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Depuis quelques jours, la monnaie européenne a chuté face au dollar américain. Cette dégringolade intervient sur fond de crise énergétique en Europe, soutenue par le conflit armé entre la Russie et l’Ukraine. En Algérie, les cotations officielles pour ce mercredi 20 juillet indiquent que l’euro unique s’échange contre 149.03 dinars algériens à l’achat et 149.10 […]

L’article Le dinar face aux devises en banque et au marché noir ce 20 juillet est apparu en premier sur .

Gazprom et l’AIE préparent le terrain à un arrêt. Verdict jeudi, sur le gazoduc de la Baltique. En Suisse, l’industrie craint une crise majeure.

Die Bundesregierung sieht sich einer Kakophonie externer und interner Stimmen ausgesetzt, die fordern, dass die geplante Abschaltung der verbleibenden Atomreaktoren des Landes verschoben wird.

Pour ce mercredi 20 juillet 2022, l’Office national de météorologie (ONM) a émis un bulletin météo spécial (BMS) de niveau 1,pluies orageuses. Ce BMS concerne les wilayas de : Souk Ahras, In Guezzam, Bordj Badji Mokhtar, Tamanrasset, Oum el Bouaghi, Tébessa, Tindouf et Khenchela. Concernant le ciel, pour ce mercredi dans les régions Nord du […]

L’article Météo Algérie : alerte pluies orageuses sur 8 wilayas ce 20 juillet est apparu en premier sur .

Die Unterbrechungen der russischen Gaslieferungen, über die sich die EU beklagt, könnten mit dem Start von Nord Stream 2 gelöst werden, sagte der russische Präsident Wladimir Putin am Dienstag (19. Juli) in Teheran.

Un puisatier a été repêché d'un puits profonds de plus de 80 mètres le lundi 19 juillet dernier à Dogbo, dans le département du Couffo. Il était en pleine manœuvre quand son treuil a cédé.

Plus de peur que de mal sur un chantier à Dogbo. Un puisatier est tombé dans un puits. Grâce à la promptitude des sapeurs-pompiers, il a été repêché du puits profonds de plus de 80 mètres. La victime, un homme âgé de la trentaine, était en pleine manœuvre sur le chantier quand l'accident est survenu.
Conduit à l'hôpital pour des soins, sa santé serait hors de tout danger.

F. A. A.

Pour voyager dans l’un des pays de l’union européenne, les ressortissants des Etats non membres, notamment les Algériens, ont besoin d’un visa Schengen. Ce dernier est de courte durée allant jusqu’à 90 jours et permet à ses personnes de se rendre dans l’un des 26 pays de l’espace Schengen, pour des fins touristiques ou professionnelles. […]

L’article Voyage été 2022 : l’espace Schengen suspend les rendez-vous visas est apparu en premier sur .

La plupart des ministres de l’Agriculture de l’UE ont confirmé leur volonté d’assouplir les mesures de protection de l’environnement prévues par le programme de subventions agricoles de l’UE, la PAC, afin d’augmenter la production et de combler le déficit dû à la guerre en Ukraine.

Sept législateurs européens s’envoleront pour Dublin afin de discuter de la mise en application de la loi européenne sur la protection des données avec le régulateur irlandais, les décideurs politiques et les parties prenantes.

Az egyéni versenyek utolsó napján megkezdődtek a csapatküzdelmek is a kairói vívó-világbajnokságon, és az elsőként pástra lépő magyar férfi kardválogatott két magabiztos győzelemmel a legjobb nyolc közé jutott.

Bienvenue sur le Green Brief d’EURACTIV. Vous y trouverez les dernières actualités en matière d’énergie et d’environnement en provenance de toute l’Europe.

« Comment survient une catastrophe ? En un instant. Quand prend-elle fin ? Jamais ». Cette interrogation est le fil narratif de Milk, la création que Bashar Murkus, né en 1992 à Kufer Yasif, au nord de la Palestine occupée, vient de présenter dans le In du Festival d'Avignon. Il y était déjà invité l'an dernier avec Le Musée, une pièce où il questionnait la violence terroriste, des individus et des États, dans un dispositif d'interrogatoire entre un condamné à mort et son geôlier. Dans Milk, qui a une double (...)

- Contrebande / Israël, Théâtre, Palestine, Culture, Art

Le tribunal de Cotonou a acquitté ce mardi 19 juillet 2022, un agent de sécurité et un chauffeur employés dans le domicile d'un particulier. Les mis en cause ont été accusés par leur ancien patron du vol d'une somme de 25 millions de francs CFA.

Relaxe pure et simple pour un agent de sécurité et un chauffeur ce mardi au tribunal de Cotonou. Les deux sont poursuivis par leur ex patron dans une affaire de vol de 25 millions de francs CFA. Ceci, en raison de leur train de vie, et de leurs réalisations au moment de la disparition des sous. L'un aurait investi dans l'achat une moto, et l'autre dans le commerce.
A l'audience ce mardi, aucune preuve n'a été exhibée pour confondre les deux accusés. En détention provisoire depuis 05 ans, ils ont été purement et simplement relaxés.
L'affaire selon l'un des avocats des prévenus, est un pur montage du patron.
Le chauffeur âgé de 32 ans et père de 02 enfants, et l'agent de sécurité, âgé de 66 ans et père de 03 enfants étaient présents au procès.
Le patron plaignant ne s'est pas présenté à l'audience.

F. A. A.

Après la victoire de son parti aux élections législatives, le Premier ministre japonais Fumio Kishida veut promouvoir une réforme constitutionnelle de l'article 9 de la Constitution, qui restreint le recours à la force militaire.

A senior MEP said Wednesday (20 July) that Taiwan's future should be decided by its own people and that the EU backs the island's "sovereign" existence, in a pointed warning to Beijing.

Le gouvernement confirme son intention d'acheter les 15,9% de titres restants d'EDF. Les autorités arguent d'une mesure pour « l'indépendance et la souveraineté énergétique de la France », les oppositions craignent les conditions qu'imposera l'Union européenne.

Karoline Edtstadler a déclaré que les pressions exercées par l’Autriche lors de la dernière réunion des dirigeants européens pour ne pas négliger les pays Balkans occidentaux qui souhaitent rejoindre le bloc ont contribué à l’élan positif pour cette région.

Ongoing disruptions with Russian gas supplies to Europe could be solved with the launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline tp Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Tehran on Tuesday (19 July).

Roberto Savio

By Sebastián Do Rosario and Federico Larsen
ROME, Jul 20 2022 (IPS)

For years, Russia’s relations with the European Union and the United States have been one of the main areas of conflict in the media. Washington and Brussels accuse Moscow of manipulation and disinformation and, after the invasion of Ukraine, decided to close their media outlets to Russian companies.

Excerpts from the Q&A:

Q: What do you think about the way this issue has been handled and what repercussions could it have on the management of the media, especially non-mainstream media such as Inter Press Service (IPS) or OtherNews?

A: Information has always been used by power, both economic and political. Information is, by definition, top-down. Whoever transmits it, whether in print form in newspapers and magazines, or in electronic form on radio and TV, sends it to an audience that cannot intervene in the process. That is why power has always tried to use it.

The Gutenberg era represented by this phenomenon lasted six centuries. Communication, which is a more recent phenomenon and which until now has only been possible with the Internet, is different. Communication is horizontal: I am a receiver, but I can also be a sender. There, power has much more power.

The media that provide information are closer and closer to power, they are no longer a business, and every year they are less and less powerful. And politics today is increasingly oriented towards social media. The most recent example was former US President Donald Trump, who had 80 million followers with Twitter (during his tenure at the White House) and completely gave up control of the media. (Trump was permanently banned from twitter in January 2021, right after he supported the attack on the capitol. So, Trump doesn’t actually have any twitter followers now.).

It must be added, however, that the Internet has been captured by the market, which has eliminated the horizontality we all hailed in the beginning. Today we have moved from the era of Gutenberg to the era of Zuckerberg, and we users are data, not people.

This is of great importance for young people, who today find themselves involved in vertically created turmoil, brought about by search engines, which divide users into affinity groups, thus eliminating dialogue, because when someone from part A meets someone from part B, they clash, end up insulting each other, without listening or sharing. And search engines, in order to keep the user, prioritise what generates the most impact, so that the strangest news ends up taking precedence.

The extreme polarisation of America would not have been possible without social media. Newspapers increasingly focus on events and abandon processes, and international relations cannot be understood without analysing the process in which events take place.

In Nairobi in 1973 there were 75 foreign correspondents; today there are three. No European TV has correspondents in Africa. It is therefore easy for a government to decide to expel correspondents, but it is almost impossible to shut down social networks, even if autocratic governments try to do so. That is why the Russian public knows little about the reality of the war.

But if someone is determined, they can always find a way to overcome censorship, even if it is a skill of the young, the old are not on the Internet and still rely on traditional media.

In Italy, the main daily newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, had the front page for forty days with a nine-column headline dedicated to Ukraine. This was followed by the first twenty pages, all dedicated to Ukraine. The rest of the world had disappeared. And the same happened with most of the European media.

Only with the French elections were newspapers forced to give significant space to Macron and not Zelensky. In this respect, representatives of the quality American press, such as the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, have been more balanced. Of course, the longer the war goes on, the more the repetition of events in the media becomes insufficient.

But the European press, like Europe itself, has sided with NATO, and with little argument. In Russia, of course, the press has been an amplifier for the government. The US media, for its part, often at odds with the government on domestic and national issues, tends to support the official foreign policy position. Factors such as national identity, nationalism and a lack of knowledge of international realities in newsrooms come into play.

It was surprising to see the European press become a megaphone of NATO positions. Putin was demonized as was Hitler, and Zelensky praised as a Greek hero. The Russians are portrayed as barbarians killing Minos. There has never been any negative news about Ukrainians, when in war violence and dereliction of ethics are inevitable and unfortunately widespread.

It is as if the Cold War has never ended, and we are ready to accept an escalation that can become scorching hot. GDP has contracted, the cost of living is rising, inflation is on the rise, and so far, there has been no reaction. This is really surprising.

For OtherNews, which is a news service on global issues, it was a very complex challenge. OtherNews represents a new design. The idea is that the non-profit association is owned by the readers, who can become members by paying a modest annual fee of 50 euros.

They elect the board of directors and discuss the editorial line, thus guaranteeing full independence and a pluralistic and inclusive line. There are 12,000 readers, in 82 countries around the world: academics, international civil servants, global civil society activists, etc.

Q: How would you define the role of the media in covering the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?

A: The war in Ukraine is exclusively an affair of the global North. The global South is only a victim of the increase in food, energy and transport. In Africa it has reached 45% of the population. Articles from the North were criticised by readers from the South and vice versa.

OtherNews lost almost 300 readers, almost all from the North, for publishing articles that criticised or questioned the war. I believe that this North-South divide will increase with the explosion of the multipolar world, as the values on which multilateralism was based are disappearing.

An ‘active non-alignment’ could be recreated, which the press in Europe and the US will struggle to understand. The West still believes it is the centre of the world, the United States in particular.

But today, mainly because of the need to prioritise national interests over international cooperation, a path opened by (former President Ronald) Reagan and (former British Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher in 1981, we have moved from a multilateral to a multipolar world. In the Bush junior era, neo-conservatives preached the arrival of an American century, that the US should remain the dominant power. Since then, the US has lost in every conflict it has been involved in, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

And Trump took the logic of the end of multilateralism to the extreme, advising all countries to put their own interests first. Today the result is that the multipolar world is not based on the idea of international cooperation for peace and development, but on the most brutal competition.

And Biden now wants to revive multilateralism. But it is too late. Biden will lose the mid-term elections in November and become a lame duck, with a Congress of Trumpist Republicans vetoing everything. And in 2024 Trump is likely to return, and this whole NATO boom will go into deep crisis. But until November, if the war does not escalate and remain as it is, the European press will basically keep the war helmet on.

Q: After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the identity of the international blocs seems to have reconfigured: on the one hand, the United States and the European Union, which defend the liberal tradition, have drawn a very wide dividing line, at home and abroad, between ‘pro-Russian’ and ‘pro-democratic’; on the other hand, Russia, China and their allies are considered ‘illiberal’. What do you think of this construction and what can it lead to in the future?

A: This vision of a world divided into two blocs, China and Russia on one side and liberal democracies, Europe and the United States, on the other, is an easy illusion to see. In this multipolar world, countries stand alone.

A good example is Turkey, which is part of NATO, but does not participate in the embargo against Russia and is very close to China. Or India, which continues to buy Russian arms, is on China’s New Silk Road, but does not want any problems with the US. Indonesia, which has always been a loyal US ally, continues to maintain Putin’s participation in G20 despite US protests.

And also in Europe: Hungary and Poland are openly defying Brussels, splitting into a pro-NATO Poland and a pro-Russia Hungary. Saudi Arabia, Washington’s great ally, ignores Biden’s request to increase oil production, despite having been invited to the summit of democratic countries convened by Biden. This homogeneous bloc of liberal countries is a good marketing slogan, but it crumbles at the slightest analysis.

Q: How do you see the impact of US domestic political polarisation on the international scene? Why?

A: The Cold War was a confrontation between two political and ideological visions that clashed in a proxy war. America is no longer Kennedy’s America and it is no longer Obama’s America. It is a country where political polarisation has reached unprecedented extremes. In 1980, 12% of Democrats and 15% of Republicans told the Pew Institute that they would not want their daughter to marry a man of the other party. Today it is 91% of Democrats and 96% of Republicans.

And the US Supreme Court is already part of this polarisation. 72% of Republicans believe Trump was a victim of electoral fraud. And the crowd that stormed the Capitol is described by the Republican Party as a ‘display of political opinion’. Is this the exemplary leader of democracy’s fight against the world’s dictators? And we are only at the beginning of a process of radicalisation.

Right-wing states, with the endorsement of the Supreme Court, are banning abortion, reducing social protections, minority voting power and changing schoolbooks. With the return of Trump, or Trumpism, in two years the coexistence between the two camps will become even more difficult and few will see America as the beacon of the free world. And that won’t matter much to Trump either.

Q: What lessons do you see for Latin America, both politically and economically, after Donald Trump’s four years in office? And for Europe?

A: My opinion is that there will be great chaos in international relations, with a growing power struggle between the United States and China, with Russia, which we had the intelligence to push into Beijing’s arms. Of course, this struggle will be disguised as something political, but in reality, it will be a pure struggle for economic and military hegemony.

It is a fight that the US cannot win. And China is a self-referential country that has never left its borders and has built walls to keep the enemy out. While the US has exploited its soft power, its music, food, clothing, sports and lifestyle, China has little interest in this kind of imperialism.

I have been going to China since 1958 and have always been struck by how little they care to make a foreigner understand Chinese culture. But there are tens of thousands of Chinese students studying abroad, while the same cannot be said of Americans. The two countries are two big islands, which consider themselves surrounded by inferior nations.

Latin America has always been considered a second-rate region by the US, despite many declarations, and I doubt that China sees the region beyond its raw materials and Latin Americans beyond its buyers.

My opinion, especially in light of Trump’s experience, is that Latin America should adopt a policy of active non-alignment, declaring that it will not get involved in a proxy war that is not in its interest, and that it will do exactly what the multipolar dynamic advises: put its interests as a region first.

This would give it greater consideration and weight in international negotiations, and a clear advantage in a world divided by the New Cold War that is brewing. A war that, unlike the current NATO war against Russia, cannot be military, because it would mean the destruction of the planet. Of course, history and the present do not help to have great faith in the intelligence of power.

The big problem is that Latin America continues to be a continent divided by the inability to leave behind the experience of its ancestors. It is the most homogeneous region in the world, much more so than Asia and Africa, and in some ways more so than Europe and the United States, since the latter are experiencing a real disintegration.

However, the Latin American integration process has been an optical illusion. Latin America is a region of permanent political experimentation, which has stifled any economic logic due to the rivalry between successive presidents, between whom there is a constant change of compass.

I fear that instead of putting up a united front in the face of the next cold war, they will allow themselves to be bought off individually, convinced that they are doing what is best for their country. The only thing that can change the situation is a great popular movement. But this has always been directed at global issues, such as women or the environment, and of course at national issues: never at regional issues.

And in the press, the issue of integration has at best been relegated to its bureaucratic aspects, to the various bodies that have sprung up and failed in modern times. So, in my opinion, I don’t think we have learnt a real lesson from what has happened in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall to express an inclusive regional policy, with a strong identity, and which places us as important players in the inter-national arena of this century.

Sebastián Do Rosario and Federico Larsen are researchers at the Institute for International Relations of Mar del Plata, Argentina. The interview was first published in the newsletter of the Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Interview with Roberto Savio by Sebastián Do Rosario and Federico Larsen

Vor dem Hintergrund geopolitischer Spannungen führten hochrangige europäische und chinesische Beamte am Dienstag (19. Juli) hochrangige Handelsgespräche, schwiegen aber über ein durch Streitigkeiten auf Eis gelegtes Investitionsabkommen.