European Union

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The European Union will probably issue a ruling today that goods produced in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank by Israeli squatters must be so labeled. Such labeling is already carried out in some European countries, but this ruling would extend the practice to all 28 EU […]

European Union

Splintering World: Looking Back on the Great Collapse from 2050

contributors

By John Feffer | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Let me start with a confession. I’m old-fashioned and I have an old-fashioned profession. I’m a geo-paleontologist. That means I dig around in archives to exhume the extinct: all the empires and federations and territorial unions that have passed into history. I practically created the profession of […]

Corporate Surveillance

Citing NSA Spying, Euro Court of Justice Forbids Auto-Sharing of Personal Info

contributors

Danny O’Brien | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The spread of knowledge about the NSA’s surveillance programs has shaken the trust of customers in U.S. Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple: especially non-U.S. customers who have discovered how weak the legal protections over their data is under U.S. law. It should come as […]

Displaced and Refugees

Can Syrian Asylee Airlift from Turkey to Sweden be Crowd-Funded? Iranian Expats Think So

contributors

By Elisabeth Braw | (RFE/ RL) | – – A group of Iranian emigres and friends has announced an ambitious project to mount a crowdfunded airlift from troubled areas around the Mediterranean to Sweden, allowing would-be refugees to bypass hazardous land-and-sea journeys via what they’re calling Refugee Air. One of the organizers says he was […]

Displaced and Refugees

Why some European countries do more than others to help refugees

contributors

By Tim Hatton | (The Conversation) | – – Not since World War II has Europe faced a refugee crisis comparable with the situation unfolding at its borders at the moment. The European response has been, to put it mildly, ambivalent. On one hand there has been a mass outpouring of sympathy in the media […]

Authoritarianism

Those forced to Europe are mostly Regime Change Refugees

contributors

By Thalif Deen | ( Inter Press Service) | – – UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – The military conflicts and political instability driving hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe were triggered largely by U.S. and Western military interventions for regime change – specifically in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria (a regime change in-the-making). The United […]

Displaced and Refugees

Germany decides to Accept Syrian Refugees, Waives EU Rule

contributors

Der Tagesspiegel by Andrea Dernbach translated by Samuel Morgan [NB Germany is expecting 800,000 asylum seekers this year, 40% of the EU total.] Germany has ceased applying the rules of the Dublin system to Syrian refugees. All deportations to other EU countries have been halted, Tagesspiegel reports. The Dublin system’s critics have said for years […]

China

US Right needs to get over Self: Iran Deal is International

contributors

By Thalif Deen | (Inter Press Service) | – – UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – The single biggest misunderstanding about the nuclear agreement with Iran is that it is a bilateral deal with the United States. Not true. “Beware of American and Israeli politicians and commentators who claim this agreement will enable Iran to acquire nuclear […]

Featured

Iran Deal: Why doesn’t US Media interview Real Allies on American Policy?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – So after France and Britain and Germany conducted negotiations with Iran over its civilian nuclear enrichment program alongside the United States, you would expect American television news eagerly to seek out interviews on the deal from David Cameron, Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel– or foreign ministers […]