Europe
Europe
Fair Observer provides insightful and informed analysis about important European issues, events and trends.
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2030 / climate change / Food Scarcity / future / North America / Shahbaz Shaikh / United Nations / Water Scarcity / Europe / Focus Article / Global ChangeWhat challenges does the world face for 2030? By 2030, technology will have advanced at a rate far beyond the predictive capacity available today, as technology expands in efficiency at an exponential rate. As a result, this will meet limits in terms of physical constraints; it will create a new need for organizational structures that do not promote discrimination or abusive cyclical patterns, which are a feature of today’s marketing system — especially in agriculture and other markets whose products are necessary to the sustenance of the nation. Issues of planning are often understood in goals and timeframes available for achieving them. The primary problem of scarcity in any...
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360° Analysis / abolitionism / Forced Labour / Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation / North America / Second Wave Feminism / UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons / White Slavery / Europe / CultureBy Donna HughesSex trafficking has existed since the dawn of civilization. The practices of sexual exploitation and sexual slavery are older than recorded history. Whenever a woman or girl — or man or boy — was without status or protection, he or she could have been subjected to sexual exploitation. The same is true today. Debates and Protocols “Sex trafficking” is a modern term. It was coined during the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1980s, when female activists started protesting the exploitation of women and girls in prostitution and pornography. Debates raged for years among feminists about “free” and “forced” prostitution, and whether...
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al-Shabab / Fair Observer / Golden Dawn / Human Trafficking / Iran / Kenya Attacks / Nairobi / North America / Obama UN General Assembly / Obama-Rouhani / Politics / Rachel Lloyd / Rouhani / Syria / Tariq Ramadan / United States / Europe / Focus Article / Middle East & North Africa / Latin America / Africa / Central & South Asia / Asia PacificPledge $1 to keep us going. Back in 1939, September was the month when World War II broke out. So in 2013, it is reassuring to see that the US and Iran might be beginning their first tentative steps to rest the ghosts of 1953 and 1979. The former scarred Iran because the CIA was influenced by the British to conduct a coup against a democratically elected Iranian government. The latter scarred the US because Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in a revolution and caused a hostage crisis that led to the fall of Jimmy Carter. After the saber rattling of the last few years, perhaps Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani might give diplomacy a better shot to resolve their difference, leading...
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American Healthcare / Britain / British Healthcare / Bruce Newsome / Care Quality Commission / Healthcare / Labour Party / National Health Service / NHS / North America / Europe / Focus Article / ScienceIs the British healthcare service a model for the United States? This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here. Here is the most consequential truth: Even though British healthcare is largely public, it is effectively unaccountable. You might naturally assume that the Ministry of Health is accountable for public healthcare – not so. The Labour government (1997-2010) had set up an incestuous system of “quasi-non-governmental organizations” (QUANGOs) that effectively hid epidemic malpractice and allowed government deniability. QUANGOs are largely self-regulating bodies, even though almost all their funding comes from the taxpayer. Enforcing Accountability The...
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360° Analysis / Arab Spring / Bashar Al-Assad / Chemical Weapons / Citizen Empowerment / Diplomacy / Egypt / John Kerry / North America / Russia / Sergei Lavrov / Syria / Syrian Civil War / Tartus / Tunisia / United Nations / US Foreign Policy / Yemen / Europe / International Security / Middle East & North AfricaToo many Syrians have been killed for a deal to contain chemical weapons. Quite apart from the current fury in the West over the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Civil War has been the latest chapter in the continual collapse of ersatz national sovereignties in the Middle East since the notion of the nation-state was first imposed upon them a hundred years ago. In a political rendition of "if the right fist don't get you, the left one will," the eminent transnational forces of Islam and Facebook have taken to leap prescribed country borders in a single bound. All this while Big Oil still maintains a series of overweight...
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360° Analysis / Ba'athism / Barack Obama / Bashar Al-Assad / Chemical Weapons / Ghouta / Iran-Iraq War / Jeffrey Laurenti / John Kerry / Military Intervention / North America / Saddam Hussein / Sergei Lavrov / Syria / Syrian Civil War / United Nations / US Congress / Vladimir Putin / Europe / International Security / Middle East & North AfricaSyria's appalling civil war must come to an end. The agreement that US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently hammered out in Geneva will, if implemented, prove a milestone in the century-long effort to contain the horrors of modern war. For the first time, the world community will have compelled a country that has used weapons of mass destruction within its own borders in suppression of an armed insurrection to relinquish them to international control and destruction. It had taken Saddam Hussein's defiant annexation of Kuwait, and a war to expel his forces, to subject Ba’athist Iraq to such measures; no one in major capitals much...
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360° Analysis / at-risk children / Child labor / child sexual exploitation / GEMS / Girls Are Not For Sale / lower-income families / North America / poverty / Rachel Lloyd / Teenage Prostitutes / Europe / CultureBy Rachel LloydVulnerable children face higher risks of being seduced into sex work. *[Note: The following is an excerpt from Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, a memoir about Rachel Lloyd’s experiences as a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation and her work over the last 15 years running Girls Educational And Mentoring Services (GEMS).] Summer 1989, England The van leaves at 5am to get us to the Estée Lauder factory for our 7am shift. It’s still dark outside and it’s too early for me to engage in the chatter of the other girls in the van. I sit smoking and staring out the window thinking how much I hate this job. Still, it’s...
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India / India-Russia / India-US / Indian Nuclear Energy / Indo-Russia Relations / Indo-US Relations / M.G. Devasahayam / New Delhi / North America / Nuclear / Nuclear Energy / Russia / United States / Europe / Focus Article / Central & South Asia / EnvironmentThe US and Russia have a large stake in India’s nuclear energy pie. Misusing various oppressive and repressive instruments at their command and in brazen disregard of Supreme Court orders, India’s government recently put the Russian Koondankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP, Unit 1) on the road to commissioning. Washington and Moscow Presuming this to be "success," American companies are now pushing their projects in India, looking to finalize a commercial agreement between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) and Westinghouse for the 6000 MW Mithivirdi nuclear reactor in Gujarat. Another US project — 10,000 MW Kovvada (General Electric) in Andhra...
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360° Analysis / abolitionism / criminalization of sex workers / German prostitution model / German Sex Workers / history of prostitution in Germany / Prostitution / Prostitution in Germany / Sex Industry / Sonja Dolinsek / Europe / CultureIn light of the German prostitution model, the abolitionist movement holds many shortcomings. “If you want to get rid of human trafficking, you must first abolish prostitution.” This message has successfully spread across the world in the past years. In Europe, the idea of prostitution as “violence against women” and as inherently harmful has been supported by many feminist organizations, in particular by the European Women’s Lobby. In their view, women in prostitution are, by definition, objectified, degraded, beaten, abused and raped. Therefore, a woman could never choose freely to work in the sex industry; prostitution, by definition, cannot be considered as...