NATO will need a military presence in the Arctic as global warming melts frozen sea routes and major powers rush to lay claim to lucrative energy reserves, the military bloc's chief said Thursday.
NATO commanders and lawmakers meeting in Iceland's capital said the Arctic thaw is bringing the prospect of new standoffs between powerful nations.
"I would be the last one to expect military conflict — but there will be a military presence," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters. "It should be a military presence that is not overdone, and there is a need for political cooperation and economic cooperation."
The opening up of Arctic sea routes once navigable only by icebreakers threatens to complicate delicate relations between countries with competing claims to Arctic territory — particularly as exploration for oil and natural gas becomes possible in once inaccessible areas.
De Hoop Scheffer said negotiations involving Russia, NATO and other nations will be key to preventing a future conflict. The NATO chief is expected to meet Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov next week for talks.
The United States, Russia and Canada are among the countries attempting to claim jurisdiction over Arctic territory alongside Nordic nations. Analysts say China is also likely to join a rush to capture energy reserves.
"Several Arctic rim countries are strengthening their capabilities, and military activity in the High North region has been steadily increasing," de Hoop Scheffer told delegates.
Some scientists predict that Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers by 2013, decades earlier than previously thought. De Hoop Scheffer said trans-Arctic routes are likely to become an alternative to passage through the Suez or Panama canals for commercial shipping.
"Climate change is not a fanciful idea, it is already a reality, a reality that brings with it certain new challenges, including for NATO," de Hoop Scheffer said.
The NATO chief said an upsurge in energy exploration — and the likelihood of more commercial ships needing emergency rescue — would require a larger NATO presence in the Arctic.
"The end of the Cold War resulted in a marked reduction in military activity in the High North — Iceland would like it to stay that way," Iceland's outgoing Prime Minister Geir Haarde told the conference.
Haarde tendered his resignation Monday amid the country's economic crisis and said the one-day conference was among his final duties before he steps down on Saturday.
Lee Willett, head of the maritime studies program at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based military think tank, said that as routes open up, warships from nations seeking to defend claims on energy resources will follow.
"Having lots of warships, from lots of nations who have lots of competing claims on territory — that may lend itself to a rather tense situation," Willett said. "We may see that flash points come to pass there more readily than elsewhere in the world."
Russia and Canada have already traded verbal shots over each other's intentions in the Arctic, and Canada has beefed up its military presence in the region, announcing plans to build a new army training center and a deep-water port in contested Arctic waters. Norway, the U.S. and Denmark also have claims in the vast region, while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seeks to lay claim to Arctic territory the size of France.
Six people were arrested on Wednesday outside the Reykjavik conference venue — two for burning a NATO flag. Many Icelanders oppose the volcanic island's membership in the military bloc, fearing it compromises the nation's independence.
Such attempts to miltarize the north is obvious. Global warming has been a concern since the 1980s. However this militarization of the north only comes during the race for the claim over the natural resources located in the Arctic. This is just another power play, placing military power where it is not needed in order for nations to fight over resources. We at the Maoist Rebel news call on Iceland's people to refuse the NATO Agreement (which never had real purpose) in order to maintain their own sovereignty.
President Barack Obama signed a number of executive orders Friday that he said should "level the playing field" for labour unions in their struggles with management.
Obama also used the occasion to announce formally a new White House task force on the problems of middle-class Americans, with Vice-President Joe Biden as chairman.
Union officials say the new orders by Obama will undo Bush administration policies that favoured employers over workers. The orders will:
-Require federal contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
-Reverse a Bush administration order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
-Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
"We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests," Obama said during a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
"I do not view the labour movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution," he said. "You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labour movement."
Signing the executive orders was Obama's second overture to organized labour in as many days. On Thursday, he signed the first bill of his presidency, giving workers more time to sue for wage discrimination.
"It's a new day for workers," said James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who attended the ceremony with other union leaders.
"We finally have a White House that is dedicated to working with us to rebuild our middle class. Hope for the American Dream is being restored."
Of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, Obama said, "We're not forgetting the poor. They are going to be front and centre, because they, too, share our American Dream."
He said his administration wants to make sure low-income people "get a piece" of the American pie "if they're willing to work for it."
"With this task force, we have a single, highly visible group with one single goal: to raise the living standards of the people who are the backbone of this country," Biden said.
Obama set several goals for the task force, including expanding opportunities for education and training; improving the work-family balance; restoring labour standards, including workplace safety, and protecting retirement security.
The president and vice-president said the task force will include the secretaries of commerce, education, labour and health and human services because those cabinet departments have the most influence on the well-being of the middle class.
It also will include White House advisers on the economy, the budget and domestic policy.
Biden pledged that the task force will conduct its business in the open, and announced a website, www.astrongmiddleclass.gov, for the public to get information.
He also announced that the panel's first meeting will be Feb. 27 in Philadelphia and will focus on environmental or "green jobs."
After weeks of shocking twists and turns, the conclusion of Rod Blagojevich's tenure as Illinois governor offered no surprises at all.
Blagojevich addressed his Senate impeachment trial and offered familiar lines: He was innocent. The trial rules were unfair. His goal always was to help people.
Then the Senate did what was expected and voted to throw Blagojevich out of office. And on an identical 59-0 roll call, it barred the two-term Democrat from ever again holding public office in the state.
"He failed the test of character. He is beneath the dignity of the state of Illinois. He is no longer worthy to be our governor," said Sen. Matt Murphy, a Republican from suburban Chicago.
Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell President Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, becomes the first U.S. governor in more than 20 years to be removed by impeachment.
Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, one of Blagojevich's critics, was promptly sworn in as governor. "The ordeal is over," declared Quinn, 60.
Blagojevich's troubles, however, are not over. Federal prosecutors are drawing up an indictment against him on corruption charges.
Outside his Chicago home Thursday night, Blagojevich vowed to "keep fighting to clear my name," and added: "Give me a chance to show you that I haven't let you down."
Blagojevich, 52, had boycotted the first three days of the impeachment trial, calling the proceedings a kangaroo court. But on Thursday, he went before the Senate to fight for his job, delivering a 47-minute plea that was, by turns, defiant, humble and sentimental.
"You haven't proved a crime, and you can't because it didn't happen," Blagojevich told lawmakers. "How can you throw a governor out of office with insufficient and incomplete evidence?"
The verdict brought to an end what one legislator branded "the freak show" in Illinois. Over the past few weeks, Blagojevich found himself isolated, with almost the entire political establishment lined up against him. The crisis paralyzed state government and made Blagojevich and his helmet of lush, dark hair a punchline from coast to coast.
Many ordinary Illinoisans were glad to see him go.
"It's very embarrassing. I think it's a shame that with our city and Illinois, everybody thinks we're all corrupt," Gene Ciepierski, 54, said after watching the trial's conclusion on a TV at Chicago's beloved Billy Goat Tavern. "To think he would do something like that, it hurts more than anything."
In a solemn scene, more than 30 legislators rose one by one on the Senate floor to accuse Blagojevich of abusing his office and embarrassing the state. They denounced him as a hypocrite, saying he cynically tried to enrich himself and then posed as the brave protector of the poor and "wrapped himself in the constitution."
Blagojevich did not stick around to hear the vote. He took a state plane back to Chicago.
He did, however, use his last day in office to grant clemency to a prominent Chicago real estate developer and a former drug dealer, just hours before the vote to oust him.
The verdict capped a head-spinning string of developments that began with his arrest by the FBI on Dec. 9. Federal prosecutors had been investigating Blagojevich's administration for years, and some of his closest cronies already have been convicted.
The most spectacular allegation was that Blagojevich had been caught on wiretaps scheming to sell an appointment to Obama's Senate seat for campaign cash or a plum job for himself or his wife.
"I've got this thing and it's (expletive) golden, and I'm just not giving it up for (expletive) nothing. I'm not gonna do it," he was quoted as saying on a government wiretap.
Sen. James Meeks, a Chicago Democrat, mocked Blagojevich during debate: "We have this thing called impeachment and it's bleeping golden and we've used it the right way."
Prosecutors also said Blagojevich illegally pressured people to make campaign contributions and tried to get editorial writers fired from the Chicago Tribune for badmouthing him in print.
Obama himself, fresh from his historic election victory, was forced to look into the matter and issued a report concluding that no one in his inner circle had done anything wrong.
"Today ends a painful episode for Illinois," the president said in a Thursday night statement. "For months, the state had been crippled by a crisis of leadership. Now that cloud has lifted."
Even as legislators were deciding whether to launch an impeachment, Blagojevich defied the political establishment by appointing a former Illinois attorney general, Roland Burris, to the very Senate seat he had been accused of trying to sell. Top Democrats on Capitol Hill eventually backed down and seated Burris.
As his trial got under way, Blagojevich launched a media blitz, rushing from one TV studio to another in New York to proclaim his innocence. He likened himself to the hero of a Frank Capra movie and to a cowboy in the hands of a Wild West lynch mob.
The impeachment case included not only the criminal charges against Blagojevich, but allegations he broke the law when it came to hiring state workers, expanded a health care program without legislative approval and spent $2.6 million on flu vaccine that went to waste. The 118-member House twice voted to impeach him, both times with only one "no" vote.
By Thursday night, Blagojevich's name and picture had disappeared from the state's official Web site. Instead, an unobtrusive "Pat Quinn, Governor" was in the upper right corner.
Never before has a man who is blatantly guilty acted as a persecuted victim. This man was caught red-handed undermining democracy. Undermining the spirit of the fore fathers. This man could not be more guitly. It is sickening for this man who say he is being judged unfairly. It is a true testiment to the shear BS of the Conservative to try to find a way to blame Obama.
There has never been one piece of evidence to link Obama to this scandal. The fact they can out right lie saying he is, after 8 years of George Bush destroying democracy, show what kind of people Conservatives really are.
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