Weisbaden (picture by Gus Leonisky)

City officials in Wiesbaden, Germany, are asking U.S. military personnel, including off-duty military police, to respect a new weapons-free zone aimed at preventing night-time violence in parts of the city.

"All kinds of potential weapons such as knives, screwdrivers, sharp-edged or pointed objects, clubs, baseball bats, axes and weighted-knuckle gloves are prohibited between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.," according to a Jan. 7 U.S. Army press release.

The new regulation, instituted Jan. 1, is designed to help the German Polizei prevent conflicts in the city center more effectively, since "young men have a tendency to solve disputes with a knife," Thomas Becker, first police chief inspector with the Wiesbaden Police Directorate, said in the release.

U.S. military police on duty are not affected by the regulation, but off-duty MPs "will have to respect the new rules like everyone else," Becker said.

The Polizei have the power to check suspicious persons without a particular cause, confiscate their weapons and fine violators up to 5,000 euros, the release states.

The weapons-free zone includes Kirchgasse, Langgasse, Michelsberg, Platz der Deutschen Einheit and parts of the Westend to Hellmundstrasse. Signs will be in place indicating the exact location of the "Waffenverbotszone" by late January, the release states.

U.S. military police frequently patrol civilian areas near large U.S. military bases in Europe. Last week, U.S. MPs and Italian police began conducting joint patrols of local bars following a "number of incidents involving U.S. personnel that reflected negatively on the Vicenza Military Community."

The details of recent incidents are unclear, but last February a paratrooper with the 173rd Airborne Brigade broke an Italian police officer's teeth after his behavior forced bouncers to call for help.

 

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READ MORE: ‘Germany can’t accept being treated like an occupied country’ – Former Chancellor Schroeder

 

The EU votes for the installation of new US missiles in Europe

by Manlio Dinucci

The member States of the European Union have unanimously aligned themselves with the military strategy of their American big brother. They have accepted that their own territory may transform itself into a nuclear battleground in the case of conflict between the United States and Russia.

Near the United Nations Glass Palace in New York, there is a metallic sculpture entitled “Evil Defeated by Good”, representing Saint George transfixing a dragon with his lance. It was donated by the USSR in 1990 to celebrate the INF Treaty concluded with the USA in 1987, which banned land-based short- and mid-range nuclear missiles (a reach of between 500 and 5,000 km). Symbolically,the body of the dragon is in fact made with pieces of US Pershing-2 ballistic missiles (originally based in West Germany) and Soviet SS-20 missiles (originally based in the USSR).

But the nuclear dragon, which in the sculpture is shown as dying, is now being reborn. Thanks to Italy and other countries of the European Union, which, at the United Nations General Assembly, voted against the resolution presented by Russia on the “Preservation and Implementation of the INF Treaty”, rejected by 46 to 43 with 78 abstentions.

The European Union – of which 21 of its 27 members are part of NATO (including the United Kingdom, which is currently leaving the EU) – has thus taken a uniform stance with the position of NATO, which in turn has taken a uniform stance with that of the United States.

The Obama administration first, followed by the Trump administration, have accused Russia, without any proof, of experimenting with a missile from the forbidden category, and have announced their intention of withdrawing from the INF Treaty. At the same time, they have launched a programme aimed at renewing the installation of nuclear missiles in Europe to guard against Russia, while others will also be based in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

The Russian representative at the UN has warned that “this constitutes the beginning of a full-blown arms race”. In other words, he warned that if the United States should once again install in Europe nuclear missiles pointed at Russia (as were the Cruise missiles based in Comiso in the 1980’s), Russia would once again install, on its own territory, similar weapons pointed at targets in Europe (but which would be unable to reach the USA).

Ignoring all that, the EU representative at the UNO accused Russia of sabotaging the INF Treaty, and announced the opposition vote by all the countries of the Union because “the resolution presented by Russia avoids the question under discussion”. Essentially, therefore, the European Union has given the green light to the possible installation of new US missiles in Europe, including Italy.

On a question of this importance, the Conte government, like its predecessors, has abandoned the exercise of national sovereignty and aligned itself with the EU, which, has in turn adopted the position of NATO, under US command. And across the entire political arc, not one voice has been raised to request that it should be the Parliament which decides how to vote at the UNO. And similarly, no voice has been raised in Parliament to request that Italy observe the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires that the USA must withdraw its B61 nuclear bombs from our national territory, and must also abstain from installing here, as from the first half of 2020, the new and even more dangerous B61-12’s.

So this is a new violation of the fundamental constitutional principle that “sovereignty belongs to the people”. And since the politico-media apparatus swaddles Italians in the ignorance of these questions of such vital importance, it is also a violation of our right to information, not only in the sense of the freedom to inform, but also the right to be informed.

We must do this now, or else tomorrow there will be no time to decide – a mid-range ballistic missile can reach and destroy its target with its nuclear warhead in between 6 and 11 minutes.

Manlio Dinucci

Translation 

Pete Kimberley

 

Source 

Il Manifesto (Italy)

 

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Jacques Hogard: Europe has died in Pristina

 

 

Colonel Jacques Hogard in the European Parliament, via GeoStrategy

 

 

Conference: “KOSOVO AND METOHIJA – A EUROPEAN  CASE  OF  VIOLENT  SECESSION”

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am pleased to be here today, in the European Parliament, at the invitation of the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade.

As a senior French officer, I served in Macedonia and then in Kosovo in the first half of 1999. When I was assigned to the French Special Operations Command, I was appointed as the head of the joint special forces group that intervened before the French KFOR Brigade’s deployment under the command of NATO.

It is for this reason that I am speaking today, having published a few years ago a book with a deliberately provocative title: “Europe has died in Pristina”. If you have not read it, I recommend you to do it! There you will find my testimony on this tragic period.

If one speaks of Kosovo, its full name Kosovo-Metohija, it is indeed not possible to ignore the past of this region, the ancient past, the cultural and religious history, the history of the Serbian and Orthodox identity always present through the innumerable and very old monuments, churches, Serbian monasteries found throughout the province, but also the recent past, and especially the events of the 1990s that culminated in 1999 during the war that was imposed on Serbia, with the support of NATO and the European Union to the Albanian KLA rebellion.

It is in this context that I myself intervened in Kosovo at the head of French special forces under British command.

What struck me in Kosovo in 1999 was, first of all, the very large misinformation that preceded and justified the NATO aggression.

Indeed, it is because the word “genocide” was pronounced by the American president Bill Clinton and his secretary of State Madeleine Albright — who gave the fatal and false figure of “100,000 dead” in Kosovo — that NATO will allow itself to attack Serbia in March 1999, after the unacceptable demands made by the Allies to the Serbs during the Rambouillet negotiations which forced them to refuse the Diktat the Allies wanted to impose on them.

However, it would be seen after the 1999 war that the number of the victims from all origins, all ethnic groups, civil or military, was less than 6,000.

Which is far too many of course, but which has nothing to do with a “genocide”.

Today Kosovar authorities practice a sneaky hostile policy to the Serbian, Roma and Gorani minorities. In particular, they are hostile to the maintenance of Orthodox monasteries and religious communities who live there and pray there.

On a daily basis, it is not good being a Serbian, Roma or Gorani in the province of Kosmet today.  Persecutions, vexations, spoliations, physical violence are possible at any time.

It has been seen many times recently, during the visit of the Serbian High Representative Marko Djuric, who was arbitrarily arrested by the Kosovar police while visiting Serbian enclaves in Kosovo; we saw it during the arbitrary arrest of the French Arnaud Gouillon, president of the remarkable French NGO “Solidarité Kosovo”; we saw it again last Friday at dawn with the violent intervention of this same “Kosovo police” against Serbian citizens of Kosovska Mitrovica, whose fate is unknown until today. And finally, the authorities in Kosovo recently introduced high taxes on all products coming from central Serbia, even medication and food, which puts at risk the health and lives of  many Serbs in the province.

Obviously, the so called “republic of Kosovo” is anything but a state of law, a democratic state, where the rights and dignity of the human person are respected.

The fact that this puppet state is today supported with large amounts of European public money by the European Union is for me a real subject of shame and indignation. I allow myself to say so here.

It is also true that seeing the  president of Kosovo welcomed in Paris with great pomp and ceremony during the Centenary of the 1918 Victory is also a subject of shame for me, as a grandson of two French officers badly wounded during the Great War and as a grand nephew of a young officer killed in 1917 in the north of Macedonia.

Moreover, I learned yesterday that the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, presented at a joint meeting of the governments of Kosovo and Albania in Pec the idea of ​​a “national project of unification of Albania and Kosovo”.

Edi Rama invited the Kosovan Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to start developing a “joint strategy for the unification of Albanians by 2025“.

Is the old dream of the League of Prizren about to be realized?

In any case, I have never personally thought that the “Republic of Kosovo” has a future; I said it and wrote it: this puppet state has no other solution than to join back the motherland, Serbia, or to merge with conquering Albania.  The latter would be a piece of real robbery, iniquitous and scandalous, which promises to be achieved in a quarter of century by the mafia clans of Kosovo with the blessing of international institutions.

If that were to happen, it would certainly be the beginning of a period of very great unrest in the entire Balkans.

We, the French people, saw in 1871 what happened to Alsace-Lorraine unduly annexed by Germany!

It took almost 50 years, then a world war and its millions of dead for these French provinces to finally return to France, their motherland.

Let us be clear, it will be the same with Kosovo in due course.

That is why, if we want to avoid kindling another war in the region, it is essential to return to the fundamentals that the UN Resolution 1244 expresses very clearly in its own way.

Kosovo and Metohija is an integral and inalienable part of the Republic of Serbia.  That it has a certain autonomy is perfectly understandable, but with respect for the sovereignty of the Serbian state.   The latter must be restored and the European Union will grow by helping this with its influence.

This would be the only real means of guaranteeing future generations in this part of Europe a just and lasting peace.

Finally, let me add that reconciliation between the different communities populating Kosovo is only possible if the whole truth of history is restored and the responsibilities of each party are well defined.

That is why it seems essential to me that the judicial procedure initiated within the European Union a few years ago, in 2013, concerning the war crimes of KLA and in particular the abominable organ trafficking crimes denounced in the Dick Marti Report, which was expected to give results in 2015, be reactivated and completed.

The credibility of the European Union is at stake.

Thank you for your attention.

Colonel Jacques Hogard
Brussels, European Parliamen, November 28, 2018.

 

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British think-tanks call for “US leadership” in Europe

“Rebuilding US leading role is the key for European security” say British experts, but the new political realities inspire doubts

January 4, Anonymous hackers released the new batch of documents from the Integrity Initiative – a government-funded program run by the London based Institute for Statecraft. The Institute for Statecraft describes itself as “an independent body dedicated to refreshing the practice of statecraft, to improving governance and to enhancing national security”. The Integrity Initiative: Defending Democracy against Disinformation is one of the Institute’s projects aimed at countering Russian propaganda as well as all kinds of “attempts to influence the policies and undermine the societies of the West”.

The released batch inter alia contains the files on the Integrity Initiative efforts in the USA. These documents worth being examined more carefully because they show a questionable approach to European security shared by some British think tankers. The experts believe a reassertion of the US political and military domination in Europe is the only way for the West to counter Russia, China and Daesh/IS.

“The West is badly in need of a reassertion of US leadership. The EU has been unable to generate any strategic thinking or to exercise convincing leadership. Russia (& China) are successfully driving wedges between EU Member States and between Allies within NATO. Brexit has added to the confusion.

The US also needs to rebuild its understanding of Russia and how to deal with it, so as to (a) improve its own governance at a time of transition, and (b) rebuild its leading role in Europe via NATO and via encouragement to the EU, to enable them to deal more effectively with the new challenge to our democratic structures and processes posed by Russia (and China, and Daesh/IS) today,” the documents recently leaked by the Anonymous state.

In other words British security experts welcome American military bases on European soil and supremacy of American national interests over the interests of European nations. They believe that American military power will save the Europeans from “Russian hybrid warfare”, Chinese expansion and jihadists. This approach looks more than flimsy.

The problem of IS sleeping agents in Europe has no military solution at all. China shows no intention to annex Europe; it sees the Old Continent as an attractive market but not as the battlefield.

The problem of “the Russian threat” is more complex. Today it more looks like a mirage widely used by mass media to fuel anti-Russian hysteria necessary to justify increase in defense spending. By February, it could turn into a Cold War-style standoff between Russia and the West as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, that the US had given Russia 60 days to comply with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty or it would no longer abide by the agreement and could produce, test and deploy new missiles in NATO member states. There is now doubt Moscow will respond in kind by deploying missiles in its Western regions.

The new political realities show imprudence of the approach to European security developed by the think-tankers from the Institute for Statecraft. American military facilities are the last things necessary for the Europeans to feel safe. What the Europeans really need to do is to stay away from the up-coming missile duel between Trump and Putin.

 

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...

Thierry Meyssan: It is very difficult for an Allied government in the United States to describe US wars as illegal. Charles De Gaulle had allowed himself in his speech of Phnom Penh, Jacques Chirac preferred to emphasize that wars are "the worst of solutions".

Most French media obviously do not have the ability to think for themselves. Moreover, their journalists are no longer analysts, just commentators. In the past, "journalist" was not a job, but a means of spreading a thought. Since the 1980s, media owners have created "schools" of journalism. Their future employees are trained to handle agency dispatches without challenging them. These professional "journalists" constitute a homogeneous caste that has become the clergy of the dominant religion. They ignore many things, including international law, although it was built by French and Russians. We have witnessed a drastic fall in the intellectual level of the elites in our country; a process that is being reversed as a result of the current revolt. Now citizens are debating again our common interest. They show a political maturity of which both the journalists and our leaders are deprived. It will be necessary for the media to recruit again, as journalists, competent persons.

This problem is recurrent in our history. The first French newspaper, La Gazette, in the 17th century was written by Théophraste Renaudot for Cardinal Richelieu. He was a "professional journalist". But only personalities like Voltaire denouncing the Knight of La Barre or Zola that of Captain Dreyfus are in my eyes real journalists.

 

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

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"THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT EVENTS OF THIS WORLD ARE SCARCELY MORE THAN THE HISTORY OF CRIME." 

--VOLTAIRE

The French thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy has emerged as the poster boy for the defense of “Europe” against the advance of the nationalist-populist parties so dreaded by the establishment. Yet Lévy’s involvement is more likely than not to turn out as a boon to the nationalists. That’s because, in his long media-saturating career as a Parisian public philosophe, Lévy has been an important shaper of the attitudes that have brought France to its current unhappiness.

A wiser political strategy for the neoliberal Merkelist and Macronist parties would be to downplay their ideological distinctions and present their candidates, however disingenuously, as unexceptional center-left and center-right patriots. Macron has been attempting this, with some success, in his own battle against the gilet jaunes. He now appears on TV with a French national flag prominently at his side, and seeks to woo audiences with flattering patriotic references to France’s “uniqueness.”

But here comes Lévy, organizing a public letter signed by 30 writers and intellectuals throwing down the ideological gauntlet in the coming elections. “The idea of Europe is in peril,” Lévy and his co-signers intone. It is being attacked by “false prophets drunk on resentment and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight.” France’s elections in May, say Lévy and his signatories, “promise to be the most calamitous we have known.” He summons Europeans to “a new battle for civilization.” Urgently they “sound the alarm” against “these arsonists of soul and spirit who want to make a bonfire of our freedoms.” And Lévy isn’t stopping at a mere public letter. He promises a tour of two dozen European cities beginning in March. At 70, he bids to become the continent-wide face of resistance to the Euroskeptic parties. 

There is a consistency here that ought to be respected. Bernard-Henri Lévy, or BHL as he is known in France, has been a career-long foe of French nationalism. In L’Ideologie francaise, the 1981 book that cemented his stature as the most telegenic of the French “New Philosophers” and made him a glittering figure in the intello/media world, BHL gave an energetic middlebrow boost to an idea that has become a commonplace trope for every antifa or casseur who wants to stifle free speech at a Western university: everyone you don’t approve of is basically Hitler. 

In his book, BHL argued that the French didn’t need to defeat the Nazis in 1940 to fall into fascism, that the precursors to the Vichy regime were already everywhere in French intellectual life. They made up, as his title proclaimed, “The” French ideology. This was a distorted simplification of an argument that had been made by serious historians—disdain for parliamentary democracy, hostility to bourgeois capitalism, anti-Semitism, all infused into Vichy, were hardly German monopolies. But BHL took the argument to its outer limits and beyond, sweeping up virtually any French writer of renown and patriotic sensibility. Maurice Barrès, literary celebrant of a French people formed by common blood and soil—a Vichy precursor. Christian socialist Charles Péguy, also a Vichy precursor. The French communist party is reproached by BHL not for being excessively Stalinist, but for being too French. Every French writer who’s ever extolled the French people became in BHL’s telling a predecessor to national socialism.

As Eric Zémmour concluded in a scathing critique of the work: “love of France, it’s the right and far right; the far right, that’s Vichy; Vichy, that’s the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup; Vel’ d’Hiv, that’s the extermination of the Jews. QED, love of France=extermination of Jews.” The book made a splash and sold well, despite scathing criticism of its oversimplifications by some (like Raymond Aron) who had been friendly to Lévy and was generally favorable towards the New Philosophers as a group. Lévy’s work was a critical opening shot in a cultural war during which the French interior minister could not expel an illegal immigrant without being barraged by bien-pensant human rights activists comparing him to Hitler. This, of course, is the era in which we now live.

BHL’s career did not stop there—he was a vigorous pamphleteer and human rights enthusiast, albeit selectively. Cameras could find him on the barricades of the Maidan or persuading his friend President Nicolas Sarkozy that France must assist the rebels seeking to overthrow Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi. Yet not all human rights victims merited BHL’s concern, and some blood and soil nationalisms turned out to be more acceptable than others. Late in life, Levy developed a great attachment to Israel. He is now an apologist for whatever the Israeli government feels like inflicting on Palestinians, in Gaza or elsewhere. As Zémmour puts it, noting the contrast between Lévy’s media interventions in France and Israel, “BHL got in the habit of playing a double role, Zola in Paris and Barrès in Jerusalem.”

So now this aging and very rich philosophe will be a most prominent public face of the campaign to save Europe from the Euroskeptic parties. The election debate in general is likely to be fascinating and without precedent. The right-wing and nationalist parties have, in general, a nuanced view of Europe—their nationalism, such as it is, is directed not against other Europeans, but against mass immigration from beyond Europe’s shores. Their views are roughly those held by Charles de Gaulle: that a Europe of nation states is more likely to sustain and nurture the creative aspects of European civilization than a Europe dominated by bureaucrats who have elevated freedom of movement and universal human rights into an ersatz religion. But much remains much to be worked out in practice.

 

 

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Geopolitics of Europe and the Iron Law of Evolutionary Biology

Europe after the Brexit, NATO 70 summit and Turkish geopolitical vertigo

Professor Anis H. Bajrektarević

freshly released IMF’s World Economic Outlook brings no comforting picture to anyone within the G-7, especially in the US and EU: The WTO Round is dead, trade wars are alive, GCC is rapidly Pakistanising while the Asia’s core and its Far East slows down. No comfort either comes from the newest Oxfam Report – Are 26 billionaires worth more than half the planet?, which the ongoing Davos Vanity Fair known as the WEF tries to ignore (as much as this gathering of capital sustains in ignoring labor). The Brexit after-shock is still to reverberate around.

In one other EXIT, Sartre’s Garcin famously says: ‘Hell is other people’. Indeed, the business of othering remains lucrative: The NATO 70 summit will desperately look for enemies. Escalation, the best way to preserve eroded unity, requires the confrontational nostalgia dictatum. Will the passionately US-pushed cross-Atlantic Free Trade Area (substituting the abandoned TIPP and compensating for the Sino-US trade war) save the day? Or, would that Pact-push drag the things over the edge of reinvigorating nationalisms, and mark an end of the unionistic Europe?

Is the extended EU conflict with Russia actually a beginning of the Atlantic-Central Europe’s conflict over Russia, an internalization of mega geopolitical and geo-economic dilemma – who accommodates with whom, in and out of the post-Brexit Union? Finally, does more Ukrainian (Eastern Europe’s or MENA) calamities pave the road for a new cross-continental grand accommodation, of either austerity-tired France or über-performing Germany with Russia, therefore the end of the EU? Southeast flank already enormously suffer. Hasty castling of foes and friends caused colossal geopolitical vertigo in Turkey, whose accelerated spin produces more and more victims.

For whose sake Eastern Europe has been barred of all important debates such as that of Slavism, identity, social cohesion (disintegrated by the plunder called ‘privatization’), secularism and antifascism? Why do we suddenly wonder that all around Germany-led Central Europe, the neo-Nazism gains ground while only Russia insists on antifascism and (pan-)Slavism?

Before answering that, let us examine what is (the meaning and size of) our Europe? Where, how and – very importantly – when is our Europe?

THE LETZTE MENSCH OR ÜBERMENSCH 

Is the EU an authentic post-Westphalian conglomerate and the only logical post-Metternich concert of different Europes, the world’s last cosmopolitan enjoying its postmodern holiday from history? Is that possibly the lost Atlántida or mythical Arcadia – a Hegelian end of history world? Thus, should this OZ be a mix of the endemically domesticated Marx-Engels grand utopia and Kennedy’s dream-world “where the weak are safe and the strong are just”?

Or, is it maybe as Charles Kupchan calls it a ‘postmodern imperium’? Something that exhorts its well-off status quo by notoriously exporting its transformative powers of free trade dogma and human rights stigma – a modified continuation of colonial legacy when the European conquerors, with fire and sword, spread commerce, Christianity and civilization overseas – a kind of ‘new Byzantium’, or is that more of a Richard Young’s declining, unreformed and rigid Rome? Hence, is this a post-Hobbesian (yet, not quite a Kantian) world, in which the letzte Mensch expelled Übermensch?

Could it be as one old graffiti in Prague implies: EU=SU²? Does the EU-ization of Europe equals to a restoration of the universalistic world of Rome’s Papacy, to a restaging of the Roman-Catholic Caliphate? Is this Union a Leonard’s runner of the 21st century, or is it perhaps Kagan’s ‘Venus’– gloomy and opaque world, warmer but equally distant and unforeseen like ‘Mars’?

Is this a supersized Switzerland (ruled by the cacophony of many languages and enveloped in economic egotism of its self-centered people), with the cantons (MS, Council of EU) still far more powerful than the central government (the EU Parliament, Brussels’ Commission, ECJ), while Swiss themselves –although in the geographic heart of that Union – stubbornly continue to defy any membership. Does it really matter (and if so, to what extent) that Niall Ferguson wonders: …the EU lacks a common language, a common postal system, a common soccer team [Britain as well, rem. A.B.] even a standard electric socket…“?

Kissinger himself was allegedly looking for a phone number of Europe, too. Baron Ridley portrayed the Union as a Fourth Reich, not only dominated by Germany, but also institutionally Germanized. Another conservative Briton, Larry Siedentop, remarked in his Democracy in Europe that it is actually France who is running the EU ‘show’, in the typical French way – less than accountable bureaucracy that prevents any evolution of the European into an American-style United States. Thus, Siedentop’s EU is more of a Third Bonapartistic Empire than possibly a Fourth German Reich. The Heartland or Rimland?

(D)EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND GEOPOLITICS

Regardless of different names and categorizations attached, historical analogies and descriptions used, most scholars would agree upon the very geopolitical definition of the EU: Grand re-approachment of France and Germany after WWII, culminating in the Elysée accords of 1961. An interpretation of this instrument is rather simple: a bilateral peace treaty through achieved consensus by which Germany accepted a predominant French say in political affairs of EU/Europe, and France – in return – accepted a more dominant German say in economic matters of EU/Europe. All that tacitly blessed by a perfect balancer – Britain, attempting to conveniently return to its splendid isolation from the Continent in the post-WWII years. Hence, living its Brexit distance from the continental Europe for most of its history.

Consequently, nearly all scholars would agree that the Franco-German alliance actually represents a geopolitical axis, a backbone of the Union.

However, the inner unionistic equilibrium will be maintained only if the Atlantic-Central Europe skillfully calibrates and balances its own equidistance from both assertive Russia and the omnipresent US. Any alternative to the current Union is a grand accommodation of either France or Germany with Russia. This means a return to Europe of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries – namely, direct confrontations over the Continent’s core sectors, perpetual animosities wars and destructions.

Both Russia and the US has demonstrated ability for a skillful and persistent conduct of international affairs, passions and vigorous visions to fight for their agendas. Despite the shifts in political affiliations and drives triggered by the Brexit, migrants, economic performance or generational in/compassions, it is a high time for Brussels to live up to its very idea, and to show the same.
Biology and geopolitics share one basic rule: comply or die.

Professor Anis H. Bajrektarević is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He has authored six books (for American and European publishers) and numerous articles on, mainly, geopolitics energy and technology. For the past decades, he has over 1,200 hours of teaching on the subject International Law and Relations (including lecturing in both Kiev and Moscow universities and Diplomatic Academy). He is editor of the NY-based GHIR (Geopolitics, History and Intl. Relations) journal, and editorial board member of several similar specialized magazines on three continents. His 7th book, From WWI to www. – Europe and the World 1918-2018 was to released in December.

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The Italian government announced that it vetoed the EU’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as the “Acting President” when the Council of Foreign Ministers met in Romania on 31 January 2019. ‎

Despite this, the governments of Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, France, Holland and Portugal, lined up to recognize Juan Guaidó as the “President ‎ in charge of Venezuela”, borrowing the language adopted last Monday by Spanish Prime Minister ‎Pedro Sánchez. ‎

During the legislative elections held in Venezuela in 2015, the Opposition to President Nicolas Maduro obtained a substantial majority in the National Assembly. However, in the 2018 Presidential elections, Nicolas Maduro was re-elected once again. This created a situation in which there were two bases for legitimacy, a situation unforeseen by the constitution. Refusing to accept the situation, the Opposition declares that the Presidential Election had been “rigged”, as even through the constitutional arbiter was the National Electoral Council, which was composed of the same persons that had certified the victory of the opposition in the 2015 legislative elections. ‎ Furthermore, the opposition then latched onto article 233 of the Constitution to declare that the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, automatically becomes the acting president of Venezuela. However, this is false given that this article provides that the President of the Legislature only assumes the exercise of executive power in the event of an absence proved and duly certified by the President of the Republic for reasons such as physical incapacity or ‎ death. ‎

The United States is exploiting the internal conflict between the opposition and the Chavistas to create conditions to justify a foreign military intervention against the Bolivarian State. ‎

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

 

 

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The US burial of the INF Treaty with European complicity

by  Manlio Dinucci

 

The Pentagon has decided to install medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, which would turn this territory into a battle-field in case of a war between the two Great Powers. It’s no surprise that NATO and the European Union have approved the suicide of the European nations.

The « suspension » of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), announced on 1 February by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has launched the count-down which, within six months, will count the United States out of the Treaty definitively. As from today, in any case, the USA considers itself free to test and to deploy weapons of the category forbidden by the Treaty – ground-based medium-range nuclear missiles (between 500 and 5,500 km).

The nuclear missiles installed in Europe in the 1980’s belong to this category – Pershing-2 ballistic missiles, installed by the United States in West Germany, and ground-launched cruise missiles, installed by the United States in Great Britain, Italy, West Germany, Belgium and Holland, under the pretext of defending the European allies from the SS-20 ballistic missiles installed by the Soviet Union on its own territory.

The INF Treaty, signed in 1987 by Presidents Gorbatchev and Reagan, eliminated all the missiles of this category, including those based in Comiso (Sicily).

The INF Treaty was called into question by Washington when the United States saw their strategic advantage over Russia and China diminish. In 2014, the Obama administration accused Russia, without the slightest proof, of having tested a cruise missile (mark 9M729) belonging to the category forbidden by the Treaty. And in 2015, it announced that « due to the violation of the INF Treaty by Russia, the United States are considering the deployment in Europe of ground-based missiles ». This plan was confirmed by the Trump administration. In 2018, Congress authorised the financing of a « research and development programme for a cruise missile launched from a road-based mobile platform ». From Moscow’s side, they denied that their cruise missile violated the Treaty and in turn accused Washington of having installed, in Poland and Romania, launch ramps for interceptor missiles (from the « shield »), which can be used to launch cruise missiles bearing nuclear warheads.

In this context, we have to remember the geographical factor – while a US medium-range nuclear missile based in Europe can hit Moscow, a similar missile based by Russia on its own territory can reach the European capitals, but not Washington. If we turn the scenario round, it’s as if Russia were to install its medium-range nuclear missiles in Mexico.

The US plan to bury the INF Treaty has been fully supported by the European allies of NATO. The North Atlantic Council declared, on 4 December 2018, that the « the INF Treaty is in danger because of the actions of Russia », which was accused of deploying « a destabilising missile system ». The same Council declared yesterday its « full support for the action of the United States in suspending its obligations concerning the INF Treaty » and told Russia to use the remaining six months to « return to a complete observance of the Treaty » [1].

The collapse of the INF Treaty was also helped along by the contribution of the European Union which, at the UN General Assembly on 21 December 2018, voted against the resolution presented by Russia on the « Preservation and implementation of the INF Treaty », rejected by 46 votes against 43, with 78 abstentions. The European Union – of which 21 of its 27 members are also members of NATO (the United Kingdom remains a member while leaving the EU) – rallied unanimously to the position of NATO, which in turn rallied unanimously to that of the United States. In substance, then, the European Union has also given its green light for the possible installation of new US nuclear missiles in Europe, including Italy.

On a question of this importance, the Conte government, like those before it, has aligned itself with both NATO and the EU. And across the whole political arc, not one voice was raised to state that Parliament should decide how to vote at the UNO on the INF Treaty. And again, no voice was raised in Parliament to ask that Italy should observe the non-proliferation Treaty and adhere to that of the UNO concerning the ban on nuclear weapons, forcing the USA to withdraw from our national territory its B61 nuclear bombs and not to install, from the first half of 2020, the even more dangerous B61-12’s.

Since it has on its territory nuclear weapons and US strategic installations, with the Muos and the Jtags in Sicily, Italy is exposed to growing dangers as an advanced base of US nuclear forces, and thus a target for Russian forces. A medium-range ballistic nuclear missile takes between 6 and 11 minutes to reach its target. A fine example for the defence of our sovereignty, inscribed in the Constitution, and for our security, that the Government guaranteed by closing the door to migrants, but opening it wide to admit US nuclear weapons.

Manlio Dinucci

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

Source 
Il Manifesto (Italy)

 

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DER SPIEGEL: Ms. Rackete, you have become a heroine to many because of the considerable risks you took to save people from the Mediterranean. Many others, however, are hostile to you. How do you see your role?

Rackete: I've been surprised by how personal things have gotten. It should be about the issue, about the European Union's failure to fairly distribute those who have been rescued and to take shared responsibility. That's what it should be about, not about individuals like me, who just happen to have become visible. It's not a situation I wished for. I was only filling in for a colleague who had originally been scheduled.

DER SPIEGEL: Describe what you have experienced in the past few weeks?

Rackete: It was difficult. We were traveling for almost 17 days with the refugees on board. After we arrived in Italian waters off Lampedusa and knew that we would not be allowed to go in to port, 10 particularly urgent medical cases were taken from the ship. Shortly afterward, we continued -- even though we had medical concerns, because our medical station is only equipped for emergencies.

DER SPIEGEL: You then spent several days cruising off the coast of Lampedusa.

Rackete: We were trying to figure out what to do. First, we issued an urgent appeal against the Italian entry ban, which was immediately rejected. Then we tried at the European Court of Human Rights. Thirty-four of the rescued people on board and myself, as captain, filed the complaint, but it took a lot of time.

DER SPIEGEL: What were conditions like on Sea Watch 3?

Rackete: With each passing day, the medical and hygienic situation worsened. Then came the negative verdict. Our situation seemed hopeless.

DER SPIEGEL: Was there any direct contact with the Italian coast guard?

Rackete: At some point, a medical evacuation became necessary because one of our passengers was ill and needed to be taken off the ship immediately. We called the sea rescue center and the Italians arrived within two hours and helped, even though we were outside Italian territorial waters. It went quick, but it was an exception.

DER SPIEGEL: Why?

Rackete: We sent medical reports to the rescue center in Rome, to the Netherlands flag state and to the port in Lampedusa every day. But nobody listened and we didn't get an answer. All they said in Rome was that they had forwarded our reports to the Italian Interior Ministry. That was it. Our doctors felt like the world had been turned upside down. Nothing happened politically either. Sea-Watch made inquiries with Malta, with France, there was a constant series of inquiries sent to the German Foreign Ministry and the German Interior Ministry.

DER SPIEGEL: And there were no responses?

Rackete: They always said: We'll do something. But there just wasn't a solution on the horizon, at least nothing concrete.

DER SPIEGEL: Did that surprise you?

Rackete: It was clear to me that it was going to be difficult. The problem of distributing (the refugees) has been unresolved for ages. It's been this way for all rescue ships for about a year now. Just think of the Lifeline case in Malta or the Aquarius. The question was always: Who's going to take these people this time? Each ship is handled separately.

DER SPIEGEL: In other words, that was all completely clear to you when you began your mission.

Rackete: We keep going because it's necessary. But, of course, we launched the Sea-Watch knowing full well that nobody wanted to take in the refugees. Not even Tunisia, which European governments like to view as a safe alternative. While we were out there, the Mare Dive, a cargo ship with 75 rescued people on board spent 15 days waiting off the coast of Tunisia. But the Tunisians also don't want to become the next port for unloading. Nobody wants these people.

DER SPIEGEL: What is life like on board your ship?

Rackete: The refugees are essentially confined. There is very little space and no privacy. Most people sleep on the aft deck in a tent on the floor, everyone has a blanket. There are three portable toilets. There isn't enough water for people to take showers regularly -- they can only take one every few days. Doctors without Borders used to operate the ship, but at that time they had people on board for a maximum of three days. It's not designed for more.

DER SPIEGEL: What does that mean for the mood on board?

Rackete: We couldn't promise people anything that wasn't there. No one wanted to take them in. This hopelessness often blends with post-traumatic stress disorders. Many have suffered human rights violations, have been tortured, sold, have had to work under slave-like conditions or have experienced sexual violence. We wanted to project confidence, but the longer things took, the more we lost people's trust.

DER SPIEGEL: In explaining why you decided to sail into the port of Lampedusa, you referred to the fact that you were carrying people at risk of suicide on board.

Rackete: Some had told the medical team about previous suicide attempts and asked them: Please look after me, I'm not doing well. There were three people in particular.

DER SPIEGEL: What did that mean for you?

Rackete: At the beginning of the mission, we defined red lines in the team and discussed when we had to go to a safe harbor. When those lines were crossed, we headed into port.

DER SPIEGEL: What were those red lines?

Rackete: Many passengers needed treatment from specialists. We suspected there might be a case of tuberculosis. It's not possible on board to test for something like that or to treat it. With others, we could only treat them with painkillers, without a diagnosis. Almost all needed psychological care, but we didn't have a psychologist with us. When we keep people in these conditions for two weeks, it can get explosive.

DER SPIEGEL: What did the Italian authorities say about that?

Rackete: The Guardia di Finanza had been on board and had checked our documents. They said: Captain, please don't get so worked up. There will be a solution -- just wait. At that point, I thought, OK, we'll wait. The Italian parliamentarians who visited us on board the Sea-Watch also gave us hope, telling us that there were talks between France, Germany and Portugal. Salvini said that if countries were ready to take the refugees in, we could go ashore.

DER SPIEGEL: What happened in the final hours before you arrived in Lampedusa?

Rackete: We had a second medical evacuation the night before. A passenger urgently had to go to the hospital -- he was in severe pain, apparently he had kidney stones. From that point on, the situation was no longer tenable. The feeling among the people on board was: Do we all have to get sick first, do we have to throw ourselves overboard for something to happen? There also came a point where the crew couldn't take it anymore. It became more exhausting by the day, and in the end, we were all in a state of total despair.

DER SPIEGEL: In the meantime, European governments continued negotiating who would take in the refugees and when.

Rackete: That's also what the parliamentarians were telling us: The solution is imminent, it will come in the next few hours. I didn't want to go to port, I didn't want to break the law. We intensified the watch duties on board so that no one would try to harm themselves. That was on Thursday night. On Friday, I woke up at 6 a.m. and asked the parliamentarians: Where's the solution? Of course, there wasn't one. I didn't know what to do then. But it couldn't go on. I could no longer guarantee safety on board.

DER SPIEGEL: What happened then?

Rackete: On Friday afternoon, the Guardia di Finanza boarded again and handed me some papers informing me that I was being investigated for illegal entry into territorial waters and for aiding and abetting illegal entry. They took the ship's log with them and wanted to leave again. I asked them: What about my 40 rescued people -- do you want to take them? And they said: No, we know nothing about that. A short time later, the word from Berlin was that Salvini was again blocking a solution. I didn't want to take responsibility for another night with the refugees, so I decided to take the ship in.

DER SPIEGEL: When you arrived at the port ...

Rackete: ... the Guardia di Finanza tried to block our way. We sailed in extremely slowly, stopped the ship and turned it around because you have to dock backwards. Then I saw that the Guardia di Finanza had docked in the middle of the pier to prevent us from mooring there. The fact that we collided was not an attack on a warship, as I was accused of. It was an accident.

DER SPIEGEL: Did you expect that you would be arrested?

Rackete: I was afraid of something like that.

DER SPIEGEL: How were you treated?

Rackete: The officers were nice. After eight hours at the Guardia di Finanza, I was taken to the refugee camp in the middle of the island. That's where the only police station that can carry out identification measures is located. The people we rescued were also sitting on the floor there, and they began to applaud when they saw me. My fingerprints were taken. From there, I was put under house arrest. On Monday, I was taken by ship to Sicily for a hearing.

DER SPIEGEL: What did you tell the judge?

Rackete: I explained my reasoning to her and described the collision with the boat from my point of view. After that, I was placed under house arrest at another location.

DER SPIEGEL: Were you aware of the attention your case was generating? That you had become a hero to some and the devil to others?

Rackete: Not really. I was under house arrest, after all. But I was glad I didn't have to burden myself with what others were saying. During the second house arrest, the woman hosting me switched on the television and the images were being broadcast, but I didn't want to see them at all.

DER SPIEGEL: How are you coping with the role of the hero? Just like the young climate protection activist Greta Thunberg, you have now become the champion of migrants.

Rackete: It hasn't really hit me yet. But I'm a person who prefers taking action to talking. And I think that this action speaks sufficiently for itself.

DER SPIEGEL: On Tuesday evening, a judge decided to release you.

Rackete: Surprisingly, she accepted our reasoning on almost all points. She also wrote that we did not enter territorial waters illegally. And that we are not migrant smugglers. The entry ban applies only to smugglers.

DER SPIEGEL: What is the next legal step?

Rackete: A second hearing is to be held on Tuesday. It concerns aiding and abetting illegal entry and entry into territorial waters. As I understand it, these allegations have been dropped in other cases. But it can take months.

DER SPIEGEL: Do you like the fact that you are being portrayed as Salvini's opponent?

Rackete: I don't take note of what he says. I do know how Italy voted in the European elections and that many Italians support his policies. But there are also many solidarity movements in Italy. The country is divided.

DER SPIEGEL: What would you like to say to him if the two of you ever came face to face?

Rackete: Salvini is not a person I want to meet. His policies violate human rights. His way of expressing himself is disrespectful and inappropriate for a top politician.

DER SPIEGEL: How do you explain the fact that Salvini has you in his sights?

Rackete: Anyone who is currently a captain on a rescue ship knows that they are being criminalized. The odd thing is that it has become so extreme in this instance. There was a strange chain of circumstances: After we already had the refugees on board, Salvini pushed through this decree prohibiting aid organizations from entering Italian ports. It was done in expedited proceedings. We saved the refugees on Wednesday and the decree was brought through parliament in Rome on Friday and published online shortly afterward. There was a lot of political pressure to do it so fast.

DER SPIEGEL: Have you been provided with sufficient support from Germany?

Rackete: I felt left in the lurch. Of course, there were individuals who wanted to help -- cities that wanted to take in our refugees, for example. But those efforts failed because of German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who had no desire to accept the cities' offers. My impression was that, on a national and international level, nobody really wanted to help. They kept passing the buck, even though we still had 40 rescued passengers on board.

DER SPIEGEL: What would have to happen at political level to improve the situation?

Rackete: We need a solution in Europe for taking in people who have fled to us. And for distributing them fairly. The Dublin system, which puts the responsibility on the shoulders of those countries with external borders, isn't fair. (Eds: Under the Dublin rules, a refugee must apply for asylum in the first EU country they enter.)

DER SPIEGEL: What should happen until such a solution is found?

Rackete: I'm curious to see what will happen with other rescue ships that are currently out at sea and which will take refugees on board -- the Open Arms, for example, which is operating near the North African coast.

 

DER SPIEGEL: What will now happen with the Sea-Watch 3?

Rackete: I assume our ship will be released soon. It was only held to secure evidence. There will then be some technical work, and after that, we'll head back out to sea. It's just hard to find a captain willing to take the risk.

DER SPIEGEL: Would you do it again?

Rackete: At the moment, my lawyers are discouraging me from such a thing. But if the charges against me are dropped, I'd head back out.

DER SPIEGEL: Ms. Rackete, thank you for this interview.

 

 

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