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Thursday, June 14, 2007 |
EUObserver: "The EU is exploring ways to increase the accountability of an obscure 'working group' called 'Clearing House', which sees EU member state secret service agents meet regularly in Brussels to share counter-terrorism intelligence.
The group - which was set up in reaction to the 9/11 attacks in the US - is part of the EU's common foreign and security policy branch, with a December 2001 EU 'common position' mandating that 'information shall be exchanged between member states' to help curb terrorist financing.
Clearing House does not appear on any official EU listings of 'working groups' - standard meetings of mid-ranking EU diplomats, which pre-agree EU decisions before they are adopted by EU ambassadors and, later down the line, rubber-stamped by EU ministers.
The group's main job is to decide, every six months or so, who should be on the EU's terrorist register and have their financial assets frozen, with the group meeting sometime this week to finalise contents of the next terror list before its formal adoption in early July.
Clearing House's internal decision-making is not open to any political scrutiny: when the secret service delegates write a new list of names, it is passed - without any accompanying evidence or reasoning - to a meeting of EU ambassadors, who automatically adopt it as an 'A point' (an agenda item with no discussion)."
11:24:35 AM 
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EUObserver: "The EU's key tool to reach its Kyoto climate commitments - the Emissions Trading Scheme - is being undermined by polluting companies across Europe, which are buying their way out of cutting their greenhouse gas emissions, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature has warned.
In the report - Emission Impossible - launched on Wednesday (13 June) the NGO looked at the CO2 emission reduction plans of nine EU member states - France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK - for the second trading period 2008-2012.
According to estimates in the report, between 88-100 percent of the nine countries' combined emission reduction targets under the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) could be met by buying Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project credits from outside the EU.
WWF therefore fears that because EU countries allow such high percentages of CDM projects by their companies, it could mean that the second trading period of the ETS will fail to deliver any significant emission reductions within the EU because it is cheaper to purchase CDM credits outside Europe."
11:20:20 AM
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AlterNet: "A bloated overclass can drag down a society as surely as a swelling underclass. A great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor.
In Sunday's New York Times magazine we learn that Larry Summers, the centrist Democratic economist and former Harvard president, is now obsessed with the statistic that, since 1979, the share of pretax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen by 7 percentage points, to 16 percent. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points.
As the Times puts it: 'It's as if every household in that bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent.'
... the huge concentration of wealth at the top is routinely used to tilt the political process in favor of the wealthy."
In the Netherlands the wages of top managers go up 10 to 30% each year. Greed doesn't know any boundaries. The rich thrive on the low wages of the poor and middle classes.
11:12:32 AM
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Guardian: "The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has 'pummelled into submission' the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.
The 53-page 'End of Mission Report' by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government."
11:03:38 AM
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CrooksandLiars: "Jon Stewart recaps President Bush's whirlwind trip to Europe, including his rock star reception in Albania where he was 'greeted as a liberator'."
Whether Bush's watch was stolen in Albania or Bush himself removed it for fear of it being stolen remains unclear, but calling the pope 'sir' several times reminds me of the Fonz, he changes for no man!
10:57:30 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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