What’s the Matter With Europe?

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

May 21, 2018

If you had to identify a place and time where the humanitarian dream — the vision of a society offering decent lives to all its members — came closest to realization, that place and time would surely be Western Europe in the six decades after World War II. It was one of history’s miracles: a continent ravaged by dictatorship, genocide and war transformed itself into a model of democracy and broadly shared prosperity.

Indeed, by the early years of this century Europeans were in many ways better off than Americans. Unlike us, they had guaranteed health care, which went along with higher life expectancy; they had much lower rates of poverty; they were actually more likely than we were to be gainfully employed during their prime working years.

But now Europe is in big trouble. So, of course, are we. In particular, while democracy is under siege on both sides of the Atlantic, the collapse of freedom, if it comes, will probably happen here first. But it’s worth taking a break from our own Trumpian nightmare to look at Europe’s woes, some but not all of which parallel ours.

Many of Europe’s problems come from the disastrous decision, a generation ago, to adopt a single currency. The creation of the euro led to a temporary wave of euphoria, with vast amounts of money flowing into nations like Spain and Greece; then the bubble burst. And while countries like Iceland that retained their own money were able to quickly regain competitiveness by devaluing their currencies, eurozone nations were forced into a protracted depression, with extremely high unemployment, as they struggled to get their costs down.

This depression was made worse by an elite consensus, in the teeth of the evidence, that the root of Europe’s troubles was not misaligned costs but fiscal profligacy, and that the solution was draconian austerity that made the depression even worse.

Some of the victims of the euro crisis, like Spain, have finally managed to claw their way back to competitiveness. Others, however, haven’t. Greece remains a disaster area — and Italy, one of the three big economies remaining in the European Union, has now suffered two lost decades: G.D.P. per capita is no higher now than it was in 2000.

So it isn’t really surprising that when Italy held elections in March, the big winners were anti-European Union parties — the populist Five Star Movement and the far-right League. In fact, the surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner.

Those parties are now set to form a government. While the policies of that government aren’t completely clear, they’ll surely involve a break with the rest of Europe on multiple fronts: a reversal of fiscal austerity that may well end with exit from the euro, along with a crackdown on immigrants and refugees.

Nobody knows how this will end, but developments elsewhere in Europe offer some scary precedents. Hungary has effectively become a one-party autocracy, ruled by an ethnonationalist ideology. Poland seems well down the same path.

So what went wrong with the “European project” — the long march toward peace, democracy and prosperity, underpinned by ever-closer economic and political integration? As I said, the giant mistake of the euro played a big role. But Poland, which never joined the euro, sailed through the economic crisis pretty much unscathed; yet democracy there is collapsing all the same.

I would suggest, however, that there’s a deeper story here. There have always been dark forces in Europe (as there are here). When the Berlin Wall fell, a political scientist I know joked, “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true path: fascism.” We both knew he had a point.

What kept these dark forces in check was the prestige of a European elite committed to democratic values. But that prestige was squandered through mismanagement — and the damage was compounded by unwillingness to face up to what was happening. Hungary’s government has turned its back on everything Europe stands for — but it’s still getting large-scale aid from Brussels.

And here, it seems to me, is where we see parallels with developments in America.

True, we didn’t suffer a euro-style disaster. (Yes, we have a continentwide currency, but we have the federalized fiscal and banking institutions that make such a currency workable.) But the bad judgment of our “centrist” elites has rivaled that of their European counterparts. Remember that in 2010-11, with America still suffering from mass unemployment, most of the Very Serious People in Washington were obsessed with … entitlement reform.

Meanwhile our centrists, along with much of the news media, spent years in denial about the radicalization of the G.O.P., engaging in almost pathological false equivalence. And now America finds itself governed by a party with as little respect for democratic norms or rule of law as Hungary’s Fidesz.

The point is that what’s wrong with Europe is, in a deep sense, the same thing that’s wrong with America. And in both cases, the path to redemption will be very, very hard.

My Response:

Audience:

I think that the author wrote this for Americans who are convinced that democracy is no longer the best system.

Bias:

This author obviously has a bias against the European Union and specifically the central currency it created. He also doesn't seem to believe that democracy is going to last very much longer in the western world.

My Opinion:

In my limited knowledge of the European Union I have previously thought that the Euro has been very good for many nations. However, this article shows that it has been very bad for some nations. I also agree with the author that democracy may not be the system of the future. It seems to me that the problems that the US and Europe are facing today will show people that there must be a better way to to run a nation. 

Korea is built to be unsolvable
Arguably no four words are better calculated to explode the heads of liberals the world over than “Donald Trump’s Nobel Prize.” That was reason enough for thousands of Trump devotees to chant “Nobel! Nobel!” at a weekend political rally in Michigan. His putative claim on the laurel had come days earlier, when the whole world saw North Korea’s Kim Jong Un attempt an awkward hug with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in at the conclusion of their summit. Kim is a third-generation despot known for ordering senior officials executed by shooting them at close range with antiaircraft fire. So any hug, no matter how awkward, is going to look like a momentous breakthrough, and President Trump’s team is of course going to credit his Twitter diplomacy.

Liberal heads also went blooey back in 1906, when another brash, wealthy, self-promoting New York Republican president received a Nobel Peace Prize. According to keepers of the Nobel records, “the Norwegian Left argued that [Theodore] Roosevelt was a ‘military mad’ imperialist who completed the American conquest of the Philippines. Swedish newspapers wrote that Alfred Nobel was turning in his grave.”

What is most pertinent about this parallel is not how much or how little Trump resembles this role model. (It’s possible Roosevelt wrote more books than Trump has read.) Instead, the key takeaway is that Roosevelt won his peace prize for mediating an agreement involving the future of Korea. More than a century later, the U.S. president is still working on the same problem. This simple fact ought to give the triumphalists pause.

For all the focus on personality — “Little Rocket Man” and so on — Korea’s destiny as a global problem patch is dictated by its geography more than its leaders. It is the strategic peninsula where imperial powers converge. Korea shields China’s vital ports on the Yellow Sea; it lures Russia with the hope of warm-water access to the Pacific; it juts at the Japanese home islands “like a dagger pointed at the heart,” as one military strategist put it sharply. Dominated for centuries by China, Korea found itself at the crossroads of two wars in the decade between 1895 and 1905, and nothing afterward has resembled true peace.

Roosevelt’s role in ending the second of those two wars, between Russia and Japan , led to his Nobel Prize and left the peninsula under Japanese sway. Over the next generation, that sway deteriorated into an increasingly brutal occupation, ending only with Japan’s defeat in World War II. After Tokyo’s surrender in 1945, the victorious United States divided the peninsula with the Soviet Union, creating a buffer zone between the rival superpowers, but the tense coexistence failed. A savage war in the early 1950s carried the world to the nuclear brink and never officially ended.

For all the hopes Trump will carry into his proposed summit with Kim — hopes for peace, denuclearization and even visions of eventual unification — this tangled skein of history and geography presents some formidable knots. On a scale of difficulty from one to 10, this is a 13. Consider just a few of the intractable questions facing the U.S. team:

First, what is Kim’s future? Today, he is the absolute ruler of an impoverished but militarily dangerous nation protected by his own arms and the suzerainty of China. Like his father and grandfather, he holds power by wielding violence, favoritism and propaganda, while keeping his people on a constant wartime footing. How, exactly, does he fit this family-business model into any vision of a peaceful, unified Korea in which the wealthy, open South would have overwhelming economic superiority?

Second, how can global powers reconcile competing interests in Korea over the long term without a permanent division, and the attendant threat of renewed tensions? Since November 1950, when China sent hundreds of thousands of ill-equipped troops across the Yalu River in human waves, Beijing has made clear it will never accept U.S. dominance of the peninsula. Over the same period, the United States has invested enormous blood, treasure and human resources in building the South into a dynamic democracy. If the bright line of the 38th Parallel is to be gradually erased, as Kim and Moon agreed in vague but idealistic language, how will these competing commitments be separated?

And supposing that the United States can somehow coexist with China in a peaceful Korea, how does Russia fit into the mix? The struggling but proud petro-state has designs on turning Korea into a major customer, and perhaps a transshipment hub for its natural gas. There is friction all around the globe where Russia rubs against the West. Can it be safely managed in the tinderbox of Korea?

Everything we have seen in the past few months, we’ve seen before. The North Koreans pause their arms buildup. The South Koreans extend their hands. Promises of peace are exchanged.

This has happened repeatedly because it’s the easy part. What comes next is devilishly difficult. And if Trump pulls it off — truly, lastingly — he will deserve the prize.

My Response:

Audience:

Although the author talks about liberals in a joking fashion in this article I do believe that his target audience is liberal Americans.Since he is writing for the Washington Post and because of the language he uses it is clear that he isn't writing to a conservative audience.

 

Bias:

The author seems to have a bias against Trump but at the same time is writing this article to show that Trump could be worth it in the long run. He is showing that even though Trump does a ton of bad things if he could fix the problem in Korea then it would be worth it.

My Opinion:

I think I would have to agree with the author that if Trump were able to pull this off then he would deserve the peace prize. I also found it interesting that the author had found that although the problem in Korea seems to be getting a lot better that they have gotten to this point before and failed. It seemed to me before reading this article that the problem had a very good chance of being solved but  maybe we are farther from peace than I believed. 

In Brexit, Economic Reality Competes With Nostalgia for Bygone Days

Branded “idiots,” residents of Grimsby, England, choose romance for a dying fishing industry over another that is thriving.


GRIMSBY, England — There aren’t a lot of fishermen left in this town in North East England, once home to one of the largest fleet of trawlers in Britain. But nostalgia for the fishing industry permeates the place. So the result seemed inevitable when 70 percent of residents voted to leave the European Union. Britain’s fishermen have complained for years about regulations imposed on all members.

The surprise came later when a local business group began lobbying to avoid tariffs, customs and the other burdens of departing the European Union. Social media scorn ensued. In thousands of tweets across the country, the people of Grimsby were derided as dummies and hypocrites. Either they wanted the upsides of Brexit with none of its costs, or they didn’t grasp the harm that leaving would cause until it was too late.

“Grimsby residents branded ‘idiots’ for Brexit vote as seafood industry seeks free trade deal,” read a headline in a local newspaper.

Actually, what happened here is more about hearts than minds. The vote to leave was a vivid demonstration of the way emotions can transform politics and affect the economy. It’s a phenomenon found around the world, including in the United States, where the legacy and the romance of a declining industrial past often eclipse the interests of new and expanding businesses. Time and again, economic facts are no competition for sentiment and history.

“Some industries that are economically insignificant have enormous public resonance,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, an independent think tank in London. “And because of that, they have political influence that is way out of proportion.”

It isn’t fishermen who are pushing for a kind of exemption from Brexit. It is a group of fish processors, an industry that is thriving in Grimsby, where fish from all over the world are gutted, packaged and sold to wholesalers. This town of 27,000 is a hub in a global supply chain.

“We haven’t fished here for 25 years,” said Simon Dwyer, who leads Seafood Grimsby & Humber Group, the organization arguing for a special free trade deal. “We’ve reinvented ourselves.”

The once-bustling docks here would be pretty desolate were it not for 70 processing warehouses with some 5,000 employees, about one-third of whom are foreign nationals, mostly Poles and Lithuanians. To stay competitive, these companies want the kind of frictionless trade and immigration policy that they currently enjoy, and will probably lose, after Brexit.

The goal of fishermen, on the other hand, is regaining full control of British waters so that they aren’t forced to compete with trawlers from other countries.

The first problem with this dream is the scarcity of local fishermen. Today, there are not enough here to fill a service elevator.

“I wouldn’t put it past 20,” said John Hancock, a skipper with three decades of experience and a fan of Brexit. “And most of them are retired or dead.”

So how did the interests of a tiny, shrinking industry defeat a larger, thriving one at the polls? While active fisherman here are nearly extinct, the job maintains an almost folkloric hold throughout Britain.

“This is a seafaring nation,” said Martyn Boyers, chief executive of Grimsby Fish Market, which oversees the local fish auction. “Think of the Royal Navy, Nelson, Trafalgar. And every city has people who died at sea. So when fishermen said, ‘We want to come out of the E.U.,’ everyone wanted to back the fishermen.”

Brexit passed for a complex variety of reasons in Grimsby and elsewhere, including fears about immigration, sovereignty and the loss of a way of life. All of those factors played a role here and will privilege a moribund industry at the expense of one that is growing.

A similar calculus is evident in the United States, where President Trump has promised to resuscitate coal mining. It’s an industry that now employs roughly 55,000 people, a figure that has been trending downward for years. If economic agendas were driven strictly by data, a lot more would be heard about solar power, which employs about five times the number of people.

In Grimsby, the fishing past is very much alive. Pubs are filled with sepia-toned photographs of the town in its 1950s heyday, when 500 boats were crammed into what was then one of the largest ports in the world. Locals speak wistfully about the work of their fathers, taking an almost perverse pleasure in underscoring the hardships that were part of their lives.


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Grimsby's central shopping area. CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times


“When I was a kid, I hardly saw my dad for 20 years,” said Steve Swallow, a port operative who was having a drink at the JD Wetherspoon pub one recent afternoon. “He used to go to Iceland, Norway, the Arctic Circle, and that’s like a month’s trip.”

On occasion, these voyages yielded no income at all. The owners of trawlers were always paid first, and when hauls weren’t large enough, fishermen went home empty-handed. It was known as “landing in debt.”

“You needed a cup of sugar,” Mr. Swallow said, “you’d go ask your neighbor.”

Pining for this bygone age seems especially baffling after a visit to Grimsby’s Fishing Heritage Center, a harrowing exhibition not far from the docks. It tells the story of what is often called “the most dangerous peacetime occupation in the U.K.,” with dioramas, wooden mannequins and piped-in voices of veterans of the sea.

One tableau features a gaunt and sooty man shoveling coal in what looks like the boiler room of a penal colony. Then the journey takes a still sadder turn when visitors walk into a period living room where a stricken woman learns from the radio that her husband, and the rest of his crew, were killed at sea.


“It’s a recording of an actual BBC broadcast,” said Dave Ornsby, the center’s operations officer. “Thirty-two ships from Grimsby sank in the ’50s.”

Apparently, none of this work or lifestyle appeals to British youths.

“You can’t get young people to fish these days,” said Danny Normandale, a skipper with three decades of experience. “If you say to them, ‘I’ll take you if you’re willing to learn,’ their next question is, ‘Do you have Wi-Fi on the boat? Do you have the internet?’”

Were the manpower problem solved, others would persist. The species in Britain’s waters are scallops, crab, lobsters and other delicacies that have never been popular in this country. The fish of choice here are cod and haddock, staples of fish-and-chip shops. Those species are found closer to Norway and Iceland.

In other words, Britain exports most of what it catches and imports most of what it eats. Either the country will need to change its appetite or it will need to trade.

Mr. Hancock, the former skipper, is undaunted. In the hallway of his office hangs a poster of a cod, clad in armor and clutching a Union Jack. Above it are the words “Fishing for Leave,” and below it “Save Britain’s Fish,” rallying cries during the Brexit campaign.
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Pete Dalton, owner of a fish processing business in Grimsby, in his office overlooking the River Humber.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times


“We’ve had to make way to let every other country come and fish in our waters,” he said. “It’s like a cake that got sliced thinner and thinner. It destroyed whole communities all across this country.”

With enough investment and the right incentives, he believes that British fleets could catch as much as $5 billion worth of fish a year, five times their current annual haul.

That is the stuff of fantasy, countered Mr. Boyers, whose company manages the daily fish auction here. Fish are a uniquely international commodity, he said, and the end of European oversight would not mean the end of quotas. Those quotas are set in consultation with scientists to prevent depletion of stocks. Shirking them would infuriate any number of institutions, starting with the United Nations.

“After Brexit, our government won’t be in a position to create more fish,” Mr. Boyers said. “We’re all cogs in wheels. If you don’t integrate, you won’t get anywhere.”

The cog that Mr. Boyers oversees is one of the few that are largely unchanged from decades ago. The daily auction takes place in a chilled and cavernous hall, which one recent morning was filled with more than 2,500 yellow boxes of fish on ice, each weighing about 110 pounds. A scrum of wholesalers looked over the merchandise and then trailed auctioneers holding pen and paper.


The scene unfolded the same way 30 years ago except for one detail: Nearly all of the fish now come via the highway. They are off-loaded at a port eight miles away then packed onto a truck.

The residents of Grimsby are well aware of the role that fish processing plays in the local economy, and many doubt that a sizable fishing fleet will ever return.

It doesn’t matter. They believe that the European Union has compromised their sovereignty, and part of reclaiming it is asserting the exclusive right to trawl in Britain’s seas. They are also certain that in a post-Brexit world, Britain in general, and fish processors in particular, are going to fare just fine.

“Europe needs the U.K. more than the other way around,” said Ian Thompson, a Grimsby resident and former merchant marine, having a drink under one of those sepia-toned photographs. “We will prevail.”

My Response:

Audience:

Since this article is written by the New York Times it is probably safe to assume that their main audience is to Americans. Specifically in this case Americans who know about Brexit and want a closer view into whether they agree or do not agree with it.

Bias:

The author of this article seems to have a clear bias against the Brexit decision but at the same time has written this article in order to understand the hearts of the people. Although the author is definitely against Brexit they have tried to see the other side of it and have presented that pretty well.

My Opinion:

Personally I have always thought of Brexit as a very bad idea and that the people voting for it were paranoid nationalists. However, this article gave me a deeper insight into it in the fact that some of these people have different stories. It reminded me of one of the most important things when dealing with these major crisis which is that everyone is a complex person just like myself and they should be thought of this way. Even if they do things that I do not agree with and even think is outrageous they have their own stories and many personal experiences which are different to mine and have led them to that conclusion. This doesn't mean I can't think they are wrong still but it just means that we should try and understand where they are coming from so that we can come up with a better solution.

Probe finds deadly Niger mission lacked proper approval


WASHINGTON (AP) — A military investigation into the Niger attack that killed four American service members concludes the team didn’t get required senior command approval for their risky mission to capture a high-level Islamic State militant, several U.S. officials familiar with the report said. It doesn’t point to that failure as a cause of the deadly ambush.

Initial information suggested the Army Special Forces team set out on its October mission to meet local Nigerien leaders, only to be redirected to assist a second unit hunting for Doundou Chefou, a militant suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an American aid worker. Officials say it now appears the team went after Chefou from the onset, without outlining that intent to higher-level commanders.


As a result, commanders couldn’t accurately assess the mission’s risk, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the results of the investigation before they’re publicly released. The finding will likely increase scrutiny on U.S. military activity in Africa, particularly the role of special operations forces who’ve been advising and working with local troops on the continent for years.

Four U.S. soldiers and four Nigerien troops were killed Oct. 4 about 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of Niamey, Niger’s capital, when they were attacked by as many as 100 Islamic State-linked militants traveling by vehicle and carrying small arms and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Two other American soldiers and eight Nigerien forces were wounded.

The investigation finds no single point of failure leading to the attack, which occurred after the soldiers learned Chefou had left the area, checked his last known location and started for home. It also draws no conclusion about whether villagers in Tongo Tongo, where the team stopped for water and supplies, alerted IS militants to American forces in the area. Still, questions remain about whether higher-level commanders — if given the chance — would have approved or adjusted the mission, or provided additional resources that could have helped repel the ambush.

Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, wouldn’t comment on the investigation, beyond saying it’s now complete and being reviewed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other senior leaders.

The other U.S. officials said the final report could have consequences for U.S. military operations in Africa.


Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the Africa Command’s leader, is expected to recommend greater oversight to ensure proper mission approval and risk assessment, they said. Waldhauser isn’t expected to scale back missions in Africa or remove commanders’ authorities to make decisions. He is slated to testify before a House committee Tuesday.

The incident is likely to trigger discussions about improved security measures, too, including heavier armored vehicles, better communications and improved individual trackers to make it easier to find missing troops.

Top Africa Command officials, led by its chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier Jr., have spent months trying to unravel the complex incident, conducting dozens of interviews across the U.S., Europe and Africa.

U.S. and Nigerien officials say the troops received intelligence about Chefou’s location and acted on what was likely considered a fleeting chance to get him, or at least gather valuable intelligence on the American hostage.

It’s unclear where Chefou was believed to be. But before arriving at that location, the U.S.-Nigerien team learned he had left. The troops traveled on to the site to collect any remaining information there. A second U.S. commando team assigned to the mission was unable to go because of weather problems.

One Nigerien official said the troops that reached the destination found food and a motorcycle. They destroyed the motorcycle. The team then headed home, the official said, but stopped in Tongo Tongo to get supplies.

The U.S. investigation notes the team stayed at Tongo Tongo longer than normal, but says there is no compelling evidence to conclude a villager or anyone else deliberately delayed their departure or betrayed them by alerting militants.

The Nigerien official said Abou Walid Sahraoui, an IS leader in the region, heard the team had visited the site of Chefou’s last known location. He then dispatched about 20 fighters to pursue the U.S. and Nigerien troops. A larger group of militants followed later, said the official, who also would only discuss the matter on condition of anonymity. U.S. officials couldn’t corroborate that information.

Shortly after leaving Tongo Tongo, U.S. and Nigerien forces were attacked and eventually overrun by the IS ambush. Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson, 25, of Miami Gardens, Florida, became separated from the others as he fought and ran for cover in the brush. He was gunned down, but his body wasn’t found until two days later.

The other three Americans killed were Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, 35, of Puyallup, Washington; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, 39, of Springboro, Ohio; and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, 29, of Lyons, Georgia. Black and Wright were Army Special Forces. Johnson and Johnson weren’t Green Berets; the others were.

The U.S. troops called for help using the code “Broken Arrow,” which signals they were in imminent danger, officials said. They then followed procedures and shut down their radios to prevent the enemies from using them. As a result, they couldn’t communicate quickly with French aircraft sent in to rescue them. Some footage of the gruesome battle, taken off one of the U.S. soldier’s helmet cameras, surfaced in recent days in an IS propaganda video posted online.

Officials said the procedural breakdown meant the overall mission lacked the higher-level command approval necessary to go after a senior militant. Such missions require approval by senior Special Operations Command officers who would’ve been in Chad or at Africa Command’s headquarters in Germany.

The reporting failure meant those commanders lacked a complete picture of what the unit was doing, so concluded the mission was unlikely to encounter enemy forces. Had the unit gotten proper oversight and approvals, officials said, it might have been better equipped or included additional personnel more capable of sustaining a fight.

___

Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali, contributed to this report.

My Response:

Audience:

This article is probably written mainly for Americans who are curious about this strange mission and attack although Nigerien people may also be interested in what occur within their nation.

Bias:

The author seems to believe that these soldiers would have been safe if the proper approval would have kept these officers safer. He also seems to have a bias against the Nigerien people in that he suggests that it is possible that they alerted the IS to attack these soldiers.

My Opinion:

From my very novice opinion it seems like that even if these troops had had proper approval it would probably not have affected their safety in the mission because they were going into an area where they believed there to be IS militants so it seems that they should have expected some sort of attack like this or at least have  been on the look out for one. Although it probably would have been good to have a higher level of approval those closest to the situation probably had the most information about it and therefore could probably make a good decision in that. 

Freezing weather in Europe linked to soaring temperatures at North Pole, say scientists


Rob Crilly, new york 27 FEBRUARY 2018 • 2:37AM

While Britain shivers in the “Beast from the East”, scientists say temperatures have risen above freezing repeatedly at the North Pole, reaching as high as 30C above normal for the depths of winter.

The cause is a “warm air intrusion” bringing mild and moist air. It is a common feature of Arctic weather systems but this year has been deeper and longer than normal, according to meteorologists.

The disturbance is responsible for displacing a blast of chilly Arctic air, sending it streaming over Europe.

And it could become more common as a result of man-made climate change, according to scientists, who took to social media to share their extraordinary data.

Irvine Zack Labe, a climate researcher at the University of California, tweeted on Sunday: "The extreme event continues to unfold in the high Arctic today in response to a surge of moisture and 'warmth.'"

The Cape Morris Jesup meteorological site at the northern extreme of Greenland has seen a record-breaking 61 hours of temperatures above freezing so far in 2018, linked to a rare retreat of sea ice in the Arctic winter darkness.

"It's never been this extreme," said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

To the south, a rare snow storm hit Rome on Monday while commuters in London raced home before wintry weather hit train services.

Professor Lars Kaleschke, of Hamburg University, summed up the weather as “wacky”.

"The question is whether this weather will happen more often. This is just one event so it's hard to make a causal relationship," he told Reuters.

However, recent studies have found that warm air intrusions are increasing in frequency. Scientists think the reduction in sea ice on the Arctic Ocean allows warmer water to release heat into the atmosphere, with knock-on effects for the jet stream.

There are few weather stations close to the North Pole. Instead, meteorologists rely on weather models to calculate the temperature.

Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, pointed out that the North Pole was warmer than much of Europe.

In relative terms, that's a 30 C (54 F) temperature anomaly at the North Pole.

This is associated with a warm air intrusion from the Atlantic and displacement of cold air onto Asia following large scale disturbances to the polar jet stream.

Such extreme warm air intrusions over the North Pole are becoming more frequent, according to a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters last year, as well as longer-lasting and more intense.

Robert Graham, of the Norwegian Polar Institute and the paper’s lead author, told the Washington Post: “Previously this was not common.

“It happened in four years between 1980-2010, but has now occurred in four out of the last five winters.”

My Response:

Audience:

I think that the target audience is those in the UK mainly but maybe in other parts of Europe who also are experiencing the same sort of weird weather patterns. These people want some sort of explanation for what is happening.

Bias:

The author of this article seems to not fully believe in global warming because of his use that scientists are saying this almost as if it is not common knowledge. Also including reports about whether this type of weather will continue.

My Opinion:

This saddens me that these type of weather patterns are happening because if we as a planet were more thoughtful about the big issue of global warming we could prevent this. However it saddens me more that there are still those people who don't believe it exists even when we have direct evidence of the changes which are occurring. This is really a global issue and with these weather patterns getting worse and worse I think we need to be doing way more to stop global warming.

Fitness app Strava lights up staff at military bases


Security concerns have been raised after a fitness tracking firm showed the exercise routes of military personnel in bases around the world.

Online fitness tracker Strava has published a "heatmap" showing the paths its users log as they run or cycle.

It appears to show the structure of foreign military bases in countries including Syria and Afghanistan as soldiers move around them.

The US military was examining the heatmap, a spokesman said.

How does Strava work?

San Francisco-based Strava provides an app that uses a mobile phone's GPS to track a subscriber's exercise activity.

It uses the collected data, as well as that from fitness devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone, to enable people to check their own performances and compare them with others.

It says it has 27 million users around the world.

What is the heatmap?

The latest version of the heatmap was released by Strava in November last year.

It is a data visualisation showing all of the activity of all of its users around the world.

Strava says the newest version has been built from one billion activities - some three trillion points of data, covering 27 billion km (17bn miles) of distance run, jogged or swum.

But it is not a live map. The data aggregates the activities recorded between 2015 and September 2017.

So why is it in the news now?

That is thanks to Nathan Ruser, a 20-year-old Australian university student who is studying international security at the Australian National University and also works with the Institute for United Conflict Analysts.

He said he came across the map while browsing a cartography blog last week.

It occurred to him that a large number of military personnel on active service had been publicly sharing their location data and realised that the highlighting of such exercises as regular jogging routes could be dangerous.

"I just looked at it and thought, 'oh hell, this should not be here - this is not good,'" he told the BBC.

"I thought the best way to deal with it is to make the vulnerabilities known so they can be fixed. Someone would have noticed it at some point. I just happened to be the person who made the connection."

What does the heatmap show?

Although the location of military bases is generally well-known and satellite imagery can show the outline of buildings, the heatmap can reveal which of them are most used, or the routes taken by soldiers.

It displays the level of activity - shown as more intense light - and the movement of personnel inside the walls.

It also appears that location data has been tracked outside bases - which may show commonly used exercise routes or patrolled roads.

Mr Ruser said he was shocked by how much detail he could see. "You can establish a pattern of life," he said.

A significant risk

By Jonathan Marcus, defence and diplomatic correspondent

Many years ago, operational security was a relatively simple matter of not being physically overheard by the enemy.

Think of the British WWII poster with the slogan "Careless Talk Costs Lives".

Well, no more. Our modern electronic age means that we all move around with a number of "signatures"; we send and receive a variety of signals, all of which can be tracked. And as the episode with the exercise tracker shows, you do not need to be an American or Russian spy to be able to see and analyse these signals.

Russian troops have been tracked in Ukraine or in Syria by studying their social media interactions or geo-location data from their mobile phone images.

Each piece of evidence is a fragment, but when added together it could pose a significant risk to security - in this case highlighting the location of formerly secret bases or undisclosed patterns of military activity.

Which bases are affected and why?

The app is far more popular in the West than elsewhere and major cities are aglow with jogging routines.

But in remote areas foreign military bases stand out as isolated "hotspots" and the activities of a single jogger can be illuminated on dark backgrounds.

Exercise activities stand out in such countries as Syria, Yemen, Niger, Afghanistan and Djibouti, among others.

A US base at Tanf in Syria, near the Iraqi border, is an illuminated oblong, while forward bases in Helmand, Afghanistan, are also lit up.

Although US bases have been frequently mentioned it is by no means just an American problem.

One image shows the perimeter of the main Russian base in Syria, Hmeimim, and possible patrol routes.

The UK's RAF base at Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands is also lit up with activity, as are popular swimming spots nearby.

And it is not exclusively the more remote areas either. Jeffrey Lewis in the Daily Beast highlights one potential security flaw at a Taiwan missile command centre.

Neither is it just military personnel who could be affected, but also aid workers and NGO staffers in remoter areas too.

Both state and non-state actors could use the data to their advantage.
Can't you apply a privacy setting?

Yes. The settings available in Strava's app allow users to explicitly opt out of data collection for the heatmap - even for activities not marked as private - or to set up "privacy zones" in certain locations.

Strava has not said much since the concerns were raised but it released a brief statement highlighting that the data used had been anonymised, and "excludes activities that have been marked as private and user-defined privacy zones".

But journalist Rosie Spinks is one of those who has expressed concern at the privacy system.

In an article for Quartz last year she said there was too much onus on the consumer to navigate an opting-out system that required different levels.

Then there is the fear that hackers could access Strava's database and find the details of individual users.

What have authorities said?

A US Department of Defense spokeswoman, Maj Audricia Harris, said it took "matters like these very seriously and is reviewing the situation to determine if any additional training or guidance is required".

The US has been aware of such problems, publishing a tract called Enhanced Assessments and Guidance Are Needed to Address Security Risks in DOD.

In 2016, the US military banned Pokemon GO from government-issued mobile phones,

An image of the Pentagon on the Strava heatmap showed no activity.

The UK's Ministry of Defence said it also took "the security of its personnel and establishments very seriously and keeps them under constant review" but would not comment on specific security arrangements.

My Response:

Audience:

This article is mainly focused on people from western countries because they are more likely to be using Strava. Also it may also be written to inform those on the military bases of their actions and how it could potentially put them at risk.

Bias:

The article seemed to have a clear bias that having these routes highlighted was a bad thing. What was less obvious was the fact that they seemed to agree that it was the company's (not the individual's) responsibility to protect privacy.

My Opinion:

I agree with this article that the individual cannot be held accountable to make sure that all of their privacy settings our correct especially since the app is focused on public sharing. Since I do believe that these military personnel should have the same opportunity as us to use fitness apps like this I think that Strava needs to change these heat maps. I think it is a really cool idea to be able to see the routes with the most activity so I don't think that Strava should totally get rid of them but they could do something to protect the privacy of places like military bases.

Turkey's Erdogan vows to press offensive on U.S.-backed Kurds in Syria


ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Monday to keep up an offensive against U.S.-backed Kurdish militias in Syria, rejecting American calls for restraint and boasting of a deal with Russia to press ahead with the assault.

Erdogan’s defiant message underscored the deepening rift between the NATO allies over the Kurdish militias and signaled a possible escalation of the latest tensions in Syria’s seven-year conflict.

Turkey sees the Syrian Kurdish fighters as linked to insurgents fighting for Kurdish autonomy at home. Washington, meanwhile, has turned to the Syrian Kurds as a proxy force against the Islamic State and a bulwark against efforts by the extremists to reclaim territory.

Turkey on Saturday announced an air and ground offensive to rout the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, from Afrin, an enclave near the Turkish border. U.S. officials quickly called on Turkey to limit the scope and duration of the operation to avoid civilian casualties.

“We appreciate their right to defend themselves, but this is a tough situation where there are a lot of civilians mixed in,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters while traveling from London to Paris, according to a pool report.

“Turkey has legitimate concerns about terrorists crossing the border into Turkey and carrying out attacks,” he said, adding that the United States has asked Turkey to “just try to be precise, try to limit your operation, try to show some restraint.”

But Erdogan offered little suggestion that Turkey would scale back its offensive. “We are determined. Afrin will be sorted out. We will take no step back,” he said at a meeting of business leaders in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. Without elaborating, he said Turkey had reached an agreement with Russia — whose forces back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — over the operation.

“America says the timing [of the operation] should be clear,” Erdogan continued. “Well, was your timing in Afghanistan clear? Is your time in Iraq done?”

Syrian Kurdish officials said Monday that at least 13 civilians and three Kurdish fighters had been killed since the operation started. Turkey also deployed allied Syrian rebels to help in the fight.

It was unclear, however, how far Turkey or its proxy forces had advanced on Afrin or surrounding Kurdish areas. Turkish officials said this weekend that the goal was to create a “secure zone” along the border.

In Afrin, a spokesman for the YPG, Nouri Mahmoud, denounced Russia for apparently giving a green light to the Turkish attacks. “This is an unethical position from the Russian forces,” he said at a news conference.

U.S. officials say the YPG militia played an essential role in ousting Islamic State militants from several areas of Syria.

“They have proven their effectiveness,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Sunday en route to Southeast Asia.

“It has cost them thousands of casualties,” he said. “But you have watched them, with the coalition support, shred [the] ISIS caliphate in Syria.” ISIS is an acronym for the Islamic State.

My Opinion:

Audience:

The audience of this article seems to be mainly for those in the US who are concerned with the US military actions and those in Turkey who are concerned about their country's safety.

Bias:

I think this article does a pretty good job of being impartial but I still think that they definitely are writing with the US in mind. Although it states that Turkey has legitimate concerns of safety it also provides many examples about how the US is taking into account these concerns and how they are not asking Turkey to do anything dramatically different.

My Thoughts:

Since I do not really have much previous knowledge of this subject reading this article did make me agree that the US seems to be quite reasonable in their demands of Turkey. Although I agree that a country must be able to protect itself Turkey seems to be taking that to the extreme. However, I do not like the fact that the US is just using the Kurdish militias to fight ISIS because it seems that they are putting other countries safety in jeopardy by doing so. Also I generally do not think that it is a good idea for the US to be getting involved in other nations wars. It hasn't gone well in the past so I do not think that will change in the future.