Friday, July 1, 2016

Alex Christoforou — New Leaked EU Document Calls For Expansion To Middle East And Sub-Saharan Africa

Reform and democracy in the EU after the UK referendum? Not a chance. Angela Merkel’s mantra has, and will always be ‘we need more EU not less’. For EU technocrats in Brussels, this is music to their ears, because it means that their lucrative jobs will remain safe and sound.
While many are predicting more countries will wake up, and walk out of the self imposed prison that is the European Union, the Brussels aristocracy has expansion on its mind, well beyond the continent of Europe.
If you thought including Turkey into the union was pushing the boundaries of Europe’s borders, then the latest EU foreign policy document, titled Global Strategy, will make Istanbul feel like Paris.
The leaked EU document calls for an extended reach into new spheres, as distant as the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
Expansion and military build up go hand-in-hand, as the Global Strategy document outlines a “gradual synchronisation and mutual adaptation” between different member states’ individual defence strategies.
Ukip’s defence spokesman Mike Hookem said:
“The EU wants its own Empire as former Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso made clear when he was in charge.
“This global strategy by the EU is yet another reason why last Thursday’s result was a lucky escape for the UK.”…

8 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Expand or die.

John said...

Oh come on! The piece is about expanding the EU's military capabilities, and perhaps elbowing out NATO. It has nothing to do with expanding the EU to the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. That's just scaremongering by a remarkably idiotic newspaper, even by the UK's tabloid standards, the Daily Express and the neo-fascist UKIP.

The Express obviosuly does not expect its "readers" to read anything at all and instead skip to the sports pages and/or hunt for pictures of some skimpily clad celebrity showing off their breasts and buttocks. The message, however, lingers in the mind of the illiterate but very picture orientated Express "reader" - hundreds of millions of blacks and Arabs will become EU citizens and have the right to come and live in the UK.

Nevertheless, it does tell you something, for those who somehow did not know, of the EU's military and neo-imperial project.

Matt Franko said...

"neo-fascist UKIP"

Evidence please? You're making this up...

Gaby de Wilde said...

If you forget about borders for a moment and consider a context where humanity is one large organism, then we may wonder what we are doing in the Sahara. It is an amazing place for agriculture and solar thermal industries. (If you look at Europe in contrast every square cm is designated and land prices reflect that.)

What if we, (I mean humanity) were to do something constructive in the Sahara? It would bring viable investment opportunities. It would take a while but within decades it could add up to thousands of percent.

Lets not forget our substantial military budgets and aid budgets and that we have 64 million "spare" people who would really love a house and a job. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html

Between those funds there is plenty of room to build large industrial cities where we create both hope and prosperity for our species.

There are many crops that would grow there but if we take hemp for example: It will grow in sand and deliver us a virtually unlimited amount of fiber, biomass, seeds and it will fertilize the soil rather than deplete it. To go a little bit deeper into the example with a sub example: The biomass can be used to make ethanol which requires a lot of heat to distill. Heat easily provided by solar thermal. Ethanol can be safely transported overseas in old tankers that are simply to old to transport oil safely. A few hundred square km would be enough to fuel the entire world. Even at cents per gallon it would still be viable.

It doesn't have to be a hemp monoculture, there are to many other viable crops to list here. Some will even grow on salt water.

I cant find their paper or their names anymore but 2 Australian professors figured out an offshore windfarm spraying sea water far up into the sky, some of it would evaporate, most would drop back into the sea along with the salt and other ingredients.

If you combine that with large green areas it will simply rain and relax other desalination needs.

We have all this advanced technology and the means to deploy it in Europe.

If we forget about borders and think of our species, is it really so important to leave those vast empty areas to the few people already living there?

There is like 1 guy living primitively in an area the size of Belgium and we should prioritize his sovereign rights?

Or should we grow and make bio-plastics, concrete, food, textiles, medication, fuel, solar panels etc etc so that the entire world can benefit?

Don't forget: One way or another we are going to pay to feed and house millions of refugees anyway.

They would love to have a job but we don't have that for them in racist xenophobic Europe.

Imagine it was you, how happy you would be with a simple house, a few hours of school per week and a full time job in a whole new city in north Africa.

Or is it something only the Chinese can accomplish?

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2007/03/15/restoring-chinas-loess-plateau

You should try find the interview clips with Chinese natives angry about their government planting trees in "their" desert. How they were going to "ruin" the "beautiful" desert by planting entire forests. Then those same people did the job.

See this too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEM6DCTK3Y

If this is the bad thing to do you deserve whatever horrible thing is coming for ya.

John said...

Matt, you should know me better than that! I never write anything I can't back up, except when I'm obviously joking around. Anyway, I answered the same question on another thread (the Michael Hudson Brexit post by Tom): https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2761684730989137546&postID=920700891733160761

Tom Hickey said...

Oh come on! The piece is about expanding the EU's military capabilities, and perhaps elbowing out NATO. It has nothing to do with expanding the EU to the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. That's just scaremongering by a remarkably idiotic newspaper, even by the UK's tabloid standards, the Daily Express and the neo-fascist UKIP.

The element of truth to it is that the European elite want their colonies back. This was behind the Libya debacle, and it is also behind the Syrian debacle. France is deeply involved in this this, for example.

Behind it all, the European Great Powers resent that the upstart Americans got to rule the world, a right they believe naturally belongs to them. They are not dumb. they realize that NATO is a US occupying force.

Tom Hickey said...

Excellent comment, Gaby de Wilde.

The West missed it's change and went for colonialism and now neocolonialism.

The Chinese will be the ones to do it with assistance from the Russians. They have both learned to do this domestically to avoid colonization. Now they are spreading it out.

The Western (US) response is to build more military bases and regime-change non-neoliberal governments..

John said...

Tom: The element of truth to it is that the European elite want their colonies back. This was behind the Libya debacle, and it is also behind the Syrian debacle. France is deeply involved in this this, for example."

That's undeniable, at least if you're honest about these things, but that doesn't mean EU membership for, say, Algeria, as hard a blow as that was to French imperialism. Clearly the plan is for the post-colonial world to return to the status of a ruler and ruled relationship.

"Behind it all, the European Great Powers resent that the upstart Americans got to rule the world, a right they believe naturally belongs to them. They are not dumb. they realize that NATO is a US occupying force."

That's true of the old colonial Europe states, who cannot accept their reduced influence in the world and earnestly desire to displace the US which they consider nothing but a lucky but temporary occupant of the throne. The new eastern European states who are now EU members are firmly under US control. As much as the EU was partly a US creation, the fear was that it could always break free of US control. And Brexit has dealt the US an incalculably huge blow to this control of the EU. The US and UK were pressing for Turkish entry because it would dilute German influence and power, which has strengthened since France's capitulation to Germany. Taking in the million refugees was a way of signalling to the US that Germany will not accept Turkey entering the EU: workers can be found elsewhere. Although Germany is in a very strong position in essentially deciding the future of the EU, it has decided to shoot itself in the face over its handling of the euro crisis and the strong possibility of EZ and EU disintegration. The way Germany is also making nice with Russia over Ukraine must be keeping many sleepless nights for the elites at Foggy Bottom.