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Latest news - Next SEDE meeting - Committee on Security and Defence


The next meeting of the Committee on Security and Defence (SEDE) is scheduled to take place on Monday, 1 September 2025 from 15.00-18.30 in Brussels (room ANTALL 4Q1).

Further information about the SEDE meeting can be found here.

_______________________

SEDE missions 2025:
  • Norway - 27-30 May 2025
  • Moldova and Ukraine - 14-17 April 2025
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina - 24-27 February 2025
  • Israel and Palestine - 5-8 February 2025
SEDE missions 2024:
  • United Kingdom - 28-30 October 2024
  • Ukraine - 25-26 October 2024

SEDE Committee meetings' calendar 2025
EP calendar 2025
SEDE meetings' calendar 2nd half of 2024 - 10th legislature
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Latest news - Next SEDE meeting - Committee on Security and Defence


The next meeting of the Committee on Security and Defence (SEDE) is scheduled to take place on Monday, 1 September 2025 from 15.00-18.30 in Brussels (room ANTALL 4Q1).

Further information about the SEDE meeting can be found here.

_______________________

SEDE missions 2025:
  • Norway - 27-30 May 2025
  • Moldova and Ukraine - 14-17 April 2025
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina - 24-27 February 2025
  • Israel and Palestine - 5-8 February 2025
SEDE missions 2024:
  • United Kingdom - 28-30 October 2024
  • Ukraine - 25-26 October 2024

SEDE Committee meetings' calendar 2025
EP calendar 2025
SEDE meetings' calendar 2nd half of 2024 - 10th legislature
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP
Categories: Europäische Union

Balkans occidentaux : les médias indépendants en voie d'extinction

Courrier des Balkans / Monténégro - Tue, 22/07/2025 - 07:54

Fermeture d'Al Jazeera Balkans, disparition de l'USAID, pressions croissantes sur les chaînes régionales... La liberté de la presse dans les Balkans occidentaux est aujourd'hui en péril, alors que les dernières voix indépendantes risquent de s'éteindre.

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Categories: Balkans Occidentaux

Balkans occidentaux : les médias indépendants en voie d'extinction

Courrier des Balkans / Croatie - Tue, 22/07/2025 - 07:54

Fermeture d'Al Jazeera Balkans, disparition de l'USAID, pressions croissantes sur les chaînes régionales... La liberté de la presse dans les Balkans occidentaux est aujourd'hui en péril, alors que les dernières voix indépendantes risquent de s'éteindre.

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Categories: Balkans Occidentaux

The Iranian Regime Finally Reveals Its Terrorist Instincts by Targeting Innocent US Civilians

Foreign Policy Blogs - Mon, 21/07/2025 - 22:57

June 20, 2004—South Korean national Kim Sun Il was brutally beheaded by an al-Qaeda-linked extremist group, a tragedy that underscores how the spread of Islamic extremism—fueled in part by Iran’s 1979 revolution and, as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has acknowledged, the export of radical ideology—continues to claim the lives of innocent civilians simply because of their countries’ alliances.

On June 22, 2025, in a moment of blistering clarity, the Iranian regime stripped away the last fig leaf of plausible deniability. In a declaration broadcast on state television, Tehran vowed that “every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target.” This was not a coded message, nor a vague allusion—it was a direct threat against innocent civilians, a calculated act of rhetorical terrorism from a regime unraveling in the wake of its own miscalculations.

The context is clear: mere hours before this pronouncement, US-led strikes had decisively disabled critical components of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It was a blow aimed at halting Tehran’s march toward nuclear armament—one that, in the absence of good-faith diplomacy from Iran, had become necessary. But instead of addressing its own provocations, the regime lashed out with characteristic fury, scapegoating Americans—military and civilian alike—as acceptable collateral in its campaign of revenge and propaganda.

Let’s not mistake this for a novel turn. Iran’s leaders are not new to the politics of terror. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, they have deployed violence not just as a defensive tool, but as a primary mechanism of statecraft. Whether through the brazen hostage crisis of 1979, the devastating Beirut bombings of 1983, or the countless proxy attacks on US troops across Iraq and Syria in the decades since, the Islamic Republic has honed a consistent strategy: when diplomacy falters or its ambitions are thwarted, it targets the innocent.

This is not the tactical desperation of a beleaguered nation. It is the doctrine of a regime that views terrorism not as a shameful aberration but as a legitimate expression of power. And with this latest threat—an open call to murder civilians—it has once again reminded the world of its moral bankruptcy.

The regime’s calculus is cynical but revealing. It cannot defeat the United States militarily. Its conventional forces are outmatched, its economy is strained, and its legitimacy is eroded both domestically and abroad. So it falls back on its tried-and-true method: asymmetrical terror. It empowers proxies, radicalizes militias, and weaponizes fear—hoping that the West, weary of endless conflict, will trade justice for quiet, and leave tyrants to rule without consequence.

What Tehran perhaps failed to calculate is how utterly this declaration confirms everything its critics have said for decades. For years, some insisted that Iran’s aggression was reactive, that its support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas was strategic rather than ideological, that it could be coaxed into moderation through economic engagement. But threats to murder civilians—for the crime of holding a blue passport—leave no room for such illusions. This is not realism. This is raw, unreconstructed terrorism.

And yet, this moment must not be wasted on outrage alone. The United States and its allies must recognize that this is more than a rhetorical shift; it is a declaration of intent. Every American in the Middle East is now living under a threat sanctioned by a sovereign government. That is an extraordinary—and extraordinarily dangerous—development.

It also places an urgent burden on the international community. The rules-based order cannot survive if state actors are allowed to incite violence against civilians without consequence. The targeting of innocents must remain a red line—not just in theory, but in enforcement. If the regime in Tehran is allowed to get away with this, it will not be the last to abandon international norms in favor of the politics of fear.

Ultimately, the Iranian regime has revealed what it truly is: not a misunderstood player seeking regional autonomy, but a paranoid, theocratic oligarchy whose first instinct in crisis is to threaten murder. That instinct—nurtured over decades, bolstered by proxy wars, and now made explicit on national television—should end any remaining debate about its nature.

The world has been warned. Now it must respond

Ce que l'on sait de l'interpellation de Kocc Barma, le cerveau présumé d'un vaste réseau de sextorsion au Sénégal

BBC Afrique - Mon, 21/07/2025 - 17:36
Selon les autorités sénégalaises, l’homme connu sous le pseudonyme de Kocc Barma serait le cerveau derrière plusieurs plateformes numériques diffusant des vidéos et photos à caractère pornographique, mettant en scène des personnes parfois mineures et souvent sans leur consentement. Plus de 5 000 victimes ont été recensées à ce jour.
Categories: Afrique

US-Greek relations — June brief by the Transatlantic Periscope

ELIAMEP - Mon, 21/07/2025 - 09:39

The Transatlantic Periscope is an interactive, multimedia tool that brings together expert commentary, high-quality media coverage, official policy documents, quantitative data, social media posts, and gray literature. It will provide on a monthly basis a summary of the most important news concerning the Greek-US relations, as reflected in the media. Below you will find an overview for June 2025.

On June 5, 2025, the 15th Bilateral Military Cooperation between the Hellenic Navy and the United States Navy was held in Athens. The Greek delegation was headed by Commodore Stefanos Sarris HN, Director of Branch A, while the U.S. delegation was led by Rear Admiral Patrick S. Hayden, Director Maritime Headquarters (DMHQ), U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa. Discussions addressed issues of mutual interest and strengthening cooperation for stability and development in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region. On the sidelines of the talks, the head of the U.S. delegation held a brief meeting with the Deputy Chief of the Hellenic Navy General Staff, Rear Admiral Spyridon Lagaras HN.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. State Department is formally moving forward with the nomination of Kimberly Guilfoyle as the next American ambassador to Greece, undercutting widespread media speculation that she had declined the post. In a move that clarifies the administration’s intent, the State Department issued on June 18 an official “Certificate of Competency” for the nomination, a standard step preceding a confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate. Guilfoyle is set to appear before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 9, 2025, as part of her confirmation process to become the next U.S. Ambassador to Greece.

During his visit to Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland from June 12 to 18, 2025, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yannis Loverdos conveyed a message of support from the Greek government to the Greek American community and of strengthening ties with Greeks abroad. During the visit, he had a series of meetings with prominent members of the Greek-American in several fields and informed them about the Greek government’s initiatives for the Greeks abroad.

At the NATO Summit, on June 25, 2025, Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis held a high-level meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, underscoring the growing importance of Greek-American cooperation in a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. U.S. Secretary of State Rubio emphasized Greece’s role as a reliable NATO ally and a pillar of stability in the Eastern Mediterranean. He acknowledged the importance of Greece’s contributions to regional security, while Minister Gerapetritis praised U.S. efforts to de-escalate tensions in the broader Middle East. Both officials reaffirmed their intent to further deepen bilateral strategic relations.

According to Vassilis Nedos (Kathimerini), an undisclosed number of Greek Patriot missile systems are being relocated to the Hellenic Navy and NATO base at Souda Bay, Crete, to provide anti-ballistic protection to American assets in the region. The move comes amid increased U.S. military activity in the area following the escalation of the Israel-Iran conflict. Several U.S. F-16 fighter jets have also been temporarily deployed to Crete ahead of their participation in the upcoming “Anatolian Eagle” exercise in Turkey in early July.

More at: https://transatlanticperiscope.org/relationship/GR#

France’s Double Standards

Foreign Policy Blogs - Sun, 20/07/2025 - 22:56

By Rachel Avraham

It might not have caught the attention of Westerners, but people in the Global South noticed it long ago: Europeans exhibit a double standard when it comes to violations of sovereignty and civilian lives. What does that mean? In Europe, it’s customary to support a particular side in a military conflict based on the defense of a specific value. For example, a country whose territory has been invaded by soldiers from another nation can be supported in the name of defending territorial integrity, the right to sovereignty, or the right to life, and so on.

However, every now and then, we notice a phenomenon where European countries choose to support nations that don’t represent the very values they championed when it came to other countries. This exposes the hypocritical and sycophantic self-interest of the “enlightened” Western nations. This double standard is one of the reasons many countries in Eurasia and Africa are not taking sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. While many European countries engage in this demeaning and hypocritical behavior, one country acts this way most overtly: France.

When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, France gave its absolute and unequivocal support to Ukraine, claiming that Russia had invaded its legal territorial boundaries and that Ukraine had the right to defend its independence and sovereignty over its lawful territories. The truth? There’s some truth to what the French say. However, what’s infuriating about this story is that France is playing favorites when it comes to supporting countries that need to defend their territories and sovereignty from external attacks by other nations. The most striking example of this is France’s support for Armenia in its military conflict with Azerbaijan. Why, in the Caucasus war, does France support the aggressor who initiated the illegal occupation of territory legally belonging to another country, rather than the one defending its sovereign territories?

Let’s take a step back. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, two countries disagreed with the territorial division for each nation that separated from the Soviet Union: Russia and Armenia. According to the division, each Soviet Republic that became an independent state received its territorial area as a country based on its territory as a Soviet Republic. This fundamental division was agreed upon in the Alma-Ata Declaration on December 21, 1991. From Russia’s perspective, its leaders have always viewed the post-Soviet Eurasian countries as semi-independent states, allowing them (the Russian leadership) to act in these countries as they please. As for Armenia, it decided not to be content with its original territory and forcibly conquered the Azerbaijani region of Karabakh. Thus, Armenian nationalists managed to create “Greater Armenia” from the territory they seized from Azerbaijan in the “First Karabakh War,” a territory that constituted a fifth of Azerbaijan’s landmass.

According to the French moral compass, as demonstrated by France’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, we would infer that France would also support Azerbaijan, whose territory was shamefully occupied. But no. Not only does France not support Azerbaijan but Armenia, it also tried for years to prevent Azerbaijan from reclaiming its occupied territory and intensified its opposition to Azerbaijan after the “Second Karabakh War” in 2020, in which Azerbaijan regained its occupied land.

As mentioned, it seems France wasn’t content with just standard diplomatic support for Armenia but engaged in direct external intervention in an issue not directly related to it (and frankly, not even indirectly so much). France is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). This organization was established in 1992 to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with France being one of the three co-chairs of the group, along with the United States and Russia. It’s important to note that each of these three countries has a large and politically powerful Armenian lobby. The OSCE Minsk Group largely failed in all its endeavors for three decades, not only in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict but also in conflicts created by Russia in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine in 2014-2021. Furthermore, the group failed to negotiate a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan based on the Alma-Ata Declaration, which would have forced the Armenians to withdraw militarily from Karabakh. Beyond that, the group achieved no breakthrough in resolving the conflict.

Over time, questions arose about France’s participation in the group and its role as a co-chair. Firstly, as mentioned, France has the third-largest Armenian diaspora in the world (after Russia and the United States), which constitutes a strong political force. You tell me, what French politician would want to disappoint such a large number of potential voters over some conflict that doesn’t concern their private life in any way? I imagine none.

Secondly, in recent years, France has been grappling with large-scale Muslim immigration, which is not sitting quietly and is shaking the streets of France and French politics. Today, many French people understand that opening their country’s doors to anyone seeking assistance from the Middle East was not the best decision made in Paris, leading to a significant political shift across France towards the far-right. Based on the anti-Muslim sentiment that has become so prevalent in France, the decision to support Christian Armenia over Muslim Azerbaijan is the only decision supported across the entire French political spectrum. Politicians like Le Pen use crusade-like terminology to defend the Christian Armenian population from the Muslim Azerbaijanis, even though Azerbaijan is a completely secular country, and its conflict with Armenia has nothing to do with religion or any particular civilization, but rather with international law. And frankly, it’s ludicrous to portray Azerbaijan as an evil Muslim country, given that one of its greatest allies is the Jewish state of Israel. Thirdly, France also supported (Christian) Greece against its conflict with (Muslim) Turkey, so it’s not surprising that France would not support Turkey’s close and significant ally—Azerbaijan.

In November 2020, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Both French parliaments unanimously voted for French recognition of the independence of the separatist enclave of Artsakh (the Armenian name for Karabakh), mirroring the positions of Russia and Armenia. Subsequently, a frustrated Azerbaijan called for the closure of the OSCE Minsk Group.

The conflict between France and Azerbaijan is not just a conflict between two countries but a mirror image of a larger conflict between the West and the Global South, ignited by double standards and justice. Western countries will not gain the support of the Global South, even on substantive issues like the Russia-Ukraine war, as long as justice is not served and Western countries stop supporting other occupiers who act against international law, similar to the case of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. We must not normalize double standards regarding separatism, the sanctity of states’ territorial integrity, and colonialism. Countries like France must not continue to behave in such a despicable manner, dictating the “right” and “wrong” sides of conflicts between different countries based on their political interests. Only in a political world like the one countries such as France are trying to bring us into, does it make sense to support Ukraine but vehemently oppose Azerbaijan.

No Second Chances

Foreign Policy Blogs - Sat, 19/07/2025 - 22:55

A German Gepard in unique camo colours, popular in both games and in drone defense in Ukraine.

 

The era surrounding 2014 was one where life in some parts of the world could not have been more different than life in the West. Around 2014, when the Syrian Wars became very hot and violent, most people were sitting in their homes, playing games like Call of Duty with actual combat being the farthest thing from their mind. While the following years gave way to some youth in the West becoming ISIS fighters, the average family hardly felt this effect or were plagued by their children going abroad to brutalise people in Iraq and Syria.

Despite that era being one where some of the oldest communities in the Middle East were almost completely wiped out, things in Europe and North America changed very little. Even when returned ISIS fighters came back to the West, little was done in many cases to charge them, seek justice for their victims, or even take actions to protect communities in Western countries from future attacks. Even today, there is little mention of it or measures to compensate victims of acts done by Western citizens in Iraq and Syria, despite the world being a much more divisive place in 2025.

Post-Covid seemed to change the norm in many of these formerly peaceful communities. They still played games and watched similar media, still ignored many of the horrors abroad, and did little to think they would be in a dire situation themselves. The 2022 War in Ukraine took young video game players, ones with online friends in your town who played the same games and had similar lives to their team members in the West, and put many of them in the front of actual combat.

Some successes of these formerly peaceful game players and average kids were mentioned on the battlefield. In a well known incident, caught mostly on video, two Ukrainian operated American Bradley armoured personnel vehicles were able to disable one Russian T-90M tank, the most modern Russian tank on the battlefield. The tactics and knowledge they used against the ultra modern T-90M was claimed by one of the Bradley crews to be the result of playing the game War Thunder, a simplified war vehicle simulator. To improvise during the tense situation, the Bradley did something he often did in game when he targeted the sensors of an enemy tank. With the experience he had fighting against other real players online, he took to damaging the equipment of the enemy tank so he could stop the enemy from firing on the two Bradleys. While the game is not exactly designed to be a proper simulator for the Bradley or the T-90M, it enabled the driver to have a tactical mind and improvise an idea learned from their earlier days playing one of their favourite games. To note, the T-90M did not make it, and it is not clear if the Russian crew survived.

A simplified simulation of many of the systems used in Ukraine and in other parts of the world may train this generation in quick responses in actual combat. Many weapons designs are often based on control mechanisms for an XBox or Playstation, and playing something like the game mentioned above may introduce soldiers in how to manage the targeting system of a Gepard or ZSU-23-4 radar in shooting down drones attacking cities in Ukraine. It is likely the case that drone systems have already benefitted from controls and imaging seen in many modern games, drones which have changed the face of battle since 2022.

The unfortunate reality of combat in Ukraine and other parts of the world is that such technological advancements also make it very difficult to survive a war. There are estimates of thousands of young men losing their lives weekly in Ukraine, and the total number of deaths of soldiers in the war is approaching levels of losses not seen since the Second World War. Quick and rapid defeats have been recently seen in the air conflict between Pakistan and India, where many pilots likely lost their lives in the first few hours of combat with little chance to survive modern weapons technology. An advanced and well planned attack may remove the defense of military targets without a means of response, weighting one military’s strength to such a great degree that it would mirror the strategic victory at Pearl Harbor. The reality of modern warfare is that most will not survive, and for many of those on the battlefield who are more alike than different, it would be best if they were challenging each other online instead of using those skills to massacre each other on the battlefield.

"Je me bats chaque jour pour être à la hauteur de cette couronne" - Miss Côte d'Ivoire, victime de cyberharcèlement

BBC Afrique - Sat, 19/07/2025 - 16:20
Fatima Koné est devenue Miss Côte d'Ivoire. Mais en quelques heures, elle a commencé à subir une vague de cyberharcèlement massif.
Categories: Afrique

To Be Remembered Is Not to Be Freed: The Mythic Economy of Progressive Sacrifice

Foreign Policy Blogs - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 22:55

Leftist pundits should remember: God answered Abraham’s own sacrifice. The sin of sacrificing another’s child is eternal—and paid in hell. (Image generated by ChatGPT-4o-)

Whether it’s the weight shouldered by members of the vulnerable population—Emma Sulkowicz’s mattress, George Floyd’s last breath, Breonna Taylor’s bedroom, or Alan Kurdi’s shoreline—each was made into a symbol not by their own will, but by the myth-making impulses of leftist punditry and media machinery eager to construct heroes out of hurt. Their pain was aestheticized, their names invoked, their images distributed. But in many cases, they and their families suffer—not only from the original violence, but from the relentless symbolic labor they are forced to perform. Some are harassed, surveilled, erased. Others are iconized so completely that they are never seen again as people. Their public meaning grows while their private agency collapses. They become scaffolding for a morality play in which they never auditioned. Their liberation is recited, never lived.

This transformation from person to parable is not incidental—it is embedded in the moral economy of contemporary wokeism. Liberation is not a shared project but a transaction, sealed through sacrifice. Political legitimacy is won not by organizing for freedom, but by offering up a body to be injured, a voice to be silenced, or a subject to be mythologized. These figures are not truly seen. They are deified, consumed, and converted into liberal cautionary tales—fetishized icons whose pain is preserved but whose personhood is discarded.

This is the tragedy of postmodern identity: real lives become metaphorical instruments. The dead speak only through curated remembrance, and the living suffer as placeholders for unredeemed history. Heidegger might call this the reduction of being to utility: the human as object, politically visible only when useful to others’ narratives. In this way, ontological erasure becomes functional visibility—a form of legibility that only emerges through subjugation, when pain becomes performance. This seamlessly echoes Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, where power does not merely repress but regulates the conditions under which life is allowed to be seen, counted, and managed. In a world where not all lives are equally protected, the bourgeoisie monopolize not only the payoffs from the moral economy of contemporary wokeism, but the full expression of life—safety, rest, and the dignity of emotional bandwidth. Others are permitted only visibility through trauma, and even that is selectively allocated.

Even that visibility, however, often comes posthumously. The sacrificed individual is remembered, not lived. Their death becomes an ethical signal; their life is a discarded draft. The real horror lies in this economy of symbolic compensation, where systemic injustice is aestheticized, not remedied. Tragedy becomes theater, and mourning becomes moral capital. In many cases, the market absorbs these symbolic deaths with stunning efficiency. Grief becomes brandable, pain becomes a hashtag, and corporations don the colors of solidarity while continuing to exploit those very lives behind the scenes. The commodification of trauma thus becomes the final act in the ritual: mourning not as a reckoning, but as marketing.

Hannah Arendt saw the mechanics of evil, not its texture. Her account of the “banality of evil” captured bureaucratic amorality, but did not dwell in the suffering it produced. Her reflection is Lacanian: a cold mirror without skin. It renders evil comprehensible, but not felt. In effect, Arendt displaced the burden of suffering—transferring it from analytical engagement to symbolic abstraction, a form of ethical outsourcing that left the pain of victims intellectually acknowledged but existentially untouched. She succeeded in anatomizing the structures of evil, but left unexplored how suffering is lived, fragmented, and erased within those very structures. Arendt gave us the ethics of the thinking subject, but not of the suffering one. Perhaps for Arendt, that suffering was not just analytically elusive—it was something unspeakable, something she refused to represent precisely because its intimacy defied conceptual containment. In this absence, suffering becomes an epistemic object, not an ethical imperative. Diagnosis arrives without embodiment; politics speaks without contact. Her refusal to descend into the phenomenology of pain was not philosophical neutrality—it was an ethical omission. To map evil without feeling its tremor is to risk normalizing it anew, in cleaner language.

Thus, suffering is neutralized into mythology. The wounded are sainted but silenced. Pain becomes proof of virtue—an untouchable credential that resists criticism and political transformation. The sacred victim cannot be questioned, only mourned or idealized. And here lies the ethical stagnation: trauma becomes a closed loop, an immutable symbol, rather than an impetus for structural change. When political identity is secured by suffering, liberation becomes a performance endlessly rehearsed but never concluded.

If pain merely confers symbolic status, then the living are doomed to repeat the dead’s script. The suffering subject’s current life becomes unlivable. Their future is overwritten by a demand to represent trauma, indefinitely. Woke politics, in this form, enshrines suffering without transforming it. It is a politics of infinite repetition, not release. And it leaves no room for agency beyond grief.

Contrast this with the figure of the Bodhisattva: in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, the Bodhisattva is one who, despite being capable of entering nirvana, voluntarily delays personal liberation to remain in the world and accompany others in their suffering. They sense suffering and remain with it, not to define others by it, but to transmute it. The Bodhisattva does not use pain to confer meaning. They use presence to restore it. Their compassion is not forensic, but existential—a form of dwelling. The Bodhisattva is not merely compassionate; they are co-present. Their ethics emerge not from abstraction, but from dwelling beside. Where liberal politics universalizes suffering into policy, the Bodhisattva particularizes it into presence.

But presence is not enough without structure. In political terms, presence must be accompanied by material reparation. The craftsman—an ethical architect—must build beyond reflection. But craftmanship is no longer ethically sufficient if it only judges who deserves repair based on performative pain. This is where the symbolic economy of sacrifice collapses: those who have suffered must not merely be honored or remembered—they must be structurally equalized. They must be permitted to live lives as full and rich as those who now consume their memory as moral capital. There is no justification, ethical or political, for the continued monopolization of livable life by those who hide behind commemorative virtue while enjoying the fruits of unshared freedom.

Yet even this ethical craft has limits if it is not coupled with radical redistribution. The mythic victim must not only be acknowledged—they must be released from their myth. Here, capitalism, paradoxically, offers a necessary tool: not because any one mechanism is inherently virtuous or profound, but because no existing liberal or progressive instrument—reparations, welfare, or identity-based redistribution—has succeeded in releasing the mythologized victim from their symbolic role. In the absence of a non-patron-clientelist structure that can offer real exit from sacrificial identity, instruments like shareholdership or even randomized redistribution remain the only viable tools to shift the terrain. Capital, at its coldest, is indifferent to lineage, grievance, and symbolic performance. And that very indifference may be the most ethical feature available: it does not measure worthiness; it redistributes possibility. Not as reward, but as rupture. A metaphysical wager against inherited repetition. A refusal to remember, so that others might begin to live.

And in a world that only remembers your surname, hometown, or trauma—capital remains the only force indifferent enough to liberate you from all three. It may not have a conscience, but it also has no prejudice. And sometimes, that blankness is the most just form of remembering we have left.

This perspective is not rooted in the ivory towers of philosophical critique. Unlike Adorno, Arendt, or Benjamin—who observed authoritarian violence from historical distance, where suffering remained a subject of analysis rather than an object of shared responsibility—this argument emerges from within the vulnerable population itself. It does not mourn trauma as a conceptual loss; it lives within its ongoing consequences. If traditional critical theory attempts to historicize injustice, this voice demands to de-historicize survival. It refuses to be remembered. It insists on being redistributed.

Thus, to move beyond symbolic sacrifice, we need three agents: the Bodhisattva who stays, the craftsman who builds, and the system that gives. This system need not replace ethics, but it must outmaneuver its exclusions—the binaries of good and evil, victim and bystander. Without presence, structure, and rupture, suffering remains mythic, and justice remains posthumous. The task is not to mourn more skillfully, but to liberate more concretely.

'I am the queen of the cage'

BBC Africa - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 17:26
Nigerian police officer Juliet Ukah will make history when the Professional Fighters League holds its first event in Africa.
Categories: Africa

Press release - MEPs to examine Taiwan’s hybrid threat response

Europäisches Parlament (Nachrichten) - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 10:43
A parliamentary delegation will be in Taipei from 21 to 23 July to meet with Taiwanese authorities and civil society representatives.
Special committee on the European Democracy Shield

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP
Categories: Europäische Union

Press release - MEPs to examine Taiwan’s hybrid threat response

Európa Parlament hírei - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 10:43
A parliamentary delegation will be in Taipei from 21 to 23 July to meet with Taiwanese authorities and civil society representatives.
Special committee on the European Democracy Shield

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Press release - MEPs to examine Taiwan’s hybrid threat response

European Parliament (News) - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 10:43
A parliamentary delegation will be in Taipei from 21 to 23 July to meet with Taiwanese authorities and civil society representatives.
Special committee on the European Democracy Shield

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP
Categories: European Union

Press release - MEPs to examine Taiwan’s hybrid threat response

European Parliament - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 10:43
A parliamentary delegation will be in Taipei from 21 to 23 July to meet with Taiwanese authorities and civil society representatives.
Special committee on the European Democracy Shield

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP
Categories: European Union

The Return of (Neo-) Protectionism: US Tariffs and Beyond

ELIAMEP - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 10:24
  • The imposition of higher tariffs by President Trump or the threat to do so, while seemingly contradicting economic orthodoxy is not out of sync with the President’s view of the world.
  • Tariffs are used as bargaining tool to force US trading partners into bilateral negotiations.
  • A so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord”, in the spirit of the 1985 Plaza Accord, could, in Trump’s view, help in responding to the key challenges of the American economy.
  • According to the existing literature, the potential effects of higher US tariffs on the EU are going to be small to medium (0.10%-0.66%).
  • Macroeconomic projections by the IMF, which combine the effects of higher tariffs with uncertainty and tighter financial conditions, place the medium-term effect for the EU at 1.75% of GDP.
  • The effect of US trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on EU GDP with a two-standard deviation increase of TPU will be up to a drop of EU GDP by 0.73% after three years (the cumulative loss reaching 6.49%).

Read here in pdf the Policy paper by Panagiotis Konstantinou, Assistant Professor, Athens University of Economics and Business; Spyros Blavoukos, Professor, Athens University of Economics and Business; Head of the ‘Arian Contellis’ European Programme, ELIAMEP and Panagiota Pagoni, Research Assistant, ELIAMEP.

Jolly good Whiskey

Air Power Blog - Fri, 18/07/2025 - 01:50

Negyedik éve, tavalyi típusváltozat-váltása óta viszont először vesz részt magyarországi éleslövészeten az avianói 56. harci kutató-mentő század. Figyelem! Főszerepben immár a HH-60G Pave Low helyett az új HH-60W Jolly "dobozorrú" Green II helikopterek.

Érkezik napi feladataik végrehajtására a Jolly géppár a körös-hegyi helipadra.

Málházzák a .5-ös lőszert a GAU-21-es géppuskákhoz.

Lőkörök a lőtéren.

Indulás egy újabb feladatra.

Vissza Pápára.

Zord 


Categories: Biztonságpolitika

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