Political Critique: Where does equality start?

It is the directive concerning unfair commercial practices, which, makes it obligatory to place the product’s ingredients on the label. A product with the same name, but not always the same ingredients, can be sold in different countries but only under the condition that it is properly labelled. Meglena Kuneva, the Bulgarian Commissioner for Consumer Protection from 2007 to 2010, admitted that using well-known brands for selling low-quality products could mislead the consumers, but in her opinion, such situations should be addressed individually by state legislatures or offices for consumer protection. [...]

Politicians in the Czech Republic, the most Eurosceptic of V4 societies, are particularly eager to attack the EU on the issue of food quality. The state parliament has debated this problem on several occasions. In November 2016, Simeon Karamazov (conservative Civic Democratic Party) argued that the EU should focus on the problems of its citizens, and not foreigners, as it did during the refugee crisis. In March 2017, Marek Černoch from the populist Úsvit (Dawn), stated that Western corporations view the Czech Republic as a second-class country and “the landfill of Europe”. [...]

The V4 countries’ complaints did not go unheard. Commissioner Jourova and her superior, Jean-Claude Juncker, admitted that the problem is real and the Commission must play a role in solving it. Both of them are treating this issue as a political challenge and an opportunity to improve the relations with the Visegrad Group after the battles about the relocation of refugees and the still ongoing conflict over the breach of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. [...]

Slovakians were the first to conduct research on this issue. In 2011 they compared food products sold in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe (including Poland). The analysis of the Slovak Association of Consumers (partly financed by the EU) uncovered differences not only between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ union, but also among countries in the East. For example, Coca-Cola sold in the West, in Poland and the Czech Republic contained natural sugar (sucrose) but in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania – isoglucose – a cheaper, poorer quality sweetener.

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Haaretz: When Israel Ignorantly Blames the Holocaust on the Poles, It Boosts Their Illiberal Nationalists

Clearly, it’s a complicated situation that requires a thoughtful and yet forceful response. Israeli leaders opted instead to equate the Polish law with Holocaust denial, in an ignorant and foolish display of haughtiness and prejudice.

Ignorant, because it ignores historical facts, and foolish, because it only plays into the hands of the Polish government, which can now legitimize the law by saying it’s standing up in defense of Polish national honor. [...]

Even before we debate a "Polish culpability" for the Holocaust, it should be admitted that the very concept of collective guilt is fraught with danger. No one knows this better than the Jews, whom the Church only cleared of collective guilt for the death of Jesus in 1965. In modernity, no pogrom in Russia was carried out without the preamble of a supposed atrocity by a Jew. Even the Nazis had recourse to one, the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, to "justify" Kristallnacht in 1938, when more than 90 Jews were killed in attacks across Germany. [...]

"Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, opposes the new legislation passed by the Polish parliament, which is liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust. There is no doubt that the term "Polish death camps" is a historical misrepresentation! The extermination camps were set up in Nazi-occupied Poland in order to murder the Jewish people within the framework of the "Final Solution." However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion. Yad Vashem will continue to support research aimed at exposing the complex truth regarding the attitude of the Polish population towards the Jews during the Holocaust."

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openDemocracy: How the Italian media have helped CasaPound ‘glamourise’ fascism

Over the past five years, CasaPound Italia (CPI) has sought to build new political credibility and clean up its image in order to penetrate mainstream Italian political debate. And the media have played their own, starring role in this project, helping to normalise and even ‘glamourise’ the far-right movement.  [...]

In Ostia’s election, CPI got 9% of votes and obtained one seat in the local municipal council. These numbers are not big, and only 36% of citizens voted – but they received huge attention from the media (also because a member of one of Ostia’s crime families, who happened to support CPI, broke a journalist’s nose with a violent headbutt).

According to anthropologist and researcher Maddalena Gretel Cammelli, “since the foundation of CasaPound, women’s presence was overexposed, but in reality there was a small number of them.” [...]

Chiaraluce’s media profile is meanwhile growing steadily: in early January, she was invited to be a regular commentator on a political talk show on Rai3, a national Italian TV channel (though she only lasted a week). The anchorman of the talk show, known for being on the left of the political spectrum, “understood that he could not ignore us,” she said. [...]

“Existing research shows that, historically, the far right has struggled with the so-called ‘gender gap’, for example an overrepresentation of men, and men’s policy preferences, among members, voters and political personnel. However, this seems to be changing in contemporary Europe, in several ways. Electorally, women represent a large potential reservoir of support for the far right.”

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Haaretz: For Once, Netanyahu Is Rooting for Iranian President Rohani

Netanyahu tried hard to convince the world that Rohani was just a more user-friendly face for the same radical regime, calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But the international community was eager to engage with Iran and was simply relieved to be facing Rohani and his silver-tongued foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Yet now, after trying to brand Rohani and his circle as an integral part of the regime, no different or better than the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Netanyahu – at least in private – has got to be rooting for Rohani.

Over the last few days, Israel has been running a concerted campaign against Iran’s alleged plan to manufacture and upgrade missiles on Lebanese soil. It began on Sunday with a highly irregular article, written by IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis and published on Lebanese opposition websites, claiming that “Lebanon is turning into one big missile factory. ... Iran and Hezbollah are currently trying to build a precision missile factory.” It continued on Monday with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman warning in the Knesset that “we know the sites for building and upgrading missiles in Lebanon, and we know the people who are involved in the manufacture.” [...]

Now, thanks to Lieberman, the threat level has become personal, with Israel basically saying that if it so chooses, it can assassinate Iranians involved in missile production. And Netanyahu has upped the stakes, saying that if necessary Israel will attack. Lieberman, however, admitted that the last thing he wants “is to get into a third Lebanon war.” And here at least he was telling the truth: Neither him nor Netanyahu believe it would be in Israel’s interest to embark on another all-out war to dislodge Hezbollah, which is why they are pinning their hopes on Rohani. 

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openDemocracy: How President Trump is fueling Honduran migration north

Meanwhile, the Honduran military police are carrying out targeted attacks against protest leaders, journalists and human rights defenders in the wake of the post-electoral crisis, according to a leading Honduran human rights organisation, COFADEH. Thirty-four social leaders have been forced to leave the country or relocate due to political persecution. COFADEH documented excessive use of violence strategically used against protesters to instill fear and squash dissent. They cite use of torture, kidnappings, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings, among many other tactics. Thirty people were killed and hundreds gravely injured during anti-fraud protests between November 30 and December 31, mainly at the hands of the military and special forces.

These deaths are a stark reminder for Hondurans, who suffered a similar wave of violence against human rights defenders after the illegal coup d’état in 2009, led by Hernandez and backed by the United States. Since then, Hernandez has been a loyal ally in Washington’s effort to stem the flow of drugs and migrants from reaching US borders. Honduras has received nearly $114 million dollars of security aid since 2009, used to train and fund elite military police units deployed to fight gangs and drugs on the streets. The result has been a dangerous expansion of military and authoritative power that has taken civil society hostage.

Honduran military police are notoriously corrupt and overwhelmingly implicated in egregious human rights abuses against indigenous leaders, trade unionists, journalists, land-rights activists and lawyers. The Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) described Honduras as “one of the most hostile and dangerous countries for human rights defenders”.  Hernandez himself has repeatedly and publicly charged human rights defenders with undermining the country. Just last year, his administration revised the penal code to criminalise anti-government protest and anti-government media coverage as acts of terrorism.  

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Politico: Under threat, Sweden rediscovers its Viking spirit

In an election year, growing support for joining NATO is putting the center-left government of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven under pressure, with the four-party opposition bloc now united in backing membership of the military alliance for the first time. [...]

The country has already reintroduced military service, which was scrapped in 2010, for a limited number of draftees who will be called up for compulsory basic training this year. It has decided to station troops on the Baltic island of Gotland for the first time in a decade, and boosted military spending by 2.7 billion Swedish kronor (€274 million) a year from this year through 2020. [...]

At the same time, political support for NATO membership has been rising. In 2015, two center-right parties, the Center Party and the Christian Democrats, changed their minds on NATO and joined their opposition allies, the Moderate Party and the Liberal Party, in advocating membership.

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IFLScience: Wolf Found In Belgium For The First Time In Over A Century

“The wolf has stayed near the Flemish town of Beringen and the military base at Leopoldsburg. The animal has covered 500 kilometers (310 miles) in 10 days,” said the Belgian environmental group Landschap. The team has been tracking the wolf, which made its way across the German-Dutch border from the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on Christmas day last year.

Since then, the animal has wandered north, between both the Belgian and Dutch provinces of Limburg, before being recorded around the outskirts of Leopoldsburg. This is the first official record of a wolf in the country for over 100 years, although it is thought that one may have been snapped on a camera trap in the southern province of the Ardennes in 2011, but there were no hairs or spoor to confirm this. [...]

The whole idea of rewilding involving apex predators such as wolves has been a highly contentious point. In many rural parts of France and Spain, for example, farmers have heavily resisted the idea, worried about the threat that the predators may or may not pose to their flocks. These negative perceptions of the animals are further supported by how they are portrayed culturally and within the media.

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Haaretz: I Used to Care About Polish Sensitivity to Charges of Holocaust Complicity. Not Anymore

Mulling how to respond, I consulted with colleagues who write about World War II matters more frequently than I do. They were not at all surprised by the Polish embassy’s “correction” – they get them all the time, they said. I learned that such attempts to pressure and censor journalists in this manner were common and all too familiar for those on the “Holocaust beat.” [...]

Maybe it was the flattery or his ultra-gentlemanly, over-the-top polite tone – or maybe I just wanted him to stop writing to me – but ultimately I decided to make an effort to accommodate his concerns without allowing him to dictate the precise wording of my article.

I changed the wording and stated that Rae Kushner’s experiences happened in “the ghetto Novogrudok in Poland, under Nazi occupation during the Holocaust.” [...]

If it does, it will surely have a boomerang effect. Journalists who once acceded to Polish sensitivities, and bent over backwards to find wording that is both considerate of their concerns and true to history and respectful of the suffering of victims of the Holocaust, won’t do so in the future. At least, I won’t. 

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statista: Who's Winning Europe's Renewable Energy Race?

The European Union is making strides in renewable energy generation with the share of energy from renewable sources in gross final consumption hitting 17 percent in 2016, double the share in 2004 (8.5 percent). The EU is aiming to reach 20 percent by 2020 and at least 27 percent by 2030, according to Eurostat.

So far, Sweden is leading Europe's renewable energy charge. Its share of energy from renewable sources stood at 53.8 percent in 2016, far beyond its 2020 target of 49 percent. Finland is also doing well with renewables accounting for 38.7 percent of its energy consumption. So far, 11 member states have already achieved their 2020 targets but others still have a lot of work to do. In advance of its divorce from the EU, the UK has a renewable energy consumption share of just 9.3 percent, an improvement on 1.1 percent back in 2004. It is aiming for a 15 percent renewable share by 2020, a target which may already be out of reach.

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