The Euro: The Rope That Is Strangling Spain… and Europe’s Democracy
by Peter Martino – November 21, 2011
Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is the fourth head of government of the 17 eurozone countries in barely six weeks to lose his position as a result of the eurocrisis. Earlier Slovakia’s Iveta Radicova, Greece’s George Papandreou and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi were forced to resign. Last Sunday, Zapatero lost the elections after a campaign which was overshadowed by the worst economic crisis Spain has encountered since civil war in the 1930s.
Spain has Europe’s highest unemployment rate – almost 23% of the workforce is without a job – and its highest youth unemployment – a staggering 47%. Spain’s national debt is relatively low, but, with a budget defecit of 9% and hardly any economic growth, is rising rapidly.
Først sagde de nej til EUs gældsplan. Men pludselig skiftede de mening – Jyllands-Posten skriver om det her. Farage kommenterer på situationen, som den så ud, da Slovakkerne havde afvist euro-krisefonden, EFSF. Slovakiet har i den forbindelse udskrevet parlamantsvalg i utide – videoer fra i dag:
Nigel Farage: United States of Europe insane politics
Slovakia’s opposition leader says the deal to approve expanding the EU bailout fund has been reached and it will be voted in later this week. Earlier, the country’s parliament voted against it, which caused the collapse of country’s ruling coalition. Slovakia was the only member to say ‘no’ to increasing the facility, which already got the green light from 16 of the 17 Eurozone members. RT talks to British Euro MP Nigel Farage.
Der følger en artikel med, som man kan læse her hos Russia Today.
Opdatering:
UKIP Nigel Farage and Lib Dem Sharon Bowles – Sky News Oct 2011
UK Independence Party Leader debates with Pro EU and Pro Euro Liberal Democrat Sharon Bowles MEP
Farage: Barroso in the bunker planning world domination
European Parliament, Brussels – 12 October 2011
Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the EFD Group in the European Parliament (Europe of Freedom and Democracy)
Debate: Preparation for the European Council meeting (23.10.2011) – With Mikołaj DOWGIELEWICZ (Council Member, Polish EU presidency) and José Manuel Barroso (Commission President)
Desuden et godt interview:
“A ‘United States of Europe’ will mean the end of democracy in Europe” – Nigel Farage
J. Luis Martin – October 6, 2011
A self-described Libertarian, Nigel Farage is a founder member of the UK Independence Party, which was established in September 1993. He is the Member of the European Parliament for the South East region and is the leader of the parliamentary party in the EU parliament. The following is Truman Factor’s exclusive interview with the most visible Eurosceptic voice in the European Union’s political establishment.
Over the past decade, you have evolved from being the UK’s foremost eurosceptic voice in Europe to becoming the continent’s most visible anti-EU integration watchdog. What has led you to expand your political mission? Do you feel that your group’s vision is finally gaining political momentum?
I must admit, as what the UK establishment likes to call a “small” party in the UK, we certainly didn’t set out with the intention to lead a coalition of nations or be a figure-head for millions of under represented Europeans across the continent. Although, probably I am over-stating our position, our mission was to extract the UK from the corrupt and undemocratic European Union as fast as possible. Of course, that remains our goal today – but we have seen a large base of support begin to grow from across the world to our cause. We have friends and members in Canada, Australia, the USA and all over Europe. It has not been by clever design on our part, but a natural evolution of using our position in the EU “parliament” effectively and speaking what we believe to be the truth with passion and conviction.
En utrolig fin samtale her fra radioprogrammet, Nothing But The Truth, den 3. marts 2011. Intervieweren hedder Carl Boyd:
Nonie Darwish & Carl Boyd – Sharia for Dummies
The expert Nonie Darwish on a lot of issues from the sharia law as seen in the Middle East as well as in the West. A very thorough and insightful talk here. And quite a warning to countries struggeling with an unwanted immigrant burden. From Nothing But The Truth Radio Show on March 3 & 4, 2011.
Opdatering 30. juni 2011 – The Tablet har et særegent portræt af Nonie Darwish her.
Opdatering 7. juli 2011 – David Horowitz protesterer over den behandling, Nonie Darwish har fået af Tablet Magazine:
Anti-Defamation
The Egyptian-born anti-Islamic activist Nonie Darwish, whose life story and outspoken views on Israel and the Arab world make her someone Jews should support, was unfairly tarred in Tablet
By David Horowitz | Jul 7, 2011
Tablet Magazine has published a bizarre attack by Jeremy Seth Davis on an incredibly brave Arab defender of Israel and the Jews. Nonie Darwish is the daughter of an Egyptian general who was chief of intelligence for Gamel Abdel Nasser. Nasser was the dictator whose armies invaded Israel in 1956, when Gaza was part of Egypt and the West Bank had been annexed by Jordan and nobody referred to Arabs as “Palestinians.” Darwish’s family lived in Gaza, and her father created the Fedayeen, the first terrorist organization dedicated to the murder of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state. Her father was responsible for the murder of numerous Israeli civilians before he was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in a targeted assassination. At the time, Nonie was 8 years old.
Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union is Wrong
By Leon Aron | July/August 2011 issue
Every revolution is a surprise. Still, the latest Russian Revolution must be counted among the greatest of surprises. In the years leading up to 1991, virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it one-party dictatorship, the state-owned economy, and the Kremlin’s control over its domestic and Eastern European empires. Neither, with one exception, did Soviet dissidents nor, judging by their memoirs, future revolutionaries themselves. When Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985, none of his contemporaries anticipated a revolutionary crisis. Although there were disagreements over the size and depth of the Soviet system’s problems, no one thought them to be life-threatening, at least not anytime soon.
Man sagde ellers, at russerne gav op overfor Vestens IT-revolution. At det især var udfordringen fra EDB, som det hed dengang. Det mangler i artiklen. Mere HER i Foreign Policy – kan også læses her hos AEI.
Meltdown
For the first time, Boris Yeltsin’s right-hand man tells the inside story of the coup that killed glasnost — and changed the world.
By Gennady Burbulis & Michele A. Berdy | July/August 2011
“That scum!” Boris Yeltsin fumed. “It’s a coup. We can’t let them get away with it.”
It was the morning of Aug. 19, 1991, and the Russian president was standing at the door of his dacha in Arkhangelskoe, a compound of small country houses outside Moscow where the top Russian government officials lived. I had raced over from my own house nearby, after a friend called from Moscow, frantic and nearly hysterical, insisting that I turn on the radio. There had been a coup; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been removed from power.
The European Union was the best thing that could have happened to the continent. But over the years it has grown into a demon, uncontrollable and impossible to throw out of office. To avoid collapse, there is only one road open: back to the nation. And back to democracy. (Excerpts) Excerpts.
Dirk Schümer – 8 June 2011
The European Union is the best thing that could have happened to the continent since the fall of the Roman Empire. For the jostling nations of the West to reach a state where they could no longer wage war on each other first required total catastrophe. After 1945, no sane European could go on seeking his salvation in nationalism. The ideal of a Europe united was simple: by gradually intertwining national economies, every motive for going to war – indeed, the sheer logistics of such an effort – would render war impossible. Who would lay waste to his own factories and fields?
Mere HER hos Presseurop. Kan også læses her i The Free Republic.
Corrupt Language Breeds Bad History and Bad Policy
Advancing a Free Society
by Bruce S. Thornton – May 24, 2011
As the history of communism and fascism both illustrate, modern political tyranny has relied on fabricated history to legitimize its claims and actions, and such history in turn relies on the debasement of language. Nowhere is this axiom more evident than in the conflict between Israel and the Arabs — so much so that, as Obama’s recent remarks about Israel show, the false history and its false vocabulary are now taken for reality and made the basis of policy.
Start with the use of “borders” to describe what is in fact the armistice line marking the farthest advance of the five Arab armies that invaded Israel in 1948. That line is not an international “border” in the strict sense of a line dividing one sovereign state from another. The territory in question was never a state. Once a state is established, then the international border will be settled by negotiations. As Israeli ambassador Dore Gold points out, UN resolution 242, as well as later agreements such as the 1993 Oslo Accords, preserves this “flexibility for creating new borders.”
Mere HER i Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers. Og en til:
The Teacher of Fools
Posted by Bruce Thornton on May 30th, 2011
In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian ambassador refutes the Spartans’ claim that they are going to war with Athens on the principle of justice: “Calculations of interest have made you take up the cry of justice––a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might.” Thucydides presents here a permanent truth of interstate conflict: when force will not get a people what they want, they will often cloak their ambitions in lofty principles like justice in order to gain sympathy, buy time, and win allies.
How Western Foreign Policy Experts Got The Middle East Wrong and Why They’re Getting It Wrong Again
Lecture by Dr. Barry Rubin – March 10, 2011 • Luxe Hotel Sunset – Los Angeles
Amid all the speculation and panic, opinion and punditry about the current ongoing turmoil in Egypt and the Middle East, one man’s perspective cuts through the fog like a lighthouse beam.
The protests cascading across the Middle East are shaking much more than the Arab autocracies that have dominated the region for decades. Things that we thought were stable in the Middle East have turned out to be fragile, while movements that were supposed to be weak have turned into powerful tsunamis of change. Long-held beliefs are falling by the wayside.
Despite these upheavals, the same old self-styled experts are trotting out the same tired and debunked conventional wisdom about the region.
They have had to change the players around, but the apologies and fantasies are all the same. Instead of secular Arab nationalists like Yasser Arafat moderating before signing Oslo, now it’s that fanatical Muslim leaders like Yusuf al-Qaradawi can be dealt with. Instead of Hamas professionalizing after seizing Gaza, now it’s that Hezbollah will integrate into Lebanon. The contexts are different but the excuses remain the same.
Meanwhile Barry Rubin has been working tirelessly to dispel exactly this fog of misinformation. Dr. Rubin has been a Middle East writer and analyst for more than 30 years, and is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. He has written 23 books, edited an additional 32 books, and is the editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. There is literally not a topic in the Middle East that Dr. Rubin has not addressed, often in terms strikingly different than the conventional wisdom – and always with analysis that proves to be more incisive, and predictions that turn out to be more accurate, than the conventional wisdom.
There is perhaps no one able to speak about the instability rocking the Middle East, both in specific contexts and in the broadest of terms, than Barry Rubin.
Roger Scruton fortæller om det undergrundsarbejde, han var involveret i før murens fald. Styret i det daværende Tjekkoslovakiet arresterede Scruton og smed ham ud af landet. Vi hører også om tiden efter murens fald og delingen af landet. Fra 31. oktober 2010 – man kan følge med i en komplet udskrift fra Radio Prague her:
Roger Scruton and a special relationship
31-10-2010 By David Vaughan
One of the most prominent guests at the Forum 2000 conference in Prague earlier this month was the conservative English philosopher and writer Roger Scruton. In the Czech Republic he is well known not just for his extensive writings on the history of modern philosophy, but also for close links he forged with Czechoslovakia in the years before the fall of communism. In this week’s Czech Books, Roger Scruton talks to David Vaughan about how his special relationship to this country has developed over the years.
Programmet startes HER – åbner Windows Media Player. Varighed knap 17 minutter.
While the term “Religious Right” is one of the most frequently used terms in the political lexicon, notably since the rise of what is usually referred to as the Evangelical Churches, the Political Left is alive and well and a strong crutch for the Democratic Party calling for “social justice”. During the first term of the Eisenhower administration, the role of American churches in politics became a major issue and helped precipitate the campaign to defame and censure Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.
Det er ikke altid nemt at være blogger. Især ikke, hvis man bor i Kina. Her sidder 50 bloggere i øjeblikket i fængsel på grund af ting, de har skrevet på nettet. Det er langt størstedelen af de 64 mennesker, der på verdensplan er røget bag tremmer for at kritisere deres lands styre online. Det er en af konklusionerne i en ny undersøgelse fra Journalister Uden Grænser, som netop er blevet offentliggjort.
Det skriver EkstraBladet. Det handler om den årlige undersøgelse af graden af pressefrihed i de fleste af verdens lande.
Også i Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam og Egypten er bloggere blevet arresteret og nyhedssider på nettet er blevet lukket. De mest kendte eksempler er WordPress og YouTube, som flere af landene har afskåret deres befolkninger fra at få adgang til. Det har bla. Tyrkiet gjort. Landet indtager plads nummer 101 ud af 169.
I en artikel fra Reporters Without Borders står der, bloggere nu er lige så forfulgte som journalister er. Organisationen nævner specifikt Kareem, som denne blog har skrevet om mange gange:
A young man known as Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt for blog posts criticising the president and Islamist control of the country’s universities.
Man kan stadig støtte underskriftsindsamlingen HER.
Her er top 10 – mange lande deler placeringer:
1. Island
1. Norge
3. Estland
3. Slovakiet
5. Belgien
5. Finland
5. Sverige
8. Danmark
8. Irland
8. Portugal
Og bunden:
160. Uzbekistan
161. Laos
162. Vietnam
163. Kina
164. Burma
165. Cuba
166. Iran
167. Turkmenistan
168. Nordkorea
169. Eritrea
Man kan se hele listen på linket til Reporters Without Borders.
Et klart mønster tegner sig. Konservative medier får etiketten ‘højreorienteret’, hvorimod venstreorienterede får ‘uafhængig’, ‘velanset’ eller ‘troværdig’.
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