country:europe

  • Les #Etats-Unis, première #menace d’une #Europe divisée - Le Temps
    https://www.letemps.ch/monde/etatsunis-premiere-menace-dune-europe-divisee

    US poses bigger threat than Putin or Xi, say voters | World | The Times
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trump-a-greater-threat-to-peace-than-xi-or-putin-polls-suggest-ds8qrr5s6

    The US under President Trump is perceived as a greater threat to Europe’s security than China or Russia, according to an international opinion poll.

    Mr Trump’s standing has fallen so low among America’s allies that people in France and Germany are now significantly more likely to say they trust President Putin or President Xi to “do the right thing” on the global stage. A clear majority of people in eastern European countries including Poland fear that war will break out with Russia as the US-backed liberal order threatens to dissolve into an era of renewed conflict.

  • Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html

    There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

    Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

    Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

    In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

    At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

    Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

    A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.

    “It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”

    Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, said an American withdrawal from the alliance would be “a geopolitical mistake of epic proportion.”

    “Even discussing the idea of leaving NATO — let alone actually doing so — would be the gift of the century for Putin,” Admiral Stavridis said.

    Senior Trump administration officials discussed the internal and highly sensitive efforts to preserve the military alliance on condition of anonymity.

    After the White House was asked for comment on Monday, a senior administration official pointed to Mr. Trump’s remarks in July when he called the United States’ commitment to NATO “very strong” and the alliance “very important.” The official declined to comment further.

    American national security officials believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity between the United States and Europe after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Its goal was to upend NATO, which Moscow views as a threat.

    Comme on le voit au début et à la fin de cet extrait, si les #USA quittent l’#Otan ce sera pas mal la faute de la #Russie de #"Poutine

  • Vu sur Twitter :

    M.Potte-Bonneville @pottebonneville a retweeté Catherine Boitard

    Vous vous souvenez ? Elle avait sauvé ses compagnons en tirant l’embarcation à la nage pendant trois heures : Sarah Mardini, nageuse olympique et réfugiée syrienne, est arrêtée pour aide à l’immigration irrégulière.

    Les olympiades de la honte 2018 promettent de beaux records

    M.Potte-Bonneville @pottebonneville a retweeté Catherine Boitard @catboitard :

    Avec sa soeur Yusra, nageuse olympique et distinguée par l’ONU, elle avait sauvé 18 réfugiés de la noyade à leur arrivée en Grèce. La réfugiée syrienne Sarah Mardini, boursière à Berlin et volontaire de l’ONG ERCI, a été arrêtée à Lesbos pour aide à immigration irrégulière

    #migration #asile #syrie #grèce #solidarité #humanité

    • GRÈCE : LA POLICE ARRÊTE 30 MEMBRES D’UNE ONG D’AIDE AUX RÉFUGIÉS

      La police a arrêté, mardi 28 août, 30 membres de l’ONG grecque #ERCI, dont les soeurs syriennes Yusra et Sarah Mardini, qui avaient sauvé la vie à 18 personnes en 2015. Les militant.e.s sont accusés d’avoir aidé des migrants à entrer illégalement sur le territoire grec via l’île de Lesbos. Ils déclarent avoir agi dans le cadre de l’assistance à personnes en danger.

      Par Marina Rafenberg

      L’ONG grecque Emergency response centre international (ERCY) était présente sur l’île de Lesbos depuis 2015 pour venir en aide aux réfugiés. Depuis mardi 28 août, ses 30 membres sont poursuivis pour avoir « facilité l’entrée illégale d’étrangers sur le territoire grec » en vue de gains financiers, selon le communiqué de la police grecque.

      L’enquête a commencé en février 2018, rapporte le site d’information protagon.gr, lorsqu’une Jeep portant une fausse plaque d’immatriculation de l’armée grecque a été découverte par la police sur une plage, attendant l’arrivée d’une barque pleine de réfugiés en provenance de Turquie. Les membres de l’ONG, six Grecs et 24 ressortissants étrangers, sont accusés d’avoir été informés à l’avance par des personnes présentes du côté turc des heures et des lieux d’arrivée des barques de migrants, d’avoir organisé l’accueil de ces réfugiés sans en informer les autorités locales et d’avoir surveillé illégalement les communications radio entre les autorités grecques et étrangères, dont Frontex, l’agence européenne des gardes-cotes et gardes-frontières. Les crimes pour lesquels ils sont inculpés – participation à une organisation criminelle, violation de secrets d’État et recel – sont passibles de la réclusion à perpétuité.

      Parmi les membres de l’ONG grecque arrêtés se trouve Yusra et Sarah Mardini, deux sœurs nageuses et réfugiées syrienne qui avaient sauvé 18 personnes de la noyade lors de leur traversée de la mer Égée en août 2015. Depuis Yusra a participé aux Jeux Olympiques de Rio, est devenue ambassadrice de l’ONU et a écrit un livre, Butterfly. Sarah avait quant à elle décidé d’aider à son tour les réfugiés qui traversaient dangereusement la mer Égée sur des bateaux de fortune et s’était engagée comme bénévole dans l’ONG ERCI durant l’été 2016.

      Sarah a été arrêtée le 21 août à l’aéroport de Lesbos alors qu’elle devait rejoindre Berlin où elle vit avec sa famille. Le 3 septembre, elle devait commencer son année universitaire au collège Bard en sciences sociales. La jeune Syrienne de 23 ans a été transférée à la prison de Korydallos, à Athènes, dans l’attente de son procès. Son avocat a demandé mercredi sa remise en liberté.

      Ce n’est pas la première fois que des ONG basées à Lesbos ont des soucis avec la justice grecque. Des membres de l’ONG espagnole Proem-Aid avaient aussi été accusés d’avoir participé à l’entrée illégale de réfugiés sur l’île. Ils ont été relaxés en mai dernier. D’après le ministère de la Marine, 114 ONG ont été enregistrées sur l’île, dont les activités souvent difficilement contrôlables inquiètent le gouvernement grec et ses partenaires européens.

      https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/Une-ONG-accusee-d-aide-a-l-entree-irreguliere-de-migrants

      #grèce #asile #migrations #réfugiés #solidarité #délit_de_solidarité

    • Arrest of Syrian ’hero swimmer’ puts Lesbos refugees back in spotlight

      Sara Mardini’s case adds to fears that rescue work is being criminalised and raises questions about NGO.

      Greece’s high-security #Korydallos prison acknowledges that #Sara_Mardini is one of its rarer inmates. For a week, the Syrian refugee, a hero among human rights defenders, has been detained in its women’s wing on charges so serious they have elicited baffled dismay.

      The 23-year-old, who saved 18 refugees in 2015 by swimming their waterlogged dingy to the shores of Lesbos with her Olympian sister, is accused of people smuggling, espionage and membership of a criminal organisation – crimes allegedly committed since returning to work with an NGO on the island. Under Greek law, Mardini can be held in custody pending trial for up to 18 months.

      “She is in a state of disbelief,” said her lawyer, Haris Petsalnikos, who has petitioned for her release. “The accusations are more about criminalising humanitarian action. Sara wasn’t even here when these alleged crimes took place but as charges they are serious, perhaps the most serious any aid worker has ever faced.”

      Mardini’s arrival to Europe might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the extraordinary courage she and younger sister, Yusra, exhibited guiding their boat to safety after the engine failed during the treacherous crossing from Turkey. Both were elite swimmers, with Yusra going on to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

      The sisters, whose story is the basis of a forthcoming film by the British director Stephen Daldry, were credited with saving the lives of their fellow passengers. In Germany, their adopted homeland, the pair has since been accorded star status.

      It was because of her inspiring story that Mardini was approached by Emergency Response Centre International, ERCI, on Lesbos. “After risking her own life to save 18 people … not only has she come back to ground zero, but she is here to ensure that no more lives get lost on this perilous journey,” it said after Mardini agreed to join its ranks in 2016.

      After her first stint with ERCI, she again returned to Lesbos last December to volunteer with the aid group. And until 21 August there was nothing to suggest her second spell had not gone well. But as Mardini waited at Mytilini airport to head back to Germany, and a scholarship at Bard College in Berlin, she was arrested. Soon after that, police also arrested ERCI’s field director, Nassos Karakitsos, a former Greek naval force officer, and Sean Binder, a German volunteer who lives in Ireland. All three have protested their innocence.

      The arrests come as signs of a global clampdown on solidarity networks mount. From Russia to Spain, European human rights workers have been targeted in what campaigners call an increasingly sinister attempt to silence civil society in the name of security.

      “There is the concern that this is another example of civil society being closed down by the state,” said Jonathan Cooper, an international human rights lawyer in London. “What we are really seeing is Greek authorities using Sara to send a very worrying message that if you volunteer for refugee work you do so at your peril.”

      But amid concerns about heavy-handed tactics humanitarians face, Greek police say there are others who see a murky side to the story, one ofpeople trafficking and young volunteers being duped into participating in a criminal network unwittingly. In that scenario,the Mardini sisters would make prime targets.

      Greek authorities spent six months investigating the affair. Agents were flown into Lesbos from Athens and Thessaloniki. In an unusually long and detailed statement, last week, Mytilini police said that while posing as a non-profit organisation, ERCI had acted with the sole purpose of profiteering by bringing people illegally into Greece via the north-eastern Aegean islands.

      Members had intercepted Greek and European coastguard radio transmissions to gain advance notification of the location of smugglers’ boats, police said, and that 30, mostly foreign nationals, were lined up to be questioned in connection with the alleged activities. Other “similar organisations” had also collaborated in what was described as “an informal plan to confront emergency situations”, they added.

      Suspicions were first raised, police said, when Mardini and Binder were stopped in February driving a former military 4X4 with false number plates. ERCI remained unnamed until the release of the charge sheets for the pair and that of Karakitsos.

      Lesbos has long been on the frontline of the refugee crisis, attracting idealists and charity workers. Until a dramatic decline in migration numbers via the eastern Mediterranean in March 2016, when a landmark deal was signed between the EU and Turkey, the island was the main entry point to Europe.

      An estimated 114 NGOs and 7,356 volunteers are based on Lesbos, according to Greek authorities. Local officials talk of “an industry”, and with more than 10,000 refugees there and the mood at boiling point, accusations of NGOs acting as a “pull factor” are rife.

      “Sara’s motive for going back this year was purely humanitarian,” said Oceanne Fry, a fellow student who in June worked alongside her at a day clinic in the refugee reception centre.

      “At no point was there any indication of illegal activity by the group … but I can attest to the fact that, other than our intake meeting, none of the volunteers ever met, or interacted, with its leadership.”

      The mayor of Lesbos, Spyros Galinos, said he has seen “good and bad” in the humanitarian movement since the start of the refugee crisis.

      “Everything is possible,. There is no doubt that some NGOs have exploited the situation. The police announcement was uncommonly harsh. For a long time I have been saying that we just don’t need all these NGOs. When the crisis erupted, yes, the state was woefully unprepared but now that isn’t the case.”

      Attempts to contact ERCI were unsuccessful. Neither a telephone number nor an office address – in a scruffy downtown building listed by the aid group on social media – appeared to have any relation to it.

      In a statement released more than a week after Mardini’s arrest, ERCI denied the allegations, saying it had fallen victim to “unfounded claims, accusations and charges”. But it failed to make any mention of Mardini.

      “It makes no sense at all,” said Amed Khan, a New York financier turned philanthropist who has donated boats for ERCI’s search and rescue operations. To accuse any of them of human trafficking is crazy.

      “In today’s fortress Europe you have to wonder whether Brussels isn’t behind it, whether this isn’t a concerted effort to put a chill on civil society volunteers who are just trying to help. After all, we’re talking about grassroots organisations with global values that stepped up into the space left by authorities failing to do their bit.”


      https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/arrest-of-syrian-hero-swimmer-lesbos-refugees-sara-mardini?CMP=shar

      #Sarah_Mardini

    • The volunteers facing jail for rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean

      The risk of refugees and migrants drowning in the Mediterranean has increased dramatically over the past few years.

      As the European Union pursued a policy of externalisation, voluntary groups stepped in to save the thousands of people making the dangerous crossing. One by one, they are now criminalised.

      The arrest of Sarah Mardini, one of two Syrian sisters who saved a number of refugees in 2015 by pulling their sinking dinghy to Greece, has brought the issue to international attention.

      The Trial

      There aren’t chairs enough for the people gathered in Mytilíni Court. Salam Aldeen sits front row to the right. He has a nervous smile on his face, mouth half open, the tongue playing over his lips.

      Noise emanates from the queue forming in the hallway as spectators struggle for a peak through the door’s windows. The morning heat is already thick and moist – not helped by the two unplugged fans hovering motionless in dead air.

      Police officers with uneasy looks, 15 of them, lean up against the cooling walls of the court. From over the judge, a golden Jesus icon looks down on the assembly. For the sunny holiday town on Lesbos, Greece, this is not a normal court proceeding.

      Outside the court, international media has unpacked their cameras and unloaded their equipment. They’ve come from the New York Times, Deutsche Welle, Danish, Greek and Spanish media along with two separate documentary teams.

      There is no way of knowing when the trial will end. Maybe in a couple of days, some of the journalists say, others point to the unpredictability of the Greek judicial system. If the authorities decide to make a principle out of the case, this could take months.

      Salam Aldeen, in a dark blue jacket, white shirt and tie, knows this. He is charged with human smuggling and faces life in jail.

      More than 16,000 people have drowned in less than five years trying to cross the Mediterranean. That’s an average of ten people dying every day outside Europe’s southern border – more than the Russia-Ukraine conflict over the same period.

      In 2015, when more than one million refugees crossed the Mediterranean, the official death toll was around 3,700. A year later, the number of migrants dropped by two thirds – but the death toll increased to more than 5,000. With still fewer migrants crossing during 2017 and the first half of 2018, one would expect the rate of surviving to pick up.

      The numbers, however, tell a different story. For a refugee setting out to cross the Mediterranean today, the risk of drowning has significantly increased.

      The deaths of thousands of people don’t happen in a vacuum. And it would be impossible to explain the increased risks of crossing without considering recent changes in EU-policies towards migration in the Mediterranean.

      The criminalisation of a Danish NGO-worker on the tiny Greek island of Lesbos might help us understand the deeper layers of EU immigration policy.

      The deterrence effect

      On 27 March 2011, 72 migrants flee Tripoli and squeeze into a 12m long rubber dinghy with a max capacity of 25 people. They start the outboard engine and set out in the Mediterranean night, bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa. In the morning, they are registered by a French aircraft flying over. The migrants stay on course. But 18 hours into their voyage, they send out a distress-call from a satellite phone. The signal is picked up by the rescue centre in Rome who alerts other vessels in the area.

      Two hours later, a military helicopter flies over the boat. At this point, the migrants accidentally drop their satellite phone in the sea. In the hours to follow, the migrants encounter several fishing boats – but their call of distress is ignored. As day turns into night, a second helicopter appears and drops rations of water and biscuits before leaving.

      And then, the following morning on 28 March – the migrants run out of fuel. Left at the mercy of wind and oceanic currents, the migrants embark on a hopeless journey. They drift south; exactly where they came from.

      They don’t see any ships the following day. Nor the next; a whole week goes by without contact to the outside world. But then, somewhere between 3 and 5 April, a military vessel appears on the horizon. It moves in on the migrants and circle their boat.

      The migrants, exhausted and on the brink of despair, wave and signal distress. But as suddenly as it arrived, the military vessel turns around and disappears. And all hope with it.

      On April 10, almost a week later, the migrant vessel lands on a beach south of Tripoli. Of the 72 passengers who left 2 weeks ago, only 11 make it back alive. Two die shortly hereafter.

      Lorenzo Pezzani, lecturer at Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths University of London, was stunned when he read about the case. In 2011, he was still a PhD student developing new spatial and aesthetic visual tools to document human rights violations. Concerned with the rising number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Lorenzo Pezzani and his colleague Charles Heller founded Forensic Oceanography, an affiliated group to Forensic Architecture. Their first project was to uncover the events and policies leading to a vessel left adrift in full knowledge by international rescue operations.

      It was the public outrage fuelled by the 2013 Lampedusa shipwreck which eventually led to the deployment of Operation Mare Nostrum. At this point, the largest migration of people since the Second World War, the Syrian exodus, could no longer be contained within Syria’s neighbouring countries. At the same time, a relative stability in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 descended into civil war; waves of migrants started to cross the Mediterranean.

      From October 2013, Mare Nostrum broke with the reigning EU-policy of non-interference and deployed Italian naval vessels, planes and helicopters at a monthly cost of €9.5 million. The scale was unprecedented; saving lives became the political priority over policing and border control. In terms of lives saved, the operation was an undisputed success. Its own life, however, would be short.

      A critical narrative formed on the political right and was amplified by sections of the media: Mare Nostrum was accused of emboldening Libyan smugglers who – knowing rescue ships were waiting – would send out more migrants. In this understanding, Mare Nostrum constituted a so-called “pull factor” on migrants from North African countries. A year after its inception, Mare Nostrum was terminated.

      In late 2014, Mare Nostrum was replaced by Operation Triton led by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, with an initial budget of €2.4 million per month. Triton refocused on border control instead of sea rescues in an area much closer to Italian shores. This was a return to the pre-Mare Nostrum policy of non-assistance to deter migrants from crossing. But not only did the change of policy fail to act as a deterrence against the thousands of migrants still crossing the Mediterranean, it also left a huge gap between the amount of boats in distress and operational rescue vessels. A gap increasingly filled by merchant vessels.

      Merchant vessels, however, do not have the equipment or training to handle rescues of this volume. On 31 March 2015, the shipping community made a call to EU-politicians warning of a “terrible risk of further catastrophic loss of life as ever-more desperate people attempt this deadly sea crossing”. Between 1 January and 20 May 2015, merchant ships rescued 12.000 people – 30 per cent of the total number rescued in the Mediterranean.

      As the shipping community had already foreseen, the new policy of non-assistance as deterrence led to several horrific incidents. These culminated in two catastrophic shipwrecks on 12 and 18 April 2015 and the death of 1,200 people. In both cases, merchant vessels were right next to the overcrowded migrant boats when chaotic rescue attempts caused the migrant boats to take in water and eventually sink. The crew of the merchant vessels could only watch as hundreds of people disappeared in the ocean.

      Back in 1990, the Dublin Convention declared that the first EU-country an asylum seeker enters is responsible for accepting or rejecting the claim. No one in 1990 had expected the Syrian exodus of 2015 – nor the gigantic pressure it would put on just a handful of member states. No other EU-member felt the ineptitudes and total unpreparedness of the immigration system than a country already knee-deep in a harrowing economic crisis. That country was Greece.

      In September 2015, when the world saw the picture of a three-year old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey, Europe was already months into what was readily called a “refugee crisis”. Greece was overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Syrian war. During the following month alone, a staggering 200.000 migrants crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to reach Europe. With a minimum of institutional support, it was volunteers like Salam Aldeen who helped reduce the overall number of casualties.

      The peak of migrants entered Greece that autumn but huge numbers kept arriving throughout the winter – in worsening sea conditions. Salam Aldeen recalls one December morning on Lesbos.

      The EU-Turkey deal

      And then, from one day to the next, the EU-Turkey deal changed everything. There was a virtual stop of people crossing from Turkey to Greece. From a perspective of deterrence, the agreement was an instant success. In all its simplicity, Turkey had agreed to contain and prevent refugees from reaching the EU – by land or by sea. For this, Turkey would be given a monetary compensation.

      But opponents of the deal included major human rights organisations. Simply paying Turkey a formidable sum of money (€6 billion to this date) to prevent migrants from reaching EU-borders was feared to be a symptom of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude pervasive among EU decision makers. Moreover, just like Libya in 2015 threatened to flood Europe with migrants, the Turkish President Erdogan would suddenly have a powerful geopolitical card on his hands. A concern that would later be confirmed by EU’s vague response to Erdogan’s crackdown on Turkish opposition.

      As immigration dwindled in Greece, the flow of migrants and refugees continued and increased in the Central Mediterranean during the summer of 2016. At the same time, disorganised Libyan militias were now running the smuggling business and exploited people more ruthlessly than ever before. Migrant boats without satellite phones or enough provision or fuel became increasingly common. Due to safety concerns, merchant vessels were more reluctant to assist in rescue operations. The death toll increased.
      A Conspiracy?

      Frustrated with the perceived apathy of EU states, Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) responded to the situation. At its peak, 12 search and rescue NGO vessels were operating in the Mediterranean and while the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) paused many of its operations during the fall and winter of 2016, the remaining NGO vessels did the bulk of the work. Under increasingly dangerous weather conditions, 47 per cent of all November rescues were carried out by NGOs.

      Around this time, the first accusations were launched against rescue NGOs from ‘alt-right’ groups. Accusations, it should be noted, conspicuously like the ones sounded against Mare Nostrum. Just like in 2014, Frontex and EU-politicians followed up and accused NGOs of posing a “pull factor”. The now Italian vice-prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, went even further and denounced NGOs as “taxis for migrants”. Just like in 2014, no consideration was given to the conditions in Libya.

      Moreover, NGOs were falsely accused of collusion with Libyan smugglers. Meanwhile Italian agents had infiltrated the crew of a Save the Children rescue vessel to uncover alleged secret evidence of collusion. The German Jugendrettet NGO-vessel, Iuventa, was impounded and – echoing Salam Aldeen’s case in Greece – the captain accused of collusion with smugglers by Italian authorities.

      The attacks to delegitimise NGOs’ rescue efforts have had a clear effect: many of the NGOs have now effectively stopped their operations in the Mediterranean. Lorenzo Pezzani and Charles Heller, in their report, Mare Clausum, argued that the wave of delegitimisation of humanitarian work was just one part of a two-legged strategy – designed by the EU – to regain control over the Mediterranean.
      Migrants’ rights aren’t human rights

      Libya long ago descended into a precarious state of lawlessness. In the maelstrom of poverty, war and despair, migrants and refugees have become an exploitable resource for rivalling militias in a country where two separate governments compete for power.

      In November 2017, a CNN investigation exposed an entire industry involving slave auctions, rape and people being worked to death.

      Chief spokesman of the UN Migration Agency, Leonard Doyle, describes Libya as a “torture archipelago” where migrants transiting have no idea that they are turned into commodities to be bought, sold and discarded when they have no more value.

      Migrants intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) are routinely brought back to the hellish detention centres for indefinite captivity. Despite EU-leaders’ moral outcry following the exposure of the conditions in Libya, the EU continues to be instrumental in the capacity building of the LCG.

      Libya hadn’t had a functioning coast guard since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011. But starting in late 2016, the LCG received increasing funding from Italy and the EU in the form of patrol boats, training and financial support.

      Seeing the effect of the EU-Turkey deal in deterring refugees crossing the Aegean Sea, Italy and the EU have done all in their power to create a similar approach in Libya.
      The EU Summit

      Forty-two thousand undocumented migrants have so far arrived at Europe’s shores this year. That’s a fraction of the more than one million who arrived in 2015. But when EU leaders met at an “emergency summit” in Brussels in late June, the issue of migration was described by Chancellor Merkel as a “make or break” for the Union. How does this align with the dwindling numbers of refugees and migrants?

      Data released in June 2018 showed that Europeans are more concerned about immigration than any other social challenge. More than half want a ban on migration from Muslim countries. Europe, it seems, lives in two different, incompatible realities as summit after summit tries to untie the Gordian knot of the migration issue.

      Inside the courthouse in Mytilini, Salam Aldeen is questioned by the district prosecutor. The tropical temperature induces an echoing silence from the crowded spectators. The district prosecutor looks at him, open mouth, chin resting on her fist.

      She seems impatient with the translator and the process of going from Greek to English and back. Her eyes search the room. She questions him in detail about the night of arrest. He answers patiently. She wants Salam Aldeen and the four crew members to be found guilty of human smuggling.

      Salam Aldeen’s lawyer, Mr Fragkiskos Ragkousis, an elderly white-haired man, rises before the court for his final statement. An ancient statuette with his glasses in one hand. Salam’s parents sit with scared faces, they haven’t slept for two days; the father’s comforting arm covers the mother’s shoulder. Then, like a once dormant volcano, the lawyer erupts in a torrent of pathos and logos.

      “Political interests changed the truth and created this wicked situation, playing with the defendant’s freedom and honour.”

      He talks to the judge as well as the public. A tragedy, a drama unfolds. The prosecutor looks remorseful, like a small child in her large chair, almost apologetic. Defeated. He’s singing now, Ragkousis. Index finger hits the air much like thunder breaks the night sounding the roar of something eternal. He then sits and the room quiets.

      It was “without a doubt” that the judge acquitted Salam Aldeen and his four colleagues on all charges. The prosecutor both had to determine the defendants’ intention to commit the crime – and that the criminal action had been initialised. She failed at both. The case, as the Italian case against the Iuventa, was baseless.

      But EU’s policy of externalisation continues. On 17 March 2018, the ProActiva rescue vessel, Open Arms, was seized by Italian authorities after it had brought back 217 people to safety.

      Then again in June, the decline by Malta and Italy’s new right-wing government to let the Aquarious rescue-vessel dock with 629 rescued people on board sparked a fierce debate in international media.

      In July, Sea Watch’s Moonbird, a small aircraft used to search for migrant boats, was prevented from flying any more operations by Maltese authorities; the vessel Sea Watch III was blocked from leaving harbour and the captain of a vessel from the NGO Mission Lifeline was taken to court over “registration irregularities“.

      Regardless of Europe’s future political currents, geopolitical developments are only likely to continue to produce refugees worldwide. Will the EU alter its course as the crisis mutates and persists? Or are the deaths of thousands the only possible outcome?

      https://theferret.scot/volunteers-facing-jail-rescuing-migrants-mediterranean

  • Foreign Minister: Libya rejects Europe’s step to return migrants to Libya.
    https://www.libyaobserver.ly/news/foreign-minister-libya-rejects-europes-step-return-migrants-libya

    The Foreign Minister of the Presidential Council, Mohamed Sayala, stressed that Libya completely rejects the process of returning illegal immigrants from Europe to its territory, calling on the international community to enhance their role with regard to pressure on the countries of origin to stem the influx of migrants.

    “Libya does not accept this unjust and illicit procedure, it has more than 700,000 immigrants on its territory, the migrants must be sent back to the countries of origin that they came from, because Libya is just a transit country,” the minister said in a brief statement released by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.

  • Space in Videos - 2018 - 07 - From green to brown in a month
    http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2018/07/From_green_to_brown_in_a_month

    As this year’s heatwave continues, the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission reveals once again how the colour of our vegetation has changed in just one month. These two images cover the same area: part of Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, part of Germany and part of France, but the difference between them couldn’t be more striking. The first, captured on 28 June 2018, is predominantly green, depicting healthy vegetation. The second, captured on 25 July 2018, however, is mainly brown, showing just how much the vegetation has changed owing to the long hot dry spell Europe has been enduring over the last weeks.

    These two images were captured by Sentinel-3’s ocean and land colour instrument. See also similar captures over Germany, Denmark and Sweden: European drought.

    https://dlmultimedia.esa.int/download/public/videos/2018/07/045/1807_045_AR_EN.mp4

  • Israel and the U.S. are triggering a risky, unnecessary war of choice in the Middle East

    Triggering a Risky, Unnecessary War of Choice in the Middle East
    But neither Israel’s prime minister, nor other regional U.S. allies, have any assurances America will stick around to manage the dangerous fallout from the Iran deal’s implosion

    Daniel Levy May 10, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-and-the-u-s-are-triggering-a-risky-unnecessary-war-in-the-m

    We will probably never know the extent of responsibility Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears for the U.S. withdrawal, under President Trump, from the Iran nuclear deal.
    U.S.- Iranian relations have certainly long been poisonous, independent of Israel. Congressional enthusiasm for the deal was always low and, within the GOP, support for it near non-existent.
    Still, Netanyahu and the campaign he spearheaded certainly helped to create part of the backdrop to Trump‘s announcement; indeed, in his announcement, Trump gave Israel direct credit for supposedlysupplying “definitive proof” that Iran’s nuclear intentions were never peaceful. Not for the first time, a U.S. presidential text read like it was written in Jerusalem. 

    Israel will now have to live with the consequences of that success. Following Trump’s announcement, the nuclear deal is now on a clear path to unravelling completely, with only a small chance of reversing that trajectory.
    Iran has been honoring the stipulations of the JCPOA, something that Netanyahu and the deal’s many critics said would never happen, and they have produced no evidence to the contrary.
    The concerns which the U.S. and Israel had raised regarding the limitations of the deal, and with which Europeans, at least, were sympathetic – the sunset clause arrangements regarding Iranian nuclear energy, ballistic missile development, and especially the challenges posed by Iran regionally – all will now have to be addressed in an atmosphere of growing crisis.
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    That atmosphere will only be heightened now the nuclear issue is presumably back on the table, while tensions are escalating on Israel’s northern border, and the value of American international commitments have been significantly devalued. 
    Without batting an eye-lid, President Trump has effectively just called his European allies (as well as the Chinese and Russians) a bunch of morons for negotiating what he described as a “horrible,” "one-sided," “decayed,” "rotting" and “defective” deal.
    Despite his recent protestations that a shortcoming of the nuclear deal was its failure to address Iran’s regional ambitions, Netanyahu was among those who pushed hardest to keep the nuclear and regional files separate in any P5+1 dealings with Iran. He has now helped bring those two together.
    After Trump’s withdrawal decision there might be an attempt to create a semblance of continuity – Europeans and Iranians might explore avenues for retaining the deal which was, after all, blessed by the UN, and they could attempt to address the additional concerns raised by the U.S. But the odds are heavily stacked against that succeeding, if it is even attempted. 

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear program, in Tel Aviv, April 30, 2018.JACK GUEZ/AFP
    Europe cannot salvage the deal without the U.S. Thus far, Iran has implemented its side of the bargain without the reciprocal economic easing really materializing – that is primarily because European banks and companies feared being frozen out by U.S. financial institutions. Now what was speculation and risk management from European business has become fact, even fewer in the European private sector will risk extensive business dealings with Iran.

    A strong economic stand by Europe against U.S. direct and secondary sanctions, possibly even at the WTO, might make a difference. There are few signs that Europe is preparing such a response. 
    On the Iranian side the smart money will be on this strengthening those who cautioned against any expectations from the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, to honor agreements. 
    To try and claim, as the White House has done recently, that this exit could be a prelude to a better deal is to stretch incredulity to breaking point.
    The logic of Trump’s announcement is that he and his team expect one of three scenarios to play out - regime change in Iran, capitulation by Iran or confrontation with Iran.
    The music suggests that that the U.S. is betting on scenarios one or two. Neither option has much going for it other than wishful thinking. American-driven attempts at regime change have a very poor record indeed in the Middle East, and anyone who thinks that Iran will agree to terms dictated by Washington, Riyadh and Jerusalem has not been paying attention.
    All of which points in the direction of an increasing likelihood of the gloves coming off and of direct confrontation between some combination of the key protagonists (the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia on one side, Iran, Hezbollah and allied militias, including in Iraq, on the other.)

  • Gregory Klimov. The Terror Machine. Chapter 13
    http://g-klimov.info/klimov-pp-e/ETM13.htm

    Between Two Worlds

    Before the war I came across a book by Paul de Cruis: Is Life Worth Living? The book was a real find for the Soviet State Publishing Company; it was in complete accord with the Politburo course of that time, with its attack on the ’rotten democracies’. And so the book was translated and published in huge editions.

    The Russian edition had a foreword by the author; it was so amazing that I read it aloud to a friend: "’I cannot pass myself off as a proletarian; rather am I a bourgeois of the bourgeois, enervated and corrupted by the blessings of my social state.

    With a partridge wing in one hand and a glass of Burgundy in the other, I find it difficult to reflect on the social ulcers and painful problems of modern society. Nonetheless I am enthusiastic for the great Soviet experiment, I raise my right fist’ - holding the partridge wing or the Burgundy? - ’and cry: “Red Front!”’

    At this point my friend had had enough, and, swearing violently, he flung the book away. Both of us bitterly regretted that we hadn’t got the simple-minded Frenchman in the room with us. It may be there are people who get pleasure out of watching a dissected rabbit, but the rabbit itself hardly shares the pleasure.

    Paul de Cruis truthfully and honestly analyzed the defects of modem American society; he was indignant at the fact that American unemployed workers were living in extremely wretched conditions, and that their food consisted chiefly of fried potatoes and horribly salted pork. And their children received only a liter of ordinary milk a day, as an act of charity. And he exclaimed: “Is their life worth living?”

    Naturally, standards of good and bad are always relative. And possibly he was justified in concluding that in comparison with American living conditions generally such a state of affairs was very bad.

    But a Soviet reader reading those words might well ask: “And what is the state of the Soviet workers, who work themselves to death to earn a wage - not unemployment pay - which only very rarely assures them such a treat as pork, whether salted or unsalted? And what of their children, who even in the best years, received less milk than an American unemployed worker’s child? What answer could be given to the question: ’Was it worth while for these children to be born?”’

    After the war I recalled Paul de Cruis’ book, and especially his question: ’Is life worth living?’ For now some of us have had an opportunity to see the children of the democratic world, and that in conquered Germany, in conditions that were, generally speaking, worse than those applying in other democratic countries. Now we have had a chance to draw comparisons.

    In Germany the difference between the children of the two systems was painfully obvious. At first we noticed only the superficial differences; but when we had lived in Berlin for some time we saw another, much more profound difference. Soviet children seem like little soulless automata, with all their childish joy and lack of restraint suppressed.

    That is the result of many years of replacing the family by the State. Soviet children grow up in an atmosphere of mistrust, suspicion, and segregation. We in Berlin found it much more difficult to strike up a conversation with the child of a Soviet officer who was quite well known to us than with any German street urchin in the Berlin streets.

    The German children born in the Hitler epoch, and those who have grown up in the years following the capitulation, could hardly be exemplary in their characters. So we found it all the more depressing to note these vast internal and external differences between the children of the two systems.

    Here is a significant detail. The Germans are not in the habit of having their mother-in-law in the young married couple’s home; it is regarded as a family disaster. The German mothers-in-law themselves take the attitude that when they have disposed of their daughters they can ’enjoy life’; they ride cycles, visit the pictures, and live their own lives.

    In a Soviet family the exact opposite is the case. It is a bit of luck for the wife, and even more for the children, if her mother-in-law is living with them. Soviet children usually grow up in their grandmother’s care.

    Whereas the German woman of forty or more often begins a ’second youth’ when her daughter gets married, the Russian woman of over forty no longer has any personal life, she devotes herself wholly and entirely to her ’second family’, to her grandchildren. Only then is there any surety that the children will be brought up in a normal manner.

    Generalizing on this difference, one can say that the German woman belongs to the family, the Soviet woman to the State. A Soviet woman can become an engine driver, a miner, or a stonemason. In addition, she has the honorable right of voting for Stalin, and of being her husband’s hostage if the M. V. D. is interested in him. Only one small right is denied her: the right to be a happy mother.

    For a long time there were two conflicting theories as to the formation of the child character, and Soviet pedagogues were divided into two camps. The heredity theory maintained that the chief part in the development of human characteristics was played by the inherited genes; this theory came to be widely accepted by pedagogues after the emergence of a separate science of genetics. The second, environment, theory declared that the infant mind was a tabula rasa, on which environment wrote the laws of human development.

    This made the child’s characteristics exclusively dependent on the influences of its milieu. In due course the Politburo issued a specific instruction that the environmental theory was to be accepted as the basis of Soviet pedagogy. The totalitarian State fights wholeheartedly for the souls as well as the bodies of its citizens; it cannot stand any rivals in the formation of the citizen - not even genes. Soviet pedagogy now declares in so many words that the Soviet child is a hundred-per-cent product of its communist environment.

    During the period before this approach was finally established the Politburo based its system of Soviet education on a tenden-tious curriculum and the political organization of the youth in the Pioneers and the Young Communist League; in these organizations the children began when quite young to render their service to the State. The years passed, and after much experimentation the authorities went over from the ’method of conviction’ to the ’method of compulsion’.

    In 1940 a ’Committee for the Problem of Labor Reserves’ was set up as a subsidiary of the Council of People’s Commissars, and trades and technical schools attached to the factories and works were organized. The pupils for these educational institutions were compulsorily recruited at the age of fourteen, under the pretext of mobilizing labor reserves.

    In 1948 a State decree established the Suvorov and Nakhimov Cadet Schools. The task of these schools - there are some forty of them - is to prepare children of eight years and upward for a military career by a barrack style of education and training.

    I once had the opportunity to visit the Suvorov Cadet School at Kalinin. It was not far from Moscow, and consequently was the most privileged of all these schools, there being no Suvorov school in Moscow itself. At Kalinin I met a number of lads who were the grandsons of Politburo members.

    Petka Ordjonokidze, the grandson of Sergo Ordjonokidze, at one time People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry, was sitting in his underwear on his bed, for his uniform trousers were being repaired, and service regulations prescribed only one pair per child. In this respect, to have a highly influential and famous grandfather was of no advantage whatever. The teacher, a captain, complained of his delicate position in regard to Mikoyan’s youngest scion, who kept the whole establishment supplied with cigarettes, which he smuggled into the school.

    He could hardly be punished with the cells, for his grandfather was still alive and had a very good seat in the Politburo. Some of these lads of twelve or thirteen years old were wearing service decorations, which they had won as partisans. Seen close up, all this doesn’t look too bad: the Suvorov schools are privileged institutions in which the children are clothed, fed, and educated at the State expense.

    There are candidates and to spare for all vacancies, so it isn’t easy for the ordinary child to get to these schools. In that at Kalinin about half the pupils consisted of relations of generals and other members of the Soviet aristocracy.

    On leaving these schools the pupils may not enter any other than an officers’ training college. Their fate, their future career, are decided when they are eight years old. The classless society divides its children at an early age into strictly delimited castes: the privileged caste of the military and the caste of the proletarians, whose job is to do productive work, to multiply up to the approved limits, and to die for the glory of the leader.

    In 1946 an urgent conference was called by the head of the S. M. A. Political Administration to discuss the question of improving educational work in the Russian school at Karlshorst. Certain unhealthy trends had been noted among the scholars in the higher forms. A month or so before, a scholar in the ninth form had shot his father and his father’s young mistress.

    The father was a Party member, a lieutenant-general, and an official in the S. M. A. legal department. Apparently he had taken a fancy to wartime habits, and had been untroubled by the circumstance that he had been living with his paramour under the very eyes of his grown-up son and daughter, whose mother had remained in Russia.

    After fruitless talks, pleadings, and quarrels with his father, the son, a seventeen-year-old member of the Young Communist League, had decided to appeal to the advice and assistance of the Party organization. He had put in an official report to the head of the Political Department.

    When a Party man is accused of moral or criminal misconduct the Party organs usually act on the principle of not washing dirty linen in public. So the Political Department tried to hush up the affair, and only passed on the report to the father. The result could have been anticipated. The father was furious, and took active steps against his son. It ended by the son snatching up his father’s pistol and shooting him.

    Hardly had the commotion died down after this tragic incident when the Karlshorst commandant, Colonel Maximov, had to entrust a rather unusual task to a company of the commandatura guard. A mysterious band of robbers was operating in the wooded sand dunes and wilderness around Karlshorst, and filling the entire district with alarm and terror.

    The company sent to deal with it was strictly enjoined not to shoot without special orders from the officer in command, but to take the robbers alive. For they were scholars from higher forms of the Karlshorst school, and were led by the son of one of the S. M. A. generals. They were very well armed, with their father’s pistols, and some of them even with machine pistols.

    The district was combed thoroughly, the robbers’ headquarters were found in the cellar of a ruined house, and it was formally besieged. Only after long negotiations conducted through emissaries did the head of the band declare himself ready to capitulate. It is striking that the first of his conditions for surrender was that they were not to be sent back to the Soviet Union as a punishment. The officer in command of the company had to send a courier to the S. M. A. staff to obtain the necessary agreement to the condition. The stipulation greatly disturbed the S. M. A. Political Department.

    It was discovered that the results achieved in the higher forms of the Karlshorst school were not up to the standard of corresponding forms in the U. S. S. R., and on the other hand there was a considerable increase in truancy. The only improvement shown was in regard to German conversation, and this did not please the school authorities at all, as it showed that the pupils were in contact with the German world around them. That might have unpleasant consequences for the school staff.

    The commandatura patrols regularly hauled scholars out of the darkness of the Berlin cinemas in school hours. A search of the desks of older scholars led to the discovery of hand-written copies of banned Yesenin poems and amoral couplets by Konstantin Semionov, which soldiers had passed from hand to hand during the war. Worst of all, the S. M. A. hospital notified the chief of staff that several cases of venereal disease had occurred among the senior scholars. A sixteen-year-old girl was brought to the hospital suffering from a serious hemorrhage as the result of a clumsy attempt at abortion. Another girl lay between life and death for several months after she had made an attempt to gas herself because of an unhappy love affair.

    All these things had led to the Political Department calling an urgent conference, which decided that radical measures must be taken to improve the communist education of the Soviet children and youths in Germany. It was agreed that the most effective step towards effecting such an improvement was the approved panacea for all diseases: additional lessons on the ’Short Course of History of the C. P. S. U.’ and on the childhood and youth of the leaders of the world proletariat, Lenin and his true friend, collaborator and pupil, Joseph Stalin. It was also decided incidentally to send the incorrigible sinners home to the Soviet Union, a punishment which hitherto had been applied only to the adult members of the Karlshorst Soviet colony.

    *

    “Well, did you like it?”

    “Oh yes. An outstanding piece of work.”

    “Unquestionably. A real chef-d’oeuvre.”

    The solid stream of human beings carried us in the darkness out of the cinema of the officers’ club in Karlshorst. The crowd expressed their opinions about the film as they poured out.

    That morning Nadia, the secretary to the Party Organizer in the Administration for Industry, had rather startled us by her obliging conduct. She had gone from room to room, handing each of us a cinema ticket, and even asking affably how many we would like. Normally it wasn’t so easy to get hold of tickets; if you wanted to go you had to apply to Nadia very early.

    “Ah, Nadia, my dear! And what is showing today?” I asked, rather touched by her amiability.

    “A very good one, Gregory Petrovich. The Vow. How many tickets would you like?”

    “Ah! The Vow,” I murmured respectfully. “In that case let me have two.”

    The Soviet press had devoted a great deal of space to this film, extolling it to the skies as a new masterpiece of cinematic art. Although, generally speaking, I am skeptical of proclaimed masterpieces, I decided to go. It was so remarkably publicized that it would have been quite dangerous not to.

    Within five minutes of its beginning Captain Bagdassarian and I were watching the clock rather than the screen. It would have been an act of madness to leave, and yet to sit and watch the film...

    ’Let’s act as though we were going to the toilet, and then slip out," Bagdassarian whispered.

    “You’d better sit still and see it, out of scientific interest!” I advised him.

    Even in the pre-war Soviet films Stalin had begun to acquire a stature equal to Lenin’s. But in The Vow Lenin served only as a decorative motif. When they heard that Lenin was seriously ill the peasants from the entire neighboring district went on pilgrimage to the village of Gorky, where Lenin was living. But now it appeared that they had gone to Gorky only to plead, with tears in their eyes, for Stalin to be their leader. They swore their troth and fidelity to him for thousands of feet.

    I swore too. I swore that never in all my life, not even in pre-war days, had I seen such stupid, coarse, and unashamed botching. No wonder that our officers’ club had stopped showing foreign films for some months past.

    “Show a film like that abroad,” Bagdassarian said as we went home, “and they’ll believe that all Russians are a lot of fools.”

    “They’ve got plenty of rotten films of their own.” I tried to appease him.

    The few foreign films, which had been shown from time to time in the Soviet Union, were real masterpieces of the international cinema. Of course such films were shown only when they corresponded with higher interests and in conformity with the sinuosities of Soviet foreign policy.

    The result was that Soviet citizens came to have an exaggeratedly enthusiastic opinion of foreign cinema art. In Berlin we had extensive opportunities to see the achievements of various countries in this sphere. We often laughed till we cried at some heartrending American picture, with more shooting than dialogue, with blood streaming off the screen right into the hall, and it was quite impossible to tell who was killing whom, and why. It is a striking fact that, if one may dogmatize on the tastes of the ’common people’ at all, the ordinary Russian soldiers never got any enjoyment out of such films.

    It may seem strange, but we liked German films most of all. Whether in music, literature, or cinematic art-all of them spiritual revelations of national life - the German soul is more intelligible than any other to the Russians is. It has the same sentimentality, the same touch of sadness, the same quest for the fundamental bases of phenomena. It is significant that Dostoyevsky has enjoyed even greater popularity among the Germans than among Russians themselves, and that Faust is the crowning achievement of the Russian theater.

    We Russians often had interesting discussions about German films and plays. The Soviet viewer is struck by the unusual attention given to details, to facts, and to the actors themselves. These films provided plenty of matter for argument. The Vow provided no matter for argument.

    “Their art is passive, ours is active. Their art exhibits, ours commands,” Bagdassarian remarked. “Have you seen Judgement of the Nations’!”

    “Yes. It’s a powerful piece of work.”

    “I saw it recently in the American sector. They’ve given it quite different montage treatment, and call it Nuremberg. It’s the same theme, yet it makes no impact whatever.”

    We arrived at Bagdassarian’s apartment. Still under the influence of the film we had just seen, we sat discussing the possibilities of propaganda through art.

    “It’ll take the Americans another hundred years to learn how to make black white,” he said as he took off his greatcoat.

    “If they have to, they’ll soon learn,” I answered.

    “It can’t be done in a day. The masses have to be educated over many years.”

    “Why are you so anxious about the Americans?” I asked.

    “Only from the aspect of absolute justice.”

    “Who’s interested in justice? Might is right. Justice is a fairy-tale for the simple-minded.”

    “I award you full marks in Dialectical Materialism,” the captain sarcastically observed. “But, you know, during the war things were grand!” He sighed. “D’you remember the films the Americans sent us?”

    “Yes, they were pretty good. Only it was rather amusing to see how little they know about our life. In Polar Star the collective farmers had more and better food than Sokolovsky gets.”

    “Yes, and they danced round dances in the meadows, just like in the good old days.” He laughed aloud.

    In 1943 and later, American films on Russian subjects were shown in the Soviet Union. We particularly remembered Polar Star. Although it was very naive, and showed complete ignorance of the Soviet reality, it revealed genuine sympathy for the Russians.

    After a performance one often heard the Russian audience remark: “Fine fellows, the Americans”; although the film represented only Russian characters. The Russians took this kindly presentation of themselves as evidence of the American people’s sympathy for them.

    “That film had a number of expert advisers with Russian names,” I said. “I don’t suppose they’d seen Russia for thirty years or more. The American technique is good, but they haven’t any ideology. Probably they don’t even know what it is.”

    “Stalin’s making hell hot for them, but all they do is gape,” Bagdassarian meditated. “They don’t know what to do. Now they’re beginning to sneer at Russian Ivan: he’s pockmarked, he squints, and his teeth are crooked. The fools! The last thirty years of Russian history are still a white patch to them, yet it’s an inexhaustible well. They’ve only got to strip Stalin naked and the entire world would spit in disgust. And we Soviet people wouldn’t object. But when they start to sneer at Russian Ivan...”

    He sniffed, annoyed to think that the Americans couldn’t tumble to anything so simple.

    We were often amazed to see how little the outside world knew of the true position in Soviet Russia. The thirty years’ activity of the State lie-factory, and the hermetical closure of Russia to free information, had done their work.

    The world is told, as though it was a little child that the capitalist system is doomed to go under. But on that question Soviet people have no hard-and-fast standpoint. History is continually developing, and requiring new forms in its development. But even so, for us the historical inevitability of communism, the thesis that ’all roads lead to communism’, is the one constant factor in an equation which has many unknown and negative factors. For us Soviet people this equation has already acquired an irrational quality.

    We are united not by the intrinsic unity of a State conception, but by the extrinsic forms of material dependence, personal interests, or a career. And all these are dominated by fear. For some this fear is direct, physical, perceptible; for others it is an unavoidable consequence if they behave or even think otherwise than as the totalitarian machine demands.

    Later, in the West, I had an opportunity to see the American film The Iron Curtain, which dealt with the break-up of Soviet atomic espionage in Canada. I had already read various criticisms of this film, as well as the angry outbursts of the communist press, and I was interested to see how the Americans had handled this pregnant theme. It left two impressions.

    On the one hand, a feeling of satisfaction: the types were well chosen; the life of the official Soviet representatives abroad and the role of the local Communist Party were presented quite accurately. Once more I lived through my years in the Berlin Kremlin. No Russian would have any criticism to make of this presentation. It was not surprising that the foreign communist parties were furious with the film, for in this game they play the dirtiest role. Something, which for the staff of the military attaché’s department is a service duty, is treachery to their country when performed by the communist hirelings.

    On the other hand, the film left me with a vague feeling of annoyance. The Americans hadn’t exploited all the possibilities. The Soviet peoples are accustomed to films with the focus on politics, in which the audience is led to draw the requisite conclusions. In this respect The Iron Curtain scenario was obviously weak.

    In Berlin we Soviet officers were able to compare two worlds. It was interesting to set the impression made by real life against the fictions that the Soviet State creates and maintains. The direct creators of this fiction are the toilers with the pen, the ’engineers of human souls’, as they been have called in the Soviet Union.

    Of course we were chiefly interested in the writers who dealt with the problem of Soviet Russia. They can be divided into three main categories: the Soviet writers, who are slaves of the ’social command’; the foreign writers who have turned their backs on Stalinism; and, finally, those problematic foreigners who even today are still anxious to find pearls in the dungheap.

    Let us consider them as a Soviet man sees them.

    One day I found a French novel on Belyavsky’s desk. I picked it up to read the name of the author, and was astonished: it was Ilia Ehrenburg.

    “But haven’t you read it in Russian already?” I asked him.

    “It hasn’t been published in Russian.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “It’s quite simple.”

    He was right. Soviet experts on literature maintain that the finest journalists of the time are Egon Erwin Kisch, Mikhail Koltsov, and Ilia Ehrenburg. There is no disputing that they are all brilliant writers. Koltsov’s literary career came to an abrupt end in 1937, through the intervention of the N. K. V. D. It is said that he is now writing his memoirs in a Siberian concentration camp. For many years Ehrenburg was classified as a ’fellow-traveler’.

    With a Soviet passport in his pocket, he wisely preferred to live abroad, at a respectable distance from the Kremlin. This assured him some independence. His books were published in big editions in Soviet Russia, after they had been thoroughly edited. It was not surprising that I had found a book by him which was in French and unknown in the U. S. S. R. Only the Hitlerite invasion of France drove him back to his native land.

    First and foremost, Ehrenburg is a cosmopolitan. Many people think of him as a communist. True, he subtly and intelligently criticized the defects of Europe and the democratic world. But one doesn’t need to be a communist to do that-many non-communist writers do the same. After he had rid his system of his rabid, guttersnipe denunciations of the Nazi invaders he began to compose mellifluous articles about beautiful, violated France, the steadfast British lion, and democratic America.

    During the war we were glad to read these articles; but it seemed like a bad joke when we saw his signature beneath them. Today, obedient to his masters, he is thundering away at the American ’imperialists’. Ehrenburg, who once enjoyed some independence, has been completely caught in the Kremlin toils.

    His career and fate are very typical of Soviet writers generally. They have only two alternatives: either to write what the Politburo prescribes, or to be condemned to literary extinction. If Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin or Lermontov had lived in the age of Stalin, their names would never have been added to the Pantheon of human culture. When I was a student books such as Kazakov’s Nine Points, Lebedenko’s Iron Division, and Soboliev’s General Overhaul were passed from hand to hand.

    These names are not well known to the public generally, the books were printed in very small editions and it was difficult to get hold of copies. It is characteristic that they all dealt with the 1917-21 period, when the masses were still inspired with enthusiasm and hope. Their consciences did not allow these writers to write about later times; faced with the alternative of lying or being silent, they preferred silence.

    One cannot condemn the Soviet writers. Man is flesh and blood, and flesh and blood are weaker than lead and barbed wire. In addition there is the great temptation not only to avoid creative and physical death, but also to enjoy all the advantages of a privileged position. Some people may think it strange that there are millionaires in the land of communism. Genuine millionaires with an account in the State bank and owning property valued at more than a million rubles. Alexei Tolstoy, the author of Peter I and scenarios for Ivan the Terrible, was an example of the Soviet millionaire. Who can throw the first stone at a man faced with such alternatives?

    As for the foreign writers, they are simply not to be trusted! Not even the dead. At one time John Reed was in charge of the American section of the Comintern. True, he lived in Moscow, but that was in the order of things. He conscientiously wrote a solid book on the Russian revolution: Ten Days that Shook the World. Lunacharsky, the then People’s Commissar for Education, and Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, wrote introductions to the book in which they con-firmed that it was a perfectly truthful description of the October Revolution. John Reed departed from this life not very long after he had written the book, and his mortal remains were interred in the Kremlin wall: the highest distinction for outstanding communists.

    Then there was trouble! Reed had not foreseen that in Stalinist Russia history would be stood on its head. In all his story of the revolution he had devoted only two lines to Stalin, and those only in passing, whereas he had extolled to the skies Trotsky and the other creators of the revolution, all those who after Lenin’s death began to pass out with colds in the head and similar ailments.

    So John Reed’s remains had to be removed from the Kremlin wall.

    One can think of dozens of world-famous writers who in their quest for new ways for man waxed enthusiastic over communism. As soon as they came to know the Soviet reality they were permanently cured of their enthusiasm. I need mention only one of the latest of these. Theodor Plievier, author of the book Stalingrad, a German writer and communist who had spent many years in Moscow, fled from the Soviet zone into western Germany.

    In an interview given to the press he explained that there was not a trace of communism left in Stalinist Russia, that all communistic ideas were strangled and all the socialistic institutions had been turned into instruments of the Kremlin’s totalitarian regime. He discovered this quite soon after his arrival in Moscow, but he had to keep quiet and reconcile himself to the situation, since he was to all intents and purposes a prisoner.

    It is difficult to convict the Kremlin propagandists of pure lying. There is a refined art of lying, consisting in the one-sided ventilation of a question. In this field the Kremlin jugglers and commercial travelers have achieved a very high level of artistry: they pass over one side in complete silence, or even furiously revile it, while exalting the other side to the skies.

    In Berlin we often got hold of amusing little books written by foreign authors and published by foreign publishers, extolling Stalin and his regime. It is noteworthy that these books are either not translated into Russian at all, or they are published only in very small editions, and it is virtually impossible to buy copies. They are intended purely for external consumption. The Kremlin prefers that the Russians should not see such books: the lies are too obvious.

    Not far from the Brandenburg Gate there is a bookshop, ’Das Internationale Buch’. It is a Soviet shop selling literature in foreign languages and intended for foreign readers. We often visited it. Of course we didn’t buy Lenin’s works but ordinary gramophone records. Things that can’t be bought at any price in Moscow are offered in abundance to foreigners.

    Propaganda: only a Soviet man has any idea what that is! It is said of a famous drink that two parts of the price are for the mixture and three for the advertising, and many consumers are convinced that there is nothing in the world more tasty, healthy, and costly. Such is the power of advertising.

    Among the Soviet people communism is in a somewhat similar case. They are continually being told that communism is the finest of all systems, an achievement that is unsurpassable. The mixture is rather more complicated than that of any drink. It is injected into the Soviet man - day in and day out, from the moment of his birth. What advertising does in the Western World, propaganda takes care of in the U. S. S. R. The people are hungry, naked, thrust down to the level of speechless robots, and meanwhile they are assured that the complete opposite is the case. Most astonishing of all, they believe it, or try to. That makes life easier.

    The Kremlin knows what enormous power propaganda has over human souls; it knows the danger that threatens it if the mirage is dispelled. Under the Nazis during the war the Germans were for-bidden to listen to enemy broadcasts, but they were not deprived of their receiving sets. But the Kremlin did otherwise: in the U. S. S. R. all receiving sets were confiscated on the very first day of the war. The Kremlin knew its weak spot only too well. If its thirty years of propaganda are undermined, the ephemeral spiritual unity of the Kremlin and the people will vanish like mist.

    “The Press is our Party’s strongest weapon,” Stalin has said. In other words, the Kremlin’s strongest weapon is propaganda. Propaganda welds the internal forces and disintegrates the external ones. So much the better for Stalin that his opponents haven’t any real idea of the accuracy and significance of his words.

    Sommaire https://seenthis.net/messages/683905
    #anticommunisme #histoire #Berlin #occupation #guerre_froide

  • Foreign Policy Centre: Publications / Europe and the people: Examining the EU’s democratic legitimacy

    http://fpc.org.uk/publications/eudemocratic

    Europe and the people: Examining the EU’s democratic legitimacy
    [Cover of Europe and the people: Examining the EU’s democratic legitimacy ]

    Adam Hug (Ed.)

    June 2016

    Download Europe and the people (2.15 megabyte PDF)

    Europe and the people: Examining the EU’s democratic legitimacy examines the concerns across Europe around the democratic legitimacy of EU institutions and the European project as whole. It looks at how the debate about EU democratic legitimacy fits within the broader context of a crisis of institutions at both the national and global levels, particularly in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. The publication explores the mechanisms through which EU institutions seek to gain democratic legitimacy and how they try to engage the public, comparing and contrasting with other organisations at the national and international levels. It places the debate around European democratic legitimacy within the context of the UK referendum on EU membership, as well as the fallout from the Greek debt crisis. It sets out ideas for potential improvements in how the EU operates to increase its democratic legitimacy and accountability but recognises that some of the challenges will persist irrespective of efforts to reform.

    This publication contains contributions from: Dr Jim Buller, University of York; Professor Damian Chalmers, LSE; Oli Henman, Civicus; Dr Victoria Honeyman, University of Leeds; Adam Hug (ed.), Foreign Policy Centre; Professor James Mitchell, University of Edinburgh; Dr Marina Prentoulis, UEA; Adriaan Schout and Hedwich van der Bij, Clingendael; and Dr Matthew Wood, University of Sheffield.This publication is supported by the European Commission Representation in the UK Call for Proposals for civil society organisations 2015-16.

    #europe

  • #Iran Not Seeking Entry to U.S. Financial System, Envoy Says
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal-mohammad-javad-zarif.html

    “We never asked to have access to your financial system,” Mr. Zarif said. “What we asked was to implement the nuclear deal, which requires the United States to allow European financial institutions to have peace of mind for dealing with Iran.”

    [...]

    Because many international financial transactions are conducted in #dollars or converted to dollars, foreign companies interested in doing business with Iran remain wary of inadvertently violating the American rules. This reluctance has frustrated Iran and led to accusations by Iranian officials that the United States has subverted the nuclear agreement.

    #Etats-Unis

  • #Cameron: Si le #Brexit gagne, les vilains vous éviscéreront,

    ‘Even if we leave the EU, we won’t be able to control immigration,’ David Cameron warns - but his own Cabinet ministers say PM’s plan will see UK population hit 80m | Daily Mail Online
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3456880/Even-leave-EU-won-t-able-control-immigration-David-Cameron-warns-Cabine

    Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, Mr Cameron made a remarkable last-ditch appeal to Mr Johnson, claiming that membership of the EU was essential in the fight against Somalian pirates, standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and forcing Iran to abandon nuclear weapons.

    UK’s ’Special Status’ Deal With EU Means Russia Will Remain the Enemy
    http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/uks-special-status-deal-eu-means-russia-will-remain-enemy/ri12967

    For those of us who have hoped the divisions within Europe on sanctions against Russia would lead to their scrapping wholly or partially in July, what happened in Brussels yesterday is not good news. And to those who may wonder how this particular configuration of interests came about, the strings to these puppets all lead back to Washington.

  • Turkey’s Erdogan threatened to flood Europe with migrants -Greek website
    http://news.trust.org/item/20160208213511-qx48v

    The account of the meeting, in English, was produced in facsimile on the website. It does not state when or where the meeting took place, but it appears to have been on Nov. 16 in Antalya, Turkey, where the three met after a G20 summit there.

    “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses ... So how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees?” Erdogan was quoted in the text as telling the EU officials.

    It also quoted him as demanding 6 billion euros over two years. When Juncker made clear only half that amount was on offer, he said Turkey didn’t need the EU’s money anyway.

    The EU eventually agreed a 3 billion euro fund to improve conditions for refugees in Turkey, revive Ankara’s long-stalled accession talks and accelerate visa-free travel for Turks in exchange for Ankara curbing the numbers of migrants pouring into neighbouring Greece.

    In heated exchanges, Erdogan often interrupted Juncker and Tusk, the purported minutes show, accusing the EU of deceiving Turkey and Juncker personally of being disrespectful to him.

    The Turkish leader was also quoted as telling Juncker, a former prime minister of tiny Luxembourg, to show more respect to the 80-million-strong Turkey. “Luxembourg is just like a little town in Turkey,” he was quoted as saying.

    #turquie #marchandages #réfugiés #migrants

    A la base de ces « minutes » incroyables entre les « responsables » européens et Erdogan, une dépêche Reuters.

  • Iranian Crude - European To Import 300,000+ Barrels A Day - gCaptain
    https://gcaptain.com/iranian-crude-european-to-import-300000-barrels-a-day

    Iran will start sending 300,000 barrels a day of crude to Europe, 54 percent of the total it shipped before authorities on the continent put an embargo in place.

    Paris-based Total SA has agreed to buy about 160,000 barrels a day starting on Feb. 16, the ministry of oil’s Shana website reported, citing Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh. The company also expressed interest in developing the South Azadegan oil field in western Iran near the border with Iraq and in a liquid natural gas project, Shana reported. Total asked for the necessary information to submit a proposal for the LNG plant.

    Bon, ce n’est pas au meilleur moment, mais on peut se dire que les cours actuels fort bas avaient déjà anticipé la reprise des exportations iraniennes.

  • Refugee crisis: Russia and Norway battling to repeatedly reject the same refugees | Europe | News | The Independent
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-and-norway-are-in-a-two-way-battle-to-repeatedly-reject-the-sa

    With refugees from Syria and other warzones taking ever more desperate routes to safety in Europe, the arctic border between Russia and Norway has become an unlikely hot spot in the crisis.

    Last week, Norway announced it would immediately reject asylum seekers who had been residing in Russia, resulting in a battle between the two countries to send refugees back and forth.

    Norway said it would begin sending refugees who have Russian residency permits back to Russia without processing their asylum requests, arguing Russia was a safe country for them.

    At least 4,000 refugees, up from 10 last year, have made a detour through the Arctic to cross the border between Russia and Norway - which is a member of the Schengen agreement even though it is not an EU member.

    Norway says it has received no “satisfactory” explanation from Russia about why it has sent so many refugees to Norway rather than Finland, which has received almost none.

    Refugees use bicycles to cross the Arctic border, because the Russian border police do not allow on-foot crossings and it is illegal to cross the Norwegian border if the driver does not have the correct papers.

  • Forget Ukraine. It’s Business As Usual Between Europe and Russia
    http://www.newsweek.com/forget-ukraine-its-business-usual-between-europe-and-russia-369730

    It was just like the old days before the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014. At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok Gazprom clinched three major deals with some of Europe’s biggest energy companies.

    One of the most important was the revival of a lucrative asset swap between the Russian energy giant and Wintershall, the energy division of BASF, a German chemical company. BASF had abandoned that swap arrangement in December 2014 because of the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea.

    The asset swap and other deals signed in Vladivostok show how German as well as Austrian energy companies are loath to quit Russia. They also show how Gazprom wants to tie Europe’s lucrative gas market more closely to Russia. In 2013, Russia supplied the EU’s 28 countries with 30 percent of their gas needs.

    But more importantly, the deals confirm how Russia is determined to end Ukraine’s role as the major transit route for Russian gas to Europe. Half of the Russian gas imported by Europe crosses Ukraine.

    Under the terms of the deal between BASF and Gazprom, BASF’s subsidiary Wintershall will obtain a stake of 25 percent plus one share in the Urengoy natural gas fields in Siberia. Both firms will develop the fields.

    In return, Wintershall will transfer to Gazprom its jointly owned gas storage and trading business in Germany as well as a stake in its business in Austria. Through the asset swap, Gazprom will also receive a 50 percent stake in Wintershall’s exploration and production of oil and gas in the North Sea. These activities amounted to sales of over $13.4 billion in 2014, according to BASF.

    The second deal agreed to in Vladivostok involves Gazprom and a European consortium building a second Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea. This will enable Russia to send more of its gas directly to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.

    The consortium consists of BASF, German energy company E.ON, French electricity company Engie, Austrian oil and gas firm OMV and Royal Dutch Shell. Gazprom will own a 51 percent share of a new company called New European Pipeline AG, which will develop the project. The other partners will have a 10 percent stake, except for Engie, which will own 9 percent.

    The fact that the global energy majors participate in the project bespeaks its significance for securing reliable gas supply to European consumers,” stated Alexey Miller, chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee.

    Tell that to Poland and the Baltic states—and Ukraine. They had criticized the first Nord Stream pipeline, which was agreed to under the then German chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 2005. At the time, Warsaw argued that the deal increased Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

    Since then, however, Europe has been diversifying its energy supplies, spurred by the 2009 Ukraine gas crisis, which disrupted supplies to Europe because of a dispute between Russia and Ukraine over energy prices.

    Also, through its Third Energy Package, the European Commission is introducing more competition in the energy sector by breaking the hold any one company can have over the production, distribution and trading of gas. That is one of the main reasons why in December 2014 Russia pulled out of the South Stream project, which was to transport gas across the Black Sea to Southeastern Europe. Under the terms of the commission package, Russia would have had to open up the gas pipeline to competition.

    The third deal reached in Vladivostok involves OMV’s participation in the Urengoy oil and gas fields. When the deal is concluded, OMV will acquire a 24.8 percent stake in the project in exchange for Gazprom obtaining some of the assets of OMV.

    • Sans trop de surprise, le projet de #North_Stream_2 ne plait pas à l’Ukraine…

      Ukraine PM calls second Russia-Germany pipeline ’anti-European’ - Yahoo News
      http://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-pm-calls-second-russia-germany-pipeline-anti-173441635.html

      Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Thursday criticised as “anti-Ukrainian and anti-European” a deal between Russia’s energy giant Gazprom and several Western firms to build a second gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea.

      In June, Gazprom agreed with Anglo-Dutch Shell, Germany’s E.ON and Austria’s OMV to build the new gas pipeline — dubbed Nord Stream-2 — to Germany, bypassing conflict-torn Ukraine and also EU neighbour Poland.

      When the first Nord Stream was built, it brought the European Union no additional energy independence,” Yatsenyuk said after talks with Slovak counterpart Robert Fico in Bratislava.

      The construction of Nord Stream-2 is affecting the security of the continuous gas supply of the EU’s southeastern countries. It is a monopolisation of gas supply routes to the EU,” he told reporters.

      This project is anti-Ukrainian and anti-European.

  • 100,000-cow-power dairy farm in China to feed Russian market|William Hennelly|chinadaily.com.cn
    http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-07/09/content_21229700.htm

    A 100,000-cow dairy farm is being constructed in Northeast China to supply the Russian market with milk and cheese, in what can be construed as agricultural geopolitics.

    Russia has extended an import ban of most agricultural products from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Norway until August 2016, in retaliation for recently renewed Western economic sanctions over Russia’s military moves in Ukraine and Crimea.

    The new dairy site is in Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang province, Zhang Chuntszyao, chairman of the Association of Applied Economics of Heilongjiang province told Interfax on Monday.
    Russia’s ban was originally scheduled to expire in August, but was extended in late June in response to the renewal of Western sanctionsthrough January.

    It will be the world’s largest dairy farm and will be funded with 1 billion yuan ($161 million) from Russian and Chinese investors. China’s Zhongding Dairy Farming and Russia’s Severny Bur will work together on the project.

    China already is home to the world’s largest dairy operation, a 40,000-cow unit of the Maanshan, Anhui province-based China Modern Dairy Holdings Ltd, which operates 24 farms throughout the mainland.
    The largest US dairy farm is in Fair Oaks, Indiana, where 30,000 cows ply their trade.

    Earlier this month, China’s Huae Sinban Co signed an agreement to lease 115,000 hectares (284,000 acres) in Russia’s Transbaikal region for feedstock, according to state-run Russia Today. The company is expected to invest about $450 million in the project over the next half century. Huae Sinban plans to lease up to 200,000 hectares in Russia if the first stage of the project from 2015-2018 works out.

    Mansel Raymond, chairman of the Milk Working Party Copa-Cogeca, an organization representing European agricultural groups, said the ban and the Sino-Russian dairy venture are a concern for EU dairy farmers.
    The scale of Chinese investment in dairy production is vast,” Raymond told UK-based Farmers Weekly. "I wonder now whether we will ever get the Russian milk market back.
    "Building a 100,000-cow dairy farm is simply mind-boggling. If the project goes ahead and the 100,000 head represents milking cows, this unit alone could produce 800 million liters a year (about 200 million gallons).
    In that case, it would equate to 100,000 tons of cheese – and that would mean this unit alone could produce about 30 percent of our previous exports to Russia,” Raymond added.

  • Lieberman est parti. Les députés d’extrême-droite ultra-nationalistes Naftali Bennett et Ayelet Shaked sont venus, avec les portefeuilles de l’Education et de la Justice. Et il y a lieu de s’inquiéter. Non seulement ils prônent ouvertement l’éradication des Palestiniens mais ils veulent élargir la colonisation, restreindre les pouvoirs de la Cour Suprême et les donations étrangères aux ONG israéliennes… La question est de savoir si le Likoud et les autres membres de la coalition les laisseront faire...

    Europe and US keep watchful eye on Israel’s legislative plans - Israel News, Ynetnews
    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4655266,00.html

    Benjamin Netanyahu’s formation of one of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history has fuelled concerns in Europe and the United States about further settlement building and dimming prospects for peace.
     
     
    But it also has diplomats on edge about wider policy proposals, particularly on social and judicial affairs, where the far-right Bayit Yehudi party, an influential member of Netanyahu’s coalition, is determined to leave its mark.
     
    Ultra nationalist Bayit Yehudi, led by former technology entrepreneur Naftali Bennett, has secured two important cabinet portfolios: the education and diaspora ministry for Bennett and the justice ministry for his number two, Ayelet Shaked.
     
    Shaked, a 39-year-old former software engineer, is a divisive figure in Israeli politics, making outspoken comments against Palestinians while promoting a pro-settler agenda.
     
     
    Since entering parliament in 2013, she has backed a number of controversial bills, including one that would enshrine Israel as the Jewish nation-state, to the anger of Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority. Shaked also wants to check the Supreme Court’s power and restrict donations from foreign governments to non-governmental organizations in Israel.
     
    As justice minister, she will be in a position to push those legislative proposals more aggressively, with the NGO and judicial oversight bills expected to move ahead.

     
    For foreign diplomats, that raises as many concerns about the direction Israel is moving in as the expansion of settlements on land the Palestinians seek for a state - a profound, long-standing bone of contention.
     
    “The red lines for us aren’t just about settlements,” said the ambassador of one EU member state.
     
    “When you look at some of the legislation being proposed, it is very worrying. It is anti-democratic and looks designed to shut down criticism. It’s the sort of thing you normally see coming out of Russia.”
     
    Trigger for action 
    US diplomats have flagged their concerns too, while emphasising that they need to wait to see how the legislation pans out. With the narrowest of governing majorities - just 61 seats in the 120-seat parliament - it will be a challenge for Netanyahu to get new legislation approved.
     
    The nation-state bill, perhaps the most contested piece of law in Israel’s recent history, looks unlikely to progress because one member of the coalition, Moshe Kahlon, the leader of the centrist Kulanu party, has an effective veto.
     
    But the NGO and judicial oversight bills have a better chance of advancing, with Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the far-right Yisrael Beytenu party, a former ally of Netanyahu’s who is now in opposition, likely to support them.
     
    The NGO bill would impose a heavy tax on foreign donations to non-governmental organizations operating in Israel, unless a special defense ministry committee decides otherwise.
     
    “It’s part of a broader effort to limit the political space, to squeeze out opposing views,” said Matt Duss, president of the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace.
     
    “It has very negative connotations. It creates a hostile environment for those who express legitimate criticism and would put Israel in some very bad company.”
     
    In Europe, officials are discussing what steps may be taken against Israel if it continues to expand settlements, a process that continues apace, with tenders for 900 units in East Jerusalem issued this week.
     
    Israelis frequently fret that Europe is going to impose a trade boycott on them. No such action is likely.
     
    The EU does restrict loans to Israeli research bodies based in the West Bank, however, and is moving ahead with plans to label Israeli products made in West Bank settlements. Other measures are quietly being debated.
     
    In the past, the trigger to move ahead with such steps was settlement-building, which the EU regards as illegal under international law. But now, Israel’s legislative agenda may be as much of a danger.

     
    “It is a deep concern for us,” said the European ambassador. “It is the sort of thing that is a red line.”

  • Hundreds of Thousands Rally Against ’Immoral’ Charlie Hebdo in Chechnya | News | The Moscow Times
    http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/tens-of-thousands-rally-against-immoral-charlie-hebdo-in-chechnya/514544.html

    Hundreds of thousands of people protested in Russia’s Chechnya region on Monday against what its Kremlin-backed leader called the “vulgar and immoral” cartoons of the prophet Muhammed published by French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

    Mixing pro-Islamic chants and anti-Western rhetoric, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov criticized Europe to chants of “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as the protesters stood along the main thoroughfare of Chechnya’s capital, Grozny.

    Some carried signs declaring “I love my prophet Muhammed” in English and others waved flags, as security service helicopters flew overhead and police stood by.

    In a sign that it had President Vladimir Putin’s backing, the rally was shown live on state television. The Kremlin may see the protest as a way to vent pressure from Russia’s Muslims after a similar rally was banned in Moscow.

    If needed, we are ready to die to stop anyone who thinks that you can irresponsibly defile the name of the prophet,” Kadyrov said, wiping away tears on stage.

    You and I see how European journalists and politicians under false slogans about free speech and democracy proclaim the freedom to be vulgar, rude and insult the religious feelings of hundreds of millions of believers,” he said.

    Authorities and intelligence agencies of Western countries may have been behind the [Paris] incident to provoke a new wave of recruiting for the Islamic State,” Kadyrov said, Russian media reported. He did not elaborate on his theory.
    (…)
    Russia’s Interior Ministry said 800,000 people had attended the rally — about 60 percent of Chechnya’s population. Reuters witnesses put the number at several hundred thousand.


    Musa Sadulayev / AP

  • Russia and China expand economic cooperation - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/21/ruch-n21.html

    Affaire(s) à suivre absolument.

    Russia and China expand economic cooperation
    By Clara Weiss

    21 November 2014

    In the face of sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States, Russia has significantly expanded economic cooperation with China in recent months. In response to the Pacific and Atlantic trading blocs, the TPP and TTIP, with which the US is striving to exclude Russia and China, a bloc between Russia and China is emerging.

    At the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum in Beijing last week, Russian and Chinese firms concluded dozens of contracts. The most important concerned the cooperation of the Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft with the Chinese state-controlled company CNPC. Rosneft sold 10 percent of the Siberian Vankor field to CNPC.

  • Drug that wipes out vultures may cause an EU eco-disaster
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/drug-that-wipes-out-vultures-may-cause-an-eu-ecodisaster-9272395.html

    Bureaucratic ignorance has allowed a drug that almost wiped out India’s vultures to be sanctioned for use in Europe – raising fears that authorities will have to spend vast sums collecting and incinerating animal carcasses which the birds usually dispose of.

    Despite their unappealing looks, vultures make a vital contribution to public health in southern Europe.

    But Spain, which is home to about 100,000 vultures, has horrified conservationists and bird lovers by approving the use of diclophenac – a powerful anti-inflammatory drug used that is beneficial to mammals but will kill any vulture that feeds on a carcass containing traces of the drug.


    #vautours #pharma

  • Russia sanctions: Why the U.S. and Europe are not quite in step - CNN.com
    http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/07/business/russia-sanctions-why-the-u-s-and-europe-are-not-quite-in-step/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

    How important is Russia’s economy?

    Russia is the eight biggest economy in the world, with GDP of more than $2 trillion. Its economy — which is heavily reliant on commodities, particularly oil and gas — is expected to grow only slightly in 2014 to around $2.4 trillion. Hopes it would be one of the decade’s powerhouse economies have faded, with its GDP growing just 1.3% last year compared to 2012, one of the sharpest slowdowns in the emerging markets.

    Russia boomed in the late 1990s and early 2000s as energy prices rose, then stumbled as demand for commodities contracted. But its energy supplies remain vitally important for the European Union, to which it supplies a third of its natural gas. Germany, the eurozone’s biggest economy, imports around 40% of its gas from Russia.

    But Russia’s relationship with the West has fractured over the Ukraine crisis, and it now risks being economically isolated by the U.S. and the European Union. Visa bans have been introduced, and harsher sanctions threatened.

    What is Russia’s economic relationship with the U.S?
    Obama: The world should support Ukraine
    Obama orders sanctions over Ukraine

    The economic relationship between Russia and the U.S. is unbalanced. Russia is the 20th largest trading partner for the U.S., with $27 billion worth of trade exported across the Atlantic. On the flip-side, the U.S. is Russia’s fifth largest partner, with just $11 billion worth of trade.
    Barroso: Ukrainian goal is convergence

    According to Russian Foundation chair David Clark, trade is a “relatively unimportant” component of relations. Energy links are also weakening as the U.S. looks to shale gas for its energy supplies and heads towards self-sufficiency.

    However, on Thursday the U.S. State Department imposed a visa ban on Russian and Ukrainian officials and individuals “responsible for, or complicit in threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” President Barack Obama also signed an Executive Order laying the groundwork to impose sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for the crisis.

    In a statement the White House said the move was a response to “Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity — actions that constitute a threat to peace and security and a breach of international law.”

    Clark said the U.S. could get greater leverage over Russia from financial sanctions aimed at the country’s banking system and stability of the ruble. Measures targeted at named individuals, similar to those contained in the Magnitsky Act, could also be effective. “Russia’s angry response to the act shows that it works,” Clark said.

    Russia has threatened to retaliate against sanctions but, according to Clark, it “has a great deal to lose by escalating too far. Seizing western property would make Russia a no-go zone for foreign investors who Russia desperately needs to modernize its economy and maintain energy production.”

    s Europe going to do the same?

    The EU is Russia’s largest trading partner, and there are deep economic links between the two. Almost half of Russia’s exports — $292 billion worth — end up in EU countries. Russia, in turn, is the third biggest trading partner for the EU, with $169 billion in imports.

    The EU has stepped more cautiously than the U.S. on sanctions. On Thursday, the EU threatened to impose sanctions on Russia if the negotiations between Moscow and Kiev did not prove effective in dealing with the Ukraine crisis.

    European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said negotiations needed to start in the next few days and “produce results.” Without that, he said, the EU would look to additional measures such as travel bans, asset freezes, and cancellation of the EU and Russia summit.

    Earlier, a document leaked from British government suggested the UK was happy to impose sanctions — but only those that would not cause harm to the country’s financial sector.

    And while G8 members — excluding Russia — are threatening to abandon a Sochi summit planned for later this year, Germany has also pushed for more diplomacy.

    Clark believes Russia could retaliate against any European sanctions, saying it would probably try and “pick-off some of the countries that have been most forceful in advocating tough measures against it — especially Poland and the Baltic States.” However, “it probably wouldn’t retaliate against the EU as a whole or against Germany.”

    Meanwhile, the West has offered $16 billion in aid for Ukraine, helping the country prop up its ailing finances. Ukrainian leaders have said they will be $30 billion in the hole by the end of 2015. About half of that debt comes due in 2014.

    Why the different approaches?

    The eurozone has only just emerged from its own crisis, and would be wary of cutting ties with such a powerful economic partner. Its reliance on gas out of Russia would also feed caution. In contrast, the U.S. is weaning itself off Russia’s energy supplies and its trade relationship is much less intertwined.

    But Louise Cooper, of financial blog CooperCity, said the West risks looking weak if it doesn’t follow tough talk with action. The EU has so far “only come up with a threat of symbolic sanctions, even after Crimea has effectively been taken over by Russia with a new pro-Russian government,” she noted. Even the U.S. visa ban “will have no impact on either the Russian economy or the American one,” she said.

    Meanwhile Russia risks isolating itself, Clark said. “It can maintain de facto control over Crimea indefinitely, but it will come at a very considerable long-term cost to Europe’s willingness to consider Russia as anything other than a source of trouble and insecurity.”

    #Russie
    #Ukraine
    #Etats-Unis
    #Europe

  • Congress, Europe resist U.S. sanctions on Russia over Ukraine - latimes.com
    http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-us-ukraine-20140305,0,4752834.story#axzz2v5KlJs4N

    http://www.trbimg.com/img-53168bff/turbine/la-afp-getty-ukraine-russia-politics-unrest-eu-aid-20140304/600

    WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s plans to impose punitive economic sanctions on Russia — potentially its strongest response to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine — already are facing resistance from administration allies in Congress and Europe.

    Although administration officials say they are prepared to freeze assets of top Russian officials and possibly target state-run financial institutions, European allies — who are heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas supplies — signaled they aren’t ready to follow suit.

    Top Democrats on Capitol Hill also are split, with some, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, arguing that the administration should wait for European support to give the sanctions more bite.

    “To be effective, sanctions need to be multilateral, not unilateral,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday in a statement.

    Other lawmakers, including House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said they supported sanctions and were ready to move quickly to adopt them.

    President Obama sought to emphasize agreement among world leaders, saying during an appearance at a Washington public school that “together, the international community has condemned Russia’s violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”

    But key European governments, including those in Germany, Britain, France and Italy, indicated in emergency meetings in Brussels that, for now at least, they prefer other routes of persuasion.

    The split underscores a broader divide between the United States and Europe, partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance for 65 years, over how to deal with Moscow.

    The Europeans, closer and more intertwined economically with Russia, don’t share the U.S. enthusiasm for sanctions as a diplomatic tool, and worry that curbing trade and business could hurt them without persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

    Russia is the European Union’s No. 3 trading partner, following only the United States and China. Trade totaled $462 billion in 2012, more than 10 times America’s $40 billion in trade with Russia, mostly between banks, energy companies and consumer products concerns.

    Europe has little alternative to Russian energy.....

    #World
    #Congress
    #Europe
    #US
    #Russia
    #Ukraine
    #Europeans
    #energy
    #fuel
    #natural-gas
    #Moscow
    #Crimea

  • Jihadist Groups Gain in Turmoil Across Middle East - NYTimes.com

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/world/middleeast/jihadist-groups-gain-in-turmoil-across-middle-east.html?nl=todaysheadlines&

    WASHINGTON — Intensifying sectarian and clan violence has presented new opportunities for jihadist groups across the Middle East and raised concerns among American intelligence and counterterrorism officials that militants aligned with Al Qaeda could establish a base in Syria capable of threatening Israel and Europe.

    #syrie #jihadisme

  • World’s worst airline hopes to expand
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/todayinthesky/2013/09/26/north-korea-air-koryo-worlds-worst-airline-expand/2879039

    The world’s worst airline is expanding—if it can get its website to work.
    North Korea’s Air Koryo is reportedly planning to expand to Southeast Asia and Europe despite international sanctions (...) it is the only airline in the world to have a one-star rating on review site Skytrax.

    #avion #corée_du_nord cadeau pour @reka

  • Russians take protests online - Europe - Al Jazeera English
    http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2012/01/201211417451291342.html

    Russia is gearing up for more protests in the wake of December’s controversial elections as demonstrators turn to newer forms of technology to try to prevent Putin’s re-election in March’s presidential poll.

    The country’s opposition rallies have grown rapidly, much like those in the Arab world, in large part due to the power of internet.