Current Events

The Danish People’s Party (DF) has strengthened its immigration stance by securing an agreement to pay ‘anti-social’ foreigners 100,000 kroner to leave Denmark.

As part of the on-going budget negotiations, the government’s traditional ally DF said it secured the agreement late last night.
Refugees and those who come to Denmark under family reunification schemes currently get 28,256 in repatriation support if they leave, of which 11,000 is a bonus. The bonus is usually paid out a year after the recipient returns home and their right to Danish residency expires.

The new deal would see 100,000 kroner given as a bonus if a foreigner returns home and gives up their residency rights in Denmark.

Neither the government nor DF has yet elaborated on what constitutes an ‘anti-social’ foreigner, but have said that it would be aimed at those who ‘can’t or won’t integrate’.

According to DF party leader Pia Kjærsgaard, the move will save the state a significant sum in local costs which are administered by local and regional councils.

‘Society will save a lot on an immense number of charges and problems. We already know that there are problems with nursing homes and have been problems with hospitals and health charges,’ Kjærsgaard said.

His message was consistently simple and resounding: government and business are corrupted by money. This corruption becomes a roadblock to innovation because regulation is designed not for the social good but to maximize the money to Congress. The only way to fix this is to get money out of the system – a system Lessig referred to as the “economy of influence.”

The three major players in the system are lobbyists, members of Congress, and “interests.” Lessig compares lobbyists to “suppliers, or pushers inside the economy of influence.” The boom of lobbying has pushed Congress into a pathological dependency on campaign cash. Money passes from the hands of the interest groups to the lobbyists, from the lobbyists to Congress in the form of campaign donations, and through legislation, money passes from Congress to the interest groups. This vicious cycle of a system has a significant effect – legislation gets bent away from the public good because “policy gets bent to those who pay.”

“The vast majority of Americans believes that money buys results,” said Lessig. Because of money in the system, Americans have become cynical. They’ve disengaged, and the country’s democracy has become less responsive and more corrupt.

NATO code compromise

The recent crash of a Polish military transport that killed most of Warsaw's senior civilian and military leaders was not only a human catastrophe for a key U.S. ally. NATO sources said that, in addition to the loss of nearly 100 pro-U.S. Polish leaders, the crash provided Moscow with a windfall of secrets.

The crash killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski in western Russia on April 10 and decapitated Poland's military, killing two service chiefs, key military aides and several national security officials, many of whom were carrying computers and pocket memory sticks that contained sensitive NATO data.

Perhaps the most significant compromise, according to a NATO intelligence source, is that the Russians are suspected of obtaining ultrasecret codes used by NATO militaries for secure satellite communications.

The compromise of the codes is considered what electronic spies call a "break" for Moscow code-breakers. New NATO codes almost certainly were issued to allied militaries immediately after the crash.

But if the Russian electronic intelligence service, known as the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, was able to recover and use the communication key code from the wreckage, electronic spies will be able to decode months' or perhaps years' worth of scrambled communications that are routinely gathered electronically for just such an occasion.

The coded communications, if decrypted, would reveal some of NATO's most intimate secrets, such as plans for defenses and even the identities of agents or allied eavesdropping sources.

Other Polish and NATO secrets also were believed to be aboard the jet, and so far Russia's government is refusing to cooperate fully with Poland's government in providing details on the cause of the crash, or even to turn over the Polish jet's black boxes.

As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians — the world’s biggest oil producers — have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: “the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.”

Yes! It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities.

The Olympics are not even half over, but Russia seems to be suffering a collective panic attack over the lackluster performance of its athletes. “Russian Olympians Lose Historic Superiority” was the front-page headline on Thursday in Kommersant, an influential newspaper. Some politicians and commentators are calling for the firing of Russia’s sports minister and the head of the Russian Olympic Committee.

[...]

The gloom seemed to thicken on Friday as Russians woke up to the news that their superstar figure skater, Yevgeny Plushenko, took only the silver. Even worse, Russia's powerhouse men's hockey team faltered against Slovakia, falling to the former Soviet satellite, 2-1, in a shootout.

Favored Russians have floundered in the biathlon, and the women’s hockey team was trounced twice by a collective score of 18 to 1. (It is best not even to mention pairs figure skating results around here.)

Among the few areas where Russians could still earn a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics, the mass circulation tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets said, is excuse-making. Athletes have blamed the weather, the facilities and even the humidity for their lapses.

After Australian aboriginal groups accused a Russian ice dancing pair of mocking aborigines, Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, suggested that they were the target of an international plot to force them to alter their performance.

“I think that this is a well-executed strategy directed against our athletes,” Mr. Piseev told Russian television from Vancouver.

In Russia, international athletic competitions — particularly the Winter Olympics, in this frozen country — are considered one of the last prominent international arenas to showcase the country’s strength. The anxiety has been heightened because Russia will host the next Winter Games at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.

The governing United Russia party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, released a statement on Thursday suggesting that there could be repercussions for athletic officials if Russian athletes continued to fall short in Vancouver.

The Olympics are not even half over, but Russia seems to be suffering a collective panic attack over the lackluster performance of its athletes. “Russian Olympians Lose Historic Superiority” was the front-page headline on Thursday in Kommersant, an influential newspaper. Some politicians and commentators are calling for the firing of Russia’s sports minister and the head of the Russian Olympic Committee.

[...]

The gloom seemed to thicken on Friday as Russians woke up to the news that their superstar figure skater, Yevgeny Plushenko, took only the silver. Even worse, Russia's powerhouse men's hockey team faltered against Slovakia, falling to the former Soviet satellite, 2-1, in a shootout.

Favored Russians have floundered in the biathlon, and the women’s hockey team was trounced twice by a collective score of 18 to 1. (It is best not even to mention pairs figure skating results around here.)

Among the few areas where Russians could still earn a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics, the mass circulation tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets said, is excuse-making. Athletes have blamed the weather, the facilities and even the humidity for their lapses.

After Australian aboriginal groups accused a Russian ice dancing pair of mocking aborigines, Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, suggested that they were the target of an international plot to force them to alter their performance.

“I think that this is a well-executed strategy directed against our athletes,” Mr. Piseev told Russian television from Vancouver.

In Russia, international athletic competitions — particularly the Winter Olympics, in this frozen country — are considered one of the last prominent international arenas to showcase the country’s strength. The anxiety has been heightened because Russia will host the next Winter Games at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.

The governing United Russia party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, released a statement on Thursday suggesting that there could be repercussions for athletic officials if Russian athletes continued to fall short in Vancouver.