A new Council of Europe protocol is intended to strengthen cross-border investigations, confiscation and the recovery of criminal wealth. European authorities currently recover only a small proportion of the proceeds generated by organised and financial crime.

The European Union has signed an international agreement strengthening the recovery of criminal assets, as Brussels seeks to address the failure of national authorities to confiscate the overwhelming majority of wealth generated through organised crime, corruption and money laundering.

The agreement, opened for signature in Strasbourg on Wednesday, 14 October, introduces additional provisions governing the identification, freezing, confiscation and management of assets held across national borders.

It supplements the Council of Europe’s Warsaw Convention, which established an international framework for cooperation against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The Additional Protocol adopted by the Council of Europe extends existing asset-recovery mechanisms and strengthens the ability of national authorities to cooperate when criminal proceeds are transferred beyond the country where an offence occurred.

The financial foundations of organised crime

European authorities have long struggled to deprive criminal organisations of the profits generated by their activities.

An estimate frequently cited by European institutions suggests that only around one per cent of criminal proceeds are ultimately confiscated.

The figure highlights a persistent weakness in criminal enforcement. Police and prosecutors may identify offenders and secure convictions without recovering the money used to finance further criminal operations.

Organised crime networks can distribute their assets through bank accounts, companies, property holdings and intermediaries operating in different jurisdictions.

Investigators must establish the origin and ownership of those assets, obtain the necessary legal orders and secure cooperation from foreign authorities before funds or property can be transferred again.

The problem has become increasingly serious as criminal organisations operate across several countries while enforcement powers remain largely national.

In an earlier examination of Europe’s response to drug-trafficking networks, EU Today reported on the importance of confiscating criminal assets rather than concentrating exclusively on arrests and drug seizures.

The financial structures supporting trafficking organisations can survive the prosecution of individual members, allowing criminal enterprises to replace personnel and continue operations.

New powers for cross-border investigations

The protocol is intended to address practical obstacles encountered when authorities seek assistance from another country.

Its provisions cover international cooperation in asset recovery, the management of seized property and the execution of confiscation decisions.

They also address circumstances in which confiscation may be possible without a conventional criminal conviction, subject to the safeguards and legal requirements established by participating states.

Such arrangements can be particularly relevant when suspects have fled, proceedings cannot be completed or assets are held through structures designed to conceal their ownership.

The protocol also provides for improved cooperation between designated asset-recovery authorities.

These mechanisms are intended to reduce the delays that can arise when investigators must navigate different national procedures while attempting to secure property that may be rapidly moved or disposed of.

The Council of Europe’s treaty documentation explains that the protocol seeks to update the Warsaw Convention in accordance with developments in international anti-money laundering standards.

The revised framework has also been developed with reference to EU rules and the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force.

Existing European legislation

The agreement builds on legislation already adopted within the European Union.

The 2024 Asset Recovery and Confiscation Directive established stronger provisions concerning the tracing, freezing, confiscation and management of assets associated with criminal activity.

That directive is intended to improve national asset-recovery systems and strengthen cooperation between authorities.

The EU has separately developed a new anti-money laundering framework, including the establishment of the Frankfurt-based Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism.

The authority has responsibilities concerning the supervision of high-risk financial institutions and coordination between national bodies combating illicit financial activity.

The new Council of Europe protocol addresses a related but distinct problem: how authorities recover assets once suspected criminal proceeds have been identified, particularly when those assets are located in another jurisdiction.

An earlier EU Today report on criminal enforcement of sanctions violations illustrated the importance of asset confiscation in cases involving breaches of European restrictions.

Although sanctions enforcement and organised crime investigations operate under different legal arrangements, both can require authorities to identify property, obtain judicial orders and prevent assets from being moved beyond their reach.

Ratification and implementation

The protocol was adopted by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on 15 May 2026 and opened for signature on 14 October.

The European Union’s participation requires further legal procedures before the new provisions become binding.

The Commission had previously submitted proposals authorising the EU to sign the agreement, reflecting the division of responsibilities between the Union and its member states in criminal justice and financial regulation.

Individual governments must also determine how the international obligations interact with national procedures governing investigations, property rights and confiscation.

The effectiveness of the agreement will depend on the speed of its implementation and the resources available to investigators, prosecutors and financial intelligence authorities.

Criminal organisations can transfer funds internationally through transactions completed in minutes. Judicial cooperation and the enforcement of confiscation decisions frequently require considerably longer.

The protocol offers governments additional instruments for narrowing that gap, but cannot eliminate the administrative and legal obstacles without corresponding improvements in national enforcement.

For European authorities, the practical measure of success will be the amount of criminal wealth that can be identified and recovered.

The Strasbourg agreement provides a wider legal framework for that task at a time when the profits generated by organised crime continue to exceed the assets confiscated by enforcement agencies.

“As we close the tap on Russian energy, we open the doors to a more diverse range of reliable suppliers,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen wrote in an op-ed for EUobserver this week.

“And these suppliers know that we are reliable buyers.”

One of those ‘reliable’ suppliers is the US, which provided 57 percent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) last year and is on course to supply two-thirds this year, according to IEEFA. 

Four out of five overseas gas cargoes arriving in the EU will be American by 2028, the think tank estimates. These expensive cargoes have kept coming in. But how reliable is that supply likely to remain?

US officials have already shown their willingness to use their gas dominance for strategic gain. In March, US ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder threatened that Europe could lose its favourable access to American LNG if it tried to reopen the ‘Turnberry’ bilateral trade deal.

“In switching from Russia to the US, the EU has jumped from the frying pan into the fire,” Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, wrote in a comment under Jørgensen’s op-ed.

And recent developments prove his point.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

Graham Linehan, the Father Ted creator, may have been unfairly arrested by the Metropolitan Police because of his gender-critical views, the police watchdog has said.

The post Metropolitan Police May Have Unfairly Arrested Linehan Over Gender Critical Views, Says Watchdog appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

By Ian HENDERSON

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Ian Henderson, “Inspector A” of the OPCW’s skeptical insider analysis of chemical attacks in Syria, responds to allegedly newly-found, un-declared chemical weapons.

If Douma one of the highest-profile “proven” chemical attacks attributed to Syria’s former Bashar Assad government has been shown to be fake, what does it say about new, undeclared Syrian chemical weapons that have supposedly been found?

It says we should be extremely skeptical about news of such discoveries.

I spent years compiling an insider’s analysis of the evolving Western narrative of Syrian chemical attacks while I was at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as well as afterwards.

My conclusion was it is nigh impossible to prove a negative in this situation; to say there had never been a chemical attack by the Syrian government forces.

However, when it came to high-profile allegations of such attacks in the Syrian towns of East Ghouta, Khan Sheykhoun, Ltamenah, Saraqib and Douma, there were fatal flaws in the official narratives.

There were unmistakable signs, clear to us on the inside, of fabrication.

The Douma attack eight years ago appeared to be the last of a series of chemical allegations against the regime.

Yet the saga continues. The OPCW sent a new mission to Syria this May to try to find alleged, undeclared chemical weapons from the government of Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in 2024.

Before examining the intentions and results of this mission, it is useful to review how the Western-backed OPCW handled its investigation into the 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, a suburb of Damascus.

I was an OPCW inspector on that mission and this is why I blew the whistle.

The Establishment Narrative

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in July 2020, during a visit to the Kremlin. (The Kremlin)

Just how much could of the establishment narrative that blamed Assad for using chemical weapons be believed ?

Devised during the early part of the Western and Gulf-backed jihadist war to overthrow Assad a decade and a half ago – and built upon steadily by Western belligerents throughout the crisis – the story that Assad had “gassed his own people” was widely believed with mainstream media fully on board.

Doubters were glibly dismissed, including “official” dissenters such as some senior inspectors at the OPCW. I was among them.

The chemical allegations followed a well-oiled procedure. Armed opposition groups – who were seeking direct Western military intervention to support their effort to overthrow Assad – would raise the alarm online by posting slick images and videos of an alleged chemical attack.

The OPCW would generally believe the opposition groups and their witnesses and accept items of supposed “evidence” handed over to them, sometimes months after the alleged attack. Until the Douma allegation in 2018, the fact-finding mission never got to the scene of any Syrian chemical attack after an initial attempt in 2014 went awry.

The fact-finding report would be secretly drafted under the direct control of OPCW top management, bypassing any procedural or technical oversight, and would conclude that it was “reasonable to believe” that a chemical attack had indeed taken place.

The follow-up investigations by the heavily politicized Joint Investigative Mechanism (J.I.M.), or by the later Investigation and Identification Team (I.I.T.), would suggest that “a reasonable person would believe” that the Syrian Armed Forces were responsible for the attack.

OPCW inspectors are not fools. Many of us saw what was going on, seeing the tight political control that the U.S. and to a lesser degree the U.K. exerted over anything to do with the Syrian file. But the draconian confidentiality regime in the OPCW kept everyone subdued.

The breakthrough came after the April 2018 Douma allegation.

For the first time, an OPCW team actually got to the scene of an alleged chemical attack, at the town of Douma, in southwestern Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northeast of Damascus.

We did our job thoroughly, and in doing so we identified serious flaws in the allegation.

OPCW Extreme Measures

Headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, The Netherlands. (CEphoto/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

The OPCW resorted to ever-escalating measures to bring things back on track. After trying to secretly modify the interim report by withdrawing it from publication and sneaking in the preordained conclusions that were required by influential delegations, senior OPCW officials went to extremes.

They removed all the team members who had gone to Douma and produced a flawed Fact Finding Mission report written by persons unknown, none of whom had much knowledge of what the Douma team had done.

The fact-finding report predictably found that “it was reasonable to believe” there had been an attack with chlorine in Douma. This was followed much later by the OPCW’s inevitable I.I.T. report that blamed the Syrian regime for the attack.

In reaching its conclusions, the drafters claimed, as usual, to have been informed by anonymous experts. The context in the reports was usually along the lines of  the fact-finding mission (F.F.M.) “asked an expert about this and the expert said it was possible.” Many qualified experts and commentators, including me, consider this laughable.

The OPCW were going too far, and ultimately this led to the ongoing dispute where the two most senior and experienced inspectors in the F.F.M. team objected.

The drafter of the team’s interim report, Dr. Brendan Whelan (“Inspector B”), was one. I was the other. In my case I had also led the politically-mandated inspections at two facilities of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre (S.S.R.C.) suspected of harbouring illicit chemical weapons activities.

Here again, we did our work thoroughly and in drafting the S.S.R.C. inspection reports I made clear that there was nothing amiss in either of the facilities.

This didn’t stop the U.S., U.K. and France from conducting punitive missile strikes on Barzah S.S.R.C., on the basis of social media postings on the Douma allegation, even before the OPCW team had arrived at the incident scene.

Destroyed Barzah Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre labs, Nov. 7, 2018. (Ian Henderson/OPCW/courtesy former Syrian government)

Rather than another detailed analysis of the Douma scandal, suffice it to say, the official Douma narrative has been clearly and scientifically picked apart by many credible observers, including by Dr. Whelan and me.

This has been widely reported, although predictably not much in the mainstream media.

The OPCW and Western delegations have been in crisis management mode ever since the first leak, that of an internal engineering summary that cast doubt on the allegation that chlorine cylinders had been dropped from aircraft, raising the possibility that militants had placed the cylinders to stage the scene of a chemical attack.

I was the author of that report.

Nose of chlorine cylinder alleged to have smashed through a steel-reinforced concrete roof at apartment building “Location 2,” April. 21, 2018. (OPCW, courtesy former Syrian government)

Worse still for the prevailing Douma narrative, Dr. Whelan recently won a legal case against the OPCW for their charges against him of confidentiality breaches.

In their submissions, the OPCW inadvertently admitted to suppressing the key toxicology assessment (incidentally by NATO specialists) that dismissed chlorine as the likely cause of death of deceased victims shown in images posted from the scene.

[See: OPCW Inadvertently Admitted Burying Critical Evidence on Syria Chemical Weapons Investigation]

The OPCW has refused to engage in any discussion on the facts and scientific substance of the case, ever since concerns were first raised by Dr. Whelan and me.

This intransigence to re-open the file is likely dictated by the needs of the three belligerent governments that subjected Syria to punitive missile strikes in retaliation for the supposed Syrian chemical attack even before the Douma F.F.M. had started work.

Any updated or corrected findings on Douma would be inconvenient.

The New OPCW Mission

Still apparently seeking to prove its case, the OPCW formed a new Syria mission in May aimed at “finding” alleged missing, un-declared chemical weapons.

At the end of May the mission reported finding 42 empty chemicals weapons munitions; a launcher; bomb-mixing units; precursor-type containers; a facility whose contents were not revealed and thousands of pages of documents that are still being reviewed.

The mission also found 650 kg of “a chemical compound known to have been used by the former government for the production of nerve agents,” which the report does not name. It says an unknown quantity of hexamine, a legal chemical with wide industrial use, was found but it is not clear if this is the same compound as in the 650 kg.

In September, the Syrian government, now under the leadership of a former al-Qaeda and ISIS leader, began destroying the empty bombs, but not any of the chemicals that were found, presumably meaning none were banned.

Despite all the fanfare of these results being presented at a U.N. Security Council meeting last month, it appears that the new OPCW mission came up as empty as those bombs.

None of these discoveries does anything to prove that Assad ever used a chemical weapon, in other words, nothing to prove that I, along with other OPCW officials and countless observers and commentators who challenged the Assad chemical weapons narrative were wrong.

Presumably after all the effort in creating that narrative, Western governments and mainstream media that promoted the Iraq war and then the Syrian conflict to achieve regime change in that country, require a tidier ending than the mess they made of the Iraqi WMD story.

Sept. 3 U.N. Security Council meeting on OPCW mission:

An early press release from the OPCW is telling. It shows what they were attempting to prove with this May mission, in particular two rather flimsy suggestions.

They report the discovery of some of the empty munitions,

“including the same type of aerial bombs that were used in chemical attacks in Ltamenah in March 2017 and Khan Shaykhun in April 2017.”

This refers to empty M4000 aerial bombs, declared by the Syrians as part of their stockpile.

Aside from the questionable Douma-like irregularities surrounding “evidence” used by the OPCW to conclude that sarin-filled M4000 bombs were used in those attacks, it’s important to mention something else.

The Syrians had clearly explained to us that 2,000 of these bombs, never filled, had been set aside to be “repurposed,” in other words to be filled with high explosive to turn them into conventional munitions. These could turn up anywhere.

A second questionable statement in the press release is,

“Rockets were also found, of the same type as those that were used in the Ghouta chemical weapons attack in August 2013.”

This relates to artillery rockets crudely modified with a large cylindrical payload container added at the front.

For a start, the U.N./OPCW report of Ghouta did not attempt to identify the perpetrators of that sarin attack, since it was not part of their mandate. The accusations against the regime have always been political, something the mainstream media happily took up.

The Most Credible Analysis So Far

The Ghouta sarin attack took place on Aug. 21, 2013 and according to Western sources killed more than 1,000 people in the Damascus suburb.

The most serious investigation of the Ghouta incident to date points to the attack being launched from opposition-occupied positions, and remains the most credible analysis of the attack.

Indeed the U.N./OPCW team was in Damascus at the time of the attack in Ghouta because it was responding to an earlier request from the Syrian government to investigate chemical attacks against their forces.

The OPCW release also mentions a typical catch-all referring to “quantities of separately stored chemicals and related equipment, the nature of which is currently under technical analysis.”

There will always be suggestions of vague bits and pieces, rusty remnants that “may have been a part of” alleged undeclared elements of a chemical weapons program.

And, keep in mind, it’s been 22 months since the Assad government was ousted and their enemies in the opposition group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been running the country.

So far as I can see, the OPCW hasn’t found anything remotely close to the desired smoking gun. Anything real, I should say.

Partners in the Anti-Assad Chemical Narrative

Syrian President Ahmaad Al Shaara, former Al Nusra/HTS fighter, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in New York City, September 2025. (State Department Photo, Wikimedia)

We need to keep in mind how this is working. There are three partners in this latest endeavour on the anti-Assad chemical narrative.

First, we have the Western governments, belligerents in the Syrian conflict, which worked hard on building the chemical narrative to delegitimise the regime.

The U.K. government offered specialists to check out suspected sites in Syria to prepare them for the May mission in order to “assist” the current government in finding evidence of hidden chemical weapons.

That leads us to the second group, the government in Syria, reportedly eager to please their Western sponsors in return for economic favours. They are the Al-Nusra/HTS extremists who, in the case of Douma, fabricated the scene to raise a chemical false flag allegation against the Assad.

The third partner is the OPCW.

That means the various groups who have been on this mission are a). those who staged scenes of chemical attacks; b). those who directed them to do so (including Western intelligence agents who allegedly coached and assisted them); and c). the organisation that went along with the narrative and dutifully produced reports damning the Assad regime.

It may appear to the reader that I’m suggesting that the OPCW reports on Syrian chemical weapons will continue to be little more than propaganda, the usual sexed-up nonsense. Perhaps so. In disputing this, these assertions will be dismissed as conspiracy theories.

However, this argument is weakened because the source of the alternative narrative is the scientists and senior inspectors (many “Western”) from within the OPCW teams, including the Douma fact-finding mission and Scientific Studies and Research Centre inspections.

This is why Douma remains a key element in the debate. If they did it once (and doggedly stuck to their guns), they probably did it before.

Many serious and eminent observers are imploring the OPCW to conduct a review of the Douma case, including by the OPCW’s own Scientific Advisory Board.

I see this being done by credible, independent and neutral experts in the fields of chemistry, toxicology, metallurgy and engineering, overseen by the relevant professional institutes.

These experts would report their findings transparently, putting their names and reputations behind their analysis. This will clear up the Douma controversy, either demonstrating that it could have actually happened as alleged, or demonstrating the flaws in the OPCW reports.

Exposing a clear and deliberate fraud would seriously weaken the Western narrative on alleged Syrian chemical attacks. Therefore, in my view, it is not going to happen under the purview of the OPCW.

Ever.

I don’t mean to suggest that those calling for a review are unrealistically hopeful.  But the risks of such a review are perhaps too high for it ever to be envisaged by the Western group that was aligned with the efforts on regime change in Syria — chiefly the U.S., the U.K. and France.

This does not mean it can’t happen. There is more than enough open-source material, as well as now-unclassified facts, images, analysis results and information available from the OPCW itself, from former OPCW officials and inspectors, and held by Member States, that would support a credible in-depth review.

The basis for expert analysis would be the material used in the fact-finding mission and I.I.T. reports themselves.

By now we know there isn’t any “smoking gun” evidence. If there had been, it would have been cited in the mission and I.I.T. reports.

Trust me, this study will bear clear results. My hope is that someone sufficiently curious and responsible will commission and fund it.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

By Ron PAUL

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

This past week we have seen several serious Administration corruption scandals. Fox News host-turned-Trump Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, came to attention recently when she informed a Greek official, in what sounded like a threat, that Washington can overthrow any government it wishes.

While hardly breaking news, such an admission is not normally considered part of diplomatic dialogue. But for Guilfoyle, that was only the beginning. She is reported to have strong-armed a donor into paying off her $100,000 American Express bill before she took office. Most recently, she is in even hotter water for reportedly using her ties to the Trump family – she was once engaged to Donald Trump, Jr. – to set up business deals for a wealthy Greek businessman who was coincidentally funding her supposedly lavish lifestyle in Greece.

Similarly, last week the media reported that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s right hand man David Millstein was abusing his post to further his own political biases. Millstein, who first came under scrutiny for sending a request to Israeli citizens for “monetary wedding gift[s],” has also reportedly been suppressing or even falsifying Embassy reporting that is critical of Israel. In a supposedly “America first” Administration, it is shocking that officials are abusing their power for the benefit of a foreign country over their own.

The corruption taint goes even deeper. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is reported to have doubled his net worth while in office. Likewise, the Trump family itself is said to have earned billions from sketchy business deals – including military deals while a war is on – while Donald Trump has been in office. President Trump himself, who has made a show of refusing his salary as President, is said to have made over two billion dollars in the first year of his second term. That is a far cry above the $400,000 US Presidential salary!

While there is much noise on the Right about the danger of socialism – and it should not be discounted – what is not discussed enough is the “socialism” for the rich and well-connected. One word for this is “corporatism.” It is the merger – even if temporary – of state power with “private” interests.

Rich Greek businessmen are not lavishing gifts on Ambassador Guilfoyle because she is a nice person. They are looking for favors that only those holding the levers of political power can grant.

Ideally, elected and appointed government officials would be more like Rep. Thomas Massie, who was already a successful businessman before winning office and therefore did not view his “public service” as a kind of piggy bank. However, we live in the real world and such standards are probably too high to expect.

So, what is the solution? Corrupt officials abuse their positions because the government is so enormous and invasive that there are endless opportunities for graft and grift. If we are really seeking to end or reduce government corruption, we must return government to the size it was when this country was founded. Rather than waiting for a government of saints to lead the country, we must remove the incentives that tempt mere men and women to view elected and appointed office as an opportunity for personal and financial gain.

Original article:  ronpaulinstitute.org

Four in five new jobs created in Britain since 2014 were taken by migrants while the number of British people on out-of-work benefits increased by 2.3 million, according to a report from the Centre for Social Justice.

The post Migrants Taking Four in Five New Jobs appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

In the second half of this insightful conversation, former political prisoner Mansa Musa joins Black Panther Party archivist and photographer Billy X Jennings to examine the pivotal 1971 FBI office break-in by antiwar activists. The stolen documents exposed COINTELPRO—the federal government’s covert operation to surveil, infiltrate, and dismantle radical political movements. Despite state-sponsored efforts to suppress the organization, the Panthers’ legacy survives through modern social movements, culture, politics, and communal socialism. Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, who worked closely alongside the Panthers on their early survival programs, brings deep personal insight into their lasting community impact. Published in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, this feature continues our series on the BPP’s enduring role in social justice.

Related links:

• Celebrating 60th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party
• Billy X Jennings Facebook

Credits:

• Production/Post-production: Cameron Granadino

If the day should ever come where Islamophobia gets concrete legal backing in Europe, it could be soon.

The European Parliament (EP) just voted to “condemn the strategies of Islamist entryism” and to develop ways to disrupt Muslim political movements in a resolution on 8 October.

Some 381 out of 720 MEPs worry Muslims are seeking to infiltrate democratic institutions, weaken European rule of law, gender equality, and what they deemed “European values”. 

And almost every one of the centre-right and rightwing MEPs in the house voted to surveil EU funding for anti-racism organisations, so as to ensure none of it gets into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The brotherhood is a transnational Muslim group founded in 1928 in Egypt, involved in religious revival, social welfare, and political activism.

But according to a French government memo from May 2025, as well as the EP resolution, it is guilty of “entryism”, to sabotage French democracy.

The EP resolution and French memo were dubbed “a political witch-hunt targeting racialised people – particularly Muslim, migrant and refugee communities” by academics and civil society, like the European Network Against Racism (ENAR).

The group called the EP motion “a stain” on the EU Parliament, belonging “within the tradition of discredited far-right conspiracy theories.”

ENAR is among those the EU has sought to defund, due to rightwing views that its work aligns with Islamist threats.

The Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO), a pan-European anti-Islamophobic group, which also risks EU defunding, said it had faced “relentless targeting and demonisation.”

Young Muslims in Europe were being forced “to choose between their identity and their right to belong,” FEMYSO president Hiba Latreche told EUobserver.

And the EP “witch-hunt” resolution, which was drafted by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group and authored by its French MEP, Céline Imart, comes at a bad time for this demographic. 

Advocacy group Collective Against Islamophobia in Europe (CCIE) recently looked at 876 incidents of anti-Muslim hatred in Europe in 2025.

Four out of five incidents targeted Muslim women, 41 percent of which involved discrimination or violence linked to their headscarves.

Disturbingly, the documented episodes “occur predominantly in public or institutional spaces, highlighting the persistence of forms of institutional racism.”

But seeing as the EU Commission’s own anti-Muslim hatred group has been inactive since 2024, the prevailing view in Brussels appears to be that rampant Islamophobia in the EU is less of a problem than the imputed influence of a nebulous Islamic movement from Egypt, which is better known for providing social care to deprived communities, than aiming to overthrow French president Emmanuel Macron.

The EP motion did not legally bind the European Commission to propose new anti-Muslim Brotherhood measures.

But it did enforce a stereotype of Muslims “as acting in a nefarious, dangerous, anti-democratic manner, until proven otherwise,” said Omran Shroufi, a political science researcher at the Free University of Brussels.

Rightwing EU politics is pushing young European Muslims into a lose-lose, or Catch 22 situation.

The notion of “entryism holds Muslims to an impossible standard, where non-participation in public life is a sign of disinterestedness, a lack of civic duty and the growth of parallel societies, whilst active engagement in civic life is treated with suspicion,” Shroufi told EUobserver.

The centre-right EPP group used to represent a moderate EU mainstream.

But now it had joined with open racists on Europe’s far right to be “effectively calling for an institutionalised form of discrimination, where Muslim communities need to prove their European and democratic values – whatever these are supposed to mean – before being allowed a seat at a table,” Shroufi said. 

By John REES

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Preparations for war with Russia and complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza have set off a struggle over jobs, wages and military production

War preparation is now a reality across Europe. Within a single September week, Poland issued fresh warnings, Germany ran drills and national alerts, military exercises were held across the Baltic, and Lithuania published plans to evacuate residents of Vilnius in the event of an attack.

The Finnish government is in full cry over the prospect of war, reminding its citizens yet again that they should be ready, in mind and in practice, for the disruption it would bring.

On 18 September, French President Emmanuel Macron gathered party leaders and presidential hopefuls at the Elysee Palace to hear the heads of France’s intelligence services describe what his office called the rapid deterioration of the international situation.

Nato, meanwhile, talks ever more openly about Russian sabotage, cyber attacks, arson and drone attacks.

Many workers and citizens across the continent, though, are not convinced by the war fever.

Thousands of Airbus workers in Spain began strike action on 1 July after rejecting the company’s pay and conditions offer.

Representatives of the UGT and CGT unions said the stoppage had slowed military and commercial production and would make it harder for the company to meet its delivery target. Airbus’s eight sites in Spain produce military transport planes and parts for commercial aircraft and satellites.

As the Defence Matters website reported: “The industrial pressure is not confined to commercial aviation. Spain is central to Airbus Defence and Space, including military transport and satellite activity. European governments are asking manufacturers to increase output at the same time as companies compete for engineers, technicians and production workers.”

Supply lines are so tight that Airbus has had to hire giant Antonov An-124 heavy-lift aircraft to ferry parts from one plant to another just to keep production running.

Air Data News reported that the strike “threatens key military aircraft programmes”, noting that the Eurofighter plant near Madrid and the military transport aircraft site near Seville were both affected.

Spanish unions said about 90 percent of eligible workers took part in the stoppage on 25 August, part of an indefinite strike. The strikes were called after workers voted at plant-level assemblies to reject the company’s offer.

French unions briefed on the dispute said the three striking Spanish unions represent about 40 percent of Airbus Spain’s roughly 14,000 employees. Workers were seeking inflation-linked pay rises, the restoration of previous remote-working arrangements and sick-leave benefits.

After the intervention of Industry Minister Jordi Hereu and concessions from Airbus, the strikers paused the stoppage on 10 September, but not the movement. Two days later, around 8,000 workers from Airbus sites across Spain marched through Madrid to keep the pressure on.

On 1 October, 77 percent of those voting backed an improved offer providing for the restoration of lost purchasing power, inflation-linked pay rises and the protection of remote-working rights, a settlement that months of industrial action had forced out of the company.

The Airbus dispute shows the leverage workers hold in the very industries on which Europe’s rearmament depends.

Trains and the TUC

In Scotland, meanwhile, the rail union RMT, the drivers’ union Aslef and the white-collar TSSA have demanded that the Scottish government remove CAF, the Spanish manufacturer Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, from its shortlist of contractors to build ScotRail’s new fleet of suburban trains.

The company is included in the UN human rights database of businesses involved in Israeli settlements for its role in running the Jerusalem light rail and helping to extend it into territory illegally seized by Israel.

Aslef made clear that its members would refuse to drive CAF trains, a position echoed by TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust when she urged the Scottish government to “think again”.

Scottish Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay put the first minister on the spot, asking him directly: “So will the first minister agree that CAF should be blocked from this contract, and will he stand with the rail workers who have refused to drive trains produced by a company that they say profits from apartheid?”

In his response, the first minister confirmed that ScotRail was seeking advice on the contract.

For the second year running, delegates at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) backed a motion opposing increases in arms spending.

This year’s motion passed with even more support than last year’s, which reversed the TUC’s previous backing, advocated by the GMB and Unite unions, for higher defence spending.

Speaking in favour of the motion, Alex Gordon, a former RMT president and national officer of the Stop the War Coalition, said: “This movement is about fighting for jobs, for public services, for investment in the industries of the future that our young people, that our young workers need.

“Those industries are not military industries. The skills of the workers in the military sector are vital skills, vital skills that need to be used in civilian production.”

Ports and classrooms

Dockworkers’ unions in at least six countries are planning an international day of action and strikes on 30 October to protest against the war on Gaza and demand an immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people.

This coordinated mobilisation follows a strike on 6 February this year that shut down cargo operations at more than 20 Mediterranean and European ports to halt arms shipments bound for Israel.

“No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarisation of ports and strategic infrastructure from [the] EU,” the unions said in their statement. “Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.”

The signatories include CGT FNPD in France, Enedep in Greece, LAB in the Basque Country, Liman-Is in Turkey, ODT in Morocco, and Orsa Porti and USB in Italy.

The next generation, at least in Germany, seems even less enthusiastic about the prospect of a new European war. More than 45,000 school students across the country walked out of class in late September to protest against plans for compulsory military service, after hundreds of young men were summoned for medical examinations.

The School Strike Against Conscription initiative said demonstrations took place in more than 100 cities after the German defence ministry began calling in 18-year-old men for medical screening. Service itself remains voluntary for now, but the screening is compulsory.

Students took to the streets demanding a halt to the forced checks, the repeal of the new military service law and an end to what they call a step-by-step return to the draft.

This is now the ground on which European politics is being fought. It is a contest between a political establishment obsessed with war and preparations for war, and millions of workers across the continent unwilling to pay for rearmament with their wages, jobs and living standards.

These are the opening shots in that battle.

Original article:  middleeasteye.net

By Yang Xuefeng

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

At present, under the impact of factors such as deep adjustments in the global balance of economic power, frequent geopolitical crises, the “weaponization” of finance, and the accelerating pace of technological progress, the existing international monetary system is unable to cope with complex and rapidly changing external challenges and is undergoing continuous evolution.

I. Stylized Facts: The Basic Landscape of the Current International Monetary System

In the process of global de-dollarization, the international monetary system has shown a trend of evolving from the hegemonic system of unipolar dollar dominance formed after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system toward a parallel pattern of multipolarization, regionalization, and digitalization. The dollar’s core position remains, but its hegemonic status is gradually being eroded.

1. Reserve Currency: De-dollarization Continues to Deepen, and a Multipolar Coexistence Pattern Is Gradually Taking Shape

Data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that the dollar’s reserve share has declined from 69.74% in 2000 to 56.42% in 2025, with a clear long-term downward trend. Even though there were periodic rebounds during this period, the long-term downward trajectory remains unchanged. This long-term non-cyclical decline can be explained by central banks’ construction and rebalancing of reserve portfolios based on market efficiency and asset security under the existing institutional system.

The trend toward diversification of reserve currencies is becoming increasingly obvious. In the process of building diversified reserves, central banks have included non-traditional international currencies in their portfolios, broadening the options for international reserve currencies. The share of non-traditional international currencies in international reserve currencies has risen from 2.48% in 2017 to 6.13% in 2025. Although the absolute share is still not high, it has increased by nearly 1.5 times.

The substitution effect of gold reserves is significant. From 2022 to 2025, global central banks’ net gold purchases exceeded 4,000 tons, and official gold reserves surpassed U.S. Treasury bonds for the first time. The logic behind this is both the increased demand for central bank asset allocation under the trend of weakening dollar credit and a strategic reconstruction of sovereign states’ control over financial assets under financial sanctions.

2. Settlement Currency: Dollar Settlement Is Retreating, and Local Currency Settlement Is Rising Trendily

In 2025, the dollar accounted for 56% of global trade settlement. Its dominant position remains, but its leading advantage is declining. The dollar’s advantage in trade settlement comes from the dollar-denominated and dollar-settled system for mainstream global commodities (such as crude oil, gold, copper, soybeans, etc.), especially the petrodollar system. This system has provided strong support for the dollar in maintaining its core position in the international monetary system.

Although the petrodollar system has been impacted in recent years, and some oil-producing countries, oil-consuming countries, and countries subject to U.S. sanctions have continuously advanced de-dollarization in oil settlement—for example, China and Russia use renminbi and rubles in oil settlement, and China and Saudi Arabia use dollars and renminbi in oil settlement—the scale of non-dollar oil settlement is still too small compared with global petrodollar settlement to shake the dollar’s oil settlement position. However, de-dollarization of oil settlement means the reconstruction of the oil settlement system, that is, the transition from a dollar monopoly settlement system to a multi-currency coexistence settlement system. In the long run, the shift in the balance of currency settlement, or in other words the substitution of other currencies for the dollar, will continue to continuously shake the dollar’s trade settlement position.

3. Payment Currency: Position Remains Solid, but Payment Infrastructure Is Becoming Multi-threaded

Data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) for May 2026 show that the dollar accounted for 50.73% of global payments, a slight increase from 50.49% at the end of 2025. On the one hand, this comes from dollar trade settlement. Dollar trade settlement must be realized through dollar payments for funds to land; as much dollar trade settlement as there is corresponds to as much dollar payment. On the other hand, the dollar accounts for nearly 90% of global trade financing, slightly more than 80% of global trade financing, and together with the safe-haven demand for dollar assets, these financial transactions greatly support the dollar’s payment share.

Although the dollar’s share in international payments has not yet changed significantly, the global cross-border payment system, namely the two-tier architecture system mainly composed of SWIFT and the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS), is being impacted by multi-threading. These shocks come from security demands arising from the abuse of the global cross-border payment system in geopolitical conflicts. With the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, the United States used its control over the global cross-border payment system to cut off Russia’s dollar settlement channel in order to strike its economy. Sovereign states have reassessed the risks of relying on a single global cross-border payment system and urgently need to seek safe and alternative cross-border payment systems, such as discussions among BRICS countries on the feasibility of the “BRICS Bridge” payment platform, China’s acceleration of building the renminbi cross-border payment system, and the euro area’s acceleration of promoting the launch of the digital euro. As safe and alternative global cross-border payment systems are gradually implemented and used, a multi-threaded pattern of the international payment system has initially taken shape.

II. Theoretical Logic: The Internal Mechanism of the Evolution of the International Monetary System

Today, international currency is developing along a trend of diversification, but its institutional foundation still belongs to the Jamaica system. Compared with the Bretton Woods system, the Jamaica system made two important adjustments: first, it reset the monetary anchor and abolished the fixed parity between gold and the dollar, replacing the “gold anchor” with a “fiat credit anchor.” While completely freeing the dollar’s issuance, it also solved the problem of gold runs; second, exchange rate arrangements became diversified, and member countries could arrange exchange rates independently, thus resolving the problem of speculative currency attacks under fixed exchange rates. Through this institutional arrangement, the “Triffin Dilemma” under the Bretton Woods system—the dilemma between increasing dollar supply to meet global liquidity demand and maintaining the fixed dollar-gold parity—was broken. However, the Jamaica system produced a “new Triffin Dilemma,” namely the contradiction between meeting the dollar demand for international liquidity and maintaining dollar credit.

The U.S. current account deficit exports dollars, and capital flows back to the capital market, forming a perfect cycle. This cycle is basically the solution to the “new Triffin Dilemma.” However, its cornerstone is maintaining dollar credit. The maintenance of dollar credit is the result of multiple dimensions working together, such as monetary policy independence, financial market depth, fiscal deficit scale, foreign policy stability, financial sanctions, and the level of fintech development. Changes in various factors will affect dollar credit to different degrees. In recent years, U.S. foreign policy and financial sanctions have become the main drivers weakening dollar credit.

First, U.S. anti-globalization policies have damaged the nodes of the dollar credit network. President Trump implemented a series of anti-globalization policies, such as imposing tariffs, withdrawing from international organizations, and building exclusive small circles. To some extent, the implementation of these policies restricts the development of global trade liberalization and promotes the reshaping of the global trade landscape. The dollar is a beneficiary of global trade liberalization. The market fragmentation and rising protectionism brought about by changes in the trade landscape objectively loosen the path dependence effect dominated by the dollar’s network externalities and narrow the scope of the dollar’s use. As a result, its share in pricing, payment, and settlement is gradually compressed, whether in the use of the dollar in bilateral trade between the United States and other countries or in the use of the dollar in trade between countries other than the United States.

Second, financial sanctions have shaken the cornerstone of dollar credit. The manifestation of financial sanctions is the weaponization of the dollar, that is, the United States uses its dominance over international dollar clearing and control over U.S. Treasury bonds to long-term implement sanctions against Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other countries, such as freezing dollar assets and cutting off dollar clearing channels (removing them from the SWIFT system), to achieve its geopolitical policy goals. The weaponization of the dollar means that the dollar assets held by various countries have no security at all. Once the security attribute as a global public good is stripped from the dollar, dollar credit becomes worthless. Therefore, the United States’ abuse of dollar hegemony not only causes other countries around the world to lose confidence in dollar credit but also prompts them to think about rebuilding the future international monetary order. The rational choice in thinking about how to reduce dependence on the dollar is to choose an international currency that can replace the dollar and has sufficient security attributes. This is also the fundamental reason why “de-dollarization” has become a global consensus.

III. Response Strategies: Pragmatic Paths in the Evolution of the International Monetary System

Looking back at the continuously evolving international monetary landscape, we see that the decline of monetary hegemony is a long-term process. In this process, China’s strategic principles are: first, reduce excessive dependence on a single sovereign currency and enhance China’s cross-border payment and overseas asset security; second, China actively participates in the reform of the international monetary system and contributes Chinese wisdom to it.

1. Build and Improve the Financial Infrastructure for Renminbi Internationalization

The goal of building the financial infrastructure for renminbi internationalization is to construct an autonomous, controllable, widely covered, and efficiently cleared renminbi cross-border payment system (CIPS). The main current problem is that, in response to financial sanctions, China’s CIPS is usable but still cannot achieve complete autonomy and control. It is necessary to improve CIPS’s capacity for autonomy and control. CIPS and SWIFT are cooperative in cross-border renminbi clearing business. Under certain conditions, SWIFT can affect the normal operation of CIPS. Therefore, while using SWIFT’s global network advantages to expand CIPS network users, China should gradually enhance the technical independence of CIPS operations. At the same time, it is also necessary to fill gaps in the global layout of clearing banks. Strengthen the establishment of renminbi clearing banks in countries and regions with layout blind spots (such as Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and other blank areas) to form a “point-line-surface” full-coverage overseas renminbi clearing service network.

2. Build a Multilateral Network for the Use of the Renminbi

Currency network externalities affect the level of currency internationalization. The reason the dollar can stand out among international currencies depends more on inertial effects external to the network. At present, the renminbi’s “circle of friends” is increasingly expanding, but it more often serves bilateral renminbi settlement between China and other countries and regions. The use of the renminbi among third countries is still in its infancy, and a multilateral interconnected renminbi network has not yet formed. To promote the use of the renminbi among third countries, on the one hand, it is necessary to promote the renminbi’s functions of pricing, settlement, investment, and financing among China’s neighboring countries and countries along the Belt and Road Initiative; on the other hand, China’s neighboring countries should be taken as a breakthrough point, relying on close economic and trade ties and a convenient renminbi interconnection network, to promote the renminbi’s use as a “public good” in trade and investment among third countries.

3. Build an Open and Developed Domestic Financial Market

Although the domestic financial market has made considerable progress in opening up and market construction, the global attractiveness of renminbi assets is still clearly insufficient, due to both opening mechanism problems and financial product problems. First, further accelerate the opening of the financial market and launch more distinctive financial products open to overseas institutions to meet overseas institutions’ renminbi asset allocation and hedging needs. Second, increase the supply of high-quality financial assets. Around the “five major articles” of finance, deepen supply-side reform of the financial market, increase the supply of technology and green financial products, promote the rapid development of the panda bond market, and use high-quality financial products to raise overseas institutions’ incentive to allocate renminbi assets, thereby increasing their allocation share of renminbi assets. Third, accelerate the construction of an offshore renminbi center in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone. Connect supply and demand between offshore and onshore markets, coordinate the development of offshore and onshore markets, and ultimately lay the market foundation for building a smooth domestic and international financial circulation mechanism for the renminbi.

4. Actively Participate in the Reform of the International Monetary System

The development of the international monetary system toward multipolarity objectively converges toward the coexistence of several sovereign currencies in a competitive equilibrium. As the world’s second-largest economy supported by a strong economic size, China should provide the world with safe renminbi reserve assets and an efficient and convenient global renminbi settlement network. To this end, it is necessary to further advance international financial cooperation at two levels. At the level of building a regional financial safety net, relying on the continuously increasing scale of renminbi swap agreements and the increasingly complete renminbi clearing network, inject renminbi liquidity when regional economic crises occur, and enhance the region’s ability to respond to crisis shocks. At the level of promoting reform of international financial governance, continue to promote reform of governance imbalances caused by the “veto power,” use voting mechanism reform to constrain the hegemonic behavior of hegemonic currencies, participate in the formulation of global financial rules, oppose the weaponization of financial infrastructure, and safeguard its neutrality and public good attributes.

Author: Yang Xuefeng, Associate Researcher at the Institute of World Economy, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences

Original article: sass.org.cn

Louisiana recently started executing death-row prisoners after more than 20 years of not doing so (save a “voluntary” execution in 2010, when a prisoner waived his right to appeal and said he wanted to die). John Corley, an award-winning writer who is incarcerated at Louisiana’s Angola prison, reflects on how MAGA politics have re-invigorated the practice of state killing in Louisiana and elsewhere, and what it means for the tenor of life in institutions like Angola:

Dalton Prejean Jr, who is serving time for manslaughter, found Hoffman’s execution particularly painful. When he was ten years old, in 1990, his father died in the penitentiary’s electric chair. “The day it all went down, it was almost like reliving the moments leading up to my father’s execution,” Prejean told me. “At ten o’clock the news reporter announced that Hoffman was dead. My heart skipped. I couldn’t believe they had actually killed somebody. Was what he did so bad that he just couldn’t be allowed to go on living? Wasn’t there anything about him that was redeemable?”

Twice a week, the inmate counsel substitute Gary Boudreaux makes rounds on the five death row tiers. He knows each of the surviving men housed there. “There was no tension on the row because the guys believed the execution wouldn’t happen,” Boudreaux said. “It had been so long, and they have good lawyers. They just didn’t think executions would come back.”

A week after the execution, Boudreaux returned to the row. The atmosphere was “totally different.” The men now knew that Governor Landry “is serious about executing people, and the state will execute people. There’s no doubt in their minds about that any more.”

Sacrifice the inconvenient, never the project. “Pal-washing” in action.

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

A familiar script

On 9 October 2026, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Navanethem Pillay, an 85-year-old South African jurist, former judge at the International Criminal Court and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The citation speaks of a person who has paved the way for a more comprehensive global legal order. The Committee’s chair, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, added that the prize is a message to those who attack and undermine the international system and its institutions. The verdict is avowedly political, and it is on this level that it must be discussed.

The very same figure who, in 2011, is said to have ‘toppled’ Gaddafi, paving the way for the plundering of Libyan oil and the enslavement of African migrants, would now ‘topple’ Netanyahu, thereby paving the way for Israel’s rehabilitation. The underlying logic would be neither morality nor peace, but the agenda of George Soros’s Open Society: to sacrifice those who have become inconvenient, never the essence of the project itself. Some have dubbed it ‘pal-washing’. The fundamental question is a serious one, for it asks whether there is a pattern behind the prizes and jurisdictions of the liberal order.

It must be emphasised that the script is already familiar. Do you remember when Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize, whilst launching war after war? Or do you recall figures in search of a cause such as Machado, Mohammadi, or the defenders of Ukrainian criminals? But let us proceed in order.

Act One: Libya

In February 2011, Pillay, the High Commissioner, called on the Human Rights Council to take vigorous action to stop the violence and hold those responsible to account; the Council condemned the violations and established a commission of inquiry. The next step fell to the Security Council: referral to the ICC via Resolution 1970, followed by Resolution 1973, approved with ten votes in favour and five abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russia). No one claims that Pillay decided to go to war. What matters is the sequence of events: the language of human rights opened the door, that of the protection of civilians authorised the use of force, and the operation gradually shifted towards regime change. As early as April, Lavrov was accusing NATO of exceeding its mandate, and a French minister admitted that regime change would have required a new vote.

Then there are the costs. In 2017, the IOM documented auctions of sub-Saharan migrants in southern Libya, sold for sums ranging from 200 to 500 dollars. The link with the collapse of the state after 2011 is the most plausible interpretation, although the source documents the phenomenon rather than its cause. Libya and the migrants paid the price; the legal framework emerged, formally speaking, intact, even if the controversy over the mandate would later weigh on the vetoes of Moscow and Beijing in other matters.

Act Two: Bibi

On 21 November 2024, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Pillay had left the Court in 2008, but chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry which, on 16 September 2025, concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. This is where ‘pal-washing’ comes into play. International criminal law deals with individuals: a defendant, a charge, a period of time. If the case concludes with the fate of a leader, a narrative break occurs – the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of a man – after which the state can present itself as restored. Libya offers an analogy: there, the case concluded with the fall of a man.

The limitations of the process work in favour of this interpretation. The Court has no police force and the execution of warrants depends on the States Parties; the Commission is not a court and does not speak on behalf of the entire UN; the Committee itself, according to AFP, has stated that it is up to a court to determine whether genocide has taken place. The award has no legal effect, as we know, but it lends legitimacy to a system that promises justice yet cannot guarantee it.

We must also bear in mind that we have already seen dynamics of this kind on numerous occasions within the globalist order that dominates the West. The Open Society Foundations presents itself as the world’s largest private funder of groups working for justice, democracy and human rights, active in over one hundred countries, and Pillay received the Stockholm Human Rights Award, the same prize that went to Soros and Neier in 2011. It certainly seems that the pattern of the Soros agenda is repeating itself once again – an agenda comprising foundations, NGOs, tribunals, commissions and bureaucracies that share a common lexicon and worldview: that of a liberal order to be perfected and never called into question. Those operating within that lexicon may denounce a government, a leader, or even a state, but they cannot challenge the underlying assumptions of the order that grants them legitimacy.

Some will object that Pillay’s Commission attributes responsibility to Israel as a state, not merely to its leaders, which contradicts the idea of a purely personalised operation. The second point concerns the reaction. Netanyahu accused the Committee of having lost its moral compass; the Israeli Foreign Ministry spoke of a grotesque exploitation of the prize; and Washington announced sanctions against the ICC just a few hours after the announcement. All true. But it would make sense and have value if the Western system were not rotten to its very core, if its legal system were functioning properly, but this is not the case, in any respect (and we have already seen sufficient evidence of this – let us not forget the Epstein case either).

If, over the next twelve months, Netanyahu’s political downfall is presented as the conclusion of the case, rather than as a stage in proceedings concerning the state, ‘Pal-washing’ will gain traction. If the proceedings continue beyond his person, and if the State Parties execute the warrants, perhaps it will lose ground. Given the current evidence, the argument is plausible and, until proven otherwise, this is yet another ‘Non-Peace’ Nobel Prize – one we cannot call ‘war’.

Further exclusive extracts from Chris Morrison's new book on the invented 'climate crisis' are published today on the Daily Sceptic. Read about the role of the BBC and Met Office in driving the hysteria.

The post The Corruption of the BBC and Met Office: Further Exclusive Extracts From Chris Morrison’s New Book on the Invented ‘Climate Crisis’ appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Getting co-decision powers on the budget, finally enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty after more than a decade of inter-institutional battles, was one of the European Parliament’s big wins. 

The challenge facing MEPs in the coming months is whether they are really going to use those powers on the 2028-34 budget. 

The early signs are that they are spoiling for a fight. The Irish government’s compromise proposal tabled on Saturday (10 October) – an 8 percent cut worth €141bn to the European Commission’s spending plan – isn’t exactly butchery. 

But it does display a startling lack of ambition, in particular on the raft of ‘own resources’ proposed by MEPs to make the budget process less vulnerable to member states wanting to reduce or at least freeze their annual contributions  

This time round, MEPs have proposed a digital services levy, an online gambling levy, and a levy on crypto-asset capital gains.

Put together the parliament reckons that these new taxes could bring an additional €30bn to the EU’s budget, on top of the €57.4bn that the EU commission believes can be raised from other levies, such as the emissions trading scheme and the carbon border levy. 

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Death rates for Americans between 25 and 44 years old jumped 71.2% in just eleven years, rising from about 140 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 to 239 per 100,000 by 2021. No other age group came anywhere close to that surge. Overdoses, suicides, car crashes, and chronic diseases appearing at increasingly younger ages are now cutting down people in the prime of their lives.

Steven H. Woolf, a physician and researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, published the analysis in The Milbank Quarterly. He combined data from the United Nations, the CDC, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a U.S. mortality database to show how far American life expectancy has fallen behind the rest of the developed world, and increasingly, much of the developing world too.

By 2023, U.S. life expectancy ranked 38th among countries with populations over 1 million, trailing not just Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia but also Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Israel, South Korea, and several Persian Gulf nations. Sixty countries had a lower risk of a person dying before age 40 than the United States did. That gap didn’t open overnight. It has been widening since the 1990s, and it sped up sharply after 2010.

How Researchers Tracked the Rising Death Rates

Woolf built this analysis by comparing decades of death records rather than running a new clinical trial or survey. He pulled data from the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the U.S. Mortality Database, the CDC’s death-records database known as WONDER, and OECD data covering 16 other wealthy countries, including Canada, Japan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He tracked age-specific death rates from 1999 through 2023, sorted into five groups: infants, youth ages 1 to 24, young adults 25 to 44, middle-aged adults 45 to 64, and adults 65 and older.

A separate part of the study looked at all 50 states from 1941 onward, matching each year of life expectancy data to the sitting governor’s political party to see whether state policy choices lined up with health outcomes over time.

What’s Driving the Rise in Death Rates Among Young Americans

Drug overdoses top the list. Among adults 25 to 44, the overdose death rate rose sevenfold after 1999, from about 7.7 per 100,000 to more than 54 per 100,000, and surpassed circulatory diseases (such as heart disease and stroke) in 2015 to become the leading cause of death in that age group. Suicide rates for this same group are higher than in any other age bracket and climbed more than 40% between 2000 and 2023. Homicides rose 75.5% between 2014 and 2021, and deaths from car crashes and other transportation accidents rose 43.5% over that same stretch.

What surprised even close followers of these trends is how much of the damage now comes from disease rather than injury. Deaths from diabetes and other metabolic and hormone-related illness rose nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2019 among young adults. Deaths tied to liver damage from drinking more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. Deaths from alcohol-related mental health disorders more than tripled in that same window. Even high blood pressure, historically a problem of later adulthood, saw its death rate more than double among 25- to 44-year-olds between 2000 and 2023.

Middle-aged adults, 45 to 64, saw many of the same patterns: rising deaths from drug overdoses, liver damage from drinking, and diseases of the brain and nervous system, along with a COVID-19 death rate that nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021 even after vaccines became available. Older adults largely avoided these steep increases, though deaths from brain and nerve diseases doubled between 2000 and 2023, and deaths from endocrine disorders and suicide also climbed.

Infographic by StudyFinds

Where U.S. Life Expectancy Has Fallen the Furthest

National averages hide some brutal local realities. Comparing individual states to countries with similar life expectancy, Woolf found that Hawaii, the top-performing state, matched life expectancy in Western European countries like Sweden and Ireland. Mississippi, by contrast, resembled Libya, Venezuela, Belarus, and Syria in 2019. Conditions worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. By 2021, life expectancy in West Virginia and Mississippi matched Bulgaria, Bangladesh, and Iraq, and fell below North Korea and Syria. Life expectancy was higher in Palestine and Iran than in nine U.S. states, including Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Woolf’s review of state data going back to 1941 found that states led by Republican governors tended to see life expectancy stagnate or decline, a pattern that became especially visible after 2010 and turned into what Woolf calls a “natural experiment” during the COVID-19 pandemic. States’ sharply different decisions on masking, business closures, and vaccination, he writes, could be measured in death counts within weeks. Red states, the analysis notes, suffered the largest COVID-era drops in life expectancy, a pattern that held up even after researchers accounted for other factors like poverty rates and existing health conditions.

Other researchers cited in the review, who looked at generational patterns rather than state policy, found that Americans born after 1970 had higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, and injury-related causes than earlier generations. They concluded that the current stall in U.S. life expectancy stems from “multilayered social, biological, and generational forces.”

Why America’s Death Rates Keep Climbing

Woolf’s analysis lays out five broad categories behind America’s health disadvantage: a health care system without universal coverage, riskier individual behaviors like higher calorie consumption and firearm ownership, greater income inequality and poverty, a built environment that favors cars over walking and green space, and public policies that put less emphasis on collective welfare than peer nations do. None of these explanations are new, but the paper argues that treating overdoses, suicides, and chronic disease as separate problems misses the bigger picture: they are symptoms of the same underlying neglect.

That’s the sharpest point in the paper, and probably the one worth sitting with. Other wealthy countries didn’t stumble into longer lives by accident. They built universal health coverage, stronger safety nets, and tighter consumer and environmental protections decades ago, and it shows up in their citizens’ death certificates today. America’s problem was never a shortage of ideas for fixing this. It’s a shortage of political will to act on them, and until that changes, the gap between how long Americans live and how long people in dozens of other countries live looks likely to keep growing.

Original article: studyfinds.com

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

When a plurality of Canadians voted for Mark Carney’s Liberal Party in 2025, their hope was a leader who would protect and preserve Canadian values from the American onslaught of Donald Trump. Many explicitly rejected Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives because they felt his right-wing, anti-worker values were too closely aligned with the U.S. Republican Party.

So it might disappoint Canadians to know that Mark Carney is not only continuing Justin Trudeau’s controversial labour relations regime, but quickly expanding his attack upon the working class, couching in it neutral buzzwords like “modernization” all while making it clear that the goal is to make the capitalist class happy by assuring them Canadian workers have fewer rights than they used to.

You don’t have to take my word for it; you can see the doublespeak from key members of the Carney cabinet. First up is Minister of Jobs and Families (remember, Carney refuses to have a real Minister of Labour) Patty Hajdu, who went onto the CBC to defend her government’s attack on the right to strike. Puzzlingly, Hajdu suggested that while Carney supports strike rights, their new legislation will seek to address the five per cent of cases where strike action becomes disruptive. But herein lies the trick that Hajdu even admits: collective bargaining works, because 95 per cent of the time, there are no labour stoppages. That five per cent number? Hajdu is effectively saying that she wants workers to have the ‘right’ to strike, so long as they don’t use it in the five per cent of cases they currently do. A right that exists so long as it isn’t exercised, in other words.

Indeed, more candid reporting from CTV confirmed that Carney’s objective is to go even farther than Trudeau and Stephen Harper: to not only use back-to-work legislation, but propose new legislation that “will be aimed at introducing binding mediation before strike action is taken.” This is a shocking escalation of anti-labour policy, even for the already right-wing Mark Carney. The reason is even more chilling as per CTV:

Industry’s message to the government was that its traditional tool to use for binding arbitration, Section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code, can only be applied too late in the labour dispute process and from its perspective, does not adequately prevent the damage caused from a work stoppage.

Put another way, corporations feel the government’s anti-labour tools aren’t strong enough, and that the only way to ensure investors are happy is to stop strikes before they can even manifest. But this defeats the whole purpose of strikes: they are indeed rare, but when they do happen, they must be disruptive to enact vital economic victories that benefit union members and the wider working class. This is something Avi Lewis and the NDP made clear in strong opposition to Carney’s union-busting scheme. If Carney and his capitalist buddies argue that strikes can only happen when they cause zero economic disruption, they are effectively calling for an abolition of the right to strike in practice.

This focus on pleasing investors was the central and explicit concern of  Minister of Transport Steven MacKinnon. In a discussion with Rosemary Barton, MacKinnon parroted Hajdu’s insistence that while the right to strike still exists, workers better not use it: “It harms investment, harms employment, maybe even particularly in unionized environments. So we need a better framework for getting to agreements between employers and their employees.”

Again, the crux of the Carney argument is that workers’ rights are bad for business. And that if any company fears a union could strike for better wages, improved working conditions, and fair and equitable treatment, that would hurt the bottom line, and they might be less likely to invest. So, for Carney to entice the Trump-aligned American capitalists that Canadians wanted protection from, he must crush the workers under his boot, including their basic right to withhold their labour as guaranteed by the Charter.

Carney may say he opposes Trump, but his ideal Canada is a Republican dream of an anti-union southern Red state. The man elected to save Canada? He’s the one dissolving it from the inside for the benefit of capitalists, including American businessmen who supported Trump. Once Carney’s done selling away our rights and our infrastructure with the help of American banks like Morgan Stanley, he’ll be fine. But Canadians will be left picking up the pieces of a Trumpified Canada for generations.

Original article: ricochet.media