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.

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

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

EU to Ban Seeds and Criminalize Unregistered Gardens

The U.S. has already seen its fair share of cases where backyard gardens and rain collectors are raided by SWAT teams, shut down through regulations and otherwise intimidated out of proliferation. Now, official policies to support this kind of dominance by biotech, pesticide companies and other playsa in big agribusiness are being pushed through in Europe, in this case by the European Commission through a truly bunk proposed law.

Arjun Walia, from Collective-Evolution.com, writes: The European Commission is changing the European Union’s plant legislation, apparently to enhance food safety across the continent. This move has sparked a heavy opposition from many, saying that the measure will threaten seed diversity and favour large agrochemical businesses. This new law creates new powers to classify and regulate all plant life anywhere in Europe.

The “Plant Reproductive Material Law” regulates all plants. It contains restrictions on vegetables and woodland trees, as well as all other plants of any species. It will be illegal to grow, reproduce, or trade any vegetable seed or tree that has not been been tested and approved by the government, more specifically the “EU Plant Variety Agency.” [...] The new law basically puts the government in charge of all plants and seeds in Europe, and prevents home gardeners from growing their own plants from non-regulated seeds. If they did, they would now be considered criminals.

If this takes root as law in Europe and elsewhere, it will contribute towards the total subjugation of the people to the undue powers granted to biotech and Big Agra.

Truthstream Media - Government Bans Americans from Growing Vegetables! (Wealth Daily)

#Euromaidan

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Cyprus bailout: 'people are panicking, they're afraid of losing their money'

Under the palm trees of Larnaca's waterfront promenade, George Kyprou was staring out to sea and scratching his head. "I don't know what to do," he said. Like most Cypriots, he was astonished to wake up one bank holiday weekend morning to discover the government had seized up to 10% of everyone's savings from their bank accounts without warning.

Kyprou, 62, born in Larnaca, had worked most of his life as a chauffeur and driver in England, proudly buying his London council flat and scrimping to put aside money in Cyprus for when he returned for holidays and eventually to retire. "I'd put aside £50 here, £20 there, all my life," he said. Over decades, he had built up around €6,000 (£5,200) in a Larnaca account. "It was a state building society; I assumed it was safe." But now, as depositors holding less than €100,000 are made to pay 6.75% and those with more than €100,000 9.9% as part of a €10bn (£8.7bn) bailout agreed in Brussels, Kyprou stands to lose €400 overnight. "That's a lot for someone like me," he said.

When he heard the news on Saturday morning, he rushed to the cashpoint and queued with others who were panicking and trying to take out as much money as they could. The media reported a run on ATMs that were depleted by mid-afternoon. But with Cyprus taking immediate steps to prevent any money transfers over the weekend, ordinary savers realised there was little they could do to lessen the blow.

More on The Guardian

Luxembourg Prime Minister Warns European War 'Demons' May Return

The prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned Europe risks descending into a conflict similar to the First World War as a result of the eurozone crisis.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Juncker, who used to head the Euro Group of eurozone ministers, said the single currency was about "forging peace" but too many EU members states were "returning to a regional and national mindset".

"The way some German politicians have lashed out at Greece when the country fell into the crisis has left deep wounds there," he said."I was just as shocked by the banners of protesters in Athens that showed the German chancellor in a Nazi uniform. "Sentiments suddenly surfaced that we thought had been finally relegated to the past. The Italian election was also excessively anti-German and thus un-European."

Junker said that "anyone who believes that the eternal issue of war and peace in Europe has been permanently laid to rest could be making a monumental error". He added: "The demons haven't been banished; they are merely sleeping, as the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo have shown us. I am chilled by the realization of how similar circumstances in Europe in 2013 are to those of 100 years ago."

The Sun

'Attempt to ban porn' discovered in EU report

On Tuesday, members of the European Parliament will vote on the worthy yet mundane-sounding Report on Eliminating Gender Stereotypes in the EU. But bloggers this week pounced on an article in the report that calls for “a ban on all forms of pornography in the media”, and urged their supporters to bombard all 754 MEPs with emails condemning the “unacceptable political invasion of people’s bedrooms”.

While Tuesday’s vote in Strasbourg is merely an expression of support and would not be legally binding, critics worry that it could be the first step towards draconian policing of the internet in Europe. It comes after Iceland began drafting legislation to ban all online pornography, prompting cries of censorship.

Rickard Falkvinge, a founder of the libertarian Swedish Pirate Party, said the text coming before the European Parliament was a “horrendous attack on our fundamental freedoms of speech and expression” while a Pirate Party MEP, Christian Engstrom, warned that “the devil is in the detail” – in particular a call in the report for “a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere. This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the internet service providers to start policing what citizens do on the internet, not by legislation, but by ‘self-regulation’,” he wrote on his blog. “This is something we have seen before in a number of different proposals, and which is one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.”

More on The Independent