English articles
- Podrobnosti
- Kategorie: English articles
Updated 17.12.2023: Corruption at the highest level of the EU: secret meeting in Suite 412 - Even the VOP and President Pavel are keeping their hands off Marocco Gate ?! - "We should sanction the perpetrators by denying visas and seizing their assets abroad." MEP Michael Gahler
***
Dr. Damjan Prelovšek - art historian and expert on modern architecture, specialised in the work of architect Jože Plečnik, Ambassador of Slovenia to the Czech Republic 1998-2002, member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, writer and photographer.
***
So who was Badraoui anyway? And what was his interest in A. Bahaddou's visas?
I was asked a similar question by MFA lawyer Jiri Slays last year - why were the Moroccans interested in uncovering visa fraud and why, over time, did they give me some of their tapes of embassy wiretaps related to visas? In a legal society, such a question shouldn't even come up: after all, everyone should be interested in following the law, in the correct execution of the visa agenda, and in not encouraging human trafficking. In practice, however, we all know that in Arab countries many people turn a blind eye. In Morocco, on the other hand, many people are happy for their people to move to Europe and to make money out of it. Some are just looking for a better material life, others want to spread the Muslim faith in Europe, and still others engage in various not entirely legal activities. On the other hand, however, Morocco is a strategic partner of the EU and receives a lot of money in projects to combat illegal migration and to solve asylum problems.
***
Žebrák Castle 13.8.2021: Interview of Jan Šinágl with the ex-ambassador of Slovenia to the Czech Republic Damjan Prelovšek
***
Morocco cares very much about the reputation of the country and its ruler, much more than the Czech Republic.
- Podrobnosti
- Kategorie: English articles
… Lebin’s efforts seem to have been effective. His mother was released on bail on May 24, 2023, however, she is under tight surveillance and still faces prosecution. Meanwhile, Lebin’s father remains in detention and was transferred to Rizhao Detention Center on June 13. The next day, two officers from the Donggang Police Station visited Lebin’s mother and threatened to sentence Yuande if Lebin kept up his advocacy efforts in Europe. According to Ms. Ma, they seemed fearful of the attention the case has received. …
***
In the early morning on May 12, 2023, over 10 plainclothes police officers stormed the tea farm of Ding Yuande and his wife, Ma Ruimei in the rural area outside Rizhao City in Shandong Province, China. The officers restrained the couple and proceeded to ransack the property. Amidst the ransacking, the couple’s son who lives in Germany, Ding Lebin, phoned his mother to see how his parents were doing. Lebin’s mother told him, “Bad guys came into the house. They handcuffed me. My hands are numb now.” The call ended after 33 seconds.
- Podrobnosti
- Kategorie: English articles
Venezuela’s planned vote over territory dispute leaves Guyana residents on edge
SURAMA, Guyana (AP) — Congregants of an Anglican church in a sparsely populated rainforest village in Guyana gathered recently to bid on a bounty of bananas, squash and other produce during a community event. They sang hymns and rang a bell after each successful bid.
They offered grateful devotions typical of a harvest festival but also asked for peace for their community amid what they see as an existential threat. Their village, Surama, is part of Guyana’s Essequibo region — a territory larger than Greece and rich in oil and minerals that Venezuela claims as its own and whose future it intends to decide Sunday with a referendum. The practical and legal implications of the vote, which among other things calls for turning Essequibo into a Venezuelan state, remain unclear, but the referendum has left area residents on edge.
“We are praying, we are hoping and we are having faith that nothing negative will come,” said Loreen Allicock, who led the congregation during the harvest festival. “We want to continue living a peaceful life in this beautiful land of ours.”
- Podrobnosti
- Kategorie: English articles
I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the true horrible reality of Communist Russia.
The average married worker had to make do with less than half as much bread and flour and less than two-thirds as much sugar as his counterpart in St Petersburg in the early 20th century. People were short of fat, milk and fruit. Meat and fish consumption in the 1930s was five times less than at the turn of the 20th century. Well, the Russians were better off under the Tsar than under Stalin.
In Penza, thousands of villagers who have travelled 200 kilometres to buy bread sleep outside shops. 'We queue for bread from midnight, and even if you are starving, they give you a kilo loaf at most,' wrote a woman from a collective farm in Yaroslavl to her husband. Yes, in the supposed workers' paradise of the USSR, there were queues for hours for this basic foodstuff, and it was not even certain that people would get it. They often ended up starving and dying. And, of course, other goods were not available either, such as milk, butter, vegetables, not to mention meat. Even fish in areas with developed fishing couldn't be bought, because somehow they weren't. Even such common things as salt, soap and matches were missing from the shops. In the early 1930s, even vodka was impossible to find. Clothes, shoes and other consumer goods were also hard to find. In the factory canteens, workers queued not only for food, but also for cutlery, because there was a critical shortage of that too.
- Podrobnosti
- Kategorie: English articles
Pharmaceutical firm Pfizer sued Poland this month over its refusal to pay for vaccines the Polish government bought under a contract between the European Commission (EC) and Pfizer for 1.1 billion doses for member states.
The exact wording of the contract, including the price of the vaccines, is officially secret, but according to the Financial Times, the value of a single dose is said to be around €19.5. Given that Poland has not taken delivery of 60 million vaccines, the total amount recovered can be expected to be around €1.2 billion. The contract with Pfizer was signed by the EC in April 2021, with the support of EU member states. They have committed to buy 650 million doses from Pfizer in 2022 and 450 million doses in 2023. However, demand for vaccines has fallen sharply over the past year.
Central and Eastern European countries, except the Czech Republic, have asked the EC to amend the contract
In 2022, CEE governments began to argue that they had a large stock of vaccines. And if they buy more, they say they will have to destroy millions of doses as the guarantee expires. This has led to the shredding of millions of vaccines in this country too. According to our investigation, vaccines worth a total of CZK 11.6 billion have been purchased in the country. The largest share of these were vaccines from Pfizer. A large proportion of these vaccines were disposed of. More than 7 million doses, worth more than CZK 3.5 billion, had to be destroyed at taxpayers' expense. In the summer of 2022, a coalition of 10 countries (Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) asked the EC to negotiate a contract modification with Pfizer. According to these countries, it was, among other things, "a waste of public funds that cannot be reasonably explained to the public". Contractual changes were agreed between the EC and Pfizer and the revised contract from May this year will allow countries to buy fewer vaccines but at a higher price per unit. Except for Poland, all nine countries have signed the revised contract.
Read more...