TAHUN 2010 MENURUT EOWI

TAHUN 2010 MENURUT EOWI

Thank to Mr Leonardas Misiulis and his friend who design this cute cover which I am happy to received on Xmas’s Day

Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected a report from lawmakers saying the country had hosted secret CIA prisons as part of the “war on terror.”

“There are neither facts nor information that secret CIA detention centers existed in Lithuania,” the ministry said in a statement, contradicting Amnesty International statements a day earlier based on a report by Lithuanian lawmakers.

“It has neither concluded that the territory of Lithuania was used to transfer persons under suspicion of terrorism nor that such persons had been brought in or transported from the territory of Lithuania,” the Foreign Ministry said of the parliamentary report.

…..

Click on the link to read the article

via Lithuania denies report it hosted secret CIA prisons – CNN.com.

CIA Conducted ‘Interrogations’ in Stable

The Lithuanian Parliament released its findings into a probe of CIA activities in the nation today, confirming that the American spy agency in fact operated two “black sites” inside the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius.

Povilas Malakauskas

The probe further showed that at least five CIA planes landed in the city and that Lithuania’s own domestic spy agencies prevented border guards from inspecting them. Lithuania’s civilian government denies ever having been informed of any such actions beforehand, and Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius called it a “matter of great concern.”

Rather the requests are said to have gone directly to Lithuania’s State Security Department, which approved the CIA’s requests establishing both a single-cell “interrogation” facility and later a larger site. A former stable on the outskirts of the city served as the CIA’s interrogation center.

The US has declined all comments into this probe so far, but the Lithuanian government seems determined not to allow the activity to damage relations at any rate. The State Security Department’s chief, Povilas Malakauskas, resigned last week in anticipation of the results of the probe.

A Lithuanian inquiry has found that the US Central Intelligence Agency set up and used secret prisons on its soil following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US.

Lithuania’s intelligence agency assisted the CIA-run secret prisons, which were used to hold at least eight al-Qaeda suspects, the parliamentary panel in charge of the probe said in a report on Tuesday.

The National Security Committee report records instances in 2005 and 2006 when chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania, adding that all the Lithuanian officials, including President Dalia Grybauskaitė, were kept in the dark about the aircraft’s passengers.

The report, which is based on testimony of top politicians and intelligence officials, also sought to close the door on any charges of human rights violations on the grounds that no official was ever aware of exactly what was happening in the US-run prisons.

It said Lithuania’s State Security Department (Valstybės saugumo departamento) provided two facilities to the CIA.

A single detention cell was set up to house one suspect in 2002 and a former riding school on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius was turned into a larger facility in 2004, big enough to hold eight suspects.

Since August 2009, the US media reports have accused Lithuania, Poland and Romania, of hosting to secret CIA interrogation centers, reigniting concerns over the exact number of these facilities and the extent to which the spy agency used its questionable tactics.

They have contributed to straining Washington’s relations with some of its key allies during former president George W. Bush’s administration.

One such former ally, Britain, is now under increasing pressure to investigate whether its own agents were involved in the alleged CIA torture of the British citizens in Pakistan.

Lithuania’s spy chief, Povilas Malakauskas, resigned last week as controversy mounted over the secret jails. A lawmaker said the resignation was “partly” because of the government’s efforts to investigate the details surrounding the CIA facility.

According to the conclusions of a 2007 probe conducted on behalf of the Council of Europe, 14 European governments are accused of having permitted the CIA to run detention centers on their soil or to carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.

The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.

It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board.

Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA “black sites”, media reports say.

In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, the investigation found.

It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.

In August this year, US media reports claimed that Lithuania, Poland and Romania all hosted secret CIA interrogation centres.

But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania’s political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.

Secret flights

The practice of “extraordinary rendition” and the long-suspected network of secret US detention facilities became among the most controversial aspects of the Bush administration’s response to the 11 September attacks.

“Extraordinary rendition” is the tactic of capturing militant suspects in one country and transporting them to another without judicial oversight.

The BBC’s defence and security correspondent Nick Childs says critics of the Bush administration saw it as a way of avoiding legal constraints and, in some cases, as they put it, “contracting out” torture – although American officials repeatedly denied the allegations.

The issue caused considerable strains between Washington and some of its key allies during President Bush’s administration.

Many governments – not least the British – have been under pressure to disclose what they knew, Nick Childs says, and the tactics the Americans did or did not use, and how extensively, remain murky.

US officials have hinted at perhaps dozens of prisoners having been held in secret detention centres. A controversial European Parliament report, however, spoke of hundreds of so-called “rendition” flights.

So far, only one case has actually gone to trial. Recently an Italian court convicted more than 20 American agents in their absence of being involved in the abduction of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.

US President Barack Obama announced early on that he was closing the foreign detention centre network.

in: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8426028.stm

The report by the Lithuanian legislature’s National Security Committee based on testimony of top politicians and national security officials confirmed that the State Security Department provided two facilities to the CIA.

One was a small cell set up in 2002 that could only house one suspect. The other was set up in 2004 and was big enough to hold eight suspects, the panel said.  Aircraft involved in transporting prisoners had entered Lithuanian airspace and landed in Vilnius, the country’s capital, on several occasions in 2002-2005.

“Those airplanes were not checked by border police and customs, (and) persons travelling and cargo were never identified.”

The panel didn’t give details on the two alleged detention.  An ABC report last month identified the second facility as a former horseback riding school in Antaviliai, a village 12 miles (20 kilometres) northeast of Vilnius. It was privately owned until 2004 when it was sold to Elite L.L.C., a company that no longer exists.  The State Security Department bought it in 2007 and used it as a training center. The facility has no address and uses a post office box number in the village.

There was no evidence that the State Security Department had informed the president, prime minister or other political leaders of its cooperation with the CIA. The panel also did not found any evidence that any suspects were interrogated in Lithuania.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite has demanded that the former director of the State Security Department, Mecys Laurinkus, immediately leave his post as ambassador to Georgia.

In a 2007 probe conducted on behalf of the Council of Europe, Swiss politician Dick Marty accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

A parliamentary enquiry in Lithuania has concluded that the CIA ran two secret prisons in that jurisdiction to which various suspected terrorists were ‘extraordinarily rendered’ in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks. According to the Irish Times news report the enquiry has found that the detention centres were opened and operated in conjunction with the Lithuanian intelligence agencies and that there was no domestic political approval of them. This adds Lithuania to Poland and Romania as European jurisdictions in which such prisons operated.

This is worrying in a number of respects. First of all there is, of course, the concern that a European jurisdiction allowed for the operation of these ‘ghost prisons’. These prisons were clearly intended to circumvent US and international law. Furthermore, they were designed and operated in a manner that attempted to ensure that the domestic law of the relevant state could not be availed of by detainees in any attempt to secure their liberty. The idea of designing a detention centre that would operate outside of the law is almost certainly to ensure that intelligence officers can use whatever mechanisms they deem appropriate or necessary in order to acquire ‘intelligence’ about the detainees’ alleged activities without the spectre of legal accountability for such actions. It seems unlikely that thoughts at that time were directed towards acquiring evidence that could be used in a court of law—there would, after all, be clear questions of admissibility if sustainable claims could be made that information was acquired in an unconstitutional manner. Rather, the information to be gathered was clearly ‘intelligence’—i.e. designed to be used in counter-terrorism design and operations as opposed to in any prosecutorial process.

The second worrying aspect of this report, as far as we know about it at this point, is the claim that there was no high level political approval of the establishment of these detention centres. This is something that the citizens of Lithuania ought to be particularly concerned about as it suggests that intelligence agencies are creating bilateral working relationships that have clearly repressive nature and open the state to potentially immense liability without any kind of democratic processes being used to approve them.

What the fall out of this enquiry in domestic politics and law will be in Lithuania remains to be seen. It will also be interesting to see whether or not there are any repercussions at the EU level (Lithuania joined the EU in 2004). However, it should be said that the fact that a parliamentary enquiry was carried out and that a report is being released is very much to be welcomed. As the story of European involvement in the ‘War on Terrorism’ continues to unfold it is important that we marry our disappointment with various states’ participation with a sense of optimism that the story is, indeed, unfolding giving rise to at least political—if not always legal—accountability.

(Photo credit)

Myth#5 – The most painful lie used against me was when I was betrayed by someone I thought of and trusted as a friend.  She twisted a sentence that I wrote in a handout for an international TESOL conference paper that I delivered last March in Denver, Colorado.  She immediately flew into a rage that she did not agree with the term “dumping ground.” Here’s the errant sentence I wrote: “The Soviet Union from the North made Kazakhstan a “dumping ground” of other nationalities, making Kazakhs a minority in their own land.”  Why had I put “dumping ground” in quotations? Because there are plenty of journal articles, while doing a literature review, that use this phrase when referring to the number of nationalities (Korean, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.) who were thrown off the train in the middle of the steppes of Kazakhstan.  Thankfully, many Kazakh sympathized and helped those people who were dumped onto Kazakh soil to find food and shelter.  I believe the spirit of generosity and hospitality extended to strangers thrown off of trains during the perilous times of Stalin’s purges says something noble about the Kazakh people, doesn’t it?

In fact, when I went to ALZHIR, the memorial built by the president of this fine country, he was quoted as saying, “It is not Kazakhstan’s fault that it’s land was used as a “dumping ground” of many nationalities.”  Why can the president use this disputable phrase but I can’t? (ALZHIR is just outside of Astana, the new capital for Kazakhstan.  This place was where the wives whose husbands were considered “Enemies of the people” from all over the Soviet Union were sent as punishment. They were separated from their children and forced to do labor, some for 10 years if they lasted that long.) 

Logic went out the window in our heated discussion when my “friend” said that I thought her mother was garbage if I wrote that Kazakhstan was the Soviet Union’s “dumping ground” much the same as Siberia was used with its penal system. I never mentioned her mother, I was puzzled how that came up in our conversation when I thought we had been talking about Kazakhstan. But my supposed “friend” loves her mother and didn’t want her to be thought of as an imperialist Russian who came down from Moscow to Kazakhstan to tame the wild Kazakhs into submission.

I have much sympathy and compassion for this former teaching colleague woman who only has an older mother and one daughter.  We shared some very good times together but this is a very complex country to live in. Unfortunately she was born in Kazakhstan but she is not Kazakh herself, she is what is known as Kazakhstani.  Perhaps her main fear is that the nationalistic Kazakhs will rise up against the Kazakhstani who are of Russian ethnicity and kick them out as has been done in more nationalistic countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and other former Soviet countries. In actual truth, her mother was a history teacher and that is where the political rub comes in.  Even the president of this country found that the Moscow elites were changing Kazakhstan’s history in the history textbooks to fit the Soviet ideology and would obliterate any truth to what the Kazakhs had handed down orally for generations.

So from that little incident last spring, it was noised around with a change of wording that I thought Kazakhstan was a “garbage dump.”  Nothing could be further from the truth!!!  I see Kazakhstan as a very beautiful country with very beautiful people.  What saddens me is that there are Kazakh and Kazakhstani alike who are still so twisted up in their old communist dogma. They are NOT beautiful people but are soulless and still very much misled by untruths. In some cases, the older teachers and administrators have been communist party members longer than they have known the liberating air of democracy.  I have learned from this experience that the old habits of intimidation, fear and bullying die hard. 

What I found so perplexing was why would I, as an American citizen, prefer to stay and teach longer in Kazakhstan if I thought this country was a “garbage dump?” I certainly was not teaching at this institution of higher learning for the pay as many other foreigners are who draw large professor salaries.  Compared to other universities in Almaty, our institution is also the best paying job for any Kazakh or Kazakhstani teacher. There’s the irony because it would be much easier for me to go home and live in a culture that I know as my own and be paid twice as much as I was paid in Almaty.

to be continued

ヴィータウタス・ランズベルギス氏が11月に来日した。1990年代、ソ連からの独立運動を指導したリトアニアのサユディス運動の中心メンバーであり、その後同国最高会議（国会）議長を務め、現在は欧州議会があるストラスブールでリトアニア代表を務める。一方で、彼は音楽家でもある。リトアニアを代表する作曲家で画家のチュルリョーニス（1875～1911）の研究者で、しかも彼自身がピアノの演奏者だ。

1932年生まれの77歳だが、多忙な毎日。今日、そんな中での来日だった。時に茶目っ気があり、時にとても鋭い眼差しで話をする本人を目の前に、政治家としての話が聞けただけでなく、彼の演奏するピアノの繊細な音色まで聴けたのはとても幸運だった。

記者会見の席でランズベルギス氏は、冷戦終結にもつながった民主化の流れの一つであるバルト三国の「人間の鎖」について触れた。こうした動きは、民主化を求めていた共産圏の国々だけでなく、モスクワの民主化運動にも力を与え、帝国（ソ連邦）を崩壊させた。

だが、20年経った今日、自由を取り戻した国々も経済危機の影響を受け、社会主義時代を懐かしむ人々もいる。ランズベルギス氏は「20年とは長い時間ではない。人々の気持ちの動きを注意深く見ていかなければならない」と話した。

レクチャー・コンサートでランズベルギス氏は、チュルリョーニスが活動をしていた20世紀初頭の背景、そして彼の芸術に対する姿勢について講演した。モデレーターを務めた沼野充義東大教授は最後に、恐らく誰もが聞きたかった質問を投げた。音楽家と政治家はどう両立できるのか。ランズベルギス氏の答えは単純明快であった。「人のために働くこと、説得し伝えること、そして人の話を聴くこと、これらは音楽家であろうと政治家であろうと同じなのだ」と。（みかん）

駐日リトアニア大使館の案内ページ
http://jp.mfa.lt/index.php?-875580666

リトアニアやチュルリョーニスにまつわるブログ　
http://ciurlionis.exblog.jp/13023632/

時事通信報道
http://www.jiji.com/jc/zc?k=200911/2009112000738

1. Much has been said about COP15 already. While media is vocal bringing Obama’s quotes, EU disappointment (Ed Miliband) and Wen Jiabao’s perspective, I found a fair and insightful review written by Robert Stavins at Belfer center. [Myself, I tend to the same conclusion Ann Florini advocates: we need to rethink global energy related organizational infrastructure].
2. Distinctly little on Copenhagen talks has been delivered in Lithuanian media. Forum was never awarded a major headline in the local media and was only briefly mentioned in the context of protests or after the deal was signed. Is it the media, or society to blame?
3. Generally, one could say the ‘green wave’ has reached the country. Young Lithuanians write eco-blogs, green ideas enter public discourse (for instance, in multiple contests of national vision),  green (of all shades) shops are mushrooming around the old town of Vilnius. However, reading a magazine Green’as made me regret spending 8 litai earlier and reminded the “green party” problem Thomas L. Friedman describes in his book (excerpt from an interview for Salon):
   - The green revolution is still at a symbolic and hobby level. There are a lot of small things people are doing — wonderful things — driving a hybrid car, putting solar panels on their roof, generating their own power. But the problem is, the scale of this problem is so large. I say, “Well, here’s a phony revolution. It’s doing nothing toward that scale.” So that’s why I’m down on Earth Day concerts and more focused on the real engine for innovation and deployment, which is the marketplace.
4. Drop kitchen-innovation. Focus on issues where real pollution happens.

Lithuania is a republic in north Eastern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic States along the Baltic Sea. The other Baltic State countries are Estonia and Latvia. However the concept of Baltic States is misleading as it implies some sort of political unity between Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia which is not the case. It shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland to the south, and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia to the southwest. The capital of Lithuania is Vilnius.

The population of Lithuania was estimated at 3,585,906 in 2006.

Lithuanian is the official language.

The majority of Lithuanians are Roman Catholic. Other religions practised in Lithuania are Lutheran, Protestant, Russian Orthodox, Evangelical Lutheran, Judaism and Islam.

The Kernave Archaeological Site, about thirty five kilometres from Vilnius, is on the World Heritage List. The site which dates from the late Palaeolithic period to the middle Ages includes settlements, burial sites, forts and the town of Kernave.

Over thirty percent of Lithuania is forested. There are many rivers and over three thousand lakes.

There are Regional parks and National parks. Animals found in protected areas are elk, deer, foxes, wolves and wild boar. Birds include eagles, hawks, geese, herons, swans and white storks.

Traditional Lithuanian cuisine includes soups, stews, sausages, smoked meat and rye bread.

Main meals consist of meat such as pork, chicken and duck or fish such as eel, pike and herring served with potatoes and vegetables such as beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, cucumber, mushrooms, onions, radishes and turnips.

Lithuania has a variety of potato dishes including pancakes and stuffed potato dumplings called cepelinai. Dairy products, especially cottage cheese and curd cheese, are used in Lithuanian recipes. Eggs are used to make a variety of omelettes.

Cakes, pastries, fruit dumplings and ice cream are popular desserts. Cold sweet soups, such as cherry soup, are made with berries and fruit. Other fruits grown in Lithuania are apples, gooseberries, pears and plums. Bilberries, cranberries, raspberries, strawberries and mushrooms are collected from the woods.

Lithuanians drink milk, fruit juices, tea, coffee, beer and mead, an alcoholic drink made with honey.

Many Lithuanians belong to sports clubs. The most popular sports are basketball, football, track and athletics.

During the Sydney Olympics Lithuania won the bronze medal for basketball and gold medals for the discus and shooting.

Lithuanias climate is mild although it can be cold in winter and summers are warm.

If in doubt visit the country yourself

1. Building on my previous post: London Mayor Boris Johnson announced plans to add 25,000 charging stations for electric cars across the city by 2015, turning London into a center of plug-in vehicle technology. The rationale is to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improve the quality of air for the citizens.
2. I have stated previously there’s very little thinking along these lines in Lithuania. My observation was based on the media discourse and simple facts as number of hybrid vehicles in the country (few hundreds only). Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a Lithuanian firm of EVs enthusiasts: they have even launched a promotional site greenauto.lt.
3. Next year Mitsubishi i-MiEV will reach country as well (they claim exploitation cost of mere 1€  per 100 km!). Charging stations are expected to follow (first – residential areas, then – public?).
4. Thus the picture for EVs  is not that gloomy. However the issue  is how can we bring these positive pieces of ‘ecopreneurship’ together?

A “toxic asset pool” rears its ugly head…

Nordic banks are beginning the long process of tidying up their bad Baltic property loans, with all four of the most exposed institutions creating special purpose vehicles (SPVs) in the last couple of months to take ownership of loan collateral. The strategy will leave the banks owning and managing large numbers of offices and retail properties in the region while they wait for markets to recover – which is expected to take five years or more.

via Nordic bank SPVs start work on bad Baltic loans – Risk.net.

A few questions I have:

Are the SPVs bankruptcy remote from the banks? Because without true risk transference, this whole thing is pointless. The banks need to get the stuff off their books so they can stop taking charges against their capital structure. That won’t make them lend again in and of itself, but there would at least be an end to taking capital charges as their balance sheets deflated.

Where will the equity come from? Will it be from private investors, taxpayers, or some combination? If there’s a combination of public and private investment involved, public money has to be safeguarded by being placed in the capital structure at a senior level to the private money.

What’s the mark on the property being taken over by the SPVs? If the value is still at par, these things will need many, many years to recover. The banks wouldn’t take a loss, but  the investors into the SPV would. If it’s less, then it’s  a question of how much further down the property’s value goes. Chances are there will be a second leg down, but how far and how long remains to be seen.

The alternative is not very appealing:

The alternative for both institutions would be to sell their collateral into a property market that has crashed spectacularly. In Riga, for example, prices for the Soviet-era apartments that make up around 85% of the city’s housing stock dropped from a pre-crisis peak of €1700 per square metre to a trough of €460 – a drop of 70% or so, according to one Latvia-based banker with another western institution.

“It’s like a completely illiquid bond market where the prices you get are fire-sale prices,” says the SEB source. “If you’re not in a bind for capital and not in a bind to show profits, it might be more efficient to hold onto the assets until the liquidity has returned.”

Has it occurred to anyone that the only bid they’ll get is a distressed bid? Like a Nikkei investor who bought in 1989? How is that going for them? By the looks of things, still not so good – and it’s 20 years later.

Someone will have to be the bag holder eventually. The sooner it gets spelled out as to who it is (it should be the banks that lent on these deals and the borrowers) and how much pain is involved, the sooner we can put it all behind us and move on.

Will you drive this? That is a question I pose to our readers here at Suit Up!. I personally don’t like the whole big rim debacle and some of the design elements look quite odd, so I wouldn’t drive it myself and to tell you the truth neither should you. This car comes from Lithuania and although I applaud the guys work and engineering I deeply concerned this will start a trend. Click on the jump to see what I mean. Fear the Russian repaired cars. Fear them

Courtesy of EnglishRussia.com

Visit http://multiculturalcooking.net for in-depth coverage in the European Food history section of European Christmas Traditons.  Food customs of the Ukraine, Poland, Finland and Lithuania.

Learn about the German and Italian history of Mulled wine.

http://www.multiculturalcooking.net/en2/food-history/europe