by Oui
Sun May 18th, 2025 at 01:12:05 PM EST
[Update] w today's red carpet reception of EU delegation in London ...
Defragmentation of Europe and the lost cause of the European Union ...
Awkard hold to say the least ...
One liner "wisdom" by VDL
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her speech that "as our energy dependence on fossil fuels goes down, our security goes up".
B R E X I T T O B R E N T E R
’Breakthrough' in UK-EU talks, says government, as Starmer hosts summit in London | BBC News |
- There was a "breakthrough" in talks between the UK and EU last night, government sources say, as Keir Starmer hosts a summit of EU leaders in London
- The sources say the remaining "stumbling blocks" to a deal, mostly concerning fishing rights, were solved at about 10:30 on Sunday night
- The UK-EU summit is intended to "reset" relations - topics include defence, trade, fishing, and a possible youth mobility scheme
Fishing remains sticking point - as it was for post-Brexit deal
(Credit Getty Image)
Fishing makes up just 0.4% of the UK's GDP, external, but it was a big talking point during the Brexit campaign. There were promises that the UK would become an "independent coastal state".
Under the Brexit deal in 2020 however, EU boats were given continued access to UK waters.
That deal runs out at the end of June next year.
Several EU countries, including France, want to extend the current arrangements for longer, external.
However, UK fishermen are worried about this. The Scottish Fishermen's Federation has written to the prime minister ahead of today's summit, asking for fishing rights to be protected.
To reduce costs of export to the EU, there needs to be a reduction of “red tape”. Except the food standards of the trade agreement is a prerequisite. Just wonder how Trump views the closer ties of Great Britain with “villain” EU … won’t sit well in the White House for sure.
Trump: The EU is an ’atrocity’ on trade
’EU nastier than China': Trump bashes Europe over trade ties, issues warning, ’We've all the cards' | Economic Times |
Damn … the red carpet @DowningStreet#10 is truly getting worn out under Keir Starmer with European leaders’ shoes.
From the EuroTrib archives ... are we idiots not remembering historical facts and policy changes as the mood in Brussel changes?
Neolibs use Gazprom as tool to break French & German energy companies
by Jerome a Paris Fri Nov 27th, 2009
We get yet more hints of a "New Cold War" being revved up by the Wall Street Journal via the usual rhetorical flourishes (in this case, a "new Iron Curtain"):
The Modern Iron Curtain Is Made of Gas Pipelines | WSJ |
Some 80% of Russian gas supplies to the European Union pass through Ukraine and gas to Ukraine can't be interrupted without also stopping flows further west.
But not everyone views this prospect with the same dread as East European householders. One suspects senior executives at some major European energy companies would be secretly delighted if Russia stopped gas deliveries. The reason: they could buy the gas far cheaper on the world market than they are buying it from Russia.
In fact, this has the makings of a serious longer term challenge for OAO Gazprom , the state Russian gas monopoly that supplies 40% of the European Union's gas. The gas giant has short-term worries too. Gas demand has collapsed in Europe with the economic slowdown. Gazprom's sales to big European buyers such as E.On, BASF, Eni and GDF Suez have fallen to minimum contract levels, probably about 80% of contracted amounts, energy specialists say.
[...]
And what about building other, independent, pipelines to ship gas from West to East if that's so important? Is it that these pipelines are not profitable? Or that States are not willing to subsidize them for the oh-so-important purpose of energy security? Is it because that would be a distortion of competition (the ultimate evil for neoliberals), or is it that governments cannot put a price on security of supply?
So new pipelines are vital, but both companies and States are apparently powerless to build them or control them? How can that be?
Oh, right, it's the evil monopolies of Old Europe, the Italian, German and French (for some odd reason not mentioned here) gas companies that are somehow treasonously preventing new pipelines from being built... new pipelines that would give them new clients (remember, we're talking about pipelines going from West to East - hard to avoid Germany or Italy when going towards the vulnerable countries of Central Europe...)
And we get the usual suspects - the London think-tanks promoting "reform" and deregulation, telling us that the problem is GDF or E.On, when these companies have shown exactly how to deal with Moscow - diversify, make sure that Gazprom supplies less than it could, and tie the company under constraining long term supply contracts supported by intergovernmental negotiations.
Why are the fossil fuel corporations still in the driver's seat and keep our energy prices in a strangle fold?
+++++
EU Policy on the Iraq War and its Aftermath: The Breakdown and Revival of Consensus-based Decision-making
At first glance, the deep divisions in Europe over the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq hardly represent a successfully chapter in the evolution of Common Foreign Security Policy (CFSP) and the EU's long-term effort at becoming a coherent, influential international actor. The run up to the Iraq war split open fissures amongst EU member states rarely displayed in such naked clarity: 'new' versus 'old', 'Atlanticist' versus 'Europeanist' [sometimes referred to as Gaullist], and within the big state `triumvirate' of Britain, France, and Germany.
And when a majority of member states publicly broke ranks with a tenuously reached common position, sceptics argued that the EU's consultative and consensus-based process of foreign policy-making was either fictitious or irrevocably broken.
According to David Calleo, 'internal divergences over Iraq mocked the geopolitical vision of European unity'. But what is striking about this case is not the failure of EU members to reach a common policy on Iraq. Indeed, as John Peterson noted soon after the war began, `Iraq had been a bitterly divisive issue in both transatlantic and inter-European relations for at least ten years'
New Geopolitics of Central and Eastern Europe
Between European Union and United States
The `Letter of the Eight' signed, inter alia, by Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and later by Slovakia; the subsequent letter of the `Vilnius Group'; the US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld's suggestion that the centre of gravity is shifting from `Old' to `New' Europe; and finally the reaction of President Chirac to the political position of the EU candidate states - these developments led to a profound shock in Europe. The European constitutional debate that went through a deadlock in Brussels added uncertainty to the future relations between new and old Member States.
The countries once located on the Western periphery of the Soviet Union, apparently doomed also to be peripheral within the European Union, have found themselves in the centre of a heated debate on the future of the transatlantic relations and a new balance of power in Europe.
For the past decade, the Western perception of Central and Eastern Europe was shaped first by a romantic vision of the peaceful revolution of 1989 and the slogan `Return to Europe', later by the less admirable picture of the national and ethnic conflict in former Yugoslavia, and the growing role of populist politicians and nostalgia for the communist past. By the end of the 1990s, the situation became more stable, giving way to a routine of mutual contacts based on a profound asymmetry between the Member
States and the Candidate States. The concept of reunification was replaced by the project of enlargement with clearly defined roles: the Candidate States were questioned and evaluated on how they conformed to the set conditions, and eventually either praised or reproached.
Paradoxically, the Western interest in these countries seemed to be fading. Central Europe was no longer a fascinating revolutionary phenomenon, nor a source of instability jeopardizing Western Europe's security. `New Europe' dreamt about becoming the West, finding the way to the luxurious club that ensured security, prosperity and high status among the nations. These aspirations did not generate much excitement in Western Europe.
`New Europe's' perception of its strategic priorities and attitude toward the EU and the United States started to evolve in a manner that initially was not recognized in Western Europe. In this context Poland is seen as a country not only willing to integrate with the EU and strengthen its relations with the United States, but also to assume a leading role in the region. Yet among countries demonstrating a strong preference for a close alliance with the US, there are important differences in the degree of assertive formulation of the national interests; in the readiness to play an active role in the transatlantic relations and within the European Union.
Finally, some countries seem inclined to strike an alliance with a particular dominating state, or to follow the `coalition of the willing' model - in other words, to shift coalitions within Europe depending on their particular interests. Perhaps for the first time after 1989, Central Europe is facing truly difficult political choices. Following their Cold War experiences, the countries of the region are not prepared for this challenge; their previous history is not very helpful either. The necessity to make tough political choices in the times of profound changes taking place globally and in Europe is, however, the price of freedom and sovereignty that these countries achieved only fifteen years ago.
EUROPE RIPPED APART BY DONALD RUMSFELD AND COLD WAR WARRIORS
Old and New Europe
Populism and Right-wing Extremism as the New Normal
The ticking time bomb of destruction hammering the foundation and principles of security of the European Union. The year 2000 forward ...
Ukraine Caught Between East and West, Red and Blue | 3 Oct. 2019 |
A long history of a divided state, caught up in collapse of West-European and Eastern Empires and the Rise and Fall of Communism in the 20th Century. The oligarchs run the nation ...
Viktor Pinchuk, Trump's Lonely Friend In Ukraine
In the first google search the organization "Yes" appeared ... a long history to join the EU and reset the relations with Russia. Yalta European Strategy (YES) founded in 2004.
EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy
Droit et Politique de l'Immigration et de l'Asile de l'UE
Coming to terms with relocation: the infringement case against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic | 17 April 2020 |
Push back act of drowning Mediterranean boat migrants ... Greece
Regime change: the war of choice by the US, EU and NATO states ... the sham of R2P and the three female warriors of the first Obama-Biden administration 2009-2013
Survivors of the Adriana: 'The captain lost the way ... That's when we called for help'
Testimony from terrified passengers on the doomed migrant ship which sank near Greece last June suggests hundreds of deaths may have been preventable. For survivors, their ordeal was just beginning
For Yazan, the only way was out. The 33-year-old is originally from Daraa, a city known as the cradle of Syria's revolution and which has been devastated by 12 years of war. Hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have died - the vast majority of them at the hands of the still-ruling regime, according to a recent report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
And Yazan was wanted, ordered to serve in the regime's military: a role that can involve killing other Syrians, for a force implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
So he found an escape. A smuggler helped him cross from the Syrian city of Homs to Lebanon. He flew out of Beirut, legally, to Libya.
"I wanted to go to Germany where I have family," Yazan explains. He had heard horror stories of Syrians travelling to Turkey, with the hope of crossing the sea to Greece, and instead being forced back to Syria. "That's why I had to choose that way, through the plane to Libya, then Italy."
History of RAND and McNamara's Domino Theory SE Asia
.
How A Sailor Reunited With Vietnamese Refugees He Rescued After The Fall Of Saigon | NBC News |
Millions died across SE Asia, former French Indochina and defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
After the Fall of Saigon | Cairo Review |
The Vietnam War lasted twenty years and cost the lives of more than two million Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. troops. In the forty years since the Communist victory and American defeat, a surprising friendship has followed.
Reprieve of #JP now as US President ... "Baby I'm Back" 😊
CIA Is Back: East-West Tensions In Europe | 19 April 2021 |
U.S. Intelligence and American policy kept a Cold War intact. Doing a repeat performance, Europe build on Four Freedoms does not get the opportunity to grow from infancy through adolescence to mature as a force for peace. Communism and corruption in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states have been incorporated in Western countries and Israel to its very own detriment. The U.S. and the United Kingdom have led the attack on Russia, a failed state created during the leadership, or lack thereof, of Boris Yeltsin.
America doesn't want an united Europe as a strong economic power and will do the utmost to undermine the union. Bush and Rumsfeld split Europe into Old and New Europe. The former Soviet satellites states were like a warm bun that was easily taken into America's orbit. The allegiance to U.S. military and CIA intelligence came not really as a surprise as America is seen as the liberator of continental Europe and the defeat of Communism. With the Afghan expedition of the U.S. and NATO, many ugly abuses of human rights were seen as "acceptable" for the right cause to defeat the Islamists. Terror became the great evil across the globe and most nations in the NATO alliance left no stone unturned to cooperate.
Torture of prisoners, rendition across the globe run by the CIA, got open support from many U.S. allies. The strong ties of Eastern Europe to U.S. military and its intelligence became a strong bond above the legitimacy of being a member of the European Union.
American exceptionalism, white supremacy ... I am better than Thou ... my life is worth more than your and yours.
Recurring Manifest Destiny ... GENOCIDE
