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John Quiggin 
New ozone-destroying chemicals discovered in atmosphere. Should I be worried? I doubt we can achieve anything like the Montreal Protocol consensus again. Oh, and have a gr888t day!
Europe is on a hiding to nothing in trying to tell Russia what to do in Crimea and Ukraine. Why does the West fell it necessary to interfere in Ukraine? This is a Ukraine / Russia issue. There is nothing the West can do that would be constructive. Rather, it would again be destructive interference by the West in matters best left alone. The West’s involvement will only make matters worse.
Russia is a nuclear superpower. You can’t tell it what to do in its own backyard. Russia is an energy superpower. The EU is a collapsing energy minnow. Its periphery is already plundered and decaying and now it wants to plunder Ukraine apparently.
The EU needs Russian energy. Russia does not really need the EU or its products. Pushing Russia will push it further into the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation). Confrontation with Russia over Ukraine is a geostrategic mistake. Militarily, Russia can never afford to give up its Black Sea ports. It would fight a war (including using tactical nukes if necessary) to keep them. The West can’t bluff Russia out of Crimea. It would be foolish and dangerous to try.
If the West starts a proxy war of Ukraine vs Russia that could lead anywhere, even very likely to nuclear war. It would be rank stupidity.
I was struck by these stories in this Saturday’s SMH. I wonder if you or any of your correspondents would like to comment:
Puncturing the coal-seam gas job creation PR balloon: http://www.smh.com.au/business/ignore-page-count-just-note-number-on-the-front-20140307-34cre.html?skin=text-only
But boosterism is alive and well—The global economic corridor: wonder jobs creator?
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/the-good-news-on-jobs-20140307-34chw.html
(Note claim about doubling of labour productivity in the CBD: measured how? And what does the last line in the article mean?)
Meanwhile consumers continue to be squeezed:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/concerns-as-financial-advisers-hunt-bonuses-on-life-insurance-policies-20140307-34cpt.html
And questionable business practices continue:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/bill-lewski-sweats-prime-trust-decision-while-investing-in-isle-of-man-gambling-shop-20140307-34cu3.html?skin=text-only
I was reading the news about new NASA stuff, and had an idea for dropping a probe into Neptune that would be buoyant at certain pressures where interesting stuff might be happening. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but it’s an interesting idea.
I got into an argument with someone over whether it was better to do a job guarantee or a basic income stipend, with me arguing for the latter – I said you’d get beneficial effects at a lower cost, and don’t have to do a lot more extra monitoring and verification like you’d have to do with the job guarantee.
Europe may have lost the Crimean region but Russia may have lost the rest of the Ukraine .Its a cute idea of Putins that you can invade on a humanitarian mission to protect citizens that speak your language from terrorists. There must be some English speakers there that the US could go and protect too if they hadnt trashed their moral authority in the middle east and elsewhere !
In Abbotts speech to the loggers he said ‘god’ gave ‘mother nature’ to ‘man’ to use and ‘husband ‘ into the future. That crackpot religious language reminds me of the sort of thing Taliban leaders say, but I havent seen it remarked upon in the mass media here. Then to the dismay of most mainstream commentators senator Ludlam calls Abbott out and gets 700000 hits on youtube for his efforts. This juxtaposition shows the size of the generational divide developing . Those currently in charge are on the wrong side of it and will eventually be crushed . By then tho most of them will have finished living out their lives in the comfortable bubble they created or will be safely tucked into private nursing homes or gated retirement estates ,leaving others to clean up the mess.
There’s a bit of frog-boiling going on: the media have judged, probably correctly, that the public wouldn’t believe Abbott is governing according to fundamentalist religious principles and would perceive such claims as a partisan attack. So until he goes the full George Bush and announces that Australia needs to take on Gog and Magog, his pronouncement in the name of god will be passed off as acceptably secular.
@drsusancalvin
The hole in the ozone layer helps let heat out, so it’s not all bad news if its rate of restoration is slowed. The effect is only small but it is there. Perhaps at some point we’ll see players on the anti-human team suggest we can easily control global warming by destroying the ozone layer. Their slogan can be, “We don’t need to mine less coal. We just need to destroy more ozone!” Or maybe they will claim burning coal is an environmental good since it produces ozone and ignore the detail that we only want ozone up high in the atmosphere on account of how it’s toxic. Other ozone trivia: There are apparently places in China and India that are over a degree warmer than they would be otherwise thanks to local greenhouse warming from ozone pollution and a major reason why China is so dependent on soybean imports from the US and other countries is because soybeans and related plants are particularly susceptable to ozone pollution.
The MSM in Australia may not have picked up on Abbott’s religious language, but the nutters in the US seem to have noticed.
@sunshine
Soviet Russia lost or ceded the whole of Ukraine formally on or about 26 December 1991. I am not sure in what sense Russia has “owned” Ukraine since; maybe as a client state. It has leased Crimean bases on a long term lease deal since then. Russia originally ceded Crimea to the Ukraine Soviet on 19 February 1954. A potted history going back is that Crimea was part of Soviet Russia from 1917-1954. It was part of Imperial Russia from 1783–1917. It formed part of the Crimean Khanate 1441–1783 partially contested by the Ottoman Empire at that time. The rest of “Ukraine” about that time was part of the Poland or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Throughout earlier centuries:”Crimea was invaded or occupied successively by the Goths (AD 250), the Huns (376), the Bulgars (4th–8th century), the Khazars (8th century), the state of Kievan Rus’ (10th–11th centuries), the Byzantine Empire (1016), the Kipchaks (the Kumans) (1050), and the Mongols (1237).” (1.)
By the above history, does Ukraine have any more title to Crimea than Russia? I think not. The notion that precedent, even recent precedent should determine who owns or who should own Crimea is absurd. Where would you take the precedent from, which century? Another alternative, division by ethnic language lines makes at least at much if not more sense than claiming modern Ukraine’s recent 22 year ownership as precedent.
The most realistic ownership is that determined by Realpolitik, that is to say power. All arguments used by all sides are merely self-interested and opportunistic arguments seeking to bolster positions with no more logical or moral force than other positions. I am saying that both Ukraine’s and Russia’s claims are roughly supportable or dubious in equal measure. The West’s interference makes the situation worse not better. There is no way to satisfy all parties. The Realpolitik solution is the only realistic solution.
All international disputes (and international balances) are finally decided by power no matter how much we might wish it and rationalise it otherwise. The West plus the USSR won WW2 not because they were right but because they were more powerful. On balance the West was in the right at that time . Arguably USSR was not in the right and scarcely preferable to the Nazis in any way. But the winners still were not determined by a balance of right but simply by the balance of might.
1. Wikipedia.
@Ikonoclast
I agree . I guess I am wondering if the Ukraine will end up looking East and the Crimean region looking West in the sense of where those people see their cultural future being, and, I am assuming there are growing differences between the two outlooks (Russian and Western ) that will become exaggerated and further entrenched as time passes .
Footnote: I realise my advocacy of Realpolitik in this case looks callous. However, I think that the least misery and deaths would be caused by allowing the re-acquisition of Crimea by Russia. Fighting it could lead to a huge Ukraine-Russia war perhaps on the scale of the Iraq-Iran war. This could entail almost Soviet era strategies and tactics involving static lines, artillery and “fire-sacks” or “kill-boxes” to halt ground offensives: in other words huge casualties. And that is a best case scenario if Ukraine holds for while. Russia could well get a rapid armoured breakthrough to Kiev with vastly superior air support.
That is without the West getting involved. If the West got involved by assisting proxies in any remotely significant way or by providing air support it could rapidly escalate to nuclear war. The risks are simply not worth it. The West should stop huffing and puffing for its own moral vanity and quietly accept a Russian status quo in Crimea.
correction- swap ‘East’ and ‘West’ above
@Ikonoclast
Did you read the transcript of Putin’s press conference the other day?
It’s quite long but really worth reading.
It seems like the whole “who will ‘win’ Ukraine – US or Russia?” thing is coming from the US rather than Russia. Here is a snippet:
Hardly the words of a pro-invasion hawk. Compared to the totally unhinged stuff coming out of neo-con central it is positively level-headed statesmanship.
PS: ‘Automatic earth” has an interesting column today about oil, gas and the EU ‘threats’, which seem implausible.
PPS: There was a laughable attempt at non-issue journalism in brisbanetimes yesterday about “Putin may not come to Brisbane for the G20”. Maybe he’s scared of our draconian anti-VLAD laws? boom-tish!
@Megan
Well, I trust Russia and the USA as far as I could throw each of them. But I think the West is being the most provocative and de-stabilising in this case. There is certainly evidence of Western provocation and covert assistance to some West Ukrainian neo-nazis. The US has a lot of form in de-stabilising democracies and helping thugs into power when it suits it. The recent Ukraine PM was probably corrupt as were the few before him. At the same time he elected more or less democratically. But the process used to remove him was not democratic or lawful. So how “lawful” is the current government? Does it really have lawful jurisdiction to comment on a referendum in Crimea?
That is my whole rationale. Just who is morally right or legally lawful in this messy situation is completely muddy and obscure. Realpolitik (power) will determine what happens anyway. In addition, the realpolitik solution (Russia controls Crimea in some form) reduces the chances of all out conventional war and/or limited or unlimited nuclear war.
Realpolitik or offensive realism holds;
(1) The international system is “anarchic” meaning the situation is as expounded in point 2.
(2) There is no actor above states capable of regulating their interactions; states must arrive at relations with other states on their own or via alliances.
(3) The international system exists in a state of constant antagonism.
(4) States are the most important actors.
(5) All states within the system are unitary, rational actors.
(6) States tend to pursue self-interest.
(7) States strive to attain as many resources as possible (relative gain).
(8) The primary concern of all states is survival. (No other goal can be met if survival is not met.)
(9) States build up military to survive, which may lead to a security dilemma.
Responding to Ikonoklast above, Russia supplies about 34 per cent of EU gas (one of many sources of energy). EU takes about 84 per cent of Russian gas. EU is responsible for about half of Russia’s foreign trade. Russia is responsible for about 10 per cent of EU trade. It’s pretty clear who needs whom most.
Available now at the SMH website (films) is ‘Outing The One Per Cent’ made by an inheritor of the Johnson and Johnson family fortune. I wanna shake that man’s hand. He’s like the like Michael Moore of the bourgeoisie. A must watch.
http://www.smh.com.au/tv/Documentary/The-One-Percent-4290303.html
We’re on the turn.
Moreover, and here’s a promise, if I don’t hear back from regular contributors to the site saying something along the lines of eff-me-dead, that’s superb doco by a superb human, then I’ll never post here again. A negative outcome will free us all 🙂
aggregate figures can be misleading. what is important is not france which has kept its nuclear power but germany which has not and has to make up the difference from somewhere.
Germany Marches East – Russia Moves West, Putin’s Energy Diplomacy
Im assuming Crimea will join Russia, Russia wont go for more than that, no outside power will risk war, and there wont be meaningful sanctions. Then ,in time everything will be back to business as usual for most of us. But ,lots of Ukrainians will be even less impressed with Russia for a long time.
@jungney
Yes – a good doco insight to the weird secretive world of the born rich American.
@John Quiggin
That is standard economic reasoning and thus incorrect. It ignores physics, political economy and geostrategy (as orthodox economics always does). In a world of primary resource and energy shortages (which has now arrived), a major country (Russia) whose biocapacity is still above its ecological footprint is better off to face the long term future than countries in the reverse situation. Every major country in the EU has an ecological footprint larger than its biocapacity. In addition, no EU country has a significant amount of oil left, relative to its consumption, except Norway.
In a position of enforced autarky, Russia could survive on its own resources better than Europe. In fact, an EU facing autarky would collapse even more rapidly than it is already collapsing. This is not to deny that Russia would suffer from a cessation of bilateral trade in the short to mid term. Russia could, over time, reorient (pun?) its trade to China. I assume you have heard of China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation? Can you seriously suggest that the EU can now provide Russia with anything that China cannot? I mean given the fact that China is now the workshop of the world.
The West is making a set of miscalculations based on an outdated assessment of its own power. EU power will collapse soon and badly, although US power will hold up relatively well (unless it destroys itself internally with inequity). Nato seems blind to the reorientation of the power balance of the world. China will more and more outbid the West, particularly the EU, for world oil supplies. At least it will do this while the US permits a more or less free market to operate in oil (which it may not).
Long term, all zones of the world are in now serious trouble (resource-wise) with the relative exceptions of Russia, US/Canada (as a resource block), Brazil and Australia and a few minor countries from the likes of Finland to New Zealand. These are the nations/regions which are yet to move into ecological overshoot. In a world of decline, to overshoot later and decline slower (eg. Russia) will be to become relatively more powerful.
China can continue its overshoot by plundering and bidding for remaining world resources. China may even still surpass the USA economically by about 2015 to 2025. If so, its number one status is likely to be brief. It will then collapse much more rapidly than USA/Canada contracts. Russia will be best placed to face the enforced regional autarky of the new era. Once many key commodities are scarce, general exports in those commodities will be banned by countries needing the remaining resources for domestic consumption.
A completely new era is emerging and you don’t understand or won’t accept the evidence for its new parameters. I mean, you quote one import/export statistic and make the blind and false assumption that there are no physical limits affecting geopoltical entities (which are doing so at different rates) and that there are no evolving political, military or geostrategic parameters which might alter the pure economic calculation. The empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise. The world is much messier than mere economic theory. It is also constrained by real resources even though orthodox economics ignores this basic physical fact.
Ikonoclast, you wrote, “Can you seriously suggest that the EU can now provide Russia with anything that China cannot?” Well, since the EU is China’s largest source of imports, I would seriously suggest that the EU could provide Russia with the sort of goods that China imports.
@jungney
Yep, a good watch.
@Ronald Brak
And I would seriously suggest China could export to Russia rather than to the EU, particularly if Russia re-directs oil and gas exports to China. Again, aggregate figures hide a lot, but they suggest that the EU needs China a hell of a lot more than China needs the EU. The EU needs to sell to China. China can sell to Russia and even to its domestic 1.3 billion. I.E. It can substiture domestic demand for international demand if need be. China and Russia together could cut the EU right out of the loop.
The EU has no primary resources left to speak of and makes nothing that China could not tool up to make in 5 years. The EU is an empty shell and collapsing like a house of cards (to deliberately mix metaphors). Its southern periphery is already in obvious terminal decline (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Albania, Greece and the Balkans.)
If the West wants to play the sanctions game, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is potentially a more self-reliant block long term than the EU-USA (because the EU book-end is falling over now).
But cutting back to the basic facts. Is it worth anything from a trade war, to a regional war to a nuclear war to stop Russia holding Crimea? Of course not. So our politicians should stop posturing and admit they will do nothing and can do nothing.
Alfred beat me to it.
In addition to EU gas imports, EU gets about 34% of its oil from Russia. There is no way they are going to cut off that nose to spite that face. Especially given the Russia/Germany dynamic and the US (unintended) publicly known attitude being let’s “Fu*k the EU!”.
And Ikon I would quibble with this:
If the 1% want to move commodities around they will. Potato famine style, and scarcity for local consumption be damned.
aggregate figures hide the fact that all the russians would need do is bring down germany, bring down germany and you bring down europe. it is obvious they have the means now to bring down germany and the fact of this is affecting policy. -a.v.
Re Media Watch tonight about the Australian’s editing of Letters to the Editor, let’s broaden the view. Last time I sent a letter to The Age, they rang up and suggested that I amend it to congratulate the Age for reporting on the issue in the first place! And that was 20 years ago; I gave up writing letters to them after that; one of the few places for consumer sovereignty was lost. Maybe they should call it Letters Approved by the Editor.
The recent News articles (including a Melb Herald Sun editorial last week) on the Chinese buyer threat to Aussie home buyers is obviously overplayed as the stats relate to *new* homes, a small annual increment (10-15%?), and its incidence is amplified by the law which prevents them from buying established *second-hand* homes. The Clive Hamilton article in the Guardian a few weeks ago “Foreign demand is making Sydney’s housing problem worse” fuelled this, which has led to a long apologia (my word) on their website. Maybe Clive would like to comment here?
I noticed on one day last week that the Melb Herald Sun had on the front page a story saying that AFL footballers were worried (!) they weren’t going to get all the extras they wanted from higher revenues, and on the same day the Age had a front page photo of football captains.
This is all good – it confirms that the MSM is spiralling down into a rats nest of attention-seeking behaviour and entertainment, bugger a commitment to report the truth. Abdicating its throne should be revelatory to punters of its contemporary function.
Pity the new Saturday Review is such a lightweight publication (more of Mike Seccombe;s expansive musings.) Looks like the online blogs and journals, Guardian, Crikey, Mr Denham etc. will win attract the thinking class.
@jungney
Wow what a dude that Milton Friedman is – not. Thanks for the link.
The right seem to be shifting towards fascism with some impressively anti-democracy points being made on catallaxy:
I.e. The “cultured” and wealthy should get a political veto over the views of the “irresponsible” majority.
@Megan
Putin says now, ‘I would like to stress that I believe only the people living in a given territory have the right to determine their own future.’
How committed was he to applying this principle to Chechnya?
The most comprehensive review of the Ukraine that offers detailed and even more alarming information about the role of fascism there. The author notes that the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the World Jewish Congress have made a statement (no link) stating that Ukrainian fascists are a genuine concern.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/10/ukraine-the-sovereignty-argument-and-the-real-problem-of-fascism/
@J-D
I don’t know. I’m no expert and not a Putin water-carrier.
But interestingly, I’m re-reading Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”.
The “Chicago Boys” were hell bent on on bringing “extreme-capitalism” to Russia after the USSR collapsed. They backed Yeltsin because he would follow their extreme version of ‘free-market’ ideology.
Of course it resulted in mass poverty and misery as everything was looted by crooks who became billionaires. The public didn’t like this at all and were set to throw out Yeltsin at the upcoming election (pg 232):
Putin, in the interview, was warning about the destructiveness of just that sort of military adventurism.
Mr Luca Belgiorno-Nettis of Transfield Holdings is upset.
From ABC News: “As well as the artists’ protest, Mr Belgiorno-Nettis was subject to a social media campaign including a wave of tweets accusing him of making money out of “concentration camps” and children in detention.”
Of course they are concentration camps. Did he think they were holiday camps?
@David Allen
The most recent edition of “Time” describes them as “concentration camps”.
What upsets the establishment class (ALP/LNP/Media) is that the non-violent protest action is having an effect. So they’re furiously attacking the public for speaking out against the gulags, rather than doing the obvious thing and closing them down.
Most people here are probably too young to remember the 1973 oil embargo that destroyed the United States as a unified nation and allowed the rise of the Nippon-Commonwealth Prosperity Union that served as a counter to the EU block. You’ve probably seen the recent Nippon science fiction anime down at the cinema that speculated that if oil prices hadn’t dropped as a result of the falling demand that followed the destruction of the US, the Soviet Union would have had the foreign exchange necessary to feed its people and modernise its economy, but to me that seemed a bit far fetched. The recent food for bombs aid deal brokered by the Californian Republic is a prime example of just how utterly devastated the US was by the oil embargo. Inspectors found not one single functional nuclear missile in all the territories formally known as the United States.
Only today I read on a US website that the UK and some other Europeans …the Germans…are very worried about the US call for sanctions on Russia
They see them as unworkable and very damaging to their own economies…especially Germany which has a huge trade with Russia…in exchange for Russian oil and gas
It also suggested that the Russians might demand payment for all their energy,in gold bullion..thereby cutting the US Dollar out of the muti-billion trade deal,and dealing it a terrible blow
I absolutely agree with Megan and her comments on NAOMI KLEIN’s BOOK ON THE DEVESTATION WROUGHT TO ORDINARY RUSSIANS BY THE FREE MARKET IDE0LOGUES IN THE 1990ies…NOTABLY SACHS
This and Putin’s role in normalising the Russian economy later is probably at the base of the support he enjoys
I know from a friend that Russians pensioners were in their millions…reduced to poverty on a vast scale…many sold their flats to have m,oney to eat and live and they were in dire trouble…in time Putin has restored the value of such pensions and done much else to help the elderly
The demonisation of him in the West follows a familiar pattern by those in the service of the USA
@Megan
It seems odd to me to quote Putin and then to express no interest at all in whether his sincerity can be relied on.
The evidence of the Second Chechen War favours the conclusion that Putin has no sincere belief in the principles he’s now enunciating in the Crimean case and is merely paying opportunistic lip service to them in the hope that some people will be gullible enough to put more weight on his words than on his deeds.
@J-D
Of course, Putin is an absolutist in spirit and often in effect. He heads the Chekist government of Russia. It seems very likely that the orders to poison Alexander Litvenenko in a way both subtle and flagrant (1), with Polonium-210, came right from the top. Yet, Obama orders drone-strike murders (sometimes hitting innocent wedding parties among other collateral victims) which are considerably less discriminate. It is not possible to hold that Putin and the Chekists are morally blacker than Obama and the US secret security apparatus.
You pay no attention to what Putin says just as you should pay no attention to what Obama says. All that is involved finally are Realpolitik superpower calculations. Neither pays any attention to moral dimensions. Given that it is realpolitiks, it is now time for the West to pull back a little. There is no advantage to the EU in trying to absorb poverty-stricked, resource poor Ukraine. There is no advantage in starting a trade war and certainly no advantage in starting a hot war. There is no advantage in further pushing Russia further into the arms of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Note 1. Polonium poisoning is subtle while undetected. That is not quite the truism it sounds. “Doctors and Scotland Yard investigators could not detect polonium earlier because it does not emit gamma rays, which are encountered with most radioactive isotopes. Unlike most common radiation sources, polonium-210 emits only alpha particles that do not penetrate even a sheet of paper or the epidermis of human skin, thus being invisible to normal radiation detectors in this case. Hospitals only have equipment to detect gamma rays. Both gamma rays and alpha particles are classified as ionizing radiation which can cause radiation damage. An alpha-emitting substance can cause significant damage only if ingested or inhaled, acting on living cells like a short-range weapon. Litvinenko was tested for alpha-emitters using special equipment only hours before his death.” – Wikipedia.
“Nick Priest, a nuclear scientist and expert on polonium who has worked at most of Russia’s nuclear research facilities, says that although the execution of the plot was a “bout of stupidity”, the choice of polonium was a “stroke of genius”. He says: “the choice of poison was genius in that polonium, carried in a vial in water, can be carried in a pocket through airport screening devices without setting off any alarms”, adding, “once administered, the polonium creates symptoms that don’t suggest poison for days, allowing time for the perpetrator to make a getaway.” Priest asserts that “whoever did it was probably not an expert in radiation protection, so they probably didn’t realize how much contamination you can get just by opening the top (of the vial) and closing it again. With the right equipment, you can detect just one count per second”. – Wikipedia
Filmmaker and friend of Litvinenko, Andrei Nekrasov, has suggested that the poison was “sadistically designed to trigger a slow, tortuous and spectacular demise”. Expert on Russia Paul Joyal suggested that “A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin…. If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you, in the most horrible way possible”. – Wikipedia.
Some have further suggested that Polonium was chosen because it was hard to detect initially and essentially untreatable (thus dooming the victim) but once and if detected it would send a message that only a state actor with access to state controlled polonium (in the one facility in the world which produced the type with that radiological signature) could have done it. It was a stamp that said “Russia did this and we want you to know it.”
@J-D
What Ikon said, more or less.
It shouldn’t be odd to look at the words and deeds of Russia/EU/NATO/US & even Australia regarding the coup in the Ukraine. We should look at the players, their words, their deeds and their probable intent.
Using snipers to shed blood with the goal of blaming the government is precisely what the CIA backed right did in the short-lived US-backed Venezuala coup in 2002. It looks like they’ve done it again here.
It would be gullible in the extreme to take anything coming from the “West” as being factually correct or sincerely believed.
PS: David Allen, Julia Bishop was asked by UK media about our “concentration camps”. She didn’t like that, she must wish all media was as “on message” as our MSM.
Glad to see that the bleeding obvious has emerged out of the latest chatter about the Woolworths 5 year deal to buy $70 million of product from SPC Ardmona. Much MSM joy about how this “saves” SPC Ardmona, and Abbott responds that it vindicates the feds’ refusal to provide financial support. It seems that a big surge towards SPCA product has also occurred recently.
No-one that I heard from the MSM bothered to ask questions about this false equivalence between sales revenue and funds for investment. Yet a growers’ organisation rep today says (The Age)that the deal is at breakeven prices, so this presumably is no replacement for the $25 million investment sought from the feds. Another grower said the sustainability in the consumer switch needs to be tested beyond the last couple of months. Quite so.
Hardly surprising that one of the retail duopolists has not become a charity and drives a hard bargain, given cheaper import sources. Slightly surprising that none of the media and especially business journalists picked this up AFAIK. Dumber and dumber everyday.
@Megan
lol. I’ll bet her head vibrated vigorously at that.
A US academic in”Counterpunch ” today looks at what he calls “the very real problem of fascsism in the Ukraine”and looks at the neo-fascist party in the new regime and their links with sim,lar groups all around Europe
He makes the interesting point that this the first time since 1944-445 that fascists have been in European governments…and we all know the precedents at that dark time
but the fascist are back…and in strength in places like Greece…and the new Kiev regime is to have a visit froim Marine Le Pen from France,and the Golden Dawn fascist from Athens in a few days time
Perhaps the Russians have right to be worried
see Prof Leupp’s article on Ukrainian fascism
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/10/ukraine-the-sovereignty-argument-and-the-real-problem-of-fascism/
@Ikonoclast
I made no comment whatever about Obama, good, bad, or other, in comparison with Putin, in comparison with somebody else, or with reference to any absolute standard. When I express my judgement about Putin, what makes you think it is in any way relevant to respond with reference to your judgement about Obama?
@Megan
I said nothing about the words or deeds of anybody except Putin. I responded to a comment in which you quoted the words of Putin and wrote of them that they were ‘Hardly the words of a pro-invasion hawk’. However, Putin already has a record of being a pro-invasion hawk, at least in one instance, although of course that doesn’t prove he would behave the same way again in different circumstances. Were Putin’s words good evidence that he is not a pro-invasion hawk? No, they are good evidence for the conclusion that he is either (a) not a pro-invasion hawk or (b) dishonest. The other evidence favours (b) over (a). You appeared to be quoting what Putin said as good evidence of what he is actually like, without any apparent consideration of the possibility of dishonesty on his part. That’s why I pointed it out.
I am aware that many people are dishonest, not just Putin. If you quote the words of other people as good evidence of what they’re actually like, I may possibly again refer to the possibility of dishonesty on their part, but on this occasion you didn’t do that. I didn’t either, so it’s not clear to me on what basis you think it’s relevant to bring other players into this discussion at this point.
@J-D
We’re talking about Ukraine, currently. Evidence?
yeah, where else did putin invade. was he the guy who invaded grenada to protect his nationals during a revolutionary upheaval? was that someone else. -a.v.
that one was already linked Tom S but here’s one that’s different:- http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-fascist-danger-in-ukraine-resurgence-of-neo-nazism-denied-by-western-media/5372109 -a.v.
How does one deal with radioactive leaks, spills and contamination?
Apparently there’s no underestimating the power of an apology…
@alfred venison
That’s cheating! Under “JD Rules” you’re only allowed to discuss Putin.