EU Imposes Anti-Union Law on Greece
By Will Podmore | CounterPunch | February 2, 2018
Under instructions from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Greek government pushed through the most anti-union legislation in Europe on Monday 15 January.
The move was demanded, along with other draconian measures, as a condition of the latest tranche of what is called Greece’s bailout but which in reality is bailing out the European financial institutions which recklessly encouraged Greek borrowing.
The key concession required from the Syriza government was that industrial action would now require a yes vote from more than half of the total number of union members in a workplace, regardless of the actual turnout. This is even worse than the provisions in the Trade Union Act which came into law in the UK in March 2016.
Astonishingly – or perhaps not – there has been not one word about this from the TUC, which continues its scaremongering about the effect of Brexit on workers’ rights. While it prattles on, the European Union is turning the screw on the most fundamental of all workers’ rights, the right to strike, and using Greece as a test bed for policies it would like to see across all member states.
Without the right to take effective strike action, workers have no protection save the courts, and capitalist courts consistently favour the employers.
The European Court of Justice ruled (in the Laval case, 18 December 2007), that employers have the right to bring workers from a low-wage EU state to a higher-wage EU state on the wages payable in the cheaper country, regardless of any collective bargaining agreements in the higher-wage state. It has also ruled (in the Viking case, 11 December 2007) that effective industrial action to stop outsourcing to cheaper countries is illegal.
In the Alamo–Herron case (18 July 2013), involving Unison members transferred out of local authority employment, it ruled that whatever their contracts said, benefits collectively negotiated for local authority workers could be ignored by their new employers. “This case is an appalling attack on collective bargaining and is at least as serious as Viking and Laval,” wrote Britain’s leading employment barrister, John Hendy.
Hendy went on to say, “The EU has become a disaster for the collective rights of workers and their unions.”
As we have consistently said, strong trade union organisation backed up by effective industrial action if need be is the only way to secure and defend advances in the workplace. The EU murmurs about “rights” while consistently attacking the basis of workplace organisation.
Not one line of the Trade Union Act introduced by the Cameron government, or the even worse White Paper that preceded it, was contrary to EU law. The sooner Britain leaves the EU, the better it will be for trade union members (though some so-called leaders will resent being kicked off the Brussels gravy train). At least then we will just have our own employers to deal with.
Will Podmore is a librarian and writer living in London.
Trump’s Foreign Policy Is In Service To Israel
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | January 28, 2018
Peter Jenkins, a former British ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, expresses concerns about the decisions of France, Germany, and the UK to appease President Trump on fixing “flaws” in the Iranian nuclear agreement. http://lobelog.com/europe-dont-go-all-wobbly-on-the-jcpoa/ It is worth a read to see that the European governments are still Washington’s toadies despite the “hate Trump” attitude that allegedly prevails among Washington’s European vassals.
Readers need to understand that there are no flaws in the agreement. The allegation of “flaws” is an israeli orchestration in order to resurrect the attacks on Iran that the nuclear agreement terminated. What Trump is doing is appeasing Israel. Israel doesn’t want Iran to have long range missiles, non-nuclear ones, that enhance Iran’s defensive posture. More importantly, Israel does not want to lose the nuclear weapons charge that Israel invented and hoped to use to have the US military destabilize Iran a la Iraq and Libya. Israel’s problem with Syria and Iran is that both countries support Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has twice driven the vaunted Israeli army out of southern Lebanon, territory Israel wants to occupy for the water resources. If Israel, armed as it is with the American Zionist Neoconservatives who control US foreign policy, can resurrect the Western attack on Iran, Israel can perhaps pressure Iran to abandon Hezbollah and Lebanon to Israel.
Americans are so totally brainwashed by Israeli propaganda that there is no public restraint on Washington serving Israel’s interest. And that is what Trump is doing. The tough guy is nothing but a panderer for Israel.
What is going on has nothing whatsoever to do with the Iranian nuclear or missile program. It has to do with Israel’s use of US power, including the intimidation power over Europe, to remove Iran as a constraint on Israeli expansion.
Of course, the UK diplomat probably knows this, but he also knows that he cannot say it without being read out of his career as an “anti-semite.”
Russia sanctions a ‘dead horse,’ seriously damaged economy – German regional heads
RT | January 27, 2018
Anti-Russian sanctions have achieved nothing other than placing a significant burden on the German economy, prime ministers of two German federal states have argued, calling on fellow regional leaders to demand their lifting.
The German government should gradually lift sanctions it imposed against Russia over its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis, Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff told journalists in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday. He said he would raise the issue at a conference of the heads of five German states on Monday and urge them to adopt a unified position against the anti-Russian sanctions.
The initiative has already been supported by Bodo Ramelow, Minister President of Thuringia, who said the German economy had already suffered enough because of the effects of the sanctions. “There must be an exit strategy [as to] the anti-Russian sanctions,” Ramelow told the German DPA news agency, adding that “they have already seriously damaged us economically.”
Sanctions are “a dead horse one should not ride anymore,” Ramelow told Der Spiegel as he pointed out that they did not actually contribute anything to the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis. Ukraine’s problems cannot be “solved through a symbolic policy at the expense of our industries,” he said.
Economic restrictions that the EU imposed against Russia indeed put a heavy burden on the economy of Germany, and its eastern states in particular. Between 2014 and 2016, the volume of Russian imports to the eastern German states has halved while the volume of their export to Russia has decreased by one third, Der Spiegel reported citing the German Federal Statistical Office.
Eastern German states might lose access to some markets for a long period of time, Ramelow warned, adding that Germany’s agriculture and food industries are hit particularly hard by this situation. “However, this is not just about agriculture, but also about machine industry and the [sector] of engineering technologies,” he added.
The head of Thuringia also said that the initiative of the East German states might receive backing from other parts of Germany. “I have heard that Bavaria could possibly support it,” Ramelow said, as cited by DPA.
In the meantime Haseloff, a member of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that he would put the issue of lifting the anti-Russian sanctions on the agenda of the ongoing collation talks between the CDU and the Social Democrats. The politician, who is part of the CDU negotiating team, said he would do so in case the head of the eastern German states succeed in forming a unified position on the issue.
In December 2017, a study published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy showed that Germany is de facto Europe’s biggest loser from the EU penalties introduced against Russia. German exports to Russia dropped nearly 40 percent with the country losing €618 million ($768 million) each month because of the sanctions.
The sanctions were introduced in 2014 over Russia’s alleged involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine and its reunification with Crimea. The EU restrictions targeted Russia’s financial, energy and defense sectors, along with some government officials, businessmen and public figures.
Moscow responded by imposing an embargo on agricultural produce, food and raw materials on countries that joined the anti-Russian sanctions. Since then both sides have repeatedly broadened and extended the restrictive measures.
Davos 2018: Elites to save the world at cocktail party schmooze-fest
© Ruben Sprich / Reuters
RT | January 23, 2018
It’s that time of year again when the elite gather at Davos by day to tackle the many problems plaguing the planet. And then by night it’s back to hitting the slopes, sipping champagne and networking again.
Since its first gathering in 1971, the scenic Alpine town of Davos, Switzerland – home to over 200 miles of breathtaking ski slopes – has played perfect host to the world’s financial and political elite, who spend three days attending panel discussions on a variety of topics.
Thanks to the natural edifices of the Swiss Alps, Mother Nature’s most effective security apparatus, not to mention 4,500 police and many miles of security fencing, the Masters of the Universe will be at liberty to discuss momentous global issues without being rudely interrupted by the dissenting voices of the global village far below.
“The skies over Switzerland are choked with private planes and helicopters as Davos gets underway,”CNN reported. “Security is tight, and rooftop sharpshooters watch over attendees as they parade through metal detectors and then swap snow boots for dress shoes.”
And then there is the price of membership in the world’s swankiest club: corporations don’t blink when they are asked to pay $60,000 to purchase base membership to the World Economic Forum; premier corporate partnerships are up to 10 times that amount. The cost alone makes the event prohibitive for your average person, in the highly-unlikely event he or she awoke one morning to find an invitation to this event in his or her mailbox.
In the insulated, discreet world of the elite, this is what seems to pass for ‘democracy in action’. But in reality, the real importance of these annual forums is the golden networking opportunities they offer attendees during “informal talks and…deal-making which takes place elsewhere in the conference centre and in hotel lobbies.”
Meanwhile, with the vast majority of the mainstream media literally in their pockets, Davos – formally known as the World Economic Forum – is rarely on the receiving end of negative publicity. Indeed, it is usually described in one monotonous, uncritical voice as some kind of “high-minded gathering” that aims to “hash out the world’s most intractable problems,” to quote an article from USA Today.
The rationale behind these high-profile meetings is that the corporate elite – due to their lofty position, influence and wealth – are the best-equipped to cure the world’s ills. And judging by the annual theme at these events (Davos 2018’s is ‘Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World’), mankind is always presented as teetering on the edge of disaster. There is good reason for that. This creates the impression that the only thing required to abolish poverty, fix the environment and end global wars, for example, is for ‘Davos Man’ to sit through a few more dry seminars before hitting the piste.
However, since this brave new dawn for mankind always sits temptingly over the horizon, just out of our grasp, the elite always have the perfect excuse for planning next year’s cocktail party. For some, that may sound like an overly cynical view of this annual event, but it is difficult to see what has changed for the average consumer/citizen since the launch of Davos almost half a century ago.
On the very eve of Davos, the world was greeted with some sobering news: the world’s richest 1 percent received 82 percent of the wealth pie from last year, while the poorest half of the population got exactly nothing, Oxfam said Monday. At the same time, the wealth of billionaires has surged six-times faster than that of ordinary workers since 2010. Finally, a new billionaire was born every two days between March 2016 and March 2017, the charity added.
“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy, but a symptom of a failing economic system,” Oxfam executive director Winnie Byanyima said in a statement.
Yet, according to Byanyima, the world’s political and business elite – the same individuals who will be rubbing shoulders in Davos this week – are making things worse for everyone else by “slashing taxes and scrapping labour rights.”
Despite many decades of Davos members getting together for the purpose of improving the economic lot of the world’s citizens, it is painfully apparent they are failing on a grand scale. In fact, the situation is only getting worse.
In 1999, as resistance to globalization was on the rise, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote an impassioned plea to that year’s Davos members, calling for a “global compact of shared values and principles, which will give a human face to the global market.”
“Globalization is a fact of life,”Annan wrote. “But I believe we have underestimated its fragility…The spread of markets outpaces the ability of societies and their political systems to adjust to them, let alone to guide the course they take.”
“History teaches us that such an imbalance between the economic, social and political realms can never be sustained for very long.”
Once again, however, another Davos forum passed with the elite delivering a lot of empty words – not action – to address the problem of global inequality. Then, in November 1999, echoing Kofi Annan’s warning to the elite, Seattle erupted in massive anti-globalization demonstrations made up of tens of thousands of protesters. The protests were aimed at the World Trade Organization that had convened in the state of Washington to launch a new round of controversial neoliberal trade negotiations.
Today, the mixed feelings for globalization have not changed and, as the British vote for Brexit proved, has only really intensified.
Since its inception in 1971, Davos has been devoted to the liberal economic principles of open borders. This anti-national stance witnessed at Davos was described by the academic Samuel Huntington, who argued that the global elite (which Huntington famously labeled ‘Davos Man’) “…have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.”
This year, with US President Donald ‘Make America Great Again’ Trump expected to grace the Davos forum with his weighty presence (assuming his trip does not get canceled due to the shut-down of the US government), the Davos elite will be forced to defend their increasingly untenable position – based on raw statistics – that globalization is a force for the wellbeing of the world’s citizens.
It may well be the first time that ‘Davos Man’ will be forced to defend its position from a top politician who is far more motivated by the interests of the nation-state.
It’s too bad more representatives of the people don’t have a ticket to this event, which promises to be quite a show.
For a comprehensive list of Davos participants since 2013, click here.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is author of the book, ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ released in 2013. robertvbridge@yahoo.com
European Commission to Issue Plan on Tackling Foreign Fake News
Sputnik – January 18, 2108
The European Commission is preparing a strategy to counter fake news, which will be published this spring, European Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King said during a debate at the EU Parliament on Wednesday.
“There’s been a focus on a wider phenomenon of fake news. It’s one of the European Commission’s priorities for the coming year… In November last year, we established a high-level expert group which has now started its work to advise the commission on scooping the phenomenon … and presenting recommendations. It will contribute to the preparation of a strategy addressing the challenge of fake news, which we’ll issue in spring this year,” King said at the European Parliament’s debates entitled “Russia — the influence of propaganda on EU countries.”
According to King, there was little doubt that a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign was an orchestrated strategy aimed at spreading disinformation in various languages and through various channels.
“Russian disinformation can be extremely successful. So that’s why we need to redouble efforts to debunk this propaganda,” King stressed. Western politicians have repeatedly accused the Kremlin of orchestrating disinformation and propaganda campaigns and spoken about threats allegedly posed by Russian media, specifically emphasizing the role of Sputnik news agency and RT broadcaster. Moscow has repeatedly dismissed such allegations.
However, current EU polices on countering fake news and propaganda are focused on Russian media exclusively, with some other outlets like Fox News and Al Jazeera not being under the radar, the European Parliament member from the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, Tanja Fajon, said on Wednesday.
“I agree that monitoring the impact of the media on the politics in society is necessary … but I have a few critical remarks. Firstly, why are we dealing only with Russian propaganda, how do we view the news on the American Fox News, do we have a problem with the stakes of the US media corporations in EU media outlets whose views are reported by Al Jazeera? And if we remain in Europe, how do we feel about the national media owned by a political party members and related persons, in Slovenia we have such a media outlet,” Fajon said during a debate at the EU Parliament dubbed “Russia — the influence of propaganda on EU countries.”
She added that RT broadcaster and Sputnik news agency perhaps should be seen as an attempt of Russia to find its place in the media world, which had long been dominated by the West.Meanwhile, several other lawmakers also pointed at the hypocrisy of the European Parliament. Joerg Meuthen from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party noted that the term “fake news” was often used to discredit unwanted facts and opinions.
“Today’s debate about alleged election influence by Russian fake news is for the established European parties like Easter and Christmas at once … This is pure hypocrisy, since this Parliament will lead an election campaign in pure self-interest in the 2019 European elections. The self-supporting slogans of EU officials and campaigners will produce their own truths, which will be propaganda of the best calibre. Anyone who acts like that has no right to complain about alleged election interferences by Russia. You are sitting in a glasshouse here in Strasburg, you should therefore not throw stones,” Meuthen warned.
Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Scotland, David Coburn, stressed that it was the European Union that spent millions in propaganda to prevent Brexit, and that was destroying impartiality or credibility of this debate about alleged Russian influence.
“The EU is still doing it by setting up the Orwellian machine to push the EU project and subvert national democracies, in its own words, ‘challenging Euroscepticism.’ It is pure Soviet ‘Pravda’ [newspaper]. I am more concerned with EU propaganda than with their clunky Russian version,” he said. Moreover, Coburn recalled that RT broadcaster gave the UKIP an opportunity to voice its position when they could not get on the BBC.
Western politicians have repeatedly accused the Kremlin of orchestrating disinformation and propaganda campaigns and spoke about threats allegedly posed by Russian media. Moscow has repeatedly dismissed all such allegations.In November 2016, the European Parliament adopted a Polish-initiated resolution which declared that Russia was waging an “information war” against the European Union and claimed the need to “fight” Russian “disinformation.” Commenting on that decision, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the adoption of the resolution demonstrated the degradation of the perception of democracy in the European society and expressed hope that the common sense would prevail.
Since then, the European External Action Service East Stratcom Task Force, set up in 2015, has secured over $1 million in funding and published multiple articles “debunking” alleged cases of “disinformation” by Russian outlets. A lot of these cases appeared to “debunk” news pieces reporting about opinionated remarks by Russian officials and overblown tabloid headlines.
Quit Lying To Us About The ‘Peace Process’: Israel Won’t Willingly Return the Lands and Resources It Has Stolen
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | January 17, 2018
Face the truth: Israel won’t willingly return the lands and resources it has stolen unless slapped with tough, sustained sanctions. Civil society in the US and UK must end the conspiracy among their warped government ‘élites’ that makes a mockery of international law.
It goes something like this:
“Listen up, you wretched Palestinians. There’s no way you’re getting your lands back, or a state of your own, because that would make our Zionist buddies feel upset and insecure. And you know how their security matters above everyone else’s. Besides, God told them they could grab your land and kick you out even if they don’t really have any ancestral connection to it. So you rabble don’t belong here. And you might as well know that we support them 100 percent in their efforts to make life so f*cking unbearable that you all piss off somewhere else – and we don’t care where just as long as our beloved friends get their hands on your farms and homes and resources. Naturally we’ve suspended your human rights, and international law simply isn’t available to you.
“You don’t like being shafted? Tough. Learn to accept it. Bow down to those who are favoured by God, as we have done.”
signed: US and UK, adoring sponsors of God’s Rogue Regime
Life for the Palestinians hasn’t improved. It has only got worse under the tyrrany of Israel’s military occupation. And throughout that time the performance of their representatives to the outside world, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), has been chronic verging on useless. Thanks in part to the Palestinian leadership’s diplomatic ineptitude and quisling tendencies Israel has been able to expand its frontiers and flourish far more than it had any right to.
By 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu felt untouchable enough to say that if he was returned to power, a Palestinian state would not be established because handing back territory would threaten Israel’s security.
And in August 2017 he announced that Israel would keep the West Bank permanently and there would be no more uprooting of settlements: “We are here to stay forever…. This is the inheritance of our ancestors. This is our land.”
Netanyahu’s ancestors, by the way, are from… where? And the rest of the thugs in his administration… where do their roots lie? Few if any can show ancestral links to the Biblical lands they claim are theirs. The true inheritors, of course, are the Palestinian peoples who have been there since the days when Jerusalem was a Canaanite city.
Netanyahu’s position echoes his Likud Party’s stance back in 1999 and 2009, so western politicians should be well acquainted with it. To remind them, David Morrison has produced a neat analysis of Israel’s unchanging position:
- “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”
- “The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”
- “Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem”
- “The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values [written before Israel removed its troops]. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.”
Likud’s message still stands. Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister and second only in ranking to Netanyahu, told Israeli diplomats in 2015 that “we need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country…. This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.” She rattled on about God having promised the land of Israel to the Jews and how she was going to get the international community to “recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere”.
Zionist leaders before Netanyahu broadcast their fraudulent claims to the land and bragged about their plan to seize it. Their evil intent has been well advertised. Even if Netanyahu wanted a two-state solution he would be opposed by his own party and the five others making up his ruling coalition, virtually all of which stand against Palestinians having a state of their own.
Israel’s bad behaviour richly rewarded
As David Morrison and others have repeatedly pointed out, the UN Security Council has never applied sanctions against Israel to force a reversal of its illegal land grab. Instead of punishing the regime for its 50 years of terror, the US, UK and EU have showered it with privileges.
Since 1967, the US has handed Israel well over $100 billion in mostly military aid and provided political and diplomatic cover by vetoing resolutions critical of it in the UN Security Council. Obama before he left office guaranteed Israel a further $38 billion in military aid over the next ten years.
Hard-pressed American taxpayers still don’t seem to have grasped this misappropriation of their funds or they’d surely be angry enough to stop it.
The EU for its part allowed Israel to sign up to the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995 and gave it privileged access to EU markets under the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 2000, even though it breached the basic terms of membership from the start and continues to do so.So there are no painful consequences for Israel’s bad behaviour, just rich rewards.
Maintaining the illusion of a peace process
The peace process is, of course, a sham. Anyone who believes in it is hallucinating. But to perpetuate the cruel illusion Netanyahu offers an occasional glimmer of hope for a ‘negotiated’ settlement provided there are no awkward preconditions. In any event he will ensure the talks go nowhere, just as he has done many times before, aided and abetted by discredited ‘peace broker’ America and always blaming the Palestinians. It is patently obvious that Israel and the US (and indeed the UK) conspire to keep the idea of a peace process alive in order to provide a smoke-screen while Israel continues its expansionist policy and establishes more ‘facts on the ground’ designed to make its occupation irreversible.
Ban Ki-moon said two years ago: “The United Nations is committed to working to create the conditions for the parties to return to meaningful negotiations. That is the one and only path to a just and lasting solution — an end to the occupation that began in 1967…”
First, “meaningful negotiations” simply aren’t going to happen; and if they do they’ll lead nowhere as before. Besides, negotiations between a strong party backed by mighty powers and a weak demoralised party are unlikely to produce a “just” solution. Second, it is not “the only path”. There’s law and sanctions. And the law has already spoken. All that’s needed is the integrity and guts to enforce it. Nothing will change until the UN — or a significant section of the international community — rises to the moral challenge and enforces international law and the many resolutions relating to Israel’s crimes, and slaps Israel with severe sanctions until it complies. As long as it does nothing the UN is seen to be in on the conspiracy too.
The British government knows the facts. So what on earth was Ambassador Peter Wilson, UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, thinking when he recently addressed the Security Council briefing on the Middle East Peace Process?
“Support for a two-state solution is the only way to ensure a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…. The United Kingdom’s longstanding position on the Middle East Peace Process remains clear and unchanged: we support a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state; based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a just, fair, agreed and realistic settlement for refugees.
Theresa May has all her ministers and MPs mouthing and writing the same tosh, as did her predecessors. It isn’t difficult given that 80 percent of them are reported to be signed-up Friends of Israel. We watched their grovelling worship of the rogue regime — and of the arch-criminal Netanyahu — at the Balfour centenary celebrations in London. Wilson added:
“The leadership and engagement that President Trump and his administration have demonstrated in reinvigorating the Middle East Peace Process must have our support. We call on the region, Israelis, and Palestinians to seize the opportunity that this presents and turn 2017 not just into another anniversary of occupation, but a new anniversary of peace.”
Well, we’ve seen Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop leadership at work, gifting Jerusalem to Israel, and what that did for peace.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, an organisation not given to exaggeration, reacted by reminding everybody that acquiring or annexing territory is prohibited under international law, and the US is disregarding the international community’s long-standing position of not recognising Israel’s unlawful annexation of East Jerusalem. Recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is tantamount to condoning annexation and the occupation. Furthermore Israel, as the occupying power, is prohibited from forcibly transferring Palestinians out of their homes in Jerusalem. Israel disregards this with its programme of evictions, home demolitions and residency revocations. “The US administration’s declaration risks condoning these practices and other violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territory that NRC witnesses daily…. The international community should insist on respect for international law and the enforcement of existing UN resolutions, while governments should use their influence to hold those responsible for violations to account.”
Unfortunately respect for international law, enforcing UN resolutions and applying sanctions are not part of the US-UK tool kit unless directed against Iran and Israel’s other enemies.
So, as David Morrison warns, it looks as if “today’s Palestinian children will still be living under occupation when they are grandparents”.
And we as a nation will never be able to hold our heads up on account of the humiliation we heaped on them.
US forcing Europe to abandon Russian gas & buy more expensive American LNG – Lavrov
RT | January 15, 2018
The United States is afraid of fair competition in the energy sector, and is hampering the implementation of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“There is reprisal in the energy sector against North Stream 2. It is the US which is calling it politicized, leading to a split in Europe, and the strangling of Ukraine,” he said at a press conference on Monday.
“Washington clearly forces Europeans to abandon Nord Stream 2, despite the fact that gas deliveries to Germany via the pipeline could be 2,000km shorter than through Ukraine, and the cost of transit could be halved,” said the Russian diplomat.
Europeans “are being forced to buy much more expensive liquefied gas from the United States instead of Russian gas,” Lavrov added.
He also said that the US could not withstand fair competition from Russia in the gas-export sector.
Russia plans to build the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany, and to double the existing pipeline’s capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year.
The project has faced fierce resistance from some EU members, especially from the Baltic states and Poland. They say the pipeline will cut gas transit through Ukraine and will result in a Russian monopoly in the EU gas market.
Other countries like Austria, Hungary and Germany are in favor of buying Russian gas.
Israeli Security Minister Says EU Ready to Increase Pressure on Iran
Sputnik – January 14, 2018
Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Sunday that he believed US President Donald Trump who had promised to waive sanctions against Iran for the last time, also noting that France, Germany and the United Kingdom also started expressing their readiness to increase pressure on Tehran.
On Friday, Trump said that he had extended Iran’s sanctions waivers, stipulated by the Iran nuclear deal, for the last time, calling on the European Union to take part in rewriting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“I definitely believe him [Trump]… We also see that the Europeans start realizing that Iran should change its behavior… I believe the Germans start expressing their readiness to increase pressure on Iran. I think that the British and the French are also moving in this direction,” Erdan said as quoted by Israel’s Army Radio also known as Galei Tzahal.
According to the Israeli minister, Iran’s actions in Syria and Lebanon as well as the country’s ballistic and nuclear programs will convince the European countries that the US president’s plans are reasonable.
“I believe that in 120 days when he [Trump] will have to decide on whether the United States will remain in the agreement [JCPOA] or not, serious changes will take place,” the minister stressed.
In July 2015, the EU, Iran and the P5+1 group of nations comprising the US, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom plus Germany signed the JCPOA. The nuclear agreement stipulates a gradual lifting of sanctions imposed on Tehran in exchange for Iran’s nuclear program program remaining peaceful.
In late October, Trump refused to re-certify the JCPOA, accusing the Islamic Republic of violating the agreement.
READ MORE:
Israel, Middle East Leaders Tried to ‘Trap’ US into War With Iran — Kerry
Israel agrees to EU deal excluding settlements
RT | December 31, 2017
Israel’s government has approved an agreement with the EU that includes a provision excluding funding for settlements, seemingly consenting to the EU’s boycott of settlements.
The agreement centers on Israel’s part in the EU’s ENI Cross-Border Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CBC Med) program, which provides funds for projects for non-EU countries in the Mediterranean area, such as Israel, Egypt and Jordan, Haaretz reports. The projects are largely focused on promoting development, education, technology and environmental sustainability.
As per EU policy, the ENI CBC Med agreement contains a provision which excludes areas outside Israel’s 1967 borders from receiving grants. This means Israeli settlements inside the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights (which were occupied by Israel in the conflict) cannot receive funding under the program.
Israeli settlements inside Palestinian territories are considered both an impediment to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, and to be in violation of a number of UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel’s Culture and Sport Minister, Miri Regev, voiced her objections to the agreement to the cabinet secretary earlier in the month. She fought against the deal at the cabinet meeting, the Jewish Press reports, but no other minister agreed to second her motion to delay the vote pending further debate.
The deal was given final approval by the government Sunday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on the measure last week. It’s also been approved by the Justice Ministry and Foreign Ministry, Haaretz reports. The foreign ministry is said to have led the charge for Israel to be part of the program.
The agreement is at odds with the Israeli government’s stance on settlements, which it continues to develop within the occupied territories in disregard of the EU and others’ condemnation. Netanyahu is also a fierce opponent to the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel.
“My fundamental position is that the Israeli government should reject agreements from the outset that require us on a de facto basis to boycott portions of the homeland or populations living in the Golan Heights, Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] other than with very limited exceptions,” Regev wrote in her letter.
“I do not see the justification to compromise and with one hand sign the agreement while with our other demanding that the world give de facto recognition to our right to a united Jerusalem and even to move embassies to Israel’s capital,” she added.
Aside from the settlement matter, Regev’s letter to Cabinet Secretary Tzachi Braverman also took issue with the text of the agreement referring to the Palestinian Authority “as if it were a neighboring country.”
It is “not acceptable to me,” she said.
The far-right Regev managed to halt a similar agreement with the EU last year. A Creative Europe culture and media program contained a similar provision excluding settlements, and, although Netanyahu had given consent, Regev stopped it from going ahead. Earlier this month, Regev succeeded in forcing the NBA remove a reference to Palestine as being “occupied territory.”
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Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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