Even though Russians represent less than three percent of the world’s population, one of every six alcohol-related deaths in the world occurs within the borders of the Russian Federation, a figure that means Russia is overrepresented in this category by more than 500 percent.
But as tragic as that figure is, the situation in some parts of the Russian Federation – particularly those with predominantly ethnic Russian populations and in extreme climatic conditions – is far worse than in others, particularly those with predominantly Muslim populations and less extreme weather.
photo: RFE/RL
And these often enormous differences in alcohol-related deaths among the regions mean that the share of ethnic Russians in the population will continue to decline and that of the historically Muslim nations continue to rise, almost independent of any other factor or government program.
Those are just some of the findings contained in a new study prepared by the Rating Center for Communication on behalf of the “Sober Russia” Project which rated Russia’s federal subjects by the number of alcohol-related problems their populations’ currently face.
Each region was evaluated in terms of the number of those ill with alcoholism or alcoholic psychoses, the amount of beer sold, mortality from alcohol consumption, and crimes carried out when their perpetrators were drunk. The regions were then ranked on a scale from 100 to 600.
The 20 most “sober regions,” the study found were led by three predominantly Muslim republics, Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, followed by Moscow, St. Petersburg and a mix of Muslim and Russian federal subjects. In these places, the amount of alcoholism was lower than average as were sales of vodka and beer and alcohol-related crimes.
The second group of 43 were closer to the average and included mostly predominantly Russian areas. And the third, where conditions were the worse, were in Russian-majority regions in Siberia and the Far East. At the very bottom were Kamchatka, Magadan, the Nenets AO and the Jewish AO. (Despite names, these are both predominantly ethnic Russian.)
Four days after Turkey’s November 24 downing of a Russian fighter jet, Turkish leaders seem ready for Kremlin blowback. But analysts and officials in Ankara are less sure about how the incident will impact Turkey’s relations with its allies.
One Turkish analyst believes that the timing of the incident near the Turkish-Syrian border could exacerbate tension among Turkey’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Some NATO member states, especially France, had hoped to bring Russia fully into an anti-ISIS coalition in Syria. The fighter shoot-down greatly complicates such efforts. “Behind the words of support and solidarity, I think they [other NATO members] are very unhappy with what happened,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul’s Suleyman Şah University. “It jeopardizes the slowly building coalition between the West and Russia to counter the Islamic State.” Such a coalition has caused unease among Turkey’s political leaders. Ankara and Moscow are on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, a rivalry that has already soured their once close friendship. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made clear that the priority of his NATO allies should be the removal of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad; those allies have their primary focus on ISIS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russian officials have tried to frame the incident as a conspiracy, something that can be interpreted as an attempt to marginalize Ankara from other NATO members. Lavrov also has alleged that Turkey was helping Islamic State by purchasing oil from the jihadist group. State-controlled Russian media outlets have been quick to trumpet Lavrov’s claims. Turkish foreign-policy specialist Sinan Ülgen dismissed Russian conspiracy theorizing about the shoot-down. “Turkey was transparent,” said Ülgen, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe think-tank in Brussels. “Here, the responsibility lies squarely with Russia. Despite knowing full well the scope of Turkey’s rules of engagement, [it] nonetheless went ahead and tested Turkey’s resolve.” Ankara has repeatedly accused Russian warplanes operating in Syria of violating its airspace and harassing its jets. NATO condemned such actions, but Ankara made little secret that it felt such support was less than enthusiastic. Retired Turkish Ambassador Murat Bilhan, the former head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Strategic Planning Committee, believes NATO’s perceived tepid support for Turkey’s position on airspace violations ended up playing a role in the shoot-down incident. “Turkey was ignored by all parties. Whatever Turkey said [about Russian planes’ violations of Turkish airspace] fell on deaf ears,” Bilhan explained. “Insensitivity by our Western allies prevailed and Turkey was offended.” Domestic support for the Turkish government remains strong. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on November 25 received a standing ovation in parliament after claiming to have authorized the attack. But Turkey “will now pay a heavy price,” Ambassador Bilhan cautioned. “Russia has many tools in its hands to punish Turkey.” Moscow is still calculating exactly what that price will be, but bilateral trade seems destined to be the first target. On November 27, Moscow wheeled out one of its standard vehicles for geo-strategic disputes — a possible embargo on food imports, a tactic also used toward Western allies Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Food-monitoring agency Rossel’khoznadzor cited allegedly falsified export documentation and the “shaky” safety of Turkish goods. On November 26, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev gave the government two days to come up with a response to the loss of the Su-24. Aside from transportation links, lucrative contracts with Turkish companies could be hit. A multi-billion dollar gas pipeline and the building of Turkey’s first nuclear power station also are seen at risk. Citing terrorist concerns, Lavrov has already warned tourists to stay away from Turkey, and Russian tour agencies are obliging. Turkish President Erdoğan’s confidence in dismissing Russian economic threats as “emotional” may be well placed, commented İnan Demir, chief economist of the Istanbul-based Finans Bank. The likely damage “would be more than marginal, but not unmanageable,” Demir calculated. “That’s because Turkey has already been getting used to living with reduced exports to Russia” with the West’s 2014 imposition of sanctions for Russia’s activities in Ukraine. Turkish exports to Russia have decreased by 53.6 percent since 2014 to 5.6 billion euros ($5.9 billion), according to data from the Turkish foreign ministry for the first nine months of this year. With a tighter economy, Russian vacation bookings also have declined. “But energy imports [are] a different story,” Demir underlined.”Turkey imports 55 percent of its gas from Russia.” Turkish experts are waiting to see if Moscow cuts off energy supplies. Many doubt that Russia would take such a step because the $10 billion that Ankara pays per year to the state-run Gazprom is seen as vital to Russia’s sanction-hit economy. At the same time, Moscow has on more than one occasion sacrificed its own economic concerns for strategic interests. “If Russia was to cut back supplies, it would have a serious impact, but it depends how long the cuts would be,” warned economist Demir. Nearly all of Istanbul and the surrounding hinterland, where much of Turkish industry is based, depends almost solely on Russian gas. A gas cut-off could meet with an equally tough response. “Turkey would be the major loser, but Russia would lose as well,” predicted retired ambassador Bilhan.
Two Dutch physicists, Dr van Doorsslaere and Dr Lapenta -- after watching a video of the downing of the Russian jet online -- said, according to their calculation the plane was in Turkey's airspace only 7, not 17 seconds, as the Turks claimed.
From this they said it was unlikely Turkey could issue 10 warnings in 5 minutes because the plane travelling at 980 km/h could cross 80 km in 80 seconds.
But Dr van Doorsslaere and Dr Lapenta don’t think the Russians are being honest either.
Russia has claimed the plane made a 90 degree turn after it was hit and was actively trying to avoid Turkish airspace:
“A change of course of 90 degrees can only be achieved with an object that’s many times heavier or faster than the jet.”
“Estimates limit the violation of Turkish airspace to a maximum of 10 seconds. Russia's claims do not correspond to the laws of mechanics.”
Comment
Behind the dispute about the Russian plane lurks a different story. As part of its aggressive Syria policy, Turkey fostered the political and military development of the Turkmen minority settling the northeastern part of Syria's Latakia province bordering Turkey. Traditionally, the Turkic speaking Turkmen looked to Turkey for support. As part of its efforts to achieve regime change in Syria, Turkey adopted the Turkmen Mountain area as a protectorate, hosted its tribal parliament and government, and bolstered the Syrian Turkmen Brigades, a tribal defense force.
When the Russian airforce started pounding and strafing the Turkmen villages it meant that two zones of influence clashed: the Russian protectorate of theNusray (Alawite) state of western Syria and the Turkish protectorate of the Turkmen Mountain. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan realized that the Syrian government army, following the trail blazed by Russian bombs, invaded the Turkmen Mountain, defeated the small Turkmen forces and could inadvertently open a corridor for the Kurdish YPG forces to expel the Turks and proceed toward the Mediterranean, he apparently panicked.
He personally ordered to shoot down the Russian jet as a warning to Moscow that its proxy forces had crossed Turkey's red line in Syria. The accusation of Russia having violated Turkey's airspace was probably only a red herring to detract the media from the real issue.
Update II
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu: "Russia is trying to carry out an ethnic cleansing in northern Latakia to force out all Turkmen and the Sunni population who do not have good relations with the regime. They want to expel them, they want to ethnically cleanse this area so that the regime and Russian bases in Latakia and Tartus are protected," Davutoğlu told members of the international media in İstanbul" (9/12/15)
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Written on .
Ende September dieses Jahres schrieb germanpages.de – Deutsche Rundschau in dem Artikel “Geiz & Bilateralismus --Schwachsinnige Flüchtlingspolitik", dass die Bundesregierung mit ein paar Milliarden Euro für die unterfinanzierten Hilfswerke der Vereinten Nationen und für die Nachbarländer Syriens eine Völkerwanderung jetzigen Umfangs vermeiden konnte, dies aber aus Geiz und Engstirnigkeit unterliess.
Am 27. November gelangte auch die Süddeutsche Zeitung in einem Kommentar von Heribert Prantl “Knickrigkeit als Fluchtursache” zu der Erkenntnis, “was wirklich hülfe, wird nicht getan: die Flüchtlingslager in den Regionen nahe Syrien so auszustatten, dass Flüchtlinge dort leben können.” (sic)
Wäre das der SZ ein paar Monate früher eingefallen, so hätte sich vielleicht noch etwas in der übrigen Presse und in Berlin bewegt. Stattdessen: nichts. Deutschland diskutiert zwar erregt die Flüchtlingsfrage, Berlin aber wurstelt weiter mit seiner Flüchtlingspolitik und Kanzlerin Merkel versucht, im starken Gegenwind wenigstens teilweise das Gesicht zu wahren. In den Lagern in der Türkei, im Libanon und in Jordanien herrscht weiter das Elend, wie Prantl zurecht moniert. Noch schlechter geht es denen, die keinen Platz in den Lagern finden und sich auf der Strasse durchschlagen.
Als man in Berlin die Zahl der Einwanderer für 2015 noch auf 800.000 schätzte, rechnete man mit Gesamtkosten für Bund, Länder und Gemeinden von mindestens 10 Milliarden Euro. Inzwischen erwartet man knapp über eine Million Zuwanderer für 2015, und die offiziell geschätzten Mindestkosten steigen daher linear auf 12,5 Milliarden. Von dieser Zahl wollen aber unabhängige Fachleute nichts wissen; sie kalkulieren – wie beispielsweise der Volkswirt Matthias Lücke vom Institut für Weltwirtschaft in Kiel -- mit bis zu 45 Milliarden Euro pro Jahr der Einwanderung im jetzigen Umfang.
Vor wenigen Monaten hätte man mit wenigen Milliarden im niedrigen einstelligen Bereich den Flüchtlingen im vertrauten Umfeld nahe der Heimat noch eine menschenwürdige Alternative zur Reise nach Europa bieten können. Doch selbst jetzt scheut Berlin sich vor der nötigen Grosszügigkeit; man will Brüssel zum Zahlmeister für die Türkei machen und lässt die UN-Hilfswerke, die in den Lagern und ausserhalb davon vor Ort wirken können, weiter auf dem Trockenen – ein paar Almosen ausgenommen.
Was treibt die Bundesregierung an? Kann denn niemand in Berlin Zahlen lesen? Die Selfies mit Merkel haben eine Lawine losgetreten. Nicht Millionen, sondern hunderte Millionen warten jenseits des Mittelmeers auf eine Chance, nach Europa zu kommen und vielleicht sogar ein Selfie mit Merkel zu schiessen. Laut einer Gallup-Umfrage von 2012 in 151 Ländern würden rund 350 Millionen Bewohner von Ländern des Bogens von Bangladesh bis Nigeria nach Europa auswandern, wenn sich die Chance böte. Jeder vierte Afghane, jeder dritte Nigerianer würde ein Smartphone kaufen und den Rollkoffer packen, wenn er oder sie das Geld für die Reise hätte. Eine Million Pioniere hat ja bereits 2015 gezeigt, wie man es macht, wenn man nach Deutschland will.
Man hofft in Berlin offenbar, dass das Mittelmeer und das fünfstufige Filter der Grenzen von Griechenland bis Oesterreich den Strom so ausdünnen werden, dass Deutschland nur noch die Syrer, Iraker und Afghanen abbekommt, minus der jungen Männer mittleren Alters, die als potentielle Gefährder gelten und draussen bleiben sollen, wenn es nach manchen CDU-Politikern ginge. Man baut keine Mauer – man verlässt sich auf die Mauern der Anderen. Ob das 2016 besser funktioniert als 2015, wird sich zeigen.
Heinrich von Loesch
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« Les commandes reprennent, la confiance de nos dirigeants est bonne, la croissance augmente : les chiffres sont là et ils sont positifs ! »
On le dit souvent : alors que la France n’est toujours pas parvenue à résoudre son problème de chômage, le secteur du numérique semble se porter agréablement bien. Et la crise semble n’être qu’un mauvais souvenir pour celui-ci.
Aujourd’hui, les chiffres donnés par Syntec Numérique, le syndicat professionnel des ESN (Entreprises de Services du Numérique), des éditeurs de logiciels et des sociétés de conseil en technologies sont là pour le montrer.
En effet, d’après celui-ci, le secteur logiciels et services informatique aurait créé 12 000 emplois nets en 2014, une hausse par rapport à 2013 et 2012 (7 000 emplois créés), bien que le niveau de 2011 (15 000 emplois créés) ne soit toujours pas atteint.
Pour cette année, le syndicat semble plutôt optimiste
« Avec une croissance de 2,1 % pour 2015, il semble que la crise soit plutôt dernière nous. Les commandes reprennent, la confiance de nos dirigeants est bonne, la croissance augmente : les chiffres sont là et ils sont positifs ! Le numérique représente une part toujours plus importante du PIB et il contribue à plus d’un quart de sa croissance », explique Guy Mamou-Mani, président de Syntec Numérique.
Concernant le marché de l’emploi, Syntec Numérique s’appuie également sur une étude réalisée par l’Apec selon laquelle 93 % des entreprises du numérique envisageraient d’embaucher au moins un cadre pendant ce quatrième trimestre 2015. Et cela correspond à une hausse de deux points par rapport aux chiffres du dernier trimestre 2014.
De plus, les jeunes diplômés auraient de meilleures conditions de travail dans le secteur informatique : « La promotion 2014 des Bac+5 sont près de huit sur dix à occuper un emploi dans les neuf premiers mois après l’obtention de leur diplôme. Et lorsqu’ils sont en poste, ils sont aussi plus souvent cadres et en CDI que les autres diplômés ».
Tout cela est très encourageant. Cependant, le président du syndicat évoque aussi des « problématiques d’inadéquation des compétences de certains demandeurs d’emploi vis-à-vis des besoins de nos entreprises ».
The current migration crisis in Europe and North America shows two distinct aspects:
the arrival of refugees and other migrants, and
the deportation of undesired migrants.
The former enjoys high visibility not only in the media but also as new faces continue to appear among the crowds of daily life.
The deportation is largely invisible. Over night, a foreigner who has been around for some time is missing, an entire family may have disappeared like the Jews in Germany did during Nazi years.
Deportation or “repatriation”, as the Italians prefer to call it, is the ugly side of migration. “Welcome culture” was offered in Germany to the arriving crowds – but no “disappearance culture” exists for those expelled from their dream land.
Even less of a welcome is offered to the returnees upon arrival in their country of origin or any in other place where they may have been dumped against their will. Unless a kind-hearted government or an NGO takes care of the returnee, a deported person is rarely welcomed.
For several reasons, a deportee is usually unwelcome back home because
someone who returns reduces the strength of the diaspora on whose remittances the economy depends;
a returnee is considered someone who failed to establish himself or herself abroad;
of the suspicion to have been expelled for bad behavior or for having committed a felony and done jail time.
the returning migrant has not only squandered his or her own savings but in many cases also a credit provided by family and friends to finance the northbound trip.
Understandably, immigration countries are at present mainly focused on the challenges of accepting and accommodating the migrants assumed to be refugees if they apply for asylum. In Germany, some 40 percent of current arrivals are offered asylum, the rest is expected to return voluntarily to their country of origin or to be deported.
The potential deportees, however, stay months and sometimes years in the country before they leave – if they ever do. During this period they are kept in suspended animation, can't work, can't send their children to school and are not eligible for language courses. Their cost of accommodation, food and medical treatment are borne by the country of immigration, as well as the cost of deporting them.
In addition, the country that wants to get rid of them also faces the cost of convincing another country to accept them. Most migrants arrive without papers, many lie about their country of origin, making it extremely difficult to deport them. Consequently, authorities in charge of deportation are usually quite rough in handling people. Picking them up in the middle of the night, rushing them to the airport before they can call a lawyer, forcing them handcuffed into the plane if it is a commercial flight – scenes which neither passengers nor flight personnel like to watch.
The United Kingdom, for instance, hired a fleet of 54 private jets to deport almost 3,000 people from January 2014 to June 2015, according to the interior ministry. "Charter flights are used to return illegal immigrants to destinations which have a limited number of scheduled flights or where scheduled flights have an insufficient capacity to meet demand. In general, they are used to remove those with a history of non-compliance or who pose a risk to the public,” the Home Office told the Mirror.
On arrival back home they are usually penniless, facing grim immigration procedures and possibly persecution.
In other instances they are not expelled by plane but given a one way train ticket to the country they came from. In Hungary, for instance, arriving through the border fence is considered a crime. The convicted felon is given a train ticket to return to Serbia. Since Serbia refuses to accept any returning migrants, the poor person ends up in an overcrowded Hungarian jail to wait for doomsday or for Serbia to change tack.
In the first half of 2015, Italy deported 8,500 illegal immigrants who did not qualify for asylum, who lied on their applications, or whose proposed reason to stay was not justified, according to a report by the interior ministry. Of the 200,000 illegals expected to arrive in Italy in 2015, 18,068 are considered the least wanted of the unwanted; most of them have already been expelled.
Weekly charter flights to Cairo and Tunis take illegal Egyptians and Tunisians back home. Algerians are usually put on return flights upon arrival. Moroccans can also be returned because of a bilateral agreement with the government. Similar arrangements are sought with Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia. Illegal Albanians and other people from the Balkans are forcibly returned by locked train carriage or ferry.
Back in 2012, Europe's human rights court ordered Italy to pay damages to 24 Somali and Eritrean migrants for having deported them to Libya in 2009, saying the government in Rome put the migrants at risk of torture and persecution. In 2015, despite this ruling, 133 Syrians were dropped at the border of Lebanon and Syria, and 221 Afghans were flown to Afghanistan which refuses to accept returning refugees.
The US government is deporting undocumented immigrants back to Central America to face the imminent threat of violence, with several individuals being murdered just days or months after their return, a Guardian investigation has found.aThe Guardian has confirmed three separate cases of Honduran men who have been gunned down shortly after being deported by the US government. Each was murdered in their hometowns, soon after their return – one just a few days after he was expelled from the US. A forthcoming academic study based on local newspaper reports has identified as many as 83 US deportees who have been murdered on their return to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras since January 2014.
Germany is very slow in returning migrants. In 2014, some 200,000 people applied for asylum. Two thirds of them were rejected but only about 10,000 were expelled. The remainder were “tolerated” which means living in suspended animation. In the first half of 2015, only some 8,000 from over 190,000 rejected asylum seekers were returned to where they came from. Of those, 52,000 should leave Germany, the rest is tolerated for medical reasons or because they lack documents and Germany cannot identify their country of origin. As a result of the backlog and the recent and continuing mass immigration, the Bundestag adopted legislation to speed up deportation but chances are that most asylum seekers, except citizen of Balkan countries, will one way or another remain in Germany.
Switzerland is unpopular among potential asylum seekers because it practices a fast track procedure for candidates from the Balkans, deciding within 48 hours if the request is accepted. Since Switzerland has concluded bilateral agreements with Balkan countries that permit repatriation, undesirable applicants can be returned quickly. Immigrants from North Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia are kept in federal centers maximally 140 days before deportation; other applicants with better chances of success are distributed among the Cantons and will receive the verdict within a maximum of 12 months. All asylum seekers are offered legal assistance which helps to speed up procedures.
Conclusion
With a time lag of one to several years – depending on the immigration policy of the country of asylum – the streams of migrants are reversed. For each million of arrivals a few hundred thousand are expected to return to where they came from.
Some will leave voluntarily with a small cheque in their pocket. Others will be forcibly expelled. Still others will successfully dodge deportation and stay in hiding. Some will commit suicide or die before being deported.
Although expelling countries are eager to act smoothly and silently, the scandal of forced deportation will gain in visibility as the scale of the operation grows. For every fish trawler full of migrants arriving at Europe's shores, for every train load of potential wetbacks making across the Rio Grande, one or more plane loads of returnees will leave in the opposite direction.
A costly and basically inhumane operation likely to assume a large scale as asylum policies are tightened and the northbound mass migration from Asia, Africa and Central America continues with no end in sight.
Many if not most migrants hail from countries considered safe. Experience shows that most of these countries are unwilling to take back migrants unless they are compensated for the loss in terms of remittances foregone. Deportation thus becomes doubly expensive: to the cost of transport and a possible silver handshake for the voluntary returnee, the dispatching government is forced add the cost of compensating the receiving government for the remittances lost. If this compensation is satisfactory, the latter government might even accept migrants of unknown nationality: an opportunity for the dispatching government to get rid of some of the toughest cases.
Heinrich von Loesch
Update
According to the Ministry of the Interior, Germany "repatriated" 18,363 persons who were not granted asylum during the first eleven months of 2015. During the same period, 425,000 newly arriving persons were processed for asylum request. Obviously, numbers of arrivals and numbers of departures are out of sync if deportation is supposed to limit immigration to genuine refugees entitled to asylum.
The deputy chief of the German police union, Jörg Radek, estimated the number of people obliged to leave Germany at 190,000. He criticized the Länder governments for lack of action and urged them to show "much more determination in expelling foreigners who were denied asylum."
Update II
The Afghan Minister for Refugees Hossein Alemi Balkhi has allegedly encouraged Afghans on social media to leave their country and migrate to Europe. In an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung (1/02/16) he considered 31 of 34 provinces "unsafe". He wants to exclude from repatriation all Afghan refugees except a few "healthy males from safe provinces."
photo: RFE/RL