Joao Rei's random thoughts

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It turns out the protests in Riga turned a bit more violent this evening.

According to reports from some of my local friends, the police was unable and unprepared to control the demonstration, and what started as a peaceful gathering, has now turned into a full scale riot. Pictures are available at the website Delfi.lv, and some movies as well, but the demand for those has been so huge that it is hard to access them from outside of Latvia.

http://foto.delfi.lv/picture/419341/ (Picture of the police trying to protect what looks like the local Parliament)
Protesters are demanding that the parliament be dissolved and early elections be called.

The Baltic Times also reports that 8 people have been injured so far, and that looting has began in some local liquor stores. According to the newspaper, a state of emergency has been declared.

Video of the riots in Riga

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Here’s what’s wrong with the world today.

The EU (actually the EU Parliament and the MEP’s) voted to ban 20 types of pesticides, or pesticide ingredients from being used by EU farmers in agriculture. The Commission welcomed this as being a good way to start the new year with a regulation that promotes health and the environment. However, if you read most of the news on this, the most pressing issue is raised by farmers that are against this measure (mostly British). They say that this will make agriculture more expensive, push prices higher for the consumer and might even force some farmers into unemployment.

Now, really. Think about it for a moment. How can it be that banning the use of pesticides that are proven to cause cancer and damage to hormones be a bad thing?! Even the Greens, and Greenpeace says that this is not enough, that this 20 are only a minority of the up to 400 dangerous chemicals used to grow food in Europe and that are still used today and end up at our table every day!

And yet, the spin on this is totally from the side of the farmers that are complaining that this will make farming more expensive, and warning consumers that they will have to pay more for their carrots. Well I for one am willing to pay more for my food provided that it is healthier and safer to consume.

Seriously, how can this even be an issue! How have we allowed economics to get in the way of health and public safety?!

Here’s a sample from Reuters:

By Jeremy Smith

BRUSSELS, Jan 13 (Reuters) - European Parliament members voted on Tuesday to ban some of the most toxic and dangerous pesticides to human health.

The move, likely to be endorsed by EU ministers in the next weeks, would let groups of countries with similar geography and climate decide whether farmers may use specific products.

A list of EU-approved “active substances” will be drawn up, with certain highly toxic chemicals to be banned unless their effect can be shown to be negligible – such as pesticides classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction.

That list will provide the basis for national EU governments to license each pesticide.

Pesticides already approved will remain available until their 10-year authorisation expires, so there should be no sudden large-scale withdrawal of products from the market.

Tuesday’s vote was made smoother by a deal struck last month by parliament, the EU’s executive commission and the bloc’s 27 national governments to hammer out the remaining political difficulties for a final agreement on the new pesticide rules.

EU states will be able to approve pesticides nationally or via mutual recognition within 120 days, with countries divided into three zones – north, centre and south – so pesticides can be approved for a region rather than a single country.

At present, approvals apply only for individual countries and there is no deadline set for mutual recognition approvals.

Crucially, EU countries will be allowed to ban a product, because of specific environment or agricultural circumstances.

Aerial crop-spraying will mostly be banned, with strict conditions placed on pesticides used near aquatic environments and drinking water supplies. Buffer zones will be set up around water and protected areas along roads and railways.

The changes agreed will make EU rules primarily a hazard-based, not risk-based, approach since they treat products in three categories: whether they are proven or suspected carcinogens, or whether there has been some observation – but no actual evidence – of carcinogenic behaviour.

The classifications, known as cut-off criteria, have annoyed Europe’s pesticides industry, which says the new law will remove products from the market that have been used safely for years.

“The banning criteria are of major concern to industry and the whole European food chain. European farmers have already lost 60 percent of the substances previously available in 1991,” the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA) said.

ECPA is an umbrella organisation that represents Europe’s major pesticides companies. Bayer AG (BAYG.DE), BASF (BASF.DE) AND Syngenta AG (SYNN.VX) are among those which would be affected by new EU rules.

Many EU scientists, for example – backed by countries like Britain – have been fighting this approach and say fewer available pesticides will lead to resistance problems since pests that are regularly treated with a single product type, not a range of products, will develop tolerance.

This would damage agricultural productivity and make farming of certain crops in Europe uncompetitive, such as wheat and barley, cotton, potatoes and a range of fruits and vegetables, since yields would be reduced, they say.

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As reported some days ago, a protest was scheduled for today in the Latvian capital, Riga 

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As a law student in Lisbon in the late 1960s, Jose Manuel Barroso
passed around an illicit copy of “Je t'aime, Moi non plus” a
heavy-breathing French tune of a lovemaking couple that Portugal’s
fascist dictator had banned as too racy.
 
“I could not buy the books I wanted. Or listen to the music I liked,”
said Barroso — today the European Union’s top executive. “My
generation saw Europe as … a destination for those who wanted
freedom and democracy.”
 
In 50 years of the European Union, former dictatorships like Barroso’s
Portugal, and more recently former Communist lands like Romania and
Bulgaria, have joined the fold. And peace has been cemented across the
region to such a degree that the very threat of war has been largely
forgotten.
 
Yet as Europeans prepare to mark the half-century birthday with pomp
and proclamations this month in Berlin, across the region many people
are looking ahead with fear.
 
They feel angst about globalization, appear unable to implement
reforms needed to regain its competitive edge, struggle to integrate
millions of mostly Muslim immigrants, and grope for direction as the
EU’s grand dreams of adopting a constitution that would formalize and
deepen the union lie in tatters.
 
There have been momentous accomplishments: a single currency,
elimination of internal borders, expansion into an economic giant that
includes 490 million people in 27 nations — 11 of them formerly
fascist or communist dictatorships.
 
And many Europeans are proud of their social safety net, their long
vacations, their short work-weeks, their high wages.
 
Yet it is some of these very achievements, and some of its members
inflexible labor markets and highly-regulated economies, that are
threatening to hold it back. Increasingly, both America and Asia seem
better placed to compete.
 
Perhaps the EU’s chief goal, albeit one that was often unspoken, was
making Europe safe from war — but that succeeded so spectacularly that
most people now take peace for granted.
 
“Sixty years of peace,” Barroso acknowledged in an interview with the
Associated Press, “means the image of Europe as a bastion against war
is losing its resonance.”
 
At their March 24-25 to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of
the Treaty of Rome that launched Europe’s common market, EU leaders
are to issue a declaration they hope will reignite enthusiasm for the
European project — notably by reviving prospects for a constitution.
 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit’s host, faces a formidable
task persuading fellow leaders that the charter — which would
streamline decision-making and raise the EU’s international profile by
giving it a president and foreign minister — was not killed off when
the French and Dutch rejected it in referendums in 2005. France and
Britain have lame-duck leaders in Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair —
further dimming the likelihood of a major constitutional breakthrough.
 
Yet many believe the hand-wringing over the charter is merely a
symptom of a deeper malaise affecting the EU that is preventing it
from adapting to the challenges of the new millennium — in particular
the rise of China and India as global powers.
 
Several European governments have attempted to reform Europe’s cushy
labor and social welfare — only to back down in the face of fierce
protests.
 
“The European Union is going through a crisis,” said Luxembourg Prime
Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, adding the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes
“did not cause this crisis, but simply made it more visible.”
 
The EU crisis of confidence is also seen in the way momentum for
expansion — the chief way Europe has been able to use its philosophy
of “soft power” to engineer democratic reforms in former dictatorships
— has all but petered out.
 
Polls show little public appetite for further enlarging the club to
countries like Ukraine and Albania, let alone mostly Muslim Turkey —
whose membership talks were partially frozen a year after being
launched in a dispute over Ankara’s non-recognition of EU member
Cyprus.
 
Barroso had guarded optimism for the EU’s prospects in the 21st Century.
 
“Globalization is happening. Can we shape it to our interests and
values? We believe we can,” said Barroso but only if EU nations unite
on challenges ranging “from energy security to climate change to
international terrorism.”
 
But some leading figures expressed a deeper sense of crisis.
 
“The European Union has not understood that it needs a complete change
of direction,” according to British Conservative George Osborne, the
shadow finance minister of his Euro-skeptic party.
 
“It hasn’t understood that today the primary challenge we face is an
economic one, not a political one. For my generation the question for
Europe is not how to unite but how to compete — not only within
Europe, but with the rest of the world.”
 
One of the EU’s biggest challenges is its demographic crisis. By 2010,
there will be more Europeans in their 60s than in their 20s. The EU’s
working population will drop by 48 million by 2050, according to EU
data.
 
Although 40 million people are seen to move into the EU in that same
period “immigration can only partially compensate for the effects of
low fertility and extended life expectancy on the age distribution of
the European population,” according to a recent report by Eurostat,
the EU statistics agency.
 
Unless the average birth of 1.5 children per female rises to 1.7,
“Europe will find it increasingly difficult to remain competitive and
— equally alarming — to finance pensions,” said EU Employment
Commissioner Vladimir Spidla.
 
But changing demographics require reorganizing labor markets and
social benefits.
 
To date, European governments have been slow to get Europeans to work
longer hours and say 'adieu’ to six week vacations.

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Here’s a movie I want to see.

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According to an article on the British Times Online Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea.

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