Tag Archives: Croatia

Military alliances like NATO won’t solve our greatest security threat

Things may look rosy for NATO today, but climate breakdown, not wars, are the biggest threat to global security

By Paul Rogers. Published 7-14-2023 by openDemocracy

Finland accession to NATO ceremony. Photo: Estonian Foreign Ministry/flickr/CC

NATO really is on a roll thanks to Vladimir Putin, but even as its immediate prospects look good, the whole future of the alliance should be open to question.

For now, as Finland and Sweden join, Putin finds an enlarged alliance ranged against him. NATO’s reputation is so bound up with the fate of Ukraine that, in the unlikely event that Russia makes substantial military gains in the conflict, Kyiv cannot be allowed to lose. From Putin’s perspective, his warning early last year of the threat posed to Russia from NATO has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This does at least mean he can claim ‘I told you so’ – which is helping maintain some domestic support.

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‘Europe Is Cooking’: Records Smashed as Historic Heat Alert Issued

While fires rage and temperatures in Western Europe top the charts, the U.K.’s Met Office announced the first-ever red warning for extreme heat expected in the coming days.

By Jessica Corbett  Published 7-15-2022 by Common Dreams

Image” Peter Dynes/Twitter

Several countries across Europe are enduring the dangerous hot conditions that climate scientists have longed warned of and meteorologists project the brutal heatwave could last in some areas through next month.

Spain and Portugal have faced high temperatures since last Friday. According to CNN, at least three Spanish cities set records this week: Ourense at 43.2°C (109.76°F); Soria at 38.7°C (101.66°F); and Zamora at 41.1°C (105.98°F). Continue reading

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How Europe Is Getting Rich by Fueling Its Own Terror Epidemic

By Darius Shahtahmasebi. Published 8-3-2016 by The Anti-Media

Though Europe do not have the rates of gun violence the United States continues to grapple with, European governments have made over a billion euros by fueling gun violence in the Middle East and North Africa.

A report conducted by a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found a group of European nations has been funneling arms into the Middle East region since 2012, making at least 1.2 billion euros in the process. Continue reading

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Refugees Left Stranded As Europe Faces ‘Crisis of Political Will’

‘You aren’t going to solve these problems by closing borders.’—Adrian Edwards, UN refugee office

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-18-2015

Refugees wait at a registration point in Preševo, Serbia on 10 August 2015. (Photo: Stephen Ryan / IFRC via flickr)

Refugees wait at a registration point in Preševo, Serbia on 10 August 2015. (Photo: Stephen Ryan / IFRC via flickr)

As Hungary on Friday said that it was constructing another razor wire fence, this time along its border with Croatia, a humanitarian aid organization is stressing that what the European continent is facing is not a refugee crisis but a crisis of political will.

The new barriers for the refugees come as Turkish state media said Friday that the body of a four-year-old Syrian girl’s body washed up on a beach, just weeks after the body of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed ashore, the image of which captured global headlines. Continue reading

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