Russia's "hooligans" here to stay

The "Arctic 30" Greenpeace protesters may not be in the deep freeze as winter closes in -- they're being moved to a grim St. Petersburg jail pending trial -- but they face as much as seven years in the cooler if convicted on tsarist-era charges of hooliganism.

Some of the 30, including two Canadians, arrested during a protest against Arctic oil drilling, may also face more bizarre and serious charges of piracy. Something even President Vladimir Putin called spurious.

But hooliganism is no free pass in Russia.  In fact, says Brian LaPierre of University of Southern Mississippi, it's a "catch-all" charge used at the pleasure of Russia's rulers since the 19th century.

"It's a foreign word coined from the British penny press," said LaPierre, author of Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia. "But the interesting thing is it has cultural as well as legal implications. The way it's used can be slippery."

Indeed. Under Joseph Stalin, it was employed to keep down street crime and brawlers could get up to five years in a labour camp.

But in the more "liberal" era of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s and early 60s, it encompassed a "well-rounded" set of charges tailored to deal with everything from bad manners -- swearing or spitting in public -- to more violent crimes. It was a threat hanging over workers who deviated from the image of the Ideal Soviet Man.

Since then, says LaPierre, it's become the "go-to instrument for Russian governments who want to get things done and stigmatize a certain social group. That's now political protesters, environmentalists or anyone seen to be outside the cultural mainstream."

That's why charging the 30 with hooliganism might be worse than slapping them with a piracy charge, which has a higher evidence bar and would likely be dismissed in court.

Hooliganism, on the other hand, is what it is. Or whatever the regime of the day says it is.

In Putin's increasingly authoritarian era, it fits with a wider agenda of demonizing civic society organizations as "foreign agents" because many have backing in the West.

Hooliganism is a charge of choice that has been used against a number of dissidents, including political protesters and  members of Pussy Riot who are serving months in labour camps, Stalin-style, for the crime of performing a satirical protest in a Moscow cathedral.

It could also seal the fate of the Greenpeace protesters. "The penalties may be less than piracy but it's easier to convict," says LaPierre.

Meanwhile the thousands of anti-immigrant nationalists who rallied across Russia Monday waving banners that included "Young people against tolerance," got a free pass, and so did their rabble-rousing, hate-mongering leader Alexander Belov. 

A sign of much more chilling times to come.

Olivia Ward covered the former Soviet Union from 1992-2002 as a bureau chief and correspondent.

Stormageddon! (Or, it's windy and raining in London)

Keep calm and drive on.                                                                          (AP Photo - Lefteris Pitarakis)

Oh, the humidity!

Okay. There is no denying that Our Friends In Britain are experiencing some weather. Hurricane force gusts of wind; rain rain rain; general unpleasantness.

The power has failed in places and falling trees have badly injured, perhaps killed, people. This, "the worst storm in the last five years," according to the BBC, is making Monday a very nasty day to be out and about. 

As awful as it all is, there is little that gets Britain as fired up as a good storm. (Some of my friends and colleagues in the U.K. have been talking about this incoming patch of weather since last week.) Alas, there is also little that divides Britain as much as a good storm. I was up quite early this morning listening to the BBC's "Today" program and though there were important discussions on sectarian violence in Iraq, short-term-high-interest loans and the death of Lou Reed, the weather seemed to get an awful lot of airtime.

Evan Davis, one of the team of presenters, worked valiantly to keep up with what he termed the "anti-storm backlash" by reading out comments sent in by clearly irked listeners. One termed the storm simply "ripples in my teacup." Well, quite. But then came the "anti-storm backlash backlash." "No storm? My house is shaking!" one listener in Faversham reported.

Someone else asked the presenters to stop talking about the south of England and tell them what the weather would be like in the north - Manchester, specifically, please and thank you. (The answer was rain.)

After all this, Davis turned back to his script and sighed.

"This is the point when we tell you the weather," he said. "It hardly seems necessary this morning."

Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. As a journalist with the Associated Press, based in London, she wrote extensively about British politics (and talked a lot about the weather.) Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.

Keystone Clout: Canada flexes lobbying muscles over controversial pipeline

The existing Keystone pipeline - which developers hope to extend --  delivers Canadian crude from Alberta's tar sands to storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma. Toronto Star photo by Lucas Oleniuk.

 

“Mild-mannered Canada” is turning into a Superman of lobbying when it comes to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline -- and Americans are taking notice.

 Canada is “making itself seen and heard inside the Beltway,” says the influential National Journal, an online and print publication aimed at Washington insiders that is widely read by members of Congress, White House staffers and Beltway lobbyists. 

The Journal’s energy and environment correspondent, Amy Harder, notes that Ottawa has placed advertisements in the Washington subway and the Ronald Reagan National Airport and “plans to step up the campaign in September for what is expected to be the long-awaited homestretch fight over the project.” 

President Obama will give the final thumbs up or thumbs down to the 1,897 km pipeline that would stretch from the Alberta oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast sometime this fall.

Harder reports that as a country Canada has “an inherent advantage” over other lobbying groups since Canadian government officials meet regularly with administration officials and Congress.

At  the G-8 summit in June  “Harper pulled President Obama aside to talk Keystone,” the Journal reports, remarking as well that Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s “aggressive support” for the pipeline has prompted jokes that he is “the worst-paid lobbyist in the oil patch.”

“The fact that any foreign government—and especially mild-mannered Canada—is lobbying so publicly and assertively on one project is unusual,” the Journal argues, but it reflects “how much political capital Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is putting into this issue.” 

Meanwhile, the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review has highlighted  the local media coverage and mounting debates along the proposed route of the pipeline

“The lobbying is more intense than ever,” the CJR reported, noting that in Washington 48 groups lobbied in Washington on the issue in the first three months of the year, all but two of them apparently in favour of the pipeline.

“TransCanada, the Calgary-based company that seeks to build the pipeline, has played a major role in defining the debate, and continues to do so,” the CJR reports. 

In the key state of Nebraska, CJR says TransCanada hired a lobbying firm “to quietly wine and dine members of the state’s … legislature.”

But the CJR warns the pipeline is facing opposition from an unusual alliance of environmentalists and conservatives. 

 “I’m a capitalist, conservative—really more of a libertarian—not an environmentalist,” Greg Awtry told the CJR. He’s the publisher of Nebraska’s York News-Times and a strong opponent to the pipeline. “It’s just strange bedfellows.”

Lobbying in the court of public opinion and in the corridors of political corridor is likely to intensify in the coming months before the Americans make a final decision of the fate of Keystone.

TransCanada was quick to pounce this weekend, when Obama used an interview with the New York Times to question the economic benefits of the project.

“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator," he said. "There is no evidence that’s true.”

Obama insisted the pipeline would create “a blip” of 2,000 jobs.

But in a widely-covered media statement,  TransCanada disputed the president’s figures, insisting the construction phase of the project alone would directly create at least 13,000 jobs. 

Still, the dispute over jobs is widely seen as a sideshow compared to the main battle over the environment, with Obama vowing he would approve the plan only if does not pose a "net" increase in greenhouse-gas emissions.

"It's going to take more than a PR campaign to win Obama over on the pipeline,"  the National Journal concludes, noting that the controversial project  has “become a lightning rod in the debate over climate change.”

_________

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher.

 

Shining reputation earns Canada top billing

Keeping Canada beautiful: Mayor Rob Ford takes part in the Annual Mayor's Clean-up in Toronto's Amesbury Park. Photo: Rick Eglinton/Toronto Star

If you’re finding it harder to be a flag-waving Canadian these days of national and civic scandals, spying allegations, environmental embarrassment, appalling aboriginal issues and diplomatic fumbles, there’s some cheering news.

Canada’s reputation is number one in the world, according to the Reputation Institute’s 2013 Country report, a global study of more than 34,000 ratings, collected from more than 27,000 consumers in the G8 countries.

“Canada’s results confirm that it is only possible to maintain a strong reputation in the long term when a country has the ability to transmit its leadership globally in three criteria,” says managing partner Fernando Prado. “Effective government, advanced economy and an appealing environment.”

The New York and Copenhagen-based institute is billed as “the world’s leading reputation management consultancy.”

For the third year running, Canada topped its annual survey, measuring how 50 countries are viewed. Our win was based on “levels of trust, esteem, admiration and respect” as well as perceptions that we are “a safe place to visit, a beautiful country," with "friendly and welcoming residents, progressive social and economic policies, effective government and more.”

Our nearest competitors include (in declining order) Sweden, Switzerland, Australia and Norway, with the U.S. running only 22nd and Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq bottoming out between 46th to 50th place.

That’s much more buoyant than the latest UN Human Development Report. In it Canada plunged from sixth place in 2011 to 11th this year. Meanwhile Statistics Canada figures confirm what most Canadians know – that housing prices have spiked and food costs are on a year-on-year upswing, prompting some to put their grocery carts on a diet.

Food banks are a growth industry, with nearly 900,000 people dependent on them. And close to 400,000 households are spending more than half their incomes on shelter.

In spite of Canada’s “progressive social and economic policies and effective government,” middle class incomes have stalled -- a result of outsourcing decently-waged jobs to low waged countries and a shrinking job market for skilled workers. The most common jobs  are in low-paying, insecure retail sales.

But not to worry.  Barring oil spills, unchecked air and water pollution, vanishing endangered species, chopped boreal forests, shrinking water bodies and toxic mining, the friendly and welcoming residents will still be celebrating the beauty part.

While we can.

Olivia Ward has covered the former Soviet Union to the Middle East, South Asia and the U.S., winning national and international awards. She’s happy to be a Canadian.



   

 

Cataclysmic flooding in India sign of global warming, warns new study

A vehicle moves along a damaged road caused by landslides, in Gauchar, in northern Indian state of Uttarakhand on June  25, 2013. (AP photo)

The past week’s cataclysmic floods in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand are yet another a stark reminder of things to come with global warming, say researchers.

Rainfall patterns in India might become much more variable due to climate change, potentially putting millions of farmers at risk, says a study by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The study contends that Indian monsoon is a complex system which is likely to change under global warming. Of course, weather varies from month to month, year to year but how much and whether we can deal with it is the question, says the study.

Extreme rainfall, for instance, increases the risk of deaths, flooding and crop failure.

In a country like India where a majority of farmers still depend on steady monsoon rains for their crops, it doesn’t look good.

“Increased variability — this rather technical term translates into potentially severe impacts on people who cannot afford additional loss,” Anders Levermann, one of the study’s authors told Science Daily.  

In India, as much 80 per cent of the annual rainfall occurs during the monsoon season from June to September. Climate change scientists say factors that could play havoc with rainfall predictability include the higher holding capacity of moisture of the warmer air, but also more complex phenomena like cooling in the higher atmosphere which brings about changes in current pressure and consequently rainfall patterns.

The Indian meterological department reported a record rainfall of 385 millimetres in the first two weeks of June; it was 440 per cent over the usual rainfall in the monsoon season. Over 5,000 people are feared dead and over 33,000 people were rescued by the Indian army; latest reports suggest that another 20,000 or so are still stranded.

Raveena Aulakh is the Toronto Star's environment reporter. She is intrigued by climate change and its impact, now and long-term, and wildlife. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh