Europe
Europe
Fair Observer provides insightful and informed analysis about important European issues, events and trends.
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360° Analysis / Bidzina Ivanishvili / Free Press / Freedom House / Katherin Machalek / Media Censorship. Georgia / Micheil Saakashvilli / Politics / Press Freedom / Tbilisi / Transparency International Georgia / Europe / Arts & CultureDespite the recent change in leadership, Georgian media seems unlikely to develop non-partisan reporting in the near future, argues Freedom House analyst Katherin Machalek. Amid great fanfare, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili appeared at a rally in Tbilisi on April 19 in support of his United National Movement (UNM), which had ruled the country from 2003 until it lost the October 2012 parliamentary elections. Since then, the party has suffered a serious decline in popularity, which it desperately hopes to recover before presidential elections in October 2013. This desperation was captured in news coverage of the April event: pro-UNM media featured members of the party claiming as many...
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360° Analysis / Barack Obama / Bashar Al-Assad / Diplomacy / Israel / Jeffrey Laurenti / Lakhdar Brahimi / Negotiations / Nobel Prize / Politics / Recep Tayyip Erdogan / Ryan Crocker / Syria / Syrian Civil War / Turkey / UN resolution / United States / Europe / Middle East / Global SecuritySyria is not Iraq. Outside Washington, the US seems strongly opposed to deep involvement in the Syrian conflict. Obama's caution is on the mark, argues Jeffrey Laurenti. As pressures mount in Washington for a more aggressive American involvement on behalf of at least some rebel groups in Syria, President Obama has seemed intent on proving the Nobel committee was farsighted in awarding him its peace prize four years ago. He sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow this month with an initiative to re-engage diplomatically with Russia to end the war, through an international conference in June. It could not come soon enough. The Syrian government has, by all accounts, begun to win back...
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Alexander von Hahn / anti-blasphemy laws / Memorial Society / Moscow / NGO Berlin Conference / nongovernmental organization / Politics / Russia / Russian NGOs law / Europe / Focus Article / BRICAs the “anti-blasphemy” bill passes the State Duma, prison sentences and fines for public insults and humiliation of divine services, as well as believers’ feelings, have become real. With the Russian state becoming increasingly anachronistic and failing to deliver on its promise of social modernisation, Alexander von Hahn sees the country’s nongovernmental organizations taking the initiative into their own hands. Russia's new law on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) was recently criticized at the United Nations by the US, which called it to be rescinded. While opening the first German-Russian NGO conference in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Guido...
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Andrew Haldane / Dodd Frank Act / Financial regulations / Glass Steagall Act / Irish Prime minister / John Bruton / prime minister / UK tax system / United States / Europe / Finance & Economics / Focus Article / Business & EntrepreneurshipBy John BrutonFormer Prime Minister John Bruton asks, why are modern business regulations so complex? I believe that, across the Western world, we may be reaching some sort of limit in the complexity of rules governing business. The response to the financial crisis has been ever more complex rules, that only a tiny number of professional advisors could ever hope to remember, or understand properly. In the United States, the Glass Steagall Act, introduced to regulate banking after the Depression of the 1930s, ran to 37 pages. In contrast, the Dodd Frank Act, introduced in the wake of the recent crisis, runs to 848 pages of basic text, plus 30,000 pages of implementing rules. In the United...
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Forced Labour / immigration / Migration / Mirko van Pampus / Moldova / Prostitution / Sex Industry / Trafficking / Turkey / Europe / Focus Article / Global ChangeThe dominant terminology on forced labour relations is too rigid in assuming the existence of two homogeneous but separated groups of workers. "For three hundred years, the most powerful nations on earth grew richer and stronger on the profits of slave trade. Over twelve million men, women and children were forcefully transported from Africa...to the colonies and plantations of North and South America. Today, slavery is illegal in every country on the planet, but the truth is slavery did not die in the 19th Century. It is alive, it is thriving and it is bigger than ever." With this sweeping statement, researcher and journalist Rageh Omaar introduces every episode of the eight-part...
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360° Analysis / Algerian War / Colonialism / Extremism / France / Informed Comment / Islam / Juan Cole / Muslims / Russia / Stalin / terrorism / Tsar / United States / World War 1 / World War 2 / Europe / Middle East / Africa / Global Security / AsiaBy Juan ColeTerrorism is a tactic of extremists within each religion, and within secular religions of Marxism or nationalism. No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents, argues Juan Cole. Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions. Murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States. As for political violence, people of Christian heritage in the 20th Century polished off tens of millions of people in the two world wars and colonial repression. This massive carnage did not occur because European Christians are worse than or different from other human beings, but...
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360° Analysis / Boston Bombings / Chechen-Russian War / Chechens / Chechnya / Iliana Hagenah / international security / terrorism / Tsarnaev / United States / Europe / Global SecurityHistorically, radical jihadists in Chechnya do not have the ideological ambition to form a network of Chechens against the US, argues Iliana Hagenah. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher once called Chechen rebels "freedom fighters" but they are now seen by many as radical Islamists. Chechen Islamists have recently been making the headlines. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the two brothers who recently bombed the Boston Marathon, are suspected to be products of the radical Islamist movement that has gripped Chechnya and parts of the Chechen Diaspora. Chechen history offers clues about whether these radical jihadi Islamists are part of a broader anti-American network...
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360° Analysis / Carbon Emissions / Energy Descent Action Plan / Rob Hopkins / Serena Carta / Symbio Cities / transition movement / Europe / Global Change / Environment & SustainabilityBy Serena CartaFounded seven years ago in Ireland, and now spread throughout the world, the Transition Movement aims for the creation of an alternative system based on resilience and happiness as a response to current environmental and economic instability. To switch from a world based on oil resources and disposable objects to a new society built on the philosophy of degrowth, awareness, respect, and value of relations between humans and nature. This is the idea upon which the Transition Movement is based. Also known as “Transition Towns,” it consists of a social and cultural movement founded in 2005 in the town of Kinsale, Ireland with the purpose to support the society, in order to create...
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Ban Ki Moon / carbon dioxide / Carbon Emissions / climate change / Cristina Simonetti / greenhouse gases / United States / Europe / 360° Context / Global Change / Middle East / Americas / Africa / Asia / Environment & SustainabilityAs the last significant climate change conference took place six months ago, it is essential to observe developments and create awareness about the issue. Background It was not until after the efforts of a few highly committed scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Hubert Lamb in England and J. Murray Mitchell in the US, that climate change was accepted as a scientific concept. Today, however, the issue is no longer about finding proof, but solutions. At the simplest level, we can define weather as what is happening to the atmosphere at any given time, while climate is what would be expected to occur at any given time of the year based on statistics built up over a long period of time....
