EU south hails step towards federalism, north sees handout

Almost half of this, 32 billion euros ($36bn), comes from NextGenerationEU, with some 19 billion euros ($21bn) in the form of grants and more than 12 billion euros ($13bn) in the form of loans. Over a five-year period, the grants alone amount to a boost of about 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year. [...]

The pandemic is set to claim 8.3 percent of the EU economy, but other countries in the European south stand to lose even more than Greece. Spain, Italy and France are expected to see recessions to the tune of 11 percent. [...]

NextGenerationEU marks the first time all 27 EU members are selling debt together, and it is the first time the Commission is to be given powers to levy taxes and raise resources of its own to service that debt. [...]

"Conte is probably the last thing separating Italy from sliding to a new wave of anti-Europeanism that could be fatal, not just for Italy's participation in the euro, but for the entire European integration project and the single market," he said.

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Al Jazeera: Putin's rating is collapsing as anger grows in Russia

Putin's decision to introduce constitutional changes, which would allow him to stay in power until 2036, when he would be 84 years old, have also been particularly unpopular. Although the Kremlin may consider this the best time to push through these amendments, given that protests are banned due to the coronavirus outbreak, they are making the Russian public that much more frustrated. The idea of Putin remaining in power for life is causing indignation even among his staunchest supporters.

In a May poll conducted by independent research centre Levada, just 59 percent approved of the Russian president, down from 69 percent in February. Just five years ago, amid the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian crisis and the annexation of Crimea, Putin's approval rating stood at 85 percent. Support for his presidency was never so low, even during the anti-government protests of 2011-13.

Other indicators of public support have also fallen dramatically. In another May poll by Levada, just 25 percent of people said Putin is among the Russian politicians they trust - the lowest value this indicator has had for the past 20 years he has been in power (even during his premiership in 2008-12). In January this year, public trust in him stood at 35 percent; just three years ago, it was as high as 59 percent.

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Al Jazeera: Polish archbishop refers child abuse negligence case to Vatican

The referral, unprecedented in the deeply religious country, will test procedures introduced by the Vatican last year to hold to account bishops accused of turning a blind eye to child sex abuse. The Vatican is now expected to assign an investigator to the case. [...]

The case came to prominence after a film by brothers Tomasz and Marek Sekielski, released on Saturday, showed how Bishop Edward Janiak, based in the city of Kalisz, failed to take action against priests who were known to have abused children. [...]

"For the last year, the Catholic Episcopate has known that there are bishops who covered up paedophilia cases, and yet none of them have been dismissed."

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Al Jazeera: Why a hipster, vegan, green tech economy is not sustainable

Thus, immigrant-owned grocery stores, halal butcheries and community centres will soon be replaced by vegan chain restaurants, hip vintage clothing joints, organic food stores and coffee-shops galore, as landlords push out poor tenants to make space for more well-to-do ones. [...]

Unfortunately, creation by destruction is what capitalism does best, and its damaging practices are anything but green. This market-driven "sustainable" vision of economic activity, ecological-conscious diets and "hipness" within modern capitalism reinforce inequality and still hurt the environment.

Before I proceed further with my argument, I should mention that I am an academic, living in a "hip" part of Montreal and engage in activities that follow a particular aesthetic ethos, all of which make me very much a part of the reality I critique below. My aim is not to moralise, but rather to highlight the dangers of a political and economic system that profits from deceiving perhaps well-meaning self-proclaimed progressive folks into believing that a greener, more efficient capitalism is possible.[...]

Thus, environmental problems became framed as an issue of inefficiency that could be solved by technology and the better management of resources, which effectively neutralised the politically-oriented environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s. [...]

In other words, the more efficient we are, the cheaper consumption gets, and in an economy predicated on endless growth, the more we consume and waste. The environment will always be at the losing endof this logic.

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Al Jazeera: Kushner's diplomatic tour ends quietly in Belgium

Mike Stephens, a researcher at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera: "The Palestinians are effectively broke, but that's probably one of the reasons why they won't negotiate. They won't negotiate under this sort of duress. They see it as being strong-armed into accepting an agreement that's not in their interests."

Rejection by the Palestinians makes it very difficult for King Abdullah II of Jordan and, to a lesser extent, other Arab leaders, to support Kushner's plans. [...]

Kotef added that the deal, which looks unlikely to grant Palestinians any of their key demands, could also win support among the Israeli centre and some of the left. [...]

"It's not like the Arab states are that invested in the Palestinian cause now," he said. On the other hand, Stephens pointed out that the global Muslim community will not thank any leader who legitimises Israel's control of Jerusalem.

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Al Jazeera: Brexit Britain set to wield little influence in new-look Europe

The Brexit Party gained 29 seats in the new chamber - as many as Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, and more than Matteo Salvini's League in Italy, which got 28 seats as 34 percent of Italians who voted opted for his far-right, anti-migrant party. [...]

A number of smaller far-right parties across Europe support Salvini's bloc, however, most did not perform well in the elections. Geert Wilder's anti-Islam Freedom Party in the Netherlands, for one, lost all of its seats. [...]

"But ultimately, they don't have the same aims, so it's unclear at this point how much they are going to cooperate. Traditionally, Farage and his colleagues have rarely taken an interest in the works of the EU. They weren't really active in the committees, they didn't hold any of the important roles," she said, adding that it remains to be seen "how invested they [Farage et al] are in the European Parliament". [...]

"[However], the League is much more oriented towards playing the European game. Of course, they have positioned themselves against some of the decisions made by the EU, but unlike Mr Farage, they do not want to undermine the EU and the institution of the European Parliament per se," Frantescu told Al Jazeera. [...]

"A more fragmented EU parliament shows there is more polarisation, and I think that makes for a more healthy debate. But it will also make EU reform much more difficult," Wright added. "There are going to be lots of challenges ahead for the EU and I'm not sure where Brexit sits in that list of priorities."

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Al Jazeera: New Zealand cabinet agrees on tougher gun laws in principle: PM

The New Zealand prime minister also announced an inquiry into the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday that left 50 people dead.

Ardern said the details are still to be worked out but the changes to the country's firearms laws will be announced in full within 10 days.

She also said that while the man charged with carrying out the shootings was not a New Zealand citizen, it could not ignore the problem of white supremacy supporters within the country. [...]

Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the shootings during the first 24 hours after the massacre. [...]

Frustration was building among the families of victims as under Islam it is custom to conduct burials within 24 hours, but bodies will not be released until post-mortems are carried out.

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Al Jazeera: Pope Francis admits priests, bishops sexually abused nuns

"And I think that it's continuing because it's not like once you realise it that it stops. It continues. And for some time we've been working on it," he said.

The February issue of Women Church World, a supplement distributed with the Vatican's Osservatore Romano newspaper, stated that nuns have been silent over abuse for decades for fear of retaliation.[...]

The pope has summoned the heads of some 110 national Catholic bishops' conferences and dozens of experts and leaders of religious orders to the Vatican from February 21 to 24 for an extraordinary meeting on the sexual abuse crisis.[...]

Pope Francis said Pope Benedict XVI had taken action against a France-based order after some of its religious sisters were reduced to "sexual slavery" at the hands of the priest who founded the order and other priests within it.

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Al Jazeera: Spain's far-right hates not only immigrants, but also women

The party's nationwide goal is to transform Spain's current system of devolved regional power into a single government and parliament for all of Spain. Their slogans, similar to those of other right-wing populist parties across the West, are "España primero" and "Los españoles primero", that is, "Spain first", "Spaniards first". Steve Bannon has obviously endorsed them.[...]

Like the Northern League in Italy, the National Rally in France and the Alternative for Germany, Vox also wants to shut down mosques, erect walls and deport immigrants. While the party's political and economic proposals are similar to those of other extreme parties throughout Europe, they include another alarming feature: hate for gender equality movements.

Vox, like Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, denounces "gender ideology" as a threat to heteronormative, Christian, and white family values. According to the party programme, men and woman are already equal and so there is no need for specials laws against domestic violence to protect women's rights. Measures to fight gender violence are "ideological" and "discriminatory" against men. These measures - introduced by the Socialist Party government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in 2004 to crack down on gender-based violence - offer free legal aid and established special courts for victims. [...]

But Vox wants not only to repeal these gender measures, but also to eliminate subsidised feminist groups, create a Ministry of the Family and introduce "an organic law protecting the natural family, which shall be recognised as an institution that came before the State". While they also seek to abolish laws protecting abortion and gay marriage, their goal, as veteran Spanish feminist Ana Maria Perez del Campo said, is to "stop in the advance of women's rights". It should not come as a surprise that their regional leader, Francisco Serrano, a former judge, was suspended by the Supreme Court after altering visitation arrangements in a custody case in favour of the father without calling the mother to the hearing. As a radical opponent of feminism, Serrano considers himself "a victim of gender-based jihadism".

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Al Jazeera: 'Not just horror and crime': Parallel worlds in Berlin's Neukolln

"There really are parallel worlds here, of cultures and classes," she said. "I can't say it's not dangerous but within the white middle class, it's not. In the world right next to it, it can be."

Neukolln stretches across a long, jagged slice of land at the southeastern edge of the capital; the northern half lies within the inner city and is stitched together by a few "kiezes" or neighbourhoods. On the whole, the borough reflects the front lines of the very battleground issues dividing German political opinion, from integration and refugees to crime and gentrification. [...]

The closing of the Tempelhof airport drew in newcomers, particularly on and around the wide, leafy Schiller Boulevard next to the park. There, according to Berlin's daily Morgenpost, the price per square metre of apartment space was 4.80 euros in 2006 ($5.51). Now, the average is 12.90 ($14.80).[...]

"There are cafes here serving a cup of tea, from a teabag, for 3.50 euros ($4.01), in a neighbourhood where the average salary is really low," he remarked, weaving between fluent German and English tinged with a Dutch accent. In 2017, 26.8 percent of households across the entire borough of Neukolln were deemed to be at high risk of poverty: they earned less than 60 percent of the median income, or in other words, under 923 euros ($1,058) a month.

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Al Jazeera: How Britain stole $45 trillion from India

New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - just published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. [...]

Here's how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.[...]

This corrupt system meant that even while India was running an impressive trade surplus with the rest of the world - a surplus that lasted for three decades in the early 20th century - it showed up as a deficit in the national accounts because the real income from India's exports was appropriated in its entirety by Britain.

Some point to this fictional "deficit" as evidence that India was a liability to Britain. But exactly the opposite is true. Britain intercepted enormous quantities of income that rightly belonged to Indian producers. India was the goose that laid the golden egg. Meanwhile, the "deficit" meant that India had no option but to borrow from Britain to finance its imports. So the entire Indian population was forced into completely unnecessary debt to their colonial overlords, further cementing British control.[...]

Patnaik identifies four distinct economic periods in colonial India from 1765 to 1938, calculates the extraction for each, and then compounds at a modest rate of interest (about 5 percent, which is lower than the market rate) from the middle of each period to the present. Adding it all up, she finds that the total drain amounts to $44.6 trillion. This figure is conservative, she says, and does not include the debts that Britain imposed on India during the Raj.

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Al Jazeera: Why Saudi Arabia's foreign policy is failing

At the beginning of the Cold War, Riyadh took a backseat in most regional conflicts, leaving the rowdy revolutionaries of the Arab world (Egypt, Iraq and Syria) to take the lead. On Palestine, for example, the Saudis decided to keep a low profile. Although Riyadh backed the war efforts of the so-called "ring states" - the Arab countries surrounding Israel - it always refrained from getting involved in a direct military confrontation with the Zionist state. When it decided to get involved - for example by leading the 1973 oil embargo - it always did so through soft or economic power. [...]

Throughout the Cold War, Saudi Arabia also played a quiet albeit important role in the international arena, contributing to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, it joined Pakistan and the United States in their efforts to support armed groups resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, funding most of the CIA programmes to arm and train the Mujahideen. The House of Saud also helped plunge oil prices in the second half of the 1980s, bringing the oil-dependent Soviet economy to its knees. [...]

For the first time in its recent history, Saudi Arabia found itself completely exposed, with no one to fall back on but itself. To add insult to injury, the Obama administration showed little sensitivity towards Saudi concerns as it sought rapprochement with Iran, leaving Riyadh deeply worried about its security. As the feeling of insecurity in the House of Saud grew, "backseat" diplomacy gave way to a more assertive foreign policy; the tactics, however, remained more or less the same: confrontation by proxy. [...]

Not only has MBS created more enemies than he can handle, but he has also chosen the wrong allies. He has embarked on a dangerous path of normalisation with Israel, believing that it would pay back in the long run. But with this decision, he risks losing the hearts and minds of the Arab people to Turkey and Iran, both of which have positioned themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause.

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Al Jazeera: Report: Saudi royals turn on king's favourite son after killing

Senior US officials, meanwhile, have indicated to Saudi advisers in recent weeks they would support Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz - who was deputy interior minister for nearly 40 years - as a potential successor to King Salman, according to Saudi sources with direct knowledge of the consultations.

Amid international outrage over Khashoggi's murder, dozens of princes and cousins from powerful branches of the Al Saud family want to see a change in the line of succession, but will not act while King Salman - the crown prince's 82-year-old father - is still alive, sources said.

They recognise the king is unlikely to turn against his favourite son, the report added.

Rather, they are discussing the possibility with other family members that after the king's death, Prince Ahmed, 76, uncle of the crown prince, could take the throne, according to the sources. [...]

The official also said the White House saw it as noteworthy that King Salman seemed to stand by his son - also known as MBS - in a speech in Riyadh on Monday and made no direct reference to Khashoggi's killing, except to praise the Saudi public prosecutor. [...]

According to one well-placed Saudi source, many princes from senior circles in the family believe a change in the line of succession "would not provoke any resistance from the security or intelligence bodies he controls" because of their loyalty to the wider family.

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Al Jazeera: Saudis tampered with CCTV cameras after Khashoggi murder: report

According to the report, on October 6, at 1am local time, a consulate member staff went into the police security post outside the Saudi consulate to access the video system.

Sabah reported that the staff member put in a digital lock code into the system, which did not dismantle any cameras, rather the code was to prevent access to any videos showing movement at the entrance, including Khashoggi's arrival at the consulate.

Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons reporting from Istanbul said that their attempt was, in any case, irrelevant because the police had already deciphered the coding and accessed the system, retrieving a copy of the video well before the attempted tampering. [...]

Cavusoglu added that Turkey has further evidence regarding Khashoggi's killing which they have yet to share with the public and that details of his case will continue to be reported to the public until the investigation is complete.

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Al Jazeera: Saving MBS from himself is the key to Saudi Arabia's stability

The return to Saudi Arabia this week of Prince Ahmad bin Abdelaziz, the last surviving full brother of King Salman, following six year of self-imposed exile, confirms the seriousness of the situation in the kingdom.[...]

As Prince Ahmed never publicly accepted MBS's appointment as crown prince, speculation is rife that he has come to replace or challenge him. However, it is much more likely that his return is part of the House of Saud trying to demonstrate unity in the face of the increasingly difficult predicament it faces.[...]

The combination of overconfidence, overambition and lack of diplomatic experience, which came to characterise MBS and his circle of advisers, is what led to the murder of Khashoggi - whether he was involved in it directly or not.[...]

Any of these moves could prove incredibly difficult, if MBS decides to resist - and he has the tools to do so. He is popular with a sizeable part of the Saudi population and has managed to build over the past three years his own deep state, which could sabotage efforts for a transfer of power.

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Al Jazeera: Bolsonaro, 'gender ideology' and hegemonic masculinity in Brazil

In Brazil, the legal recognition of same-sex unions by the Supreme Court in 2011, was the turning point for "anti-gender crusaders". It was in the aftermath of this groundbreaking decision that the hysteria around "gender ideology" gained momentum and visibility.

Since then the evangelical parliamentary bloc, a key force behind Bolsonaro's successful candidacy, has systematically tried to undermine the expansion of sexual rights, including same-sex marriage and reproductive rights, and particularly the right to abortion. They have regularly submitted proposed legislation, including draft laws to recognise the "rights" of an unborn child, to define the family as a unit consisting of a man, a woman and their children, and to criminalise abortion even in the case of rape.[...]

Bolsonaro's own career as an "anti-gender crusader" also started back in 2011. Then and now, Brazil has been dealing with alarming rates of violent deaths related to homophobia. In 2017, reports registered at least 445 LGBTQI deaths, a 30 percent increase from 2016. In this context, in 2011 then Education Minister Fernando Haddad (now Bolsonaro's former election opponent), launched an initiative to distribute educational materials aimed at combating homophobia and discrimination in schools.[...]

Then in 2018 during his election campaign, Bolsonaro not only embodied and praised this hegemonic form of masculinity but also actively projected himself as a crusader against "gender ideology". "Anti-gender" rhetoric was also generously used even in the fake news campaign aimed at smearing his opponent. One fake story distributed on WhatsApp claimed Haddad supplied schools with erotic baby bottles in public child care centres. Another claimed his running mate, Manuela D'Avila, was an atheist who defiled religious symbols.

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Al Jazeera: How much power does Saudi Arabia wield over the global economy?

Saudi oil is "actually quite important, particularly in the short-run," according to Chris Garcia, CEO of Vicar Financial and former deputy director of the US Department of Commerce under US President Donald Trump. "This is why when we look at some of the potential retaliation tactics that the Saudis have threatened, we have to take them seriously."[...]

"It's the short-run repercussions of the Saudis cutting [oil] output that would send shockwaves throughout the global economy, but I would say that's leverage that would diminish in the long run unless they diversify as the world continues to diversify itself from its energy resources," explains Garcia.[...]

Saudi's sovereign wealth fund is called the Public Investment Fund, which traditionally had a strategy of low-risk investments. But everything changed in 2016 when the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund invested $3.5bn in Uber, making it the largest single investment ever made in a privately-held company at the time.

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Al Jazeera: On fake investigations: From Kavanaugh to MBS

The Saudis should have hired what in Hollywood they call a "script supervisor" before they opened their mouth telling the world what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. So far, they have gone from flat denial to having Khashoggi start a fistfight with 15 cutthroat butchers the Saudis had sent to cut him to pieces. Right now, they are shooting a martial art movie with Khashoggi cast as Bruce Lee.

The Saudis know the world is not stupid, but they also know for a fact Jared Kushner is in their pocket. According to Intercept's sources, Mohammed bin Salman bragged that the president's son-in-law and Middle East adviser is "in his pocket" months ago. It is payback time. Trump will try to sell this cover-up by the Saudis the same way he sold the FBI's cursory report on Kavanaugh.[...]

He produced a "fake" FBI investigation - one that simply going through the motions and did not even interview the primary suspect or accuser, and issued a secret report the public could not see, as his Republican accomplices rushed the nomination through a hasty vote cast almost entirely on partisan lines just a few weeks before crucial midterm elections. And Trump and his Republican cohorts won. Professor Ford and countless sexually abused women like her lost.[...]

Like a real estate crook (he is) who refuses to see he has made a bad investment in a building he bought, Kushner is singularly determined to sustain the Saudi-Zionist alliance in a manner that, in his estimations, neutralises and eliminates the Palestinian national aspirations. Kushner sees the key to his ambitious desire to destroy and eliminate the last bastion of Palestinian resistance in this particular Saudi prince.

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Al Jazeera: How do Palestinians see the Syrian war?

Throughout their long struggle against Zionism, Palestinian political factions have found support in Syria, often maintaining headquarters on its territory. Traditionally it was leftist, nationalist and Baathist movements in Palestine that were closest to Damascus, but as Hamas and Islamic Jihad came to prominence in the early 1990s and developed close relations with Iran, they also started receiving Syrian support. Syria would give Palestinian groups logistical assistance, training, and political backing to the level that no other Arab country would.[...]

This led to a crisis in relations between the Palestinian authorities and the Syrian regime which ultimately ended with the death of Arafat and the rise to power of Mahmoud Abbas. Since then, Syria has pressed for rapprochement, fearing that the Palestinian Authority could move closer to Jordan and Egypt, curbing its influence over the Palestinian issue. [...]

Hamas took a very different position. After much internal deliberation, it chose to leave Syria as a way to demonstrate its rejection of the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown on popular protests. It joined the axis of the Syrian opposition supported by Gulf states, cutting its relations with the regime and angering Iran.

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Al Jazeera: On the reform path: Uzbekistan opens up after years of isolation

Since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took power in December 2016, following the death of Islam Karimov, who ruled the country since independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been on the reform path.

The rule of law reform, aimed to enhance the transparency and accessibility of the allegedly corrupt courts, has been just one of the steps to improve Uzbekistan's image.

Faced with a collapsing economy, international isolation, and a growing number of unemployed youth following years of Karimov's misrule, the country had little choice but to open up. [...]

"Fairly quickly, he (Mirziyoyev) set a new tone. And that new tone has been the main factor driving change because the system has had to adapt both to the new president's expectations and to his willingness to make the state more responsive to citizen concerns," said Uzbek VOA journalist Navbahor Imamova, noting that her views shared here were personal and did not represent her employer's. [...]

"The most notable developments on human rights in the little more than two years of Mirziyoyev's presidency has been the release of approximately 30 or more high-profile political prisoners, the easing of some restrictions on the freedom of speech and assembly and in that area we've seen the emergence of a fairly dynamic media environment as compared to what used to exist," Steve Swerdlow, Human Rights Watch Central Asia researcher, told Al Jazeera. [...]

Forced cotton picking, obligatory for all public administration workers, medical and educational staff, students and schoolchildren has been abolished.

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