BIAŁOWIEŻA, Poland — Michal Żmihorski, deputy director of the Institute of Environmental Protection, will never forget the morning of Aug. 1, 2023. Two Belarusian helicopters entered Polish airspace, hovering above the village of Białowieża in eastern Poland, three kilometers (1.9 miles) from the Polish-Belarusian border. The panic was palpable. “We didn’t know if the invasion had begun, if they were going to start dropping bombs,” he says during a conversation at the Białowieża-based Mammal Research Institute. The incident galvanized Żmihorski’s conviction that the borderlands should be impenetrable to enemy forces. “So that bandits on motorbikes can’t get through and start murdering people, because this is a real threat in this area,” says the longtime researcher of the UNESCO-protected Białowieża Forest straddling the Polish-Belarusian frontier. Poland shares a 420-km (261-mi) border with Belarus, 55 km (34 mi) of which runs through the Białowieża Forest, Europe’s last ancient woodland. This sprawling forest, covering an area equivalent to 200,000 football pitches, is among the continent’s top biodiversity hotspots. Consisting of impressive evergreens and broad-leaved trees, the Polish side alone is home to 900 European bison (Bison bonasus) — a species reintroduced to the forest — as well as lynx, wolves and up to 4,000 fungi species. While the specter of a military escalation by Belarus, a country that supports Russia, feels very real to some in this part of Eastern Europe, Poles throughout the country have been impacted by the war ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. To strengthen national security and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Non credo nelle istituzioni perché le osservo all’opera. Due esempi recentissimi: la procura della repubblica di Roma, la pubblica accusa, ha chiesto l’archiviazione per i responsabili dell’attacco alla sede dell’associazione Pro Vita. Il gentile slogan dei buontemponi assalitori era: “i Provita si chiudono col fuoco, ma con i provita dentro, sennò è troppo poco”. Detto fatto, dopo aver spaccato una vetrina hanno lanciato all’interno una bottiglia incendiaria che non ha prodotto danni eccessivi per puro caso. Ragazzate, non meritano di essere processati, dice la magistratura addetta all’accusa. Inutile citare analoghe situazioni di segno opposto trattate diversamente. So per esperienza che la neutralità delle istituzioni – vanto del pensiero liberale – è, nel migliore dei casi, un racconto per ingenui . Ora sappiamo che si può assaltare impunemente la sede del movimento Provita. Delizie della democrazia. Nel frattempo si accumulano notizie di condotte sconcertanti del prestigioso Ris, braccio scientifico dei Carabinieri, che avrebbe nascosto esiti d’analisi e indirizzato le indagini contro l’allora indiziato del delitto di Garlasco del 2007.

Mi indigno senza stupirmi. Ho conosciuto per diretta esperienza l’apparato pubblico; so quanto conti fare carriera, essere dalla parte dei superiori senza porre domande , spesso ignorando gli interessi e i diritti di chi – malcapitato – si trovava nel mirino dei detentori di un potere delegato. Nulla di nuovo; la differenza rispetto al passato è che non si rispettano più nemmeno le forme. Conta, come in ogni ambito della società, il successo a ogni costo, l’avanzamento, la pubblica esibizione. Alcune categorie di funzionari pubblici, come i magistrati, hanno conquistato un potere immenso , frutto di effetti perversi del cosiddetto “stato di diritto “ e della debolezza della politica.

Lo Stato liberale non è affatto tale rispetto al diritto di parola, riunione e associazione. In molte città le attività di movimenti o soggetti sgraditi alla galassia progressista vengono sistematicamente spostate o impedite dal semplice annuncio della mobilitazione di minoranze facinorose dotate evidentemente di coperture importanti. Tutto questo sotto un governo autodefinito di centrodestra. Poliziotti e cittadini che si difendono dalle aggressioni sono processati e spesso condannati. Le istituzioni di ordine pubblico sono svuotate di funzioni. Ordini professionali come quello dei medici hanno mostrato in tempo di pandemia di essere al servizio del potere. Non pochi sanitari lavorano attivamente per impedire il rimpatrio di immigrati irregolari attraverso certificazioni “dubbie”, unico aggettivo per evitare denunce: un altro dono della finta libertà.

L’elenco potrebbe continuare, ma il nocciolo della questione è che le istituzioni sono al servizio del potere e sempre più spesso alibi e privilegio di chi ne fa parte. Parole come democrazia e diritto diventano vuote, maschere, espedienti per far tacere chi non è d’accordo o semplicemente chiede spiegazioni. Dovremmo forse credere all’istituzione per eccellenza, il parlamento, che promulga una legge elettorale truffaldina, con capilista bloccati e preferenze solo a candidati in gran parte privi della possibilità di essere eletti? E’ la classe politica dominante di ogni orientamento a scegliere gli elettori, piazzando i fedeli nei collegi considerati sicuri, non il contrario. Addirittura indegno è il sistema della raccolta delle firme a sostegno delle candidature . Sono esentati i gruppi già presenti in Parlamento – lo ius primae noctis dei feudatari politici – mentre a tutti gli altri sono imposte centinaia di migliaia di sottoscrizioni certificate. Finora non possono abolire le elezioni, ma sono bravissimi a neutralizzarne gli effetti.

Quasi nessun atto della vita quotidiana, nessun diritto può essere esercitato concretamente se non si possiedono e si sanno utilizzare apparati artificiali. Districarsi tra app ed operazioni obbligatoriamente online è un altro segno dell’inimicizia delle istituzioni verso noi sudditi. E’ probabilmente contrario all’articolo 3 della costituzione ( la più bella del mondo, beninteso …) ma a chi ricorrere, giacché le istituzioni dette di garanzia sono presidiate dai più alti funzionari del sistema? La persona onesta, oggi più di ieri, è indifesa dinanzi a un potere nemico. Ernst Juenger esortava a “passare al bosco”, ossia a prendere atto dell’impossibilità di cambiare le cose dall’interno. Oggi è peggio: la potenza della tecnologia ci raggiunge ovunque. Impossibile vivere senza nulla chiedere ma anche senza essere inseguiti dagli infiniti obblighi, dalle regole e dalle trappole del sistema, vigilate da istituzioni ostili, che inverano le conclusioni di Michel Foucault: sorvegliare e punire all’interno di un dispositivo di potere sulla vita.

L'articolo Non credo nelle istituzioni proviene da Blondet & Friends.

 

For years, the European Union has struggled with a peculiar contradiction in its dealings with China. The EU is one of the largest and wealthiest trading blocs on earth, capable of determining access to a market of some 450 million relatively affluent consumers, yet it frequently conducts foreign policy as though it were the supplicant.

Hilde Vautmans, the Belgian Renew Europe MEP and European Parliament rapporteur on EU-China political relations, is right to challenge this timidity.

Her report, debated this week in Strasbourg, does not advocate severing relations with Beijing. Nor should it. China is too economically important and too influential on questions ranging from climate change to international security for Europe simply to close the door.

But dialogue must not become an alternative to action.

“Europe has economic power. It’s time to use it,” Vautmans told Parliament ahead of the vote. That sentence ought to be pinned above every desk in the European Commission dealing with China.

The figures make the case brutally clear. In 2025 the EU imported €559.4 billion of goods from China while exporting just €199.6 billion in the opposite direction. The resulting deficit was €359.8 billion — almost €1 billion every day.

As EU Today reported recently, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has herself warned of a potential “second China shock”, with subsidised Chinese industrial production threatening European manufacturers.

Fine words. But Beijing has heard fine words before.

The Commission’s preferred formulation remains “de-risking, not decoupling”. There is sense in that distinction. Nobody seriously proposes shutting down trade with the world’s second-largest economy. But de-risking becomes meaningless if every risk identified is followed by another dialogue, another working group and another opportunity to postpone difficult decisions.

Indeed, the Commission acknowledges that European companies operating in China face regulatory obstacles, inadequate intellectual-property protection, restrictions on data flows and pressures associated with technology transfer.

Europe possesses formidable weapons with which to respond: anti-dumping duties, anti-subsidy measures, foreign-investment screening, the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, the Anti-Coercion Instrument, procurement restrictions and controls on strategically sensitive technologies.

These instruments should not be deployed indiscriminately. But neither should they sit polished in the armoury while Beijing exploits European openness.

Vautmans is particularly right to connect economics with security and values. China cannot reasonably expect privileged access to European markets while helping sustain the Russian war machine. The European Parliament’s own research service describes Beijing as a “decisive enabler and dual-use provider”, including through goods entering Russian weapons and drone supply chains.

If Chinese companies materially assist Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine, Europe should be prepared to impose a direct economic price. The same principle should apply to human rights.

EU Today has warned repeatedly that Brussels’ ritualised engagement with Beijing risks becoming precisely that: ritual.

We reported earlier that the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue risks losing credibility, pointing to the continuing imprisonment of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai and Uyghur academic and Sakharov Prize laureate Ilham Tohti. After round upon round of discussions, Beijing has learnt that European expressions of “deep concern” are inexpensive things to endure.

The problem is hardly new. Years ago, EU Today highlighted calls for concrete EU action over goods associated with forced labour in China, including demands for tougher restrictions on entities implicated in abuses against Uyghurs.

Yet repression continues. In March this year China adopted its new Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress. The European Parliament subsequently condemned what it described as intensified repression and assimilation affecting Tibetans, Uyghurs and other minorities, by the overwhelming margin of 439 votes to 52.

Europe therefore faces a straightforward question. What is the purpose of economic power if it is never translated into political influence?

The EU should not attempt to bully China. Nor should it abandon diplomacy. Vautmans is correct that channels of communication must remain open. But reciprocity must become something more than a word appearing in communiqués.

Where China closes markets to European companies, Europe should be prepared to restrict equivalent access. Where state subsidies distort competition, Brussels should respond rapidly with trade-defence measures. Where strategic dependencies expose Europe to political coercion, alternative supply chains must be built. Where Chinese entities support Russia’s military-industrial complex, sanctions should follow. And where companies benefit from forced labour or serious human-rights abuses, access to the European marketplace should carry consequences.

That is not protectionism. It is leverage.

Totalitarian states understand leverage perfectly well. China routinely uses access to its enormous market as an instrument of statecraft. Europe, by contrast, too often behaves as though exploiting its own commercial strength would somehow represent a failure of diplomacy. It represents precisely the opposite.

The European Commission has spent years discovering that China is simultaneously a partner, competitor and “systemic rival”. It is time to move beyond discovering the obvious.

Vautmans has identified the essential point. Europe already possesses economic power on a scale few countries can ignore. What it appears to lack is the political confidence to use it.

Main Image: by Valentine ZELER, © European Union 2026 – Source : EP

A push to reopen the door to commercial whaling failed at the recent meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) after a controversial resolution was taken off the table on the last day. The draft resolution, put forward by the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda and co-sponsored by Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and Togo, called for the IWC to discuss the “sustainable use of whale resources” and introduced a path toward the reintroduction of commercial whaling. The bill, however, was ultimately withdrawn by another Caribbean nation, Grenada, which did not co-sponsor the bill, leaving the IWC’s 40-year-old global moratorium on commercial whaling intact. The IWC, an intergovernmental organization that oversees the management and conservation of cetaceans, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, convened its 70th meeting between Sept. 27 and Oct. 2 in Hobart, Tasmania. Approximately 400 delegates from all 89 member governments and several observer organizations attended this year’s commission meeting, which has been held biennially since 2012. The meeting marked 80 years since the IWC was established and 40 years since the moratorium it placed on commercial whaling took effect. The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, the international agreement that established the IWC in 1946, only refers to baleen and toothed whales, leading some to believe the moratorium only applies to these species, and not smaller cetacean species. Experts say the moratorium has aided the recovery of many whale species once on the brink of extinction due to whaling. But other threats to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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