The forced displacement of millions of people spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is putting a fresh spotlight on the experiences and differing treatment of refugees and asylum seekers around the world.
In just a few months, a stunning number of people — more than 6.5 million — have sought refuge outside Ukraine and been able to legally enter neighboring states where they have been welcomed with an outpouring of support.
Denmark will join the European Union’s defence policy after a referendum on Wednesday (1 June), final results showed, signalling the latest shift among Nordic countries to deepen defence ties in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Netherlands and Germany will drill for gas in the North Sea together, with production expected to start in 2024, the Dutch government has announced.
According to the Dutch government’s website, production will take place in the North Sea, about 19 kilometres north of Schiermonnikoog and Borkum. A pipeline is being constructed to get the gas onto the shore.
Europe lurched closer to an energy crisis on Tuesday after the Kremlin cut off gas supplies to major buyers including Shell.
The revelations of outrageous behavior by the civil servants and advisers closest to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have become so predictable in their mixture of bureaucratic procedure with B-movie farce, that it now seems surprising when a day goes by without another incident splashed across the morning headlines.
The member states of the European Union on Monday agreed to impose terrorism-related sanctions against an al-Qaida-affiliated armed insurgent group and two of its leaders.
The European Council, which oversees the 27-member bloc’s political direction, identified Hurras al-Din, a Syria-based al-Qaida affiliate, its leader, Faruq al-Suri, and its religious leader, Sami al-Aridi, for asset freezes and travel bans.
Anyone who grew up in my generation of 1980s kids remembers G.I. Joe action figures — those green-uniformed plastic soldiers you could use to stage battles in the sandbox in your backyard or, for that matter, your bedroom. In those days, when imagery of bombed-out homes, bloodied civilians, and police violence wasn’t accessible on TV screens or in video games like Call of Duty, war in children’s play took place only between soldiers. No civilians were caught up in it as “collateral damage.”
It is an American trait to root for the underdog in any contest that pits David vs. Goliath. Therefore, it is understandable that most Americans (except for extreme MAGA types) are thrilled that Ukrainian forces have pushed the brutal, but hapless, Russian military away from Ukraine’s two largest cities and are gamely taking the fight to a force multiple times as big and strong (on paper).
As should be clear by now, Francis Fukuyama’s declaration in The End of History: The Last Man (1992) that we had arrived at “the end of history” did not mean that classical liberalism, or laissez-faire economics, had emerged victorious over communism and fascism, or that the final ideological hegemony signaled the end of socialism. In fact, for Fukuyama, the terminus of history was always democratic socialism or social democracy. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted in Democracy: The God That Failed, “the Last Man” standing was not a capitalist homo economicus but rather a “homo socio-democraticus” (222). The end of history, with all its Hegelian pretenses, did not entail the defeat of socialism-communism but rather of classical liberalism. Evidently, the big state and big capital were supposed to have reached an inevitable and final détente. The Great Reset is the consummation of this final détente.
There is a replacement of civilization and the media is not even covering it.
“By 2050, 50 percent of the French population will be mixed.” — Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Radio Classique, May 17, 2021.
“The mayor of Grenoble adopts the arguments and rhetorical formulas of the Muslim Brotherhood: talking about freedom to impose sexism”. — Céline Pina, Le Figaro, May 4, 2022.