NEWS ARCHIVE – March, April 2014
EURASIAN UNION:
Putin urges government to finalise Eurasian Economic Union treaty
Russian President Vladimir Putin asks the partners to improve the treaty as quickly as possible
ITAR-TASS News Agency (Russia), April 30, 2014 – Putin stressed the need to guarantee “four freedoms”: free movement of goods, services, capital and labour among the member states…. He believes that the European Economic Union needs to be granted broad powers in the field of economic regulation. “This will allow (us) to carry out a common and coordinated policy in key industries…”
Notes on the Future Court of the Eurasian Economic Union – Moscow Times, April 28, 2014 – According to publicly available information, the final draft of the agreement on the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) should be ready for signature by May 2014…. While the current draft appears to be silent on details of judicial authorities of the EAEU, it is quite evident that the new Court of the EAEU (Union Court) will soon be in charge of dispute resolution and interpretation of the legal order within the CU/CES and EAEU itself.
PIF
Pacific leaders meet in Cooks
Pacific leaders are to meet in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands tomorrow to consider a plan to re-vitalise the push for regionalism.
Radio New Zealand, May 5, 2014 – In its nearly ten years in place the Plan has achieved little and the review calls for to be jettisoned and replaced with what it calls a New Framework for Pacific Regionalism.
Australia and Pacific Islands Forum sign new agreement – Islands Business (Fiji), April 29, 2014 – A new six-year Partnership between Australia and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) aims to leverage the efforts of Forum Island Countries to realise their aspirations for effective regionalism.
NORTH AMERICA:
Nicholson talks defence with U.S., Mexico
Niagara Falls Review (Canada), April 27, 2014 – “Canada, the United States and Mexico share common goals and interests about the defence and security of North America,” said Nicholson. “The (meeting) has given us a valuable opportunity to further deepen our cooperation and collaboration towards our common goals of ensuring the security of our citizens and our continent.”
SAARC
‘Wait for SAARC results’, Secy-Gen to critics
Bangladesh News 24, April 28, 2014 – He urged all not to compare the grouping with the ASEAN and the EU since “we have a brief history and our organisation is not that old like ASEAN and EU”….“The EU member states have surrendered their sovereignty to the EU. In our relations, our leaders felt that everything should be done on the basis of consensus,” he said to questions as to why SAARC could not succeed like the EU and the ASEAN.
UNASUR:
Venezuela a Test Case for U.S. to Navigate South America’s New Normal
World Politics Review, April 24, 2014 – The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a regional South American body created in 2008, has stepped up its involvement and, through a three-member delegation of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador’s foreign ministers, is playing a prominent role in fostering dialogue. Meanwhile, the United States, though keen to shape the post-Chavez trajectory of Venezuela, is in the background, unsure of how to make a constructive impact.
Alba, CELAC, Mercosur and Unasur announce the creation of a common market
RT, April 20, 2014 (Google Translate) – [Venezuelan Trade Minister, Dante Rivas] wrote on his Twitter account, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America ( Alba ), the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States ( CELAC ), Petrocaribe and the Union of South American Nations ( Unasur) will develop “powerful and positive challenges with large market.”
EURASIAN UNION:
Russian war cries herald rise of George Orwell’s Eurasian vision
The Australian, April 20, 2014 – To the uninitiated he might sound like a crackpot with his talk of a “Eurasian empire” stretching from Vladivostok to Lisbon, like the neo-Stalinist superpower in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four…. It is called Eurasianism, a dogma inspired by fascism and Stalinism that is intended to answer Russians’ nostalgia for empire and yearning for a strong national identity. In the Eurasianist view, the motherland is threatened by a western conspiracy known as Atlanticism to which it must create a bastion of “Eurasian” power.
Orwell’s fiction is now being played out as Henry Kissinger’s “new mercantilism” of “competing regional units” has begun. Emerging regional blocs around the world are designed to conflict and compete with one another to consolidate the power and resources of each bloc’s member nations into centrally controlled, intensely surveilled regional jurisdictions.
Western sanctions to push integration of Eurasian Union and Asia-Pacific – Russian official Journal of Turkish Weekly, April 17, 2014 – “The striving of Western countries to hamper the cooperation between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) by introducing sanctions… will only speed up the integration with the Asia-Pacific region,” Naryshkin told the Eurasian Economic Perspectives forum.
Single Currency Talk: Armenia’s ex-PM says common payment system key to future Eurasian Union
ArmeniaNow, April 14, 2014 – “The new currency is likely to be introduced not later than in 2025, although international economic sanctions against Russia may cut the process to 3-5 years,” writes the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, citing a source in the Eurasian Economic Commission.
Jobs for future Eurasian Union citizens in any member state
Belarusian Telegraph Agency, April 11, 2014 – In his words, the norm is envisaged in the draft Eurasian Economic Union Treaty. Citizens of the Union member states will be freed from getting a permit to work in the country of employment. Employee insurance for the workers of the EEU member states bears a special significance in the future establishment of the common labor market.
EUROPEAN UNION:
European Union: From Economic Community to Alliance of Warmongers
Center for Research on Globalization, April 14, 2014 – The instigation of a crisis and confrontation with Moscow is aimed at unifying a divided European Union and silencing all social opposition. Previously, the identity of the EU was grounded on economic issues, such as the free movement of capital and goods and the common currency. In future, the struggle against a common enemy will replace economics as the basis of the EU’s internal cohesion.
“Such a return to mercantilism and 19th-century diplomacy would divide the world into competing regional units with dangerous long-term consequences.” – ‘The Chance for a New World Order’ – Henry Kissinger, NY Times, Jan 12, 2009. In like manner, all the world’s regional blocs will be played off against each other to consolidate even more central control within each region, en route to a New World Order of geopolitical regional blocs. World Order out of Chaos.
Nigel Farage scores victory over Nick Clegg as second TV debate turns nastyThe Telegraph (London), April 2, 2014 – In a heated and confrontational televised debate the leader of the UK Independence Party warned that extremists would resort to “violence” unless the European Union “ends democratically”. Early polls showed that Mr Farage won the debate comfortably, securing 68 per cent of public support in a YouGov poll and 69 per cent according to ICM.
European Union migrants will overtake immigrants from outside Europe for first time, says report – The Telegraph, April 2, 2014 – “It was crazy to have opened up our labour market and our benefit system to 100 million people from countries with a standard of living less than a quarter of our own. There must now be a determined renegotiation.”
UNASUR:
Creating a refined Unasur Defence College
La Razón (Bolivia), April 4, 2014 (Google Translate) – Delegates of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in Quito tuned regulation of the first regional Defense College, a counterweight to U.S. influence in the traditional training of officers. The representatives of the 12 countries that make up the block, except for Guyana and Paraguay began a two-day meeting to define the “roadmap” of the South American Defense College (Esude), according to an official statement.
Natural Resources as the Dynamic Axis of UNASUR strategy
Alí Rodriguez Araque, general secretary of the Union of South American Nations, Venezuelanalysis, March 31, 2014 – With the signing of the Foundation Charter of UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations), the twelve countries that make it up took a step of historic dimensions. This is a question, no less and no more, of enforcing the decision to reunite the parts, now separate, of a great nation. Because that is what we are: having a common territory and a common historical origin, having a culture and beliefs that are also common, sharing a language that allows easy communication, and facing common problems, principally that of poverty.…
Resolution 1803 of the General Assembly of the United Nations (1), approved in 1962 and which deals with the principle of sovereign and permanent property of States over their natural resources….A policy of this sort, outlined here in general aspects, will demand a substantial mass of resources. This in turn requires gathering contributions of all member countries for the development of institutions such as the Banco del Sur [Bank of the South], as well as common policies for negotiations when extra-regional financing is needed. So we are faced with the enormous possibility of leaving behind the nightmares of poverty for so many, and of providing a vigorous and growing impetus to the integral development of South American human beings…
Spoken like a true leftist: The state is supreme, and it alone has the right to resource property – usurping the individual’s sell-evident, God-given rights as recognized in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Now Rodriguez, claiming authority from the statist U.N., declares the power of the South American superstate, UNASUR, over resource property “contributions” from member nations.
EURASIAN UNION:
Eurasian Union Treaty to be ready in late May
Vestnik Kavkaza (Russia), April 2, 2014 – Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrisov said at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov today that the Eurasian Union Treaty will be ready for signing in Astana by late May, ITAR-TASS reports.
ASEAN:
Hagel to Host ASEAN Ministerial in Hawaii
U.S. Dept. of Defense, March 27, 2014 – Next week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will convene the first U.S.-hosted meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Defense Department Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said today in a press briefing here…. Kirby said the ASEAN meeting will identify ways to strengthen multilateral security cooperation in the region
EURASIAN UNION:
Armenia’s decision to join Eurasian Union has military-political content: Armenia’s PM
Armenpress, March 29, 2014 – Our political decision to join the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space, and Eurasian Union in future, has distinct military-political and security content as well.
As Kiev looks West, Putin turns east to build Eurasian dream – Reuters, March 27, 2014 – With his biggest prize escaping his grasp in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is likely to turn to the autocrats of Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev, to further his aim of erecting a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states.
EUROPEAN UNION:
EU has ‘blood on its hands’ over Ukraine – UKIP leader
Farage and Clegg clashed over the UK’s membership in the European Union in a live televised debate Wednesday night on LBC Radio…. “I don’t want a European army, navy, air force or a European foreign policy. It has not been a thing for good in the Ukraine,” he said. A YouGov poll carried out immediately after the debate gave Farage a landslide victory with 57 percent, while just 36 per cent of respondents supported Clegg’s position.
AFRICAN UNION – SADC:
Deeper integration: SADC sets priorities for 2014
Southern Times (South Africa), March 28, 2014 – SADC [South African Development Community] companies will have access to a combined population of approximately 600 million people, spanning from Cape to Cairo. The single market would serve as one of the building blocks of an African Economic Community. The target for COMESA-EAC-SADC is to reach an agreement by June, paving the way for the launch of the grand FTA that will become a new benchmark for deeper regional and continental integration in Africa.
UNASUR:
Expert says US trying to execute export coup scenario in Venezuela
ITAR-TASS News Agency (Russia), March 21, 2014 – “Anti-Americanism is the only platform uniting Latin American Spaniards, Indians and Afro-Americans. In this sense, Venezuela, like Cuba earlier, is a country uniting South American states in their opposition to Washington’s diktat,” the expert said. The US chose Caracas as a target that it intends to hit to avoid strengthening of integration processes in the framework of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR),” the colonel-general stressed.
The globalist “free traders” in Washington do not discourage EU-style geopolitical integration among authoritarian nations in South America, or any other region (such as Marxist Vietnam within ASEAN – Assn of SE Asian Nations), so long as that region eventually cooperates with their New World Order network of regional blocs. They will sabotage any effort that insists on being antagonistic to that network, or remains defiant of Western “colonialists” and financiers. In this sense, events in Ukraine and Venezuela are intrinsically related.
SAARC:
India blocks China entry into Saarc
TheTelegraph (Calcutta, India), March 20, 2014 – India has blocked a fresh thrust by China to join the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a grouping New Delhi dominates, arguing that the alliance first needs to clarify its objectives in strengthening ties with new partners. The foreign ministry has communicated to all other member states of the Saarc —Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — that it is uncomfortable with any expansion of the alliance at present, senior officials confirmed to The Telegraph.
EURASIAN UNION:
‘Western sanctions against Russia may boost Eurasian Economic Union’
RT (Russia), March 20, 2014 – What would then happen is that the Eurasian Economic Union would accelerate in scale very rapidly. And Russia’s ties with China and India or Iran would not be negatively affected at all. Also, Russia would not play ball with the US and Western Europe on energy issues. This could backfire very badly on the West.
This created conflict has the same effect in revitalizing the stagnant European Union integration process, and soon you will see globalist calls for increased “cooperation” among the North American “community” of nations as well. This signals the start of what globalist Henry Kissinger predicted would be a “new mercantilism” of “competing regional units.” This ‘1984’-like new mercantilism is the globalist pretext to intensify geopolitical integration within all of the world’s regional blocs, citing threats from one another to justify increased central control within each region in “response.”
GCC:
China and GCC
Saudi Gazette, March 17, 2014 – The Chinese government forecasts that China-Middle East trade will increase by 50 percent in value in 2014, while sustained rapid growth in trade between the two blocs has convinced many analysts that China will become the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) biggest trading partner by 2020.
EUROPEAN UNION:
Cameron seeks limits on EU judicial powers, migration
British Prime Minister David Cameron will seek to prevent mass migration and European Union interference in police and judicial matters, he said on Sunday, providing the most detail yet on how he intends to reform the country’s relationship with the EU. Under pressure from euro-sceptics in his Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) ahead of European elections in May, Cameron has promised to reshape Britain’s ties with the EU before giving Britons a vote on whether to leave the 28-nation bloc if he wins next year’s national election.
EUROPEAN UNION
Vladimir Putin: Hero of the European Union
Breitbart, March 14, 2014 – Vladimir Putin’s adventurism in the Ukraine has had a strange side effect: it may well have prolonged the life of his chief rival and antagonist – the European Union – by several years.
EUROPEAN UNION:
European Union wants to force the U.S. to rename products like Parmesan cheese that are made in America
Daily Mail (UK), March 12, 2014 – As part of trade talks, the European Union wants to ban the use of European names like Parmesan, feta and Gorgonzola on cheese made in the United States. The argument is that the American-made cheeses are shadows of the original European varieties and cut into sales and identity of the European cheeses.
UNASUR:
Venezuela breaks ties with Panama
Business Standard (India), March 6, 2014 – Panama was earlier denounced for taking part in a US-led attempt to “interfere” militarily in Venezuela to carry out regime change.
“The OAS should stay out of here now and forever. Our path is Unasur (the Union of South American Nations),” Maduro added.
EURASIAN UNION:
Armenia fit to join Eurasian Economic Union – Putin
Voice of Russia, March 5, 2014 – Russian President Vladimir Putin believes it is time to start drawing up an agreement on Armenia’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union, which should be formed in 2015.
GCC:
Decision on Gulf union before next GCC summit
Zawya, March 5, 2014 – A decision on the much-anticipated union between members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will be announced before the next GCC summit later this year, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said. Saudi daily Okaz on Wednesday reported the statement attributed to Prince Saudi Al Faisal, saying that he was answering a question about the date to announce the Gulf union.
EURASIAN UNION:
Eurasian economic union with Russia at centre of Putin’s endgame
The Australian, March 4, 2014 – In addition to the geostrategic importance of Ukraine, getting Kiev on side is critical to the success of Putin’s proposal for a Eurasian Economic Union. Such a union will exist as a counter to the EU and allow Moscow to institutionalise Russia’s influence. If realised, the Russian-dominated union would also potentially control one-third of the world’s proven natural gas reserves.
EUROPEAN UNION – EURASIAN UNION:
Ukraine – A burning divide
Irish Examiner, March 1, 2014 – Western Ukraine…. would also become a weak state, economically dependent on American and EU aid for its financial survival. Much of Ukraine’s wealth and industry is concentrated in the east and this region can be expected to increasingly turn towards Russia….President Putin has a grand vision for a Eurasian Union to rival the EU and the loss of the Ukraine to the west would be a grievous blow to that plan.
ASEAN:
PH asks neighbors to join case vs China
ABS-CBN News | Philippine Star, March 1, 2014 – “We should strengthen our defense cooperation with other ASEAN nations. Acting as a group will give the ASEAN more leverage against China’s aggression. One country alone may not be enough to dampen China’s efforts in pushing for its claims. It is time for the ASEAN member-states to stand together and put aside differences.”