal power was proposed as the ideal solution for Japan, 19 stations were built. However, the government went for nuclear power. Geothermal stations would be located near hot springs, and thus tourist spots, it argued. Additionally, it said, geothermal is too expensive. The “atomic village” killed this clean source of energy.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), a kilowatt hour (Kwh) of nuclear generated electricity costs about 5 US-cents, geothermal power is estimated at 11 US-cents. However, the price given by METI does not include the disposal of nuclear waste, and neither the cost of the clean up of Fukushima I, currently estimated at some 300 billion US-Dollars.

According to Tetsunari Iida of the Tokyo Institute for Sustainable Energy, METI refuses to release its basis for determining the price of nuclear power at some 5 cents per kwh. He therefore calls this price fiction.

Professor Hiroaki Niitsuma of Tohoku University, blamed the state for this clean energy’s demise. Keiji Miyazaki, Professor emeritus of Osaka University, a staunch supporter of nuclear power even after Fukushima, claimed recently that geothermal power plants smell bad. Fortunately for those poor people in Fukushima, radiation doesn’t smell.

The politics of nuclear absolutism

According to her constitution, Japan is a democracy. Eisako Sato, the aforementioned ex-governor of Fukushima prefecture, says, when it comes to nuclear power, “Japan is almost a fascist state.” Japan:s doctrine has been, “nuclear power is absolutely necessary for Japan, so it is absolutely safe”, he says. Because it is so important for the nation, Sato goes on, many officials thought it legitimate to cover up accidents and flaws. He calls that “Japan:s nuclear absolutism.”

Originally accepting nuclear power as a necessity, Sato became a critic after whistle-blowers revealed to him how much Tepco was violating safety rules and falsifying protocols. As a consequence, he withdrew his approval for Tepco to use MOX in Fukushima I, a dangerous mix of uranium-plutonium. After that, the prosecution office started to investigate him for corruption.

Behind the governor’s back, Tokyo sent a flock of nuclear missionaries to the 23,000 households around the Fukushima I plant. Their task was to convince the people that MOX was safe, despite what their governor said. These households are now evacuated.

Maybe  Sato was corrupt. But if so, his was at most the petty corruption common among Japanese politicians. If all Japanese MPs guilty of this kind of corruption were banned from parliament, the hall would be half empty, it has been said. Japan’s prosecutors have a free hand to determine whom they prosecute and when; or to turn a blind eye. Thus, Sato’s allegation that he has been singled out for political reasons, namely his opposition to nuclear power, is at least plausible.

The “atomic village” stands for corruption on a much grander scale. The nuclear industry, scientists, bureaucrats and politicians have created a tight network of institutionalized and legitimized corruption. Reciprocity, a crucial point to prove corruption, is not required in the “atomic village”. Its members provide “the village” with construction jobs, research grants, promotions and votes, probably believing it is for the good of the nation. They don’t tolerate criticism. The leading media have been on good terms with this network. They have ignored the critics of nuclear power, including their many lawsuits against unsafe plants, including  Fukushima.

A crucial component of the “atomic village”, as of other tightly knit Japanese networks between politics and the private sector, is “amakudari”, literally “descent from heaven”. Japanese bureaucrats retire at the young age of 55. “Amakudari” is the institutionalized practice to help them join those companies and organizations they used to control before retirement. Thus, while still working for the government, they can expect to be rewarded in the future with the high pay of an adviser for smoothing a company’s dealings with the state. After switching side, they also use their connections and their intimate knowledge of the controlling authority to facilitate permission procedures for the company. This practice has been called the “hidden fabric of Japan’s Economy.” At the time of the Fukushima accident, two former bureaucrats were on the board of Tepco, and the former boss of the nuclear division of Tepco was rewarded by the LDP with a mandate in the Upper House of the Diet.

On top of this, there are the family networks. Many leading Japanese politicians are sons, son-in-laws, grandsons or nephews of top-politicians. They inherited their relatives’ constituencies, and also their networks.

Fukushima prefecture’s current governor, Yuhei Sato (he’s not related to his predecessor) is a nephew Kozo Watanabe, one of the surviving grand old men of Japanese politics. The only job Watanabe never held was Prime Minister, as they say. An MP for Fukushima since 1969, Watanabe was once an independent, then a member of the LDP; now he’s a crucial actor in PM Kan’s DPJ. He is on the record saying nuclear power allows the people to live longer, because it has helped Japan solve its energy problem.

After taking office, Yuhei Sato re-approved the use of MOX at Fukushima I. As a direct consequence of this decision, there were now traces of Plutonium contamination around the plant.

Most of Japan’s nuclear power plants are clustered on remote coastlines in poor prefectures. Tokyo gets the power, the people in Fukushima the problems, one can hear these days. Former governor Eisaku Sato stresses, in Japan, decision are made from top down, from Tokyo to the provinces. However, there’s another side to this equation.

One of the main architects of the “atomic village” was Kakuei Tanaka, PM from 1972-1974, and one of the most powerful men in postwar Japan. Under his premiership, Japan declared nuclear power to be a top priority.

A farmer’s son from rural Niigata, Tanaka served in the Japanese army in Manchuria. There he made his first contacts with the group that was to lead Japan’s post war economy. In hindsight, the command economy Japan imposed on Manchuria, de facto a Japanese colony, served as a laboratory for Japan’s reconstruction. Back in Tokyo, Tanaka married the heiress of a construction company and went into politics, thus becoming part of both sides of the corruption, almost an incarnation of it.

Not only did Tanaka try to get as many construction jobs for his company, but also for his prefecture Niigata. This would help him get reelected, and improve his and his prefecture’s standing in Tokyo. He managed to get his remote province connected to the national highway system and the bullet-train network long before bigger cities. The biggest price, construction work for more than a decade, was erected literally at the doorstep of his birthplace: the world’s largest nuclear power plant, Kashikawazaki-Kariwa.

When he was a member of the LDP, Kozo Watanabe belonged to Tanaka’s faction. Just like his mentor, he helped bring nuclear power plants to his own prefecture, Fukushima.

In the Soviet Union, the communist party was ubiquitous. To ensure loyalty to the party, it sent a representative into every institution, the party secretary. Their second task was to keep the government informed about the needs and achievements of their enterprise. Japanese networking, namely amakudari, other mutual dependencies and the family ties, do the same trick. In its heyday, the LDP was almost as ubiquitous as the CPSU in the Soviet Union.

Chernobyl forced the Soviet authorities to their first steps of glasnost, or openness. Late in 1986, a local youth newspaper in the then Soviet republic of Estonia dodged censorship and published a story of young Estonian liquidators who were exposed to high dosages of radiation. This was the beginning of the liberalization of the Soviet media. Thus, Chernobyl can be considered as one of the starting points to the process that finally led to the collapse of communism.

Just as with the Soviet Union at the time, Japan needs fundamental reforms. For two decades, Japanese politics have been stagnant and petrified. Some academics see the nuclear power plants as monuments of Japanese corruption.

Other than the Soviet Union, however, Japan is an open society with free elections that respects human rights. All the levers for reform should be in place.

Reform?

Will Fukushima trigger the changes Japan has been waiting for? In the Soviet Union, well educated people had lost faith in a system that lied to them and failed to provide them with their daily needs, enough milk or toilet paper. They helped to topple the government, and the system.

Japan’s is still an affluent society, the new poverty that emerged in the last decade is hard to discern, since it is marginalized to the provinces and to the fringes of society. The urban middle class still has a very good life, it has too much to lose to ask for change. In their eyes, the Tohoku region hit by the earthquake, the tsunami and the radiation crisis, is a remote place. The media is already stepping back from the more controversial position it adapted at the culmination of the crisis. The government is preoccupied with fighting assessments of Fukushima I that differ from its own. It calls these “harmful rumors”. And the opposition is back to its petty bickering.

There is no Japanese Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Andrey Sakharov, not even a Mikhail Gorbachev, no moral authority and no politician who could lead the nation to reforming itself, and not much can be expected from a government that barely manages to survive. Thus, Fukushima, unlike Chernobyl, looks unlikely to set off the chain reaction of reform that would be the only good to come of it.

Sideboxes

Related stories: 

Japan: from tsunami to change

After Fukushima

Nuclear Follies

Advertising Age reported Draftfcb London is buying 60-person digital agency Blue Barracuda. Perhaps Howard Draft will spin it off to realize his dream of running a small, interactive shop. Draftfcb CEO-president Laurence Boschetto gushed, “In the five years since DraftFCB was created, we have been focused on building our fully integrated model, which means one P&L;, no silos. … Rather than infighting over budgets, our employees are able to put our clients and their brands at the center of all we do. Now we are committed to further enhancing our capabilities.” Wow, this guy is a delusional douche—and a fucking liar too. Draftfcb has more silos than the Atlas Missile System Project. Hope the folks at Blue Barracuda realize they’ll be “fuelling” a broken, sinking ship.

DraftFCB to Acquire London-Based Digital Shop

New Shop Will Be Called ‘Fuelled By Blue Barracuda’

By Kunur Patel

Interpublic agency DraftFCB will acquire London-based digital agency Blue Barracuda. The new entity will be called DraftFCB London “Fuelled By Blue Barracuda.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Blue Barracuda’s 60 employees will be immediately merged with Draft’s London office, increasing headcount 50% at the agency. Blue’s management team will also be integrated, with former CEO Martin Talks becoming Draft, London’s president of digital. The office will serve as the digital hub for Draft’s agency network in Europe.

Blue Barracuda, founded in 2002, handles digital strategy and media buying and planning for clients such as Pizza Hut, Getty Images and Roche Pharmaceuticals. Draft also gains access to Blue Barracuda’s offshore-production unit in Tallinn, Estonia.

“In the five years since DraftFCB was created, we have been focused on building our fully integrated model, which means one P&L;, no silos. … Rather than infighting over budgets, our employees are able to put our clients and their brands at the center of all we do. Now we are committed to further enhancing our capabilities,” said Laurence Boschetto, worldwide CEO-president for DraftFCB.

While London in particular has been a recent hotbed for boutique creative shops, it has not seen as much mergers-and-acquisition activity as other markets. In recent years, the Big Four companies have snapped up agencies in emerging markets like China and Brazil. Meanwhile, London-based independents like Engine and LBi have set sights on growing stateside footprints with recent acquisitions in the U.S.

The Draftfcb ad agency is buying London-based digital production and marketing shop Blue Barracuda, to give it “a key strategic hub worldwide and drive even faster growth”.

Blue Barracuda’s 60 staff will be merged in to Draftfcb and the company renamed Draftfcb London,” Fuelled by Blue Barracuda”.

Blue Barracuda founded in 2002 and its clients have included ITV (LSE: ITV) Local, Pizza Hut, Nectar and the UK Film Council, for which it built the Find Any Film site.

Draftfcb CEO Laurence Boschetto says this makes for “a new type of integrated agency in the U.K. that ultimately will provide innovative, media-agnostic solutions for a digital world”.

Draftfcb will also get to use Blue Barracuda’s Talinn, Estonia, production centre for “faster, more cost-efficient production services”.

Acquisition terms weren’t disclosed.

By MICHAEL LAKE This is a summary of the HIT Trends report for April 2011.  You can get the current issue or subscribe here. Europe. European progress reports on HIT show us that it’s evolving along many similar lines to current US efforts.  One report highlights beacons of e-prescribing in Sweden and Estonia where scripts are stored [...]

Israel praises Estonia stand against anti-Semitism Straits Times TALLINN (Estonia) - ISRAEL on Wednesday praised Estonia for a firm stance against anti-Semitism despite recent criticism by the Nazi-hunting Wiesenthal centre slamming Tallinn for failing to prosecute Nazi war criminals. 'Estonian authorities have been ... and more »

· Translated by Catherine Lawlor

Originally Published at GlobalVoices:  http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/05/03/russia-who-is-restricting-the-russian-internet/

Mind Sports Olympiad moves to bigger venue
By Alexander Baron

A short report on the forthcoming Mind Sports Olympiad - now in its 15th year - which will be held in London, England at the end of August.

The annual Mind Sports Olympiad has been confirmed for London , August 20-28, and is moving to a slightly bigger venue, University of Central London, Malet Street, after last year’s disappointing turn out. This will be the 15th year the event has run, and is already attracting players from Europe and the United States, mostly the die-hard gamesters who have supported it over the past few rocky years.

The first four Mind Sports were truly spectacular events, beginning with the 1997 launch at the Royal Festival Hall, and three equally impressive follow ups which took up substantial space at the Novotel Hotel, Hammersmith; Kensington Olympia; and then Alexandra Palace in North London, but the 5th event was a low key affair held at the South Bank University, and was only saved from oblivion by the inclusion of a strong chess contingent from India when the Commonwealth Championship was incorporated with the Ron Banwell Masters.

In 2002, MSO moved north to Loughborough University, followed by two years at the campus of University of Manchester (UMIST) before moving south again.

The main reasons for the downturn in its fortunes were a falling out of the organisers and protracted legal problems. Although the latter were resolved, the event never recovered, and it was only by a supreme collective effort that it didn’t fall to pieces after its temporary relocation to Manchester.

The Mind Sports was the brainchild of chess player David Levy; although he has not played competitively for many years, Levy is an international master, prolific author of chess books and articles, and has done pioneering work on chess programming and in related fields. Sadly, his original vision, which was conceived as early as 1987 and was ten years in the making, never quite came to fruition, and for no fault of his own.

The actual events have been run since 1997 by Tony Corfe and a small team of mostly volunteers. Corfe is a big name on the chess circuit, and is well known as a tournament organiser as well as a supplier of chess paraphernalia. He will be in charge again this year, and his schedule includes a new Abstract Games in addition to the regulars of chess, Abalone, backgammon, Diplomacy, draughts, Go, Entropy, Lost Cities, Scrabble, and a collection of poker tournaments played strictly for medals and fun.

Last year, Paco de la Banda of Spain won the Pentamind Championship, and Andres Kuusk won the first gold medal ever to be awarded to Estonia.

Source: http://www.digitaljournal.com

This photo brings back many fond memories. It was taken during the first leg (Amsterdam to Hong Kong) of my five-month round-the-world trip in 2008 as the plane flew past the coast of Estonia. I’ve called this photo “The Moment” because it symbolises the start of a life-changing journey that began in 2008 and which [...]

The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) has happily announced that trade marks from the French national offices have now been added to the TMview search tool -- the new tool which provides free access to trade mark applications and registrations from a number of leading trade mark offices, including OHIM. 


The latest expansion of TMview brings the total number of offices contributing data to 14: the other 13 are OHIM, WIPO, the UK, Czech Republic, Italy, Benelux, Portugal, Denmark, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia and Bulgaria.

The Helsinki based Aalto Venture Garage is putting together in international incubation/acceleration program for very early stage projects that should turn to startups later this summer. In total, 17 teams from the region were accepted into the program from around the Baltic Sea. 3 teams were from Russia, 2 from Latvia, 1 from Lithuania and Estonia as well as Sweden and the rest were from Finland (9).

• 
  
• Campalyst - An analytical platform for measuring ROI of social media.
• 
  
• CoFoundIt - A crowd funding tool for app-developers, combining crowd sourcing and micro investing tools
  
• 
  
• City Premises - A commercial real estate finder
• 
  
• Double Defense - A sticker that can determine if your packages in the mail have been tampered with
• 
  
• Fluorescent Nanoscopy - Nanoscale imaging to show biological specimens in 3D in their native environment
• 
  
• FundFriend - A game that helps track your personal finances
• 
  
• FutureFul - A predictive discovery engine
• 
  
• Hakama - Customer availability & resource utilization analytics
• 
  
• Mighty Fingers - A multiplayer tank game
• 
  
• Ovelin - Combines gaming with music exercises for guitar
• 
  
• Pazio - Storing and sharing your best team sports moments
• 
  
• Solu - Value added services to mobile customers in Africa
• 
  
• Spektikor - A device that monitors a victim’s pulse
• 
  
• SunyRide - Social car-pooling service
• 
  
• Tohina - A teamwork platform
• 
  
• Twonicorn - Creates toys for social change
• 
  
• Walkbase (ex-Mobio) - Verifying your check-ins on location-based services
• 
  

The 17 teams will now work for a duration of six weeks at the co-working space to create and fine-tune their concepts into reality. The six weeks will feature guest speakers, other entrepreneurs and mentors to share their experiences and advice. On June 17th the teams will pitch on stage their results from the six weeks, in a somewhat similar manner to that of Y-Combinator.

Last year Aalto Venture Garage created Summer of Startups which was Finland focused and already this year they've managed to attract a very impressive crowd of companies. Overall, the 6-week program received over 200 applications. You can follow the development of the program on the Startup Sauna website.

In a bit of a surprise move, rather than allowing us to discover new imagery in Google Earth, Google has pre-announced an imagery update that is due out later this week.

Part of the update will include some high-quality imagery from Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was captured in May, 2010. They're offering a preview of that imagery via this KML file.

In addition, the very new GeoEye imagery of Abbottabad that we mentioned yesterday will be available in the historical imagery feature of Google Earth soon. Remember, historical imagery is sometimes newer than the base imagery.

It sounds like it's quite a major update, and we'll be sure to let you know when it goes live. Here is the full list of areas that will be getting fresh imagery:

High Resolution Aerial Updates: USA: Brookshire, TX; Brownsville, TX; Dallas, TX; Ft Stockton, TX; Hebbronville, TX; Houston, TX; Laredo, TX; McAllen, TX; Milwaukee, WI; Padre Island, TX; Wharton, TX; Zapata, TX;
Australia: Central Coast, New Castle, and Salamander Bay
Norway: Buskerud, Fredrikstad, and Oslo

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Algeria, Angola, Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Svalbard, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, The Gambia, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, West Bank, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Ministry Proposes Yellow Plates for Taxis ERR News Estonia may soon join Sweden and Lithuania in requiring its taxis to sport bright, yellow number plates if a recommendation by the Ministry of Finance is acted upon. The colored number plates would not only help cut down on instances of pirate taxis by ... and more »

See Christopher's original Facebook note here.

Many of you have been asking what the big deal is about the new copyright legislation (Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill 119-2). Isn't it a good measure for stopping illegal downloads? The answer is quite clear: No.

First, in case you missed the news: http://www.3news.co.nz/Govts-Skynet-legislation-becomes-law/tabid/412/articleID/206882/Default.aspx

There are so many problems with this law. I've listed thirteen here. There are others more fundamental especially relating to what the law should be expected to achieve, the polarised debate over the intention of copyrights and what should be protected under them, which is a natural consequence of the birth of the information society, but that's a big subject with a lot of history (that I hope to write about some other time).

Some reasons are legal, some ethical, and some technical but nonetheless crucial:

1. Presumed guilty on accusation

Despite the revision committee trying to fudge the issue, this law does work via the presumption of guilt. If the accused party has had their 3 warnings and goes to the Copyright Tribunal, they have to give reasons why the warnings were invalid. But if the accused party is innocent, what reasons can they have, apart from "I didn't do it"?

Presumption of guilt is rife for abuse, as has happened overseas under similar laws. In the digital realm evidence is often very temporary, complex, and easily fabricated, so providing evidence of your innocence could be very difficult, depending on how much is required. Providing evidence of your guilt is almost as difficult, but why should that mean an advantage should be given to accusers? New Zealand intellectual property lawyer Rick Shera says the law is grossly unfair, out of place and unnecessary in this analysis: http://lawgeeknz.posterous.com/nzs-copyright-proposal-guilty-until-you-prove

When a new law contradicts the Bill of Rights it better have an extremely good reason... and protecting the entertainment industry isn't one.

How to prove you're not in league with scurvy ne-er-do-wells like this?

2. Unsupported accusations

New Zealand Judge David Harvey has noted that 30 per cent of copyright litigation fails due to a failure to prove ownership of copyright, or due to the copyright in question not being governed by New Zealand law. Yet this law encourages more copyright infringement accusations, and puts the onus on the accused to prove themselves. There is no penalty for making spurious accusations.

3. Stifled creativity and innovation

People are often accused of infringing copyrights unreasonably, for instance quoting a section of a work to comment on it, or for sampling or making a parody of a copyrighted work. This is why US law has the concept of "fair use" (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fair_use) - in NZ it is called "fair dealing". The Creative Freedom Foundation, a charity representing thousands of Kiwi artists, has written a short explanation of copyright and how the new law will stifle creativity: http://creativefreedom.org.nz/copyright.html

Some copyright owners frequently make claims of infringement even when the use is fair because users are likely to forgo their use of the work rather than spend money defending themselves - see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation.

Even without accusations, creativity is stifled by laws like this. YouTube continually removes videos that have no right being removed, simply at the request of a copyright owner.

4. Disproportionate penalties

Firstly, if found guilty you could potentially be fined $15,000 for downloading a single song - there's no clarity in the law about what a appropriate fine would be. The purported cost of copyright infringement is very arbitrary: Overseas, people have been ordered to pay millions of dollars for downloading a small number of songs, for instance this mother of four charged US$1.9m for downloading 24 songs: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Capitol_v._Thomas

5. Insufficient warning

The minimum time between the first accusation being made your last strike is 20 working days. It could be easy to miss both warnings, there's nothing in the law about making sure you actually receive the notices. You could even go on holiday for a month, come back and find you have to go to the Copyright Tribunal for alleged file-sharing from a week before you left.

6. The law is ill-defined

I've already mentioned how the law doesn't define the level of proof required to rebut the presumption of guilt, nor how to determine fines.

The technical definitions are particularly useless. For instance, it defines file-sharing as where:

(a) material is uploaded via, or downloaded from, the Internet using an application or network that enables the simultaneous sharing of material between multiple users; and

(b) uploading and downloading may, but need not, occur at the same time

Downloading from a network using a network? That's meaningless. Besides that, it is very loose, any internet activity could conceivably be covered by this. That's clearly not the intent. This kind of thing is very difficult to define - still, it needs to be better than this. There are other things such as the change from using the term ISP (Internet Service Provider) to IPAP (Internet Protocol Address Provider), a change which will become meaningless in the next few years as IPv6 makes everyone potentially an IPAP. So not only is it loosely defined, it's already outdated (this last would most likely would have been fixed if the law had gone through the proper process).

7. ISP costs

Compliance with this law is going to cost ISPs. Although accusers are required to pay ISPs a fee, there is no consideration for the capital expenditure required to setup the system. And they only have four months to get it up and running. This could be very significant for smaller ISPs.

So you can expect your internet connection to be more expensive than it would otherwise be.

8. Violated human rights

More importantly, your internet could be terminated. This law was passed just two days after Tim Berners-Lee (credited with the invention of the Internet) declared "access to the web is now a human right" (https://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/041211-mit-berners-lee.html). The UN has proposed that internet access should be a human right, and it already is in France, Finland, Estonia and Greece.

Terminating internet in response to infringing copyright is worse than the post office stopping deliveries to your house because you sent photocopies to someone. The earlier law was revised due to protests over internet termination. The new bill disables that penalty for the moment, however it can be re-enabled with an order-in-council, not needing any public consultation or parliamentary vote.

Which leads on to the problems relating to how this law came to be:

9. Political precedence of law ambush

Urgency is supposed to be for urgent issues. National has passed 17 laws under urgency in the last two years, most of them completely unjustified (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10719268). The passing of this law without proper process sets a particularly bad precedent.

This law has made headlines throughout the tech world, along with comments on the sucker-punch nature of its passing, and how equivalent laws overseas have been pushing through in a similar way (eg. UK's Digital Economy Act 2010):

Groups like Creative Freedom NZ, which helped lead protests against the initial bill, were taken by surprise. "The item has been due to go through the house for a while now, but has been fairly low on the list," said the group. "We are surprised to find out that it is being rushed through under urgency, and we're not alone; MPs who have been involved in the process are surprised as well."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/guilty-until-proven-innocent-new-zealand-rushes-ahead-with-p2p-bill.ars

Using the Canterbury earthquake as an excuse to push through a law in response to the entertainment oligopoly complaining about supposed lost profits, is shameful.

10. Lawmakers who don't understand the law, let alone basic technical facts

Next, it was blatantly obvious that most of the voting MPs didn't understand what they were talking about. In what the National Business Review called "a debate that often sunk to almost surreal levels of technical ignorance", MPs made fools of themselves saying things like:

"It is really important to remember that file sharing is an illegal activity."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJdPkrpFXBM

Katrina Shanks took the prize for worst speech. Jonathan Young made a joke:

"Do you remember the movie "The Terminator"? I'm sure that you do. And the computer system... yes... the computer system called Skynet that ruled the world. It's like the Internet today."

http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-MP-Jonathan-Young-compares-the-internet-to-Skynet/tabid/419/articleID/206944/Default.aspx

Oh the perfect irony of analogizing the internet-enabled masses as evil robot overlords, and the government and corporates trying to control the internet as underdog freedom-fighters...

Topping the irony charts was Melissa Lee. Her speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IIyk1y9o_8) actually had an interesting point about how the multi-billion dollar Korean movie industry was made possible through blatant copyright infringement by the Chinese. Yet she then went on to talk about the damage done by lesser forms of piracy like file-sharing and how infringing copyrights is always an intentional illegal act. The kicker is, just hours before making her speech, she tweeted about a music compilation a friend copied for her! (https://twitter.com/melissaleemp/status/57764856488669184) When confronted about it, she replied that the songs were legally downloaded and paid for - proving that either she's a hypocrite, or worse, she doesn't know what the current copyright law is, despite voting on the law, and holding herself up as an example of an unintentional pirate.

Then there are the technical issues with copyright enforcement:

11. Trojaned machines

There are millions of computers infected with viruses which hackers use to do whatever they want - for instance, sending spam, hacking more computers, or sharing copyrighted files via file-sharing networks. (Yet another reason to make sure you install your updates and don't visit dodgy websites or install untrusted applications - not that this is proof against hackers, it just makes exploits less likely.) You should not be held liable for what a hacker does with your computer without your permission. But how can you prove you were hacked? Viruses can remove themselves after acting. And if being hacked is a reasonable defence, pirates can use it as a defence too, just by claiming it or perhaps purposefully allowing themselves to be hacked. (Now there's an interesting new reason for hackers to make viruses: a viral file-sharing network, where some people would be users without their permission - thus giving plausible deniability to all users.)

12. Shared connections

How can copyright holders identify people who infringe? One way is through file-sharing programs where users have accounts. It may be possible to track these to a person in New Zealand. But most piracy isn't done through any account except an internet account. Most internet connections are shared between many people. So how would copyright holders know which person to accuse? They can't. Your ISP can only trace web traffic to your router (often only with a lot of work) - they can't see where traffic goes after that. So the copyright holder can only accuse the account holder. So if your flatmate infringes, you might be the one having to prove your innocence. Likewise companies have to take responsibility for all their employees - an excellent encouragement for companies to enact draconian firewalls against their employees. When an employee is accused, it may take a great deal of effort to track down which employee it was - if it is even possible. Similarly with any company providing a connection, like hotels, caf?s and airlines.

Expect company-provided internet access to be more restrictive and better monitored.

13. Real pirates don't get caught

The most problematic pirates - the ones who upload unreleased movies or sell pirated copies - are very unlikely to be caught. They use anonymizing techniques and encryption to make their downloading untraceable. The same goes for hackers or anyone with the technical know-how. Or anyone connecting via an internet hotspot or public wi-fi. Or those who just download without using peer-to-peer software. So those caught are much more likely to be accidental and small-scale infringers, not those the law is primarily intended to stop.

The Copyright Tribunal will have only 5 people, so it can hardly handle a large number of cases. A small number of unlucky people will be made an example of, which will dissuade the most casual pirates - i.e. the kind of people whose piracy probably earns creative industries more in advertising than they lose in profits (but that last part is an argument I don't have space to explain here).

That's 13 reasons why this new law is bad and why law-abiding citizens will be worse off under it.

You, accused of infringing copyrights under the new law

What you can do

There's a list of ways you can protest the law at: https://www.facebook.com/notes/opposing-the-copyright-infringing-file-sharing-amendment-bill/information-on-what-you-can-do-to-help/141454075923884

from Marko Simich http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000641193889, used without permission

I'm tempted to change my name on Facebook to "John Connor"... but I've settled for merely changing my profile pics...

Other sources

• http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2010/0119/latest/versions.aspx
• http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/internet-file-sharing-bill-under-urgency-ck-90750
• http://creativefreedom.org.nz/2011/04/copyright-bill-has-second-reading-in-parliament
• http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/04/an_own_goal-2.html
• http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/the-file-sharing-bill/
• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access
• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention
• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/IPv6
• http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/isp-says-new-copyright-law-effectively-useless-aw-90936
• http://torrentfreak.com/kiwi-mp-called-out-as-pirate-after-passing-anti-piracy-law-110415/
• http://www.youtube.com/copyright_school (Happy Tree Friends, yay!)

P.S.

OK that's ridiculous, I really need to setup a blog... Facebook notes are painful...

P.P.S.

I couldn't resist using the word "sucker-punch" :P https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150146767961160&set=a.446831791159.246947.545581159

Published 21 April.

EDIT 25 April 23:00: Added several sentences to #6, including note about ISP vs. IPAP.

UPDATE 3 May 19:14: The Ministry of Economic Development has released a document seeking input on improving some parts of the act, and revealing even they are confused about what constitutes "file-sharing": https://www.facebook.com/notes/christopher-wood/ministry-of-economic-development-is-confused-about-the-new-law-help-them-out/10150176923503926

For the third time, we are organizing an Elevator Pitch Competition for all startups and growth companies in the Baltic and Nordic countries. The competition will be held in Tallinn on June 3rd at the International Technology Law Association's IV Tallinn Conference.

Whether or not you're interested in applying to the pitch competition, check out the conference agenda (pdf) which features this year a keynote address by Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia, and topics like marketing and branding, early stage financing, and landing the first customers. The conference is free to attend, but space is limited and registration is needed.

The jury of the pitch competition consists of pan-Nordic/Baltic VCs, so this is a perfect opportunity to put yourself on the radar and get valuable feedback on your pitch from an experienced jury that has heard quite a few before. We also have great prizes for the winners - see below.

Growth and internationalization-oriented firms from all of the Nordic and Baltic countries are welcomed to apply. Six firms will be selected to present a 10-minute pitch at the event. The judging criteria include the presentation delivery, the expected success and growth potential of the firm. Detailed contest rules and other information in the Invitation letter.

The applications to the Pitch Competition must be done using this form.

Please send your application to events (at) arcticstartup.com latest by May 12th 8:00 PM EET. The Finalists will be announced on May 12th.

The conference will be held at the Swissotel Tallinn during June 2-3, and the Elevator Pitch Competition will take place in the afternoon of June 3, 2011.

Prizes:

1. 
   
2. The Grand Prize is provided by SNR Denton US LLP, Silicon Valley. The firm will offer a $5000 USD in kind prize, equivalent to one full day of law consulting time with the firm. The consultation can be used as the winner wishes, e.g., to incorporate a subsidiary for operations in Silicon Valley, file a provisional US patent, etc. The consultation can be in person, by Skype video or by Polycom video. Consultation with the other of the 43 offices of SNR Denton may also be included, subject to availability, requirements of the contest winner, and the nature of the consultation. Other terms and conditions stated in the Award Certificate.
   
   • 
     
   • ArcticStartup will also offer the winner 2 tickets to Arctic15, the most exciting startup launch event in Northern Europe.
   • 
     
   
   
   
3. Second Prize - Law Firm Glimstedt will offer a $2,500 USD in kind prize, equivalent to one full day of law consulting time with their Tallinn office. The consultation can be in person or can be arranged otherwise, as agreed with the prize winner. Consultation with Vilnius or Riga offices of Law Firm Glimsted may also be included, subject to availability, requirements of the contest winner, and the nature of the consultation.
   
   • 
     
   • The runner-up will also get 1 ticket to Arctic15, the most exciting startup launch event in Northern Europe.
   • 
     
   
   
   

Details and terms on the prizes can be found in the Invitation letter.

The jury:

• 
  
• Martin Hauge, Creandum, Stockholm
• 
  
• Allan Martinson, MTVP, Tallinn
• 
  
• Artturi Tarjanne Nexit Ventures, Helsinki
• 
  
• Pekka Mäki, 3TS Cisco Growth Fund, Vienna
• 
  
• Richard Allan Horning, SNR Denton, Silicon Valley
• 
  
• Pirko Konsa,Tehnopol, Tallinn
• 
  
• Yrjö Ojasaar, Solon Partners, Tallinn
• 
  
• Heidi Kakko, Estonian Development Fund, Tallinn
• 
  
• Toby Moore, Imprimatur Capital Baltics, Riga
• 
  
• Olev Schults, AS Cresco, Tallinn
• 
  
• Harry Santamaki, KoppiCatch, Helsinki
• 
  
• Jussi Harvela, Veturi Venture Accelerator, Helsinki
• 
  
• Margus Uudam, Ambient Sound Investments, Tallinn
• 
  
• Hele Karja, Law Firm Glimstedt, Tallinn
• 
  
• Mart E. Koppel, Patendibüroo Koppel, Tallinn
• 
  

Any questions about the contest can be sent to miikka(at)arcticstartup(dot)com.

Readers who follow British political affairs know that up until now there has been no political party of any significance that opposes Islamization, with the exception of the British National Party (BNP). British Islam-critics who resist the destruction of their country through immigration, but are put off by the BNP — due to its long-time “whites only” policy, or for some other reason — find that there is no other party that they can turn to. They can vote Tory, and hope that (ha!) the “Conservatives” somehow regain their patriotic compass. Or they can vote BNP. Those are the only choices.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is a Euro-skeptic party. Its defining issue is the European Union, and the fact that membership in the EU is dangerous and destructive to the traditional identity of the British nation. Up until now UKIP has declined to tackle the issue of immigration, or to touch the third rail of British politics: Islam. But all that seems to be changing.

Abhijit P.G. Pandya is the UKIP Parliamentary Candidate for Leicester South in the by-election which is to be held this Thursday, May 5. He is a Christian of Indian extraction, and has broken with the normal practice of UKIP by making Islamization one of the major issues of his campaign.

The British political establishment has not failed to notice Mr. Pandya’s effrontery. His local newspaper, The Leicester Mercury, published a deliberate distortion of a post on the candidate’s blog. The newspaper article told its readers that “In the article, Abhijit Pandya called Islam ‘morally flawed and degenerate’.” However, the entire sentence in Mr. Pandya’s post read:

“A system that treats women as slaves without chains is morally flawed and degenerate in its treatment of women.”

One can only assume that this was a deliberate misrepresentation, and the inflammatory account has actually endangered the lives of UKIP canvassers.

How do I justify this assertion? Last week, just after the article was published, eight members of UKIP went out canvassing for the party in Leicester. One of our British correspondents, whom I’ll call Nigel, was among the eight who went from door to door.

Here is Nigel’s account of what happened that evening:

At the third door I knocked on, two culturally-enriched brothers came out and said they were going to kill us; there were knives and everything.

The guy went straight for me. Completely ignoring the Asian chap stood next to me, who was canvassing with me. I got chased down the street by these guys, who were shouting that they were going to cut me up into little pieces, that I shouldn’t be in their area, and they’d shove my head through the door if I put a leaflet through it.

However, the larger issue — more important than my own personal safety — is that they are trying to shut us down. The media in particular. Because they know if we do well in this by-election, the result will be that the Islamic issue will finally be out into the open in the UK.

So the MSM — the BBC and the local press — are just trying to shut down information and our access to the media. They did a classic stitch-up on us: they published their piece in the Saturday edition, knowing that Sunday and Monday are Bank Holidays.

Now the local newspaper has come out, telling people not to vote UKIP because Abhijit has dared to make the election about Islam. They have also libelled him in the process.

One good outcome, which is very much what we want, is that it the issue has been taken up in India.

But the British media are strangling us into silence, particularly on the national level. Abhijit hasn’t been invited to hustings, or radio phone-ins that the other candidates have, etc. etc. You know the drill.

Now for the details of the imbroglio over Abhijit Pandya. First, here are excerpts from his original blog post, which was published on April 22:

Will Britain face a growing Muslim population on benefits?

William Hague wishes for Turkey to enter the EU. Turkey will add to the theft of benefits, or the theft of the British tax-payer, that is going to go the way of 8 countries that joined the EU in 2004 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) on 1 May 2011. From that day nationals from these states will be entitled to the same rights as those of established E.U. member states with access income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit by signing on as a jobseeker at Jobcentre Plus and meeting the requirements imposed on British Citizen jobseekers. It is very likely that when Turkey joins, whose nationals on average earn less than £8,000, more hard earned money of British nationals will go to line Turkish national’s pockets. Many of these will have done nothing to contribute to the British economy or that of the EU.

Note that under the current benefit system, that the Conservative Party has tacitly endorsed, for those who have never worked without any capital there’s no time limit on receiving income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance. This so long as you continue to meet all the easily satisfiable requirements (e.g. actively seeking work, a partner who works less than 24 hours a week).

Further, even if foreigners were able to make money coming over here, they would still be entitled to benefit under EU rules. For most of those with some capital (over 16K) and who have paid NICs you get contribution-based Jobseeker’s Allowance for as long as 6 months. This can be gained for just a years contribution to the British economy, despite others ploughing away for generations.

The moral of all of the above is that that at present it really does pay never to work at all.

However there is a greater social problem that will be caused by those that may come over here for housing benefits if Turkey were to join the EU. Campaigning in Leicester recently, I have been shocked to discover the quanta of those from Islamic backgrounds on one form of a benefit to another. Islamic culture inherently rejects the Western way of life, more specifically the Protestant work ethic that has successfully built the economies of the West. It is also fundamentally socially intolerant, closing itself off to the rest of society and local communities and forming ghettos that are economically dysfunctional and ethically espouse, perhaps without realising it, intolerance that undermines both social and human capital.

[…]

The increase of Islam in the UK is going to be a problem for the welfare state. For example, unemployment among Moroccan and Turkish communities in the Netherlands is higher than the national average: (2006 study by The Netherlands’ Social and Cultural Planning Office). In the UK, the important Institute from Public Policy Research study showed that immigrants from many Muslim countries (especially Somalia, Turkey, Bangladesh and Iran) are far less likely to be employed and claim benefits than those from non-muslim nations such as Zimbabwe, Poland and India. The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission’s own figures show: “Half of Muslim men and three quarters of Muslim women are unemployed in the UK”. Muslim husbands in the UK with more than one wife to get extra benefits as ministers recognise polygamy (original source Taxpayers’ Alliance). Further a recent study of the 70,000 strong Somali immigrant community in the London Borough of Camden showed unemployment of over 75%. Actual unemployment in war torn failed state Somalia itself, is 47%. A removal of multi-culturalism, and assimilation of these people needs to done to save them from the abyss of exclusion and welfare. Above all, one should not shy away of contemplating deportation for new arrivals who do not work, or threatening it to further assimilation and an effort to find work.

[…]

A theological system that fundamentally encourages discrimination between those who believe it and those who don’t, treating the latter as second-class citizens, is backward. A system that treats women as slaves without chains is morally flawed and degenerate in its treatment of women. Cultural practices in many parts of the world which include child marriages and the death penalty for practising homosexuality are reminders that man is capable of going back to the dark ages very quickly.

Read the rest at Abhijit Pandya’s blog, including his support for Geert Wilders.

This was the local paper’s first response, published on April 27:

Outrage as prospective Leicester MP condemns Islam on his blog

The UKIP candidate for the Leicester South by-election has caused outrage by condemning Islam on his blog.

In the article, Abhijit Pandya called Islam “morally flawed and degenerate” and said he backed a controversial Dutch politician, who called Islam a retarded ideology.

Mr Pandya also wrote that Britain should not shy away from forced repatriation of foreign citizens who did not work.

The city’s Federation of Muslim Organisations (FMO) said it was surprised at Mr Pandya’s “hostile” comments, which it said were “cheap pot shots”.

[…]

Suleman Nagdi, of the FMO, hit back. He said: “I am surprised at the UKIP candidate taking such a hostile approach in his web blog by blaming the Muslim community for virtually every problem in society.

“I am even more surprised because the candidate has not attended any hustings meetings and has instead hid behind his measly words. Candidates who cherish our long-standing history of democracy, tolerance and respect for human rights would not make such immature and distorted comments.

“There are a number serious charges in the web blog against Muslims which the FMO would be very keen on having a public debate about…”

The same day Islamophobia Today republished an article that originally appeared in The Deccan Herald:

Abhijit Pandya: UKIP Candidate Supports Wilders

Lovely lookin’ fella’ isn’t he? Maybe if he dyes his hair using peroxide he can try to be the British version of Geert Wilders?

If he wasn’t so Brown he’d fit right in with the BNP. I wonder how the EDL folks who want “British to be about British” feel about this lad? Anybody will do who can save us from the dreaded “Muslamic ray guns.”

UKIP by-election candidate backs Geert Wilders, says Islam is ‘morally flawed and degenerate’

Abhijit Pandya, an Indian-origin candidate for the Leicester South byelection, has sparked fury by making critical remarks about Islam in his blog less than a week before the May 5 elections.

Pandya, 31, is the candidate for the UK Independence Party, which is opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union.

On his blog, Pandya called Islam “morally flawed and degenerate” and said he backed Geert Wilders, a controversial Dutch politician who allegedly called Islam a retarded ideology.

And the following day the local paper had more:

UKIP shows itself as silly and nasty

It is not our normal practice, as a politically neutral newspaper, to criticise an individual party during an election campaign, but we will make an exception with UKIP. In the course of two days, readers will have learned of the disturbing views of UKIP’s parliamentary candidate for Leicester South regarding Muslims, and the admission of the party’s leader that it is running a “paper candidate” in the election for mayor of Leicester.

Leicester South hopeful Abhijit Pandya has said the anti-Islamic diatribe published on his blog was an attempt to highlight issues regarding integration and employment “which we should not shy away from discussing.”

Really? To us it seemed like a wildly inflammatory rant which boiled down to a crass and nasty characterisation of Muslims as lazy, intolerant spongers who are a threat to the British way of life. It was not part of a reasoned debate about multiculturalism, but a series of sweeping, unsubstantiated generalisations which demonise the Muslim community.

The matter of UKIP’s “paper candidate” for the mayoral election is obviously a lot less serious. However, we do think that parties should do voters the courtesy of engaging in the electoral process properly rather than just seeking to get their name on the ballot paper. It seems particularly daft to run a candidate in an election, which has a predominately local focus rather than national one, if you have nothing whatsoever to say about local issues.

Voters will make up their own minds on May 5. However, it is difficult to see how anybody can take seriously a party which has managed the distinction of showing itself to be both unpleasant and silly in the course of a single week.

A couple of questions for our British readers:

Do you take Abhijit P.G. Pandya seriously?

After reading all this, do you consider UKIP to be “unpleasant” or “silly”?

If you’re a constituent in Leicester South, you might want to take a closer look at UKIP. It seems there may be some life in the party yet.

The Google Earth and Google Maps Imagery Team will be publishing the latest batch of imagery in our next update, and as always, there are numerous fascinating and notable areas around the world.

One of the areas that was already slated for this regular update is Abbottabad, Pakistan, which is of particular interest given yesterday’s news. The imagery of this area that is currently available in Google Earth and Maps is from 2005. Higher resolution imagery taken in May 2010 has been prepared for our next imagery update release. However, given the number of inquiries we have received about this area, and to help users better understand recent events, we’ve published an advanced preview KML of the new imagery for viewing in Google Earth. This imagery will be pushed live in Google Earth and Maps as part of our next periodic imagery update.

In addition, as part of our continued effort to provide up-to-date imagery, we’ve worked with our provider again to obtain even fresher satellite imagery of Abbottabad, Pakistan from this morning local time. We have provided this imagery, which is of lower resolution than the scheduled update, to the media. This imagery will be accessible in the near future through the Historical Imagery feature of Google Earth.



This round of imagery also includes many other interesting sites, a few of which are shown below.

Here’s an image of the Harris County Court House of 1910, located in downtown Houston, Texas. Here you can see the ongoing restoration of the building, returning to glory its halls of justice. It is one of the most important historical buildings in Houston, and is often considered one of the best examples of historic courthouses in Texas.



Below is an image of part of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In it you can see two industries that are part of the might of Milwaukee: the Harley Davidson factory (right hand side of image) and the Miller Brewing Company (left hand side of image).



Now here’s a colorful sight: the Clipsal 500 Adelaide race, a four-day event consisting of two 250 km races of V8 Supercars. The race is often attended by well over a quarter million people. This photo shows the race in March 2010.



These updates will be made available soon in both Google Maps and Google Earth.

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Brookshire, TX; Brownsville, TX; Dallas, TX; Ft Stockton, TX; Hebbronville, TX; Houston, TX; Laredo, TX; McAllen, TX; Milwaukee, WI; Padre Island, TX; Wharton, TX; Zapata, TX;
Australia: Central Coast, New Castle, and Salamander Bay
Norway: Buskerud, Fredrikstad, and Oslo

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Algeria, Angola, Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Svalbard, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, The Gambia, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, West Bank, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Posted by the Imagery Team

Britain ranks 23rd out of 43 'more developed' countries for children's well-being. Save The Children, who conducted the survey, called it a 'national embarrassment'.

Six out of 1,000 British children will die before their fifth birthday and only four in five attend pre-school, says Save the Children

Children in the UK are worse off than those in Slovenia, Estonia and Greece, according to Save the Children. The charity today ranked the UK 23rd out of 43 "more developed" countries for child wellbeing in its annual State of the World's Mothers report, and said the result was a "national embarrassment".

The report ranked children's wellbeing according to three main factors: pre-primary enrolment, secondary school enrolment and under-five mortality rate.

The charity said it was "particularly concerned" that just 81% of children in the UK were enrolled in pre-primary education.

Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, said: "We know that pre-school nursery or playgroup access helps all children, but especially the poorest. It is a national embarrassment that the UK lags so far behind other countries of a similar size and wealth."

Mr Forsyth criticised government plans to cut support for childcare costs, which he said would hurt the poorest children even further.

"By cutting childcare support, the government is making it harder for low-income parents to return to work but, just as important, more of our poorest children are likely to miss out on pre-school education, a key to later educational achievement," he said.

The charity's report ranked Sweden as the best place for a child's wellbeing, with Italy and Japan in joint second place. Somalia is the worst place on the planet for children's wellbeing.

The UK's under-five child mortality rate – at six per 1,000 live births – was the joint 23rd lowest score out of the 43 countries. The lowest rates were three per 1,000.

And it found that only 81% of children under five were enrolled in pre-school education. In secondary schools, 99% of children were enrolled.

Children in the UK have lower wellbeing than their counterparts in Slovenia, Estonia and Greece, charity Save the Children has said.

Today we would like to welcome back a member of the Team Dignitas family! Our former Enemy Territory player Vaiko 'Night' Vainola is soon returning from his time in the Estonian army and will be joining back in our Enemy Territory squad in exactly three weeks.

Night was part of our lineup that won the Crossfire Intel Challenge 7 but unfortunately had to join the army shortly after that. Now, one year later, he is back to pick up his ingame captain role which he will do while playing the rifle class. He will also be attending the TLR lan event with us in July.

Meet the player

Vaiko 'Night' Vainola Location: Rapla, Estonia Nationality:  Estonian Age: 23

 

We had a little chat with Night, click read more to continue reading!

Call for Papers: IV Autumn Conference of the CECT THINGS IN CULTURE, CULTURE IN THINGS University of Tartu, Estonia October 20–22, 2011 Things in culture, cultures in things and lest we forget, all that stuff in between. Objects, artefacts...

Telegraph.co.uk

Germany and Austria open labour markets amid fears of wage drops Monsters and Critics.com Berlin - Germany and Austria opened their labour markets to eight central and eastern European Union member states on Sunday, as trade unions expressed fears that the move could force down wages. From midnight, citizens of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, ... Germany opens labor market, finallyGlobalPost Germany lifts restrictions on workers from Eastern EuropeFocus News Labor Day May Be Trigger Germany Needs to Ease ShortageBloomberg Financial Times -APA -Scotsman all 124 news articles »

Madrid.- A dos semanas del evento, Francia, Reino Unido, Estonia, Hungría y Suecia son las grandes favoritas para hacerse con la victoria en la 56 edición del Festival de Eurovisión, cuya final se celebrará el próximo día 14 en Düsseldorf (Alemania).

Tanto los expertos en el festival como las principales páginas de apuestas de internet coinciden en señalar a estos países como los candidatos con más opciones, así como en que la representante española, Lucía Pérez, hará bueno el título de su canción, "Que me quiten lo bailao", al quedar relegada en la mejor de las previsiones al puesto 27 de los 43 participantes.

"La canción podría haber representado bien a España hace 20 años", cuenta José García, responsable de la página web www.eurovision-spain.com, que no ve "competitiva" a esta candidatura. Para él, aunque "las canciones alegres gustan, no hay muchas como ella y además actúa en los últimos lugares", por lo que quedar a mitad de tabla ya sería un buen resultado para Lucía.

Daniel Diges, representante español en la edición de 2010, apunta que "cuenta mucho el azar y también la originalidad. Hace dos años ganó un chico con un violín y el año pasado una chica cantando una canción sencilla y moderna".

El intérprete de "Algo pequeñito" recomienda por ello a Lucía Pérez que "disfrute" y que aproveche el trampolín.

Se da la circunstancia de que dos antiguas ganadoras competirán este año por repetir triunfo. Se trata de la israelí Dana International, que presenta "Ding Dong" tras su victoria en 1998 con "Diva", y de la alemana Lena, que cantará "Taken by a stranger", tras lograr una sorpresiva victoria el pasado año con "Satellite".

Las casas de apuestas colocan a la alemana entre las diez canciones mejor clasificadas, frente a Dana International, que tendría que conformarse con puestos intermedios y que, según García, será el "batacazo" de esta edición, "con una canción flojita".

Alemania, junto con Francia y Reino Unido, que han conseguido inmejorables valoraciones con sus representantes, harán posible que 2011 esté también marcado por el regreso a la primera línea de casi todos los miembros del "Big Five" (la televisiones británica, francesa, alemana, italiana y española), esto es, los cinco países que financian la mayor parte del certamen.

"Frente a las acusaciones de que siempre ganan los del Este, la victoria de Alemania el año pasado ha animado a estos países", apunta García.

Reino Unido ha apostado "a caballo ganador", añade en referencia a Blue, "una banda masculina que ha vendido 13 millones de discos en toda Europa", con éxitos comerciales como la revisión junto a Elton John de su tema "Sorry seems to be hardest word".

Francia se presentará con el intérprete lírico Amaury Vassili, que cantará en corso la canción "Sognu".

"Es un tema arriesgado, con un cantante de ópera, lo que le diferencia del resto. Es muy apoteósico, de banda sonora épica y tiene muy buen directo", destaca el responsable de Eurovision-Spain.

Otra de las novedades de la presente edición será el retorno al concurso de Italia, el quinto miembro del "Big Five", tras trece años fuera del evento. Raphael Gualazzi, con "Follia d'amore", fue elegido para este cometido durante el pasado Festival de Sanremo y, según las apuestas, podría rondar también los diez primeros puestos.

Los otros grandes favoritos son artistas surgidos de concursos televisivos de talentos con temas bailables: el sueco Eric Saade, cuya propuesta visual recuerda a la del estadounidense Adam Lambert, con "Popular"; la joven estonia Getter Jaani, con "Rockefeller Street", y la húngara Kati Wolf, con "What about my dreams?".

"Tanto el de Suecia como el de Hungría son temas que gustan mucho a los eurofans, pero yo dudo de su directo", observa García, quien destaca que la sorpresa podría darla Azerbaiyán, con el dúo Ell/Nikki y el tema "Running Scared".

Pese a todo, la historia del festival está lleno de casos en los que los pronósticos no atinan. Así, si el pasado año se daba por segura la victoria de los representantes israelí, noruego o azerí, fue finalmente la alemana quien ha llevado la edición de este año a Düsseldorf, conocida como la ciudad germana de la moda.

Javier Herrero

The national bird of Estonia is the Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica.  Of course, in Estonia the bird is not called Barn Swallow.  In Estonian the term is Suitsupääsukese which, when translated by Google, comes out as Smoke Swallow.*  According to a report by sixth-graders at the International School of Estonia Suitsupääsukese was chosen as the national bird [...]

a

Jim Mickle's Stake Land screened to great response earlier today at HOFF in Estonia to great success. And while promotional activities at home in the US kept him from attending the festival himself Mickle, producer Larry Fessenden and writer-star Nick Damici sent along the introductory video below. Note the bottles on the table. Note that they are not full. It's not news by any means but it makes me giggle....

[Adam Green's Hatchet 2 screens as part of a North American indie spotlight at the HOFF festival in Estonia, providing a handy excuse to revisit a previous review.]Splatter fans will have a field day. Adam Green's sequel to his 2006 slasher flick, which debuted at Fantastic Fest to uproarious popular acclaim (and the Audience Award), provides more of the same bloody, gooey nonsense. It's a hard-core horror movie for hard-core horror movie fans, made by a hard-core horror fan: no more and no less.There's something to be said for integrity, and even though extreme splatter flicks don't nourish me personally, movies like HATCHET II are tailor-made for for their audience. Green picks up the story from the ending of the first film, as Marybeth (Danielle...

Seven months ago when I applied to work as an intern for ÉCU -The European
Independent Film Festival (aka Fun European Project as it said in the
Craiglist job ad!) I had no idea what I was getting myself into. During
these months I have met some of the most interesting people ever, worked
hard, played hard, but most important enjoyed my time while working for
the “Fun European Project”.

My position at the festival has been marketing coordinator, which has
been fun and I didn’t mind spending most of my days on Facebook and
Twitter :), managing social media buzz, getting filmmakers interested in
submitting their work and getting people to attend the festival.

When Scott, President of the festival came to me and offered me the
job to be the new Festival Manager, I had my fears. First, I wasn’t
scared that I couldn’t handle the job – I was afraid of giving my old
job to someone else. It’s tough to let go of something that you are good
at, but it’s also fun to jump into something new and very exciting. And
I am definitely someone who loves challenges and pushing myself faster,
higher and further. My second thought was, what if from now on they
don’t call me Miss Estonia and I just become just The Boss. :)

Is it scary? Yes, of course. Is it going to be heaps of hard work?
Definitely. Am I going to feel that nothing works the way I want it to?
Most probably. But is it going to be tremendously fun? No doubt about
that!

Becoming the Festival Manager after Rhiannon, who did it for four
years, and Teodora who did it for ÉCU 2011 is definitely hard and I will
need to prove myself to many people. But as long as I have my team with
me and as long I know that people trust me, and trust what I am doing I
am going to be just fine. I am very excited and happy to accept this
position – and I cannot wait to put all my ideas into an action.

So what have I learned from working for the festival so far? I have
learnt that if you stay around for long enough, prove yourself to right
people then good things are going to happen and you would get onto a
ride that you can’t imagine, a ride that is hard to get off. So here I
am, standing in front of the carrousel. Am I going to jump on it and
have fun. Am I going to work insanely hard to make 2012 fantastic for
all concerned? Definitely!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------

Il y a 7 mois, j’ai répondu à une offre de stage pour travailler chez
ÉCU (appelé Projet Fun Européen dans l’annonce Craigslist !). Je ne
savais pas dans quoi je m’étais lancée ! Pendant ces derniers mois, j’ai
rencontrée beaucoup de personnes intéressantes et passionnées, j’ai
travaillé comme une folle, j’ai fais la fête comme une folle – en bref,
je me suis énormément amusée en bossant sur ce « Projet Fun Européen ».

Pendant ces derniers mois, j’étais la coordinatrice marketing du
festival. Ce fût marrant et stimulant, ça ne me dérangeais pas de passer
mes journées à travailler sur Facebook et Twitter, de créer du buzz en
ligne, de motiver les cinéastes à soumettre leurs productions, et
d’inciter le public à venir au festival !

Quand Scott, le président du festival m’a offert la position de
coordinatrice du festival 2012, j’ai pris peur – je pensais que je
n’allais pas pouvoir assumer le poste  – et je n’avais pas envie de
laisser mon ancien poste à quelqu’un d’autre ! C’est parfois difficile
de quitter un job où l’on se sent à l’aise parce qu’on est douée… mais
c’est excitant de se lancer dans de nouveaux projets. Je suis quelqu’un
qui adore les challenges et je suis toujours prête à repousser mes
limites et tenter de nouvelles choses. En plus de tout ça, je me suis
demandée si l’équipe continuerai à m’appeler Miss Estonia, et pas tout
simplement Le boss !! :)

Est-ce flippant? Oui, bien sûr. Est-ce que ça va demander une énorme
quantité de travail? Surement. Aurais-je l’impression que malgré mes
efforts, rien ne se passera comme je l’aurais voulu ? Probablement.
Est-ce que ça va être une expérience délirante et fun? Sans aucun doute!

Assumer le rôle de Manager du Festival après Rhiannon, qui la fait
pendant quatre ans, et Teodora, qui l’a fait pour le festival 2011, va
être une tâche difficile ; je vais devoir prouver mon mérite à beaucoup
de personnes. Mais je pense qu’avec l’équipe à mes côtés qui, j’espère,
aura confiance en moi et en les décisions que je prendrais, tout se
passera bien. Je suis contente et excitée d’accepter cette mission – et
j’ai hâte de m’y mettre.

Mon temps et mon travail à ÉCU m’ont déjà appris beaucoup de choses…
que si l’on s’implique, qu’on travaille dur et qu’on fait ses preuves,
on est embarquée dans un manège d’expériences et de rencontres
fantastiques… un manège duquel il est difficile de descendre !
Aujourd’hui, je suis débout devant ce manège. Je vais le prendre, et
m’éclater. Est-ce que je vais faire tout mon possible pour que le
festival 2012 soit fantastique pour tous ? Sans aucun doute !

 

The ACE World Language program is delighted to expand its class offerings this summer with Estonian Culture.

 

 

Date of Issue : 28 April 2011

Here are some new stamps to be issued by Bulgaria and Estonia Post to celebrate International  Year of Forests  with common theme of  Europa 2011 – the year of Forests. The stamps are beautiful and look magnificent !! Bulgaria Post also issues a Miniature sheet with to stamps and two separate sheetlets of each stamp. More new issues of EUROPA 2011 could be seen on this Special Blog . A query from the reader…..given in next section of this Post. Response from the readers will be highly appreciated  !!

Bulgaria

 

Estonia

Date of Issue : 28 April 2011

View complete list of Europa 2011stamps on Europa Stamps

 

 

Query from the readers…

Krishnadevaraya MS…..No of copies ???

I have received enquiries from some of our readers regarding the actual number of MS of Krishnadevaraya issued by India Post on 27 January 2011. The information sheet mentions number of copies of stamps but not the number of MS printed. It will be nice if someone could  answer this question ….. or the officials of Philately section of India Post  could throw some light on this issue….

Great Britain secure their second win at the World Championships with a 7-0 thrashing of Estonia in Ukraine.

With China's rare earth industry blighted by claims of toxic pollution, Estonian company Silmet is stepping up production to meet demand for rare earths essential in the manufacture of electrical gadgets and green technologies

Gedanken über Estland reports [GER] that the Estonian documentary filmer, Oleg Besedin, is accused of anti-Estonian propaganda in the 2010 annual report of Estonia's security police, KaPo. Written by Vilhelm Konnander · comments (0) Share: facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Ergma Blasts Sloganeering of Expat Program ERR News Bring Talent Home is a 120000-euro project funded by EU structural funds that puts Estonians who have wandered abroad in touch with local employers, to bring expats back to Estonia. Critics say the plan is unrealistic, that it seeks to replace local ...

Smart-Grid Technology Planned for $240M Oxford Park Community in Estonia TMC Net Developers of the site—which is located about 30 minutes inland from the seaport and capital city of Tallinn, in scenic Juuru municipality—have announced that they will use smart-grid technology to maximize the project's energy efficiency. ... Oxford Park Plans for Smart Grid TechnologyERR News all 2 news articles »

Summary

Wikitravel users have collectively created a free Estonian phrasebook with the goal of making it possible for travelers to "get by" while traveling in areas where Estonian is spoken.

Wikitravel phrasebooks are available in many languages and each one varies in depth and detail. Most of the phrasebooks include a pronunciation guide, a general phrase list, information about dates and numbers, a color list, transportation-related phrases, vocabulary for shopping and phrases for eating and drinking. Some are even more in depth, and all are free!

From Website

Estonian (eesti keel) is a Finno-Ugric language spoken by roughly 1.1 million people in Estonia. Though closely related to Finnish and distantly to Hungarian, Estonian bears almost no resemblance to any other European language in either vocabulary or grammar.

The lack of Indo-European language structures makes Estonian a rather difficult language to learn. The fact that it has more words of Indo-European origin than Finnish, for instance, it is slightly easier to learn. Even though many people in Estonia (especially young people) speak English and many of the older generation understand Russian, an attempt at some basic phrases will definitely impress the locals and you will receive an enthusiastic welcome.

Estonian (eesti keel; pronounced [ˈeːsti ˈkeːl]) is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities. It is a Uralic language in the Finnic group and is closely related to Finnish.

One distinctive feature that has caused a great amount of interest in linguists is what is traditionally seen as three degrees of phoneme length: short, long, and "overlong", such that /toto/, /toˑto/ and /toːto/ are distinct. In actuality, the distinction is not purely in the phoneme length, and the underlying phonological mechanism is still disputed.

The Estonian alphabet is used for writing the Estonian language and is based on the Latin alphabet, with German influence. As such, the Estonian alphabet has the letters Ä, Ö, and Ü (A, O, and U with umlaut), which represent the vowel sounds [æ], [ø] and [y], respectively. Unlike the German umlauts, they are considered to be separate letters and part of the alphabet, and are alphabetised as separate letters. The most distinguishing letter in the Estonian alphabet, however, is the Õ (O with tilde), which was added to the alphabet in the 19th century by Otto Wilhelm Masing and stands for the vowel [ɤ]. In addition, the alphabet also differs from the Latin alphabet by the addition of the letters Š and Ž (S and Z with caron/háček), and by the position of Z in the alphabet: it has been moved from the end to between S and T (or Š and Ž).

View the Estonian Phrasebook.

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Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev begins on Wednesday his two-day official visit to Estonia.

Former professional cyclist and triathlete Tanja Slater has just launched a new venture focusing on training camps, coaching and events at www.upandactive.com. Throughout her professional career Tanja always helped and coached on many camps as part of her own training, and for the past 18 months she has been coaching on a full time basis. Tanja has been working at the Club La Santa sports resort in Lanzarote for the past 14 months where she led all the swimming and women's only camps, as well as running the triathlon, duathlon and cycling camps. Alongside this she conducted fitness testing and one-to-one swimming, cycling, running and triathlon instruction. Tanja’s first camp will take place in and around the TriStar 111 race in Estonia, August 5th to 12th. Details of the Estonia camp is now live at www.upandactive.com. Further camps and coaching events/weekends will be announced soon as the website and business is developed. Estonia camp information is available HERE. To book your place on the camp and guarantee a room at the event hotel please e-mail tanja@upandactive.com, places are limited. You must enter the race separately at http://www.star-events.cc/site/en/tristar-estonia/sign-up

I had the change to sit down yesterdau with Sweden's finance minister, Anders Borg, on the sidelines of the IMF Spring Meetings here in Washington. Borg described the meetings as the most "relaxed" that he's attended since the start of the financial crisis. Then again, with Sweden raising its growth projections last week and predicting a budget surplus and falling unemployment, he can afford to be more relaxed than some of his colleagues. We talked about the reasons for Sweden's surprising recent success (a combination of bad experience, luck, and good policy), why Sweden is reluctant to participate in a bailout of Portugal, and why he thinks U.S. politicians need to get real and raise taxes.

Our conversation is below the jump:[[BREAK]] 

How have this year's IMF meetings been going?

If I compare it to the other IMF meetings and G-20 meetings that I've been in during the crisis, everyone's much more relaxed now. Most countries, with some small exceptions around the Mediterranean, are in much better shape than they have been. So you don't have the tension that people are under pressure from the economic crisis to the same extent.

Partly I think it's a little bit of a pause before the really tough decisions. For example here in the U.S. when it comes to deficits -- I know because we've done a lot of fiscal restructuring in Sweden that that will bring a lot of political tension -- but we are maybe a year or two before the U.S. will really start to get serious about their deficits.

But it's been probably the most relaxed meetings that I've been to since I've been coming here. People are very much interested in our experience because we tend to be such an outlier in Europe. Sweden's latest growth number was 7.2 percent. The debt figures are coming down.  So people are interested in how this could be -- it's not a simple explanation.

So what is the explanation?

I think it's a combination of bad experience, luck, and good policy. The bad experience is a real asset. What we went through in the early 90s means that around 97, 98 percent of the public agree we should have a balanced budget. The experience of fiscal restructuring is that it's actually people who are less well off who are dependent on welfare, which means that they get a bigger part of the hurt when you do fiscal restructuring.  So that means that everyone says, "we don't want to go back to the '90s. We don't want to go back to the '80s and '70s with inflation and disorder in the labor market. So the bad experience is an asset.

Also, it is a little bit to do with luck. We have a composition with manufacturing, high tech, and iron ore, that is very well situated in the kind of global markets that we now see. Our world market will increase on average 7 percent in the coming years. So we have very strong positioning, which is at least party luck.

The third reason is good policy. We did a lot of structural reforms in 2006 and 2008 with tax cuts, huge restructuring of our early retirement system, and a huge restructuring of our unemployment benefits. That has been a very strong supply-side force on the labor market. So when we went into the crisis, we thought we would have a deficit of some 4 percent.  But the underlying trends from these structural reforms have been so strong that we ended up with very close to a balanced budget.

What's your sense of Europe more broadly? Do you think the crisis is nearing an end?

You have three different things going on at the same time. One is a very strong recovery in Northern Europe. It is not only Sweden that is growing. Estonia, Poland, Finland: all of these countries are forecasted to have around 5 percent growth next year.  Germany is obviously in a much stronger position. So, the northern part of Europe is growing very fast.

This could be an issue in a couple of years, because you still have a lot of problems in the south of Europe, which means that the [European Central Bank] will be very reluctant to raise interest rates. So there is a risk that we could have a more unbalanced development.

We have two really big problems to deal with: one is the banking sector. The recapitalization that is needed in Europe is substantial. Then you have the huge issue of public finances which is both shot-term and long-term. Short term, obviously it's Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. That could be dealt with. The governments are doing the right things. They are increasing VAT rates and the retirement age and so forth.

The other problem is that the whole of Europe is now indebted. So the room for stabilization policy in the next downturn will be very limited. We could have a very severe and harsh crisis the next time we see a slowdown in the world economy.

So from what I understand, Sweden is not interested in participating in a bailout of Portugal?

We have participated in Latvia -- which nobody else did but the Nordics, we participated in Iceland -- which nobody else did but the Nordics, we participated in Ireland -- it's not as obvious why we should do that but we should always try to be working in solidarity. As for Portugal, I think there are still a lot of uncertainties to be answered by the Portuguese government before we make that decision. I would say that it's more unlikely we would participate in the Portuguese case than in Ireland.

Why is that, exactly?

Well there's a limited responsibility. Why did Spain not participate in Latvia? Why didn't France help us with Iceland? Every country has a neighborhood where you can get the taxpayers to accept that we need to chip in. We'll contribute more than a billion dollars through the IMF and EU funds. A billion dollars is quite a lot of money. But we will follow the situation closely and if we have the sense that this is systemic risk, we might have to contribute.

In previous meetings it has seemed like there was a tension between the U.S. pushing a more expansionist monetary policy and European governments favoring austerity measures. Is that tension still there?

For us to say that we would ever be over-expansionary, would be very difficult. The U.S. can be very expansionary. You have 10 percent deficit and interest rates are still hovering around 1,2,3, percent. It's basically only the U.S. that could behave that way. For everybody else it would mean huge bond spreads.  To my mind, the U.S. is saying to the rest of us that we should be more expansionary, but we're also on top of a huge U.S. debt. The markets will not punish the U.S., they will punish everybody else standing on top of that debt. I would be very cautious about running a huge debt like the U.S. because we are a small vulnerable country. That is true of many of these European countries.

Have you been following the budget debate here in the United States? What's your sense as an outside observer?

When you look at fiscal restructuring -- what the U.S. needs to do -- it is very clear that they need to increase taxes and cut expenditures. The most obvious thing to do would be to introduce a VAT. Look at the U.K. They are run by a Tory government -- they increased the VAT. Look at Greece -- it's a Social Democratic government, they've increased VAT. All of these countries have increased VAT because it's a broad-based tax with low costs and limited impact on growth.

It's also quite clear that the U.S. doesn't have control over its healthcare sector. The cost control of Medicare and Medicaid doesn't really work. We've all seen the Congressional Budget Office projections so it is quite obvious that you need to strengthen the revenue side, but also have much better control of the expenditure side.

I'm not sure to what degree people in Sweden are aware of this, but in U.S. political debates, your country is often used as a kind of code word for socialism, high taxes and a generous welfare state. Do you think this view Americans have of Sweden is still accurate?

During [the Moderate Party's] period in government, we've cut taxes quite substantially. For ordinary people, we've cut them the most. We've also been restructuring our social welfare system. But our idea is that you can keep social cohesion by giving priority to education, healthcare. Everyone, regardless of income can get good healthcare and good education. We think that we are modernizing the Swedish model, making it more flexible, and trying to keep as much social cohesion as we can.

If you feel like the gap between the world's rich and poor is widening, you may be right.

Since the 1980s, countries like New Zealand, Israel, and the United States have seen their populations become less equal, based upon rapid income growth for those countries richest. Others like Turkey and Chile have become more equal as a result rapid development.

Inequality is measured using the Gini coefficient, which is imperfect, but a good indicator of inequality within countries. The larger the Gini coefficient, the more unequal a country is.

Note: Measured using the Gini coefficient, the OECD average is 0.31. We've listed all those countries which are equal to, or above that average, according to OECD data. The list is limited to OECD countries.

#16 Estonia

Gini coefficient: 0.31

Annual change in the Gini coefficient mid-1980s to late 2000s: NA

Source: OECD

#15 Poland

Gini coefficient: 0.31

Annual change in the Gini coefficient mid-1980s to late 2000s: NA

Source: OECD

#14 Korea

Gini coefficient: 0.32

Annual change in the Gini coefficient mid-1980s to late 2000s: NA

Source: OECD

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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See Also:

• The Hardest Working Countries In The World
• 14 Must See Charts From The Epic IMF Report On The State Of The World Economy
• The Most Heavily Taxed Countries In The World

Tallinn 2011

Watch Free Live HOCKEY Streaming Poland Vs Estonia WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP WCH B April 18 2011 Streaming Via Online TV

Watch Free Live HOCKEY Streaming Poland Vs Estonia WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP WCH B April 18 2011 Streaming Via Online TV