Czechs Thumb Their Noses At Putie -- Again

Talks on U.S. radar completed
Czech and U.S. representatives have completed the talks on the planned U.S. radar base on Czech soil that were launched a year ago, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek (Civic Democrats, ODS) said in an interview for today's issue of the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN).

Topolánek said only the venue where the treaty would be signed must yet be agreed on.

"I have information that the major problems might have been solved in the main treaty. Nothing prevents us from potentially declaring at the NATO summit in Bucharest the possibility to sign it," Topolánek told HN.

He added that the last "three words" that were not clear during his February visit to Washington have already been agreed on.

The U.S. radar base is to be located at the Brdy military district, some 90 km southwest of Prague. The radar and a planned base for ten interceptor missiles in Poland are to be elements of the U.S. missile defence shield that is to protect the United States and a large part of Europe against missiles that states like Iran might launch.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg (for Greens) told public Czech Television (CT) on Sunday that agreement has not yet been reached on one article concerning the environment in the treaty.

The Czech and U.S. delegations should go to the April NATO summit in Bucharest with agreed conditions on the radar base re-location to the Czech Republic to be able to negotiate NATO's support for the missile defence shield, HN writes.

It says such support is primarily significant for the Czech government to persuade the radar opponents in the country where the left-wing opposition as well as some 70 percent of the public are against the project.

The junior ruling Greens condition their nodding to the radar exactly by NATO's support .

Topolánek said he is sure that NATO would support the project in the summit's final resolutions.

"The discussion is only about the verb - we expect, welcome. Everything else is concealed in the NATO analyses. No one doubts that this system is necessary," Topolanek told HN.

Schwarzenberg said on Sunday the bilateral treaties on the stationing of a U.S. missile defence base in the Czech Republic might be signed in early May.

Topolánek stressed in HN that the second bilateral treaty to create a legal framework for the stay of U.S. soldiers in the Czech Republic must yet be tuned up.

Heh. The diplomacy of Vladimir Paranoid appears to be failing.

Reality Confronts European Union

The al-Goracle cult, otherwise known as the Religion of Environmentalism, has many devotees within the corridors of the European Commission and European Parliament.

That is, until a known eeeeevil – reality – jumped up and bit 'em on the ass.

EU Members Lobby against 'Harmful' Climate Plan
European countries and businesses have criticized a climate change action plan that COMINTERN the European Commission is scheduled to unveil next week. Their concerns about competition and carbon trading could undermine the EU's commitment to confront climate change.

As the European Commission puts the finishing touches on a sweeping climate change policy package to be unveiled on Jan. 23, politicians and business leaders from the EU's richest member states are lobbying to revamp draft policies that they believe could harm them in Europe and abroad.

Among the critics of the bill are France, which wants to protect its nuclear investments, Germany, which is worried about its renewable energy sector, and major European auto and steelmakers, who are concerned that Europe could lose its competitive edge.

But the Commission says it will not be bullied into diluting the climate change package. To back down, Commission President José Manuel Barroso told Reuters, would be an international embarrassment after the EU worked to promote itself as the international leader in addressing climate change. "We knew from the very beginning that transforming Europe into a low-carbon economy is not an easy task," said Barroso. "But this is the moment to be serious, responsible and coherent with our commitment."

In other words, Barroso believes that saving face is more important than the economic health and well-being of European Union member states. Nice to see that the consummate tax tick has his priorities straight.

Barroso was responding to complaints that include a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which Sarkozy objected to a policy that would raise the share of energy that Europe derives from renewable sources from 8.5 percent currently to 20 percent by 2020. He said the policy "unnecessarily penalizes the prospects of growth." France wants to have its huge nuclear energy program counted in the mandatory contribution it will be asked to make toward the EU goal, but atomic power, which produces toxic waste, is not considered a form of renewable energy.

Germany and Spain are protesting another proposed policy. Ministers in Berlin and Madrid sent a letter this week to the Commission criticizing a system [that] would encourage companies in Europe to trade renewable energy across borders. They are worried that an EU-wide system would undermine their existing national systems. "This will put a very successful development of renewables at risk, which is not acceptable to our governments," read the letter in part. It was the second time this week that German officials criticized the forthcoming policies, after Bavarian politicians condemned (more...) a proposal to cap the amount of carbon dioxide that new automobiles produce per kilometer they are driven.

In an interview with the German magazine Capital published Tuesday, the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, denied that a new renewable energy trading system would infringe upon existing "feed-in" systems in Germany and Spain. "Don't worry," said Dimas. "We will ensure that Germany can keep its system without restrictions in (the) future and ... we will construct it in such a way that it doesn't hinder national promotion systems in Germany and other countries -- that's a promise."

A politician making a promise. ROTFLMAO .

Private sector leaders also criticized the forthcoming policy package, saying strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions will hit major industrial polluters unfairly and encourage them to relocate outside of Europe. BusinessEurope, a lobby group that represents most of the Continent's largest companies, said it had learned that the Commission will require industrial polluters to cut emissions to 21 percent below 2005 carbon emission levels by 2020.

EU officials explained that 2005 was chosen because it is the first year in which data includes the impact of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme; BusinessEurope says it is unfair because it does not take into account efforts to reduce emissions that companies made between 1990 and 2005. In a letter to Commission President Barroso, the group also objected to broader plans to strengthen the continent's carbon trading scheme.

Many of the permits that a company must hold to emit carbon are currently distributed for free, but the Commission is proposing to auction those permits to the highest bidder by 2020. To offset the impact that might have on the competitiveness of a European business, the Commission is considering a carbon tariff (more...) on imports from outside the EU that were not produced within a carbon trading market. Still, BusinessEurope calls the prospect of an auction-based trading scheme "extremely worrying."

The lobbying in Brussels this week is in sharp contrast to the proud tones in which European leaders announced last March their joint agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and make major investments in renewable energy and biofuels. As the Commission drafts policies that will make those goals a reality, Europe's richer countries are frustrated that they will be asked to bear the brunt of the collective goal.

EU officials told Reuters this week that the Commission wants to allow the EU's poorest member states to actually increase their emissions, by up to 20 percent above 2005 levels. That would help poor states like Romania and Bulgaria grow their economies -- but could spell trouble for the strong European countries charged with making up the difference.

Via der Spiegel Online

See also Moonbats and Economics.

Also at A Tangled Web.

The European Union And Extraordinary Renditions

Lost and forgotten amidst the current and hysterical pantie-wringing over unknown 'secret prisons' is a nifty little tidbit.

EU concealed deal with US to allow 'rendition' flights

Uh-oh. Brussels, we have a problem here.

The European Union secretly allowed the United States to use transit facilities on European soil to transport "criminals" in 2003, according to a previously unpublished document. The revelation contradicts repeated EU denials that it knew of "rendition" flights by the CIA.

The EU agreed to give America access to facilities - presumably airports - in confidential talks in Athens during which the war on terror was discussed, the original minutes show. But all references to the agreement were deleted from the record before it was published.

So-o-o, info about a 'secret memo' surfaces in 2005. In 2007, an 'investigator' from a professed neutral country - that was in fact complicit with Nazi Germany - pontificates, sans substantiation, that there are/were 'secret prisons' in Poland and Romania.

Just as Switzerland knew nothing about Nazi gold, mein herr?

Report Alleges CIA Had Secret Jails in Europe

The left is sure to get their panties in a knot over this one.

The CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate key terror suspects, shackling and handcuffing inmates, keeping some naked for weeks and reducing contact with the outer world to masked and silent guards, a European investigator said Friday.

Oh my, the horrors. Shackles and handcuffs!

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano did not address whether there were secret detention centers, but he disputed the report's characterization of the agency's activities.

"When you see words like apartheid and torture in the document, that tells you it's biased and distorted," he said. "The CIA's counterterror operations have been lawful, effective, closely reviewed and of benefit to many people — including Europeans — in disrupting plots and saving lives. Our counterterror partnerships in Europe are very strong."

Following a meeting with President Bush in Gdansk, Polish President Lech Kaczynski told reporters: "I know nothing about any CIA prisons in Poland." His predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was president in 2001-05, said: "I deny it. I've said as much several times."

Former Romanian President Ion Iliescu, mentioned in a list of ranking officials who allegedly had knowledge of the prisons, dismissed Marty's report as "stupid."

Exactly.

The report, which did not give specific locations for the alleged jails, provided graphic descriptions of conditions.

It told of prisoners being kept naked for weeks, sometimes attached to a "shackling ring" in cells. Buckets served as toilets. Masked guards who never spoke were the only contact for those consigned to four-month isolation regimes.

Cells, sometimes equipped with video cameras, were cramped and kept extremely hot or cold, the report said. Prisoners had to listen to irritating noises, including "torture music," rock or rap as well as "distorted" verses of the Quran, it said.

Just brutal, isn't it?