Politics In the EU > The two most powerful members of the EU are women and they're blondes. There should be a joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it.

 

EU members could revolt against Kallas’ powers – FT

The bloc’s foreign service is reportedly seen as “dysfunctional” under its current chief

Published 11 Jun, 2026 12:11 | Updated 11 Jun, 2026 14:07

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Brussels, Belgium, May 18, 2026. ©  Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu via Getty Images

EU member states could seek to curtail the powers of the bloc’s diplomatic service, headed by Kaja Kallas, amid concerns among officials that the body is “dysfunctional,” the Financial Times has reported.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) was launched in 2010 as a kind of collective foreign ministry for the EU, overseeing international relations, aid programs, and intelligence gathering and analysis.

France has outlined possible reforms of the EEAS for consideration by member states, the FT reported on Thursday.

One option would return some of the service’s functions to the European Commission and national governments, although this would require unanimous approval by member states. Another proposal, which supporters say could be implemented without changing EU treaties, would limit the autonomy of the EEAS chief and loosen her control over more than 140 missions the EU maintains worldwide.

“Capitals are annoyed and want an effective way for us to act in unison externally,” one of five officials cited by the FT said. “It is clear that [the EEAS] doesn’t work the way it should in today’s world. It is dysfunctional,” another said.

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Commenting on the report, Russian presidential adviser Kirill Dmitriev said Kallas has “succeeded in annoying everyone.”

Kallas and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have reportedly been locked in a tug of war over who should steer EU foreign policy. The former German defense minister is said to have outmaneuvered the former Estonian prime minister in the bureaucratic battle, taking direct control in key geographic areas and pushing for a new intelligence body that would answer directly to her office.

Kallas accused of going off-script on China

Kallas has on several occasions made remarks on sensitive issues, including relations with China, that appeared to reflect her own views rather than the EU’s agreed position, while also advancing proposals some officials considered unwarranted, the FT said.

Last year, Kallas criticized the administration of US President Donald Trump for arguing that Ukraine could not defeat Russia militarily even with continued Western aid and sanctions. “If you’re saying that we collectively are not able to really pressure Russia…, then how do you say that you’re able to take on China?” she asked. The moderator at the Hudson Institute event joked that the remark would be removed from the recording.

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Arrogance and downfall: Germany gets a well-deserved UN put-down

In May, Kallas denounced Beijing for what she described as “coercive economic practices” and claimed that the West’s inability to compete with Chinese companies was a “disease.” She compared government subsidies to increasing a cancer patient’s morphine dosage and urged retaliatory measures – chemotherapy in her metaphor.

EU and China at economic loggerheads

French President Emmanuel Macron made a state visit to China last December, followed by a similar trip by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in February. The leaders of the EU’s two largest economies brought with them major industrial figures, who signed significant deals with Chinese counterparts.

The EU’s stated policy toward China is to “de-risk” economic ties. However, the turbulence that the Trump administration has added to the global economy, along with the doubts it has raised over NATO protections, has pushed European nations to reassess their positions.

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Can China turn Serbia into a European high-tech hub?

In a separate story on Thursday, the FT reported that Beijing has canceled two senior meetings with EU officials on trade issues scheduled for this month. The British newspaper said the gestures were part of Chinese deterrence against measures proposed by Brussels to reduce trade deficit. The gap widened to €1 billion ($1.15 billion) a day in 2025, with EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic calling it “unsustainable.”

EU chose Kallas as a Russia hawk

Kallas stepped down as Estonian prime minister after her popularity at home sank, partly due to a scandal involving her husband’s business interests in Russia. She joined von der Leyen’s second commission in December 2024 as an official who “eats Russians for breakfast,” as some media outlets put it.

The EU is currently debating who should represent the bloc in any direct negotiations with Russia. When asked last month whether she wanted the role, Kallas said the debate itself was a Russian “trap,” adding that her job description is “in the treaties.”

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Von der Leyen suffers new ‘Pfizergate’ judgement

The European Commission was wrong to make its Covid vaccine deals in secret, according to the opinion from the EU’s highest court

Published 11 Jun, 2026 18:46 | Updated 12 Jun, 2026 09:10

Ursula von der Leyen delivers a press statement in Brussels, Belgium, June 9, 2026 ©  Getty Images;  Dursun Aydemir

The European Commission should have revealed the details of its Covid-19 vaccine contracts with drugmakers to the public, an adviser to the EU’s highest court has declared. Among the contracts was a deal with Pfizer that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated via text message.

In an opinion published on Thursday, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos argued that the commission’s insistence on secrecy made it impossible to know whether its vaccine negotiators had any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies that they procured the shots from.

The commission signed six advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies – including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna – between 2020 and 2021. The contracts were worth a combined €71 billion ($82 billion).

When Green MEPs and more than 3,000 members of the public demanded information about the negotiation process, the commission redacted the names of all of its negotiators and many of the contract clauses. The commission’s lawyers have argued that these redactions were made to protect the negotiators from “conspiracy theorists.”

Conspiracy theorists have a habit of leaking the truth which would be disastrous for the crooked negotiators.

Read more

EU members forced to pay billions for von der Leyen’s Covid deal

The commission lost a legal battle to keep these details secret in 2024, but appealed the decision up to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Rantos’ opinion is not legally binding, but will inform the court’s final ruling.

Last year, the court ruled against von der Leyen in the ‘Pfizergate’ case, which centered around her negotiations with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. In 2021, von der Leyen told the New York Times that she had been negotiating a €35 billion deal for 900 million Covid vaccine doses with Bourla via sms messages.

The newspaper sued for access to the messages, arguing that von der Leyen could have used sms messaging to bypass EU transparency laws. The commission claimed that the messages had been lost, but the court ruled last May that the EU’s executive body failed to provide “credible explanations enabling the public and the Court to understand why those documents cannot be found.”

Von der Leyen survived a no-confidence vote initiated by right-wing parties in the European Parliament over the scandal last July.

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Islam in Islam > Reign of terror in Iran; Women only good for raising families in Afghanistan

 

In Iran, a Reign of Terror

Jun 5, 2026 4:00 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald15 Comments

The reign of terror in the Islamic Republic of Iran deepens. Eighty percent of political prisoners executed in the world during the last year were from Iran. Anyone deemed an enemy of the state can be summarily executed without a trial. Ethnic minorities are targeted, too. So are homosexuals. And now the European Parliament  has called on Iran to end its executions and release political prisoners.

Gathering of Basij in November 2013, Mehdi Shamohammadi, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

More on this reign of terror, and the ineffectual European efforts to end it, can be found here:

European Parliament Slams Iran Over Surge in Executions, Brutal Repression

by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, May 21, 2026:

European lawmakers have stepped up pressure on Iran amid mounting alarm over the country’s human rights situation, marked by a surge in executions, mass arrests, and an intensifying security crackdown, warning of what they described as a growing campaign of repression.

On Thursday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, adopted a resolution — 516 votes in favor, 14 against, 92 abstentions — calling on the Islamist regime to immediately halt executions, release political prisoners, and hold officials accountable for alleged human rights violations.

The newly adopted resolution also voiced deep concern over escalating pressure on women, civil society activists, and religious minorities, warning of a widening climate of intimidation, surveillance, and systematic restrictions on basic freedoms across the country….

Since March 17, at least 36 people have been executed in Iran on political charges.

Earlier this year, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent monitoring group, released a report outlining a deeply troubling human rights situation all across the country over the past 12 months, citing crackdowns on protesters, harassment of activists, threats to minorities, executions of children, violations of women’s rights, and dire prison conditions.

According to HRANA’s Statistics and Documentation Center, 78,907 people were arrested on ideological or political grounds from March 2025 to March 2026, highlighting a pervasive climate of repression across the country.

But the report warned that the number of arrests was likely much higher, given the difficulty of tracking such cases — especially earlier this year during recent nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, leaving thousands of demonstrators tortured or killed.

HRANA reported in February that over 7,000 protesters, including hundreds of children, were killed during the protests, with an additional nearly 12,000 cases still under verification. Multiple reports have put the death toll at over 30,000, and US President Donald Trump claimed the figure was over 40,000….

The larger figure, of over 40,000 killed on Jan. 8 and 9, comes from Iran International, a well-informed  group of Iranians in exile who base that number on reports from inside Iran.

On women’s rights, HRANA reported that 105 women were murdered, including seven so-called “honor killings” — murders committed under the pretext of preserving family honor — and documents 68 cases of rape or sexual abuse.

Some women have been killed, such as Mahsa Amini, simply for not wearing their hijabs correctly. Other women have been killed for such “crimes” against the family honor as being out with an unrelated male.

Members of the ethnic minorities, like the Kurds and Azeris, can also be killed for supposedly posing a threat to rule by the dominant Persians. Political dissidents deserve death as they are a threat to the regime. Homosexuals are hung for their crimes against nature.

The fanatics in Iran will not stop. They are determined to crush any conceivable dissent, and to strictly enforce the Sharia. The European Parliament’s denunciation is sloughed off in Tehran. The only way to end the reign of terror is to change the regime, as the Israelis had initially insisted must be done. But Trump has decided that that is no longer one of his war aims; he will be content if he can obtain a guarantee from Iran to give up its 440 kg. of uranium enriched to a just-below weapons-grade level of 60%. Still worse, he has cut Israel out of the negotiations. Meanwhile, the miserable people of Iran will have to endure their torment, until that moment when the economic collapse of the country becomes so severe that millions of Iranians will again take to the streets, and this time their numbers will overwhelm those of the Basij and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who are sent out to crush them.

Afghanistan: Senior Muslim cleric says subjects such as science and technology ‘not necessary for women’

Jun 6, 2026 8:00 am By Robert Spencer10 Comments

We can all hope, for the sake of the women and girls in Afghanistan, and for Afghan society as a whole, that the claims of those who say that these restrictions have no basis in Islamic teachings will win out. But Westerners should not kid themselves (yes, I know, they will anyway). The Islamic case against Din Mohammad’s views is hardly open and shut. He is saying that women should learn some religious subjects but don’t need to learn science and technology. That emanates from an idea of female intellectual inferiority that is found in several hadiths. One of those hadiths depicts Muhammad saying that the majority of the inhabitants of hell are women: “I looked into Paradise and I saw that the majority of its people were the poor. And I looked into Hell and I saw that the majority of its people are women.” Sahih Bukhari 3241; Sahih Muslim 2737)

When asked about this, he explained: “I was shown Hell and I have never seen anything more terrifying than it. And I saw that the majority of its people are women.” They said, “Why, O Messenger of Allah?” He said, “Because of their ingratitude (kufr).” It was said, “Are they ungrateful to Allah?” He said, “They are ungrateful to their companions (husbands) and ungrateful for good treatment. If you are kind to one of them for a lifetime then she sees one (undesirable) thing in you, she will say, ‘I have never had anything good from you.’” (Sahih Bukhari 1052)

And in another hadith: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) went out to the musalla (prayer place) on the day of Eid al-Adha or Eid al-Fitr. He passed by the women and said, ‘O women! Give charity, for I have seen that you form the majority of the people of Hell.’ They asked, ‘Why is that, O Messenger of Allah?’ He replied, ‘You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religious commitment than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you.’ The women asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, what is deficient in our intelligence and religious commitment?’ He said, ‘Is not the testimony of two women equal to the testimony of one man?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Is it not true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?’ The women said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is the deficiency in her religious commitment.’” (Sahih Bukhari 304)

So to say that Din Mohammad’s restrictions on the education of women has no basis in Islamic teachings is exaggerated. It would be enlightening to see one of his critics explaining how the above hadiths do not open the door to restricting educational opportunities for women. But “moderate” Muslims never, ever get that specific in their explications of Islam. One might even get the idea that they’re more interested in lulling non-Muslims into complacency than in actually convincing their fellow Muslims that equal treatment for women is in accord with Islam.

Burqa clad women buying at a market (Afghanistan), Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Taliban cleric says girls’ education is forbidden

by Mehrdad Herawi, Amu.tv, May 31, 2026 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A senior Taliban cleric in Kabul has said that schooling for women and girls is “forbidden,” arguing that they should be limited to studying certain religious subjects, including matters related to marriage, child-rearing and household responsibilities.

Din Mohammad, head of the Taliban’s Council of Ulema in Kabul, made the remarks in an audio recording that circulated widely on social media in recent days.

In the recording, he argued that women and girls should be limited to studying certain religious subjects and described modern disciplines, including science and technology, as unnecessary for them.

“We are talking about religious sciences, while they are talking about schools,” Din Mohammad said. “Such matters are not necessary for women. What they need are the sciences related to their obligations, such as issues of menstruation, childbirth, the rights of husbands, the rights of children and household duties.”

Notice: The rights of women is not mentioned, because women have no rights in Islam. 

He said women could pursue additional studies only under strict conditions, including wearing what he described as proper Islamic dress, obtaining a husband’s permission and avoiding contact with unrelated men.

“If these conditions are not met, then even attending a madrasa is not permissible,” he said. “As for other forms of education, they are impermissible regardless.”

The comments prompted criticism from some religious scholars and human rights advocates, who said the remarks have no basis in Islamic teachings….