Austria wants to deploy soldiers on Italy border, defence minister says
BERLIN (Reuters) - Austria plans to deploy soldiers at the Brenner border with Italy to stem an expected increase in migrants trying to get to northern Europe, Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told news outlets on Saturday.
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Édifiant. Quand un nazi devient un tueur du Mossad
The Strange Case of a Nazi Who Became an Israeli Hitman
Otto Skorzeny, one of the Mossad’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s favorites.
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.711115
On September 11, 1962, a German scientist vanished. The basic facts were simple: Heinz Krug had been at his office, and he never came home.
The only other salient detail known to police in Munich was that Krug commuted to Cairo frequently. He was one of dozens of Nazi rocket experts who had been hired by Egypt to develop advanced weapons for that country.
HaBoker, a now defunct Israeli newspaper, surprisingly claimed to have the explanation: The Egyptians kidnapped Krug to prevent him from doing business with Israel.
But that somewhat clumsy leak was an attempt by Israel to divert investigators from digging too deeply into the case — not that they ever would have found the 49-year-old scientist.
We can now report — based on interviews with former Mossad officers and with Israelis who have access to the Mossad’s archived secrets from half a century ago — that Krug was murdered as part of an Israeli espionage plot to intimidate the German scientists working for Egypt.
Moreover, the most astounding revelation is the Mossad agent who fired the fatal gunshots: Otto Skorzeny, one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s personal favorites among the party’s commando leaders. The Führer, in fact, awarded Skorzeny the army’s most prestigious medal, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, for leading the rescue operation that plucked his friend Benito Mussolini out from the hands of his captors.
But that was then. By 1962, according to our sources — who spoke only on the promise that they not be identified — Skorzeny had a different employer. The story of how that came to be is one of the most important untold tales in the archives of the Mossad, the agency whose full name, translated from Hebrew, is “The Institute for Intelligence and Special Missions.”
Key to understanding the story is that the Mossad had made stopping German scientists then working on Egypt’s rocket program one of its top priorities. For several months before his death, in fact, Krug, along with other Germans who were working in Egypt’s rocket-building industry, had received threatening messages. When in Germany, they got phone calls in the middle of the night, telling them to quit the Egyptian program. When in Egypt, some were sent letter bombs — and several people were injured by the explosions.
Krug, as it happens, was near the top of the Mossad’s target list.
During the war that ended 17 years earlier, Krug was part of a team of superstars at Peenemünde, the military test range on the coast of the Baltic Sea, where top German scientists toiled in the service of Hitler and the Third Reich. The team, led by Wernher von Braun, was proud to have engineered the rockets for the Blitz that nearly defeated England. Its wider ambitions included missiles that could fly a lot farther, with greater accuracy and more destructive power.
According to Mossad research, a decade after the war ended, von Braun invited Krug and other former colleagues to join him in America. Von Braun, his war record practically expunged, was leading a missile development program for the United States. He even became one of the fathers of the NASA space exploration program. Krug opted for another, seemingly more lucrative option: joining other scientists from the Peenemünde group — led by the German professor Wolfgang Pilz, whom he greatly admired — in Egypt. They would set up a secret strategic missile program for that Arab country.
In the Israelis’ view, Krug had to know that Israel, the country where so many Holocaust survivors had found refuge, was the intended target of his new masters’ military capabilities. A committed Nazi would see this as an opportunity to continue the ghastly mission of exterminating the Jewish people.
The threatening notes and phone calls, however, were driving Krug crazy. He and his colleagues knew that the threats were from Israelis. It was obvious. In 1960, Israeli agents had kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief administrators of the Holocaust, in far-off Argentina. The Israelis astonishingly smuggled the Nazi to Jerusalem, where he was put on trial. Eichmann was hanged on May 31, 1962.
It was reasonable for Krug to feel that a Mossad noose might be tightening around his neck, too. That was why he summoned help: a Nazi hero who was considered the best of the best in Hitler’s heyday.
On the day he vanished, according to our new information from reliable sources, Krug left his office to meet Skorzeny, the man he felt would be his savior.
Skorzeny, then 54 years old, was quite simply a legend. A dashing, innovative military man who grew up in Austria — famous for a long scar on the left side of his face, the result of his overly exuberant swordplay while fencing as a youth— he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS. Thanks to Skorzeny’s exploits as a guerrilla commander, Hitler recognized that he had a man who would go above and beyond, and stop at nothing, to complete a mission.
The colonel’s feats during the war inspired Germans and the grudging respect of Germany’s enemies. American and British military intelligence labeled Skorzeny “the most dangerous man in Europe.”
Krug contacted Skorzeny in the hope that the great hero — then living in Spain — could create a strategy to keep the scientists safe.
The two men were in Krug’s white Mercedes, driving north out of Munich, and Skorzeny said that as a first step he had arranged for three bodyguards. He said they were in a car directly behind and would accompany them to a safe place in a forest for a chat. Krug was murdered, then and there, without so much as a formal indictment or death sentence. The man who pulled the trigger was none other than the famous Nazi war hero. Israel’s espionage agency had managed to turn Otto Skorzeny into a secret agent for the Jewish state.
After Krug was shot, the three Israelis poured acid on his body, waited awhile and then buried what was left in a hole they had dug beforehand. They covered the makeshift grave with lime, so that search dogs — and wild animals — would never pick up the scent of human remains.
The troika that coordinated this extrajudicial execution was led by a future prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Shamir, who was then head of the Mossad’s special operations unit. One of the others was Zvi “Peter” Malkin, who had tackled Eichmann in Argentina and in later life would enter the art world as a New York-based painter. Supervising from a distance was Yosef “Joe” Raanan, who was the secret agency’s senior officer in Germany. All three had lost large numbers of family members among the 6 million Jews murdered by the cruel, continent-wide genocide that Eichmann had managed.
Israel’s motivation in working with a man such as Skorzeny was clear: to get as close as possible to Nazis who were helping Egypt plot a new Holocaust.
The Mossad’s playbook for protecting Israel and the Jewish people has no preordained rules or limits. The agency’s spies have evaded the legal systems in a host of countries for the purpose of liquidating Israel’s enemies: Palestinian terrorists, Iranian scientists, and even a Canadian arms inventor named Gerald Bull, who worked for Saddam Hussein until bullets ended his career in Brussels in 1990. Mossad agents in Lillehammer, Norway, even killed a Moroccan waiter in the mistaken belief that he was the mastermind behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the terrorist group known as Black September. Ahmed Bouchikhi was shot down in 1973 as he left a movie theatre with his pregnant wife. The Israeli government later paid compensation to her without officially admitting wrongdoing. The botched mission delayed further Mossad assassinations, but it did not end them.
To get to unexpected places on these improbable missions, the Mossad has sometimes found itself working with unsavory partners. When short-term alliances could help, the Israelis were willing to dance with the proverbial devil, if that is what seemed necessary.
But why did Skorzeny work with the Mossad?
He was born in Vienna in June 1908, to a middle-class family proud of its military service for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From an early age he seemed fearless, bold and talented at weaving false, complex tales that deceived people in myriad ways. These were essential requirements for a commando officer at war, and certainly valuable qualities for the Mossad.
He joined Austria’s branch of the Nazi Party in 1931, when he was 23, served in its armed militia, the SA, and enthusiastically worshipped Hitler. The führer was elected chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then seized Austria in 1938. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and World War II broke out, Skorzeny left his construction firm and volunteered — not for the regular army, the Wehrmacht, but for the Leibstandarte SS Panzer division that served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard force.
Skorzeny, in a memoir written after the war was over, told of his years of SS service as though they were almost bloodless travels in occupied Poland, Holland and France. His activities could not have been as innocuous as his book made them seem. He took part in battles in Russia and Poland, and certainly the Israelis believed it was very likely that he was involved in exterminating Jews. The Waffen-SS, after all, was not the regular army; it was the military arm of the Nazi Party and its genocidal plan.
His most famous and daring mission was in September 1943: leading commandos who flew engineless gliders to reach an Italian mountaintop resort to rescue Hitler’s friend and ally, the recently ousted Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and spirit him away under harrowing conditions.
This was the escapade that earned Skorzeny his promotion to lieutenant colonel — and operational control of Hitler’s SS Special Forces. Hitler also rewarded him with several hours of face-to-face conversation, along with the coveted Knight’s Cross. But it was far from his only coup.
In September 1944, when Hungary’s dictator, Admiral Miklos Horthy, a Nazi ally, was on the verge of suing for peace with Russia as Axis fortunes plunged, Skorzeny led a contingent of Special Forces into Budapest to kidnap Horthy and replace his government with the more hard-line Fascist Arrow Cross regime. That regime, in turn, went on to kill or to deport to concentration camps tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews who had managed to survive the war up to that point.
Also in 1944, Skorzeny handpicked 150 soldiers, including some who spoke fair to excellent English in a bold plan to fend off the Allies after they landed in Normandy on D-Day in June. With the Allies advancing through France, Skorzeny dressed his men in captured U.S. uniforms, and procured captured American tanks for them to use in attacking and confusing Allied troops from behind their own lines.
The bold deception — including the act of stealing U.S. soldiers’ property — plunged Skorzeny into two years of interrogation, imprisonment and trial after the war ended. Eventually, Allied military judges acquitted him in 1947. Once again, the world’s newspapers headlined him as Europe’s most dangerous man. He enjoyed the fame, and published his memoirs in various editions and many languages, including the 1957 book “Skorzeny’s Special Missions: The Autobiography of Hitler’s Commando Ace,” published by Greenhill Books. He spun some tall-tale hyperbole in the books, and definitely downplayed his contacts with the most bloodthirsty Nazi leaders. When telling of his many conversations with Hitler, he described the dictator as a caring and attentive military strategist.
There was much that Skorzeny did not reveal, including how he escaped from the American military authorities who held him for a third year after his acquittal. Prosecutors were considering more charges against him in the Nuremberg tribunals, but during one transfer he was able to escape — reputedly with the help of former SS soldiers wearing American military police uniforms.
Skorzeny’s escape was also rumored to have been assisted by the CIA’s predecessor agency, the Office of Special Services, for which he did some work after the war. It is certainly notable that he was allowed to settle in Spain — a paradise for Nazi war veterans, with protection from the pro-Western Fascist, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In the years that followed he did some advisory work for President Juan Peron in Argentina and for Egypt’s government. It was during this period that Skorzeny became friendly with the Egyptian officers who were running the missile program and employing German experts.
In Israel, a Mossad planning team started to work on where it could be best to find and kill Skorzeny. But the head of the agency, Isser Harel, had a bolder plan: Instead of killing him, snare him.
Mossad officials had known for some time that to target the German scientists, they needed an inside man in the target group. In effect, the Mossad needed a Nazi.
The Israelis would never find a Nazi they could trust, but they saw a Nazi they could count on: someone thorough and determined, with a record of success in executing innovative plans, and skilled at keeping secrets. The seemingly bizarre decision to recruit Skorzeny came with some personal pain, because the task was entrusted to Raanan, who was also born in Vienna and had barely escaped the Holocaust. As an Austrian Jew, his name was originally Kurt Weisman. After the Nazis took over in 1938, he was sent — at age 16 — to British-ruled Palestine. His mother and younger brother stayed in Europe and perished.
Like many Jews in Palestine, Kurt Weisman joined the British military looking for a chance to strike back at Germany. He served in the Royal Air Force. After the creation of Israel in 1948, he followed the trend of taking on a Hebrew name, and as Joe Raanan he was among the first pilots in the new nation’s tiny air force. The young man rapidly became an airbase commander and later the air force’s intelligence chief.
Raanan’s unique résumé, including some work he did for the RAF in psychological warfare, attracted the attention of Harel, who signed him up for the Mossad in 1957. A few years later, Raanan was sent to Germany to direct the secret agency’s operations there — with a special focus on the German scientists in Egypt. Thus it was Raanan who had to devise and command an operation to establish contact with Skorzeny, the famous Nazi commando.
The Israeli spy found it difficult to get over his reluctance, but when ordered, he assembled a team that traveled to Spain for “pre-action intelligence.” Its members observed Skorzeny, his home, his workplace and his daily routines. The team included a German woman in her late 20s who was not a trained, full-time Mossad agent but a “helper.” Known by the Hebrew label “saayanit” (or “saayan” if a male), this team member was like an extra in a grandly theatrical movie, playing whatever role might be required. A saayanit would often pose as the girlfriend of an undercover Mossad combatant.
Internal Mossad reports later gave her name as Anke and described her as pretty, vivacious and truly flirtatious. That would be perfect for the job at hand — a couples game.
One evening in the early months of 1962, the affluent and ruggedly handsome — though scarred — Skorzeny was in a luxurious bar in Madrid with his significantly younger wife, Ilse von Finckenstein. Her own Nazi credentials were impeccable; she was the niece of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s talented finance minister.
They had a few cocktails and were relaxing, when the bartender introduced them to a German-speaking couple he had been serving. The woman was pretty and in her late 20s, and her escort was a well-dressed man of around 40. They were German tourists, they said, but they also told a distressing story: that they had just survived a harrowing street robbery.
They spoke perfect German, of course, the man with a bit of an Austrian accent, like Skorzeny’s. They gave their false names, but in reality they were, respectively, a Mossad agent whose name must still be kept secret and his “helper,” Anke.
There were more drinks, then somewhat flamboyant flirting, and soon Skorzeny’s wife invited the young couple, who had lost everything — money, passports and luggage — to stay the night at their sumptuous villa. There was just something irresistible about the newcomers. A sense of sexual intimacy between the two couples was in the air. After the four entered the house, however, at a crucial moment when the playful flirting reached the point where it seemed time to pair off, Skorzeny — the charming host — pulled a gun on the young couple and declared: “I know who you are, and I know why you’re here. You are Mossad, and you’ve come to kill me.”
The young couple did not even flinch. The man said: “You are half-right. We are from Mossad, but if we had come to kill you, you would have been dead weeks ago.”
“Or maybe,” Skorzeny said, “I would rather just kill you.”
Anke spoke up. “If you kill us, the ones who come next won’t bother to have a drink with you, You won’t even see their faces before they blow out your brains. Our offer to you is just for you to help us.”
After a long minute that felt like an hour, Skorzeny did not lower his gun, but he asked: “What kind of help? You need something done?” The Mossad officer — who even now is not being named by colleagues — told Skorzeny that Israel needed information and would pay him handsomely.
Hitler’s favorite commando paused for a few moments to think, and then surprised the Israeli by saying: “Money doesn’t interest me. I have enough.”
The Mossad man was further surprised to hear Skorzeny name something that he did want: “I need for Wiesenthal to remove my name from his list.” Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Vienna-based Nazi-hunter, had Skorzeny listed as a war criminal, but now the accused was insisting he had not committed any crimes.
The Israeli did not believe any senior Nazi officer’s claim of innocence, but recruiting an agent for an espionage mission calls for well-timed lies and deception. “Okay,” he said, “that will be done. We’ll take care of that.”
Skorzeny finally lowered his weapon, and the two men shook hands. The Mossad man concealed his disgust.
“I knew that the whole story about you being robbed was bogus,” Skorzeny said, with the boastful smile of a fellow intelligence professional. “Just a cover story.”
The next step to draw him in was to bring him to Israel. His Mossad handler, Raanan, secretly arranged a flight to Tel Aviv, where Skorzeny was introduced to Harel. The Nazi was questioned and also received more specific instructions and guidelines. During this visit, Skorzeny was taken to Yad Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem dedicated to the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Nazi was silent and seemed respectful. There was a strange moment there when a war survivor pointed to Skorzeny and singled him out by name as “a war criminal.”
Raanan, as skilled an actor as any spy must be, smiled at the Jewish man and softly said: “No, you’re mistaken. He’s a relative of mine and himself is a Holocaust survivor.”
Naturally, many in Israeli intelligence wondered if the famous soldier for Germany had genuinely — and so easily — been recruited. Did he really care so much about his image that he demanded to be removed from a list of war criminals? Skorzeny indicated that being on the list meant he was a target for assassination. By cooperating with the Mossad, he was buying life insurance.
The new agent seemed to prove his full reliability. As requested by the Israelis, he flew to Egypt and compiled a detailed list of German scientists and their addresses.
Skorzeny also provided the names of many front companies in Europe that were procuring and shipping components for Egypt’s military projects. These included Heinz Krug’s company, Intra, in Munich.
Raanan continued to be the project manager of the whole operation aimed against the German scientists. But he assigned the task of staying in contact with Skorzeny to two of his most effective operatives: Rafi Eitan and Avraham Ahituv.
Eitan was one of the most amazing characters in Israeli intelligence. He earned the nickname “Mr. Kidnap” for his role in abducting Eichmann and other men wanted by Israeli security agencies. Eitan also helped Israel acquire materials for its secret nuclear program. He would go on to earn infamy in the 1980s by running Jonathan Pollard as an American Jewish spy in the United States government.
Surprisingly flamboyant after a life in the shadows, in 2006, at age 79, Eitan became a Member of Parliament as head of a political party representing senior citizens.
“Yes, I met and ran Skorzeny,” Eitan confirmed to us recently. Like other Mossad veterans, he refused to go on the record with more details.
Ahituv, who was born in Germany in 1930, was similarly involved in a wide array of Israeli clandestine operations all around the globe. From 1974 to 1980 he was head of the domestic security service, Shin Bet, which also guarded many secrets and often conducted joint projects with the Mossad.
The Mossad agents did try to persuade Wiesenthal to remove Skorzeny from his list of war criminals, but the Nazi hunter refused. The Mossad, with typical chutzpah, instead forged a letter — supposedly to Skorzeny from Wiesenthal— declaring that his name had been cleared.
Skorzeny continued to surprise the Israelis with his level of cooperation. During a trip to Egypt, he even mailed exploding packages; one Israeli-made bomb killed five Egyptians in the military rocket site Factory 333, where German scientists worked.
The campaign of intimidation was largely successful, with most of the Germans leaving Egypt. Israel stopped the violence and threats, however, when one team was arrested in Switzerland while putting verbal pressure on a scientist’s family. A Mossad man and an Austrian scientist who was working for Israel were put on trial. Luckily, the Swiss judge sympathized with Israel’s fear of Egypt’s rocket program. The two men were convicted of making threats, but they were immediately set free.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, however, concluded that all of this being out in public was disastrous to Israel’s image — and specifically could upset a deal he had arranged with West Germany to sell weapons to Israel.
Harel submitted a letter of resignation, and to his shock, Ben-Gurion accepted it. The new Mossad director, commander of military intelligence Gen. Meir Amit, moved the agency away from chasing or intimidating Nazis.
Amit did activate Skorzeny at least once more, however. The spymaster wanted to explore the possibility of secret peace negotiations, so he asked Israel’s on-the-payroll Nazi to arrange a meeting with a senior Egyptian official. Nothing ever came of it.
Skorzeny never explained his precise reasons for helping Israel. His autobiography does not contain the word “Israel,” or even “Jew.” It is true that he sought and got the life insurance. The Mossad did not assassinate him.
He also had a very strong streak of adventurism, and the notion of doing secret work with fascinating spies — even if they were Jewish — must have been a magnet for the man whose innovative escapades had earned him the Iron Cross medal from Hitler. Skorzeny was the kind of man who would feel most youthful and alive through killing and fear.
It is possible that regret and atonement also played a role. The Mossad’s psychological analysts doubted it, but Skorzeny may have genuinely felt sorry for his actions during World War II.
He may have been motivated by a combination of all these factors, and perhaps even others. But Otto Skorzeny took this secret to his grave. He died of cancer, at age 67, in Madrid in July 1975.
He had two funerals, one in a chapel in Spain’s capital and the other to bury his cremated remains in the Skorzeny family plot in Vienna. Both services were attended by dozens of German military veterans and wives, who did not hesitate to give the one-armed Nazi salute and sing some of Hitler’s favorite songs. Fourteen of Skorzeny’s medals, many featuring a boldly black swastika, were prominently paraded in the funeral processions.
There was one man at the service in Madrid who was known to no one in the crowd, but out of habit he still made sure to hide his face as much as he could. That was Joe Raanan, who by then had become a successful businessman in Israel.
The Mossad did not send Raanan to Skorzeny’s funeral; he decided to attend on his own, and at his own expense. This was a personal tribute from one Austrian-born warrior to another, and from an old spy handler to the best, but most loathsome, agent he ever ran.
Dan Raviv, a CBS News correspondent based in Washington, and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman are co-authors of five books about Israel’s espionage and security agencies, including “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars” (Levant Books, 2014). Contact them at feedback@forward.com
For more stories, go to www.forward.com. Sign up for the Forward’s daily newsletter at ►http://forward.com/newsletter/signup
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En français ici sur Sputnik News : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/474938
11 fotos increíbles del rito ona que desapareció hace un siglo en Tierra del Fuego - Laika
▻http://laika.com.ar/11-fotos-increibles-del-rito-ona-que-desaparecio-hace-un-siglo-en-tierra-d
Entre 1918 y 1924, el misionero alemán Martín Gusinde fue uno de los tantos antropólogos y etnólogos que en los últimos cien años, visitó Tierra del Fuego para tomar registro de la población local, conviviendo con yámanas, selk’nam y kawésqa, tomando unas 1.200 fotos realmente increibles.
Gusinde fue un sacerdote alemán que en el 1900 se unió a los Misioneros de la Divina Palabra, y cinco años más tarde comenzó sus estudios en etnología en Viena, Austria.
El objetivo de su trabajo en Tierra del Fuego, donde estuvo 22 meses, fue rescatar la tradición oral y visual, ante el avance de la población blanca que fue desplazando a los pueblos originarios, afectados severamente por enfermedades para las que no tenían defensas naturales.
• Photographer Travels Throughout the EU Documenting Picturesque Borderlines between Countries
▻http://www.featureshoot.com/2015/07/photographer-travels-throughout-the-eu-documenting-picturesque-borderl
Nationality can play a large role in personal identity and sense of belonging, but what happens when the bounds of nationality become ambiguous? Valerio Vincenzo’s Borderline – Les frontiers de la paix visibly captures this practically borderless lifestyle.
Over a period of eight years and 10,000 miles, Vincenzo documented the internal borders of the EU. Using his 1964 Hasselblad camera with one 50mm lens, he zigzagged around countries such as: France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Austria.
http://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/04_BORDERLINE.jpg 
http://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/01_BORDERLINE.jpg 
http://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/29_BORDERLINE.jpg • Le site du photographe Valerio Vincenzo :
▻http://www.valeriovincenzo.com
• Avec d’autres images sur ce travail :
▻http://www.valeriovincenzo.com/Borderline-Frontiers-of-Peace
Companies from 20 countries involved in Islamic State bomb supply chain - Yahoo Finance UK
▻https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/islamic-state-bomb-supply-chain-includes-firms-20-000359241.html
Companies from 20 countries are involved in the supply chain of components that end up in Islamic State explosives, a study found on Thursday, suggesting governments and firms need to do more to track the flow of cables, chemicals and other equipment.
The European Union-mandated study showed that 51 companies from countries including Turkey, Brazil, and the United States produced, sold or received the more than 700 components used by Islamic State to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
IEDs are now being produced on a “quasi-industrial scale” by the militant group, which uses both industrial components that are regulated and widely available equipment such as fertiliser chemicals and mobile phones, according to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which undertook the 20-month study.
Islamic State controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria. NATO member Turkey shares borders with both countries and has stepped up security to prevent the flow of weapons and insurgents to the hardline Sunni group.
A total of 13 Turkish firms were found to be involved in the supply chain, the most in any one country. That was followed by India with seven.
[…]
Bevan said the Turkish government refused to cooperate with CAR’s investigation so the group was not able to determine the efficacy of Ankara’s regulations regarding the tracking of components.
Turkish government officials did not reply to requests for comment.
[…]
Seven Indian companies manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord, and safety fuses documented by CAR. Those were all legally exported under government-issued licences from India to entities in Lebanon and Turkey, CAR found.
Companies from Brazil, Romania, Russia, the Netherlands, China, Switzerland, Austria and Czech Republic were also involved, the report found.
Closure of Balkan refugee route deepens rifts in the EU - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/16/refu-f16.html
Closure of Balkan refugee route deepens rifts in the EU
By Martin Kreickenbaum
16 February 2016
Diplomatic tensions between the EU member states are intensifying in the run-up to the meeting of heads of state and governments this week. The issue of what measures can better seal off Europe against refugees is further inflaming these conflicts.
While the countries of the “Visegrad Group,” consisting of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, together with Austria, are insisting on the complete closure and militarization of the Macedonian-Greek border in order to strand refugees in Greece. Germany, France and Italy, above all, reject such a step, which would mean the de facto exclusion of Greece from the Schengen Area.
Israeli authorities deny European Parliament delegation access to Gaza
Feb. 11, 2016 10:01 P.M.
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=770242
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — A delegation from the European Parliament was prevented by the Israeli authorities from accessing the blockaded Gaza Strip this week, the delegation said in an official statement.
The authorities gave no justification to explain the refusal at the time. The delegation group reportedly arrived in Jerusalem on Monday and had arranged to travel to Gaza on Wednesday in order to evaluate EU-funded reconstruction in the war-torn enclave.
Chair of the delegation, Irish MEP Martina Anderson, in the press release said: "The systematic denial by Israel of access to Gaza to European Parliament delegations is unacceptable. The European Parliament has not been able to access Gaza since 2011.
“This raises questions: what does the Israeli government aim to hide? We shall not give up on the Gazan people,” Anderson said.
The EU is one of several international bodies that aid Gaza’s over 1.8 million Palestinian residents, the majority of whom are forced to rely on foreign aid as Israel’s military blockade on the strip — upheld by Egypt on Gaza’s southern border — nears a decade.
Palestinians in Gaza have struggled to rebuild from the mass destruction caused by three Israeli offensives on the strip over the past six years, and the UN reported last year that the strip could become “uninhabitable” within five years if current trends continue.
EU delegation led by Anderson MEP blocked from Gaza
Published 10/02/2016
▻http://martinamep.eu/eu-delegation-led-by-anderson-mep-blocked-from-gaza
Martina Anderson said:
“As part of its mandate the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine, which I chair, travelled to the region yesterday on a four day fact-finding mission in the West Bank and Gaza.
“But we have been informed by Israeli authorities that the Delegation will not be permitted to proceed to Gaza, and will for the fourth time in two years be denied access.
“EU support to the Palestinians amounts to 300 million euros per annum.
“The purpose of the delegation’s visit is to assess the situation on the ground and the impact EU policies and assistance programmes are having on the lives of Palestinians.
“Despite stating clearly that the remit of this delegation has a purely social, economic and humanitarian focus, we continue to be blocked.
“I condemn, in the strongest terms, the Israeli authorities’ decision to deny this delegation access to Gaza for the fourth time.
“It is unacceptable that an official EU delegation to Palestine is refused entry to assess the humanitarian situation and the destruction in Gaza. Since the EU is the largest contributor of finance to Palestinians it is time the EU took steps to insist its delegations are allowed unhindered access to the region.
“These blatant attempts to deter us from our responsibilities to monitor the impact of EU funding in the Region should not be allowed to go unchallenged. The European authorities must leave Israel under no illusions that there will be repercussions if it insists on blocking access to Gaza by the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine.
“If Israel thinks that blocking EU-accredited International delegations from visiting Gaza that its illegal demolitions of EU-funded structures and other acts of oppression will be hidden from the wider world then it is seriously mistaken. It will only strengthen our resolve to expose what can only be described as Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Notes: The delegation is being led by Delegation Chair Martina Anderson (GUE/NGL, Irish) and composed of 6 other Members: Margrete Auken (Vice-Chair of Delegation, Greens, Denmark), Roza Thun (EPP, Poland), Eugen Freund (S&D, Austria), Patrick Le Hyaric (GUE/NGL, France), Rosa D’Amato (EFDD, Italy) and Konstantinos Papadakis (NI, Greece).
Patrick Le Hyaric
▻https://twitter.com/PatrickLeHyaric/status/698168645999001602
Le gouvernement de l’ultra droite Israélien empêche une délégation du parlement européen dont je fais partie de rentrer à #Gaza #Palestine
Par Are you syrious :
▻https://www.facebook.com/areyousyrious/photos/a.542222625926625.1073741829.537310533084501/581620575320163/?type=3&theater
Austria Closes its Borders to Refugees
The Austrian government closed its borders last Wednesday. Already at the beginning of the week, it made clear its intention to send more refugees back to Slovenia. Then on Wednesday, a conference was held on refugees between leading Social Democrat (SPÖ) and conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) politicians to impose an upper limit for refugees. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) justified the decision by stating, “A joint European answer cannot be expected”.
▻http://www.globalresearch.ca/austria-closes-its-borders-to-refugees/5503754?platform=hootsuite
#Autriche #frontières #fermeture_des_frontières #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Slovénie #push-back #refoulement
cc @reka
Europe Gives Greece 6 Weeks to Stop Migrant Flow | GreekReporter.com
▻http://greece.greekreporter.com/2016/01/25/europe-gives-greece-6-weeks-to-stop-migrant-flow
Europe is about to warn Greece that it has six weeks to stop migrants crossing from Turkey or it will be forced out of the Schengen zone for two years, says a London Times report.
Germany, Austria, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark will warn on Monday that Greece has six weeks to stop migrants crossing from Turkey or it will be “quarantined” outside the borderless Schengen zone.
European Commission on Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos has repeatedly stated that European Union law does not allow for a country to be forced out of the Schengen zone.
“If the Athens government does not finally do more to secure the external borders then one must openly discuss Greece’s temporary exclusion from the Schengen zone,” Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Austria’s interior minister, told Welt am Sonntag last week. “It is a myth that the Greco-Turkish border cannot be controlled.” Northern European countries have expressed similar sentiments on the issue.
A meeting of European interior ministers will discuss plans for Greece to be sealed off for two years behind a new EU external border in the Balkans.
According to the report, there is a plan B discussed for the EU’s passport-free Schengen area. The plan says that Europe’s external border would become Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary, staffed by EU border guards with powers to turn back migrants heading to Germany or Sweden.
Asylum seekers not prepared to stay in Slovenia, Croatia or Hungary to be processed would be pushed back to Greece and Turkey. With the help of armed EU border guards, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is building a three-meter razor-wire fence along its border with Greece.
“The easiest plan is to put Greece in sealed quarantine,” an EU diplomat told The Times.
In order to expedite processing migrants who make it through the Balkans, Germany is discussing setting up registration centers along the frontier with Austria to speed up the repatriation of non-qualifying asylum seekers.
Safety Under One Roof
Young Thuraya and her eight brothers and sisters are given a new home and a warm welcome in Austria, far from the bombs and bullets that shattered their world.
L’Allemagne refoule de plus en plus de migrants vers l’Autriche (police)
Les autorités allemandes refoulent vers l’Autriche un nombre croissant de migrants cherchant à gagner la Scandinavie, a-t-on appris lundi auprès de la police autrichienne.
▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/964270/lallemagne-refoule-de-plus-en-plus-de-migrants-vers-lautriche-police.
#Allemagne #renvoi #push-back #refoulement #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Autriche
EU migrant crisis: Germany sends migrants back to Austria
Germany has been sending an increasing number of migrants back to Austria every day since the beginning of the month, Austrian police say.
Refugee crisis: Germany sending hundreds of asylum seekers back to Austria every day as mood shifts
German authorities said the rules had not changed but Austrian police said more and more people are being turned back
NAVIGATING THE MAZE : STRUCTURAL BARRIERS TO ACCESSING PROTECTION IN AUSTRIA
ECRE has published a report this week on a fact-finding visit to Austria conducted at the beginning of December 2015. It reveals obstacles to accessing protection in the country and documents the shortcomings in the reception system.
The report finds severe restrictions on asylum seekers’ access to the procedure, stemming from severe delays in even the first stages of registration – such as the first interview with the police (Erstbefragung) – as well as from the legal formalities attached to registration. The latter may often not be completed if there is no reception place available for the applicant.
Additionally, the use of Dublin procedures, even where there is no prospect of transferring a person to another country, further impedes access to the Austrian asylum process, while people may wait for over a year for a substantive decision by the asylum authority on their claim.
This state of legal limbo is coupled with an escalating phenomenon of homelessness or inadequate accommodation, thereby running the risk of making destitution part of the asylum system itself. The report highlights that over 7,000 asylum seekers are currently residing in transit centres for a long period of time. These generally consist of big halls or tents with rows of beds; offering some sanitary facilities, but not meant for long-term use. These conditions are not in compliance with the recast Reception Conditions Directive as they offer little if any privacy, no special provisions for vulnerable persons, no trained staff and substandard sanitary conditions.
▻http://ecre.org/component/content/article/70-weekly-bulletin-articles/1334-navigating-the-maze-ecre-publishes-report-following-fact-finding-visit-to
#asile #migrations #réfugiés #Autriche
Can We Trace the History of Human Migration Through Our Guts? - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/can-we-trace-the-history-of-human-migration-through-our-guts
Eduard Egarter-Vigl (L) and Albert Zink (R) taking a sample from the Iceman in November 2010.EURAC/Marion LafoglerIn 1991, two German tourists walking an Alpine ridge, between Austria and Italy, stumbled across something shocking: a yellowed but well preserved human body, partially frozen embedded in a glacier. Initially, they believed it to be the remains of a modern mountaineer but it was actually a member of one of the first agricultural societies in Europe. Ötzi, or “Iceman,” as he was dubbed, was dated to be 5,300 years old. After sequencing his genome, scientists confirmed that he belonged to a group of Neolithic farmers that were, 8,000 years ago, the first to migrate from the Near East to Europe. This ancient migration now accounts for about 50-60 percent of the modern European (...)
Does the #Gates_Foundation do more harm than good?
▻http://africasacountry.com/2015/12/does-the-gates-foundation-do-more-harm-than-good
In July 2010, I attended the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria. Representatives of the Gates Foundation’s HIV team set-up shop inside the venue with a private conference room. For.....
A Self-Interested Approach to Migration Crises. Push Factors, Pull Factors, and Investing In Refugees
Nations frequently help migrants fleeing crisis. They help out of generosity—generosity that quickly wears thin. What would they do if they acted instead from stark self-interest? Consider András Gróf, a refugee who arrived illegally in Austria after crossing the Hungarian border with a smuggler and then running through a swampy field under cover of darkness. He came without his family, without a college degree, without assets beyond 20 dollars. Back home, he had watched soldiers arrive, first to rape his mother, later to conscript young men like him. So András fled for the same reason that so many others leave the Middle East and Africa; whether or not there was an imminent threat to his life, the future in his country looked hellish.
▻https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/central-europe/2015-09-27/self-interested-approach-migration-crises
#push-pull_factors #facteurs_push #facteurs_pull #migrations #attraction #répulsion #réfugiés #asile
Along the migrant trail, pressure grows to close Europe’s open borders - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/top/along-the-migrant-trail-pressure-grows-to-close-europes-open-borders/2015/11/02/31fdfc30-7cc2-11e5-bfb6-65300a5ff562_story.html?wpisrc=nl_draw2
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/api/imgs/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftabletimages.washingtonpost.com%2Fprod%2F1103Europ
SENTILJ, Slovenia — With Slovenia behind them and Austria just ahead, the asylum seekers shoved at the metal barriers blocking their path and chanted a plea into the smoky night air: “We want to go!”
Nearly 1,000 people had been waiting all day for the border crossing to open, penned into a no-man’s land by twitchy troops armed with pistols and assault rifles who met requests for food or water with stern commands and glares icy enough to match the fast-falling temperature.
“We’ve already spent two nights outside,” said Galia Ali, pointing to her severely disabled 8-year-old son, who lay shivering on a blanket near a dwindling fire. “If we’re still here in the morning, he’ll be dead.”
Refugees’ horror: ’It’s not human. Treated like sheep’
Less than two hundred metres from the chaos of the no man’s land between Austria and Slovenia, the Austrian army is trying to impose order.
▻http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Refugees-horror-Its-not-human-Treated-like-sheep/articleshow/49605337.cms?
#Autriche #asile #migrations #réfugiés
“Ten Hours from Home : A Short Film on Transnational Mobility and Integration”
Prince arrived in Austria from India 25 years ago as a student. Today, he owns a famous exotic food market in Vienna and is actively engaged in charity projects in his hometown and around the world. Myroslava left Ukraine when she was 22 and moved to Naples. She worked, became fluent in Italian and eventually married with a fellow national. Now she’s proud to be back home, in spite of the war. Samir instead settled in London as a refugee from the Bosnia. Today he trades products from across the Balkans to counteract his nostalgia for Bosnia. At 17, Khalid hid underneath a truck in Tangiers and crossed the Gibraltar strait seeking a future on the other side. Shot in Austria, Ukraine, Spain and the UK, Ten hours from home explores the meaning and feelings of living across two faraway countries as an everyday option. 7 stories from Bosnia, Ukraine, Morocco, India and The Philippines shed new light on transnational mobility as a way of life.
http://globalgovernanceprogramme.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Ten-hours-poster-OK.jpg 
http://globalgovernanceprogramme.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/MAPPA.jpg Cela montre bien que les parcours migratoires ne sont pas des parcours linéaires, et qui, du coup, c’est difficile de pouvoir les visualiser avec une #flèche (car même une fois "arrivés", les personnes bougent encore et encore... #mobilité_post-migratoire)
cc @reka @fil
#ressources_pédagogiques
World population by level of fertiliy over time (1950 - 2010) - Vivid Maps
▻http://www.vividmaps.com/2015/10/world-population-by-level-of-fertiliy.html
Très intéressante visualisation de l’évolution des taux de fertilité, signalé par Pierre Ageron sur Twitter à qui je dis merci. Ce graphique montre que parfois, ce n’est pas la peine de chercher à faire complexe ou archi-original, ioci, c’est très simple et très direct et l’effet est très « spectaculaire »
Auteur :
Max Roser
▻http://www.maxroser.com/about
I am an economist working at the University of Oxford. My research interests are the growth and distribution of living standards.
Most of my research is concerned with inclusive and sustainable growth. These interests go back to my studies: In addition to economics I studied philosophy and geoscience. (I have a BSc in geoscience, a BA and an MA in philosophy, an MSc in economics, and a doctorate from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.)
World population by level of fertiliy over time (1950 - 2010)
Du même auteur, qu’il faut suivre attntivement :
The World income distribution in 1820, 1970 & 2000 - Vivid Maps
▻http://www.vividmaps.com/2015/10/the-world-income-distribution-in-1820.html#more
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Life expectancy of the world population in 1800, 1950 & 2012 - Vivid Maps
▻http://www.vividmaps.com/2015/10/life-expectancy-of-world-population-in.html#more
The situation when it comes to refugee route through Slovenia after Hungary sealed the border
Un message d’Andrej Kurnik
State authorities established two types of centers, registration centers on the border with Croatia and accommodation centers on the border with Austria. Registration centers are Dolga vas, Petišovci, Središče ob Dravi, Gruškovje and Obrežje. Accommodation centers are Šentilj and Gornja Radgona. Registration centers are under the police authority, accommodation under Civil Protection.
Refugees travel by trains from Croatian Serbian border until Čakovec in Croatia. There they are divided in smaller groups and continue their journey either by buses to Dolga vas, Petišovci, Gruškovje and Obrežje either by train to Središče ob Dravi (the biggest group of around 1200 people). Registration takes place in big tents. Around one person in two minutes. Police takes photo and fingerprints. Although in Petišovci yesterday they did not take fingerprints due to problems with machine. Upon this they issue permit to stay for six months. This is permit issued to person that is in process of deportation but can not be deported for various reasons. In short time they are taken by buses to accommodation centers where they can have rest and are agin quite quickly escorted by foot to Austrian side of the border, where Austrian police receives them and submit them to another registration procedure. Austrian police than transports refugees to Graz and Vienna. It seem that cooperation between Austrian and Slovenia police is strengthened. In registration centers there is presence of Austrian police officers.
There are first controversies when it comes to handling of refugees by Slovene authorities. Namely state officials are claiming that Slovenia can receive 2500 people per day and that this depends on Austrian reception of refugees. Austrians supposed to take only 1500 per day. While Croatian authorities are demanding that Slovenia open borders for 5000 refugees per day. This afternoon for this reason Slovenia presumably rejected one train of refugees from Croatia. It is not clear yet either this are just PR maneuvers for slovene public. Namely, yesterday Slovenian authorities have let in more than 3000 people. We will now in couple of days what is exactly going on. When it comes to the regime in refugee centers it is quite difficult for independent volunteers to get involved. But it really depends on persons in charge. In Petišovci activists managed to build a huge tent next to police one, while in Središče ob Dravi no one was allowed to enter not even activists of Amnesty International. The impression is however that Red cross and Civil protection really lack personal and it might be that they will be forced to soften their attitude toward independent volunteers.
It seems that refugees miss the most informations. There is no wi fi in centers, no chargers for phones, no electricity cables. Translators hired by police are there only to interpret during registration procedures that takes two minutes per person. Permit to stay is only in Slovene and people do not know what this paper is about.
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Croatia diverts migrants to Slovenia after Hungary border closure (updated) - Cyprus Mail Cyprus Mail
▻http://cyprus-mail.com/2015/10/17/hungary-shuts-off-migrant-route-from-croatia
By Aleksandar Vasovic and Marja Novak
Migrants streaming across the Balkans reached Slovenia on Saturday, diverted overnight by the closure of Hungary’s border with Croatia in the latest demonstration of Europe’s disjointed response to the flow of people reaching its borders.
Hungary’s right-wing government declared its southern frontier with Croatia off limits to migrants, blocking entry with a metal fence and razor wire just as it did a month ago on its border with Serbia.
Croatia began directing migrants west to Slovenia, which said some 300 had arrived and would be registered before continuing their journey to Austria and Germany, the preferred destination of the vast majority, many of them Syrians fleeing war.
Brennendes Flüchtlingslager in Slowenien: Dramatische Bilder aus #Brezice
Nach der Abschottung Ungarns suchen die Menschen den Weg nach Mitteleuropa über Slowenien. 8300 Flüchtlinge zählt das Land derzeit. Besonders in Brežice ist die Situation dramatisch.
Zelte in Brezice brennen nieder
An der kroatisch-slowenischen Grenze sind Zelte eines Auffanglagers für Flüchtlinge niedergebrannt. Das Lager befindet sich nahe dem Ort #Brezice. Fernsehbilder zeigten hohe Flammen und anrückende Rettungskräfte.
▻http://www.n-tv.de/politik/Zelte-in-Brezice-brennen-nieder-article16183256.html
Refugee crisis: Slovenia calls in army to help patrol borders
Government passes legislation early on Wednesday boosting security presence on border with Croatia
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/slovenia-calls-in-army-refugee-crisis-borders-europe
Some Tips for the Long-Distance Traveller
A Kurdish friend of mine in Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq recently posted an image of a hand-drawn diagram on his Facebook page. With little arrows and stick figures and pictures of a train and boat or two, the diagram shows how to get from Turkey to the German border in twenty easy steps. After you’ve made the thousand-mile trip to western Turkey, the journey proper begins with a taxi to Izmir on the coast. An arrow points to the next stage: a boat across the Aegean to ‘a Greek island’, costing between €950 and €1200. Another boat takes you to Athens. A train – looking like a mangled caterpillar – leads to Thessaloniki. Walking, buses and two more worm-like trains take you across Macedonia to Skopje, and then through Serbia to Belgrade. A stick figure walks across the border into Hungary near the city of Szeged. Then it’s on to Budapest by taxi, and another taxi across the whole of Austria. At the bottom of the page a little blue stick figure is jumping in the air waving a flag. He has arrived in Germany, saying hello to Munich, after a journey of some three thousand miles, taking perhaps three weeks, at a total cost of $2400.
Plus loin dans le texte :
Not all smugglers toil at the dirt tracks on the frontiers between nations. Nabil is a Swedish-Iraqi whose main talent is marketing. His job has been made difficult lately: who needs a smuggler if they can find their own way to Europe? He made the decision to cater for more exclusive clients, those who want to spare themselves and their families the hardship of a long trek through the Balkans.
Migrant truck deaths: the untold story of one man’s desperate voyage to Europe
In August the decomposing bodies of 71 migrants were found in an abandoned truck in Austria. In the most complete account to date, we tell the story of one of the victims, Saeed Othman Mohammed, and how he came to die
Soda Has a Lot Less Sugar If You’re Not in the United States | TakePart
▻http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/02/soda-has-lot-less-sugar-if-youre-not-us
La quantité de #sucre dans les #sodas varie d’un pays à l’autre
The group found that overall, 88 percent of the products analyzed had more than the entire recommended daily serving of sugar. Just one 330-milliliter Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or 7Up contained more than 25 grams of sugar, or about six teaspoons, which exceeds consumption recommendations in every country. In the majority of instances, the amount of sugar in the drinks the group analyzed was highest in North American countries and lowest across Europe, where activists and health organizations have had more success influencing the amount of the substance in drinks.
But where the data takes a fascinating turn is the country-to-country comparison of the amounts of sugar in the drinks. Head to Thailand and drink a can of Sprite, and you’ll down 47 grams of sugar. But a can of Sprite in Austria or Poland has 19 grams of sugar.
Why is Infant Mortality Higher in the U.S. Than in Europe?
▻http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/2015no1/w20525.html
There are numerous theories as to why the IMR is higher in the U.S. than in other countries. There may be reporting differences for infants born near the threshold of viability, with the U.S. more likely to count them as live births while other countries are more likely to count them as miscarriages or stillbirths. Babies in the U.S. also may have lower birth weight or a lower gestational age at birth, predisposing them to worse outcomes. Finally, U.S. babies may experience a higher neonatal mortality rate (deaths within the first month of life) or higher post-neonatal mortality rate (deaths in months one through twelve) than do babies of similar birth weight and gestational age in other countries.
To quantify the importance of these potential sources of the U.S. IMR disadvantage, the authors combine natality micro-data from the U.S. with similar data from Finland and Austria. These countries provide a useful comparison because Finland has one of the lowest IMRs in the world and Austria has an IMR similar to much of continental Europe.
