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Egy, a múlt heti párizsi terrorakciókkal kapcsolatba hozható személy őrizetbe vétele után döntöttek így.

American AGM-114 Hellfire Anti-Tank Guided Missile

A Széchenyi 2020 keretében megjelent „Az állattenyésztési ágazat fejlesztése - trágyatárolók építése” című (VP-5-4.1.1.6-15 kódszámú) felhívás.  A támogatásra rendelkezésre álló tervezett keretösszeg 5,6 milliárd forint.  A támogatást igénylő beadási időszakonként, továbbá megvalósítási helyenként csak egy támogatási kérelmet nyújthat be.   Az igényelhető vissza nem térítendő támogatás összege: egyéni beruházás esetén maximum 50 millió Ft, kollektív beruházás esetén maximum 100 millió Ft, a támogatás intenzitása 40-70%-ig terjedhet.

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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres told an IPI audience that as millions of refugees flee war and persecution, the multilateral system has failed to mobilize the resources necessary to move them to safety in a dignified and efficient way.

“The humanitarian response system is today financially broke,” the High Commissioner said. “We are no longer able to provide the minimum needed for both core protection and lifesaving assistance.”

The uncoordinated responses of development and humanitarian actors are inadequate for a crisis of this magnitude, he emphasized. The “business model is to a certain extent exhausted,” he said. “We have been essentially on a care and maintenance model, with solutions dwindling, and with the possibility to ensure the suffering of refugees severely limited,” he said.

Humanitarians and development agencies not only need more funding, but also have to engage with one another from the outset of a crisis.

“For me, what is absolutely crucial is to understand that it no longer makes sense to talk about the gap between humanitarian aid and development cooperation, with this idea that first humanitarians address the crisis, and then the development actors come, to guarantee the sustainability of the solutions,” he said. “Now we came to a situation in which humanitarians and development actors need to be acting together since the very beginning of a crisis.”

The November 20th event, “Leadership and Global Partnerships in the Face of Today’s Refugee Crisis,” aimed to contribute to the development of proposals to more effectively help refugees through multilateral cooperation.

IPI Vice President Walter Kemp, the conversation’s moderator, noted concrete steps to help save refugees which had been suggested in the Salzburg Declaration on the Refugee Crisis, drafted by high-level participants at an IPI seminar.

Olof Skoog, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN, made opening remarks in which he highlighted his country’s commitment to welcoming refugees. Together with Germany, Sweden has born the brunt of resettlement in the EU. Sweden received the most asylum-seekers per capita in the EU, equal to 2% of the country’s population, he said.

Of Sweden’s priorities for the future, he said, “We strive to ensure that every one of those people receive a dignified [treatment,], and have rights fulfilled and implemented on arrival in Sweden,” he said. “But it is also true that the system has put a lot of strain on our capacity, so another priority is to ensure there is a genuine partnership within the EU and globally to jointly handle migration flows, while safeguarding of course the right to asylum.”

Sweden has been a model in this regard, but many other refugee-hosting countries struggle to provide services for the new arrivals, given the nature of their economies. New kinds of partnerships will be necessary to improve refugee lives in middle-income countries, as well as offer benefits for these states, Mr. Guterres said.

He proposed offering economic support to neighboring countries that have received a total of more than 3 million Syrians—Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey—in exchange for policy changes that could make refugees more self-reliant, such as allowing them to participate in the labor market, and access educational and other public services. These changes are necessary “in order to avoid this current maintenance model that is not only unsustainable from the financial point of view,” but also militates against “the dignity and hope for the future of the refugee community,” he said.

He praised one such agreement between Jordan, the United Kingdom, and the World Bank, which will create industrial zones inside Jordan that will be a source of employment for both Syrians and Jordanians. “This is the kind of formula that is necessary—humanitarian actors, development actors, and the countries—acting together in order to create this kind of win-win situation to ensure that refugees can have a dignified life in the countries of first asylum,” he said.

Many of the top refugee-hosting countries, like Lebanon, Jordan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Niger, and Chad, are important to their regions, Mr. Guterres said. It is essential to ensure these nations have the resources to remain bulwarks against global terrorism. “Unfortunately many of these countries are not a priority in development cooperation, and so, a fundamental review is required,” he emphasized.

The lofty goals of the just agreed to UN Sustainable Development Agenda cannot be achieved without basic security first, he said. “A large part of the poor in today’s world are in conflict areas, and that number is growing, and we cannot have a development strategy at the global level if we do not take seriously into account the problems of global security, and the multiplication of conflicts we are witnessing in today’s world,” he said.

Since 2011, 3.9 million people have fled the Syrian civil war, and 7.6 million have been internally displaced. The High Commissioner described the situation as “the most dramatic of the crises we face.”

In July 2015, as hundreds of thousands risked their lives to leave their war-torn and poverty-stricken countries for Europe, a new crisis emerged. A number of factors influenced this mass migration wave, but “the trigger in my opinion was the reduction of international assistance in 2015,” which had devastating results for the quality of life in Syria and for refugees in neighboring countries, Mr. Guterres said.

He offered three suggestions on Syria, moving forward. Firstly, he said it was essential to establish humanitarian aid at adequate levels inside Syria. Secondly, living conditions would need to improve in neighboring Middle Eastern states serving as countries of first asylum. Finally, illicit smuggling and trafficking networks, operating largely in the open, must be shut down. “This will require cooperation between the EU and Turkey, and this cooperation, I hope, will be established in the near future,” he said.

Mr. Guterres also noted that the journey of refugees to resettlement in Europe would only become more trying as temperatures drop. “I’m afraid that we will have difficult moments on the western Balkan route this winter,” he said.

The High Commissioner said the failure of European institutions to manage this migration flow in an organized way has fostered xenophobia on the continent. He emphasized the power of images in raising fear for host country populations. “The perception from looking at the television day after day after day was that Europe was being invaded by a flow of people, and all of a sudden my village is going to be completely overwhelmed, and government was not in control.”

To manage the influx properly, Europe needs to receive and screen people at the point of entry, he said.

Mr. Guterres refuted any connection between the arrival of refugees and the coming of terrorism to Europe. “Those fleeing the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, or the Afghan conflict, are overwhelmingly victims of terror, so to say that this flow of refugees is responsible for terrorist acts is absurd, ” he said.

“For Daesh, it is very important to stimulate in Europe anti-Muslim sentiments, because anti-Muslim European societies are the best instrument they have for their propaganda and recruitment,” he said. “So, I think that a simplistic approach in trying to link refugees and terrorism need to be clearly denounced, because the security problems Europe faces at the moment are more complex and need a much more effective and comprehensive response.”

Summarizing his wide-ranging recommendations, the High Commissioner said it would be essential to redesign development cooperation around crisis prevention, and to invest in the improvement of refugee living conditions so that they “are more in line with the normal aspirations of anyone, anywhere—and that is the right to work, the right to property, for children at school, access to health systems.”

He suggested that the May 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul would offer a prime opportunity to bring the development and humanitarian communities closer. “If we could establish in the World Humanitarian Summit a new plan of action to bring together the development actors, and the development money, to humanitarian actors, I think the World Humanitarian Summit would do a fantastic thing,” he said. “Another important aspect will be to make the humanitarian system universal. The system is still very much Western conceived, to bring other actors into the system and give it a clear universal approach, that will increase its capacity to respond.”

The event was held as part of IPI’s “Global Leaders Series,” and was co-hosted with the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the UN.

Walter Kemp, IPI Vice President, moderated the conversation.

Watch event:

 

De csak szombatig maradnak. Orbán illiberális demokráciája ellen demonstrál az európai liberális párt budapesti kongresszusa.

Nem kérdés, hogy a nap és talán a hét legszomorúbb és legmegrázóbb híre Afrikából a bamakói túszdráma, amelyben legalább két tucat ember veszítette életét a legfrissebb hírek szerint, ám most mégsem erről lesz szó ebben a posztban, hiszen a Maliban történteket az összes nagy sajtóorgánum és hírügynökség percről-percre követte-követi, viszont amiről most szó lesz, az mindenféle tragédiák nélkül sem kerülne be a mainstream média hírei közé. Lesothóba látogatunk, ahol az egész ország lélegzetvisszafojtva, feszülten várja, hogy a Dél-afrikai Fejlesztési Közösség (SADC) közzétegye azt a jelentést, amely a 2014-ben kezdődött és a mai napig fennálló politikai és belbiztonsági krízisről fogalmazza meg a közösség álláspontját és a kialakult feszült helyzethez vezető utat is.

Az egy botswanai bíró által vezetett nyomozás még augusztusban kezdődött és arra hivatott választ adni, hogy pontosan hogy is történt és mennyire volt legális Maaparankoe Mahao az akkori miniszterelnök, Thomas Thabane által történő kinevezése a lesothói hadsereg élére, majd eltávolítása a jelenlegi miniszterelnök, Pakalitha Mosisili által. Emellett valószínűleg komolyabb konkluzió nélkül azt is megpróbálja megfejteni, hogy mi vezetett Mahao elődjének, Tlali Kamolinak a Mosisili általi visszahelyezéséhez 2015-ben, majd Mahao 2015. júniusi halálához (erről itt volt szó, állítólagosan egy puccskísérlet miatti letartóztása során vesztette életét), de legfontosabb kérdésként egy jövőképet is megpróbál az SADC bizottsága felvázolni a lesothói hadsereg jelenlegi megosztottságának helyzetében. És hogy miért várja ezt lélegzetvisszafojtva ez az aprócska kis ország?

Mert nagyjából mindenki, még az érintett politikai szereplők is abban bíznak, hogy a jelentés végre minden kétséget és bizonytalanságot megszüntet és lefekteti egy egységes, stabil Lesotho alapjait – persze ezek csak hangzatos szófordulatok, valójában a bűnösök és a kiváltó okok nyilvánosságra hozatalával akár egy tiszta lap is létrejöhet a politikai elit számára. Persze azt is figyelembe kell még venni, hogy a miniszterelnöknek joga van figyelmen kívül hagyni a jelentés ajánlásait és konkluzióit, így akár az egész munka a kukában végezheti, amire azért is van jelentősebb esély, mert a hadsereg egy tisztje bíróság előtt is megtámadta a SADC bizottságának jogkörét az ügyben. Ha most szeretnénk felvázolni egy jövőképet a jelentés és hatásai számára, akkor nagyjából biztosan kijelenthetjük, hogy minden érdemleges ki lesz majd gyomlálva belőle mielőtt a lesothói parlament elé kerül, a politikai elit pedig tovább folytatja megosztó, hatalmi harcát, amelyben a most már dél-afrikai száműzetésben élő Thabane is elég jelentős tényező.

És talán jobb is, ha semmi komolyat nem fog napvilágra hozni ez a jelentés, hiszen az azt is jelentené, hogy valamelyik oldalt felelősnek nevezné meg az elmúlt évek politikai agressziójában, ami a fentebb megfogalmazott reménnyel ellentétben szinte biztosan még jobban elmélyítené a két oldalt támogató társadalmi rétegek közötti ellentétet. Pluszban nem csak a belső, de a SADC és Lesotho közötti feszült viszony is mélypontra jutna egy ilyen bíráló jelentéssel, így valószínűleg a SADC még kicsit megkozmetikázza a dokumentumot abban a négy napban, ami a bíró általi befejezés és a lesothói parlament előtti bemutatás között telik majd el.

És hát a poszt végén beszéljünk arról, hogy a megbékélés és az egység annyira kellene ennek az országnak, mint egy falat kenyér (és a falat kenyér a szó szoros értelmében is fontos lenne a sokszor és sok helyen jelenleg is élelmiszerbiztonsági gondokkal küzdő lakosságnak), hiszen jelenleg a 120 helyes lesothói parlament 55 ellenzéki képviselőjének mindegyike bojkottálja a törvényhozás munkáját, jelentős részük pedig száműzetésben várja a jövőt Tom Thabane holdudvarában csoportosulva. Remélhetőleg Mahao rejtélyes halálának körülményeire is fény derül végre és akkor bizonyos politikus neve tisztázásra kerül és ez a parlament munkájának újbóli elindulását is maga után vonhatja.

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4 ember kedveli ezt a posztot.Tetszett az írás.Tetszett az írás.

Francia nyomásra szigorodhat az ellenőrzés az unió külső határán.

The European Defence Agency together with EuroDefense Deutschland co-organised a conference entitled “Unmanned Maritime Systems – A Key Enabling Technology for the 21st Century Navy”, held at the Representation of Schleswig-Holstein in Berlin.

 

The conference featured participants from thirteen different nations and had ninety attendees. The conference consisted of three different panels which addressed the pertinent and topical questions in relation to the development and adoption of Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS).

In his opening remarks, Rini Goos, the Deputy Chief Executive of the European Defence Agency (EDA), highlighted the role the EDA plays in the development of capabilities and that the EDA “is the place to go for Member States who are keen to develop defence capabilities through cooperation”.

Rear Admiral Kähler, the Chief of Staff at the German Naval Command, provided an opening keynote speech. His address set the tone for the conference, as it outlined the importance of UMS and the need for European cooperation, but, additionally, it contained a word of caution, in that we must not neglect the need for internal and external investments in a time of shrinking budgets. In the broader Unmanned Systems environment, he asserted that many of the technological developments are dual-use in nature, and there are many complimentary features between the civil and military sides. 

The conference panels proceeded to address three broad areas relating to UMS, namely the operational concerns on the adoption of UMS, the need for multinational cooperation in overcoming complexity and, finally, a focus on the challenges facing the wider adoption of UMS in terms of classification, safety and regulations. 

An interesting theme consistent throughout the conference related to the next steps on the use of UMS. It was emphasised that the current focus of UMS in the area of mine countermeasures is very much a first step and not the end point in itself. Navies must continue to innovate and accept new technologies and this often requires a cultural shift. As Dr Heiko Borchett outlined in his presentation, innovation requires a level of risk tolerance and acceptance, and that it is only by the wider adoption of UMS that we can ensure confidence and reliability in these systems and shift the debate from men vs machine, but rather focus on the men-machine and machine-machine collaborative aspects that will open the door on future uses. 

This lead into the second panel discussion, moderated by the EDA Project Officer for Naval Systems, Paul O’Brien. This panel focussed upon some of the areas addressed in the EDA Unmanned Maritime Systems programme, which consists of fifteen coordinated projects and has a monetary value of €56 million. The conference participants were informed of the ongoing efforts to develop technologies to meet the capability requirement for Maritime Mine Countermeasures. 

The Capability Armament and Technology Director, Peter Round, moderated the third panel, which focused on the challenges facing the wider adoption of the UMS. This had a particular focus on regulatory aspects and legal classifications. 

The conference concluded with a speech from the Cypriot Minister of Defence, Mr Fokaides who provided an overview of the security considerations in the Eastern Mediterranean. In particular, he outlined the importance of the recent discovery of natural resources in the area and stated that these could act as a catalyst for political solutions. He further asserted that UMS technologies and the civil-military dimension have an important role to play.

 

More information:

• Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) research

 

via Flickr’ user mg-muscapix

While the U.S. is inching closer to pre-crisis unemployment and GDP growth figures, the picture across the pond is much, much darker. The Eurozone, once the darling of economists and businessmen everywhere, is unable to wiggle its way out of a quagmire of depressed investments, contracting exports, low employment and external shocks. The third-quarter growth figures, released on November 13, were underwhelming and fell beneath the expectations of analysts, further dispelling the hopeful notion that 2015 will be the year the Euro will boom. Instead of a predicted 0.4% growth, the 19 members of the currency bloc clocked in at 0.3% as Germany slowed, Portugal caved and Finland out-shrank even debt-laden Greece.

While a full, sector-by-sector breakdown of the economic contributions of every member state will be released in December, Barclays estimates that “domestic demand, and in particular private consumption, was once again the main contributor to GDP growth”. However, saying that consumption was responsible for keeping the Euro area in the green isn’t an epiphany—what is, however, is the extent to which exports slowed and imports rose. If historically net trade served as the engine of growth for the Euro economy as a whole (especially for export-dependent Germany), pundits, faced with a slump in emerging markets, anticipate consumption to become the dominant force in European growth. Indeed, consumption can be held responsible for the strong performance of the Euro area’s industrial production, which rose by 1.9% in the three months to September.

With unemployment refusing to budge downwards from its 11% summit, inflation barely registering at 0.1%, the onus is now on the ECB to accelerate its stimulus program ahead of a key meeting in December.

However, it’s not just global market trends that are responsible for the Eurozone’s flagging exports. In certain sectors, it is European policy itself that is to blame. Take the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector, seen as the backbone of the European economy. Unlike their American counterparts, EU SMEs are ill-fitted to secure financing, partly because the EU lacks a capital markets union, but also because EU funds are slowly trickling down and not across all sectors. For example, even if the European start-up economy benefits from a talented pool of STEM graduates that surpasses the U.S.’, the lack of collaboration between tech hubs and dependency on outside funding has meant that almost no innovative products have come from Europe. While the U.S. raised financing totaling some $39 billion in the first three quarters of 2015, the EU lagged far behind with $7.43 billion. Venture capital is so fragmented and caught up in red tape that European startups have to turn to the U.S. to secure funding, leading a CEO to exclaim: “How come we can’t get funding right in Europe?”

And it’s not just access to financing: sometimes competing European interests collide, dealing blows to European competitiveness and growth. Even if more than 600,000 EU SMEs are part of the export ecosystem, generating over a third of EU exports and employing more than six million people throughout the continent, their capacity to grow has in some respects been curtailed by poorly tailored policies. According to industry sources, adapting to regulations is a topic of growing concern, consistently ranking in the three most pressing problems faced by SMEs across the European Union.

A vivid example concerns the lowly aluminum foil sector, where an over-eager trade policy has led to significant job losses that eventually put at risk the viability of the entire sector. The European Commission placed anti-dumping tariffs upon aluminum foil imported from China, Brazil and Armenia back in 2009, ostensibly in a bid to protect businesses in the EU from the typically unfair trade practice of selling goods or commodities at a rate far below the ordinary market value. A similar action is now on the table for Russian exports. But with 80% of the production costs for the European SMEs rewinding foil into supermarket rolls, cutting off the source of raw materials can only bode ill on the industry as a whole. In safeguarding this principle, thousands of workers spread across several dozen EU SMEs involved in the chopping down of the so-called “jumbo rolls” into the household items used in kitchens everywhere are now at risk of losing their jobs, posing a threat to the European aluminum rewinder industry as a whole.

Therefore, the European economy is sputtering not just because the Chinese economy is in for a rough landing, nor because of growing political uncertainties attributable to rising Eurosceptic feelings—that would be an over simplistic analysis of the structural risks underpinning the much-expected and twice delayed European recovery. The truth is that the European economy is getting harder and harder to manage and understand by Brussels. The sad cliché that makes EU specialists chuckle is still relevant—there is no such thing as a silver bullet that can restart EU growth, what is needed is a coordinated institutional response.

Lundi, dans son discours devant le Parlement réuni en Congrès, le président de la République a déclaré : « la France est en guerre (...) contre le terrorisme djihadiste ».  Dans ce contexte, 34 000 militaires sont engagés en permanence – en France et dans le monde, pour protéger les Français. Ainsi, depuis vendredi 13 novembre, immédiatement après les attentats, les militaires ont renforcé les dispositifs sécuritaires des forces de sécurité intérieures (FSI) sur le territoire national. Pour l’armée de Terre, ce sont 50 unités qui ont été mises à contribution pour participer à cet effort. Aujourd’hui, la force est donc constituée de 10 000 militaires - dont 6 500 en Ile-de-France. 100% des effectifs mobilisés sont désormais engagés.

A csodálatos drágakőre az afrikai Botswanában találtak rá, több mint száz éve nem volt hasonló lelet!

The American administration led by Barack Obama stands up for the rights of gay individuals. Why provoke clashes between Russian homosexuals and law enforcement agencies, forcing them to engage in illegal actions for financial rewards? The US administration is loking for other ways to sow instability in Russia. Sex scandals could be a good tool

La mise en scène de la réplique militaire contribue à créer de la « symétrie ». En termes d’image, c’est une victoire importante pour Daech. 

 Au sein des forces spéciales, des débats avaient eu lieu pour savoir qui serait leader dans le cas d’une action terroriste, comme celle en cours au Mali.