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European Union

Adventures In NATOstan: Sparks Flying In Ibiza, Locked Down Bilderberg

May 24, 2023 Pepe Escobar, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
I was a guest at a top business gathering – mostly Spaniards but also featuring Portuguese, Germans, Brits and Scandinavians: ultra high-level executives in real estate, asset management, and investment banking. Our panel was titled “Global Geopolitical Shifts and Their Consequences.” Before the panel, participants were invited to vote on what worried them most when it comes to the future of their business. Number one was inflation and interest rates. Number two was geopolitics. That prefigured a very lively debate ahead. Little did I or the audience know that would turn into a wild ride. The first presentation came from the director of a “Center for European Politics” in Copenhagen.

European Cities Breathe New Life Into BDS Movement

May 6, 2023 Ramzy Baroud, Mintpress News. , , ,
A succession of events starting in Barcelona, Spain, in February, and followed in Liège, Belgium, and Oslo, Norway, in April sent a strong message to Israel: The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is alive and well. In Barcelona, the city’s Mayor canceled a twinning agreement with the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. The decision was not an impulsive one, although Ada Colau is well-known for her principled positions on many issues. It was, however, an outcome of a fully democratic process initiated by a proposal submitted by left-wing parties at the city council.

Europe’s Fate

May 3, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. , , , , ,
If Emmanuel Macron got one thing done above all others during his recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, it was to put the question of Europe’s place in the global order before a lot of people who would rather not think about it. The French president, as is his habit, once again questioned Europe’s status in the Atlantic alliance, notably in his now-famous protest that Europeans cannot allow themselves to be “vassals” of the United States. “Strategic autonomy” must be the Continent’s aspiration, Macron asserted for the umpteenth time. Suddenly, the future of the Continent is squarely on the table.

Europe Pays More For Banned Russian Oil, Resold By India

May 1, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , ,
The European Union heavily sanctioned Russia and pledged to boycott its oil, yet continues to buy it, and at an even higher price, albeit indirectly. India is importing record levels of discounted Russian crude, purchasing it in currencies other than the dollar. India then refines the Russian oil and exports fuel to Europe at a profit. Meanwhile, increasing energy costs in Europe have stoked inflation, causing workers’ wages to significantly decline. The real wages of workers in the Eurozone fell by 6.5% between 2020 and 2022. As of April, Bloomberg reported, European imports of refined fuel from India are approaching 360,000 barrels per day.

Report: US Liquefied Gas Flooding Europe

April 30, 2023 Tim Donaghy, Greenpeace. , , ,
The oil and gas industry has moved quickly to take advantage of the disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, a surge of shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States was redirected to Europe in order to replace Russian pipeline gas and secure supplies for the European winter. By taking advantage of this short-term energy crisis, the industry has also secured financing and begun construction on numerous LNG terminals on both sides of the Atlantic that are designed to operate for decades to come.

EU’s Withdrawal Of Tariffs On Ukrainian Grain Backfires

April 23, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
European Union (EU) authorities and five eastern European countries are in a stand-off over the import of tariff-free grain from Ukraine. The decision to remove the tariffs on grain imports from Ukraine was taken by the EU in June 2022. However, eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Romania have been increasingly unhappy with the withdrawal of tariffs, citing the impact on their local markets. The disagreement boiled over last week when five countries — Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia — blocked the import of Ukrainian grain. A meeting on Wednesday, April 19, between EU authorities and representatives of the five countries did not lead to any breakthrough.

Parliament Adds Ecocide To EU’s Draft List Of Environmental Crimes

April 6, 2023 Valentina Romano, Euractiv.com. , , ,
“This is historical! The European Parliament unanimously supports my proposal to enshrine ecocide in European law,” said French MEP Marie Toussaint, who is leading the EU’s environmental crime directive for the Greens in the European Parliament. According to the French MEP, “the issue of ecocide has resurfaced” in recent years since the Erika oil tanker sank off the Brittany coast in 1999, bringing the issue to the EU’s attention. “The litigation cases that we have taken, for the climate or for the rights of nature, have contributed to reviving the urgency of dealing with attacks on living beings in and through the law,” she said.

Does Climate Inaction Violate Human Rights?

April 3, 2023 Olivia Rosane, Ecowatch. , , ,
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard its first ever cases Wednesday related to the climate crisis.  The plaintiffs argue that the governments of Switzerland and France violated their human rights by not doing enough to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, which are primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The hearings mark a “pivotal moment” for the legal fight for more ambitious climate action, Center for International Environmental Law human rights and climate campaign manager Sébastien Duyck told Climate Home News. “They have the potential to set an influential legal precedent that would further confirm that states must take more adequate action against climate change as a matter of their human rights obligations,” said Duyck.

The US/EU/NATO Axis Of Domination Remains Greatest Threat To Peace

March 25, 2023 ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , ,
This commentary really should be part two from the piece I wrote last week in the run-up to the anti-war mobilization that took place March 18th which commemorated the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. In that article I made a similar argument about why the U.S. should be seen as the greatest threat to the survival of collective humanity on our planet. That point, however, needs to be reinforced because in typical arrogance, on the eve of that mobilization and the official March 20th date of the U.S. invasion, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Russia President Vladimir Putin while Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Barack Obama, responsible for horrific crimes against humanity and literally millions of deaths combined in Serbia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, walk around as free individuals.

Today’s Banking Crisis: Deep Origins And Future Directions

March 23, 2023 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. , , ,
It’s been a week since the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US at the time of its collapse and reportedly a source of funding for half of all the tech start ups in the US. It’s now become clear the more general banking crisis that has emerged is not due simply to a rogue, mismanaged bank that over-extended itself during the recent tech boom and then somehow mysteriously imploded in just 72 hours, March 7-9, until seized by the FDIC on the morning of March 10, 2023. Deeper, more systemic forces are at play—in the case of both the SVB collapse and the now spreading contagion to US regional banks as well as to European banks.

In Consequence To Collapsing US Empire, Russia’s Strategic Aims

February 14, 2023 Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation. , , , ,
Things are getting psychotic. As you listen to EU leaders, all parroting identical ‘good news’ speaking points, they nonetheless radiate basal disquietude – presumably a reflection of the psychic stress from, on the one hand, repeating ‘Ukraine is winning: Russia’s defeat is coming’, when, on the other, they know the exact opposite to be true: That ‘no way’ can Europe defeat a large Russian army on the landmass of Eurasia. Even the colossus of Washington confines the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose – wars lost to weak opponents that no one could gainsay whether the outcome was no loss, but somehow ‘victory’.

Europe Proposes Mass Exit From Energy Treaty

February 13, 2023 Joe Lo, Climate Home News. , , ,
The 1998 Energy Charter Treaty, which has around 50 signatories including European Union countries, was designed to protect companies in the energy industry by allowing them to sue governments on policies affecting their investments. But in recent years it has been used to challenge policies that require fossil fuel plants to shut – raising concerns that it is an obstacle to addressing climate change. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain have already announced plans to quit the treaty, increasing pressure on Brussels to coordinate an EU-wide withdrawal. In a document shared with EU countries and seen by Reuters, the European Commission said the “most adequate” option would be for the EU and its 27 member states to leave.

Struggle For Liberation Of Western Sahara Intensifies

January 4, 2023 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Morocco, Western Sahara - Moroccan forces illegally occupying the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) have come under repeated bombardment by the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Moroccan forces currently occupy over 80% of SADR, also known as Western Sahara, which remains classified by the UN as among the last countries still awaiting decolonization. On Friday, December 30, according to a statement by the Ministry of Defense of SADR, the SPLA “targeted the trenches of the occupation soldiers in several areas of the Mahbas sector.” The SPLA bombarded the positions of occupation forces in this region, in the northwest of occupied territory, for the third consecutive day on Friday. Attacks were also reported on December 28 and 29, inflicting “heavy losses in lives and equipment along the wall of humiliation and shame.”

Europe’s Surprising Record Of Dam Removals

December 1, 2022 Tara Lohan, Resilience. , ,
The 1999 demolition of the Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River set off a wave of dam removals across the United States. Since then some 1,200 dams have come down to help restore rivers and aquatic animals, improve water quality, and boost public safety — among other benefits. Across the Atlantic, European nations have been busy removing thousands of river barriers, too. But until recently the efforts have gone largely unnoticed, even among experts. Pao Fernández Garrido can attest to that. An engineer and expert in ecosystem restoration from Spain, Fernández Garrido was finishing her master’s thesis in 2012 when she attend a dam-removal training in Massachusetts that was part of a conference on fish passage.

EU Admits New Cold War Is Not ‘Democracy Vs. Autocracy’

October 28, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. , , ,
The European Union’s top foreign-policy official, Josep Borrell, admitted that the new cold war that the West is waging on China and Russia is not a conflict of “democracies vs. authoritarians.” “On our side, there are a lot of authoritarian regimes,” the EU’s de facto foreign minister conceded. Borrell’s comments directly contradicted those of US President Joe Biden, who claimed in his first State of the Union address in March that the new cold war is a “battle between democracy and autocracies.” The top EU diplomat instead recognized that the new cold war is a struggle in which economic “systems are in rivalry,” and that most of the Global South “do not want to be forced to take sides in this geopolitical competition,” because “they feel that the global system does not deliver,” and “because they blame us.”
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