Pontosan egy hónappal ezelőtt, 2015. május 24-én került megrendezésre Etiópiában a parlamenti választás, amelyen 1828 jelölt indult az etióp parlament 547 képviselői helyéért és ahogy a menetrendnek megfelelően ma (06.24.) napvilágra került hivatalos eredményekből kiderült, egyetlen nem tisztázott helyet leszámítva (Bonga szavazókörzetében, de azért itt sem valószínű, hogy a független jelölt nyert volna) az összes képviselő Hailemariam Desalegn elnök pártjának, az Etióp Népi Forradalmi Demokratikus Front (EPRDF) színeiben jutott a törvényhozásba (vagyis 500 az EPRDF színeiben, a maradék 46-ot regionális szövetségeseik révén szereztek meg) .
Annak ellenére, hogy tudjuk, az EPRDF négy egykori lázadó, etnikai alapon szerveződő politikai mozgalom szövetségéből jött létre még 1988-ban, az ország méreteit, lélekszámát (100 millió emberről beszélünk!) figyelembe véve azért még a legkevésbé kétkedők számára is furcsa lehet egy ilyen elsöprő eredmény, hiszen ekkora erejű győzelmet még olyan országokban sem láttunk a fekete kontinensen, ahol az uralkodó pártnak köszönhető az adott ország konkrét létezése és minden elért eredménye (lásd mondjuk Namíbia).
És itt most nem egyből összeesküvés-elméletekre, kamionokkal szállított dupla-tripla szavazókra kell gondolni, hanem arra a politikai környezetre, amelyben az ellenzéki mozgalmak mozgástere rendkívüli módon beszűkült, nem igazán lehet független médiáról vagy erős civil közösségről beszélni, sőt, ahogy láttuk már az elmúlt években, az ellenzéki megmozdulások ellen is elég kemény kézzel lépnek fel a hatóságok (és akkor egyes újságírók, bloggerek meghurcolásáról még nem is esett szó) – amúgy azért ilyen eredményre lehetett számítani, hiszen 2010-ben az EPRDF 99.6%-ot szerzett (akkor senki nem gondolta volna, hogy még ezt is felül lehet múlni).
Ha ellenzéki etióp blogokra, internetes oldalakra látogatunk el, akkor láthatjuk, hogy az aktivisták pénzügyi nehézségekről, felvonulások, kampányrendezvények szervezésének teljes ellehetetlenítéséről és az ellenzéki vezetők alaptalan letartóztatásairól írnak és persze mindig csínján kell bánni az ilyen megnyilvánulásokkal, azért az mégis elgondolkodtató, hogy ennyire egyoldalúvá vált az etióp politikai paletta. És ez a hivatalos bejelentés pont akkor látott napvilágot, amikor néhány nappal korábban bejelentették, hogy Barack Obama, az Amerikai Egyesült Államok elnöke utolsó, elnökként tervezett afrikai útja során felkeresi Etiópiát is és ez a döntés sokakat felháborított, főként a fentebb említett emberi jogi problémák és a demokrácia állítólagos összeomlása tükrében. Mindenesetre azt is látni kell, hogy az USA és az Európai Unió számára is kulcsfontosságú afrikai partnerről beszélünk Addisz-Abeba esetében és a jelenlegi jó kapcsolatokat valószínűleg senki nem fogja kockára tenni egy, a választások tisztaságát kétségbe vonó kinyilatkoztatással.
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3 ember kedveli ezt a posztot.Tetszett az írás.Tetszett az írás.Photo Credit: CH’7K via Flickr
Information regarding the size and scope of the cyberattack against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) continues to grow. As many as 18 million current, former and prospective federal employees — ranging from military personnel to the IRS — are now thought to be affected. This figure is a massive increase in the initial OPM estimate of 4.2 million and it’s likely to grow. Officials speaking about the breach, which is believed to have originated in China, have now acknowledged the incident goes back to June of last year.
The slow drip of information regarding the extent of the security breach has frustrated policymakers, many of whom expressed those feelings to besieged OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, during her testimony on Capital Hill to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.
Archuleta defended her time as director saying, “In an average month, OPM, for example, thwarts 10 million confirmed intrusion attempts targeting our network. These attacks will not stop — if anything, they will increase,” she said and went on to promote her “aggressive effort” to reform and update the policies and procedures that govern OPM’s aging cybersecurity infrastructure.
The Obama administration continues to express its confidence in Archuleta’s ability to lead OPM. Such a statement is deeply concerning, considering that the Office of the Inspector General warned OPM that critical vulnerabilities in its security authorization system left it open to exploitation. A warning that Archuleta seemed content to ignore, or at best move at a snails pace to address.
The lackadaisical attitude surrounding the OPM breach is indicative of a wider cyber security mindset that is plaguing our national security infrastructure in cyberspace. The U.S. is simply not adapting fast enough. Every year the U.S. fails to adequately meet the threshold for the development of a robust and comprehensive cybersecurity platform, and we fall farther behind our digital adversaries. There is a mindset in Washington that addressing these security threats are somehow beyond our capability, and that no matter what we do there will always be penetrations of critical systems. You’d be hard pressed to find a policymaker that would tolerate, much less express, such an idea when it comes to terrorist threats from al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Why such an attitude is allowed to exist when it comes to cybersecurity is deeply troubling.
In February 2013, President Obama issued Executive Order (EO) 13636: Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. The EO was intended to lay out the administrations priorities and commitment to improving critical infrastructure and thus mitigating the threat from cyberattacks. The plan was developed in conjunction with recommendations from the Internet Security Alliance, a multisector trade association that provides a unique combination of advocacy and policy development. The EO outlines a robust plan, full of big ideas but short on a strategy for how it can be implemented.
The perfect example of this is White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel. During an interview with Information Security Media Group, Obama’s point man on cybersecurity came under heavy fire when he down played his own lack of technical expertise and dismissed the importance of understanding the nitty-gritty of implementing cybersecurity policy. While Daniel’s pedigree is impressive, especially in terms the scope and skills he has brought to his numerous positions in government, the decision to appoint him to the position of White House Cybersecurity Coordinator is indicative of a pervasive belief cybersecurity leadership doesn’t require technical expertise in the field. Can you imagine the Director of the Center for Disease Control not being a doctor or the Attorney General not being a lawyer?
A report released from the software security firm Veracode highlights the staggering deficiencies in civilian federal agencies. Entitled State of Software Security, the report examined 208,670 applications over the course of 18 months, and the company audited source code from government and private sector clients.
This particular report focused on the government sector, comparing it to 34 industries across a variety of different sectors. Veracode found that the government agencies ranks last in how often and how fast they are addressing security vulnerabilities — only 27 percent of identified vulnerabilities were adequately fixed and three out of four government sector applications consistently failed the OWASP Top 10, the pinnacle standard assessment of web application security. One reason cited for this high degree of vulnerability cited was an outdated programming language used in many government systems.
So why aren’t these government agencies adequately addressing these problems? The short answer is the government simply lacks the regulatory demands that is so often present in the private sector.
Many in Washington are expressing their collective outrage over the OPM breach, but the alarm bells that have been ringing over the last two decades will continue to be ignored. Incidents of computer attacks have increased 1,100 percent since 2006, the cybersecurity threat facing the U.S. is very real, unfortunately, for many policymakers on Capital Hill these security challenges exist in the abstract. There is no body count to tally from a cyber attack. There is nothing present in the physical world to help policymaker — many of whom purposefully avoid diving into the technical nuances of cybersecurity — properly conceptualize the threat. Right now, unless the problem we are facing in cybersecurity involves a Middle East government on the verge of collapsing, the desire and wherewithal to take action will continue to fall short.
Nations spy on one another; it’s a fundamental reality of the international system. The idea that China is spying on us is not the problem per se but rather the symptom of a much broader disease. The Chinese government is not going to stop trying to breach our digital bulwarks, no matter how much we whine. The problem is, however, that the digital age provides the potential for critical national security information to be taken with far greater ease and at much greater volumes than at anytime in history. We are making it far too easy for foreign governments to exploit our soft cyber underbelly. Can we really blame them for capitalizing on that advantage?
IMF's Christine Lagarde, right, and EU economics chief Pierre Moscovici in Brussels Wednesday
As expected, the standoff between Athens and its creditors that exploded into the open on Wednesday has focused on pension reforms – a point made clear in a document obtained by the FT’s correspondent in Athens, Kerin Hope.
According to the five-page list of “prior actions” – which are always the real nitty-gritty in any bailout agreement, since it lists the specifics that the sitting government must implement and the calendar for implementation – creditors have asked for wholesale changes to the pension proposals made earlier this week by Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister.
We’ve posted the document here.
In order to achieve savings of 1 per cent of gross domestic product – or about €1.8bn – starting next year, creditors are demanding a significant rewriting of Tsipras’ pension reform plan.
First, rather than gradually raising the effective retirement age to 67 by 2025 as Athens has proposed, creditors want that moved up to 2022 (Athens had originally shot for 2036 in one of its earlier proposals). The creditor plan would allow for retirement at 62, but only for those who have paid into the system for 40 years. Those measures would become law immediately, under the counterproposal.
Read moreAnja Humljan
Urban Yoga
1 - 24. June 2015
You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition on Monday, 1 June 2015, at 8pm in the presence of the artist. The Urban Yoga is the herald of a novel approach to urbanism and architectural design. It evokes human sensory experience and uncovers newly established rules of interaction. It has almost become a cliché opinion that urban environments limit our freedom, keep us constantly alert, cause stress, and disturb our inner peace. The (...)
The EU is struggling to regain its lost popularity. There’s a sense of foreboding in Brussels that the radical and generally eurosceptic parties like Spain’s Podemos, Germany’s AfD, the Front National in France and even Britain’s UKIP and Greece’s Syriza are not the fleeting flash-in-the-pan phenomena they were first thought to be. Unless the EU can raise its game on communications and outreach, these ‘fringe radicals’ may soon be Europe’s game changers.
Anyone familiar with Brussels would probably agree that the institutions of the European Union generally prefer the detail of dossiers to the ‘big picture’. That’s understandable, given the sheer complexity of the technocratic issues that are the daily business of the EU. But it is also regrettable, and increasingly a problem.
Public opinion across Europe is rarely concerned with the minutiae of economic policies or even social measures. What the voters register are the things ‘Europe’ is or isn’t doing to confront the major challenges that feature so prominently in TV news bulletins.
There are times when such threats are indeed headed-off and defused by the EU; bird flu or the menace of jihadist terrorism are readily understandable examples of how Europe’s cross-border cooperation is invaluable. Most people also see the single market for goods and services as hugely beneficial.
Whether they see the underpinnings of the European economy as necessary trade-offs for what the EU’s critics call Brussels’ “high-handed interference” is less certain. The years of austerity have taken a heavy toll of people’s unquestioning support for the European project.
But the EU still has opportunities to demonstrate its value, not just within Europe but to the wider world. It should tackle the problem of refugees displaced by conflict in the Middle East and by poverty in Africa. Their plight has so far highlighted Europe’s impotence in the face of the huge humanitarian crisis on its doorstep, and the selfishness of the many European governments refusing to offer help. But it’s a chance for the EU to show its worth.
The drama of boatloads of people risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean, along with TV reports of teeming but flimsy refugee camps, is striking a chord with Europeans that’s more than a passing moment of sympathy. They feel their governments should be doing more, even though they themselves may want to resist immigration and a more multi-cultural Europe.
Jean-Claude Juncker and his fellow EU commissioners have been trying to rally member states to act, with little real results. The EU, they say, doesn’t itself have the instruments and funds to make a difference. But it does have a voice.
The refugee problem is just a symptom of the EU’s failure to grasp the dangers that follow the Arab Spring. Brussels should launch a truly ambitious long-term strategy for addressing the economic and security weaknesses of the countries that these refugees are fleeing from. It couldn’t resolve this crisis overnight, but it could show that Europe is about people, and not just red tape.
IMAGE CREDIT: CC / FLICKR – European parliament
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The June European Council has a comprehensive list of topics to discuss, including the situation in the Mediterranean, the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), fighting terrorism, economic governance aspects, and the digital agenda. In addition, a presentation by the British Prime Minister on the future role of the United Kingdom is on the agenda.
Migration is the main topic of this June European Council. Heads of State or Government will discuss the recently published European Agenda for Migration and take stock of the progress made since the extraordinary European Council meeting on migration in April 2015. The European Council will discuss the European Commission’s proposal for a temporary relocation mechanism, which envisages relocating 40 000 persons from Italy and Greece to other Member States.
The European Council should also agree on a new CSDP roadmap and set the objectives for capabilities development, fostering the defence industry and the defence market, and strengthening relations with international organisations (i.e. the UN, NATO, the African Union). The Heads of State or Government will decide on a timeline for the completion of the strategic review process, most probably by June 2016. Within the broader context of discussing security aspects, the European Council will also examine the implementation of the informal February 2015 European Council‘s decisions on the fight against terrorism.
During discussions on the 2015 European Semester the European Council endorse the Country Specific Recommendations that Member States should implement to ensure sound public finances and to make their economies more competitive. Whilst on the topic of better economic governance in the euro area, the ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union’ report is expected to be presented to the Heads of State or Government.
The European Commission’s recent Digital Single Market strategy for Europe will be tabled for examination, and the European Council will most likely call for a rapid adoption of pending legislation in this field, such as the European Single Market for Electronic Communications, the Directive on Network and Information Security and the proposal for a Regulation on Data Protection.
This European Council meeting will also hear United Kingdom Prime Minister, David Cameron outline his vision for renegotiating his country’s relationship with the EU.
Read the complete ‘Outlook for the European Council of 25 – 26 June 2015‘ in PDF.Elektromajdan – ezzel a hashtaggel terjednek a net orosz nyelvű részén két napja a jereváni tüntetések fotói.