• The question they can’t answer: What does ‘leave’ mean?
Here’s a question for you. Would you move home without knowing what your next home looks like? No, me neither.
Portuguese President Cavaco Silva (right) receives (former) Prime Minister Passos Coelho after elections to talk about the new government. Gonçalo Silva/Demotix. All rights reserved.
Sixty-two of the world’s wealthiest people own as much as the poorest 3.6 billion – a shocking figure that will certainly come up at this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The question is whether the people who get invited to Davos – the global elite – will take action to combat growing economic inequality.
These proposals do not happen in a vacuum, but in the context of a changing policy landscape where critical thought and protest are being marginalised through labelling and “securitization”.
Boycott Apartheid Bus, London, UK, 1989. Flickr/ R Barraez D’Lucca. Some rights reserved.During the Conservative Party’s annual conference in October 2015, the party announced proposals to stop local councils from supporting “politically motivated boycotts and divestment campaigns”. Specifically, the Tories warned of “growing concern” about councils aiming to disinvest local authority pension funds from companies that produce weapons or are complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The press release[i] that followed branded those who support such boycotts “hard-left militants”, claiming that they undermine “international security” and hold back measures necessary to “tackle Islamic extremism”.
‘Hands Off Our Privacy’: Polish Citizens Speak Out Against Surveillance Law
A small group of citizens protested against the surveillance law on January 13. Picture used with permission.
Why don’t we all know which journalists are accredited to the EU institutions?
Ska Keller retweeted this from Spiegel Online journalist Markus Becker earlier:
Polish government requested names of all accredited journalists from@EUparliamenthttps://t.co/2ofkNXxq2k#PiS#Poland
— Markus Becker (@MarkusBecker) January 21, 2016
The insinuation is that – having purged the Warsaw press, the government of Poland is about to try to do the same in Brussels.
That may be the case, but I see this issue rather differently – why is the list of the European Parliament’s accredited journalists not open and transparent anyway? Because to be an accredited journalist means you have a badge to access the EP and can use EP filming facilities. To know who has the power to report is also a means of knowing who wields influence in Brussels, not least because the Brussels-based press – especially Euractiv and Politico – are so heavily dependent on corporate sponsorship.
The Bundestag is not adequately carrying out its role in controlling and influencing EU policies. This is according to a study carried out by the Centre for European Policy (CEP).
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