European civil society groups angered by decades of mass industrialized agriculture converged Sunday on Koblenz, where 12 EU farm and fisheries ministers began two days of informal talks hosted by Germany’s Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner.
Police said 350 protesters, some on tractors and in animal costumes, headed towards the venue, a riverside palace, while a cross-European alliance, including bio farmers, environmentalists and slow-food advocates, put its turnout at 1,300 persons.
Koblenz lies at the junction of the (larger) Rhine and Moselle rivers in Germany’s state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The alliance of 400 European civil society groups, calling itself in Germany “We are fed up with the Agra industry” (Wir haben Agraindustrie satt!) and “Good Food, Good Farming, Europe, urged ministers to make “radical” changes to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
At €55 billion ($65 billion) a year — roughly a third of the bloc’s budget — CAP’s allocation of flat-rate subsidies for land areas farmed was clearly out-of-date and should be oriented instead toward the new European Commission’s Green Deal plan, said the alliance.
“The Green Deal sets the course that the post-CAP must follow,” it said, and ministers must “ensure” sustainable food sovereignty for future generations and rebuild ecosystems, soils and resilience in rural livelihoods.
Current EU policy of fetching cheap, unsustainable imports also degraded land in developing countries, said the alliance, echoing a German finding in June that Germany’s “footprint” through imported foodstuffs was three times heavier abroad than on its own soil.
‘Immense’ responsibility
Germany, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, had an “immense” responsibility to bring a CAP reform into line with climate and biodiversity goals, the alliance insisted, directing its remarks at German Minister Klöckner, who hails from Rhineland-Palatinate.
Klöckner, who has floated a European animal welfare label and an EU “farm-to-fork” campaign to reduce usage of herbicides, fertilizers and antibiotics, drew a caution Sunday from Joachim Rukwied.
The farming federation president — for German growers, and Europe‘s association Copa — said extra costs should not be imposed on farmers, who instead should get supplements to their incomes for environment protection and animal welfare tasks.
‘Massive’ concentration
The alliance of civil society groups said EU policy of recent decades of rewarding large landowners had “fueled” a massive concentration in farm and land ownership.
Across the EU, between 2005 and 2016, more than four million farms — often family-run livelihoods — had been forced to shut down due to economic pressures.
“The remaining operations run increasingly large areas,” said the alliance.
The two explosions that tore through Beirut on Aug. 4 marked the latest catastrophe for Lebanon, a country beleaguered by a massive financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. The explosions killed at least 160 people, injured thousands and left many homeless. Lebanese officials blamed the disaster on a cache of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, which had been kept improperly for years in a warehouse at the city’s port.
This chemical long has been favored by Hezbollah for attacks, though the Iranian proxy has denied stockpiling it at the port, which it controls. While it is currently unclear who owned the ammonium nitrate behind the explosions, Hezbollah has stored and used the same material abroad, including in Europe — all while evading a full terrorist designation by the European Union (EU).
In 2012, for instance, a bus carrying young Israeli tourists was bombed in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing six people and wounding dozens. Bulgarian, American and Israeli authorities all linked the attack to Hezbollah, and law enforcement determined that “ammonium nitrate was an active ingredient in the explosives,” according to a US Justice Department complaint.
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The Burgas bombing was not an isolated incident. Eighteen years prior, a suicide bomber drove a van packed with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil into a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, murdering 85 people and wounding hundreds. Argentine prosecutors have accused Hezbollah of carrying out the massacre under Iran’s direction.
Indeed, Iran has an extensive record of directing its Hezbollah proxy to conduct attacks on foreign soil. In the same year as the Burgas atrocity, Iran was accused of plotting against American, Israeli and Western targets in Azerbaijan; and orchestrating bombings against Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. Plots were also uncovered in Thailand, Kenya and Cyprus, where a Hezbollah operative was arrested over his role in a bid to attack Israeli tourists. “I was just collecting information about the Jews,” the operative reportedly told police. “This is what my organization is doing, everywhere in the world.”
In 2013, the EU finally designated Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization. This paved the way for member states to freeze funds linked to Hezbollah’s military wing and for greater law enforcement cooperation. Yet the ban did not apply to the Iranian proxy’s political wing, effectively enabling it to continue operating in the EU and undermining the designation’s impact. Unfortunately, qualifying the terrorist designation between two wings is illogical, because all Hezbollah operations are coordinated and directed by its political elites. Indeed, even Hezbollah leadership has refuted and mocked this distinction.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons have continued plotting terrorist attacks in Europe. In 2015, Hezbollah-linked operatives were caught stockpiling more than three tons of ammonium nitrate in the U.K., and 8.5 tons of the chemical in Cyprus. In 2018, France accused Iran of seeking to bomb an opposition group rally in Paris. In June, a Danish court sentenced a man over an Iranian plot to murder an Iranian opposition activist in Denmark. In July, reports emerged that Israel thwarted Iranian attacks on its diplomatic missions in Europe.
Hezbollah sustains its reach largely through Tehran’s support, which according to 2018 U.S. estimates amounts to $700 million annually. Yet it also maintains an independent fundraising apparatus, engaging in money laundering, drug trafficking, and other criminal operations across Europe, and exploiting businesses and charity front groups to funnel resources to its terrorist operations.
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This April, Germany unilaterally banned Hezbollah in full, reportedly after being tipped off about a stash of ammonium nitrate in the country’s south. Lithuania designated Hezbollah as a terrorist group this month. Such positions align with those adopted by the U.S., U.K., Canada, Israel, Argentina and the Arab League, among others. Yet most EU nations continue to rely on the bloc’s insufficient designation, which grants Hezbollah’s fundraising activities valuable breathing room.
As Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, noted in a recent report, investigations into Hezbollah “face the difficulty of demonstrating that the funds collected are channeled to the military wing of the organization.” Aligning Hezbollah’s terrorist designation with the reality of its operations would empower European law enforcement authorities to comprehensively target the group and its resources within the EU.
A full designation also would help further delegitimize Hezbollah at a time when the Lebanese government has resigned, and furious citizens demonstrate against the ruling elite. Indeed, it is notable that some of these protesters are directing their ire at Hezbollah, and even hanging Hezbollah leaders in effigy. The Lebanese are justifiably outraged over the governing malfeasance that set the conditions for this tragedy after running the Lebanese economy into the ground. But there is also evidence that they are fed up with Hezbollah’s parasitic exploitation of their country. Ramping up this terror group’s delegitimization is more urgent than ever to support a Lebanese movement to free their country from Iran and Hezbollah.
Deep reforms are needed if Lebanon has any hope of restoring governing normalcy. Unfortunately, Hezbollah, which exploits Lebanon’s weak political system to operate with no transparency or accountability, presents a major barrier to such reform and the hopes of the Lebanese people. By comprehensively blacklisting Tehran’s top proxy, the EU would decisively signal that Hezbollah is not a legitimate actor, directly threatens stability in and beyond Lebanon, and must be countered if Beirut is to have a hope of a true recovery.
Mark P. Fitzgerald, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, is a former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and of Allied Joint Force Command, Naples. He is on the board of advisers for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former military attorney and intelligence officer, is the Vinson & Elkins Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law, Houston, and a distinguished fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy.
AMMAN — Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Wissam Rabadi has signed four financing agreements in the water and education sectors in the presence of Sawsan Aruri, deputy director of the German Development Bank (KfW).
The first agreement is an additional European Union (EU) grant funding for a programme in the education sector amounting to 6 million euros, according to a Planning Ministry statement.
Three additional grant financing agreements for feasibility studies and a training component have also been signed in the water sector for “Environmental and climate friendly sewage sludge disposal”, “Climate Protection Water Sector V” and “Energy Efficiency in the Water Sector II” amounting to a total of 2.2 million euros, the statement said.
The European Union will grant an additional 6 million euros for the implementation of an ongoing school construction programme in Jordan that was signed in 2018 with a total amount of 33 million euros.
The objective of the school construction programme financed by the European Union is to assist the government of Jordan in responding to the needs of children and youth impacted by the Syrian crisis.
This includes increased access to inclusive and child-friendly quality primary and secondary education for both, refugee and host community children.
The EU-financed school construction programme, primarily channelled through the EU’s Regional Trust Fund in response to the Syrian Crisis, the Madad Fund, will be implemented in parallel to a bilateral school construction programme financed by the German government amounting to 34 million euros that was signed last month.
The German government has made funds available for feasibility studies for the preparation of new projects in the water sector.
The first agreement is signed for a study of “Environmental and climate friendly sewage sludge disposal” amounting to 700,000 euros.
The study aims to identify and elaborate concepts for the safe, environmentally sound and climate-friendly final disposal of sewage sludge originating from the wastewater treatment plants — mainly in northern Jordan — including domestic faecal sludge delivered by tankers, the statement said.
The second agreement that is also financed by the government of Germany shall finance a study for a project under “Climate Protection in the Water Sector V” and amounts to 795,000 euros.
The envisaged project to be studied aims at mitigating climate change risks related to water in the Jordan Valley.
In particular, the study shall analyse the potential for water loss reduction at the King Abdullah Canal (KAC) with the aim to identify and compare suitable alternatives to reduce the water losses in the KAC by means of a multicriteria analysis in the most sustainable and efficient manner. With support of the potential project a substantial amount of fresh water shall be saved for the use of drinking purposes, read the statement.
The third agreement financed by the German government through KfW German Development Bank amounts to 700,000 euros and shall complement the project “Energy Efficiency in the Water Sector II — with training measures to support operational staff in the water sector in the field of energy efficiency and sustainable operations.
The school construction programme will be implemented by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Public Works and Housing and is financed by the European Union.
The water sector programmes will be implemented by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and is financed by the Federal Republic of Germany through KfW Development Bank.
KfW finances investments and advisory services on behalf of the German government. In Jordan the ongoing and envisaged projects with a main focus on education, employment promotion as well as water and sanitation amount to about 1.3 billion euros, the statement said.
Since its establishment in December 2014, an increasing share of the EU’s non-humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees and their host countries is provided through the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis, the Madad Fund. With contributions and pledges from 22 EU member states and Turkey, the fund has reached a total volume of 1.5 billion euros to date.
Large programmes focusing on education, livelihoods, health, socio-economic support, water and wastewater infrastructure — benefitting both refugees and their host communities — have already been approved by the fund’s board, for a total of more than 1.4 billion euros.
Of this, about 1 billion euros have been contracted in over 50 projects to the Trust Fund’s implementing partners on the ground, now reaching more than 2 million beneficiaries, concluded the statement.
A migrant transport funded by the so-called street artist Banksy demanded help after overloading the vessel with more than 200 people picked up off the coast of Africa.
Crew on the Louise Michel, which is painted pink and named after a French anarchist, sent out tweets on Friday night and Saturday calling for “immediate assistance” from authorities in Malta, Italy, and Germany — but seemingly not any of the safe North African countries nearby — and denounced the EU’s supposed ‘Fortress Europe’ migration policy.
“#LouiseMichel is unable to move, she is no longer the master of her manoeuvre, due to her overcrowded deck and a liferaft deployed at her side, but above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance,” activists on the boat tweeted Saturday.
#LouiseMichel is unable to move, she is no longer the master of her manoeuver, due to her overcrowded deck and a liferaft deployed at her side, but above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance. The responsible authorities remain unresponsive.
The message followed a series of tweets in which the crew informed followers of their attempts to contact relevant authorities in EU countries, as well as a post proclaiming that the vessel “exists because current European policy is to deliberately ignore distress calls and let people drown”.
Despite Banksy being worth an estimated £38 million (50 million USD), according to reports, the crew made it clear that they expect taxpayers to foot the bill for housing and feeding the migrants in their homelands, with the artist merely funding their transportation to Europe.
The crew tweeted: “States are relying on civilians to prevent mass loss of life in the Med. Now we rely on them to give the survivors a Place of Safety — and we need it now!”
Known as a “street artist”, Banksy published a video explaining that he decided to buy a French navy vessel and turn it into a migrant transport because “All Black Lives Matter”, denouncing EU countries for allegedly “deliberately ignor[ing] distress calls from ‘non-Europeans’”.
The #LouiseMichel exists because current European policy is to deliberately ignore distress calls and let people drown. States are relying on civilians to prevent mass loss of life in the Med. Now we rely on them to give the survivors a Place of Safety – and we need it now!
On Saturday morning the crew repeated its calls for help, posting to Twitter that the Louise Michel, which has a maximum capacity of 130 passengers, “is unable to safely move and nobody is coming to our aid”.
Open borders activist Claire Faggianelli, who prepared the boat for its maiden mission, saw the project as a “wake-up call for Europe”, according to the left-wing Guardian.
“We really want to try to awaken the consciousness of Europe and say: ‘Look, we have been yelling at you for years now. There is something that shouldn’t be happening at the very borders of Europe, and you close your eyes to it. Wake up!’” she said.
Banksy’s ship has now been evacuated by the Italian authorities and the Sea-Watch 4 migrant transport operated by pro-migration NGOs.
France Admits There Is ‘Real Collusion’ Between People-smugglers and Migrant ‘Rescue’ NGOs https://t.co/NGgHZRSIns
Previously, Breitbart London reported how 70 per cent of migrants who seek to cross the Mediterranean to Europe are not eligible for asylum, according to a United Nations (UN) estimate.
NGOs and campaigners claim that opening Europe’s borders to everyone in the world who wants to come and live a taxpayer-funded lifestyle is the only way to stop people from drowning.
However, figures showed a major drop in the number of deaths at sea when Italy’s previous populist interior minister, Matteo Salvini, cracked down on the activities of NGO boats picking people up in Africa — because fewer migrants set out on the dangerous journey in the first place.
UN Launches App to ‘Empower’ Migrants, Encourage Them to ‘Migrate Safely’ https://t.co/NxR3REMoyT
PARIS (AP) — In a story published August 30, 2020, The Associated Press reported that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi defended detention camps for mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region, brushing off human rights concerns by European countries. The story should have made clear that he did not refer to the camps as “reeducation centers.”
The two UN agencies said they were deeply concerned about the continued absence of dedicated EU-led search and rescue capacity in the Central Mediterranean.
Italy’s coastguard on Saturday evacuated 49 people from an overloaded rescue vessel named Louise Michel that is funded by the British artist Banksy. Those evacuated included 32 women and 13 children.
The crew of Louise Michel had earlier issued a series of tweets calling for immediate assistance from the authorities in Italy, Malta and Germany. They said they were stranded and overloaded with 219 migrants picked up off the coast of Libya over the previous 2 days.
One tweet said the boat was unable to move due to her overcrowded deck and were also carrying the body of a migrant who had died earlier.
The crew accused the European authorities of not responding adequately to their appeals for help.
Shortly after the evacuation of the most vulnerable migrants, another rescue boat, Sea Watch 4, took the remainder of the Louise Michel’s 150 migrants on board. It said it was now carrying a total of 350 people who needed to disembark as soon as possible.
A third boat also needs assistance. A group of 27 migrants and refugees, including a pregnant woman and children from Libya, have been aboard the commercial tanker Maersk Etienne since their rescue on August the 5th.
The two UN agencies said the lack of a deal on a regional landing system could not be an excuse to deny vulnerable people safe harbour and stressed the humanitarian imperative of saving lives should not be penalized or stigmatized.
The Louise Michel rescue boat funded by Banksy only started operating last week in the Mediterranean. The artist posted a video on his official Instagram page saying he had bought the Louise Michel because, he claimed, the EU authorities deliberately ignore distress calls from non-Europeans.
Italy is the destination of most migrants who embark on the often dangerous journey of crossing the Mediterranean from the coast of Libya in recent years.
According to UN data, 443 people have died or have gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2020. In a speech to the European parliament in 2014, Pope Francis urged leaders not to allow the Mediterranean to become a vast cemetery for those migrants risking their lives trying to reach the continent.
This long-running dispute between Greece and Turkey, which are both NATO members, shows no sign of abating.
Tensions have heated up as Turkish crews search for gas in the waters off Greek islands in the eastern Mediterranean. The Turkish research vessel “Oruc Reis” is probing for deposits south of the Turkish coast in waters which Athens claims jurisdiction.
To add muscle to their prospecting endeavours, the Turkish energy ship has been shadowed by powerful naval vessels.
Ankara argues that the area is part of its continental shelf. To make matters worse, Greece has complained of Turkish Air Force jets making an incursion into its airspace.
There is a similar conflict playing-out near Cyprus, an island where rich natural gas reserves have already been discovered.
In an effort to calm nerves, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has warned that any small spark ‘could lead to catastrophe.’
Germany has been trying to mediate in the dispute for weeks with Chancellor Angela Merkel speaking on the phone several times with Turkish President Tayipp Erdogan and the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
For its part, the European Union has called on Turkey to immediately halt energy exploration in the disputed waters, dangling the threat of new sanctions if tensions don’t simmer down.
Last week, the Greek Foreign Minister endorsed that call for sanctions against Turkey by the EU – of which Greece is a member. He said Turkey represented a ‘neo-Ottoman ideology’ and was attempting ‘unlimited expansionism’ in the eastern Mediterranean.
However, despite the calls for calm, there seems to be no sign of tensions calming. As it stands, both Greece and Turkey are ratcheting up the tension by staging large naval drills.
Military drills
Turkey said it would carry out live-fire military exercises until mid-September in a zone off the southern Turkish town of Anamur, just north of Cyprus. This comes in addition to a bulletin that Ankara would also hold military exercises in a zone further east.
The European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Brussels was determined to show solidarity with Greece and Cyprus.
“We must walk a fine line between preserving a true space for dialogue and, at the same time, showing collective strength in the defence of our common interests,” he told reporters.
The heads of European states will discuss fraught relations with Ankara in an upcoming summit next month.
Abu Dhabi-listed investment firm Waha Capital has launched an income-focused Islamic fund to attract over $500 million (Dh1.83 billion) to invest in Shariah-compliant assets across sukuk and equity markets which will have a global outreach for investments.
The open-ended “Waha Islamic Income Fund SP” adds to Waha Capital’s existing three funds and is targeted at large regional institutions.
Its Waha Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa Credit Fund has achieved a cumulative return of over 180 per cent since its inception in 2012 and the end of 2019. The Waha Mena Equity Fund, launched in 2014, has achieved a cumulative return of 175 per cent since inception while Waha’s Mena Value Fund SP fund produced a return of 25.34 per cent in 2019 and overall by 56.1 per cent since its launch in 2015.
Amr Al Menhali, CEO of Waha Capital, said the new fund will invest in entities that have relatively low gearing.
“While our existing funds have some Shariah-compliant elements in them, there has been a steadily growing demand from our existing clients over the past couple of years for us to develop such a fully-fledged Islamic fund. We are confident that the new fund will be well received because it avoids investment in prohibited or controversial activities or assets and business sectors that may be considered as particularly risky or potentially volatile,” said Al Menhali.
On August 22, Waha Capital invested Dh184 million ($50 million) in New York-listed company online travel firm Despegar.com. It plans to invest $150 million in US-listed companies.
Waha Capital posted net profit of Dh267.2 million in Q2 2020 as compared to net loss of Dh124.4 million in Q2 2019 as total impairments fell from Dh109.3 million to Dh10 million. Its share price increased 0.51 per cent to Dh0.990 on Sunday on Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange. – [email protected]
