[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', 'C')ontinental climates typically include some of the most productive farmland in the world, which I suspect might be a large part of why the area has been occupied since at least the Neolithic age...

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'U')hmmm, no. Continental climate means the kind of climate that predominatres when you are far enough from the sea that a large body of water does no buffer your weather extremes. Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, Denmark western Germany all have maritime climates typified by mild weather year around. Eastern Germany, Swizerland, Austria, Poland, Hungry, Romania, the former Yugoslavia and points east have Continental climate, just like the USA and Canada between Lake Michigan and eastern Washington state. It gets really cold in the winter and can get really hot in the summer because the days are long and landforms absorb heat easily.

[wisconsin_cur]

FT: Old Dangers Threaten New Europe

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ationalism has long been a dirty word in Europe's polite political circles. Many politicians still bristle at the term. Nationalism was the destructive fever that drove the continent mad in the first half of the 20th century and flared up again in the Balkans in the 1990s with murderous results. “Nationalism is war,” said Francois Mitterrand, the late French president.

Europe’s greatest postwar achievement has been to dilute that nationalist poison so as to make war unthinkable. Sovereignty was pooled in the European Union, the “most effective conflict-resolution mechanism ever devised,” according to George Schopflin, a historian of European nationalism and Hungarian MEP.

Paradoxically, the success of European integration has now helped decontaminate nationalism, making it “safe” to fly the flag again while national electorates have rejected the perceived over-centralisation of power in Brussels. French, Dutch and Irish voters voted against the EU’s reform treaties with no fear of negative consequences. The financial crisis has also highlighted the primacy of nation states. As they bail out banks and pump money into their economies, national governments have rarely seemed so necessary. Who said that the EU and globalisation had rendered them irrelevant?

But how will Europe react to the rise of national sentiment during this increasingly severe downturn? In Brussels, the belief is that the EU will simply evolve to reflect the new realities, leading to more pragmatic co-operation between member states. The fear is that escalating competition between national interests will encourage protectionist instincts, jeopardising the European ideal.

[wisconsin_cur]

Washington Post
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')For 20 years, Bart McIntyre has tracked white supremacist movements, even spending two years undercover in Alabama to penetrate a violent young band of criminals who called themselves the Confederate Hammerskins.

Away from his wife and young daughter, McIntyre took the alias "Mark," attended Ku Klux Klan rallies and educated himself in racist propaganda. He and a law enforcement partner ultimately helped build criminal cases that sent more than 10 men to prison for their involvement in the murder and vicious beatings of black men in the Birmingham area in the early 1990s.

Now, as McIntyre prepares to retire from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he and other analysts are warning that the threat from hate groups and splinter organizations connected to the Klan should not be underestimated, especially at a time of economic unrest.

[wisconsin_cur]

Stimulus contains "Use only American Products" clauses

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he EU trade commissioner vowed to fight back after the bill passed in the House of Representatives late on Wednesday included a ban on most purchases of foreign steel and iron used in infrastructure projects.

The Senate's version of the legislation, which will be debated early next week, goes even further, requiring that any projects related to the stimulus use only American-made equipment and goods.

The inclusion of protectionist measures has quickly raised hackles in Europe.

Catherine Ashton, the EU trade commissioner, said: "We are looking at the situation. The one thing we can be absolutely certain about, is if a bill is passed which prohibits the sale or purchase of European goods on American territory, that is something we will not stand idly by and ignore."

Despite the parlous state of the US economy, some major American firms, including General Electric, are also opposed to the Buy American stipulations, fearing reprisals from overseas and further damage to the global economy.

[wisconsin_cur]

Protectionism rising

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') "Buy American" drive in the U.S., spreading protests against foreign workers in Britain and various countries' efforts to prop up their own beleaguered industries are fanning fears of a rise in economic nationalism that could deepen the global recession.

In Washington, President Barack Obama faces an early test as international concern mounts over moves in Congress to bar foreign suppliers from winning business on most projects funded by a new economic-stimulus package.

In the U.K., Prime Minister Gordon Brown confronted a different test, as hundreds of workers at oil refineries and power plants walked off the job as part of spreading protests in the industry against the use of foreign labor. That's a new phenomenon for the formerly booming country, known for being open to foreign businesses and workers. Meanwhile in Spain, the government is offering immigrants money to return home, while France has introduced stimulus measures that would route many government-sponsored projects to French companies.

[wisconsin_cur]

Wildcat strikes spread in UK

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')ordon Brown’s pledge to create “British jobs for British workers” came back to haunt him yesterday when a dispute over foreign labourers sparked a wave of industrial unrest.

Wildcat strikes flared at more than 19 sites across the country in response to claims that British tradesmen were being barred from construction jobs by contractors using cheaper foreign workers.

[TWilliam]

Gee, imagine that, eh cur? Governments endeavoring to put their own citizens back to work. The nerve...

[wisconsin_cur]

I guess I don't quite understand the mocking tone.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', 'I') guess I don't quite understand the mocking tone.

[wisconsin_cur]

Ah, no problem. Thanks for the clarification...

I have always had to roll my eyes at the presupposition from certain quarters that just because we have been headed in a certain direction for 60 years that it is ordained to last forever... or at least continue and gain strength for another 60.

The next few months or years will be extremely interesting as we see how government and popular pressure interact; and what kind of political movements are born or die. An extremely interesting time to say the least.

[wisconsin_cur]

Link
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Lord Mandelson enraged unions and Labour MPs last night by accusing wildcat strikers of "protectionism" and claiming they could turn the recession into a full-blown depression.

The Business Secretary inflamed the dispute over foreign workers by suggesting that protesters could go and work elsewhere in Europe if they were unhappy.

As the mediator Acas was called in to try to prevent more unofficial strikes planned for tomorrow, the peer issued a statement that failed to damp down growing industrial unrest.

His support for free movement of workers in the European Union was also at odds with Gordon Brown's 2007 promise to safeguard "British jobs for British workers", a phrase which has been turned against the Prime Minister by protesters.

[outcast]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd just watch -- South Africa is going to sh*t too, it's 15 years behind Zimbabwe.

[wisconsin_cur]

But instead of depending on feelings this one is codified in the stimulus package (only use American steel buy American bulldozers etc) which is more than advertising cliche but an attempt to undermine the basis of free trade.
---------
edit: an editorial from today's nyt on the issue

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')WORLD trade is collapsing. The United States trade deficit dropped sharply in November as imports from the rest of the world plummeted in response to the financial crisis and global recession. United States imports from China, Japan and elsewhere declined at double digit rates. The last thing the world economy needs is for governments to give a further downward shove to trade. Unfortunately, we may be doing just that.

Steel industry lobbyists seem to have persuaded the House to insert a “Buy American” provision in the stimulus bill it passed last week. This provision requires that preference be given to domestic steel producers in building contracts and other spending. The House bill also requires that the uniforms and other textiles used by the Transportation Security Administration be produced in the United States, and the Senate may broaden such provisions to include many other products.

[outcast]

As long as that stuff can be made cheaper somewhere else, often times it will be purchased from somewhere else. For example, even if China doubled the value of it's currency against the dollar, your average chinese factory worker would only made the equivalent of ~$400 per month, sometimes not even that. Those jobs wouldn't come back to the US, even if they left China they would only go to other SE asian countries that are even poorer like Vietnam. We cannot compete in that way, that's why those blue collar jobs were lost to begin with.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ritain is braced for more wildcat strikes after a day of confusion in the Government that failed to resolve the row over foreign workers.

Up to 1,000 construction workers at Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing facility, will decide today whether to join the walkout over building jobs, which unions claim are being handed straight to overseas workers.

Ministers were forced into an embarrassing U-turn yesterday after Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, suggested that the Government was preparing to bow to union demands to push for measures in Europe to protect British jobs. Unions want a new EU directive to overturn a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2007 that made it easier for companies to circumvent pay deals by hiring foreigners on lower wages. They believe that Gordon Brown could be forced to take action after promising “British jobs for British workers” in his 2007 Labour conference speech.

[POAlex]

National Sovereignty is a necessity in order to keep checks and balances.

Alex

[wisconsin_cur]

link$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')d Balls, the Children's and Schools Secretary, said the downturn was likely to be the most serious for 100 years, and his comments appeared to raise the prospect of a return to the Far Right politics of the 1930s and the rise of Facism.

His warning, in a speech to activists at the weekend, came after a trade union baron warned that far right parties were trying to hijack the campaign for "British jobs for British workers".

The row over foreign workers has gathered momentum in recent weeks and Mr Balls seemed to suggest the recession could trigger a return to the Far Right politics that prospered in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

[wisconsin_cur]

Washington Post: Trade barriers threaten world economy

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t least 17 of the 20 major nations that vowed at a November summit to avoid protectionist steps that could spark a global trade war have violated that promise, with countries from Russia to the United States to China enacting measures aimed at limiting the flow of imported goods, according to a World Bank report unveiled yesterday.

The report underscores a "worrying" trend toward protectionism as countries rush to shield their ailing domestic industries during the global economic crisis. It comes one day after Mexico vowed to slap new restrictions on 90 U.S. products. That action is being taken in retaliation against Washington for canceling a program that allowed Mexican truck drivers the right to transport goods across the United States, illustrating the tit-for-tat responses that experts fear could grow in coming months.

[SeaGypsy]

I am expecting an avalanche of protectionist legislation over the next 12 months around the world and that this will be the beginning of real massive die off.
Americans should fondly kiss cheap driving days goodbye and be thankfull they will probably still be able to eat.
Many countries will starve if this goes ahead; but it seems unavoidable that it will as soon as the crisis reaches proportion to selling protectionism over free trade to consumer economies.