I4C Trouble with Daly and Wallace

This week Mick, Clare and Damien are in Strasbourg and the Parliament is making a lot of noise. They discuss the vote to designate Russia a state sponsor of Terrorism, the imprisonment of activists in Egypt and EU arms flows into the country, the EU’s cosying up to Qatar despite its horrific human rights record, and finally a vote on decoupling the EU economy from China.

Clare kicks things off this week with a rundown of recent events in the parliament, most notably, the recent visit by Guatemalan peasant and indigenous movement CODECA. Then Mick joins her, straight from the COP climate conference in Egypt. He fills us in on what he saw there, the geopolitical machinations driving the talks, and the question of loss and damage - whether the Global North is prepared to pay for climate damage it has caused in countries of the Global South.

This week on the podcast Mick and Clare are joined by Dr. Helen Yaffe, coproducer of the documentary "Cuba's Life Task: Combatting Climate Change." They discuss Cuba's climate change adaptation and mitigation plan "tarea vida" and how Cuba is dealing with climate change despite the US sanctions regime and blockade. Find out more about the campaign to defeat the extraterritorial effects of the US blockade at 1C4Cuba.eu

Mick and Clare are just back from a trip to Pakistan. The country is still grappling with the effects of the devastating floods that happened during the summer. Our I4C MEPs met with various government ministers, political groups and industry representatives to hear about how they were dealing with the floods and Pakistan’s place on the world stage.

This week, Clare and Mick are joined by Damien again. They discuss increasing calls for peace coming from the political mainstream, EU double standards around migrants and asylum seekers, unrest in Haiti, debt trap disaster capitalism in action in Tunisia, the proposal for a windfall tax on excess profits of energy companies and finally the question of tracing arms being sent to Ukraine.

This week we’re in Strasbourg and the parliament has been debating the war in Ukraine from every angle imaginable - from the idea of state-sponsored terrorism, to the impact of the war on culture, on research, and migration. We also chat about the Sakharov price, changes in European states’ laws on sex work, the climate impact of the military sector and Josep Borrell’s disgusting comments comparing Europe to a garden and the rest of the world to a jungle.

This week we’ve got something a little different for you. It’s the recording of the event we held at the parliament to launch our report on sanctions and their status under international law. It’s a long one but there’s lots of good stuff in here from the report’s authors Alina Miron and Antonios Tzanakopoulos, as well as from Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of sanctions on human rights. Find the report here: https://mickwallace.net/study-unilateral-coercive-measures-and-eu-law/

This week Mick, Clare and Damien wonder what people talked about in the European Parliament before the war. They discuss a debate on “Putins cronies” in Europe, an excuse to bash any voices for peace, and the explosion of the Nord stream pipelines. They also discuss the release of a report on sanctions (read the report at https://mickwallace.net/study-unilateral-coercive-measures-and-eu-law/), EU presence in Africa and finally the ongoing floods in Pakistan.

This week on the podcast: Mick’s trip to Mozambique, Clare’s trip to Ireland and the question of Irish data protection laws, a new film on the Assange case, and the parliament doubling down on the disinformation narrative.

This week Mick, Clare and Damien are in Strasbourg discussing Commission President Von der Leyen's speech on the "State of the Union" - though it was really more of a rant on behalf of US imperialism.