With united Europe MIA in its Covid-19 response, worst-hit nations turn to ‘evil’ Russia and China for help

“In Verduno, near Turin in northern Italy, a hospital that has been under construction for 20 years, and is still unfinished, will open as a Covid-19 hospital next week, and will take in its first 60 coronavirus victims.

In comparison, the Italian government will be well aware that China, using 7,000 builders working around the clock,  built a 1000-bed hospital in just 10 days, and that Russia, with parallel ambition, is looking to finish a virus hospital on the outskirts of Moscow within a month.”

Source

http://www.rt.com/op-ed

Damian Wilson

is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.

23 Mar, 2020

Russian servicemen load medical equipment and special disinfection vehicles into cargo planes while sending the supply to Italy, hit by the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a military airdrome in Moscow region, Russia March 22, 2020 ©  Reuters / Russian Defence Ministry / Alexey Ereshko

Brussels has all but abandoned them to their fates, so is it any wonder that Italy, Spain and other European countries have turned to Moscow and Beijing for meaningful support in terms of expert advice and medical supplies?

When this coronavirus pandemic has passed and the nations of the European Union are counting the cost of decimated populations, shattered public health infrastructures and economic meltdowns, one thing is certain: the dynamics within the bloc will have changed forever.

Before the global outbreak of this killer virus, Russia and China were always the West’s undisputed bogeymen. Troublemakers, always up to mischief, playing dangerous geopolitical games intended to undermine Western democracies and divide allies in the EU and NATO.

Many in the Western mainstream media are addicted to a daily fix of either Russian or Chinese conspiracy, so they probably don’t appreciate the irony here. Because things have changed.

READ MORE

WATCH Russian Army deliver medical aid at airbase near Rome as Moscow rallies to help coronavirus-ravaged Italy

In a big way.

It’s largely due to the generosity of these two “tricksy” outsider superpowers that some European nations, fully paid-up, long-term members of the EU, have even a remote chance of getting to grips with the immense public health demands caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus.

And thank heavens for that, because if either Italy or Spain had been looking to the EU — or the USA for that matter — for real, on-the-ground assistance that would enable them to simply stop people dying in their thousands in overcrowded hospitals, then they would have found themselves waiting in vain.

Sure, the ECB weighed in only last week, with an unprecedented fiscal bazooka aimed at reducing the economic impact that is being caused by the virus (ar at least by the measures governments are taking to try to stop it). But that’s fighting the virus in one manner only, very much after the fact and certainly not on the frontline.

This significance of that fiscal help will only really be apparent once the health crisis is over and the full, disastrous economic consequences are realized. And the fact that it is far from over right now is what needs immediate attention, like providing more medical staff, personal protection gear, ventilators, hospitals and, obviously, a vaccine.

But the message from Brussels to Italy, Spain and other EU members is clear: in dealing with the pandemic and the thousands of dead citizens it leaves in its wake, you are on your own.

The EU’s abject hopelessness and indifference started to become clear some weeks back in the face of the escalating virus, when the export beyond national borders of facemasks and medical equipment was banned by some EU members, including Germany.

ALSO ON RT.COMRussian military planes with medics & supplies land in coronavirus-hit Italy (VIDEO)It’s unlikely the Italians will forget that. Compare it with the generosity of the Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi which has sent tens of thousands of face masks to Italy at the same time as Beijing has filled planes with medical experts and crucial equipment of which Rome was, and remains, in desperate need.

Compare it too with the help from Moscow sent over the weekend: 100 virus specialists, disinfection trucks and medical equipment. All being sent at the request of Italy.

It seems the close ties the Italian government maintained with Russia over the last few years, particularly at the initiative of former coalition foreign minister Matteo Salvini, have paid off. His refusal to be drawn into the EU’s Kremlin-bashing of recent times, preferring to cultivate a closer friendship of his own, has to be applauded for the dividends it has produced in the Italian hour of need.

READ MORE

EU spin in the time of coronavirus

And one unintended consequence of that must be that it is driving critics of the controversial Italian populist absolutely nuts.

It also won’t escape the attention of NATO that the aid from Russia is coming via military channels, which must sting those of its members with a more hawkish view towards Moscow. Just so they don’t miss the irony, the supplies bear a “From Russia with Love” label.

What cannot be denied is that actions speak louder than words. The people of those nations being helped from outside the EU will be eternally grateful for that assistance. It’s help that can be seen. It’s brigades of medical experts, boxes of supplies delivered in big planes. It will save the lives of family and friends and it will provide help on the frontline where it is most needed.

In Verduno, near Turin in northern Italy, a hospital that has been under construction for 20 years, and is still unfinished, will open as a Covid-19 hospital next week, and will take in its first 60 coronavirus victims.

In comparison, the Italian government will be well aware that China, using 7,000 builders working around the clock,  built a 1000-bed hospital in just 10 days, and that Russia, with parallel ambition, is looking to finish a virus hospital on the outskirts of Moscow within a month.

It is these sorts of highly visible acts that people need to see. It builds confidence from despair and hope from misery.

Confidence and hope. As millions of terrified Europeans sit confined in their homes today, isolated voluntarily or by law, those are two things in critically short supply.

‘Goodbye!’ Farage trolls EU Parliament with Brexit one last time, waving Union Jack flag before mic is cut off for ‘hate’

Source

http://www.rt.com

29 Jan, 2020

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage holds a Union Jack flag at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium January 29, 2020. ©  REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Brexit Party leader and MEP Nigel Farage gave his final speech in the European Parliament, denouncing the EU as an anti-democratic experiment. He waved the Union Jack flag to cheers from his UK colleagues as he said goodbye.

As the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve the agreement that would let Britain leave on January 31, Farage rose one last time to cap his 20-year term in the forum with a speech declaring victory and wishing the EU good riddance.

Once we’ve left, we are never coming back.

Nigel Farage

✔@Nigel_Farage

After 25 years of fighting for independence, this is my final contribution in the European Parliament.

We were told to leave with our British flags, and that’s exactly what we did.

60.8K

8:51 AM – Jan 29, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

27.6K people are talking about this

The founding member of UKIP and now leader of the Brexit Party, who has campaigned against the EU since 1992, painted an unflattering picture of the EU as a fundamentally anti-democratic political experiment that gives people “power without accountability” and ignores votes that do not go in its favor.

“We love Europe, we just hate the EU,” he said of both UKIP and the Brexit Party, noting that his parents signed up for a common market, not an unaccountable state with a flag, anthem, courts and the rest of it.

No more being talked down to. No more being bullied… I mean, what’s not to like?

Arguing that the EU wants to ban national flags, he pulled out a pocket flag of the UK to wave the MEPs goodbye – and promptly got his mic cut off by the chair, Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, who insisted that the flags be put away.

“If you disobey the rules, you get cut off,” she said. “Put your flags away. You’re leaving? Take them with you, if you are leaving now. Goodbye.” McGuinness also objected to Farage’s use of the word “hate” about the EU.

The European Parliament voted 621-49 on Wednesday to approve the agreement that would clear the path for the UK to begin exiting the bloc on January 31, pending negotiations on the details with Brussels.

After UK leaves EU on January 31, what will change?

The UK is set to become the first country to leave the European Union. Here is your guide to what will happen next.

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Alasdair Lane

Jan 30, 2020

On Friday evening, as the clock strikes eleven, Britain will leave the European Union.

More than three and a half years since the EU referendum, during which the country has seen two general elections and much political wrangling, the wishes of 17.4 million Britons will be realized.

But do not expect an end to the drama. January 31 marks a single page-turn in the Brexit odyssey and the next chapter could be just as fraught.

A transition period will run for at least 11 months, Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s ideal timeframe, while negotiators thrash out the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU.

Unpicking 40 years of integration promises to be a testing process and there is skepticism on both sides of the English Channel.

Many are simply wondering: What next?

Here are five things to know:

What actually happens on February 1?

Little will change immediately. The UK will enter the transition period and it will be out of EU political institutions but still – for at least the next 11 months – ruled by EU laws.

Britons and EU nationals will continue to benefit from free movement and live in their countries under the rules and regulations they are used to.

When the divorce is finalized, free movement for British immigrants in EU countries will end, according to the Withdrawal Agreement, but they will be afforded rights.

EU nationals living in the UK are being urged to apply now for the UK’s EU Settlement Scheme, but they can wait until the deadline – June 30, 2021, if a deal is reached, or December 31, 2020, if the conclusion is a no-deal Brexit.

Will there be a UK-EU trade deal?

A trade deal is likely but not certain.

A comprehensive trade deal with the EU, the UK’s largest trading partner, is the British government’s ultimate goal. But negotiating one will not be easy, especially in the UK-mandated 11-month timeframe.

Before talks can begin, both sides need to publish their negotiating objectives. The EU’s chief Brexit figure, Michel Barnier, must also obtain a formal negotiating mandate from the bloc’s leadership. This is unlikely to happen before the end of February.

At that point, talks can start in earnest.

Reports have said discussions will begin early March.

If industry really creates a fuss about loss of market access, extending might look nicer to Mr Johnson than slogging it out.

ALAN WINTERS, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF THE UK TRADE POLICY OBSERVATORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

Johnson is pushing for a “Canada-style” agreement, one modeled on the EU’s arrangement with Ottawa. CETA, as the deal is known, removes 98 percent of tariffs on traded goods, though sizeable restrictions remain. Despite being less ambitious than the proposed UK-EU pact, it still took seven years to be finalized.

Johnson has also ruled out alignment with European regulations.

Barrier-free trade is an aim Brussels shares with London, but only if a level playing field can be agreed – code for convergence on the likes of labor, taxes, the environment, and state aid.

Having already removed former Prime Minister Theresa May‘s promise to safeguard workers’ rights in line with EU standards, Johnson faces a fight.

Alan Winters, an economics professor and head of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex, said the sticking point is one of enforcement.

Brussels will demand the invocation of EU law when solving commercial disputes, but the UK has been unwavering: No European Court of Justice (ECJ) involvement post-Brexit.

It is a contentious area that will “require a unique solution, and therefore time”, said Winters.

If no compromise can be reached, the UK will leave without an agreement. That would mean regulatory barriers, tariffs, and quotas.

In all likelihood, the UK will strive for at least a bare-bones deal that covers the trade of goods – and perhaps some services – by December.

That is unless Johnson backs down on extending the transition period. This is unlikely but not inconceivable, said Winters.

“If industry really creates a fuss about the loss of market access, extending might look nicer to Mr. Johnson than slogging it out,” he said.

Does the UK now have full control over immigration?

The argument to bolster Britain’s borders was crucial in the Leave campaign’s victory.

In terms of migration, little will change on January 31. A member of Europe’s single market for the duration of the transition period, Britain must keep its frontiers open to EU citizens. No passport impediments, no visa requirements – complete freedom of movement.

But Brexit’s chronic uncertainty will likely see EU arrivals continue to fall, said Sophie Barrett-Brown, a London-based immigration lawyer.

“The general trend of dwindling numbers will continue for the majority of the year due to uncertainty and also lack of awareness of the relevant EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) deadlines.

“Unless the government agrees to an extension of the transition period, there is likely to be a significant drop in the number of arrivals from January 2021 onwards,” she said.

Nigel Farage, former leader of hard-right UKIP, sparked controversy when he unveiled this poster in London to encourage people to get behind Brexit [Stefan Wermuth/Reuters]

In 2019, net migration from Europe fell to its lowest level since 2003. Fewer than 50,000 EU nationals moved to Britain last year – a fraction of the 200,000 that arrived in the run-up to the 2016 referendum.

The shortfall is cause for concern for the British industry. There are deficits at every level of the UK job market, business groups have said, caused in part by the decline in EU arrivals.

Johnson’s plan for the post-transition period immigration has been met with equal unease from rights groups and some businesses. A three-tier points-based system is in the works: Exceptional talent, skilled workers, and temporary staff.

The government says it will be fair, but not all are convinced.

Johnson “should waste no time” in providing thorough details, according to the British Chambers of Commerce, which has warned of costly delays for businesses anxious to plan their post-2020 employment program.

Will UK still be subject to EU law?

During the transition period, the UK will continue to obey EU rules, for example, employment regulations, consumer standards, and competition legislation.

On areas of EU law, the European Court of Justice will continue to exercise its jurisdiction – though the UK will have no say in the creation of new laws, nor will the ECJ feature a British judge.

In time, Brexit will see the repatriation of laws governed by Brussels to London. But not in the short term – and in some cases, not for years.

Beyond the transition period, Johnson is adamant that the Luxembourg-based body holds no further sway over the UK.

Michael Dougan, a professor of European law, said the prime minister’s Withdrawal Agreement allows for continued EU oversight on specific policy areas.

“After the transitional period, the Withdrawal Agreement provides for the ECJ to continue to exercise certain forms of jurisdiction in relation to the UK, for example as regards interpretation of the provisions on citizens’ rights [and] the Protocol dealing with Northern Ireland.”

Likewise, for up to four years after the end of the transition period, the European Commission will be able to bring infringement cases against the UK for breaches of EU law prior to December 2020.

What will happen with Northern Ireland?

On Saturday morning, the UK will share a 483-kilometer (300-mile) land border with the EU: The frontier between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It will remain open and free-flowing for the duration of the transition period.

Soon after Brexit day, special committees of British and EU representatives will meet to thrash out a future settlement. The Northern Ireland Protocol – the arrangement designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland – will be fleshed out and, all going well, agreed without delay.

But the talks promise to be tough. The Protocol seeks to keep Northern Ireland in the UK’s customs territory while simultaneously applying EU rules on agricultural and manufactured goods.

This will remove the need for a customs border on the island, a politically tense proposition given Ireland’s history of sectarian violence, but means a de facto regulatory frontier emerging in the Irish Sea.

Northern Ireland could suffer financially in this scenario, said Katy Hayward, an author and reader in sociology at Queen’s University Belfast.

“We can expect to see a rise in paperwork and thus in costs for the movement of goods across the Irish Sea, and consequently a rise in prices for consumers in Northern Ireland, plus the risk of a disruption to supply chains,” she said.

“It will require new levels of political maturity among elected representatives here to ensure that this period of flux does not give rise to growing polarisation and recriminations,” she added.

A poster aimed at EU citizens living in the UK encourages EU nationals to apply to the government’s post-Brexit EU settlement scheme [File: Adrian Dennis/AFP]

START HERE

What led to Brexit?

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

US Enraged After 6 More EU Nations Join Effort to Bypass Iran Sanctions

Source

theantimedia.com

Zero Hedge 

November 30, 2019

(ZH) — On Friday six European countries issued a bombshell joint statement declaring their intent to join INSTEX, or the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, a European special-purpose vehicle serving as a ‘SWIFT alternative’ to bypass US sanctions on Iran.

Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden released a joint statement asserting it’s of “the utmost importance to the preservation and full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on Iran’s nuclear program by all parties involved.”

“In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) subject to completion of national procedures,” the statement reads.

Instex is an initiative set up by France, Germany and the UK in January 2019 to provide humanitarian and sanctions relief to Iran after in November 2018 the SWIFT network suspended Iranian banks under Washington pressure, months after Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal.

Though the new alternative financial device had shaky beginnings amid further aggressive threats from the US administration, it continued through a trial phase even though Tehran officials had complained it appeared ‘too little, too late’.

But now as this latest six country statement announces, it will serve as the European vehicle to “facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran,” while also providing incentive for Tehran to return to its commitments under the JCPOA, specifically to recently breached uranium enrichment limits. Upon the announcement, US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell lambasted the move, saying:

Terrible timing – why fund the Iranian regime while its killing the Iranian people and shutting off the internet? You should be standing for human rights not funding the abusers.

Richard Grenell

✔@RichardGrenell

Terrible timing – why fund the Iranian regime while its killing the Iranian people and shutting off the internet? You should be standing for human rights not funding the abusers. https://twitter.com/nordrumlars/status/1200373049247379456 …

Lars Nordrum@NordrumLars

Today announced that we are joining INSTEX together with the #E3 to facilitate trade with #Iran and help preserve the #JCPOA. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/join_instex/id2680468/ …

6,136

1:16 PM – Nov 29, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

2,803 people are talking about this

Specifically he called out a tweet by Norway’s ambassador to Iran hailing the news of multiple Scandinavian countries joining the nuclear deal-saving initiative.

As the US official’s tweet reveals, the White House is using the latest weeks-long protests and government-ordered internet blockage inside Iran to keep up the pressure and focus on a ‘human rights’ narrative amid the security forces crackdown.

Despite the criticism and what will no doubt be a continued flood of US official anger in response to the news, France said it asserts European autonomy amid an over-reaching Washington administration. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian called it an “important decision” that will show “Europe’s autonomy of action.”

Europe Can No Longer Trust the United States. Better Look Eastwards

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Brian Cloughley

October 15, 2019

It has recently become more obvious that the European Union cannot trust the United States, in which sentiment it has much in common with other groupings and individual nations around the world. The Trump policy debacle over Turkey and Syria is a significant sign in the expansion of general distrust.

The first round in Washington’s latest erratic performance on the international stage was the seeming decision by Trump to abandon the Kurds who have been strongly supporting the US against the extremist barbarians of Islamic State. No matter what anyone might think of the rights or wrongs of Kurdish separatism, the fact remains that they were staunch allies of Washington. But they are also enemies of Turkey. When the White House announced that Trump would not prevent or disagree with a Turkish operation to expel Kurdish forces from the Turkey-Syria border region the Kurds considered it was now open day for their slaughter — as did Europe.

Trump’s White House statement was “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation…” President Erdogan had told Trump about it being “long-planned” and he naturally thought he had US endorsement for whatever he wanted to do.

Then Trump appeared to back-pedal by tweeting “As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families. The US has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. THE USA IS GREAT!”

While Britain, France and Germany disapprove of Turkey’s assault, there is no indication of agreement with many of Trump’s semi-coherent twitter diatribes, which is the major factor that European nations should be considering.

It is obvious in European capitals (and around the world) that Trump America, the arrogant “USA is Great” of modern times, is far from consistent in its policies regarding trade, military operations, alliances or indeed any facet of international relations. Before taking action against perceived enemies, Washington rarely if ever consults with nations or groupings that have reason to regard themselves as relevant to the US decision.

The case of the Kurds is one of the more egregious examples of Trump’s go-it-alone fixation, as exemplified by his tweet of October 7 stating he intends to “bring our soldiers home” from regions in which they are engaged in warfare, such as Syria, whereupon, after his unilateral action, “Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out.”

Successive America governments have engaged in massive military operations throughout the Middle East in their flailing determination to prove to the electorate that they are ensuring safety for the “Homeland” — that magic word that persuades all Americans that if they do not support all official activities connected with their native land, they are being unpatriotic and disloyal to The Flag.

At the moment the US is headed by an extremely strange person whose erratic behaviour is dangerous for his country and the world. No trust can be placed in the man who on October 9 tweeted that “in no way have we Abandoned the Kurds, who are special people and wonderful fighters” and then declared disjointedly that “they didn’t help us in the Second World War. They didn’t help us with Normandy, as an example.”

His comments about Europe as a grouping and regarding individual nations of the European Union have been similarly inconsistent and often even illogical.

A year ago Trump told NBC’s ‘Sixty Minutes’ that “The European Union was formed in order to take advantage of us on trade, and that’s what they’ve done.” It is verging on the incredible that the leader of the world’s richest and most influential country should make such a bizarre public announcement, which displays not only profound ignorance of history but reveals spiteful maliciousness. In July the US Congressional Research Service noted that the EU is the United States’ largest trading and investment partner and that “ties have broadened as the EU’s membership has grown, and have deepened with the growth of global supply chains, trade in services, and cross-border investment.”

Yet Trump is intent on insulting Europe and when on July 14 (French National Day) he was asked by NBC News who he thought to be America’s greatest enemy declared “I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us is in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.” He went on in a rambling fashion, but left no doubt about his stance regarding the EU.

In July the French government legislated that US digital services’ companies should pay a modest tax — just three percent — on the vast profits they make from France. To most people this is reasonable action by a sovereign government, but Trump tweeted that “France just put a digital tax on our great American technology companies. If anybody taxes them, it should be their home Country, the USA. We will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly. I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!”

Until the arrival of Trump on the international political scene it had been practice for world leaders to refrain from personal insult but, while most of them continue to observe politeness, Trump loses no opportunity to abuse and disparage those he regards as opponents. At last July’s NATO summit in Brussels he went out of his way to attack “you, Angela” saying that Germany is “totally controlled by Russia” because of their mutually beneficial agreement concerning the Nord Stream pipeline. He tweeted “What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy? The US is paying for Europe’s protection, then loses billions on Trade.” In June, in an unprecedented instance of interference in the domestic politics of an ally he tweeted “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

Given Trump’s bizarre behaviour concerning the Turkey-Kurd debacle, when he failed to consult European allies about his intentions, together with his repetitive pronouncements assailing the EU and its leaders, collectively and individually, for their level-headed governance and supposed weaknesses, it is surprising that Europe is standing by Washington to the extent it seems to be doing.

It must be faced that the Trump impeachment initiative is likely to fail, and that he could be re-elected next year by the millions of Americans who actually admire his personality, his disjointed and incoherent tirades, and his constant repetition that “The USA is Great”.

Europe must plan for its economic future, and its considerations should include the likelihood of a further Trump presidency and, therefore, further economic confrontation and other erratic behaviour. The solution is not to formally cut ties with Washington but to foster and develop economic links with Russia, its obvious and geographically convenient partner for the future. The United States can no longer be trusted by the EU — but Russia beckons.

Brian CLOUGHLEY

British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan

Brexit is a necessary crisis – it reveals Britain’s true place in the world

 

Source

http://www.theguardian.com

David Edgerton

Wed 9 Oct 2019 

A determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism is bringing about a long-overdue audit of British realities

 The Commons in 1966: ‘The Conservative party was the party of national capitalism.’ Photograph: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images

Who backs Brexit? Agriculture is against it; industry is against it; services are against it. None of them, needless to say, support a no-deal Brexit. Yet the Conservative party, which favoured European union for economic reasons over many decades, has become not only Eurosceptic – it is set on a course regarded by every reputable capitalist state and the great majority of capitalist enterprises as deeply foolish.

If any prime minister in the past had shown such a determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism, the massed ranks of British capital would have stepped in to force a change of direction. Yet today, while the CBI and the Financial Times call for the softest possible Brexit, the Tory party is no longer listening.

Why not? One answer is that the Tories now represent the interests of a small section of capitalists who actually fund the party. An extreme version of this argument was floated by the prime minister’s sister, Rachel, and the former chancellor Philip Hammond – both of whom suggested that hard Brexit is being driven by a corrupt relationship between the prime minister and his hedge-fund donors, who have shorted the pound and the whole economy. This is very unlikely to be correct, but it may point to a more disconcerting truth.

The fact is that the capitalists who do support Brexit tend to be very loosely tied to the British economy. This is true of hedge funds, of course – but also true for manufacturers such as Sir James Dyson, who no longer produces in the UK. The owners of several Brexiter newspapers are foreign, or tax resident abroad – as is the pro-Brexit billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe of Ineos.

But the real story is something much bigger. What is interesting is not so much the connections between capital and the Tory party but their increasing disconnection. Today much of the capital in Britain is not British and not linked to the Conservative party – where for most of the 20th century things looked very different. Once, great capitalists with national, imperial and global interests sat in the Commons and the Lords as Liberals or Conservatives. Between the wars, the Conservatives emerged as the one party of capital, led by great British manufacturers such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. The Commons and the Lords were soon fuller than ever of Tory businessmen, from the owner of Meccano toys to that of Lyons Corner Houses.

After the second world war, such captains of industry avoided the Commons, but the Conservative party was without question the party of capital and property, one which stood against the party of organised labour. Furthermore, the Tories represented an increasingly national capitalism, protected by import controls, and closely tied to an interventionist and technocratic state that wanted to increase exports of British designed and made goods. A company like Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) saw itself, and indeed was, a national champion. British industry, public and private, was a national enterprise.

Since the 1970s things have changed radically. Today there is no such thing as British national capitalism. London is a place where world capitalism does business – no longer one where British capitalism does the world’s business. Everywhere in the UK there are foreign-owned enterprises, many of them nationalised industries, building nuclear reactors and running train services from overseas. When the car industry speaks, it is not as British industry but as foreign enterprise in the UK. The same is true of many of the major manufacturing sectors – from civil aircraft to electrical engineering – and of infrastructure. Whatever the interests of foreign capital, they are not expressed through a national political party. Most of these foreign-owned businesses, not surprisingly, are hostile to Brexit.

Continue:

Source

Climate Catastrophe Comes for Europe

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

dispatchesfromtheedgeblog

Conn M. HALLINAN

September 19, 2019

• On Aug. 18, several dozen people gathered around a patch of snow in Iceland to commemorate the demise of the Okjokull glacier, a victim of climate change. Further to the west, Greenland shed 217 billion tons of ice in the month of July alone.
• Paris reached 108.7 degrees on July 25, and normally cold, blustery Normandy registered 102 degrees. Worldwide, July 2019 was the hottest month on record.
• Melting Russian permafrost—which makes up two-thirds of the country—is buckling roads, collapsing buildings, and releasing massive amounts of methane, a gas with the ten times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide,
• Some 1.500 residents of Whaley Bridge were recently evacuated when a dam—overwhelmed by intense rainfall that pummeled northern England—threatened to break. The rains washed out roads and rail lines and swamped homes and business.

Ever since coal was partnered with water to generate steam and launch the industrial revolution, Europeans have been pouring billions of tons of atmospheric warming compounds into the planet’s atmosphere. While scientists were aware of the climate-altering potential of burning hydrocarbons as early as 1896, the wealth generated by spinning jennies, power looms and drop forges was seductive, as was the power it gave countries to build colonial empires and subjugate populations across the globe.

But the bill is finally coming due.

Swedish fires 2019

When most people think of climate change, what come to mind are the poles, Asia’s fast vanishing glaciers, or Australia, where punishing droughts are drying up the sub-continent’s longest river, the Murray. But climate change is an equal opportunity disrupter, and Europe is facing a one-two punch of too much water in the north and center and not enough in the south.

According to recent projections, drought regions in Europe will expand from 13 percent of the continent to 26 percent and last four times as long, affecting upwards of 400 million people. Southern France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece will be particularly hard hit, though how hard will depend on whether the planet’s temperature hike is kept to 1.5 degrees centigrade or rises to 3 degrees centigrade.

Northern and Central Europe, on the other hand, will experience more precipitation and consequent flooding. Upward of a million people would be effected and damage would run into the hundreds of billions of Euros. While weather is battering away at Europe, sea rises of from four to six feet over the next century would inundate Copenhagen, the Netherlands, many French and German ports and London. If the Greenland ice sheet actually melted, the oceans would come up 24 feet.

Food production will be another casualty. According to David Wallace-Wells in “The Uninhabitable Earth,” cereal crops will decline 10 percent for every degree the temperature goes up. When crops fail, people will move and the logical place to go is north. It is not just war and unrest that is driving refugees toward Europe, but widespread crop failures brought about by too little or too much water.

The warming climate also allows insects, like the bark beetle, to attack Europe’s forests. The beetles are increasingly active in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Norway and, particularly, Russia, which host the largest temperate forests in the world.

Each tree that dies is one less carbon sink to transmute CO2 to oxygen. And dead trees are also more susceptible to forest fires, which can pump yet more of the climate warming gas into the atmosphere. Fires are not only increasing in countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal, but also in Sweden and Finland.

Black Forest fires

For many years climate change deniers—funded by hydrocarbon industry think tanks and sophisticated media campaigns—managed to inject a certain amount of doubt concerning global warming, but a rash of devastating hurricanes and last year’s wildfires in California have begun to shift public opinion. Last spring’s European elections saw Green parties all over the continent do well, and polls indicate growing alarm among the public.

A number of different European parties, including the British Labour Party, are pushing a “Green New Deal For Europe” based on a call by the United Nations to reduce green house gas emissions to zero by 2050.

The European Green Deal proposes using public investment banks to fund much of the plan, which is aimed at keeping rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees centigrade. While the price for rolling back emissions will certainly be high, the costs for not doing so are far greater, including the possibility that worldwide temperatures could go by as much as 5 degrees centigrade, a level that might make much of the world unlivable for human beings.

A jump of that magnitude would be similar to the kind of temperature rise the world experienced at the end of the Permian Era, 250 million years ago. Called the “Great Extinction,” it killed 96 percent of life in the sea and 70 percent on land.

A major reason for the Permian die off was the expansion of cynobacteria, which produce a toxic cocktail that can kill almost anything they comes in contact with. Such cynobacteria blooms are already underway in more than 400 places throughout the world, including a large dead zone in the Baltic Sea. Some New York lakes have become so toxic that the water is fatal to pets that drink from them.

The major fuel for cynobacteria is warm water coupled with higher rainfall—one of the consequences of climate change—that washes nutrients into lakes and rivers.

Of the 195 countries that signed the Paris Climate Accords, only seven are close to fulfilling their carbon emission pledges. And one of the world’s biggest sources of global warming gasses, the US, has withdrawn. If all 195 countries met their goals, however, the climate is still on target to reach 3 degrees Celsius. Even if the rise can be kept to 2 degrees, it will likely melt the Greenland ice cap and possibly the Antarctic ice sheets. Greenland’s melt would raise ocean levels by 24 feet, the Antarctic by hundreds of feet.

As overwhelming as the problem seems, it can be tackled, but only if the world mobilizes the kind of force it did to fight World War II. It will, however, take a profound re-thinking of national policy and the economy.

The US organization most focused on climate change these days is the Pentagon, which is gearing up to fight the consequences. But our enormous defense apparatus is a major part of the problem, because military spending is carbon heavy. According to Brown University’s “Cost Of War” project, the Pentagon is the single largest consumer of hydrocarbons on the planet. Yet a number of European countries—under pressure from the Trump administration—are increasing their military spending, exactly the wrong strategy to combat the climate threat.

The world will need to agree that keeping hydrocarbons in the ground is essential. Fracking, tar sands and opening yet new sources for oil and gas in the arctic will have to halt. Solar, hydro and wind power will need to be expanded, and some very basic parts of the economy re-examined.

This will hardly be pain free.

For instance, it takes 1,857 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, compared to 469 gallons for a pound of chicken. Yogurt uses 138 gallons. While beef production uses 60 percent of agricultural land, it only provides 2 percent of human caloric intake.

It is unlikely that people will give up meat—although growing economic inequality has already removed meat from the diet of many—but what we eat and how we produce it will have to be part of any solution. For instance, a major source of green house gases is industrial agriculture with its heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, close to 30 percent of food production goes to waste, most of it in wealthy countries. A fair distribution of food supplies would not only feed more people, it would use less land, thus cutting green house gasses up to 10 percent. Add to that curbing beef production, and hundreds of millions of square miles of grange land would be freed up to plant carbon absorbing trees.

Can this be done incrementally? It may have to be, but not for long. Climate change is upon us. What that future will be is up to the current generation to figure out, and while there is no question that concerted action can make a difference, the clock is ticking. When next the bell tolls, it tolls for us all.

 

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times

Source

consortiumnews.com

By Roberto Savio
in Rome
Inter Press Service

July 25, 2019 

Roberto Savio confronts an era of greed, fear and “populocracy.”

 

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

A survey in Brazil found out that 7 percent of citizens believe that the Earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilizations). Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who just elected Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favor of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win the election, U.S. President Donald Trump has made racism one of his banner issues and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

White supremacists clash with police in Charlottesville, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017. (Evan Nesterak, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euros a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87 percent of people need 90 percent of their salary just to rent a house.

A Salary Means Survival

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratize communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With the Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda that accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how the Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

Ad for a company offering “freelance services on demand.” (Billie Grace Ward/Flickr)

Smaller Attention Span

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to aim lower, at a 17-year-old instead of a 22-year-old. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22 percent (in the United States it is now 10.5 percent). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40 percent of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13 percent of libraries have closed in the last 10 years. A popular TV news program in Spain several years ago, “59 seconds” brought a number of people to debate around a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over 40. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83 percent of Internet users (80 percent under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All U.S. newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (10 million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take his tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80 percent of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, but the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Symbolic representation of Internet addiction. (Sam Wolff, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last U.S. elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube,” where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

Citizens into Consumers

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach $40 trillion. Jeff Bezos gave his ex-wife $38 billion in the divorce. That is equal to the annual average income of $20,000 of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

Protesting the Wall Street bailouts at Chicago Federal Reserve / Board of trade, Sept. 21, 2008.
(freemarketsmyass/Flickr)

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, went along with a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at the individual, state and international level. It took 20 years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent $12 trillion (the United States alone spent $4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of $800 billion in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defense of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

The Populocracy 

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who enabled Jeff Bezos to give $38 billion to a former wife? Who elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarization, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Greta Thunberg

✔@GretaThunberg

“It’s almost like you don’t even know these numbers exist. As if you haven’t even read the latest IPCC report, on which much of the future of our civilisation is depending.”

A part from my speech yesterday at the French Parliament.

75.6K

1:12 AM – Jul 24, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

25.5K people are talking about this

Today, there many “rays of light” appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilization in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of global governance. Adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service news agency and its president emeritus.

French MPs call for boycott of address by environmentalist ‘apocalyptic guru’ Greta Thunberg

Source

http://www.rt.com

22 Jul, 2019

FILE PHOTO: Greta Thunberg speaking at a climate protest in Berlin © Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch

With 16-year old Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg set to address the French parliament, a group of MPs have vowed to boycott the doomsday speech by the person they called an “apocalyptic guru” and “prophetess in shorts.”

Invited to the session by an environmental caucus called Accellerons – formed to fight what its members call “the climate emergency” – Thunberg will speak before French lawmakers on Tuesday.

However, some MPs from the conservative Republicans and National Rally parties are unimpressed.

“We don’t need apocalyptic gurus to fight climate change intelligently, we need scientific progress and political courage,” Republican Guillaume Larrivé tweeted, calling on his colleagues to give the session a miss.

 Guillaume Larrivé

✔@GLarrive

J’appelle mes collègues députés à boycotter @GretaThunberg à l’Assemblée nationale. Pour lutter intelligemment contre le réchauffement climatique, nous n’avons pas besoin de gourous apocalyptiques, mais de progrès scientifique & de courage politique.https://twitter.com/LCP/status/1152590233000714247?s=20 …

LCP

✔@LCP

[ÉVÈNEMENT] La jeune militante pour le #climat @GretaThunberg sera à l’Assemblée nationale, le mardi 23 juillet.

Suivez son allocution sur les comptes Twitter et Facebook de LCP. #DirectAN Cc @amisdelaterre @PrFeuillage @EncoreTemps_ @Alternatiba_ @RACFrance @Reporterre

4,447

8:11 AM – Jul 20, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

4,410 people are talking about this

Calling Thunberg the “winner of the Nobel fear prize,” Republican Julien Aubert announced that he wouldn’t show up to “applaud a prophetess in shorts.”

ALSO ON RT.COM‘F**k you Greta’ bumper stickers appear on German roads, taking aim at youth climate activist

Thunberg has been referred to in similar terms before. Rising to fame for organizing school strikes against climate change last year, Thunberg has since switched her rhetoric from demanding action to welcoming the apocalypse with religious fervor.

“We probably don’t even have a future anymore,” she told British lawmakers in April, in a likely preview of her upcoming address in France.

“I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,” she told the power-brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, several months earlier.

Against the dying of the earth, Thunberg offers only one solution: the immediate lowering of carbon emissions to net zero, a move that would see modern civilization – including car and plane travel, electricity, and affordable food for the masses – essentially wiped out.

ALSO ON RT.COMTeen climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg to take year off school for US trip

While European politicians have yet to put any of her radical proposals into policy, they have still applauded her speeches and lined up for photo opportunities with her.

“If I say that I do not want to prostrate myself before Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old child invited to the Assembly in front of the national representation, am I (still?) Politically correct?” asked National Rally MP Sébastien Chenu.

Criticism came from the political center too. Echoing criticism of Thunberg’s messianic worldview, Lawmaker Benedicte Peyrol of President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! Party asked why France couldn’t “honor its own scientists who’ve been active for years in trying to save the planet,” albeit with less theatrical flair.

Europe faces ‘looming syphilis epidemic’ thanks to dating apps and reduced fear of HIV

Source

http://www.rt.com

21 Jul, 2019

©  REUTERS/Steve Parsons/Pool

Syphilis stopped being “a disease of the past” after its worrying resurgence in Europe, health experts told RT. Less fear of contracting HIV and the rise of dating apps are among the factors behind the problem.

The spread of syphilis in Europe is intensifying due to worrying trends in human behavior, the head of the HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections and viral hepatitis program at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Andrew Amato-Gauci, told RT.

Various factors play into the outbreak, such as “people having sex without condoms, multiple sexual partners and a reduced fear of acquiring HIV from condomless sex,” he said.

A new report by the ECDC shows that between 2010 and 2017, the number of confirmed cases of syphilis across the EU soared by 70 percent.

ALSO ON RT.COMIceland needs condoms in SCHOOLS: Doctor raises alarm on syphilis & chlamydia outbreak

Certain countries have seen a surge of the sexually-transmitted disease, with Iceland ultimately becoming the ‘leader’, as the number of cases has grown by 876 percent there. Ireland follows with 224 percent growth, while Britain and Germany have both seen their syphilis rates more than double.

According to the ECDC, “men having sex with men” (MSM) made up around two-thirds of the cases reported between 2007 and 2017, where sexual orientation was known. Heterosexual men constitute 23 percent of the cases, and women, 15 percent.

Amato-Gauci said that the growing disregard for the use of condoms is not the only factor fueling the surge.

These include: more testing for syphilis in some groups, such as men who have sex with men, lack of or insufficient sex education, poor access to condoms for teenagers and young adults, sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs, including the use of psychoactive ‘party drugs.’

There are reports that dating apps like Tinder and Grindr also contribute to the spread of the disease. Amato-Gauci pointed out that these services “may facilitate more sexual encounters, and with that transmission of STI [sexually-transmitted infections] like syphilis.” At the same time, different apps can be used for promoting disease prevention among users, he noted.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Skyrocketing’ US STDs: Cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea & syphilis reach record levels

To reverse the spread of syphilis, the countries need to encourage people to use condoms “consistently,” as well as developing better screening and education programs, Amato-Gauci said.

Lorenzo Giacani, associate professor in the Departments of Medicine and Global Health at the University of Washington, told RT that the resurgence of syphilis in developed countries requires a robust response.

It is definitely safe and necessary to speak of a looming epidemic of syphilis in Europe, disproportionally affecting men that have sex with men (MSM), but not only.

“The ECDC data clearly shows that syphilis is not a disease of the past but very present among us,”Giacani said.

Among the most troubling trends in developed nations, he noted a “significant rise” in congenital syphilis rates, which means a greater number of cases in which the disease is transmitted to the fetus during gestation.

ALSO ON RT.COMBlame Tinder? Health officials pin 20% STD increase on dating apps

There is currently no vaccine for syphilis, but several research groups are working on developing one, including Giacani’s. He believes that “more could be done” by various European countries to develop it and study the problem.

“For example, the MSM population, which is more heavily affected by this disease, should team up with scientists to amplify their collective voices and request more government-sponsored efforts to promote research on a syphilis vaccine,” he said.

“Government involvement at this stage is mandatory, as [the medical] industry might not see such effort as a cost-effective one.”

What type of fascism is driving the far right today?

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Santiago Zabala

July 21, 2019

Fascism today aims to transform democratic systems from within, rendering it more dangerous than its past incarnations.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini smiles with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a joint news conference in Budapest, Hungary on May 2, 2019 [File: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters]

If anyone needed further proof that fascism is still alive and well in Italy, the footage of Carola Rackete, the 31-year-old captain of the migrant-rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, getting arrested in Lampedusa for trying to save 42 asylum seekers, provides a graphic illustration.

The late Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, would have been proud of Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for creating a country in which a young woman may face up to 10 years in prison for the unforgivable crime of saving human lives.

Salvini currently heads Italy’s largest political force and also recently launched the new Identity and Democracy populist group in the European Parliament, which includes other far-right parties such as France’s National Front (FN) and Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Beyond Europe, efforts to unify right-wing populists have spanned the globe. Former White House aide Steve Bannon, for example, dreams of creating a united cross-border front – from Brazil, through the United States and Europe, all the way to India and the Philippines – against refugees, cosmopolitanism, and anyone who supports these, including Pope Francis.

The world has not seen a resurgence in the radical right since fascism was defeated in the first half of the 20th century. But these new proponents of this global right-wing upsurge markedly differ from the fascist leaders of the past century; they seem to espouse a new type of fascist ideology.

Almost a century ago, classical fascism abandoned democratic liberties in order to pursue internal cleansing and external expansion without ethical or legal restraints. Although Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco pursued these internal and external goals in different ways, they all set themselves in opposition to a series of “others” that were not only ideological (liberals and communists) but also ethnic (Jews, Roma and other minorities).

Although US President Donald Trump, as well as the European parties, gathered under the Identity and Democracy umbrella, evince these traits in their rhetoric and, when they can, in their actions, their use of fascist techniques to stimulate their base and erode liberal democratic institutions are similar but not identical to those used by fascist dictators of the 1920s and 30s.

The contemporary sociopolitical context is quite different from that of the first half of the 20th century, so labeling these politicians as fascists in the classical sense of the world is not quite accurate.

The main difference between the classical and contemporary incarnations of fascism is that the version we observe today is operating within democratic systems rather than outside them. Proponents of 20th-century fascism wanted to change everything from above; Mussolini defined it as “revolution against revolution”. But fascism today aims to transform democratic systems from within.

Thus over the past decade, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic laws have resurfaced within democratic regimes through democratic procedures across the globe. These recrudescences are potentially more dangerous than surviving pockets of classical fascism’s anti-democratic ideology because mainstream conservative forces tend to ignore and even support them.

This is particularly evident in the US where the Republican Party continues to endorse Trump’s racism and hostility towards refugees and minorities as well as international and human rights agreements.

Another major difference between the two is that unlike classical fascism, its contemporary version does not concern itself with social welfare. Alongside its disastrous obsession with ethnic superiority, classical fascism took on the utopic duty of crafting an order which would better address the social and psychological needs of citizens who had been suffering the ravages of capitalism. But what has replaced this dimension in contemporary fascism? 

Having emerged in an age of neoliberalism and competitive individualism, today’s far-right parties no longer feel the need to mobilise the masses by making grand promises of an alternative society or civilisation that would better their lives. Instead, they channel the anger and frustrations of isolated individuals who do not necessarily belong to the right or the left towards the “perpetual other” whose removal or ostracisation will supposedly solve all socioeconomic problems. 

This is why Trump, for example, instead of supporting the Republican Party’s economic policies or its version of traditional national values, preaches a reactionary and xenophobic version of American individualism – as his recent attack against four congresswomen of colour has demonstrated. 

This new nationalism is no longer defined in traditional ideological terms but rather as a resistance against the “threat” of globalisation and migration.

Jews, as historian Enzo Traverso has pointed out, were the particular enemy of classical fascism; Trump has altered and lengthened the list so that it now includes blacks, Latinos, Muslims, and non-white immigrants. This list has taken an additional patriarchal turn in a number of countries where feminists and queer activists are also portrayed as enemies of the nations’ traditional Christian values.

While there are indeed substantial differences between the fascism of the past and what we see today, the general historical trajectory will inevitably remain the same. That is, just as the fascism of the early 20th century grew out of control and ended in genocide, today, the ideology that Salvini, Bannon, etc subscribe has the potential to become even more violent if it remains unchecked.

While Rackete’s defiance is truly remarkable and should be commended, individual acts of courage will not stop the new fascist wave threatening to sweep through Europe and the rest of the world. We need collective action.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Santiago Zabala

Santiago Zabala is ICREA research professor of philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

The Story of Humans and Neanderthals in Europe is Being Rewritten

A 210,000-year-old skull is the oldest Homo sapiens fossil found outside Africa.

Source

http://www.theatlantic.com

ED YONG

JUL 10, 2019

Apidima 1 (left) is a modern human; Apidima 2 (right) is a Neanderthal.KATERINA HARVATI / EBERHARD KARLS UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN

In 1978, in a cave called Apidima at the southern end of Greece, a group of anthropologists found a pair of human-like skulls. One had a face, but was badly distorted; the other was just the left half of a braincase. Researchers guessed that they might be Neanderthals, or perhaps another ancient hominin. And since they were entombed together, in a block of stone no bigger than a microwave, “it was always assumed that they were the same [species] and came from the same time period,” says Katerina Harvati from Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.That’s wrong. By thoroughly analyzing both skulls using modern techniques, Harvati and her colleagues have shown that they are very different, in both age and identity.The one with the face, known as Apidima 2, is a 170,000-year-old Neanderthal—no surprises there. But the other, Apidima 1, was one of us—a 210,000-year-old modern human. And if the team is right about that, the partial skull is the oldest specimen of Homo sapiens outside Africa, handily beating the previous record holder, a jawbone from Israel’s Misliya Cavethat’s about 180,000 years old. “I couldn’t believe it at first,” Harvati says, “but all the analyses we conducted gave the same result.”

Until now, most researchers have focused on the more complete (but less interesting) of the two skulls. “Apidima 1 has just been ignored,” says Harvati. But its antiquity matters for three reasons. First, it pushes back the known presence of modern humans outside Africa by some 30,000 years. Second, it’s considerably older than all other Homo sapiens fossils from Europe, all of which are 40,000 years old or younger. Third, it’s older than the Neanderthal skull next to it.Collectively, these traits mess up the standard story of Neanderthal and modern-human evolution. According to that narrative, Neanderthals slowly evolved in Europe, largely isolated from other kinds of hominins. When modern humans expanded out of Africa, their movements into Europe might have been stalled by the presence of the already successful Neanderthals. That explains why Homo sapiens stuck to a more southerly route into Asia, and why they left no European fossils until about 40,000 years ago. “The idea of Europe as ‘fortress Neanderthal’ has been gaining ground,” says Rebecca Wragg Sykes, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, but identifying a 210,000-year-old Homo sapiens skull from Europe “really undermines that.”“It suggests that early Homo sapiens groups got farther than we may have previously thought, occasionally occupying territories that later became that of Neanderthals,” adds Shara Bailey, an anthropologist at NYU. “Findings like this are very important for informing us on the evolution of our species.”

The identity of Apidima 1 could also cast doubt on other archaeological finds from Europe, such as stone tools with no accompanying fossils. Researchers had long assumed that within a certain time window, “any archaeology was all the work of Neanderthals,” says Wragg Sykes. But if modern humans also occupied this “safe range,” which species actually created those artifacts?

These interpretations depend on the dating of the Apidima skulls, which has always been difficult. They were found in an odd place—a small niche near the cave ceiling, separated from any sediments that could have been easily dated. They were also entombed in breccia, a composite rock made from fragments that have been cemented together. It seems that, as ice ages came and went and sea levels rose and fell, parts of the cave’s interior were flooded and eroded, and both skulls were dislodged from their original resting places. They fell into a cavity and got stuck.

Continue:

Source

Welcome to London – the Cocaine Capital of Europe

Source

journal-neo.org

Author: Grete Mautner

June 20, 2019

Previously, we have examined in much detail the influence that the recreational use of mind-altering substances might have had on the decision making capabilities of certain British politicians. Curiously enough, both the British media personalities and politicians would no longer try to make a drug addiction they share a secret anymore. But it seems that weed was just the beginning, as most of those public figures have developed a soft spot for cocaine.

But then, should it be of any wonder if we are to recall the role that London played in unleashing the so-called Opium Wars upon other states, transforming drugs in a tool of war that would undermine a great many of international players in addition to China?

However, these days the absolute majority of the British political elite has fallen victim of their own deadly medicine, as they came to the conclusion that if they have no plan that could allow them to improve the rapidly deteriorating social conditions of their citizens, they could as well get as high as a kite.

It’s been revealed that Britain is the most cocaine-loving country across the whole of Europe, as it snorts more cocaine than any other country of the Old World every year and its affection for the drug is growing rapidly, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. 

It’s curious that across London the average number of drug addicts is noticeably higher than in other British cities. Londoners are taking so much cocaine that this class A drug can be found in the River Thames – and it’s making the eels hyperactive. Cocaine from users’ urine has been detected in increasing quantities, according to research released by the Thames monitoring station near the Houses of Parliament.

One can’t describe the fact that cocaine was found in virtually all freshwater shrimps tested in the London region in any other terms as disturbing. This study was conducted by the King’s College London, and its findings are just shocking. Other illicit drugs, such as ketamine, were also widespread in the shrimp.

Moreover, cocaine users across the UK come from all backgrounds. According to Vice, cocaine has become “an important factor of Newcastle’s economy”, with bars offering privacy curtains for patrons who wish to snort lines off their phones.

Cocaine levels in waste-waters of major British cities are the highest on weekends, which serves as a clear indicator that its use has become recreational across the UK. It’s been reported that a line of cocaine with a glass of wine on Saturday night has become an ordinary thing.

Last year, the sitting mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced that the escalation of violence on the streets of the city is associated with soaring cocaine use levels of the middle class. A few days later, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis condemned the middle class for its dangerous addiction, arguing that those people who use heavy drugs on a regular basis cannot claim that they possess “political literacy”.

Against such a backdrop, one cannot possibly be moved by the Times revealing that local prosecutors are investigating a suspected heroin trafficking ring among British soldiers serving in Afghanistan. The inquiry centers on British and Canadian troops based at Camp Bastion and Kandahar, the two main airports ferrying military personnel in and out of the country.

According to a number of private confessions that Afghan drug smugglers have made in their discussions with the representatives of the MSM, British troops have been taking part in cocaine trade for some time. In an interview with The Sunday Times, one of the drug dealers, who identified himself as Aziz, described the transactions he was a part of in Kabul, while revealing that we were working for a high-profile NATO representative that was tasked with finding ways of countering the Taliban that finances its activities through drug trafficking. Aziz revealed that those servicemen engaged in drug trafficking are transporting drugs on military aircraft that are not being searched when they fly in and out of Afghanistan, thus they can transport cocaine to the US, UK or any other part of the Western world.

The fact that recreational cocaine use inside the British media has become a norm is equally disturbing, with some journalists getting too hide the fact that they were high as a kite while writing their propaganda articles that the sitting political elite is ordering them to draft. Among those who confessed to their dangerous addiction on can find Joel Lewin who worked at one of the world’s most prestigious financial newspapers – the Financial Times.

Even the sitting Security Minister of the UK, Ben Wallace is not going to make a big secret out of the fact that Britain is becoming the biggest consumer of cocaine in Europe, as he revealed that:

“With those serious organised criminals…they don’t just put a 15-year-old in a house or they ‘cuckoo’ the house; they provide a weapon to enforce the drug line.”

According to a study released by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Bristol ranks six in levels of drug use in a list of all European cities – as some 754 milligrams of cocaine consumed per thousand people are getting used every day. In 2018, more than 70 people were killed in the streets of London alone; The “violence epidemic” is associated with drug trafficking and the redistribution of spheres of influence between street gangs.

One has to recognize that recreational cocaine use has ceased to be the fancy game of death that the rich would only be able to play. Drug use is on the rise across all of British cities and villages, with technology presenting new opportunities for drug dealers: they have received a safe environment for communication and can quickly find new clients with the proliferation of encryption technologies. It’s been noted that British gangs have developed the ability to deliver large packets of drugs to the door of their clients from Albanian or Serbian drug gangs, or from local drug gangs directly.

So, be careful if you ever decide to go visit the bump capital of Europe – London.

Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” 
https://journal-neo.org/2019/06/19/welcome-to-london-the-bump-capital-of-the-old-world/

France: French President Macron Suffers Huge Blow With Defeat to Le Pen

Source

themindunleashed.com/ Republished with permission / Zero Hedge

Tyler Durden

May 26, 2019

In what may be the biggest shock from today’s European parliamentary elections, President Emmanuel Macron suffered a major blow with French voters set to hand a victory to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, picking the vocal Eurosceptic and nationalist over the former Rothschild banker.Macron’s En Marche (Republic on The Move) will have just 22.5% of the vote compared with 24% for Le Pen, according to pollsters Ifop. With Macron and Le Pen neck and neck ahead of the elections, the outcome will be a humiliation for the liberal politician who said before the elections that everything less than 1st place would be a defeat.

Rounding out the The Greens were third with 13%, the conservative Republicans got 8%, while the implosion of the Socialists continues, coming in dead last with just 6.5% of the vote.

Macron’s default took place even as turnout was up around 10% points from 2014, however the increase was particularly marked in regions where Le Pen’s party has gained ground in the past years. In other words, as establishment apathy gets entrenched, the populist vote is increasingly demanding to be heard.

It gets worse: to the shock of globalists and statists everywhere, this is Le Pen’s second straight victory in the EU vote. In 2014 she beat the conservatives by 4 percentage points with Macron’s Socialist predecessor Francois Hollande trailing in third.

As Bloomberg notes, the result is a setback for the 41-year-old Macron who played a more prominent role in the campaign than any other European leader as he sought to mobilize voters.

The president is fighting for legitimacy as he tries to persuade the rest of the European Union to pursue tighter integration. Polls in Germany showed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats came first, although with fewer seats than last time.

“For Macron this was a defining election and it’s him who made it like that,” said Bernard Sananes, president of Elabe polling institute. “Finishing second would mean a sense of isolation in Europe.”

Today’s vote followed months of relentless protests which have seen looting and vandalism in Paris. Macron responded with a raft of new spending plans and tax cuts to appease the Yellow Vest movement but the measures failed to convince voters.

Meanwhile, Eurosceptic, anti-establishment and hard-right parties were also expected to top polls in the UK, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. Nigel Farage’s Brexit party was in contention to be the biggest single national party in the parliament, potentially beating both Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and Matteo Salvini’s rightwing League.

Germany’s left-right grand coalition faced a potentially significant electoral shock, with estimates indicating the Green party had made a historic breakthrough, taking 20.9 per cent of the vote. Philippe Lamberts, leader of the Green group, said: “To make a stable majority in this parliament the Greens are now indispensable.”

This pushed the center-left Social Democratic party into third place for the first time in nationwide elections, raising pressure on party leaders to rethink their federal alliance with the centre-right CDU and the CSU, its Bavarian sister party.

While the EPP remains the biggest group in the parliament, its diminished size may hamper Manfred Weber, its lead candidate, in making a claim to the presidency of the European Commission.

EPP parties were in first place in Germany, but Merkel’s CDU secured 28%, seven points down on its vote share in 2014. Finally, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz said he was “speechless” after a crushing victory, securing a third of all votes in spite of a corruption scandal that has brought down his coalition government with the far-right Freedom party.

---

 

‘As if Germany is a US colony’: Bundestag energy chief lashes out at Russia sanctions

“The Americans are using politics to realize their own interests in this field.”

Source

http://www.rt.com

16 May, 2019

FILE PHOTO: The laying of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline ©  Reuters / Axel Schmidt

Only the US – not Germany or the EU – is interested in economic sanctions against Russia, the head of the Bundestag’s economy and energy committee has said. German MPs are looking at ways to lift the restrictions, he added.

Bundestag energy and economy chief Klaus Ernst of Die Linke party accused the US of behaving as if Germany is its colony, as Washington tries to bully Europeans out of buying Russian gas.

“Those measures don’t only target Russians, they deliberately target Europeans, for example, German energy companies involved in Nord Stream 2,” he said at a conference on the prospects of energy cooperation between Russia and the EU, organized by the Russian Gas Society – an association of Russian energy companies, relevant research institutions and local administrations.

ALSO ON RT.COMUS must prevent construction of Nord Stream 2 pipeline to counter Russia – Pompeo

US officials, including President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Berlin ambassador Richard Grenell, have mounted an offensive against the Russian-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that is expected to be completed in 2019. With the stated goal of countering Russian “leverage,” they are threatening European companies with sanctions if they continue investing in the project.

“The actions of the US ambassador to Germany are simply unacceptable,” Ernst said, as cited by Russian media.

It’s as if Germany is a US colony.

The real goal, according to Ernst, is to make the EU buy American gas instead: “The Americans are using politics to realize their own interests in this field.”

The threats have had no effect so far, with Nord Stream 2 construction continuing to surge ahead. The Gazprom-owned pipeline’s operator stated that each of its European partners, which include German, French, British, Dutch and Austrian companies, have invested around a billion euros in it.

Speaking of other economic measures in place against Russia, Ernst noted that the US is the only party that wins from them.

“There are currently discussions about this in the Bundestag economy committee, and it is growing stronger – how sanctions against Russia can be lifted. Neither Germany, nor Europe is interested in these sanctions. The only ones winning from these sanctions are the Americans.”

Finian Cunningham: Russia’s Ongoing Victory Day

Thank you Russia from saving us from the barbaric Nazis.

“The truth is Victory in Europe was predominantly a victory by the Russian and Soviet nations. After all, several of the European countries are guilty from their ruling establishments collaborating with Nazi Germany, as in France, Norway, Poland, and others.”

“Some 90 per cent of all Nazi army casualties during World War II were inflicted in the East fighting against the Soviet nations. That tells you how and where the Nazi war machine was terminated.”

Source

sputniknews.com

Finian Cunningham

May 10, 2019

© Sputnik / Aleksandr Vilf

As the world again marked the annual Victory Day against Nazi Germany this week, one thing seems more evident with each passing year – Russia holds the highest honour for celebrating this event.

The commemorations in Russia in terms of people numbers and ceremonial splendor far excel similar public events held across Europe and North America. Even though, in theory, those latter countries were allies which defeated Nazi Germany in May 1945.

READ MORE: SPECTACULAR Victory Day Fireworks Light Up Moscow Sky (VIDEO)

Why have Victory Day celebrations seem to have become more subdued in Europe and North America with each passing year, while in Russia, 74 years on, the “Great Patriotic War” is remembered and revered with undiminished passion?

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin delivered a rousing speech dedicated to the sacrifices of the war dead in front of multitudes attending Moscow’s Red Square. There was also an impressive military parade honoring the fallen heroes, followed by a breathtaking fireworks display, and marches held across all Russia in towns and villages for the “Immortal Regiments”.

Meanwhile, tellingly, an article posted on the BBC website was headlined: “What is VE [Victory in Europe] Day?”

© PHOTO : HOST PHOTO AGENCY

March of the Immortal Regiment in Moscow (VIDEO)

One reason for the difference is because Russia and other Soviet nations paid a far greater human price of suffering in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The memory of the horror is seared into Russian families. And, likewise, so too is the memory of resistance and ultimately the glory of defeating a monstrous enemy – at times against all the odds of victory.Take the Nazi siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg). For over two years the people of that city endured starvation and cruelties that hardly anyone in Western Europe or North America could imagine. Yet the Nazi barbarity was finally overcome, the city was liberated by the Red Army, and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich who was trapped in the besieged city wrote an internationally renowned symphony heralding the vanquishing of that trauma.

The later final defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945 was indeed a liberation for all of Europe. But that victory was indisputably due to the resilience and fortitude of Russian and other Soviet citizens. All told, the Soviet people lost about 27 million from Nazi war depredations, including from extermination operations and atrocities inflicted on whole villages. That number is incomparably greater to what other European countries incurred. Yet, in spite of the massive onslaught, it was the Soviet people who rose to the occasion to push back the Nazi invaders all the way to Berlin where the Third Reich was eventually buried in its war bunkers.

Just one more figure is enough to tell the story. Some 90 per cent of all Nazi army casualties during World War II were inflicted in the East fighting against the Soviet nations. That tells you how and where the Nazi war machine was terminated.

There are several current consequences from that horrific war that are still felt today.

READ MORE: Ura! London Immortal Regiment Holds 4th Annual Victory Day March in UK Capital

One is that Russia will never allow itself to be invaded and threatened as it was by Nazi Germany in June 1941. Russia’s defense forces and weapons are perhaps the best in the world. No wonder Russia is vehemently opposed to NATO expansionism. How would Americans or British feel if the shoe was on the other foot?

© SPUTNIK /

Ura! London Immortal Regiment Holds 4th Annual Victory Day March in UK Capital

Secondly, in a paradoxical way, because Russia suffered such infernal hardships from war, it is perhaps the most peace-loving of all modern nations. In President Putin’s speech this year, he once again extended a hand of friendship and cooperation to others to strengthen global security. That is in spite of the fact that the US and its NATO allies have continually insulted and provoked Russia with slanderous claims, military saber-rattling and economic sanctions. A third consequence is that Western nations who claim to have defeated Nazi Germany – thereby trying to undermine Russia’s honorable place in that event – have at the same time an evident historical amnesia. This is not to belittle the sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of ordinary soldiers from the US and Britain who did gave their lives in the fight against Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, the boastful claims of Western leaders and media is belied by the diminishing memorials to the Victory in Europe.

The truth is Victory in Europe was predominantly a victory by the Russian and Soviet nations. After all, several of the European countries are guilty from their ruling establishments collaborating with Nazi Germany, as in France, Norway, Poland, and others.

The concomitant of that duplicitous reality is that victory celebrations across Europe – except for Russia – tend to become somewhat hollow and muted with time.

Another reality – one that is shameful and concealed by Western establishments – is that American and British finance capital was very much instrumental in bankrolling the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich. US corporations such as Ford, ITT, General Motors and Du Pont made fortunes from investing in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, making full use of slave camps for cheap labor, before the outbreak of the war.

READ MORE: Highlights of the 9 May Victory Day Parade in Moscow (PHOTOS)

© SPUTNIK / ALEXANDR VILF

Russia’s Victory Day Celebrated in New Delhi, Tributes Paid to India’s Fallen

The ambiguous relationship between Western capitalism and Nazi fascism is testified in today’s cozy alliance between Washington and the Neo-Nazi regime that seized power in Ukraine. The disgusting veneration by politicians in Kiev for Nazi collaborators and their vile blood lust against the ethnic Russian people in Eastern Ukraine are never objected to by governments in Washington or the European Union.Russia knows the evils of fascism because it stared this force in the face and defeated it 74 years ago. That world-changing event will never be forgotten nor taken for granted.

The Western countries – who by contrast did comparatively little to defeat Nazi Germany – are the same ones today who feel entitled to wage covert and overt wars for regime change around the world. One may argue, therefore, that the battle against fascism has never ended. Nazi uniforms, soldiers, guns and tanks may have been buried, but the mentality of aggression, superiority, lawlessness and impunity is very much alive. Thankfully, however, Russian vigilance and courage is also alive today.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik

70 years of NATO charts 70 years of brute force and hard power

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Thomas Friedman

Source link

http://www.rt.com

John Wight

April 4, 2019

John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

© Global Look Press / Martin Poole

The existence of NATO 70 years on from its creation is an insult to the millions who died so that the UN Charter could be born.

The most significant and enduring testament to those who perished in the struggle to defeat fascism in WWII remains the UN Charter, the foundational document of the United Nations upon its birth in October 1945. The Charter arose from the ashes of that epic struggle as a tangible symbol of hope. Enshrined within its articles was a solemn promise that henceforth justice, international law and tolerance would reign in place of brute power, force and intolerance.

Consider for a moment the first section of the Charter’s preamble:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

It is impossible to read those words and not lament the gaping disjuncture between the noble ideals they embrace and the grim reality that arrived in their wake. For rather than mankind being saved from the scourge of war, the scourge of war and conflict has grown to become a near-everyday reality across the globe.

Read more

US lecturing Russia to ‘keep out of Western Hemisphere’ is hubris & hypocrisy on steroids

The pressing question we are required to grapple with today is: Why? What lies at the root and what is the common denominator responsible for mankind’s abject failure to achieve the vision set out in the UN Charter?

Upon due consideration, we are left in no doubt that, fundamentally, the series of conflicts that have come to define our existence are a consequence of the drive by one ideological bloc to dominate and impose a particular political, economic and value system onto a world defined by its diversity of languages, cultures, histories and traditions.

The result is the normalization of war and the apotheosis of hard power, rather than war and hard power being regarded as grotesque perversions in a world cured of the moral sickness of might is right.

Seventy years ago, NATO, a military alliance whose entire existence and ethos is predicated on might is right, emerged from the womb of the Cold War objectives devised by a Truman administration of fanatical hawks, consumed with the goal of full-spectrum dominance at the close of WWII.

In his 1997 essay, ‘The Last Empire,’ Gore Vidal savages the official history proffered by Western ideologues when it comes to the sudden shift that took place from Moscow being viewed as an indispensable ally in the war against Nazi Germany in the eyes of the Roosevelt administration, to implacable foe when Truman entered the White House upon Roosevelt’s death in April 1945.

Gore Vidal: “The National Security State, the NATO alliance, the forty-year Cold War were all created without the consent, much less advice, of the American people… The impetus behind NATO was the United States… We were now hell bent on the permanent division of Germany between our western zone (plus the British and French zones) and the Soviet zone to the east. Serenely, we broke every agreement that we had made with our former ally, now horrendous Communist enemy.”

ALSO ON RT.COMIf Trump wants to disarm Russia, he should un-recognize Kosovo

Moving things forward, it is by now no secret that US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in a meeting on February 9, 1990, that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” upon the reunification of Germany. According to declassified documents, Baker’s pledge was made as part of a “cascade of assurances” over Soviet security given by Western leaders at that time and on into 1991, when the Soviet Union came to an end. It is the breaking of those assurances that lies at the heart of the deterioration in relations between East and West that has taken place from then to now.

Flush with triumphalism over the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, NATO was loosed upon the world not in name of democracy but in the cause of imperialism. Neocon scribe Thomas Friedman, more than any of his ilk, has written openly of the driving ethos of Western foreign policy after the Soviet Union’s demise: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Friedman’s gleeful celebration of the economic opportunities lying open to the US in the post-Soviet world was shared by powerbrokers in Washington on both sides of the aisle. Intoxicated with a misplaced sense of exceptionalism and virtue, the world now lay before them like a vast banquet upon which they were invited to feast. And the first course in this feast was the former Yugoslavia with its abundant human and natural resources, not to mention strategic location in the Balkans, ripe for the taking.

Read more

In 1999, it was Yugoslavia in the crosshairs of the imperialists, now it’s Venezuela

Michael Parenti, in his definitive work on the destruction of Yugoslavia, ‘To Kill A Nation,’ reminds us that after the fall of communism in eastern Europe, “the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) remained the only nation in that region that would not voluntarily discard what remained of its socialism and install an unalloyed free market system. It also proudly had no interest in joining NATO.” Later, Parenti also reveals: “The ultimate goal has been the complete privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe… It is to replace the social wage with a neoliberal global free market, a process that would deliver still greater wealth and power into the hands of those at the top.”

The role of NATO in achieving the West’s objectives in Yugoslavia need not detain us; they have been set out in powerfully in a series of articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of the start of the Western military alliance’s 78-day air war against FRY with them in mind. Here, specifically, I refer you to the work of RT columnist Neil Clark.

The point is that today – bearing in mind NATO’s role in destroying Yugoslavia, helping to turn Afghanistan into a failed state rather than democratic state, destroying Libya, and in threatening Russia – it is no longer feasible or possible to harbor any lingering belief that NATO is anything other than a snarling beast of US hard power, deployed not to protect and defend, but destroy and dominate.

The 70th anniversary of the birth of NATO is a cause for lamentation, not celebration. The only fitting way to mark it is with a minute’s silence in solemn remembrance of its countless victims.

 

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Something Strange is Happening in Europe (10 min)

Pepe Escobar: EU Dilemma: How to Deal with China

Source: EU Dilemma: How to Deal with China – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

http://www.globalresearch.ca

By Pepe Escobar

Global Research, March 20, 2019

Asia Times

17 March 2019

Beijing is, little by little, extending its influence not only inside the EU but inside the NATO space.

Facing China’s irresistible rise all across the chessboard, and under relentless US pressure, the not exactly democratic EU leadership is on a backbreaking exercise to position itself between a geopolitical/geoeconomic rock and a hard place.

The 28-member EU holds a crucial meeting next week in Brussels where it may adopt a 10-point action plan detailing, in a thesis, the terms of an equitable economic relationship with China going forward.

This will happen as Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Italy and then France – ahead of the very important, annual China-EU summit in Brussels on April 9, to be co-chaired by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

That’s the crucial context under which the European Commission (EC) has recommended what it describes as 10 concrete “actions” to the EU Heads of State for their debate at the European Council in March 21 and 22.

The full report, EU-China – A Strategic Outlook, is here.

The EC shows how in 2017 – the latest available figures – the EU was “China’s largest partner with a share of 13% of imports of goods in China and a share of 16% of exports of goods from China.” At the same time, the EC stresses that China is an “economic competitor” and “a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.”

Yet the EC’s “contribution” to the European Council debate next week is far from confrontational. It is a balancing act couched in Eurocratic terminology attempting to shape common “resolve” among the 28 member-states.

Predictable real problem

Coming from the EC/EU, support for “effective multilateralism with the United Nations at its core” is the norm – with China fully integrated.

Beijing is praised for its support for the Iran nuclear deal, its role in the denuclearization of North Korea, its upcoming role in the peace process in Afghanistan and tackling the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. The real problem, predictably, is China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Why Europe Is Afraid of China’s New Silk Roads

Virtually no one apart from Brussels Eurocrats knows about the existence of an “EU Strategy on Connecting Europe and Asia.”  That’s one of those joint communiqués that no one reads, issued late last year, “enabling the Union to seek synergies between the EU and third countries, including China, in transport, energy and digital connectivity, on the basis of international norms and standards.”

Curiously, in the EC report, there’s no mention whatsoever of the New Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – which happens to be China’s synergy masterplan for the whole of Eurasia. We could define it as Globalization 3.0.

On the other hand, Made in China 2025 is duly referenced – and not demonized, Trump administration-style.

From the EU perspective, the key problem remains “lack of reciprocal market access.” The EU wants greater access for European companies, less Chinese subsidies for Chinese companies and curtailment of technology transfer from European firms to their state-owned joint venture partners in China.

All this should be part of a deal on investment rules to be clinched by 2020.

Action 9 in the EC report is quite revealing:

“To safeguard against potential serious security implications for critical digital infrastructure, a common EU approach to the security of 5G networks is needed.” To deal with it, the EC will issue – what else – another “recommendation.”

A hefty degree of Eurocratic puzzlement seems to be in the cards; one cannot disassociate BRI from Made in China, 5G and Huawei technology; it’s all part of the same package. Yet the EU is under heavy pressure from Washington to ban Huawei and forget about joining BRI, even as nearly 20 EU member-states are already linked or interested in linking to BRI, and a majority are also interested in Chinese 5G technology.

Brussels diplomats confirmed to Asia Times that the EC report was basically authored by Berlin and Paris. And yes, they had to deal with heavy Washington pressure.

The report harbors a subtle, inbuilt element of “Chinese threat” – perhaps not as overtly as in a Pentagon report. This stance is how the Franco-German alliance believes it may influence “recalcitrants” such as the 16+1 group of Central and Eastern European nations doing business with China, as well as soon to be BRI-linked Italy.

Yet that’s already a done deal – as I detailed in the case of Italy.

‘Existential threat’

Beijing is accomplishing, little by little, something that is unbearable for the Beltway; extending its influence not only inside the EU but inside the NATO space.

The US Deep State may have lumped BRI – along with Made in China 2025 and Huawei’s 5G – as part of an “existential threat”; but that’s not the case for most EU latitudes, from Greece and Portugal to German industrialists and the new Lega/Five Stars administration in Rome.

Brussels very well knows that Washington will punish any “ally” who gets too close to Beijing. It’s never enough to be reminded that the list of economic “threats” to the US features, in that order, China, Russia and Germany. And Italy is now caught in the crossfire – because it is committed to good economic relations with both China and Russia.

Rome has already sent a clear message to Brussels; beyond any EU common “resolve” facing China, what matters is the Italian national economic interest in, for instance, linking the ports of Venice, Trieste and Genoa to the New Silk Road. Alarmed Atlanticists are essentially warning that Italians cannot cross a red line; they need to ask permission to act independently. That’s not going to happen – whatever the EC decides to “recommend.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

The original source of this article is Asia Times

Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, 2019

Sick of human politicians? 25% of Europeans would prefer AI government

More than a quarter of Europeans would rather have their countries’ important political decisions made by artificial intelligence than their elected and unelected human officials, according to a surprising new survey.

Source: Sick of human politicians? 25% of Europeans would prefer AI government — RT World News

RT World News

Helen Buyniski

20 Mar, 2019

© Global Look / Daniel Karmann

More than a quarter of Europeans would rather have their countries’ important political decisions made by artificial intelligence than their elected and unelected human officials, according to a surprising new survey.

Fully one in four Europeans said they were “somewhat or totally in favor of letting an artificial intelligence make important decisions about the running of their country,” a number that climbed to one in three for the Netherlands, UK, and Germany, according to a survey by the Center for the Governance of Change, a tech-focused research group from IE University in Spain. The figures remained constant across education levels, gender, and political affiliation, indicating either Europeans are abnormally welcoming of their new robot overlords – or they’re sick of their human ones.

Spoiler alert: it’s likely the latter. While the survey uncovered high levels of technological anxiety across all demographics, even the fear of having one’s job stolen by robots doesn’t hold a candle to Europeans’ antipathy for their political masters, who’ve shown themselves all too willing to throw their constituents under the (self-driving) bus in pursuit of power – whether it’s France’s Emmanuel Macron attempting to outlaw protest and bar critical media from his press conferences or Theresa May repeatedly serving up unappetizing Brexit deals in a reverse-psychology effort to transmute “Leave” into “Stay.”

© Center for the Governance of Change

Framing the results as “a significant questioning of the European model of representative democracy” and claiming it “challenges the very notion of popular sovereignty,” CGC executive director Diego Rubio avoided mentioning that more and more European citizens are finding the EU itself might be challenging “the very notion of popular sovereignty.” Despite attempts to blame such ‘Euroscepticism’ on (who else?) Russia, parties like Italy’s Five Star movement and the Netherlands’ PVV have ridden a euroskeptic wave to power, while status-quo proponents like Macron, May and Germany’s Angela Merkel languish at record low approval ratings.

Despite the dim view some take of the future prospects of human rule, “over two thirds of Europeans of all ages believe that, if not appropriately controlled, new technologies will cause more harm than good to society in the coming decade,” IE University’s survey found, and between two-thirds and three-quarters of respondents support “strong policy measures to limit automation,” whether those involved a tax on corporations that replaced humans with automation, restricting robots to dangerous jobs, or compensating those who lose their jobs to automation.

The threat is far from abstract – most Europeans are concerned about robots taking over the majority of human jobs, researchers found, while nearly half fear their own employer will fall before the rise of our new silicon rulers. Most believe their education didn’t prepare them adequately for the fast pace of technological change, either.

Over two-thirds are “worried” or “very worried” that their social lives, too, will go wholly digital – an unappetizing prospect in an era of increasingly stringent online speech regulations. Interestingly enough, more than half of respondents in every country except Spain and Portugal support banning “political and ideological content” from social networks “in order to protect democracy.”

“People are disillusioned with governments, yet at the same time ask them to tackle the societal and economic negative effects that emerging technologies might have,” the authors wrote, pointing out the “paradoxical” nature of the results. Since those same emerging technologies include AI, are Europeans expecting their robot masters to regulate themselves once they’ve taken power?