Why Trump’s Presidency Is a Win for Europe
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 12.11.2016
By vowing to rebuild American society, scale back foreign militarism, de-escalate NATO and seek friendly cooperative relations with Russia, a United States of America under Donald Trump would not only be a boon for America’s best interests. It would also be a win for Europe.
In such a new international outlook, the European bloc would be freed from its atlanticist subservience which has been dominant and deleterious for several decades. European governments would be freer to have more independent foreign policy, instead of toeing the dubious line that up to now has been ordained from Washington. It has been a disaster for the EU to have adhered so slavishly to US foreign policy. Much of the current discontent and disaffection among EU citizens towards the Brussels-based bloc stems from this unnatural and unhealthy subservience to Washington.
Wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and the attendant problems of blowback terrorism and influx of refugees are direct results of European governments following Washington’s foreign policy of regime change and so-called «democracy promotion». Even though these wars have been illegal and vile transgressions of international law.
Financial and economic policies adopted by European governments have been straitjacketed by neoliberal capitalist doctrine dictated by Wall Street and successive US governments. This boils down to misery and austerity for the masses, while a tiny oligarchy become ever bloated with wealth. In short, stagnation.
Deteriorating relations with Russia – Europe’s biggest energy supplier – have also stemmed from the EU following Washington’s confrontational agenda towards Moscow. European governments have bought into the spurious US official narrative of Russia being «aggressive» and «expansionist». Admittedly, certain EU members such as the Baltic states are all too willingly Russophobic. But for many others, such hostility between the EU and Russia does not make sense. While economic impacts on the US have been minimal, the tensions between the EU and Russia have badly hit European businesses, exporters, farmers and workers.
The looming threat of war on European territory from the irrational enlargement of the US-led NATO military alliance along Russia’s border is also seen by many citizens as another demonstration of the EU’s reckless subservience to Washington. It is Washington, of course, that has been the main advocate of increasing NATO forces in Europe, augmented by atlanticist EU governments like Britain, Germany and France, as well as the anti-Russian paranoid Baltic states. Some 500 million EU citizens are held ransom to war policies by a coterie of governments who behave like vassals to Washington.
In many ways, the political, economic and cultural problems challenging Europe arise directly from the EU’s lack of independence from the US. Often it seems that Brussels is acting as a rubber-stamp for foreign policies authored in Washington. No wonder then that in the view of many EU citizens the functioning of the bloc is seen to be undemocratic and unrepresentative of their immediate needs. This explains the soaring rise of anti-EU parties right across the bloc. The phenomenon has less to do with an inherent popular affinity for parties labelled «far right» or «xenophobic» and more to do with a popular desire for democratic governance that attends to urgent social interests.
There is much overlap with the political rise of Donald Trump in the US. As in Europe, the mass of ordinary working-class American citizens have been disenfranchised, politically and economically, over several decades. A rarefied political class has become ossified and is seen to be self-enriching and servile to a tiny wealthy elite of financiers, corporations and the military machine that underpins this oligarchy. Integral to the oligarchy are the corporate-controlled media monopolies that pontificate to the masses on how they should vote in elections – elections that have become inconsequential to democratic needs.
All that now appears to be changing. A revolt is underway.
Trump’s election, like the Brexit before in Britain earlier this year, is a popular revolt against the oligarchy. The mass of people have become sickened and wearied by endless wars and endless economic austerity, while the rich elite become ever more obscenely wealthy, and all the while the media propaganda system cynically instructs the people who to vote for and who not to, knowing full well there will really be no «hope and change».
This time around though, the US election, like the Brexit, was infused with righteous, raw popular anger against the oligarchy.
Trump struck a deep popular chord when he called US-led wars in the Middle East a «disservice to our country and a disservice to humanity». People got it when he lamented how much American infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, jobs, would have benefited if the trillions of dollars wasted on wars had instead been invested at home. Despite media concealment, a large section of the American people concurred with Trump’s angry denunciation of Obama and past US administrations for criminally stoking terrorism and conflicts. His presidential rival Hillary Clinton was fixed right at the center of this culpability among the Washington oligarchy, which straddles both the Republican and Democrat parties.
Voting Trump into the White House – a property tycoon who has never held an elected office before – is an historic repudiation of the political establishment. It is a political earthquake.
On the eve of election day on November 8, Trump declared that «this will be our independence day… when the American working class will strike back». It may seem incongruous that a billionaire capitalist should exhort the working class to strike. But strike they did.
Trump also said his election would be «Brexit plus, plus, plus». That remark has turned out to be prescient too. The American election earthquake has rocked Europe with greater force than did Britain’s vote to quit the bloc in July. A crevice has been torn open between atlanticist governments and more independently minded ones.
Germany and France in particular have been caught off-side. Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed «shock» at Trump being elected, while French President Francois Hollande – also disapproving the result – called for «united European values» to confront the new American president. Hollande’s bravado for «liberal values» makes him look even more fatuous.
Britain, the other atlanticist voice in Europe, was more congratulatory to President-elect Trump. No doubt, that’s because Britain is seeking to shore up badly needed bilateral trade deals with the US in light of its departure from the EU and therefore it needs to keep Trump sweet.
What really alarms Germany and France is that Trump is no atlanticist or NATO advocate. His nationalist views and tougher stance on immigration controls resonate with EU members like Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece and Austria.
Trump’s views also give a boost to anti-EU parties in Germany and France who are challenging incumbents Merkel and Hollande in elections next year. It was telling that while Merkel and Hollande deprecated Trump’s election, he was heartily congratulated by the anti-EU Alternative for Germany and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, as well as Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party in Britain. These parties also tend to share Trump’s more sanguine view of friendlier relations with Russia.
If Donald Trump can deliver on his avowed program of rebuilding American society and economy from within while abandoning US imperialist hegemony around the world that will potentially transform world relations. For Russia and China it will lead to a much needed normalization of relations, away from the current Cold War-type hostility that threatens to ignite world war. Both Russian and Chinese leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were quick to express congratulations and readiness to work with new president Donald Trump.
The political establishment, including the media, in the EU that is dominated by woefully misguided atlanticism has deplored the election of Trump in the US. There is a snobbish handwringing attitude that Trump’s movement is all about racist, white trash numbskulls. There may be some unsavory elements to Trump’s support, as there are in some anti-EU movements. But in the main what it is about is reclaiming democratic power for the mass of people. What the Americans have done in electing Trump is what the Europeans also need to do in order to sack a corrupt and venal establishment that up to now has only served Washington and the atlanticist elite.
If Trump’s victory invigorates similar trends across Europe then that would be a good thing. And especially if it led to Europe having a more independent foreign policy from Washington and in particular gaining a more normal, mutual relationship with Russia.
Is Obama Staging a Color Revolution in the US?
By Martin Berger – New Eastern Outlook – 12.11.2016
The recent victory of now President-elect Donald Trump has taken a lot of Americans by surprise. But it would be safe to say that the corporate ruling elites that went all in on Hillary Clinton were literally shocked by her defeat. Without her at the head of the state they fear they may not be able to carry on spreading the corruption, which is believed to be at the foundation of the Clinton clan, or carry on waging wars upon other states which includes arming terrorists responsible for killing thousands of civilians around the world.
And even though the corporate elites have formally acknowledged Trump’s victory, they are pressuring the current government to fight the next US President tooth and nail, until all resources are exhausted.
Over the last eight years, the Obama administration has acquired a long list of tricks that were used against undesired governments in various parts of the world, while the most effective among them is the so-called “color revolutions,” where essentially a coup d’etat is achieved by media manipulation and large mobs. US intelligence services are now prepared to unleash such a revolution on the home front, since they are fairly concerned about their future under Trump, as the Washington Post would report.
The fact that Obama still believes in Trump’s inability to replace him in the White House has already been announced by the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. At the same time, he would point out, while commenting on the anti-Trump protests in the US, that the right for freedom of expression must be exercised without violence, clearly alluding to the current administration’s arsenal of “peaceful” tools that would allow it to get rid of Trump.
That is why we already are witnessing a wave of “protests” being unleashed under the control of the Obama administration. The corporate media and social networks are openly arrayed against the incoming 45th US President. These very tactics have been used by US intelligence agencies in Brazil, Nicaragua, Hong Kong, Thailand, as well as across the Middle East and Eastern Europe to unleash a “color revolution”. In some countries, such actions have brought foreign government under the direct control of the White House, as we can see it in Ukraine, Brazil and several other countries.
As a result, we are now being told about thousands of protesters in US cities rallying against the Trump election victory. These claims were followed by a petition published on Change.org that demands the US authorities change the results of the recent election, demanding the electoral college be revised, and that the election results be overturned on December 19. It is being reported that this petition has already been signed by a total of two million people.
It goes without saying that an attempt to launch a “color revolution” in the United States is being supported by a number of Europe states in addition to the US, including France and Germany, since the political order there is concerned about the impunity they’ve been enjoying coming to an end, with Trump failing to openly signal continued open US support for them. The British Independent wants Trump to be impeached, citing law professor Christopher Peterson, who would claim that there is a strong case for the beginning of legal proceedings that would stop Donald Trump from being president. The impeachment process is usually initiated when a president of a state has committed some sort of a serious offense, but Trump hasn’t been able to do anything yet, since he hasn’t been inaugurated. Still the Independent believes there must be some legal ground for his impeachment.
It’s clear the train of “color revolution” is under full steam in the US today. What will come up from this attempt to ignore the US Constitution, remains to be seen.
Steelworkers urge EU protection against imports
Press TV – November 9, 2016
Steelworkers from across the European Union have held a protest in front of the EU headquarters in Brussels to demand protection, as cheap foreign import mostly from China keeps threatening job security in the industry.
The protesters on Wednesday urged the EU to impose tough restrictions on steel imports from China and adopt better regulations for the market.
Reports said at least 5,000 people from various EU countries attended the demonstration.
Recent studies show that an estimated 330,000 people are working in Europe’s steel factories, the lowest in the history of the industry in the continent. That comes as many think Europe owes its industrial revolution to the boom in steel production.
The European Union has moved to adopt policies that could prevent the import of cheap products to its market. The aim is to cut the flow of steel from China, which has swamped the European markets at dumping prices.
Luc Triangle, the general secretary of Industrial Europe union, said the EU must do more to ensure the rights of the steelworkers were protected.
“You cannot throw workers in the arena of globalization without any protection,” Triangle added.
EU Competitiveness Commissioner Jyrki Katainen said the policies were meant to create a fair competition in the European steel market, noting, “Free trade must be fair, and only fair trade can be free.”
Workers have already staged mass protests in developed EU countries such as Germany, saying the widening trend of cheap imports from China and a global oversupply of the product have already created many uncertainties about the prospects of the industry.
About 50,000 steel workers attended such rallies in three German cities, including the capital Berlin, in April, denouncing the EU’s unfair environmental regulations.
Hillary versus Donald: Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead! Victory for the Wizard of Oz!
By Diana Johnstone | Global Research | November 9, 2016
“There’s no place like home.”
That’s the lesson. Even when home is Kansas.
The real meaning of this election is not, as bitterly disappointed Hillary supporters still maintain with tears in their eyes and fear in their throats, a victory for racism and sexism.
The real meaning of this upset is that Wall Street’s globalization project has been rejected by the citizens of its homeland.
This has major implications for the European nations that have been dragged along into this ruinous project.
Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the military industrial complex and international finance capital. She designed herself to be the figurehead of those forces, as queen of regime change. She aspired to be the one to remake the world in the image Wall Street dictates. It was a project enthusiastically and expensively supported by the one percent who profit from arms contracts and the trade deals they write themselves for their own interests.
To distract from the genuine significance of her candidacy, the Clinton campaign appealed to the desire for respectability of educated city dwellers, portraying Trump supporters as racist yokels motivated by a hateful desire to scapegoat minorities as revenge for their own inadequacies. They were “deplorables”, and you wouldn’t want to be one of them, would you?
Trump was sexist, because he referred to certain women as “bimbos”. Elizabeth Warren called him out for this, on a platform where Hillary sat listening, mouth wide open in delight – she who had referred to Bill’s girlfriends as “bimbo eruptions”. Sleaze and hypocrisy drowned out policy discussions. The worst the Clinton campaign could come up with was an eleven-year-old locker room exchange – just words, hardly comparable to Bill’s chronic actions.
Still, millions who were taken in by the Clinton campaign line are devastated, terrified, convinced that the only reason Trump won was the “racism” and “sexism” of that lower caste in globalized society: white heterosexual working class males.
But no, Virginia, there were other reasons to vote for Trump. Racism and sexism are surely low on the list.
Trump voters were scandalized by Hillary’s lies and corruption. Many of them would have voted for Bernie Sanders if they had the choice. That choice was taken away from them by Democratic Party manipulators who were sold on their own advertising campaign to elect “the first woman President.” A brand new product on the Presidential election market! Be the first to vote for a woman President! New, improved!
Bernie’s success already showed that millions of people didn’t want that woman. But the Democratic Party manipulators and their oligarch sponsors went right ahead with their plans to force Hillary Clinton on an unwilling nation. They brought this defeat on themselves.
Contrary to what you could believe by reading the New York Times, there were even intellectuals who voted for Trump, or at least refused to vote for Hillary, for the simple reason that Trump appears less likely to lead the world into its third and final Great War. He said things giving that impression, but such statements were ignored by mainstream media as they worked overtime to inflate the ogre image. No war with Russia? You must be a Putin puppet!
Trump voters had several reasons to vote for Trump other than “racism”. Most of all, they want their jobs back, jobs that have vanished thanks to the neoliberal policy of transferring manufacturing jobs to places with low wages.
But racism is the only motive recognized by the globalized elite for rejecting globalization. British citizens who voted to leave the European Union in order to recover their traditional democracy were also stigmatized as “racist” and “xenophobe”. Opposition to racism and xenophobia is the natural moral defense of a project of global governance that deprives ordinary citizens of any important power of decision.
This extraordinarily vicious campaign has brought out and aggravated sharp divisions within the United States. The division between city and countryside is most evident on the electoral maps. But these real divisions are exacerbated by a campaign that portrayed Donald Trump as a racist madman, a new Hitler about to bring fascism to America. The antiracism of this campaign, denouncing “hate”, has actually spawned hate.
No, Virginia, Trump is not Hitler. He is the Wizard of Oz. He is a showman who pulled off an amazing trick thanks to the drastic moral and intellectual decline of the American political system.
He is neither as dangerous as his opponents fear, nor as able to “make American great again” as his supporters hope. He is the Lesser Evil. What will become of him in Washington is anybody’s guess.
Copyright © Diana Johnstone, Global Research, 2016
Protests in Western Sahara against solar and wind plant construction
MEMO |November 8, 2016
Protests erupted yesterday in the Western Sahara over the construction of renewable energy plants without the permission of the Sahrawi people.
The protests, which took place in the capital Laayoune, coincided with the United Nation’s COP22 conference on climate change yesterday in Marrakech.
Siemens and Enel are building solar and wind plants in the region
“Siemens should not back Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara through energy infrastructure,” the Western Sahara Resource Watch (WRSW) said on social media.
Siemens has constructed 22 new renewable energy plants in the Western Sahara, which power over 95 per cent of mineral extraction plants in the Sahrawi region.
The World Bank, the European Investment Bank, and the European Union have previously refused to finance development projects in Western Sahara.
“If we support those investments, it would look like we are supporting the Moroccan position. We are neutral regarding that conflict,” a banker told Reuters.
The contested region has recently been engrossed in tensions between Morocco and the Sahrawi Polisario Front which has been ongoing since 1975.
Facebook investigated by German prosecutors for failing to stop ‘hate speech’
RT | November 4, 2016
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg and other senior executives are being investigated in Germany after a lawyer filed a complaint accusing them of allegedly allowing racist and violent posts to remain on the social networking site.
The social media giant was accused of doing little to stop racism, Holocaust denial and violent threats on the site, according to Der Spiegel.
A Bavarian lawyer initiated the case by reporting Facebook to the police, accusing the company’s management of allowing such hateful posts to stay on the site without any consequences.
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, European policy director Richard Allan and company head in the Berlin office Maria Kirschsieper, are also under investigation.
German law requires Facebook to delete any content considered to be inciting hatred. Earlier this year, the company was also hit with a criminal complaint, but authorities said at the time they were unable to investigate because the accused, Zuckerberg, was not residing within German borders when it was brought to light.
German politicians have criticized Facebook for reportedly failing to take action against hate speech on the site.
In October, Volker Kauder, a member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said Facebook and other social media giants should face penalties for not taking action against hate speech, following the rise of xenophobic comments amid the refugee crisis in Europe.
Kauder said he had “run out of patience” with how social media giants were dealing with abusive content.
Many users of Facebook, Twitter and Google said that despite pledges from the companies to remove hate speech within 24 hours from their sites, users complaints were not adequately dealt with, the Local reports.
Facebook did not comment on the investigation status but said “the allegations lack merit and there has been no violation of German law by Facebook or its employees.”
Misplacing priorities and freedom of expression
BDS supporters protest anti BDS activities in London
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | November 3, 2016
It would be slightly premature to consider the statement by the EU Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, regarding the right of EU citizens to boycott Israel as some sort of victory. At first glance, it might look as if activism has overcome a significant hurdle, given the Israeli government’s obsession with suffocating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). A study of the brief statement actually suggests otherwise, and all in the name of freedom of expression.
Mogherini asserted that the EU “stands firm in protecting freedom of expression and freedom of association in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union”, even when such information or ideas “offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.” You just knew that there was a “but” coming: she made it equally clear that “the EU rejects the BDS campaign’s attempts to isolate Israel and is opposed to any boycott of Israel.” The EU official missed the point, of course; Israel isolates itself by its contempt for international laws and conventions, along with its brutal military occupation and colonisation of Palestine.
Commenting on Mogherini’s statement, BDS Europe Campaigns Officer Riya Hassan voiced the expectation that the EU should respect “its obligations under international law and its own principles and laws by, at the very least, imposing a military embargo upon Israel,” as well as a suspension of the EU-Israel Agreement signed in 1995. The latter stipulates regulations regarding political dialogue, economic cooperation, security and cooperation on social matters, based upon the premise in Article 2 of the agreement that all provisions “shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.” Israel has no such respect; it is a colonial entity and the EU functions as a protector of colonialism. The entire agreement should thus be declared null and void, or amended according to each entity’s characteristics, without the need to drag pretentious terms such as democracy into the equation.
Through Mogherini’s recent statement we have a clear example of how the EU actually demeans human rights and freedom of expression by utilising the discourse meant to uphold them. The entire essence of the EU’s true intentions lies in its opposition to BDS. Hence, any concession given by the EU should not be misconstrued as support, or upholding the right to freedom of expression. It is merely a recurring political ploy that ridicules the very essence of freedom. At the same time, it is through these clauses that BDS has managed to retain ground. Notwithstanding the genuine efforts of the masses which have embarked upon collective and individual efforts to boycott Israel, the fragile compromise upon which the global boycott outlook rests may well become tarnished if it continues to laud statements blatantly supportive of Israel while grudgingly allowing dissent as proof of freedom of expression.
Hence, Mogherini’s statement is not welcome. It is a calculated contribution to the debate that places Israel’s interests above the legitimate demands and legal rights of the Palestinians. BDS should distance itself from the litany of symbolic gestures that have taken precedence over genuine, active support for the anti-colonial struggle unless, that is, the movement seeks to become just another actor that thrives upon Palestinian demands as the means for the entity’s survival. If the movement’s chartered course is in the slightest way intertwined with that of the EU, however insignificant it may seem on the surface, Palestine may well be destined to accumulate festering wounds; the objective — which is already compromised due to the two-state subjugation rhetoric — will in the meantime become ever more distant from the land and the indigenous people.
Europe’s Battle: Nationalists vs. Elites
By Andrew Spannaus | Consortium News | October 26, 2016
In recent years “nationalism” has become a bad word in Europe, a synonym of closure, racism and wars. Over the past 20-25 years European elites have instead embraced a concept of globalization based on a world without economic, physical and social borders.
This view assumes the gradual affirmation of a set of shared values internationally, consisting of human rights and economic freedom, that however much the remaining closed, autocratic regimes may try, will inevitably become the standard for the entire world.
It is essentially the argument put forward by Francis Fukuyama in “The End of History:” liberal democracy and free markets have won the ideological war, and represent the culmination of human evolution.
The political events of 2016 are upending this view of the globalization of human rights and economic liberalism. The American electorate has supported a series of outsiders – most notably Donald Trump, who has run his campaign in direct opposition to the U.S. political and financial class, invoking economic protectionism and a stronger national identity.
Against expectations, the population of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, marking an irreparable break in the supposedly inevitable process of European unification. And across Europe support is growing for more extreme, anti-system political forces, that threaten not only to withdraw from the common currency – the Euro – but also to seal the borders in response to economic and security threats associated with immigration.
Establishment’s Failure
It is no exaggeration to speak of the failure of the entire transatlantic political establishment. Since the 1970s, Western economies have undergone a post-industrial transformation that has favored short-term gain over long-term investment. The notion of economic freedom has translated principally into support for deregulation and speculative finance.
Central Banks have made unlimited resources available to the financial sector while large areas of the real economy struggle to survive, feeding discontent among the population. It is true that new economic sectors have arisen, along with widespread changes made possible by technologies that were inconceivable until a few years ago, but the overall effect has been to hollow out the middle class and create large-scale income equality.
In Europe, the principal vehicle of this process has been the economic policy of the European Union. From the implementation of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, European nations have been stuck in a monetary straitjacket, that prevents governments from taking effective economic action. In the name of market principles, liberalization has been implemented that favors large financial interests while lowering standards of living for the middle class.
Countries are constitutionally required to move towards a balanced budget, with the European Commission and the European Central Bank essentially having veto power over national policies. This has translated into harsh austerity, including the massive budget cuts and tax increases inflicted on countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy in recent years.
Despite paying lip service to the need for change, the economic and political elites have refused to abandon this approach, that not only ignores the suffering of the population, but actually makes the problem worse. In fact the austerity causes a drop in economic activity and thus exacerbates budget problems, leading to a vicious cycle that Europe seems unable to stop.
A Big Backlash
The resulting backlash is calling into question the process of European integration as a whole, provoking a strenuous defense by the elite of institutions that are said to have guaranteed “50 years of peace” after the Second World War.
It is true, of course, that there are some benefits to E.U. integration, and that nobody wants to return to a situation of conflict among the member states. But the current policies are quite different than the fruitful cooperation that existed until the 1990s, when the financial elite began its move to exert supranational control.
Now, the failed economic policies of the past 20 years are no longer sustainable. Governments are forced to negotiate over .1 percent of the budget deficit with the bureaucracy in Brussels, while the need for public and private investment runs in the trillions.
The pro-finance, anti-production policies must change not for ideological reasons or to serve some specific interest group; they must change because there is no other choice. People are revolting against a political class that does not respond adequately to widespread economic and social discontent. In times of economic distress the population becomes more vulnerable to demagogues, raising the risk of dangerous outcomes, as seen with Fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s.
Currently, there are unprepared and unpredictable political forces with growing support across Europe, that in some cases represent a threat to the democratic rights and values that the European Union aims to promote. Defending the orthodoxy of E.U. policy against popular movements that target failed economic policies, will only further damage precisely those values on which Europe is said to stand.
What to Do
At this point Europe needs a return to measures that promote productive investment and innovation, rather than cut social welfare programs and encourage further deregulation.
There are two potential directions: a wholesale change in the policies of the E.U. institutions, without modifying their essential structure, or a step back from the process of cancellation of national sovereignty.
The first option seems unrealistic, for various reasons. These include the constitutional nature of many economic and budget constraints, and the stubbornness demonstrated by the European ruling class in recent years; a class that, despite numerous alarm bells, does not at all seem ready to abandon an elitist view of globalization.
The response to the Brexit vote is a glaring example. Representatives of the E.U. institutions lashed out with arrogance and bitterness, essentially accusing half of the British population of being ignorant, racist and isolationist. It’s a comforting excuse based on partial truths, that avoids reflection on Europe’s own mistakes.
At this point a return of decision-making power to national governments is becoming inevitable: not in order to stop international cooperation, or to reject shared values, but because the model pursued by the supranational institutions and their allies in the financial world has failed, and risks producing both serious internal conflicts, and unacceptable strategic failures in an increasingly complex world.
Andrew Spannaus is a freelance journalist and strategic analyst based in Milan, Italy. He is the founder of Transatlantico.info, that provides news, analysis and consulting to Italian institutions and businesses.
Belgium’s Wallonia rejects ‘undemocratic’ EU ultimatum on CETA
RT | October 24, 2016
Wallonia is not going to be pressured into agreeing the EU-Canada trade deal according to the leader of the French-speaking Belgian region Paul Magnette. The EU has given Belgium an ultimatum to end its objection to the agreement by Monday.
“Every time you try to put an ultimatum it makes a calm debate and a democratic debate impossible,” Magnette said at a meeting in Brussels.
“We don’t need an ultimatum,” he told reporters. “We will not decide anything under an ultimatum or under pressure.”
On Sunday the leader of the Wallonia region told the Belga news agency the ultimatum from the EU “is not compatible with the exercise of democratic rights.”
“We are not against a treaty with Canada,” Magnette said. “But we won’t have one that jeopardizes social and environmental standards and the protection of public services and we want absolutely no private arbitration mechanisms.”
Magnette was referring to an introduction of a secret corporate court system, empowering big business to sue states for policies that threaten their profits.
Belgium has been given until Monday to resolve an internal disagreement holding back the CETA trade deal with Canada. The pact needs the backing of all 28 EU countries to be passed. Belgium cannot sign without Walloon support.
The EU has warned that unless Belgium makes its position clear, it will cancel this week’s EU-Canada summit. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel is expected to make a speech on Monday, an EU source told Reuters.
Wallonia is a region of 3.6 million people, and has become an obstacle in the controversial free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada. The region has refused to approve the deal, fearing an influx of Canadian pork and beef products would undermine local farmers.
CETA promises to eliminate tariffs on 98 percent of goods traded between the EU and Canada. The agreement encompasses regulatory cooperation, shipping, sustainable development and access to government tenders.
Supporters of CETA say the deal will be worth $13 billion a year to the EU and $9 billion to Canada.
Opponents say the trade deal will violate workers’ rights and benefit the interests of the wealthy elite and corporations.
The EU has warned a failure to complete the agreement after seven years of negotiations will jeopardize the bloc’s trade policy.
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Book Review
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
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
- House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech
- Ceasefire no longer viable after 200 days of Israeli violations: Hamas
- Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported
- Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare
- Trump Taps Israel Lobbyist From Mossad Cutout FDD To Join Iran Negotiations
- Trump’s Blockade Snatches Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
- Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of the Strait of Hormuz
- Mali: a new front in the Western war on multipolarism
- CHD Scientist: CDC, FDA COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring ‘Insulting, and Many People Are Injured’
- If Americans Knew
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- No Tricks Zone
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
Aletho News 