The EU says it may retaliate if the US goes ahead with plans to impose visas reform on members already part of the Visa Waiver Program.

EU warns of visas for US citizens if Washington implements visa waiver reforms

Published time: 17 Dec, 2015 14:59Edited time: 17 Dec, 2015

 

 

© Fred Greaves / Reuters

 

 

The EU says it may retaliate if the US goes ahead with plans to impose visas for some members of the bloc who are currently part of the Visa Waiver Program. Brussels says it will not increase security and that US nationals may require visas to enter the EU.

A letter signed by 28 European member state ambassadors to the US was published in The Hill after Europe reacted furiously and with disbelief to plans by Washington to tighten-up the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which currently lets millions of citizens from the bloc travel to the US each year without a visa.

OP-ED: EU warns of visas for US citizens if Washington implements visa waiver reforms

Last week, the US House of Representatives adopted a bill to reform the visa program that would ban certain EU nationals from entering the US without a visa if they had visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan after March 2011. Some US politicians want the legislation introduced to tighten security following the November 13 Paris terror attacks.

“A blanket restriction on those who have visited Syria or Iraq, for example, would most likely only affect legitimate travel by businesspeople, journalists, humanitarian or medical workers while doing little to detect those who travel by more clandestine means overland,” the letter signed by the 28 ambassadors stated.

At present, 23 of the EU’s 28 member states enjoy visa-free travel to the US, with the remaining five nations keen to join the VWP. The bloc says it is imperative to keep the visa waiver program intact for business and tourism purposes, while the current system does not mean that it is “a license to enter the US with nothing more than the wave of a passport of an allied country.”

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EFSA Findings : Glyphosate by itself doesn’t cause cancer. But products like Monsanto’s Roundup, which contain glyphosate and other additives are another story.

 

 

 

Organic Consumers Association

Campaigning for health, justice, sustainability, peace, and democracy

Monsanto’s Roundup: The Whole Toxic Enchilada

November 19, 2015

 

by Katherine Paul

Genetic Engineering,

Millions Against Monsanto

 

Last week, while we waited for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to announce whether or not the agency will give Monsanto’s Roundup a free pass by green lighting the use of glyphosate for another 15 years, the EPA’s counterpart in the EU made its own big announcement.
Glyphosate is “unlikely to cause cancer” said the authors of the new report by the European Union Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

That headline, music to Monsanto’s ears, seemed to fly in the face of the findings published earlier this year by the World Health Organization (WHO). After extensive review of the evidence, all 17 of WHO’s leading cancer experts said glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen?”

Sustainable Pulse (SP), publisher of global news on GMOs and other food-related issues, quickly reported the glaring omission made by the majority of news sources reporting on EFSA’s findings.
According to SP, what EFSA really concluded is this: Glyphosate by itself doesn’t cause cancer. But products like Monsanto’s Roundup, which contain glyphosate and other additives and chemicals that are essential to making the herbicide work? That’s another, or in this case, the rest of the story.

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French economy contracts while rest of eurozone keeps expanding

Bloomberg

French Recovery Fades as Manufacturing, Services Contract

By Mark Deen May 22, 2014 2:20 AM CT

Photographer: Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg

An employee removes excess felt from berets inside the factory of 174-year-old... Read More

French manufacturing and services unexpectedly shrank this month, highlighting President Francois Hollande’s struggle to revive the euro area’s second-largest economy.

A Purchasing Managers Index of factory activity dropped to 49.3 from 51.2 in April, while a services gauge fell to 49.2 from 50.4, Markit Economics said today in London. Economists had forecast readings above 50, the level that divides expansion from contraction.
Hollande is grappling with an economy that stagnated in the first quarter as both investment and consumer spending fell. After two years in office, his government has yet to achieve two consecutive quarters of expansion, a performance that has driven jobless claims to an all-time high of 3.3 million and his own popularity to a record low.


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French economy contracts while rest of eurozone keeps expanding

 

The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Germany.

Colm Kelpie – Published 23 May 2014 02:30 AM

The strong pace of growth in the eurozone's private sector eased very slightly this month, with drastic price cuts preventing any further slowdown, surveys showed yesterday.

Slower growth in activity at factories took the shine off an unexpected pickup in the service industry, although the bloc's recovery appears to be gaining traction.
"This doesn't change the picture of the eurozone having one of its best growth spells in the past three years. It's broad-based – with the one exception being France," said Rob Dobson, senior economist at survey compiler Markit.
Markit's Composite Purchasing Managers' Index, based on surveys of thousands of companies across the region and seen as a good indicator of growth, edged down to 53.9 from April's near three-year high of 54.0, matching the forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts.


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Eurozone's 18-month-long recession may be over, economic surveys suggest

Economists say rise in manufacturing output PMI points to flat GDP and 'light at the end of the tunnel'

• Phillip Inman and Graeme Wearden
• 
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 24 July 2013 14.16 EDT

The Osram factory in Molsheim. French factories returned to growth with their strongest performance in 17 months. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Hopes of a recovery in the eurozone were lifted after private sector firms across the region reported a rise in output for the first time in 18 months, leading to predictions that the single currency bloc is on the cusp of exiting recession.
A strong performance by German manufacturers and a halt to the headlong decline in French business activity gave the eurozone a much needed boost after the area slipped into reverse last year.
With the US manufacturing sector expanding at a faster pace in July, the main blot on the global economic recovery was a decline in manufacturing output in China that some economists have warned could force Beijing to renew its stimulus spending or risk a hard landing.
China's manufacturing sector tempered the eurozone data, slowing to an 11-month low as new orders faltered and the job market darkened.
The flash HSBC/Markit Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 47.7 this month from June's final reading of 48.2, marking a third straight month below the 50 threshold between expansion and contraction for China.
As if to highlight concerns that global growth is slowing, Caterpillar, the US construction and mining business that is considered a bellwether of global business activity, downgraded its forecast for the pace of the global recovery this year and next.
Alexandra Knight, an economist at National Australia Bank, said the weak Chinese PMI posed a problem for countries that relied on exports to China.
"It adds to the concern about the outlook for demand, and brings into question just how strong Chinese commodities demand will be," she said.

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Related articles

• French Economy Shrinks as Businesses Hold Off on Investment - Bloomberg
• French business activity shrinks underlining risk to euro zone
• Hollande Jobs Pledge Undermined by Weak French Recovery
• French GDP Shrinks as Hollande Faces Job Cuts, Recession Risk
• French Industrial Output Tumbles as Recession Looms - Bloomberg
• French Joblessness Climbs to Record, Adding Pressure on Hollande - Bloomberg
• French economy contracts while rest of eurozone keeps expanding
• Euro-Area January Factory Output Expands More Than Forecast
• Eurozone's 18-month-long recession may be over, economic surveys suggest

Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk, (US and Victoria Nuland's guy) may prove to be arsenic to the beleaguered nation.

Forbes

Washington's Man Yatsenyuk Setting Ukraine Up For Ruin

 

Kenneth Rapoza Contributor

2/27/2014 @ 4:58PM 524 views

Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk, may prove to be arsenic to the beleaguered nation.
“Recall the phone exchange between the Ukraine ambassador and Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs) that got leaked out, where she basically said ‘we want Yats in there.’ They like him because he’s pro Western,” says Vladimir Signorelli, president of boutique investment research firm Bretton Woods Research LLC in New Jersey. “Yatsenyuk is the the kind of technocrat you want if you want austerity, with the veneer of professionalism,” Signorelli said. “He’s the type of guy who can hobnob with the European elite. A Mario Monti type: unelected and willing to do the IMFs bidding,” he said.
Mario Monti was a centrist Italian technocrat who passed an austerity package that called for increased taxes, pension reform and measures to fight tax evasion.
Over the past several weeks, Ukraine has been battling political infighting between pro-Russian Ukrainians and pro-Europeans. The fight stepped into high gear in the fall when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych decided to tilt towards Moscow instead of Brussels in a trade deal.  Last week, Yanukovych left Kiev and headed to an undisclosed location, believed to be holed up in a Russian Naval base.
After Yanukovych and the political opposition agreed to an orderly transition toward new elections, the opposition shattered the agreement quickly and took strategic positions around Kiev. Many voices in the Western press say the country could break apart.

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Attempts of EU, far-right opposition to set up Ukraine government collapse

By Alex Lantier
26 February 2014

Attempts to set up a government by the Western-backed Ukrainian opposition forces that seized power in Saturday’s fascist putsch have collapsed amid rising demands for social attacks on the working class from Washington and the European Union (EU), and military tensions with Russia.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton left Kiev yesterday after two days of fruitless talks attempting to bring the different opposition parties together in a government. The putsch, cynically hailed by the Western media as a struggle for democracy, is proving to be an operation to forcibly install a filthy dictatorship of imperialist finance capital. Opposition officials estimated this week that Ukraine needs up to $35 billion to refinance its debts. However, the major international banks have effectively cut off credit to Ukraine, charging ruinously high interest rates that it cannot afford. Meanwhile, Russia has withdrawn its offer of $15 billion in aid after the putsch toppled Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.
EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials are demanding austerity measures, such as deep cuts to state subsidies for consumer energy prices, in exchange for a $1or 2 billion payment to stave off immediate bankruptcy. Yanukovych rejected a planned association agreement with the EU entailing such cuts last autumn—the decision which led to the opposition protests against him—fearing that the cuts might lead to social upheavals that would bring down his regime.
Now, the pro-Western opposition, supported by gangs of fascist thugs from the Svoboda party and the neo-Nazi Right Sector group, is trying to push this reactionary, anti-democratic agenda through. Arseniy Yatsenyuk of billionaire oligarch Yulya Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, whom Washington has identified as its preferred right-wing figurehead in Ukraine, called on the opposition to join government and do the banks’ bidding despite popular opposition. “This is about political responsibility. You know to be in this government is to commit political suicide, and we need to be very frank and open,” Yatsenyuk told reporters outside Parliament.
Such remarks underscore that the opposition aims to run roughshod over the Ukrainian people, trying to use violently anti-working class forces like Svoboda or Right Sector, which openly glorify Nazism and the Holocaust, to crush whatever popular opposition emerges.
Reports of broader public opinion in Ukraine indicate popular hostility not only to Yanukovych, but also to the leading opposition oligarch, Tymoshenko. One woman told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “They are all crooks, the ones like the other, and Yulya [Tymoshenko] is no better.”
Tensions are escalating with Russia over the Western powers’ move to snatch Ukraine from Russia’s sphere of influence. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry attacked US and EU policy in Ukraine as driven “not by a concern for the fate of Ukraine, but by unilateral geopolitical calculations … A course has been set to use dictatorial and sometimes terrorist methods to suppress dissenters in various regions.”
Speaking to Interfax on Monday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev denounced the putsch in Kiev. He said, “Strictly speaking, there is no one to talk to there. The legitimacy of a whole host of government bodies raises huge doubts … If people crossing Kiev in black masks and Kalashnikov rifles are considered a government, it will be difficult for us to work with such a government.”

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Related articles

• Washington's Man Yatsenyuk Setting Ukraine Up For Ruin
• Ukraine crisis: the nightmare in-tray of new prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk
• Ukraine's new government tries to hold the country together
• Fears of Ukraine split - ABC Online
• Ukraine's Parliament Approves New Cabinet, Yatsenyuk Claims Yanukovych Robbed Country
• Alex Lantier - Attempts of EU, far-right opposition to set up Ukraine government collapse
• Ukraine's Parliament Approves Yatsenyuk as New PM
• Verkhovna Rada approved composition of new government

Google Privacy Changes : Streamlining by popular demand OR Corporate over reach and invasion of privacy?

March 4, 2012 by desertrose   

Uploaded by RTAmerica on Mar 1, 2012

Google is under scrutiny once again. Google’s latest privacy changes went into effect on Thursday and the search engine giant claims the modifications will make a more personalized internet surfing experience. Now all Google’s services such as Gmail and YouTube will now streamline into one profile. Critics believe these changes will allow the company to gather vast amounts of personal information on any given user. Conn Hallinan, columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, joins us to give his taken on what Google is doing with this information.




Uploaded by sarkcqure on Mar 1, 2012 BBC news further explores concerns growing over Google’s new privacy policy as it effects users – even to the extent of Android phone users now being assimilated into the Googlesphere “collective”. A bit of vox pop and expert comment, bottom line: Google’s monopoly position appears to be somewhat out of control. Read more at http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/ Is it time for an ethical search engine to be launched? Wiki foundation



Uploaded by sarkcqure on Feb 12, 2012 BBC Click Online reports on new EU rules and laws backed with real sanctions, address the questions around social networks and the ownership of data at last.