Headlines – Page 35 – The Speaker News Journal

20,000 Elephants Were Poached in Africa in 2013

October 17, 2014June 17, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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At least 20,000 African elephants were poached last year–hunted for their tusks, which are still in high demand on the Asian ivory market. The statistics were published last Friday the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a group which observes 35,000 world species, including 30-40 percent of all elephant populations.

There has also been an increase in large seizures of ivory–over 500 kg–mainly in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, which account for 80 percent of the seizures reported by CITES.

John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General of CITES, commented on the trend, “Africa’s elephants continue to face an immediate threat to their survival from high-levels of poaching for their ivory and with over 20,000 elephants illegally killed last year the situation remains dire. Due to the collective efforts of so many, we also see some encouraging signals, but experience shows that poaching trends can shift dramatically and quickly, especially when transnational organized crime is involved.”

CITES monitors sites where poaching is taking place. Sites where poaching is increasing include Dzanga Sangha (Central African Republic). In Zakouma National Park (Chad) poaching is declining.

Besides Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, five other countries have been implicated by CITES: China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These are the main origin, transit and destination locations for the trade.

The rates of killing are far higher than elephant repopulation rates, and the species are declining across Africa.

Poaching is thought to continue in such high levels due to poverty and weak governance, coupled with demand for the illegal commodity.

On July 7-11, the CITES Standing Committee will meet to discuss the figures in Geneva. The Monitoring Illegal Killing in Elephants (MIKE) program and the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) will also participate.

CITES collects data for 35,000 species around the globe. The data comes from law enforcement patrols and others who collect such information. CITES monitors 30-40 percent of the entire elephant population.

By Sid Douglas

CITES

Press Release

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

Daughters Are the Biggest Losers When Fathers Are Not in the Home

October 16, 2014June 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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Fatherlessness in families has been on the rise since 1960, and now is the situation in one-third of homes–meaning that 24 million American children do without their fathers.

Among the stock-and-trade activities documented to be missing from the lives of fatherless children are talking about the child’s day, sharing meals, helping with homework and going to and coming from activities.

Statistics show marked disadvantages caused by fatherlessness. Fatherless children account for more youth suicides, runaways and dropouts, and are two to three times as likely to have behavior disorders, experience poverty, chemical abuse, institutionalization and imprisonment, child abuse and child neglect. Criminal behavior such as anger-related rape is higher for those who were fatherless.

However, the greatest losers when fathers are not present are daughters. The prospects for family of fatherless daughters are very different from those of daughters with families. Fatherless daughters are 711 percent more likely to have kids as teenagers, 164 more likely to have a pre-marital birth, and 92 percent more likely to get divorced.

Why fatherlessness has increased from around 8 percent in 1960 to around one third in the 2010s is not completely understood, but fathers have cited two main reasons. The most commonly cited is “non-marital relationships and divorce.” The second is incarceration, which accounts for 7.3 of the 24 million fatherless American children.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

The Fatherless Generation

One Little US Town Is Showing the World How a Small Community Can Stand Up to Big Oil and Gas and Stop Fracking

October 16, 2014June 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

$fracking$

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One little US town is showing the world how a small community can take on big oil and gas. Lafayette, Colo. (pop. 25,733) was unhappily facing fracking within their town area. The citizens banded together with environmental groups and amended their Community Bill of Rights to secure their right to clean air, pure water, and the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish.

Besides Lafayette’s stand, moratoriums and bans have been enacted in six small cities and towns with a combined total of more than 400,000 citizens.

The Community Bill of Rights was amended on November 6, Election Day. The margin for the vote was nearly 60 percent, and in nearby Oberlin, OH. (pop. 8,286) the vote was over 70 percent in favor.

The vote was held after an employee of Halliburton, the world’s second largest oil field services company, filed a complaint with the elections board that the amendment being proposed by the community would have to include a summary of the measure according to state law.

The petitioners included the entirety of the amendment language, and the city clerk, Susan Koster, threw out the petition challenge, stating, “As a home rule city, Lafayette operates under a citizen adopted charter. In the case of this protest, the petition submitted to amend the City’s Charter complied with the Colorado Home Rule Act.”

Among the other challenges anti-fracking citizens faced were the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s (COGA) $66,974 investment in local media and claims that the “Bowling Green” charter amendment would kill jobs and raise energy costs buy over 80 percent.

The city itself enacted an ordinance that banned fracking. This was a way of dissuading voters from voting for the charter amendment, according to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF),which helped craft the Community Bill of Rights, because the ordinance was subject to being rescinded by the Council after the election was over. Similar actions had recently succeeded in nearby Broadview Heights and Mansfield, OH, according to CELDF.

However, Lafayette voted to adopt the charter amendment, banning fracking.

One month later, COGA filed suit against the city in attempt to overturn the fracking ban.

Then, energy industry representatives began private meetings with Gov. John Hickenlooper. Eleven environmental groups formally requested to be present at any such meetings.

“Apparently, it is now simply business as usual to shut out the voice of the people when making decisions that effect us all,” said the president of Protect our Loveland, Sharon J. Carlisle. “We demand our rightful place in your smoke-filled, oil- and gas-filled rooms of secret wheelings and dealings.”

Hickenlooper approved a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s lawsuit with Longmont City in an attempt to overturn that city’s fracking ban last summer, but weeks later admitted fracking was something “no one wants in their backyard.”

Reacting to the COGA suit, Lafayete residents filed a class-action lawsuit against COGA, the state of Colorado and Hickenlooper. The lawsuit is the first of its kind. Although the particular focus of the suit is fracking, it insists on the right of local self governance for citizens, protected through a community bill of rights. The residents’ suit alleges that their right to self governance is guaranteed by the US Constitution, the COGA Act infringes that right, and Colorado officials are guilty of not enforcing the ban on fracking. The residents allege that the ban passed in November was not being enforced.

CELDF executive director, Thomas Linzey, Esq., said of the suit, “This class action lawsuit is merely the first of many by people

across the United States whose constitutional rights to govern their own communities are routinely violated by state governments working in concert with the corporations that they ostensibly regulate.

“The people of Lafayette will not stand idly by as their rights are negotiated away by oil and gas corporations, their state government, and their own municipal government.”

Halliburton Co. is incorporated in the US, where its headquarters is in Houston, TX., but its chairman and CEO, David Lesar, works and lives in Dubai, where Halliburton’s other headquarters is located.

The company took in $5 billion of profits for the past three fiscal years, and billions in the years before.

Halliburton has recently been the source of several controversies. In 2013, the company pled guilty on charges of destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, incurring a $200,000 statutory fine. In addition, Halliburton has been implicated in the creation of a toxic cloud that forced evacuations in Farmington, New Mexico in 2006, and it may also be implicated in spill in a 2009 Timor Sea off Australia and a 2010 improper cementing in the Gulf of Mexico.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Market Watch

CELDF

EcoWatch

UNESCO Issues Call for Ethics Teacher Applicants

October 16, 2014June 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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UNESCO’s The Division of Ethics, Youth and Sport has issued a call for Ethics teachers. The teachers will attend an Ethics Teacher Training Course (ETTC) in Amman, Jordan, between October 19 and 23 of this year.

The course is a part of a collaborative effort between UNESCO, the Jordanian National Committee on Ethics of Science and Technology (NCEST), Hashemite University, and the Jordanian National Commission for UNESCO to improve the teaching of ethics worldwide.

The course will be taught by a team of international experts in ethics teaching.

UNESCO has specified that applicants should submit a registration form to their Bioethics Section secretariat with a letter of intent. The registration deadline is July 1. Participants must cover their own travel meals and accommodation expenses.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

UNESCO

Education Aid Down 10 Percent Since 2010

October 17, 2014June 15, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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Global education aid has fallen significantly. It fell six percent between 2010 and 2011, and another 3 percent in 2012. The drop has brought funding levels back to par with 2008 funding. The figures were released recently by UNESCO’s Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report. This is the first time aid funding for education has fallen since 2002.

The report was published in anticipation of UNESCO’s Global Partnership for Education’s Replenishment Pledging Conference, which will take place June 25-26 in Brussels. Donors are being faced with a request to raise $3.5 billion to educate the world’s poorest.

Over 50 million children and 70 million adolescents are currently not in school. The hardest hit by the funding cuts include the countries that need the funding most, such as sub-Saharan Africa–the home of more than half the world’s out-of-school children.

Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, said, “When so many girls and boys are still out of school and not learning, the continuing drop in funds for education is cause for serious concern. Increasing external support for education is an ethical and development imperative. We know the difference that well-targeted aid can make in helping countries to put quality education first.”

Education is not the only area of aid funding that has declined. Overall aid has decreased by a percent globally, which has caused UNESCO to state that education is not a priority development goal at present. Education aid accounts for two percent of humanitarian appeals–half the target amount set by the UN in 2013 and one of the smallest proportions of requests made for funding.

Two of the countries with the most out-of-school children, India and Pakistan, have the largest funding cuts to basic education.

The Global Partnership for Education, which will meet later this month, has the stated goal of ensuring “sufficient and sustainable financing for education in our partner countries and achieve GPE’s vision of all children in school and learning…” Two hundred and fifty children in the world today cannot read and write by grade four.

By Sid Douglas

UNESCO

The Earth Actually Contains Four Times the Amount of Water Most People Think it Does, New Study Shows

October 17, 2014June 15, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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Scientists at Northwestern University have found evidence that four times the amount of water commonly thought to exist on Earth actually exists. The study, based on years of seismographical data, shows the existence of massive amounts of water located 255-400 miles (410-660 kilometers) under the surface of the Earth–equivalent to three times Earth’s oceans–and has caused a reassessment of the origin of Earth’s waters.

Evidence of the underground reservoir comes from years of US monitoring of subsurface movements. Researchers now believe they have found proof that a huge water reservoir exists in the transition zone–between the upper and lower mantle, the the two layers below the Earth’s crust.

The transition zone contains a mineral that has a high water storage capacity, called ringwoodite. Scientists believe ringwoodite fills the mantle.

Ringwoodite has been experimented on, and under extreme pressure, it has been found to trap water.

Ringwoodite (Photo credit: Richard Siemens)

The ringwoodite sinks into the mantle when oceanic crusts slide under adjoining plates and are forced further and further down. As even more weight bears on the ringwoodite from above, the water trapped in the mineral is forced out. This process is called hydration melting.

The amount of water held in subsurface ringwoodite is expected to be around three times the amount that fills the Earth’s oceans. Transition-zone ringwoodite would have to contain 2.6 percent water to bear this amount. The amount of water thought to be under the Earth, if it were on the surface, would only leave the tops of Earth’s mountains poking out as islands.

Given this information, scientists also believe there is more grounds to believe the Earth’s oceans came from within the Earth–the so-called “whole-Earth water cycle”–not from icy comets, the other popular theory.

The depth of the water is unreachable with contemporary tools, however. The deepest modern tools have drilled into the earth is 7.5 miles (12 kilometers)–halfway through the Earth’s crust. At that depth, the drill bit began to melt from geothermal heat.

The study supports the research of University of Alberta’s Graham Pearson, who found that a diamond from the transition zone expelled by a volcano contained water-bearing ringwoodite. Pearson has since found another ringwoodite crystal that also contained water.

By Sid Douglas

Science

University of Alberta

Approximately 200 Russian Army Vehicles Reported Moving Toward Ukraine Border

October 16, 2014June 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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A column of Russian military equipment, composed of perhaps 200 peices, has been videoed moving toward the Ukrainian border. The video shows 16 loader trucks carrying tanks. The column is reportedly moving toward the Dolzhansky crossing.

These reports have not been officially verified. Information is being written as it is becomes available. [Update: the reports have now published in Podrobnosti, and is being reported on by several Western outlets.]

Reports are also coming in from djp3tros and other sources on Twitter.

Russia Has Sent Tanks Into Ukraine, Says US State Department

Earlier Sunday, NATO released images it said showed Russian tanks had recently entered Ukraine from the same origin, the Russian city of Rostov. Russia had vigorously denied any truth to the claims of the Ukrainian government that Russian tanks had entered, but the US State Department confirmed the claims Saturday.

[Updated] The Ukrainian military has since stated that their forces at the border are in full combat readiness, and that no advances on the border have been made in the past 24 hours.

74 vehicles can be counted in another video.

Another video, posted Saturday, also shows large amounts of military vehicles moving toward Ukraine in Rostov. Around 45 vehicles are shown.

Another video shows 14 vehicles.

Rostov, Russia, near Ukrainian border and Donetsk

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Long Dismissed, BRICS Beginning to Grab Attention as Serious Competitor to G7, World Bank and IMF

October 16, 2014June 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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The BRICS alliance is considered to have been largely dismissed by Western players in recent years, but, with new developments, including this years Russian aggression in Ukraine and recent trade and banking agreements and talks among the BRICS community, analysts are beginning to look at BRICS as a potentially historic challenge to a global order that has been in place since World War II.

Russia lost its welcome in the G8 and saw economic sanctions imposed on it by much of the Western world due to its illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and more recent continued military aggression in Eastern Ukraine. Russia remains a part of BRICS, however, which is causing analysts to pay more attention to a possibility of the inauguration of a new phase of global bipolarity.

BRIC was created officially in 2009, and attracted many attention and investors due to the massive combined total population and landmass of the four original members. Nearly 3 billion people lived in Brazil, Russia, India and China–40 percent of the world’s population–and the nations cover 25 percent of the world’s land. Investors and others saw the potential for rapid growth in domestic consumption as millions of people elevated their socioeconomic status into the middle class bracket.

The BRICS nations recently have signed trade agreements and begun the formation of institutions to rival the current monopoly of their Western and European counterparts IMF and the World Bank, which are much criticized by economists in the developing world.

Russia and China signed a multi-billion dollar Sino-Russian gas deal in May–the so-called Agreement on Cooperation, which was 10 years in the making. The deal undercuts the US dollar in international transactions. Recently, the leaders of China and Russia have been holding talks about the creation of a new credit rating agency to cater to BRICS countries. The BRICS countries have been reported to be near a deal on the New Development Bank, each valued at $100 billion.

In addition, a BRICS development bank was proposed by India, which would directly rival the World Bank and IMF.

The future of global economics has seen many preditions, but it is still uncertain. In 2003, Goldman Sachs reported their speculation that by 2050 the BRIC economies would surpass most current major powers in wealth, due to a dominating supply of manufactured goods and services from China and India combined with Brazil’s raw materials.

More recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also projected that of the three percent annual growth it expects up to 2060, emerging economies will have much stronger, faster growth than already established economies.

Whereas the US economy represents nearly a quartre of global economic activity today, GDP is expected to shrink to 18 percent by 2030. China, which currently produces 17 percent of world GDP, will produce 28 percent in 2030, according to OECD estimates. India, which accounts for 7 percent today, will account for 17 percent in 2030 and 18 percent in 2060.

Europe’s share of world GDP will gradually drop from 17 percent today to nine percent by 2060. Japans economy will similarly shrink.

The OECD itself–composed of 34 countries–which accounts for 65 percent of global GDP will shink to 43 percent by 2060, at which time the combined GDP of China and India will be 46 percent, and other OECD nations will have a combined percentage of 18 percent.

Global GDPs will be affected largely by population growth, the OECD predicts. Personal incomes and living standards will also see the global gap narrowed. Emerging economies will increase living standards and the aging populations of the EU and US will stagnate living standards.

Alternatively, some global economists think that factors besides population growth will factor considerably into future developments, pointing to actual economic progress so far in BRICS countries. In recent years, only China has maintained strong growth rates. The other economies have been hampered by rule-of-law and other challenges.

Some commenters point to models of international organization besides the G7 and BRICS as the hope of international cooperation, such as the G20, where emerging economies are thought to have more of an equal footing with OECD nations, providing what may be a better model of dialogue between the various levels of economic development in the 21st century. The G20 takes into account contemporary and future economic rebalancing and seeks international consensus on universal global issues.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Abandoned Oil Wells Discovered to Account for Previously Unaccounted for Methane Emissions, New Princeton Study Finds

October 16, 2014June 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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In one US state alone–Pennsylvania–the effects of abandoned oil wells has been examined by a Princeton University student, PhD student and civil engineer Mary Kang, and the findings are that four to seven percent of estimated man-made methane emissions in Pennsylvania are caused by the abandoned wells. The source of the four to seven percent had previously been unaccounted for, according to the study published.

The study, “CO2, Methane, and Brine Leakage Through Subsurface Pathways: Exploring Modeling, Measurement, and Policy Options,” was published by Kang with the Civil and Engineering Department of Princeton.

Pennsylvania is the oldest oil and gas producer in the US. There are between 200,000 and just under one million abandoned wells in the state.

Robert Howarth, ecologist and methane expert at Cornell University, commented on the Princeton study, saying it was important because it shows how government and industry estimates of oil and gas emissions are actually lower than actual amounts. Howarth added that this study was not illustrative of just Pennsylvania. “I would expect this to be a problem affecting most if not all gas and oil fields,” Howarth said.

Other of Kang’s findings included that properly sealed wells polluted just as bad as unplugged wells. Also, sandstone formations were the most leaky of well locations. Cement seals in both active and abandoned wells crack over time, allowing methane leaks. The gas leaks can travel up to 14 kilometers and show up in rivers and homes.

Methane, radon, brine and other hydrocarbons can migrate into shallow groundwater aquifers, the air, and people homes through abandoned wells. Methane’s global warming potential is 86 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Princeton

Facebook Beats Conservative Lawyer in Lawsuit Over Facebook Page Encouraging Muslims to Kill Jews

October 17, 2014June 15, 2014 by Andrew Stern

The DC Appeals Court sided with Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg Friday in a case over several pages on Facebook, such as “Third Palestinian Intifada,” which called for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. The ruling was based on the protections given to all Americans using the internet under a section of a 1996 law.

Three years ago, Klayman saw the Facebook page “Third Palestinian Intifada,” of which there were 360,000 members, as well as three similar, smaller pages, and complained to Facebook because the pages called for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. After receiving a letter from Israel’s Minister for Public Diplomacy as well as from Klayman, Facebook removed the pages, but not fast enough, according to Klayman, who filed suit against Facebook and Zuckerberg. Klayman alleged that the delay of “many days” constituted intentional assulat and negligence.

The district court which heard the suit found for Facebook and Zuckerberg on the basis of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (1996), Section 230. Klayman appealed the decision, and Friday the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upheld the decision of the district court.

“In enacting the Communications Decency Act,” wrote the court in its decision, “Congress found that the Internet and related computer services ‘represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources,’ and ‘offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for

intellectual activity.”

The court concluded that Facebook and Zuckerberg–internet providers under Section 230–could not be held responsible for any content on their site(s), no matter how egregious it may seem to another user. “Facebook is not responsible for the actions, content, information, or data of third parties,” the court found.

“Congress accordingly made it the ‘policy of the United States’ to ‘promote the continued development of the Internet,'” the court continued, “and ‘to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation[.]’”

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed in 1996. It was in part an effort by the US Congress to regulate internet pornography, but in 1997 the US Supreme Court unanimously struck the “community standards” provision of the CDA in Reno v. ACLU because the provisions violated the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech.

Another part of the CDA, however, has been strengthened by court decisions over the years. Section 230 protects operators of internet services–such as Facebook–from being construed as publishers. Section 230 protects social media sites, ISPs and users by making them not liable for words posted on their sites by other people (except regarding federal criminal liability and intellectual property). The section reads, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Providers are even protected if they fail to take action after receiving notifications that harmful or offensive content exists on their sites.

Section 230 is considered a main protection of free speech online. Last year, after 47 state attorneys general signed a letter to Congress requesting the civil immunity in Section 230 be removed, the ACLU wrote, “Section 230 is directly responsible for the free, messy, uncensored, and often brilliant culture of online speech. By prohibiting most state civil or criminal liability for something somebody else writes or posts, it created the single most important legal protection that exists for websites, bloggers, and other internet users… If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn’t take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web.”

By Andy Stern

CADC

ACLU

Investigation on Current Russian Information War Finds Will Not Be Successful Against Western Minds

October 16, 2014June 14, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

In a recent report on the current Russian propaganda “netwar” being waged against non-Russia minds, the Center for Eastern Studies (OSW) found that Russia is actively carrying out organized campaigns to convince non-Russians that Russia is justified in its recent actions–particularly with regard to Crimea and greater Ukraine–but, the report found, the Russian info-war will likely not be successful outside of the Russian-speaking world where people are “less receptive to Russian disinformation.”

The report, entitled “The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare; the Crimean Operation, a Case Study,” was written by the Centre for Eastern Studies’ Jolanta Darczewska.

“The Crimean operation has served as an occasion for Russia to demonstrate to the entire world the capabilities and the potential of information warfare,” the report states. Russia’s goal is to convince the world of a context for Russia actions in which Russia is participating in a struggle against an “Atlantic civilization led by the USA” which “intends to disassemble Russian statehood and gain global hegemony,” and in which Russia struggle for “a just multi-polar world, which defends tradition, conservative values and true liberty.”

Darzcewska did not think Russian propaganda could convince any but Russian speakers who are already invested in the Russian side of the conflict. “The Russian propaganda is rather incredible and easy to verify in the era of new technologies,” Darzcewska wrote. “Furthermore, the propagated ideas are not appealing.”

The audience Putin is successful with is already “receptive to Russian propaganda,” and the rest of the world is “less receptive to Russian disinformation.” Darzcewska’s phrased it, “Ideological newspeak based on disinformation falls on fertile socio-cultural ground in the East.”

Russia is attempting to promote its messages outside Russia, Darzcewska says, through “specialist media” such as Voice of Russia (VOR) and Russia Today (RT), official websites of Russian institutions such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and also through “local opinion leaders.”

“The geopolitical doctrine,” Darzcewska wrote, “treats information as a dangerous weapon: it is cheap, it is a universal weapon, it has unlimited range, it is easily accessible and permeates all state borders without restrictions. The information and network struggle, as well as its extreme forms, such as information-psychological warfare and netwars, are means the state uses to achieve its goals.”

“Through information war, Darzcewska wrote, a state can also gain geopolitical advantage: “Geopolitics offers ideological grounds for information battles. In opposition to the ideology of liberalism, it promotes ‘a neo-conservative post-liberal power (…) struggling for a just multi-polar world, which defends tradition, conservative values and true liberty.’ The ‘Russian Eurasian civilization’ is set at contrast to the ‘Atlantic civilization led by the USA’ which allegedly intends to disassemble Russian statehood and gain global hegemony.” Darzcewska wrote that the crisis in Ukraine was presented in the context of the rivalry between the two civilizations.

In information war, specific techniques are used by the various practitioners, Darzcewska wrote. These “sociotechnical principles of successful propaganda” include “the principle of massive and long-lasting impact (the ‘orange plague’ and ‘Banderivtsy’ propaganda stero-types have been incessantly reiterated since 2003), the principle of desired information (Russians and Russian-speaking people expect that their rights should be protected, so they believed the manipulated information that the Russian language had been banned), the principle of emotional agitation n (bringing the recipients of the message to a condition in which they will act without much thought, even irrationally), the clarity principle (the message is simplified, uses black-and-white terms, and is full of loaded keywords, such as Russophobe), the principle of supposed obviousness (causing the propaganda thesis to be associated with created political myths: the Russian spring equals patriotism, Banderivtsy equals fascism, Maidan equals chaos, etc.).”

In her report, Darzcewska concluded, “Russian information warfare is set to continue since Putin’s new doctrine has crystallized. This doctrine is geopolitical, Eurasian, anti-liberal and oriented towards rivalry with the West and Russia’s dominance in Eurasia.”

By Day Blakely Donaldson

The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare; The Crimean Operation, A Case Study, by Jolanta Darczewska, Centre for Eastern Studies, Poland

FIFA, Non Profit Organization, Will Make $2 Billion Profit From the 2014 World Cup $4 Billion Gross and Pay 36 “Key Management Personnel” Over $1 Million Each

October 16, 2014June 14, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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The non profit organization FIFA will profit approximately $2 billion this year from the $4 billion the organization will take in from the World Cup. This amount is up 66 percent from its takings from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

During FIFA’s 2007-2010 revenue cycle, revenue was $4.2 billion, providing a $631 million surplus, allowing FIFA to increase its reserves to $1.3 billion. Of the $4.2 billion in revenue in 2010, 87 percent ($3.7 billion) came from the World Cup, the main income source for FIFA. After expenses of $1.3 billion, FIFA profited $2.3 billion.

FIFA is spending $2 billion on the 2014 World Cup–$576 million will go to the winning teams. Ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and other revenue are projected to amout to $4 billion, however.

FIFAs second largest source of income is World Cup rights, which in 2010 amounted to $1.1 billion. Marketers, such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates, Hyundai, Sony and Visa, payed an annual fee of $24-45 million for the privilege of using the FIFA-controlled rights, including marketing assets, and sponsors such as McDonald’s and Budweiser payed an annual $10-25 million for even greater access.

Costs for FIFA are topped by operating expenses and governance. In the 2007-2010 cycle, FIFA spent $0.9 billion on itself. The amount of $0.8 billion went to football development, and $0.7 went to operating expenses and $0.2 to “governance.”

Essentially, the organization maintains a non-profit status not by not profiting, but by paying its employees the amount that the company brings in and keeping a reserve fund, so that costs are just covered by gross.

In its 2013 fiscal year, FIFA paid its 35 “key management personnel”–Members of the Executive Committee, the Finance Committee and the FIFA management, in particular the directors–short-term employee benefits of $36.3 million. In 2012, it paid them $33.5 million. However, in addition to the short-term employee benefits, FIFA “contributes to defined post-employment benefit plans.” Pension expenses in 2013 were $2.3 million. However, even after deducting a sum like $36 million, there are questions about the $2 billion will go.

Questions about the corruption within the FIFA organization have been raised recently by the New York Times and others, including allegations linked to leaked conversations in which millions of dollars in bribes were discussed.

In response to strong accusations of corruption, FIFA issued a statement on its website Tuesday entitled “Setting the record straight.” In the introductory statement FIFA wrote, “FIFA is a non-profit organisation which shares the success of the FIFA World Cup™ with the global football community to develop the game from grassroots up and to spread positive values on and off the pitch.”

In the statement, FIFA wrote, “FIFA has covered the entire operational costs of the World Cup to the tune of around $2 billion USD. We don’t take any public money for this, and instead we only use the money generated by the sale of World Cup TV and marketing rights.”

As to the demands FIFA reportedly makes on its sponsors, FIFA wrote, “FIFA does not make any demands for a general tax exemption for sponsors and suppliers, or for any commercial activities in the host country. Instead, FIFA only requires an easing of customs procedures for some materials that need to be imported… .”

Of FIFA’s non-profit status and its massive profits, FIFA wrote, “… the question is: what does FIFA do with the profits from the World Cup? In short, all 209 member associations will benefit in equal measure. In fact, FIFA spends $550,000 USD on worldwide football development – every single day. What is more, we also spend nearly $2 million USD on organising international competitions – every single day.

The 2014 event in Brazil is costing the country an estimated $14 billion, while 16 percent of Brazilians are stricken with poverty. Poor Brazilians living in urban favelas have been evicted during the construction of the new stadiums to the tune of 250,000 people.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

FIFA

Vox

Globe and Mail