The New Sick Man of Europe: the European Union | Pew Global Attitudes Project

European hegemony may no longer be sustainable.  The European economic community is being held together by a fragile piece of paper called the Euro.  Aside from the currency, which a Pew Foundation survey reports is still favored by most European countries, there is little else Europeans agree about or even like about each other.  Perhaps the onslaught of diversity perceived by growing right wing groups is the only glue left to hold Europeans together.  The current economic crisis has seen much conflict and scapegoating regarding immigrants from mostly the African continent; but now Europeans seem to be turning against one another.

“The European Union is the new sick man of Europe. The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.

Support for European economic integration – the 1957 raison d’etre for creating the European Economic Community, the European Union’s predecessor – is down over last year in five of the eight European Union countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2013. Positive views of the European Union are at or near their low point in most EU nations, even among the young, the hope for the EU’s future. The favorability of the EU has fallen from a median of 60% in 2012 to 45% in 2013. And only in Germany does at least half the public back giving more power to Brussels to deal with the current economic crisis.

The sick man label – attributed originally to Russian Czar Nicholas I in his description of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century – has more recently been applied at different times over the past decade and a half to Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece and France. But this fascination with the crisis country of the moment has masked a broader phenomenon: the erosion of Europeans’ faith in the animating principles that have driven so much of what they have accomplished internally.”

MORE via The New Sick Man of Europe: the European Union | Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Civic Engagement, Community Tragedy, Culture Think, Economic Recession, ethnicity in politics, European Alliances, geopolitical, ideology, Immigration, International Relations, Euro, European Community

John Brennan: The debate over drones | The Economist

To kill or not to kill?  Seems to be the question for a post cold war America that struggles to find a useful venue and vehicle for its newly found monolithic world power status and the ways in which that lonely status make it an irresistible target for any group looking to be taken seriously and seeking a megaphone for its cause.

No one is raising the important issue of how simple and relatively inexpensive it might be to deploy this drone technology against the US and its allies.  It seems logical that drone technology would be simpler and cheaper to create and deploy than a nuclear weapon, or a so called “dirty bomb.”  So, what is really at stake here might be who is angry at the US and why?  How can the US justify unilaterally searching out its defined enemies and taking them out gangster style no matter national sovereignty or international law.

The London Economist tackles this issue in a straightforward way yet with a focus and a lens that seems a bit ideologically myopic and perhaps a bit nostalgic for the cowboy days of George W.  

You be the judge:

“T WAS so much simpler when George W. Bush was president. Outlining America’s plans for Osama bin Laden a few days after the September 11th attacks in 2001, Mr Bush declared: “there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.” For all those at home and abroad made uncomfortable by sweeping assertions of American power it was a moment of predictable provocation. Without surprise, they heard a swaggering Republican president vowing to make his country’s attackers pay, and seeming to pay no more heed to legal niceties than a cowboy bent on a lynching.

Yet 12 and a half years later, the cautious, lawyerly Barack Obama—a Democratic president with nothing of the…”

MORE via John Brennan: The debate over drones | The Economist.

Filed under: Arab Spring, Blogosphere, Culture Think, Death and Dying, drone attacks, European Alliances, geopolitical, International Relations, America's image abroad; American economy; economics USA; transatlantic alliance; our European friends; drone attacks; international law; national sovereignty; integrity of national borders and nationa, U.S. Foreign Policy; International Relations; World Politics; Peace Process; International Law; PACs; K Street; Lobbying;

Europe’s Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads – NYTimes.com

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the internet, in the words of the famous Chicago Anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, is that it is providing an important medium, “web of significance” if you will, for world culture, politics and spirituality, to name a few, to commingle as people and organizations of all kinds connect in real time and for seemingly less than pennies…  The Europeans are working hard and putting down their cash, in these times of fiscal constraint and investment scarcity, to deliver an important variable in the world wide web equation: The Europeans promise to deliver a competing satellite system to the American system which, unlike the American’s, is purely a business and free enterprise system without the government restraints and military industrial complex implications of the American satellite venture.  The NYTs provides some light on the Euro project…

“With lofty dreams of European unity increasingly grounded by economic woe and the weight of narrow national interests, an array of computer screens here in central Italy blinks with faint signs that — far away in space, at least …”

via Europe’s Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Changing Media Paradigm, consumers, Culture Think, European Alliances, International Relations, News, Technology and You, Europeans build satellite system, GPS and geopolitics, Privatizing global reach, World Wide Web and European Technology

Mitt Romney’s foreign policy: Wishful thinking | The Economist

IF MITT ROMNEY’S latest foreign-policy speech, delivered to the Virginia Military Institute on October 8th amid much build-up from campaign aides, was a barnburner, it would …

More via Mitt Romney’s foreign policy: Wishful thinking | The Economist.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Election 2012, European Alliances, geopolitical, International Relations, Middle East Freedom, News, Political Economy, political plots, Political Violence, Mitt Romney, The Real Mitt Romney, US foreign policy

Julian Assange Under Watch at Ecuadorean Embassy – NYTimes.com

Over the decades, London has known other diplomatic sieges that ended …

More via Julian Assange Under Watch at Ecuadorean Embassy – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Culture Think, European Alliances, Julian Assange

European Unity on the Rocks | Pew Global Attitudes Project

In Europe, what started out four years ago as a sovereign debt crisis, morphed into a euro currency crisis and led to the fall of several European governments, has now triggered a full-blown crisis of public confidence: in the economy, in the future, in the benefits of European economic integration, in membership in the European Union, in the euro and in the free market system. The public is very worried about joblessness, inflation and public debt, and those fears are fueling much of this uncertainty and negativity.

Europeans largely oppose further fiscal austerity to deal with the crisis. They are divided on bailing out indebted nations. They oppose Brussels’ impending oversight of national budgets. At the same time, Europeans who now use the euro have no desire to abandon it and return to their former currency. And anti-German sentiment is largely contained to Greece, at least for the moment.

MORE via European Unity on the Rocks | Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Culture Think, ethnicity in politics, European Alliances, geopolitical, International Relations, News, Political Economy, political plots, European Community Crisis

U.S. Banks Tally Their Exposure to Europes Debt Maelstrom – NYTimes.com

After a hurricane, homeowners check nervously to see if their insurance will cover all of their damages. With the European financial crisis still threatening a trail of defaults, United States banks are betting that …

MORE via U.S. Banks Tally Their Exposure to Europes Debt Maelstrom – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Banks, Blogosphere, European Alliances, WeSeeReason, America's image abroad; American economy; economics USA; transatlantic alliance; our European friends; peace process; the ties that bind us;, European political economy

The world economy: Self-induced sluggishness | The Economist

POLITICIANS like to promise better times ahead. But these days many are peddling gloom. In her new year’s address, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, predicted that 2012 would be more difficult for the euro zone than 2011. Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, spoke of “the year of all risks”. Half a world away, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, warned …

MORE via The world economy: Self-induced sluggishness | The Economist.

Filed under: Banks, Blogosphere, consumers, Culture Think, European Alliances, geopolitical, International Relations, Job Sector, National Debt, News, Political Economy, Public Policy, Unemployment, WeSeeReason, Nation Building and World Revolutions, world recession; world economy; the West; How the West is run; Political Economy; international order; international disorder;

U.K. and Future in Mind, E.U. Plans for Less Unanimity – NYTimes.com

For decades, any European Union nation could block proposed laws in the most sensitive policy areas, like taxation, consigning them …

MORE via U.K. and Future in Mind, E.U. Plans for Less Unanimity – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, European Alliances, News, Political Economy, WeSeeReason, European Community, European political economy

British Inquiry Is Told Hacking Is Worthy Tool – NYTimes.com

He admitted that he and his colleagues hacked into people’s phones and paid police officers for tips. He confessed to lurking in unmarked vans outside people’s houses, stealing

via British Inquiry Is Told Hacking Is Worthy Tool – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Culture Think, ethics, European Alliances, Mass Media and Public Opinion, News, Paper Media, political corruption, propaganda and spin, Public Policy, Social Media, Technology and You, WeSeeReason, violating people's privacy; unethical behavior in the media; Murdoch scandal; Rupert Murdoch spy empire; Rupert Murdoch; phone hacking scandal

The euro zone: Is this really the end? | The Economist

EVEN as the euro zone hurtles towards a crash, most people are assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker could …

MORE via The euro zone: Is this really the end? | The Economist.

Filed under: Banks, Blogosphere, European Alliances, geopolitical, International Relations, News, symbols as swords, WeSeeReason, Euro, European Community, European Community Crisis, The Euro Zone

Tensions High After NATO Air Strikes Kill Pakistani Soldiers – NYTimes.com

Pakistani officials said Saturday that NATO aircraft had killed at least 25 soldiers in strikes against two military posts at the …

MORE via Tensions High After NATO Air Strikes Kill Pakistani Soldiers – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, drone attacks, European Alliances, geopolitical, News, propaganda and spin, symbolic uses of politics, waging war, WeSeeReason, Pakistan after bin Laden; Pakistan's future; Pakistan: What now?;, US alliance with Pakistan; trusting Pakistan;