Joachim Becker: Enlarging the EU Sphere of Influence Eastwards – Or: The Dialectics of Integration and Disintegration

In the face of the austerity-induced depression of the domestic markets in the EU, the EU and its main powers bank on the expansion of economic relations beyond the EU and free trade agreements. The coalition agreement of social democrats and Christian democrats in Germany, the dominant EU power, is characteristic of this thinking. It is extremely brief and unimaginative in its paragraphs on the EU, but dedicates detailed and highlighted paragraphs on the Germany’s economic relationship with so-called emerging economies and on EU free trade agreements More

Kees van der Pijl: 1984 All Over Again. The Snowden NSA Revelations in Perspective

In the discussion concerning the Snowden NSA revelations many have referred to Orwell’s 1984. This paper highlights that Orwell identified two components–total surveillance and permanent war. The paper then looks at the actual year 1984 and argues that in that year was significant after all because both elements of today’s War on Terror (surveillance and war) were being prepared. One was the Washington conference on the War on Terror, the third in a series initiated from Israel; the other, the preparation of a Continuity of Government (COG) programme by the Reagan administration, more