Ukraine Chooses Homophobia Over Europe

On Nov. 10 the Verkhovna Rada refused to pass a law that would have allowed Ukrainian citizens to have the long-awaited privilege of visa-free travel in the European Union. The reason behind the legislation’s resounding defeat? A provision preventing discrimination against gays in the workplace. This provision, which is a precondition for visa-free travel set by the EU, ignited a vociferous outcry, and ultimately turned into a red line which the Rada refused to cross.

“As a country with a thousand-year-old Christian history, we simply cannot allow this,” is how Rada deputy Pavlo Unguryan, a member of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s own party, explained it after a previous attempt to pass the legislation on Nov. 5 failed.

This isn’t the first homophobic news to come out of Ukraine this year: On June 6, members of the ultranationalist group Right Sector attacked Kiev’s gay pride parade, brutally injuring numerous marchers as well as police. In July, when a pair of gay activists decided to test the extent of Ukraine’s new Western values by holding hands in the middle of Kiev, they were quickly assaulted by thugs. On Nov. 2, the Kyiv Post profiled Mykola Dulskiy, the founder of a vigilante group called Fashion Verdict, whose mission, according to the article, is to “sweep promiscuity, gambling, sexual offenders and homosexuality from the streets of Ukraine’s cities.” The “verdict” is delivered in a rather straightforward manner: Members of the organization track down and beat anyone they deem degenerate.

More at Foreign Policy and Kyiv Post

The Censored Truth Of The Refugee Crisis

Today 60 million human beings are displaced from war and extreme poverty. Many European countries are responding to the crisis with racist hysteria, polices and police state measures.
Abby Martin exposes the facts that are left out of the mainstream reporting: the role of criminal wars, disastrous neoliberal economics and why mass displacement is a permanent feature under this system.

Empire Files - teleSUR English

The EU Implementation of the Brezhnev Doctrine

Nigel Farage

Refugees on Slovenia-Croatia border

Aerial footage shows the scale of migration at the Slovenian-Croatian border, where hundreds of refugees are seen crossing farmland on foot on Sunday.

The European Refugee Crisis and Syria Explained

Why is the refugee crisis all over the news? How is this related to Syria? Why should we care at all?

In a Nutshell

Why Are Gulf States Refusing To Take In Syrian Refugees?

The number of Syrian refugees that are trying to make it to the EU is rising fast. What is more surprising though is where they are not trying to go. They are not headed to the Gulf States because those countries are refusing to let any of them in.

The Young Turks

Syrian refugee crisis is 'sickening'

Angelina Jolie slammed the U.N. for failing Syrian refugees during a briefing to the Security Council on Friday. "We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world's inability to protect and defend the innocent," Jolie, a U.N. special envoy for refugees, told the council.

Jolie has travelled to the region 11 times since Syria's civil war began in 2011. Close to 4 million Syrians have fled the country and are living as refugees in the region and abroad. "Nearly 4 million Syrian refugees are victims of a conflict they have no part in, yet they are stigmatized, unwanted, and regarded as a burden," Jolie added.

More at mashable.com

Where Are the Syrian Refugees?

After the tragic crisis in Syria, more than half of all Syrians have left their homes. Where are they?

Gapminder Foundation

EU Transparency at work

The Commission's 14-page letter from tobacco lobby on trade talks in PDF

CEO (@corporateeurope) on Twitter

The Greek No Vote Marks a Victory for Humanity

You could almost hear the collective sound of hearts being lifted across Europe in response to the Greek No ('Oxi') vote to the Troika's bailout demands, making it a moment to savour in itself. The hope that resonates with the defiance shown by the Greek people has been a long time coming for people suffering the weight of austerity, measured in the lack of fight to what has seemed a juggernaut of despair rolling over the lives of millions without respite.
Not anymore.

What this unfolding Greek crisis has exposed is that austerity is not so much an economic theory as an ideological concept - a code for class war, waged by the rich and their political servants against working people and the poor in order to maintain the wealth, privileges and profits of those who crashed the global economy with their unfettered greed and recklessness in the first place.

In calling this referendum, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and his Syriza government delivered a masterstroke, counterposing democracy to the tyranny of global capital, specifically the European Central Bank, IMF, and the European Commission, otherwise known as the Troika. The pressure arrayed against them in the process, both from without and within Greece by the country's privately owned media was inordinate and unprecedented. Yet despite this the people delivered a resounding No, thus plunging the Troika into crisis as Greece teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and exit from the EU.

More by John Wight on Huff. Post.

500 Greek families survive in ‘temporary camp’ with no power & running water for 15 years

European PR firms whitewashing brutal regimes

New research exposes companies behind Europe's multi-million Euro image-laundering business.

A report released today by research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) sheds light on how dictators and repressive regimes are paying European PR firms and lobbyists to push their agenda and mask their dire human rights records.

“Spin doctors to the autocrats: how European PR firms whitewash repressive regimes” lifts the lid on the murky world of spin carried out on behalf of some of the world's most brutal regimes. CEO is calling on EU institutions to urgently establish a mandatory lobbying register as a step towards bringing some much needed transparency to the sector. Transparency rules should include a specific clarification that lobbying for non-EU governments and states is required to be reported.

Corporate Europe Observatory

Ukraine Crisis - What You're Not Being Told

The European and American public are being systematically lied to about the Ukraine crisis.

Norman Finkelstein on Gaza conflict, Hamas goals and Iron Dome myth

As debate and international concern grow over Gaza, RT's Mona Zughbi sits down for an exclusive interview with American political scientist, activist, professor, and author Norman Finkelstein . We take a deeper look into the the war on Gaza that has left almost two thousand Palestinians, mostly civilians dead.
Finkelstein, who has extensively studied and written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for over 3 decades explains the reason behind this offensive and what the end game will be for Gaza. In addition to this analysis, he answers questions about Hamas' rockets and tunnels as well as Israel's Iron Dome. We take a look at how these components came together resulting in the deadliest attack in Gaza.

Also see: American Radical - The Trials of Norman Finkelstein

The making of Angela Merkel

Belarus: 20 years under dictatorship and a revolution behind the rest of Europe

Tucked away behind the vast, charmless apartment blocks and broad thoroughfares so beloved of Soviet town planners, the Minsk History Museum boasts Belarus’s best exhibition of the summer. Back in the BSSR (the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, as it was then known) is a showcase of Soviet memorabilia and propaganda that takes visitors back a generation to a time when this was one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics.

Or is it? Some would argue you don’t have to enter the exhibition to be Back in the BSSR. Streets in the capital are still named after Marx and Engels. A statue of Lenin dominates a city centre square. There’s even a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the original Soviet secret policeman and the first statue toppled in Moscow when the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991. A metro ride costs 20p. People smoke indoors. Almost no one has tattoos. This feels like a place that is at least one revolution behind the rest of us, maybe more.

And then there is the leader. This summer, Europe’s longest-serving ruler - the only post-Soviet president that Belarus has known - marks 20 years in office. Since Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994, parliament has been emasculated, political opponents driven into exile or disappeared, and the media have been silenced. This is a country where the KGB is still called the KGB. It is the last European country to use the death penalty – a bullet to the back of the prisoner’s head. Last month, Lukashenko announced he intended to bring back “serfdom” to “teach the peasants to work more efficiently”.

More at The Guardian

Euromania

A filmmaker on a search to uncover the European Union: does Europe provide jobs and democracy, or is it a big business project? A deeply personal and revealing documentary from the creators of the 2012 hit Panopticon. EUROMANIA shows what is happening to people and countries all over Europe. Democracies are being changed in depended states where a small group of people call all the shots.
See it at euromaniafilm.com

Meanwhile in the Ukraine

Ukraine Pandemonium

Anti-government protesters and riot police in Ukraine have clashed on the sidelines of a rally in defiance of new laws aimed at curbing public protests.

Tens of thousands of pro-EU demonstrators gathered in Kiev's Independence Square to protest against the laws, which were passed on Thursday with a quick show of hands by MPs loyal to President Viktor Yanukovych.

See BBC for more

#Euromaidan

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