While Ukraine crisis escalates many American's do not even know where Ukraine is located

The British Guardian reports today that pro-Russian activists in Ukraine's industrial centre of Donetsk have proclaimed their independence from Kiev and pledged to hold a referendum in the next month, provoking fears that Moscow could be orchestrating a second Crimea scenario in Ukraine's east.

"Seeking to create a popular, legitimate, sovereign state, I proclaim the creation of the sovereign state of the people's republic of Donetsk," said a man into a loudspeaker outside the seized regional administration building to a cheering crowd.

The protesters said they would hold a referendum no later than 11 May on the region's status, and also asked Russia to ready "peacekeeping troops", in a scenario reminiscent of the events that led to the annexation of Crimea last month.

In Kiev, the interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said events in the east were being carried out according to a script written in Moscow.

But is this "storm in a cup of soup" really important to the US or to Europe for that matter? The Washington post recently reported: "On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans (fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI), what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. 

We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views. 

We also found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted the U.S.  to intervene with military force."

EU-Digest

The Netherlands: McDonald's Small Wrap Kills Dutch Teenager Following Allergic Reaction

McDonald's announced it has stopped the sale of a 'Small Wrap Saté' in the Netherlands following the death of a 17-year-old teenager after he got a severe allergic reaction in a McDonald franchise in Amsterdam  from eating the wrap.

The saté wrap, selling for €2 in the Netherlands, consists of  "fried chicken and onions in a spicy peanut sauce", kown in the Netherlands as.Saté sauce. Saté sauce, which has its origins in Indonesia, became a very popular sauce in the Netherlands and is even eaten there on french fries.

A spokesperson  for McDonald's confirmed the product has been withdrawn but declined to give any further information as to questions about warning labels on McDonald's products which contain peanut products or have been prepared in the vicinity of peanut products.

EU-Digest

Technology - Netherlands is working on national robotics program - Hannover Messe April 7 - 11, 2014

The Netherlands is working on a national program to increase the use of robots and automation in industry, the Financieele Dagblad said.

A report entitled Smart Industry and drawn up by the economic affairs ministry, employers' organisation FME and the TNO research institute will be presented at the Hannover Messe trade fair.

The report will form the basis of a more in depth action plan to be finalized later this year.

EU-Digest

European Council - Successful EU-Africa Summit

The 4th EU-Africa Summit, April 2 - 3, 2014 brought together more than 60 EU and African leaders, and a total of 90 delegations, to discuss the future of EU-Africa relations and reinforce links between the two continents. In the summit declaration, leaders highlighted the close nature of EU-Africa relations and the shared values of democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law and good governance as well as the right to development.

Leaders recognised the importance of peace and security as essential prerequisites for development and prosperity. In particular, they confirmed their commitment to enhancing political dialogue on international criminal justice and universal jurisdiction. Leaders also gave their support to the African aspiration and commitment to ensuring peace and stability in Africa and agreed to support African capabilities in this area through any available means, with a particular focus on capacity-building. Both continents agreed to strengthen common effort to fight international terrorism and to combat the spread.

Leaders pledged to pursue policies to create jobs and stimulate long-term growth on both continents. In particular the two continents agreed to cooperate more closely in the field of maritime policy. The EU also underlined its commitment to continuing to support African countries in the preparation of climate-resilient and low-emission development strategies. Leaders on both sides highlighted the importance of ensuring prudent and transparent management of respective natural resources, and responsible mineral sourcing.

The summit declaration also underlines the importance of encouraging greater investment and economic development within and between countries in both continents, alongside developing transport, access to drinking water and to sustainable and affordable energy.  successful

Read more: European Council - EU-Africa summit 2014

Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism seen through the eyes of Noam Chomsky - by Javier Sethness

There can be little doubt about the centrality and severity of the environmental crisis in the present day. Driven by the mindless "grow-or-die" imperative of capitalism, humanity's destruction of the biosphere has reached and even surpassed various critical thresholds, whether in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, or chemical pollution. Extreme weather events can be seen pummeling the globe, from the Philippines - devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November of last year - to California, which is presently suffering from the worst drought in centuries.

As Nafeez Ahmed has shown, a recently published study funded in part by NASA warns of impending civilizational collapse without radical changes to address social inequality and overconsumption. Truthout's own Dahr Jamail has written a number of critical pieces lately that have documented the profundity of the current trajectory toward anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) and global ecocide: In a telling metaphor, he likens the increasingly mad weather patterns brought about by ACD to an electrocardiogram of a "heart in defibrillation."

Rather than conclude that such distressing trends follow intrinsically from an "aggressive" and "sociopathic" human nature, reasonable observers should likely associate the outgrowth of these tendencies with the dominance of the capitalist system, for, as Oxfam noted in a January 2014 report, the richest 85 individuals in the world possess as much wealth as a whole half of humanity - the 3.5 billion poorest people - while just 90 corporations have been responsible for a full two-thirds of the carbon emissions generated since the onset of industrialism.

As these staggering statistics show, then, the ecological and climatic crises correspond to the extreme concentration of power and wealth produced by capitalism and upheld by the world's governments. As a counter-move to these realities, the political philosophy of anarchism - which opposes the rule of both state and capital - may hold a great deal of promise for ameliorating and perhaps even overturning these trends toward destruction. Apropos, I had the great good fortune recently to interview Professor Noam Chomsky, renowned anarcho-syndicalist, to discuss the question of ecological crisis and anarchism as a remedy. Click on the link below for a transcript of our conversation.

Read more: Noam Chomsky: Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism

Global Economy: Yes, the stock market is rigged - by Timothy Noah

An entertaining CNBC clip currently rocketing through social media networks shows William O’Brien, president of BATS Global Markets, having conniptions over Michael Lewis’s claim (in his new book, Flash Boys) that the markets are rigged. Now that O’Brien has finished reading Lewis’s book, I recommend that he pick up David W. Maurer’s 1940 classic, The Big Con.

The Big Con (not to be confused with a 2007 book with the same title by journalist Jonathan Chait) is an affectionate catalog of the elaborate confidence games played during the golden age of the grift – a period that began in the late 19th century and ended with the Great Depression. In the book, Maurer describes a big con called “the wire” that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever watched the 1973 movie The Sting (which drew heavily on Maurer’s research):

It was a racing swindle in which the con men convinced the victim that with the connivance of a corrupt Western Union official they could delay the race results long enough for him to place a bet after the race had been run, but before the bookmakers received the results.

In essence, the mark was invited to profit by receiving, illegally, information a few minutes before it was available to anyone else. (What the victim didn’t know was that the Western union office and the gambling den were both fakes.) This is, more or less, what Wall Street’s high-frequency traders and the proliferating exchanges that serve them do: they manipulate the speed at which market information travels so that a lucky few can benefit financially from privileged early access at the expense of everybody else.

They do this not by slowing down the rate at which the information travels, but by speeding it up. In this instance, the acquisition of privileged information is perfectly legal. Also, the privileged access is real, making the dupe not the trader who seeks it but anybody who lacks it.

The rap against Lewis’s book is that he exaggerates the degree to which any of this affects the ordinary investor. And it’s true that any lone day trader who logs onto his E*Trade account expecting to outperform the big institutional investors should have his head examined. But Lewis makes clear in Flash Boys that it took many very intelligent bankers (and consequently many investors) several years to figure out why their computer terminals went blooey when they attempted futures trades. Prices were changing in mid-transaction, seemingly in response to orders they were still keying in. If that isn’t a rigged market, what is?

Lewis’s book describes an insane competition to provide the shortest fiber-optic link to market information (and therefore shave off a few crucial millionths of a second). The process leads to, among other travesties, the drilling of dedicated tunnels through mountains and under rivers in rural Pennsylvania. In Lewis’s view, this arms race can’t be regulated away. His book’s hero, Brad Katsuyama, fights it by creating a new exchange, IEX Group, that slows down all trades sufficiently to put all buyers and sellers on a level playing field.

Perhaps Lewis is right that the market is better-positioned than the government to solve this particular problem, in which case good luck to Katsuyama and anyone who might set up a similarly un-rigged shop. The advent of a market-based “slow investment” movement comparable to the “slow food” movement advocated by Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters and writer Michael Pollan would certainly be welcome. (Something like it seems to have worked out pretty well for Warren Buffett.)

But Flash Boys, along with Lewis’s previous The Big Short, conveys a larger message that the financial markets, with their “dark pools” and ever-more-abstruse financial instruments, are rapidly losing the transparency necessary for them to work properly – a problem the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation only partially addresses. As enthralling as Lewis’s new narrative is, his message that the markets are rigged won’t surprise anyone (except, apparently, the enraged William O’Brien). Financial regulators’ foremost task right now is to drag American finance into the sunlight in every way that it can.

That Wall Street will fight them every step of the way merely confirms how rigged the game really is.

Read more: Yes, the stock market is rigged | MSNBC

EU-Turkish Relations: Erdogan victory puts icy Turkey-EU relations in deep freeze - by Luke Baker

Sunday's resounding victory by the ruling AK Party in Turkey's local elections, undiminished by what some call an authoritarian turn by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, is likely to put already cool relations between Ankara and Brussels in the chiller.

After months of revelations of high-level corruption and the furore caused by the government's blocking of Twitter and YouTube, Turkey finds itself at sharp odds with the European Union, which it has been negotiating to join since 1999.

Too much has been invested in the process to call talks off - trade, energy and infrastructure links make it as hard to break off as to push ahead. But the EU is very unlikely to nudge Ankara's accession hopes along until Erdogan shows he is prepared to protect civil liberties, justice and the rule of law - and govern like a mainstream European prime minister.

As if to underline that point, the European Commission delivered a terse statement within hours of final results showing AKP won 46 percent of the nationwide vote, a significantly higher tally than many expected.

"Following the overall worrying developments which have taken place over the past three months,  Turkey ... now urgently needs to re-engage fully in reforms in line with European standards," a Commission spokeswoman said.

"It also needs to reach out to all citizens, including those which are not part of the majority vote, in order to build the strongest possible engagement on reforms needed to make progress on EU accession."

There is scant evidence Erdogan is listening, or feels he needs to. As leader of a country of nearly 75 million people which acts as an energy and trade hub and an anchor in an often unstable region, he sees Turkey as holding an upper hand. He might be right, but he could also be terribly wrong.

His attitude to EU membership since coming to power has been summed up as "Europe needs Turkey more than we need them". That self-confidence will only have been reinforced by Sunday's results, which give him a powerful  mandate.

"He'll be feeling 500 feet tall today, which makes him ruthless and able to do anything', said Amanda Paul, a Turkey expert at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think-tank.

"It's a lot of power in the hands of a man who has become increasingly unpredictable and authoritarian," she said, suggesting it would have an impact on EU relations.

Read more: Erdogan victory puts icy Turkey-EU relations in deep freeze | Reuters