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[Rad]

Gloves off in battle for French presidency

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, May 4, 2012 7:29 EDT

Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande took the gloves off for the last major rallies of their ferocious battle for the French presidency, three days before their final run-off.

The tone for the last days of campaigning was set by a fierce television debate on Wednesday, in which the right-wing incumbent Sarkozy and Socialist challenger Hollande traded insults without either landing a knock-out blow.

Hollande remains the pollsters’ favourite to win on Sunday, but Sarkozy refused to cede any ground, appearing at a huge rally in the southern city of Toulon on Thursday to denounce his opponent as a threat to French values.

“When you want to give immigrants without French citizenship voting rights, that’s not the republic,” he declared, referring to Hollande’s pledge to allow French residents from outside Europe to vote in municipal elections.

“When there are urban ghettos where the law is not respected, that’s not the republic. When you wipe out borders, when you don’t even dare speak of national identity, that’s not the republic,” he thundered, to loud applause.

“The left is destroying the republic with its habit of regarding all things as having equal value,” he said. “It’s time for a national burst of energy.”

Hollande was just as determined, in front of a similar huge crowd in another southern city, Toulouse, where he denounced Sarkozy’s record in office and predicted a Socialist victory, while cautioning against complacency.

“You will hunt for victory, you will conquer it, tear it from the hands of the right,” he declared, his voice hoarse after a long campaign and dozens of stump speeches and television appearances, including Wednesday’s debate.

Even as Hollande was speaking, he received a boost from one of the defeated first-round candidates, centrist Francois Bayrou, who revealed he would vote for Hollande despite concerns about his commitment to deficit-reduction.

While Bayrou said he would not instruct the nine percent of the electorate who voted for him in the first round to vote one way or another, he said he had been offended by Sarkozy’s lurch to the right since the first round.

“I, personally, will vote for Francois Hollande,” he said, expressing regret that the incumbent was pursuing the support of the 18 percent of the electorate that backed the far-right’s Marine Le Pen.

Bayrou noted in particular that he had been shocked by a Sarkozy television spot in which his campaign juxtaposed his promise to cut immigration with images of crowds of migrants and a customs post sign with an Arabic inscription.

Bayrou’s belated declaration was not expected to change the electoral map. Polls have long forecast that Hollande will win Sunday’s run-off by around 54 percent to 46, and they show no signs of shifting before polling day.

Following his second-place finish in the first round, Sarkozy reached out to the 6.5 million voters who had backed Le Pen’s far-right anti-immigrant ticket, toughening his rhetoric on national borders and social issues.

Most observers now expect a Hollande victory, after Wednesday’s debate proved indecisive, despite fierce exchanges.

Sarkozy had hoped to dominate, but instead Hollande belied his image as a soft consensus-builder by repeatedly attacking the incumbent.

Sarkozy has trailed in opinion polls for more than six months and in the debate the clearly frustrated president called Hollande a “liar” and “arrogant” several times.

Hollande’s response was sometimes mocking, accusing Sarkozy of refusing to take responsibility for his record — and of self-satisfaction in a period of grim economic crisis for many voters.

“Francois Hollande’s only weakness compared to Nicolas Sarkozy, that he’s viewed as soft and blurry, was overcome last night,” said Gael Sliman of the BVA opinion poll institute.

A total of 17.79 million people watched the almost three-hour duel, audience monitor Mediametrie said, fewer than the 20.4 million who watched Hollande’s former partner, Socialist Segolene Royal, take on Sarkozy in 2007.

An LH2-Yahoo poll said 45 percent of those who watched the debate found Hollande more convincing, 41 preferred Sarkozy and 14 percent had no opinion.

Sarkozy meanwhile dismissed reports that Moamer Kadhafi’s regime had funded his 2007 election campaign.

French news website Mediapart on Saturday published a 2006 document it said showed Libyan backing.

On Thursday in Tunisia, lawyers for Libya’s former premier, Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, said the Kadhafi regime had backed Sarkozy to the tune of 50 million euros ($65 million). Mahmudi is currently fighting extradition from Tunisia to Libya.

But Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), successors of Kadhafi’s ousted regime, said Thursday they thought the note was a fake.

Khadafi’s former intelligence chief and foreign minister Mussa Kussa, allegedly involved in the transaction, has also dismissed the document as forged.

Sarkozy has denounced the affair as a bid to disrupt his re-election campaign and is suing the Mediapart website.

[Rad]

Antarctic waters changing due to climate: study

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, May 4, 2012 7:11 EDT

The densest waters of Antarctica have reduced dramatically over recent decades, in part due to man-made impacts on the climate,Australian scientists said Friday.

Research suggests that up to 60 percent of “Antarctic Bottom Water”, the dense water formed around the edges of Antarctica that seeps into the deep sea and spreads out through the world’s oceans, has disappeared since 1970.

“This is a response to changes that are happening to climate in the polar regions, both natural and human causes,” lead researcherSteve Rintoul, from the Australian government’s science body theCommonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, told AFP.

“It’s not driving changes in climate, it’s responding to changes in climate. So it’s a signal to us that things are changing around Antarctica.”

Scientists are not sure what is causing the phenomenon but Rintoulsaid the leading hypothesis is that as more of the ice on Antarctica melts around the edges of that continent, it adds fresh water to the ocean.

He said this could be causing the “sinking” of the dense water at high latitudes, a process that has been linked to major changes in climate in the past.

“We’re tracking these water masses to see if changes like have happened in past climates might be coming again in the future,” he said.

“We don’t see them yet, but this… contraction of the dense water around Antarctica might be the first indication that we’re on the way to do that.”

The research was done by Australian and US scientists onboard the Australian Antarctic Division’s vessel Aurora Australis, which sailed to Commonwealth Bay, west along the Antarctic coast, and returned into Fremantle in Australia.

They took temperature and salinity samples at stages of the journey to the Earth’s southernmost continent, also revealing that the dense water around Antarctica has become less salty since 1970.

Rintoul said the change was “likely reflecting both human impact on the planet as well as natural cycles”.

“And the human impact includes both the increase in greenhouse gases but also the ozone hole over Antarctica,” he said, adding that this hole had caused winds of the Southern Ocean to strengthen.

Rintoul said it was important to resolve why the changes were occurring because it was relevant to how fast sea levels may rise in the future.

[Rad]

Asia’s architectural treasures ‘vanishing’

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, May 3, 2012 23:03 EDT

NEW YORK — Asia’s architectural treasures, from a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan to an ancient city in China, are in danger of vanishing under a tide of economic expansion, war and tourism, according to experts.

The Global Heritage Fund named 10 sites facing “irreparable loss and destruction.”

“These 10 sites represent merely a fragment of the endangered treasures across Asia and the rest of the developing world,” Jeff Morgan, executive director of the fund, said, presenting the report, “Asia’s Heritage in Peril: Saving Our Vanishing Heritage.”

The architectural gems from Asia’s ancient and sophisticated cultures are struggling in the face of economic expansion, sudden floods of tourists, poor technical resources, and areas blighted by looting and conflict — in other words, the pressures of rapidly modernizing Asia.

“We’re looking at these millennial civilizations leapfrogging into the 21st century at a kind of pace that is unheard of, unprecedented,” said Vishakha N. Desai, president of the Asia Society, which hosted a conference based on the report.

Kuanghan Li, head of Global Heritage Fund’s China program, underlined the urgency in a presentation on work to preserve Pingyao, one of China’s last surviving walled cities. The stunning fortifications are impressively maintained and floodlit.

But “up to 20 years ago, there were hundreds of similar walled cities left in China,” she said. “They have been demolished.”

Experts said that global architectural preservation efforts are poorly coordinated and targeted, with the UN cultural body UNESCO focusing almost entirely on sites in already wealthy European countries, rather than in places like Latin America or Asia.

More than 80 percent of UNESCO World Heritage sites are located in the 10 richest states, the Global Heritage Fund said.

Elsewhere, “heritage is being dramatically undervalued,” Morgan said, warning that the endangered sites were doomed without quick help. “We’re going to lose them on our watch in the next 10 years.”

Shirley Young, head of the US-China Cultural Institute, said the importance of such work goes beyond being “just about beautiful buildings, beautiful sites.”

“I think we’d agree,” she said, “that a world without history is a world without soul.”

Still, experts highlighted stories of inspiring success stories.

John Sanday, a specialist who has spent years trying to bring Angkor and other Cambodian sites back from the brink of collapse, showed dramatic before-and-after photographs of majestic temples that he first encountered two decades ago.

“The trees had literally just taken over and strangling the building, pulling it apart,” he said, pointing to ruins that had been made structurally sound once again — although now under threat from tourism.

“We really hope with a concerted effort we can save these places,” Morgan said.

The top 10 endangered sites in Asia, according to the Global Heritage Fund, are:

1. Ayutthaya in Thailand, a former Siamese capital known as the “Venice of the East.”

2. Fort Santiago in the Philippines.

3. Kashgar, one of the last preserved Silk Road cities in China.

4. Mahasthangarh, one of South Asia’s earliest archeological sites in Bangladesh.

5. Mes Aynak, an Afghan Buddhist monastery complex on the Silk Road.

6. Myauk-U, capital of the first Arakenese kingdom in Myanmar.

7. Plain of Jars, a mysterious megalithic site in Laos.

8. Preah Vihear, a Khmer architectural masterpiece in Cambodia.

9. Rakhigari, one of the biggest, ancient Indus sites in India.

10. Taxila, an ancient economic crossroads in Pakistan.

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
05/04/2012 09:34 AM

Football Tournament Spat: Ukraine Warns Berlin of Economic Consequences

By Benjamin Bidder  in Kiev

A top official in President Viktor Yanukovych's party has warned Germany of economic consequences should Berlin continue to pressure Ukraine over the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Western politicians, the official said, seem to have taken the case personally.

The Ukrainian leadership in Kiev is increasingly indignant at the growing number of boycott threats in the run up to the European Football Championship tournament and at demands that imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko be released or allowed to receive medical treatment abroad.

"It seems to me that the Tymoshenko case has become a very personal one for some politicians in the West," Leonid Kozhara, deputy head of President Viktor Yanukovych, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Berlin, he continued, apparently has taken the demise of the Tymoshenko-led Orange Revolution as a "personal defeat." Kozhara, responsible for his party's foreign policy, noted that Berlin had been a significant supporter of the pro-democracy Orange camp.

Kozhara warned that the ongoing conflict over Tymoshenko's imprisonment and her declining health could poison the relationship between Ukraine and Germany. He said that, were pacts such as the currently frozen association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, to fail, then economic relations between Kiev and Berlin would suffer as well. "Without the agreement, German access to the Ukrainian market will be limited," Kozhara said. "German producers would be the losers."

Kozhara's comments came in the wake of the Thursday afternoon announcement that all 27 members of the European Commission were planning on staying away from tournament games scheduled to be played in co-host Ukraine. The European Football Championship is the second-most important sporting event in Europe behind the World Cup. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has also said he will not attend games held in Ukraine and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy added his name to the growing list on Thursday.

'Not a Boycott'

In announcing the decision, a Commission spokesperson stressed that it was "not a boycott, but a signal that we are not satisfied with how Tymoshenko is being treated." Ukraine, however, is not impressed. Hopefully, said Kozhara, the European football association UEFA "won't take part in the EU's political wrangling."

Tymoshenko, formerly President Yanukovych's chief political rival, was sentenced to seven years behind bars last autumn for abusing her position while prime minister, a verdict widely seen in the West as having been politically motivated. While in prison, Tymoshenko has suffered a herniated disk, but has refused medical treatment in Ukraine for fear of being poisoned. Germany has offered to provide treatment in Berlin and Russia too has offered to host the opposition leader, but Kiev has so far refused. Echoing the position of the Ukrainian government, Kozhara claims that Tymoshenko "acted criminally" while in office and, in signing a natural gas deal with Russia in 2009, caused "colossal damage" to the country.

The Foreign Ministry in Kiev has condemned the European Commission announcement, saying it is "destructive" and "hurts the interests of millions of simple Ukrainians." Earlier in the week, ministry spokesman Oleg Voloshin accused the German government of using "Cold War methods" after several parliamentarians in Berlin proposed relocating tournament games hosted by Ukraine.

On Thursday, tournament co-host Poland came out against a boycott of the games in Ukraine, though Prime Minister Donald Tusk emphasized that he had "appealed a number of times to the authorities in Ukraine not to let politics ruin this national celebration." The human rights organization Amnesty International is also opposed to a boycott. "Politicians and sport functionaries that travel to Ukraine must use the opportunity to call attention to serious human rights violations and to demand that the Ukrainian government does a better job of protecting human rights," Wolfgang Grenz, general secretary of Amnesty Germany, told the business daily Handelsblatt.

President Yanukovych himself has remained silent on the issue thus far. Kozhara too seemed eager to play down the Commission's announcement. It is in no way a boycott, he said, rather a private decision taken by the 27 commissioners.

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
05/03/2012 06:30 PM

Shunning the Championships: European Commission Gives Ukraine the Cold Shoulder

The European Commission indicated on Thursday that all 27 members were planning on staying away from European Football Championship matches to be held in Ukraine. The move is just the latest European protest against the country's treatment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Several European leaders had already announced that they would stay away from European Football Championship games scheduled to be played in Ukraine. On Thursday, virtually the entire European Union leadership followed suit.

A European Commission spokesperson in Brussels indicated that all 27 members of the Commission would refrain from traveling to Ukraine during the tournament due to the treatment of imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Rather than a boycott, the move is a signal "that we are not satisfied with how Tymoshenko is being treated," the spokesperson said. The French news agency AFP and Ukraine's Interfax are reporting that the same message was delivered by an EU delegation on Thursday in Kiev.

Also on Thursday, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy announced that he too would be staying away from tournament co-host Ukraine during the football event. "The president is not happy with how the situation in Ukraine is developing," his spokesperson said. "As such, he will not travel there."

The announcements represent the latest ratcheting up of international pressure on Kiev over its handling of the Tymoshenko case. The former opposition leader was sentenced to seven years behind bars last October on charges of abusing her position when she was prime minister -- a verdict the West widely sees as being political in nature. Since being imprisoned, Tymoshenko has suffered a herniated disk, though has refused medical help in Ukraine for fear of being poisoned. At the end of April, she began a hunger strike after she was forcibly taken to hospital and, she claims, beaten on the way.

Ukraine Responds

Responding to the latest threats of political boycott, the Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a forceful statement on Thursday stating that it "considers attempts to politicize sporting events, which for ages have played an important role in the process of establishing inter-state understanding and unity, to be destructive."

"Calls to boycott the championship will mean in practice undermining the image of this grandiose sporting event and will harm the interests of millions of ordinary Ukrainians who vote for different parties or who are not interested in politics whatsoever," it continued. "Those who strive to make a target out of EURO 2012 neither facilitate the reform of the Ukrainian judiciary nor help strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law in Ukraine." The Foreign Ministry said a successful hosting of the championship would "become a victory not for certain political actors, parties or ideologies but rather for all Ukrainians and Poles, while failure would be a loss for millions ... and would undermine (European football organizing body) UEFA's determination to broaden the geography of big football beyond the borders of Western Europe's prosperous states."

"The attack on this big dream undermindes not only the chance of Poland and Ukraine, but of all members of the socialist camp," the statement read.

Treatment for Tymoshenko

Thursday's Commission announcement came after Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso indicated earlier in the week that he would not attend matches in Ukraine. The governments of Belgium and Austria have done the same.

German leaders have also heaped pressure on Kiev. In late April, German President Joachim Gauck announced that he was cancelling a planned trip to Ukraine for a previously planned meeting of European heads of state, a move that several other European leaders have since followed, most recently the president of Romania on Thursday. Gauck also indicated that he would not attend European Championship games in Ukraine, despite the fact that the German national team is playing all three of its group stage games in the country.

On Monday, SPIEGEL reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel was considering asking her entire cabinet to stay away from the event. In an interview with the daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on Thursday, however, she said that she had not yet decided whether to travel to the country or not. "Much more important than my travel plans is that we must now do everything possible to see that Yulia Tymoshenko gets the proper treatment for her medical problems as soon as possible," Merkel told the paper.

Merkel also reiterated Germany's long standing offer to provide medical treatment at the Charité hospital in Berlin, an offer that Kiev has so far refused. Her foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said on Thursday that Ukraine's pending association agreement with the European Union was in danger as a result of the treatment of Tymoshenko. "We are in agreement with our partners in the European Union that the EU association agreement with Ukraine will not be ratified as long as the rule of law in Ukraine does not develop satisfactorily," Westerwelle told the daily Rheinische Post.

Co-Host Poland Opposes Boycott Calls

Still, Westerwelle is not a fan of growing calls for a boycott of tournament matches in Ukraine, arguing that lines of communication with Kiev must remain open. Despite the growing international condemnation, tournament co-host Poland has likewise come out against a boycott of the games in Ukraine. Speaking to reporters in Warsaw, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that he does not support calls for leaders to shun Ukraine.

"It is with pain that we view the problems of our neighbors," Tusk said. "I have appealed multiple times to the authorities in Ukraine not to let politics ruin this national celebration and nothing will affect our determination to fight for human rights and alleviate the situation of Yulia Tymoshenko."

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
05/04/2012 10:16 AM

Reluctant Replacement: Tymoshenko's Daughter Leads Fight for Her Freedom

By Benjamin Bidder in Kiev

As Yulia Tymoshenko sits in prison, many view her daughter as an ideal replacement to lead Ukraine's embattled opposition. Although she has long shied away from politics, 32-year-old Yevhenia has now embraced her role as the standard-bearer in the fight to free her mother.

The villa on Kiev's Turov Street seems more fortress-like than ever. Tall iron gates block the driveway into the interior courtyard of Yulia Tymoshenko's "Fatherland" party headquarters in the Ukrainian capital.

Tymoshenko's lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, who is currently one of the most influential people in the opposition party, shuffles through the hallways in shorts and sneakers. Images of better times hang along the staircase, photographs showing Tymoshenko when she was a champion of the people, and free. Indeed, if the complex on Turov Street is a fortress, it is one awaiting the return of its commander.

Yevhenia Tymoshenko, Yulia's daughter, is meeting with journalists in a wood-panelled room her mother once used for conferences. The 32-year-old attended high school and college in Great Britain. In 2005, she married the British rock musician Sean Carr, from whom she is now separated. For years, she has carefully avoided the public spotlight. But the longer the drama surrounding her mother continues, the more insistently she is preparing to fill the vacuum that was created when she was sentenced to seven years in prison last October for allegedly abusing her position while serving as Ukraine's prime minister, which she did in 2005, and again from 2007 to 2010.

Since appearing next to her mother and her lawyers during the trial, Yevhenia has become one of the best-known faces of the opposition. Just as her mother once did, Yevhenia now travels abroad -- to Brussels, Berlin and Washington -- in an effort to get foreign leaders to take a tough stance toward Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's president and a long-time rival of Tymoshenko's.

As a leader of the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution, Tymoshenko helped torpedo Yanukovych's initial bid for the presidency. But in the 2010 presidential election she lost to him and his Party of Regions. "He wants to isolate my mother from political life," Yevhenia says. "It looks like revenge."

Global Appeals for Support

Yevhenia has already spoken before the US Senate and publicly appealed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for support. She says she is thankful that German President Joachim Gauck cancelled a planned trip to Ukraine and that other German politicians have threatened to boycott the country. "This pressure gives us hope that my mother will survive and will be free," she says, adding that Europe must "use all possible means" to help her and must "stop Yanukovych by all means."

She then repeats accusations claiming that prison authorities have mistreated her mother. She says that they only gave her mother 20 minutes to pack up her things before being transferred to a Ukrainian hospital to receive treatment for a slipped disc. She says her mother refused to go because she could "not be appropriately treated in the hospital according to German doctors."

Yevhenia says that the prison's deputy director and two orderlies wrapped her mother in a sheet and took her out of the cell by force. In the process, she adds, they left bruises on her body. The authorities claim the bruises result from self-inflicted injuries. But if this were true, Yevhania notes, hospital administrators could easily prove their claim by releasing footage from the video camera installed in her mother's cell.

Aside from the lawyer Vlasenko, Yevhenia is the only person who has been in steady contact with her mother. In Kiev, people are saying that she has what it takes to lead her mother's party herself -- and not just because the two look a lot alike.

Still, Yevhenia says that she is only reluctantly assuming this new role. "I am not a political figure," she says. "I am a messenger for my mother."

Caught in a Political Maze

Yevgenia reports that her mother said she has really only wanted to read the Bible in prison, but that she hasn't been able to concentrate on anything other than politics. When her mother was first imprisoned in 2001 under the authoritarian regime of then-President Leonid Kuchma, Yevhenia had a hard time dealing with it. "She was a successful businesswoman," Yevhenia says. "And at that time I couldn't at all understand why she would even get involved in politics."

Germany has offered to provide Tymoshenko with treatment at Berlin's Charité hospital, but Ukrainian officials have so far turned these offers down. Still, Yevhenia questions whether her mother would agree to this. "As her daughter, I want her to get out of jail and go to Germany as soon as possible," she says. "But I doubt she'd go abroad."

While speaking, Yevhenia constantly doodles on a notepad. She is drawing a labyrinth. She also says that the West shouldn't believe that her family is confident that the affair will be over after her mother has received the appropriate medical treatment. "We can't forget that she is sitting innocently in jail," she says. "This battle will only be over once my mother is free."

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
05/03/2012 06:02 PM

Threats against Journalists: The Aggressive Tactics of the Greek Right Wing

Greek far-right parties could end up with as much as 20 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has intensified the xenophobic atmosphere in the country. Those who confront them are threatened with violence, journalist Xenia Kounalaki recounts.

At night, the streets leading to Omonoia Square are empty. That wasn't always the case. The area was the premier multicultural neighborhood of Athens and one of the first quarters to be gentrified. Jazz bars and Indian restaurants lined the streets, separated by the occasional rooms-by-the-hour hotel. It was a quarter full of immigrants, drug addicts and African prostitutes, but also of journalists, ambitious young artists and teenagers from private schools.

Today, the immigrants stay home once night falls. They are afraid of groups belonging to the "angry citizens," a kind of militia that beats up foreigners and claims to help the elderly withdraw money from cash machines without being robbed. Such groups are the product of an initiative started by the neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi -- Golden Dawn -- the party which has perpetrated pogroms in Agios Panteleimon, another Athens neighborhood with a large immigrant population.

There are now three outwardly xenophobic parties in Greece. According to recent surveys, together they could garner up to 20 percent of the vote in elections on Sunday: the anti-Semitic party LAOS stands to win 4 percent; the nationalist party Independent Greeks -- a splinter group of the conservative Nea Dimokratia party -- is forecast to win 11 percent; and the right extremists of Golden Dawn could end up with between 5 and 7 percent.

My name is Xenia, the hospitable. Greece itself should really be called Xenia: Tourism, emigration and immigration are important elements of our history. But hospitality is no longer a priority in our country, a fact which the ugly presence of Golden Dawn makes clear.

A Personal Attack

Shaved heads, military uniforms, Nazi chants, Hitler greetings: How should a Greek journalist deal with such people? Should one just ignore them and leave them unmentioned? Should one denounce them and demand that they be banned? One shouldn't forget that they are violent and have perpetrated several attacks against foreigners and leftists. I thought long and hard about how to write about Golden Dawn so that my article was in no way beneficial to the party.

On April 12, the daily Kathimerini ran my story under the headline "Banality of Evil." In the piece, I carefully explained why it was impossible to carry on a dialogue with such people and why I thought the neo-Nazi party should disappear from media coverage and be banned. Five days later, an anonymous reply to my article appeared on the Golden Dawn website. It was a 2,500-word-long personal attack in which the fascists recounted my entire career, mocked my alleged foreign roots (I was born in Hamburg) and even, for no apparent reason, mentioned my 13-year-old daughter. The unnamed authors indirectly threatened me as well: "To put it in the mother tongue of foreign Xenia: 'Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat, kommt Attentat!'" In other words, watch your back.

Most Greeks believe that Golden Dawn has connections to both the police and to the country's secret service. Nevertheless, I went to the authorities to ask what I should do. I was told that I should be careful. They told me that party thugs could harass me, beat me or terrorize me over the phone. It would be better, they said, if I stopped writing about them. If I wished to react to the threats, they suggested I file a complaint against Golden Dawn's service provider. That, however, would be difficult given that the domain is based somewhere in the United States.

Like Weimar Germany

A friend told me that I should avoid wearing headphones on the street so that I can hear what is going on around me. My daughter now has nightmares about being confronted by members of Golden Dawn. Three of her classmates belong to the party. The three boys have posted pictures of party events on their Facebook pages. For their profile image, they have chosen the ancient Greek Meandros symbol, which, in the red-on-black manifestation used by Golden Dawn, resembles a swastika. The group's slogans include "Foreigners Out!" and "The Garbage Should Leave the Country!"

The fact that immigration has become such an issue in the worst year of the ongoing economic crisis in the country can be blamed on the two parties in government. The Socialist PASOK and the conservative Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy, or ND) are running xenophobic campaigns. ND has said it intends to repeal a law which grants Greek citizenship to children born in Greece to immigrant parents. And cabinet member Michalis Chrysochoidis, of PASOK, has announced "clean up operations" whereby illegal immigrants are to be rounded up in encampments and then deported. When he recently took a stroll through the center of Athens to collect accolades for his commitment to the cause, some called out to him: "Golden Dawn has cleaned up Athens!"

Yet, Chrysochoidis is the best loved PASOK politician in his Athens district, in part because of his xenophobic sentiments. His party comrade, Health Minister Andreas Loverdos, is just as popular. Loverdos has warned Greek men not to sleep with foreign prostitutes for fear of contracting HIV and thus endangering the Greek family.

High unemployment of roughly 22 percent, a lack of hope, a tendency toward violence and the search for scapegoats: Analyses in the Greek press compare today's Greece with Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic. "We didn't know," said many Germans when confronted with the truth of the Holocaust after Nazi rule came to an end. After elections on May 6, no Greeks should be able to make the same claim.

[Rad]

May 04, 2012 07:00 AM

Obama Makes Strong Case for Unions in Speech to Building and Construction Trades Department

By Kenneth Quinnell

In a speech to the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, President Barack Obama made a powerful case for the importance and value of unions and working families. Key remarks:

    So it's good to be back in front of all of you. It's always an honor to be with folks who get up every day and work real jobs -- (laughter) -- and every day fight for America's workers. You represent the latest in a long, proud line of men and women who built this country from the bottom up. That's who you are. (Applause.) It was workers like you who led us westward. It was workers like you who pushed us skyward. It was your predecessors who put down the hard hats and helped us defeat fascism. And when that was done, you kept on building --highways that we drive on, and the houses we live in, and the schools where our children learn. And you established the foundation of what it means to be a proud American.

    And along the way, unions like yours made sure that everybody had a fair shake, everybody had a fair shot. You helped build the greatest middle class that we've ever seen. You believed that prosperity shouldn’t be reserved just for a privileged few; it should extend all the way from the boardroom all the way down to the factory floor. That's what you believe. (Applause.)

    Time and again, you stood up for the idea that hard work should pay off; responsibility should be rewarded. When folks do the right thing, they should be able to make it here in America. And because you did, America became home of the greatest middle class the world has ever known. You helped make that possible -- not just through your organizing but how you lived; looking after your families, looking out for your communities. You’re what America is about.

    And so sometimes when I listen to the political debates, it seems as if people have forgotten American progress has always been driven by American workers. And that’s especially important to remember today.

    ...

    I don’t have to tell you we’ve got bridges and roads all over this country in desperate need of repair. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our railroads are no longer the fastest in the world. Our skies are congested, our airports are the busiest on the planet. All of this costs families and businesses billions of dollars a year. That drags down our entire economy.

    And the worst part of it is that we could be doing something about it. I think about what my grandparents’ generation built: the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Interstate Highway System. That's what we do. We build. There was a time where we would never accept the notion that some other country has better roads than us, and some other country has better airports than us. I don't know about you, but I’m chauvinistic. I want America to have the best stuff. I want us to be doing the building, not somebody else. (Applause.) We should be having -- (applause) -- people should be visiting us from all over the world. They should be visiting us from all over the world and marveling at what at what we’ve done.

    That kind of unbridled, can-do spirit -- that’s what made America an economic superpower. And now, it’s up to us to continue that tradition, to give our businesses access to the best roads and airports and high-speed rail and Internet networks. It’s up to us to make sure our kids are learning in state-of-the-art schools. It’s our turn to do big things. It is our turn to do big things.

    But here’s the thing -- as a share of the economy, Europe invests more than twice what we do in infrastructure; China about four times as much. Are we going to sit back and let other countries build the newest airports and the fastest railroads and the most modern schools, at a time when we’ve got private construction companies all over the world -- or all over the country -- and millions of workers who are ready and willing to do that work right here in the United States of America?

    American workers built this country, and now we need American workers to rebuild this country. That’s what we need. (Applause.) It is time we take some of the money that we spend on wars, use half of it to pay down our debt, and then use the rest of it to do some nation-building right here at home. (Applause.) There is work to be done. There are workers ready to do it, and you guys can help lead the way.

He also took on Republicans for assaulting the rights of working families:

    And what makes it worse -- it would be bad enough if they just had these set of bad ideas, but they’ve also set their sights on dismantling unions like yours. I mean, if you ask them, what’s their big economic plan in addition to tax cuts for rich folks, it’s dismantling your unions. After all you’ve done to build and protect the middle class, they make the argument you’re responsible for the problems facing the middle class. Somehow, that makes sense to them.

    That’s not what I believe. I believe our economy is stronger when workers are getting paid good wages and good benefits. That’s what I believe. (Applause.) That’s what I believe. I believe the economy is stronger when collective bargaining rights are protected. I believe all of us are better off when we’ve got broad-based prosperity that grows outwards from a strong middle class. I believe when folks try and take collective bargaining rights away by passing so-called “right to work” laws that might also be called “right to work for less,” laws -- (applause) -- that’s not about economics, that’s about politics. That’s about politics.

to watch click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIJo0IrJYXY

[Rad]

meanwhile in the USA: suppressing the vote

May 04, 2012 06:00 PM

Why We Fight: Because GOP Wants To Keep Viviette Applewhite from Voting

By Nicole Belle

Philadelphia resident Viviette Applewhite's 93 years of life has mirrored the turbulent history of 20th century. Growing up in the Jim Crow era, she worked as a welder during WWII and marched with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, during the fight for civil rights. Mrs. Applewhite takes her civic responsibility seriously, having voted in almost every election since 1960, including in 2008 for the first African American president, something that had to be scarcely conceivable to her the first time she pulled the lever in the voting booth.

But Viviette Applewhite won't be voting in the 2012 election. Because Viviette Applewhite never learned to drive, and consequently, never possessed a driver's license. All other identification was lost when her purse was stolen years ago. She asked for a copy of her birth certificate to get another set of identification, only to find that officials have been unable to track it down. And the state of Pennsylvania will not allow her to vote without a driver's license or other officially-sanctioned picture i.d., thanks to draconian laws signed into law by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and designed by ALEC (.pdf). I'm sure that is comes as no surprise that Pennsylvania is considered one of the key battleground states in the upcoming election. Mrs. Applewhite, as an elderly African American Democratic Party member, hits the trifecta of demographics that this kind of legislation intends to prevent from voting. So Mrs. Applewhite is the perfect person to be the lead plaintiff suing against the Voter ID act:

    Applewhite, who is 93 and uses a wheelchair, became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed here in state court by the ACLU and the NAACP challenging Pennsylvania's new law requiring voters to produce a driver's license or other photo identification before they are allowed to vote.[..]

    The suit seeks to overturn what it calls a "draconian" law, a measure the plaintiffs and their lawyers contend will lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters - including Applewhite.

    "It stinks," she said in a video prepared by the ACLU and aired Tuesday at a news conference in the Capitol. "They are taking our rights away."

    The suit was filed in Commonwealth Court on behalf of 10 plaintiffs, among them three elderly women who say they cannot obtain necessary ID because they were born in the Jim Crow South, where states have no records of their births.

    "What we're not talking about here is just any right, we're talking about the right to vote," Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said at the news conference. "Two hundred years ago, we actually fought a war for this right. This is an extremely important right."

This is why we fight, why we can never stop fighting. If Republicans cannot attract voters on the strength of their ideas (and I think there's a good argument that they really can't) then they're going prevent people from voting on the other side.

[Rad]

May 04, 2012 04:00 PM

Workplace Deaths Continue to Rise Across the U.S.

By Kenneth Quinnell

The number of workplace deaths across the U.S. continues to rise, something it has done every year since 2004. AFL-CIO released its annual report Wednesday—Death in the Workplace: The Toll of Neglect—which covered 2010. The report notes that the number of deaths in 2010 was up 149 over 2009, to a recent high of 4,690—meaning an average of 13 workers die on the job every day in the U.S. On top of that, an estimated 50,000 additional workers died in 2010 because of occupational diseases. More than 3.8 million work-related injuries and illnesses were also reported, but it is estimated that the real number is much higher, between 7.6 million and 11.4 million annually.

    The risk of job fatalities and injuries varies widely from state to state, in part due to the mix of industries. West Virginia led the country with the highest fatality rate (13.1 per 100,000), followed by Wyoming (11.9), Alaska (11., South Dakota (8.6) and North Dakota (8.4). The lowest state fatality rate (0.9 per 100,000) was reported in New Hampshire, followed by Massachusetts (1.7), Rhode Island (1. and California, Delaware and New Jersey (2.0). This compares with a national fatality rate of 3.6 per 100,000 workers in 2010.

    Latino workers continue to be at increased risk of job fatalities, with a fatality rate of 3.9 per 100,000 workers in 2010. There were 707 fatal injuries among Latino workers, down from 713 in 2009. Sixty-two percent of these fatalities (441 deaths) were among workers born outside the United States.

    The cost of job injuries and illnesses is enormous—estimated at $250 billion to $300 billion a year.

The report notes that one of the key reasons for the recent increases in workplace death and injury is the weakening of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which on the federal level only has the workforce and funding to inspect each workplace once every 131 years. State regulators are only a little better off. Additionally, OSHA doesn't have the ability to punish violators in a way that will make them improve dangerous situations.

    Eight years of neglect and inaction by the Bush administration seriously eroded safety and health protections. Standards were repealed, withdrawn or blocked. Major hazards were not addressed. The job safety budget was cut. Voluntary compliance replaced strong enforcement. In the absence of strong government oversight and enforcement, many employers cut back their workplace safety and health efforts.

    The Obama administration has returned OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to their mission to protect workers’ safety and health. The president appointed strong, pro-worker safety and health advocates to head the agencies—Dr. David Michaels at OSHA and Joe Main at MSHA.

    The Obama administration has moved forward with new initiatives to strengthen enforcement and with some new safety and health standards on job hazards. The administration has increased the job safety budget and hired hundreds of new inspectors, restoring the cuts made during the Bush administration.

    But with the election of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, progress in safety and health is threatened. Business groups and Republicans have launched a major assault on regulations and have targeted key OSHA and MSHA rules.

    In the face of these attacks, progress on developing and issuing many important safety and health rules has stalled.

[Rad]

UN expert calls for U.S. return of native lands

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, May 5, 2012 7:00 EDT

The UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples has called on the United States to mitigate the “sense of loss” among the Native American community by restoring some tribal lands.

James Anaya, made the comments after a 12-day tour of the United States, during which he met with tribal leaders in the capital as well as in the states of Arizona, Alaska, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington.

“The sense of loss, alienation and indignity is pervasive throughout Indian country,” Anaya said in a statement released Friday.

“It is evident that there have still not been adequate measures of reconciliation to overcome the persistent legacies of the history of oppression, and that there is still much healing that needs to be done.”

He pointed to the loss of tribal lands as a particularly sore point, naming the Black Hills of South Dakota and the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona as places where indigenous peoples feel they have “too little control.”

“Securing the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands is of central importance to indigenous peoples’ socio-economic development, self-determination, and cultural integrity,” Anaya said.

“Continued efforts to resolve, clarify, and strengthen the protection of indigenous lands, resources, and sacred sites should be made,” he said.

“The widespread loss of indigenous peoples’ lands and resources is well-documented. The negative effects of this loss are compounded by past and ongoing activities that diminish or threaten the remaining lands and resources upon which indigenous peoples depend.”

Anaya went on the tour to see how well the United States is carrying out the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the administration of President Barack Obama endorsed in December 2010.

He noted that while he visited tribal leaders both on reservations and in urban areas, and met with Obama administration officials, he was unable to meet with members of the US Congress.

Anaya is to draft a report to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council, probably in September, and which will be made public.

“More robust measures are needed to address the serious issues affecting Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian peoples in the United States — issues that are rooted in a dark and complex history,” he said.

Anaya said such measures should be taken “in consultation and in real partnership with indigenous peoples, with a goal towards strengthening their own self-determination and decision-making over their affairs at all levels.”

Last month, the US Justice Department announced that the government had agreed to pay more than $1 billion to 40 Native American tribes to settle lawsuits over federal use of their lands and assets.

The United States is home to some two million Native Americans, who trail national averages in income and health.

[Photo credit: Sergei Bachlakov / Shutterstock.com]

[Rad]

Europe braces for Greek election

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, May 5, 2012 6:48 EDT

Not only Greece but also Europe braced on Saturday for an election here that polls indicate will fail to produce a clear winner, and which markets worry will plunge the eurozone into fresh turmoil.

In comments widely quoted by Greek newspapers on the eve of Sunday’s vote, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that if Greece’s new government deviated from its commitments the country would have to “bear the consequences.”

“Membership of the European Union is voluntary,” the minister from the eurozone’s chief contributor to Greece’s 240 billion euros ($314.0 billion) in bailouts and the main proponent of European belt-tightening was quoted as saying.

Greece has written off a third of its debts, is in its fifth year running of recession, one in five workers is unemployed, its banks are in a precarious position and pensions and salaries have been slashed by up to 40 percent.

With Portugal and Ireland also getting aid and Italy and Spain on shaky ground as well, last year there were worries of some sort of break-up of the eurozone. These fears have subsided in recent months but have not completely disappeared.

For markets, it is Greece’s vote rather than France’s presidential decider also on Sunday that “weighs heavier” in investors’ minds, said Valerie Plagnol, director of research at the Credit Suisse bank.

Holger Schmieding, economist at Germany’s Berenberg Bank, said there was a 40-percent risk of Greece leaving the eurozone this year, with a “high” risk that no stable government willing to implement more reforms can be formed.

Europe’s press shared these worries, with Germany’s Spiegel saying Greek politicians were behaving like “alchemists”, while Belgium’s Le Soir said it was “vital” for the eurozone that a new government is formed soon.

Election campaigning has been marked by voter anger with Greece’s two main parties over the cuts that the country has been forced to promise in return for its bailouts. In June new savings of 11.5 billion euros have to be found.

“People are spending half what they used to,” Panos Ioannidis, 41, the owner of a flower shop in an up-market area of Athens, told AFP. “If in June wages go down another 30 percent, we are expecting the worst.”

The two main parties, the socialist Pasok and the conservative New Democracy, want to be cut more slack on the terms of the bailout, and many of the smaller parties want to tear up the agreement entirely.

“We need to break from this corrupt political system of lackeys of foreign imperialism,” Petros Alachmar, 31, an activist from far-left Syriza party, one of several expected to steal votes from Pasok, told AFP late Friday.

“We have had enough of austerity measures.”

Voters are also fed up corruption and cronyism, while immigration has also been an issue. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, completed with swastika-like emblem, may enter parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years, polls show.

The election is being fought over “a mixture of economy, immigration and national humiliation,” said analyst George Sefertzis.

New Democracy is expected to win the most votes but not enough to govern alone, forcing leader Antonis Samaras into a coalition with smaller parties. If he fails than Pasok leader Evangelos Venizelos will have to do the same.

“Our place in Europe and the euro will be decided on Sunday,” Venizelos told a rally in Athens’ central Syntagma Square, the focal point of sometimes violent protests in recent years, late Friday.

Speaking in the northern city of Alexandroupolis, Samaras warned that the left “wants to destroy everything … and is playing dangerous games with the country’s European future.”

[Rad]

Medvedev quits Kremlin with a whimper

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, May 5, 2012 6:45 EDT

When the Kremlin door slams shut on Dmitry Medvedev after Vladimir Putin returns to the presidency on May 7, the sound reverberating off the ancient red-brick walls may be one of bitter failure.

Post-Soviet Russia is set to remember its only one-term president as a man whose biggest achievement was keeping the Kremlin seat warm for Putin when he was barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive term.

Youthful, interested in technology and apparently open to the West, Medvedev’s promises to make Russia a freer, more democratic country created unprecedented hopes when he took office in 2008.

But his agreement at a congress of the ruling United Russia party last September to willingly renounce his claim to a second term and swap jobs with 59-year-old premier Putin earned him mockery not just from the opposition but also from many of his former supporters.

Incensed by the announcement and subsequent fraud-tainted parliamentary elections in December, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets in protests on a scale unprecedented since the turbulent days of the early 1990s.

“Dmitry Anatoliyevich, we feel sorry for you,” prominent liberal television journalist Leonid Parfyonov, activist Ksenia Sobchak and singer Vasya Oblomov rapped in a song that went viral on the Internet.

“Someday they will write: ‘He was a good guy!’/ Russia’s president with a human face.’”

“Sat for four years, did not make any decisions,/ Vacated the seat, taught at Skolkovo,” said the song referring to the innovation centre outside Moscow, Medvedev’s brainchild.

The cherubic-faced Kremlin chief, 46, repeatedly tried to break out of his mentor’s shadow and demonstrate that he was his own man. But most of those attempts were indecisive and even half-hearted.

He ordered Putin’s government allies to stand down from the boards of state-run companies, publicly sparred with Putin on matters of foreign policy and even solemnly declared in April 2011 that he would soon announce whether he would run for a second term.

Days later, the Russian president spent several hours with a tightly controlled pool of Kremlin reporters in the Chinese resort of Sanya seeking to explain himself as he sucked a tropical cocktail out of a coconut shell.

Not a single word from the closed-door briefing was allowed to be released to the public.

In a war of wills with his senior partner, Medvedev had apparently lost, and his promised announcement about his future plans never materialised.

“Of course, if you are a visionary and ready to fight for your ideas, you achieve more,” Igor Yurgens, a Medvedev adviser who repeatedly urged the Kremlin chief to run for a second term, told opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

“But if you are a moderate liberal with an eye on your comrades, with a sense of gratitude towards the one who elevated you to such heights, everything comes out half-baked,” he said.

The Internet-savvy, i-Pad-wielding Medvedev insists the country had become a freer nation during his four-year term, citing the recent mass protests as proof of irreversible change.

“I believe that we’ve truly come far when it comes to civil liberties,” he said in his last televised interview to liberal-leaning reporters late last month.

“Freedom is a sense of self. And in this respect we’ve done a lot.”

Human rights activists scoff at the idea.

They point to the prison death of 37-year-old lawyer Sergei Magnitsky from untreated medical conditions in 2009; and the second trial of former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky resulting in a sentence that is set to keep him behind bars until 2016.

Critics add that Medvedev’s much-touted “reset” with the United States was heavy on symbolism but light on substance.

An obscure Kremlin official in 2008, Medvedev won the elections on the back of Putin’s support and owes his entire political career to the former KGB agent.

A lawyer by training, Medvedev met Putin in the early 1990s when they were both working in the mayor’s office of their native Saint Petersburg.

Putin took his protege to Moscow after being appointed prime minister in 1999 and Medvedev rapidly rose to be chairman of gas giant Gazprom and also chief of staff at the Kremlin and then first deputy prime minister.

Medvedev is expected to take Putin’s current job of prime minister in the new government, but many say he may not last long.

“It is obvious that in the post of prime minister he cannot be more efficient than he was at the post of president,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

She described Medvedev as “political botox” whose aim was to make Putin’s Russia slightly more palatable to the West.

“Russia is stagnating. A social and economic crisis cannot be ruled out. Putin may have to make Medvedev a scapegoat,” Shevtsova told AFP.

[Rad]

Afghan child bride's in-laws sentenced for torture

By RAHIM FAIEZ

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan —

The in-laws of a child bride who became the bruised and bloodied face of women's rights in Afghanistan have been sentenced to 10 years in prison for torture, abuse and human rights violations, a judge said Saturday.

The plight of 15-year-old Sahar Gul captivated the nation and set off a storm of international condemnation when it came to light in late December. Officials said her husband's family kept her in a basement for six months after her arranged marriage, ripping out her fingernails, breaking her fingers and torturing her with hot irons in an attempt to force her into prostitution.

She was rescued by police in northeastern Baghlan province after an uncle alerted authorities.

Gul's husband's father, mother and sister were each sentenced to 10 years in prison by a court in Kabul on Tuesday, presiding judge Sibghatullah Razi said.

Also found guilty were Gul's husband, a member of the Afghan army, and her brother-in-law, both of whom have been on the run since her case became public, Razi said. He said the men will be sentenced when they are captured.

Gul was present for the decision, telling the court that she wanted her in-laws "severely punished" for what they had put her through, Razi said. She has filed an appeal for a longer sentence with the help of the Women for Afghan Women, a group that works for women's rights in the country and has been caring for the teenager since her rescue.

"Of course we are not happy with the court's decision," said Huma Safi, program manager for the group.

Gul's case has prompted calls for more efforts to strengthen women's rights and end underage marriage. The legal marriage age in Afghanistan is 16, but the United Nations agency UN Women estimates that half of all girls are forced to marry under age 15.

There has been progress in women's rights since the 2001 U.S.-led campaign that toppled the Taliban regime, which banned girls' schools and prevented women from leaving the house unless accompanied by a male relative.

But ending abuse remains a huge challenge in Afghanistan's patriarchal society, where traditional practices include child marriage, giving girls away to settle debts or pay for their relatives' crimes and so-called honor killings in which women seen as disgracing their families are murdered by their relatives.

Gul, who had been married for seven months when she was found in late December, is still seeing doctors for some problems with her hands and fingers, but is doing better both physically and emotionally, Safi said. She said the girl is now very interested in studying, very different from when she first arrived.

She also has made great progress in her efforts to become comfortable around other people again, Safi said.

"She was very brave. When she was brought to us after her rescue, she was unable to speak. But this week she was able to get up and speak in front of an entire courtroom asking for her rights," Safi said.

"These are all positive signs and of course we are very proud of her."

---

Associated Press writer Chris Blake in Kabul contributed to this report.

[Rad]

Thousands march as Japan shuts off nuclear power

By YURI KAGEYAMA

TOKYO —

Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation's 50 nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.

Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido went offline for mandatory routine maintenance.

After last year's March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor halted for checkups has been restarted amid public worries about the safety of nuclear technology.

"Today is a historic day," Masashi Ishikawa shouted to a crowd gathered at a Tokyo park, some holding traditional "koinobori" carp-shaped banners for Children's Day that have become a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.

"There are so many nuclear plants, but not a single one will be up and running today, and that's because of our efforts," Ishikawa said.

The activists said it is fitting that the day Japan stopped nuclear power coincides with Children's Day because of their concerns about protecting children from radiation, which Fukushima Dai-ichi is still spewing into the air and water.

The government has been eager to restart nuclear reactors, warning about blackouts and rising carbon emissions as Japan is forced to turn to oil and gas for energy.

Japan now requires reactors to pass new tests to withstand quakes and tsunami and to gain local residents' approval before restarting.

The response from people living near nuclear plants has been mixed, with some wanting them back in operation because of jobs, subsidies and other benefits to the local economy.

The mayor of Tomari city, Hiroomi Makino, is among those who support nuclear power.

"There may be various ways of thinking but it's extremely regrettable," he said of the shutdown.

Major protests, like the one Saturday, have been generally limited to urban areas like Tokyo, which had received electricity from faraway nuclear plants, including Fukushima Dai-ichi.

Before the nuclear crisis, Japan relied on nuclear power for a third of its electricity.

The crowd at the anti-nuclear rally, estimated at 5,500 by organizers, shrugged off government warnings about a power shortage. If anything, they said, with the reactors going offline one by one, it was clear the nation didn't really need nuclear power.

Whether Japan will suffer a sharp power crunch is still unclear.

Electricity shortages are expected only at peak periods, such as the middle of the day in hot weather, and critics of nuclear power say proponents are exaggerating the consequences to win public approval to restart reactors.

Hokkaido Electric Power Co. spokesman Hisatoshi Kibayashi said the shutdown was completed late Saturday.

The Hokkaido Tomari plant has three reactors, but the other two had been halted earlier. Before March 11 last year, the nation had 54 nuclear reactors, but four of the six reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi are being decommissioned because of the disaster.

Yoko Kataoka, a retired baker who was dancing to the music at the rally waving a small paper carp, said she was happy the reactor was being turned off.

"Let's leave an Earth where our children and grandchildren can all play without worries," she said, wearing a shirt that had, "No thank you, nukes," handwritten on the back.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama