EU warns of "dangerous consequences" of Saudi cleric execution in weakly worded statement

Is the EU a toothless tiger?

The European Union's foreign policy chief warned today, Saturday January 2, that Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric risked "dangerous consequences" by further inflaming sectarian tensions in the region.

The kingdom executed cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday alongside dozens of al Qaeda members, signalling that it would not tolerate attacks, whether by Sunni jihadists or from its Shi'ite minority.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, reiterating the bloc's opposition to the death penalty and mass executions in particular, said Nimr's case raised serious concerns over freedom of expression and the respect of basic civil and political rights in Saudi Arabia.

"This case has also the potential of inflaming further the sectarian tensions that already bring so much damage to the entire region, with dangerous consequences," she said, urging Saudi authorities to promote reconciliation between different communities in the country.

Note EU-Digest: A very weak statement by the EU in reaction to Saudi Arabia's barbaric behavior in total disrespect of basic human rights laws. 

The weak statement condemning Saudi Arabia by the EU foreign policy chief of the EU was obviously inspired by the fear of economic reprisals by Saudi Arabia (oil deliveries and EU weapons industry sales boycott) and of course, not to anger their "big boss" the US,  who are backing the totally unreliable, so-called, "Islamic Nations Military alliance", under the leadership of the Saudi's, which supposedly will combat ISIS, but in reality have quite a different political objective.  

It is high time the EU reviews its overall global foreign policy objectives and for the short term specifically takes a critical look at the Middle East policies, which to say the least, have been a total disaster so far.

Read more: EU warns of "dangerous consequences" of Saudi cleric execution | Daily Mail Online

European Parliament backs Juncker′s refugee plans

European lawmakers have backed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's proposals for coping with a massive influx of migrants. The vast majority of the people on the move have been heading for Germany.

Members of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to support Juncker's proposals, with 432 voting in favor of the non-binding resolution and just 142 against, with 57 abstentions.

A statement posted on the European Parliament's website said the lawmakers backed the Commission's proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary. This came a day after it backed an emergency proposal for relocating 40,000 asylum seekers.

It also said that a majority of lawmakers believed that the bloc's "Dublin rules," which determine in which member state any given migrant is required to register, should be amended through a "fair, compulsory allocation key" taking into account "the integration prospects and the specific cases and needs of asylum seekers themselves."

The MEPs also expressed support for the idea of drawing up a common EU list of safe countries of origin and a compulsory resettlement plan under which members states would be required to take in refugees from third countries.

Read more: European Parliament backs Juncker′s refugee plans | News | DW.COM | 10.09.2015

Thank You Greece! - by Maria Helena dos Santos André

In a time when in Paris Marine Le Pen is “Ante Portas”, when xenophobic populists are marching through the streets of Dresden, when in London the UKIP sets the tone for an ever more anti-European hysteria, and when in Helsinki the Finnish government becomes the most ardent proponent of more austerity for Greece, for no other reason but the fear of a success of the “Real Finns” at the next ballot box, the Greek people have given a clear signal, voting against more austerity and for the European values of democracy, the welfare state, tolerance and inclusive societies.

They have rejected the ruling by European and international technocrats. They have said no to their national oligarchic establishment that has led the country into the current situation. But they also resisted the siren calls of Golden Dawn. They have given their confidence to an untested party, with no experience in government, a party that has presented an electoral programme proposing better governance, more democracy, greater social justice and an end of austerity policies that have destroyed the economy and created unprecedented hardship while the public (and private) debt continued to increase. The Greek voters have sent a clear message to the rest of Europe: they want to be part of Europe, they can’t bear more austerity; they need a sustainable solution to their debt problem; they want to be a respected partner in the European Union and play an active role in the common search for a Greek and European recovery.

Europe should not see the victory of Syriza as a threat. Instead, it should be seen as a clear signal from the people and as an opportunity for Europe as a whole to reconsider its crisis response, which has already lead the continent into what may become a decade of deflationary stagnation, even with the last intervention of the ECB. There is no easy solution to the deep crisis in Europe but one thing is certain:  continuing with policies that do not work, because they concentrate exclusively on fiscal prudence, is the opposite of what must be done. We must give priority to growth, investment, employment and redistributive policies.

Anyone guided by realism will recognize that Greece cannot, at the same time, serve its tremendous debt burden and recover economically and socially. Insisting on servicing the debt without a strong economic recovery might be popular in some European capitals but it will just not work. Debts that cannot be paid remain un-payable even if creditors continue to insist that it should be paid.

The debt crises in Germany in the last century offer great lessons in this respect. After World War I, the victorious powers insisted that Germany should pay reparations independently of its economic performance. The results are well known: hyperinflation in the twenties, brutal austerity in the early thirties resulting in the rise of Hitler who immediately stopped servicing any foreign debt when he came to power.

After World War II, the Allies recognized that Germany had to become prosperous first and should pay afterwards. That reasoning lies behind one of the most generous debt restructuring agreements in history in 1953, when more than 50% of the German debt was written off, repayment was stretched out over more than half a century and debt payments were made conditional on the existence of a trade surplus. The last payment of debt from World War I was actually made as late as in 2010 and payments at no time exceeded 5% of German export earnings.

Read more: Thank You Greece!

Ukraine crisis: Nato plans (not approved by France, Germany, Spain and Italy) east European bases to counter Russia - by Ian Traynor

NAT)O says it is to deploy its forces at new bases in eastern Europe for the first time, in response to the Ukraine crisis and in an attempt to deter Vladimir Putin from causing trouble in the former Soviet Baltic republics, according to its secretary general.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the organisztions's summit in Cardiff next week would overcome divisions within the alliance and agree to new deployments on Russia's borders – a move certain to trigger a strong reaction from Moscow.

He also outlined moves to boost Ukraine's security, "modernise" its armed forces and help the country counter the threat from Russia.

Rasmussen said: "We will adopt what we call a readiness action plan with the aim to be able to act swiftly in this completely new security environment in Europe. We have something already called the Nato response force, whose purpose is to be able to be deployed rapidly if needed. Now it's our intention to develop what I would call a spearhead within that response force at very, very high readiness.

"In order to be able to provide such rapid reinforcements you also need some reception facilities in host nations. So it will involve the pre-positioning of supplies, of equipment, preparation of infrastructure, bases, headquarters. The bottom line is you will in the future see a more visible Nato presence in the east."
Poland and the three Baltic states have been alarmed at the perceived threat from Russia and have been clamouring for a stronger Nato presence in the region. They have criticised what they see as tokenism in the alliance's response so far.

But the issue of permanent Nato bases in east Europe is divisive. The French, Italians and Spanish are opposed while the Americans and British are supportive of the eastern European demands. The Germans, said a Nato official, were sitting on the fence, wary of provoking Russia.

Note EU-Digest: This kind of rhetoric and sabre rattling will only increase the problems as it will be seen as provocative by Russia. The only solution seems to be a negotiated settlement which clearly defines the borders of Russia and EU-Member States and protects all ethnic minorities.

Read more: Ukraine crisis: Nato plans east European bases to counter Russia | World news | The Guardian

Our EU Digest Poll in relation to this weeks EU Parliamentary Elections which was closed today showed the following results.

The Poll shows a potential strong showing by the so-called Eurosceptic parties while traditional pro-EU political  parties will remain in power.

Our new poll which runs through June 22 asks the question:  

"Do Corporations Have Too Much Influence On Global Governance?"

EU-Digest

European Parliamentary Elections - Eurosceptics: Netherlands' Geert Wilders cuts up EU flag in Bruxelles - by Nikolaj Nielsen

The Mouse which roared

Scissors in hand, anti-EU nationalist Geert Wilders of the Netherlands on Tuesday (20 May) vandalised the European Union flag in front of the European Parliament in Brussels.

In a publicity stunt amid the dozen or so cafes at Place Luxembourg, overlooked by the parliament’s tall glass structures, Wilders cut out a yellow star before unfolding the Dutch flag in its place.

The nationalist, who runs the Dutch Freedom Party, is convinced he will be able to form a new group of eurosceptic MEPs following the upcoming European Parliament elections. He wants the Netherlands to leave the Union, regain its sovereignty, and shut down its borders to asylum seekers.

His other goal - to pull apart the EU from within by forming the anti-EU faction in parliament - will require at least 25 MEPs from seven EU member states.Wilders says he will be meeting with other eurosceptic politicians next week in Brussels to work out a deal.

“It is our task to try to work together to overstep our differences, to not get into fights about our leadership, to overstep ‘our shadows’ as we say in the Netherlands,” he said.

He was short on details.

Note EU-Digest: Europe gets a taste of the type of politicians which represent the Eurosceptic group running in the elections for the European Parliament.

Read more: EUobserver / Netherlands' Geert Wilders cuts up EU flag

European Elections: Candidates spar in live EU TV debate

With flashes of wit, much earnestness and a certain reluctance to go for the jugular of their opponents, four candidates for the European Commission presidency broke new ground on Monday night by holding a live televised debate designed to drum up public interest in the May 22-25 elections for the European parliament.

If social media are one measure of that interest, the debate may have worked. Halfway through the 90-minute programme, broadcast from the Dutch city of Maastricht, an organiser announced that 10,000 tweets a minute were coming in.

The harder question to answer is whether any candidate did enough to convince potential voters that the elections will truly make a difference in a EU blighted by a long recession, mass unemployment and a squeezed welfare state.

Although the debate never turned nasty, Ska Keller, the Greens candidate, got in a sharp jab at Jean-Claude Juncker, the centre-right candidate, when she accused him of “presiding over a tax haven” during his time as prime minister of Luxembourg. An indignant Mr Juncker rejected the charge and managed later to slip in the image-softening remark that one reason why he favoured a EU-wide minimum wage was that he remembered his father’s tough life as a steelworker.

Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister who is the centrist, liberal candidate, turned his fire on José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing Commission president, saying Mr Barroso had never taken a decision without first flying to Berlin and Paris to get the green light. “The Commission needs to lead,” he thundered.

He also put Mr Juncker on the spot by challenging him to explain why his centre-right group still included Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, who caused outrage last weekend by suggesting Germans denied the existence of Nazi concentration camps. But Mr Juncker hit back with the succinct sentence: “I was sickened by the statements of Mr Berlusconi.”

Martin Schulz, the centre-left candidate, made a valiant effort to distinguish himself from the other three by repeating on several occasions that he was against a Europe of “banks and speculators”.

When the debate moved on to Europe’s insurgent far-right parties, he spoke with some passion in saying he found it “unimaginable” as a German that “a Nazi party could sit in the European parliament and make propaganda for the party of Adolf Hitler”.

Read more: Candidates spar in live EU TV debate | Brussels blog

EU Immigration Policies: Immigrants Benefit Host Nations' Economies, so Why Is Public Perception Negative? - by Anna Leijonhufvud

Immigrants seeking democracy and better life benefit economy

Almira is one of many millions of immigrants who every year cross borders in search of a better life. A year ago, she left her home village in Croatia to find work in Helsingborg, Sweden, and today she's gone to Arbetsförmedlingen, a Swedish public employment agency, to find a job. "I worked as a cleaner for a hotel, but the work is tiresome," she said. "I would want to work as a receptionist, but I don't think my Swedish is good enough yet."

Immigrants like Almira are often seen as having a negative impact on the host country, such as when they allegedly take jobs from the native-born. But as anti-immigration views have gained traction--even in government  policy in some cases, as in the U.K.--an increasingly large body of work suggests that assumptions that immigrants are harmful to a country's economy are unfounded.

"There is overwhelming evidence that migrants have a positive impact on the economy," said Peter Sutherland, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for migration and development. Sutherland was on the panel for the World Economic Forum's Open Forum session titled "Immigration: Welcome or Not?"

Also on the panel was former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who agreed with Sutherland that immigrants often bring lots of advantages with them. To make his point, Annan referred to a poster showing Albert Einstein trying to cross the border into a country with a sack of clothes on his back. The caption read: "The sack of clothes is not the only thing that the immigrant brings."

While many of the leaders speaking at the WEF appear convinced, the evidence that immigrants have a positive effect on their host countries' economies has not yet had much impact on public perception.

Editors Note: The question is why European Governments are  not making sure they change this Public perception about the benefits of immigration ? Instead they are letting populist, nationalistic politicians like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Marie Le Pen in France and others in Europe control the debate.

EU-Digest

Corporate Greed: 13 Mindblowing Facts About America’s Tax-Dodging Corporations

A judicious writer avoids adjectives like “mindblowing,” especially when covering political or economic issues.
But no other word seems to describe the stunning reality of corporate taxation in modern America, which cries out for the italics-heavy, exclamation-point-driven format made famous by Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Stylistic overkill? Read these thirteen facts and you may change your mind.

1. We’re told we can’t “afford” full Social Security benefits, even though closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obama’s “chained CPI” benefit cut more than ten times over!

Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

The “chained CPI” cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to “save” a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people.

It’s true. “Serious” politicians and pundits are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.

2. Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at a 60-year high!

Need we say more?  (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

3. Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks, even as executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels!

 That’s right. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between 2008 and 2010 while Wachovia, a Wells Fargo subsidiary, admitted to laundering more than $378 billion for Mexican drug gangs.

We’re talking about crazed killers like “El Loco” and gangs like “Los Zetas” – gangs who cut people’ heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or display them in the town square.

Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands.

And yet no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, “”There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.”

4. Some other huge corporations paid less than nothing, too.

Pepco Holdings (-57.6% tax rate)
General Electric (-45.3%)
DuPont (-3.4%)
Verizon (-2.9%)
Boeing (-1.8%)
Honeywell (-0.7%)

(Source: Citizens for Tax Justice)

5. The amount of money US corporations are holding offshore is an estimated one trillion dollars!

Rather than tax these profits the way other countries do, corporate politicians are promoting a tax “repatriation” break that would let corporations “bring this money home” while paying even less than their currently low rates.

They tried that in 2004 and it didn’t create any jobs. In fact, corporations took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What “repatriation” did do is line a lot of wealthy investors’ pockets. So, naturally, they want to do it again.

6. One building in the Cayman Islands is the official location of 18,857 corporations!

According to the Government Accountability Office, a five-story building called “Ugland House” is home to nearly twenty thousand corporations. That’s impressive, especially for such a small edifice. (Perhaps it has supernatural half-floors and space-time defying “mind tunnels” like the office in Being John Malkovich.)

While impressive, Ugland House’s distinction pales next to that of 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that address is home to 217,000 corporations.

That’s because Delaware has very generous tax rules – and, as a result, is home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United States.That’s startling, since only 1/342th of the nation’s population lives in that state (917,092 residents, out of a national total of 313,914,040, according to the latest( census results).

7. Conservatives complain about the “official” corporate tax rate in this country, but corporations actually pay roughly one-third of the official rate in actual taxes.

The official, or “statutory,” corporate tax rate is 35 percent. But the actual rate paid by American corporations is only 12 percent, less than that paid by many middle-class Americans.  (Source: The FACT Coalition.) 

In fact, US Corporations pay less tax as a percentage of the GDP than corporations in Canada. Or Japan …

… or South Korea. Or Norway. Or Luxembourg, New Zealand, Israel, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, and Italy.  (Source: OECD StatsExtract interactive database.) 

8. Corporations used to pay 30 percent of Federal taxes, and now they pay less than 7 percent!

That’s because the corporate tax rate has plunged since Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and is now the lowest it’s been in modern history.

(Source: FACT Coalition.)

9. Big corporations paid $216 million to Congress and got $223 billion in tax breaks!

As Citizens for Tax Justice and USPIRG reported, 280 large and profitable corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

That’s a terrific investment for them – a return of more than a thousand to one – but it’s a bad deal for the American people.

10. We don’t even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, and even fund terrorism!

Here are some examples of investments that might represent a terror threat. Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules that would help protect our national security.

11. Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, was bailed out by the government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit!

That’s right. In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a sweet settlement deal for its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. (Source: FACT Coalition.) Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings. (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank’s taxpayer-funded bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy government settlement for its foreclosure fraud.

Now David Dayen reports that the bank has apparently continued to defraud customers in violation of its government settlement. Whistleblowers have stated in affidavits that they were “told to lie” to customers, continued to deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements.

12. What they call “tax reform” would actually prevent our elected representatives from giving businesses financial incentives to improve our lives!

The word “reform” is an honorable one that’s been put to some dishonorable uses lately. “Entitlement reform,” for example, is merely a euphemism for gutting Social Security and Medicare.

Similarly, corporate-backed politicians are pushing a formula for permanent corporate tax breaks and calling it “tax reform.” They insist their “reform” be “revenue neutral” and say it will “broaden the base while lowering the rate.”

Here’s an English translation: The current, unsustainably low rates for corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in the name of “simplification.”

Here’s what that really means: The domestic tax credit for creating jobs? Gone. Tax breaks for protecting the environment with clean energy, rather than harming other people’s health and leaving a mess for the rest of us to clean up? Gone.

All in all we’d lose dozens of important policies that make our lives better, while permanently fixing corporate taxes at today’s cushy giveaway rates.

“Reform”? Ripoff is more like it.

13. Despite their greed, mismanagement, and freeloading, tax-dodging corporations are using shell organizations like “Fix the Debt” and “the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” to tell ordinary Americans they have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth!

These organizations are using the heads of failed banks – people like Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – to dispense “advice on the economy.” That’s like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

(Tax breaks for Exxon Mobil: $4.1 billion between 2008 and 2010. The company paid no taxes at all in 2009.)

These executives and their paid spokespeople tell the rest of us we need to “sacrifice” and “tighten our belts” so that their party can go on forever. And too often they’re treated as credible sources, rather than as corrupting influences on our public life.

It’s all true – and there are many more astonishing facts to be found in the world of corporate taxation. To fix the economy more people will need to learn about them – and demand that they be changed.

Read more: 13 Mindblowing Facts About America’s Tax-Dodging Corporations

NSA turns "Get Smart" TV comedy into a reality show - Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices - by Jacob Appelbaum, Judith Horchert and Christian Stöcker

When it comes to modern firewalls for corporate computer networks, the world's second largest network equipment manufacturer doesn't skimp on praising its own work. According to Juniper Networks' online PR copy, the company's products are "ideal" for protecting large companies and computing centers from unwanted access from outside. They claim the performance of the company's special computers is "unmatched" and their firewalls are the "best-in-class." Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off -- the United States' National Security Agency.

Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company's digital firewalls.

A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry -- including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives -- from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA's specialists seem already to have gotten past them.

This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets' data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000.

In the case of Juniper, the name of this particular digital lock pick is "FEEDTROUGH." This malware burrows into Juniper firewalls and makes it possible to smuggle other NSA programs into mainframe computers. Thanks to FEEDTROUGH, these implants can, by design, even survive "across reboots and software upgrades." In this way, US government spies can secure themselves a permanent presence in computer networks. The catalog states that FEEDTROUGH "has been deployed on many target platforms."

The ANT division doesn't just manufacture surveillance hardware. It also develops software for special tasks. The ANT developers have a clear preference for planting their malicious code in so-called BIOS, software located on a computer's motherboard that is the first thing to load when a computer is turned on.

Another program attacks the firmware in hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung, all of which, with the exception of the latter, are American companies. Here, too, it appears the US intelligence agency is compromising the technology and products of American companies.

Other ANT programs target Internet routers meant for professional use or hardware firewalls intended to protect company networks from online attacks. Many digital attack weapons are "remotely installable" -- in other words, over the Internet. Others require a direct attack on an end-user device -- an "interdiction," as it is known in NSA jargon -- in order to install malware or bugging equipment.

Note EU-Digest : NSA turns "Get Smart" TV comedy into a reality show. Get Smart is an American comedy television series that satirizes the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry,^[1] the show stars Don Adams (as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86), Barbara Feldon (as Agent 99), and Edward Platt (as Chief). Henry said they created the show by request of Daniel Melnick, who was a partner, along with Leonard Stern and David Susskind, of the show's production company, Talent Associates, to capitalize on "the two biggest things in the entertainment world today"—James Bond and Inspector Clouseau.^[2] Brooks said: "It's an insane combination of James Bond and Mel Brooks comedy."

Read more: Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices - SPIEGEL ONLINE