INTL Europe: Politics, Economics, and Military- September 2021

[Plain Jane]

August thread is here:

INTL - Europe: Politics, Economics, Military- August 2021

July's thread is here: https://www.timebomb2000.com/xf/index.php?threads/europe-politics-economics-military-july-2021.603379/ Main Coronavirus thread beginning page 1369 is here: https://www.timebomb2000.com/xf/index.php?threads/main-coronavirus-thread.566780/page-1369...

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Regional Conflict in Mediterranean beginning page 75:

WAR - Regional conflict brewing in the Mediterranean

First Squawk @FirstSquawk · Follow BLINKEN: U.S. DOES NOT SEEK CONFLICT WITH IRAN BLINKEN: IF IRAN OR ITS PROXIES ATTACK US, MAKE NO MISTAKE WE WILL DEFEND OUR PEOPLE, WE WILL DEFEND OUR SECURITY SWIFTLY AND DECISIVELY 11:44 AM · Oct 24, 2023

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Main Coronavirus beginning page 1384:

CORONA - Main Coronavirus thread

Thank you

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Poland seeks state of emergency at Belarus border – DW – 08/31/2021

The Polish border is set to go into a 30-day state of emergency to further prevent refugees and migrants from entering the country. The EU has accused Belarus of intentionally sending migrants across the border.

www.dw.com

Poland seeks state of emergency over Belarus border crossings
The Polish border is set to go into a 30-day state of emergency to further prevent refugees and migrants from entering the country. The EU has accused Belarus of intentionally sending migrants across the border.




Poland has been fortifying its border to Belarus, as Minsk stands accused of intentionally steering irregular migrants towards its neighbors' territory

The Polish government on Tuesday asked President Andrzej Duda to declare a state of emergency at the country's border with neighboring Belarus.

The plan to impose a state of emergency along the border comes after some 3,000 migrants tried to enter the country from Belarus during August. Poland's government and the EU believes the unauthorized crossings and attempted crossings are being orchestrated by Alexander Lukashenko's regime in Minsk.

Once approved, the emergency rules would ban demonstrations in a thin strip along the border as well as obliging people to carry identity documentation. It would last for 30 days before requiring renewal.

EU blames Lukashenko
"The situation on the border with Belarus is a constant crisis," Poland's right-wing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters. "That is why we have decided to propose this solution to the president."

Migrants have also entered Latvia and Lithuania, two other EU member states bordering Belarus. Most of the migrants are from the Middle East and Afghanistan. Belarussian authorities have been accused of flying people into the country in order to send them into neighboring EU states.

The EU believes Lukashenko's strongman regime is trying to use immigration as a form of leverage against the bloc's stringent sanctions. Minsk

Poland began the construction of a 2.5-meter-tall fence along its 418-kilometer (260-mile) border last week.

Watch video02:49
Migrants stuck in limbo at Belarus-EU border
Poland divided
The Polish government has taken a hard line in a bid to prevent refugees and migrants from entering the country and beginning asylum claim processes.

The situation has, however, split the country with the liberal opposition, non-governmental organizations and the Catholic Church all criticizing the government's stance.

Poles have also been divided about the fate of a particular group of 30 migrants, suspected to have come from Afghanistan, who have been stranded at the border for over three weeks.

Polish authorities arrested 13 activists over the weekend who had been protesting what they called "inhuman" behavior on the part of the government by cutting a hole in the new fence.


Watch video03:38
Lithuania faces record migrant influx, calls for EU help
ab/msh (dpa, AP, AFP)

 

[Melodi]

Like it or not, the reality on the ground is this is becoming a humanitarian crisis of the real kind (that word gets thrown around a lot).

These migrants/refugees whoever were forced at GUNPOINT by Belarus into the no man's land between Belarus and Poland partly as a "payback" for European sanctions over their essentially hijacking a European airplane to remove two passengers who were wanted by the regime.

Poland won't let them in, and Belarus shows them guns and shoots at them if they try to go back there.

It is starting to get cold and night now and these people need food, water, and shelter. At this point, in my opinion, the EU should at least airlift them out and send them to a UN Refugee camp or something. Obviously, if they are from Afghanistan they can't be sent back there right now but there are other options.

We can argue all day if they "should" have left home or not (if they were Afghans I sure understand why they did) but forcing people to choose between death by exposure and starvation or gunfire, well that isn't something I like to see happening in the West if it can be avoided.

I have no problems with deportation or setting up well-run refugee camps (that has been done since WWII) and I understand Europe or the US can't take everybody - but this current situation is just WRONG.

 

[Plain Jane]

Afghan 'wake-up call' breeds support for EU military force

Senior European Union officials say the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the rushed airlift operation out of the country have highlighted the EU's need for its own rapid-reaction military force.

apnews.com

Afghan ‘wake-up call’ breeds support for EU military force
By SAMUEL PETREQUINyesterday



1 of 5
Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Jansa, left, and European Council President Charles Michel, center, attend a meeting of the Bled Strategic Forum at the Bled Festival Hall in Bled, Slovenia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. The Bled Strategic Forum gathers participants from various fields to discuss solutions to present and future challenges. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — The collapse of Afghanistan’s government, the Taliban’s takeover of the country, and the rush to evacuate European citizens and Afghan employees have highlighted the European Union’s need for its own rapid-reaction military force, senior EU officials say.

As the foreign and defense ministers of member states gather in Slovenia this week to discuss the EU’s approach to the Afghan crisis, officials said in interviews and public remarks that the 27-nation bloc’s dependence on U.S. troops during the airlift of evacuees demonstrated the EU’s lack of preparedness and independence.

“As a global economic and democratic power, can Europe be content with a situation where we are unable to ensure, unassisted, the evacuation of our citizens and those under threat because they have helped us?” European Council President Charles Michel said Wednesday. “In my view, we do not need another such geopolitical event to grasp that the EU must strive for greater decision-making autonomy and greater capacity for action in the world.”


After the Biden administration pulled most of its military personnel from Afghanistan, Taliban militants took control of the conflict-ravaged country in just a few weeks as the NATO-trained Afghan national security forces withered. NATO allies that had relied on U.S. airpower, transportation and logistics during their two decades in Afghanistan said they were forced to pull out, too.

And without U.S support and equipment, European countries would not have been able to guarantee the safe passage of their citizens or even their troops out of Afghanistan.

Amid calls for “European strategic autonomy” from a non-member like the United States, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Wednesday in a opinion piece for The New York Times that the withdrawal of Western troops and airlift from Afghanistan should serve as a “wake-up call” and urged the bloc to invest more in its security capabilities.

“Europe and the United States were united as never before in Afghanistan: It was the first time that NATO’s Article 5, committing all members to defend one another, was invoked. And for many years, Europeans provided a strong military commitment and an important economic aid program, amounting to a total of 17.2 billion euros, or $20.3 billion,” Borrell wrote.

“But in the end, the timing and nature of the withdrawal were set in Washington. We Europeans found ourselves — not only for the evacuations out of the Kabul airport but also more broadly — depending on American decisions,” the EU’s top diplomat said.

To better address any future crises at Europe’s doorstep, EU member nations have floated the idea of setting up a 5,000-member stand-by-force capable of quickly intervening.


“This is a number that can make a big difference in many different situations,” one senior EU official said this week. The person spoke anonymously in accordance with EU practices. He said the U.S deployed around 5,000 troops to secure the Kabul airport, and held up as an example the 5,000-soldier anti-jihadist French military force based in the Sahel region.

France and Germany have pushed for years for the creation of such a force, with both Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron repeatedly calling for a true European army. While discussions about establishing one are far from complete, the idea has gained renewed support in the wake of what happened in Afghanistan.

Spain’s top military official, Chief of Staff Teodoro López Calderón, told El Mundo newspaper in an interview published Wednesday that the EU’s dependence on the U.S. has been “absolute” and that the bloc must develop a military force to be a relevant player on the international scene.

“If not, it will never be one,” he said. “Creating a European army means having a common foreign policy and that we all share the same interests. This is a political leap that still must be achieved. But I don’t think there is any doubt that Brussels should increase its military capacity. That is one of the important consequences of what happened in Afghanistan.”

Jana Puglierin, a security and defense policy expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said that since the United States is no longer interested as serving as the “world’s policeman,” the pressure has increased on Europeans to step up.

“In the future, the European Union will need to enhance its contribution to crisis prevention, stabilization, and peacebuilding,” Puglierin said. “The Afghanistan mission has forcefully demonstrated to the Europeans how much they depend on American capabilities.”

The idea of a European military force first got discussed in the 1990s with the Balkans wars surrounding the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in mind. Back then, the EU set a military target of putting at the bloc’s disposal up to 60,000 troops capable of deployment within 60 days.

Instead, the EU later created rapid reaction teams comprising about 1,500 personnel, but they have never been used in a major crisis, and the bloc does not deploy EU missions to active conflict zones.

Another senior EU official said the currently discussed military force would be “much bigger” than the current standby forces if member countries reach a consensus. He said the troops would train and conduct exercises together, and that parts of the costs would be covered through common funding.
___
Joseph Wilson in Barcelona and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this story.

 

[Plain Jane]

Merkel prepares to step down with legacy of tackling crises

Angela Merkel will leave office as one of modern Germany’s longest-serving leaders and as a global diplomatic heavyweight.

apnews.com

Merkel prepares to step down with legacy of tackling crises
By GEIR MOULSONyesterday



1 of 15
In this Monday, June 3, 2013 file photo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stand behind a window with a reflection of the European flag as she waits for the arrival of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands at the chancellery in Berlin. Angela Merkel will leave office as one of modern Germany's longest-serving leaders and a global diplomatic heavyweight, with a legacy defined by her management of a succession of crises that shook a fragile Europe rather than any grand visions for her own country. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

BERLIN (AP) — Angela Merkel will leave office as one of modern Germany’s longest-serving leaders and a global diplomatic heavyweight, with a legacy defined by her management of a succession of crises that shook a fragile Europe rather than any grand visions for her own country.

In 16 years at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy, Merkel did end military conscription, set Germany on course for a future without nuclear and fossil-fueled power, enable the legalization of same-sex marriage, introduce a national minimum wage and benefits encouraging fathers to look after young children, among other things.

But a senior ally recently summed up what many view as her main service: as an anchor of stability in stormy times. He told Merkel: “You protected our country well.”

“All the major crossroads you had to navigate ... we never mapped out in any election program — they came overnight and you had to govern well,” Bavarian governor Markus Soeder said.

Merkel passed her first test in 2008, pledging at the height of the global financial crisis that Germans’ savings were safe. Over the following years, she was a leading figure in the effort to save the euro currency from the debt crisis that engulfed several members, agreeing to bailouts but insisting on painful spending cuts.

In 2015, Merkel was the face of a welcoming approach to migrants as people fleeing conflicts in Syria and elsewhere trekked across the Balkans. She allowed in hundreds of thousands and insisted that “we will manage” the influx, but ran into resistance both at home and among European partners.

And in the twilight of her career — she announced in 2018 that she wouldn’t seek a fifth term — she led a COVID-19 response that saw Germany fare better than some of its peers.

On the international stage, Merkel insisted on seeking compromises and pursuing a multilateral approach to the world’s problems through years of turbulence that saw the U.S. drift apart from European allies under President Donald Trump and Britain leave the European Union.

“I think Ms. Merkel’s most important legacy is simply that, in such a time of worldwide crises, she provided for stability,” said Ralph Bollmann, a biographer of Merkel and a journalist with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

There was “a constant succession of crises that were really existential threats and raised questions over the world order we are used to, and her achievement is that she led Germany, Europe and perhaps to some extent the world fairly safely through that, for all that you can criticize details,” Bollmann said.

Before winning the top job in 2005, he noted, Merkel campaigned as “a chancellor of change, who wanted to make Germany more modern,” seeking deeper economic reforms and a more socially liberal approach than her center-right party had previously taken.

But she ditched much of her economic agenda after almost blowing a huge poll lead by turning off voters with talk of far-reaching reforms, instead embracing what she called an approach of “many small steps.” Along with a pragmatic willingness to jettison conservative orthodoxy such as conscription when opportune, it enabled her to dominate the center ground of German politics.

Crises consumed so much energy that “not much time was left to deal with other issues,” Bollmann said. There is plenty of unfinished business: Merkel has conceded that “the lack of digitization in our society” is a problem, ranging from notoriously patchy cell phone reception to many health offices using faxes to transmit data during the pandemic.

Merkel’s political longevity is already historic. Among democratic Germany’s post-World War II leaders, she lags only Helmut Kohl, who led the country to reunification during his 1982-98 tenure. She could overtake even him if she is still in office on Dec. 17. That’s feasible if parties are slow to form a new government after the Sept. 26 election.

Merkel, 67, insists that others must judge her record. Still, she highlighted a few achievements at a rare campaign appearance last month, starting with the reduction of the number of unemployed in Germany from over 5 million in 2005 to under 2.6 million now.

Predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, whose welfare-state trims and economic reforms were beginning to kick in when he left office, arguably deserves part of the credit.
Merkel also inherited a plan to exit nuclear power from Schroeder, but abruptly accelerated it following the meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima plant in 2011. More recently, she set in motion Germany’s exit from coal-fueled power.

The chancellor pointed to progress on renewable energy, saying its share of the German energy mix has risen from 10% to well over 40%. Merkel was often referred to as the “climate chancellor” in her early years, but also has drawn criticism for moving too slowly; her government this year moved forward the date for reducing German greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” to 2045, after the country’s top court ruled that previous plans place too much of the burden on young people.

Merkel praised her government’s drive to improve Germany’s public finances, which enabled it to stop running up new debt from 2014 until the coronavirus pandemic pushed it into huge rescue packages. Opponents argue that it skimped on necessary investments in infrastructure.

“I could talk about how we saved the euro,” she said, adding that “our principle of combining the affected countries’ own responsibility with solidarity was exactly the right method to give the euro a future.” Merkel’s austerity-heavy approach was resented deeply in parts of Europe and controversial among economists, but allowed her to overcome reluctance at home to bail out strugglers.

Whatever the ultimate verdict, Merkel can celebrate a unique end to her tenure: she is set to become the first German chancellor to leave power when she chooses.
___
Kerstin Sopke in Berlin contributed to this report.

 

[Plain Jane]

EU pushes for more autonomy amid Afghanistan fallout

European Union ministers discussed Thursday their options to beef up the 27-nation bloc's strategic autonomy and improve its capacity to respond to future crises.

apnews.com

EU pushes for more autonomy amid Afghanistan fallout
By SAMUEL PETREQUINSeptember 2, 2021



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European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, left, speaks with Dutch Defense Ank Bijleveld prior to a group photo at a meeting of EU defense ministers at the Brdo Congress Center in Kranj, Slovenia, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

BRDO CASTLE, Slovenia (AP) — Still reeling from the European Union’s shortcomings in Afghanistan, officials from the 27-nation bloc on Thursday discussed ways to improve their response to future crises and not be so reliant on the U.S.

“Afghanistan has shown that the deficiency in our strategic autonomy comes with a price,” EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said following talks in Slovenia with defense ministers that also involved NATO and UN officials. “And that the only way forward is to combine our forces and to strengthen not only our capacity, but also our will to act.”

During their meeting, European defense ministers looked at ways to improve the bloc’s operational engagement and develop a rapid response force capable of operating in difficult military theaters. They also discussed plans for the so-called strategic compass, a document aiming at harmonizing crisis management and defining defense ambitions for the bloc that is expected to be drafted before the end of the year.

Their foreign affairs counterparts later met for a debate on the future relationship the EU wants to develop with the Taliban. Borrell said the bloc needs to take into account the country’s new political reality and to define how it will engage with the new rulers.


The EU has set conditions for working with the Taliban, including the respect of human rights and the safe passage of those still willing to leave the country.

“Certainly we have to develop an engagement with the Taliban for many issues,” Borrell said, adding that the most pressing issue was to bring help to those looking for a way out.

Borrell insisted that the people leaving the war-torn country should not be treated as migrants but considered as asylum seekers amid fears in many member states that an Afghan refugee crisis could soon develop in Europe.

One EU official with direct knowledge of the ministerial discussions said there was a general consensus among defense ministers to acknowledge the “fiasco” that followed the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s takeover and the rushed airlift operation that followed the U.S. decision to pull out have laid bare the EU’s dependency on its ally. Without American support, European countries wouldn’t have been able to guarantee the safe exit of their citizens or even their troops.

“The strategic situation, the geostrategic changes, show that now we need a stronger Europe,” said Claudio Graziano, the chairman of the EU military committee. “The situation in Afghanistan, Libya, Middle East, Sahel, show that now it’s the time to act starting with the creation of a rapid European entry force able to show the will of the European Union to act as a global strategic partner. When if not now, later would be late.”

But finding a consensus among the 27 EU member states to create such a standby EU force of around 5,000 troops is not an easy task.


European countries on the border with Russia often oppose the idea of autonomy, for instance Poland and the Baltic nations. EU heavyweight Germany is also a strong supporter of using NATO for security operations and keeping the U.S. defense umbrella in Europe.

“We don’t have yet a complete unanimity, I would be lying to you if today everybody agreed on that explicitly,” Borrell said.

He added that in light of the disengagement of the U.S. on the international scene, the EU has no other option than to increase its capacity to act independently.

“It’s nothing against NATO, it’s nothing against the EU-US alliance, it’s a way of becoming stronger, facing our responsibilities and mobilizing the resources in order to face the challenges that we will have to face,” he said.

The EU is already endowed with rapid reaction teams — so-called battlegroups — each made up of about 1,500 personnel. But they have never been used in major crises, and the bloc doesn’t deploy EU missions to active conflict zones.

German defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the focus now would need to be on the kinds of troops needed to conduct a mission such as the U.S. military-run evacuation from Kabul airport.

“It’s not about what NATO does or what the EU does,” she added. “To some extent it’s about what we as Europeans do in NATO.”

Slovenian Defense Minister Matej Tonin, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said defense ministers also debated how to send soldiers abroad even without consensus, by lifting the unanimity requirement.

“Maybe the solution is we invent a mechanism where a classical majority will be enough and those who are willing will be able to go,” he said. “If a majority within the European Union decides to send somewhere the troops, they can go in the name of the European Union. And the countries which will participate in these groups will be let’s say the willing countries. So that we don’t force the countries who don’t want be part of that mission.”
___
Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this story.

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

La Résistance: French Create Their Own Makeshift Restaurant Again To Protest Vax Passports

BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, SEP 04, 2021 - 08:10 AM
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Another example has emerged of French people creating their own makeshift outdoor restaurant in protest against the country’s vaccine passport system.


Video footage out of Reims shows large numbers of people, including many families, camped out on the street enjoying picnics in defiance of the new rule, which bans the unvaccinated from entering bars, cafes or restaurants.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1433134724625670150

View: https://twitter.com/LE_GENERAL_OFF/status/1433134724625670150?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1433134724625670150%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcovid-19%2Fla-resistance-french-create-their-own-makeshift-restaurant-again-protest-vax-passports


Vaccine passports are also being used to prevent people who haven’t been jabbed from using public transport and accessing a multitude of other venues.



The sit down protest took place at Place d’Erlon, near to restaurants that demonstrators are unable to enter because they haven’t taken the clot shot.

This is the second time the protest has taken place in this location, although this time the numbers appear to be even larger.


As we highlighted last month, anger at the vax pass system is running so rampant that many businesses are refusing to enforce it.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1430672523604238336

View: https://twitter.com/Chrissy_2697/status/1430672523604238336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1430672523604238336%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcovid-19%2Fla-resistance-french-create-their-own-makeshift-restaurant-again-protest-vax-passports



Former Google software engineer Mike Hearn revealed how compliance with the new rules was minimal as he was able to enter numerous venues without showing proof of vaccination or a valid negative test.

This contrasted with the early days of the introduction of the program, during which police were seen patrolling cafes demanding to see people’s medical papers.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424730996738568195

View: https://twitter.com/PaoneAntony/status/1424730996738568195?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1424730996738568195%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcovid-19%2Fla-resistance-french-create-their-own-makeshift-restaurant-again-protest-vax-passports

 

[Plain Jane]

Tensions in Montenegro over Serbian church leaders – DW – 09/05/2021

Protesters have blocked roads in Montenegro as the Serbian Orthodox Church prepares to inaugurate Montenegro's next top cleric. They reportedly threw stones at police, shouting: "This is not Serbia."

www.dw.com

Montenegro: Tensions erupt over Serbian church leaders
Protesters have blocked roads in Montenegro as the Serbian Orthodox Church prepares to inaugurate Montenegro's next top cleric. They reportedly threw stones at police, shouting: "This is not Serbia."




The small Balkan country remains deeply divided over its ties with the neighboring Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church

Police fired tear gas and began to take down barricades Sunday in Cetinje, Montenegro ahead of the inauguration of the new leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the country.

Sunday's planned ceremony in the historic Montenegrin city of Cetinje has infuriated opponents of the Serbian church. Jasmin Mujanovic, an expert in Southeast European affairs, posted some videos of the clashes on Twitter.

The small Balkan nation declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2006, but some Montenegrins remain divided over their country's relations with Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox church — Montenegro's dominant religious institution. Around 30% of Montenegro's population consider themselves Serb.

The inauguration is set to take place in a monastery in Cetinje, the one-time capital of Montenegro

Since its independence, some Montenegrins have called for a new Orthodox Christian church that is separate from the Serbian one.

What is happening in Cetinje?
Protesters in Cetinje waved Montenegrin flags, as dozens set up road barriers with garbage containers, car tires and stones to block entrance to the city.

They said their goal was to prevent Metropolitan Bishop Joanikije II and other church and state officials from entering the city for the inauguration, the local Vijesti newspaper reported.
By Saturday evening, protesters had blocked all the roads into the city of Cetinje.

Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, arrived in the capital, Podgorica, on Saturday evening.

Porfirije is scheduled to attend the inauguration of Joanikije, whose predecessor as the church's leader in Montenegro, Amfilohije, died in October last year following COVID-19-related complications.

Montenegrin state RTCG broadcaster reported that demonstrators managed to break through a police barricade at the entrance to the city and threw stones at officers, yelling: "This is Montenegro!" and "This is not Serbia!"

Last month, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Cetinje, demanding that the inauguration take place elsewhere. The church has refused to modify its plans.

Watch video05:20
Journalists face repression in Montenegro
mvb/dj (AP, dpa)

 

[Plain Jane]

Ukraine says Russia has detained over 50 Crimean Tatars

Ukrainian officials say more than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained by Russian law enforcement. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that has been denounced by most of the world.

apnews.com

Ukraine says Russia has detained over 50 Crimean Tatars
By YURAS KARMANAUSeptember 4, 2021


KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — More than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained by Russian law enforcement officers in Crimea, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, detained five minority Crimean Tatar activists, including Nariman Dhzelal, the deputy chairman of the Mejlis representative body for the Tatars in Crimea, and raided their homes.
In response, more than 50 Crimean Tatars gathered in front of the FSB’s branch in the Crimean city of Simferopol to protest the arrests.
“As a result, more than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained,” Denisova wrote on Facebook on Saturday. “They were shoved into buses with force and beaten, and taken to different police precincts in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where they’re being questioned without lawyers present.”

Denisova added that two journalists were among those detained and called on “the entire international community to use all possible leverage ... in order to end repressions against the indigenous population.”

Russian authorities and the authorities of Crimea have not yet commented on the situation.
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that has been denounced by most of the world. Ethnic Russians, who form a majority of Crimea’s 2.3 million people, widely supported the Russian annexation, but Crimean Tatars, who accounted for nearly 15%, opposed it. An estimated 30,000 Crimean Tatars have fled Crimea since 2014.
Some who stayed have faced a crackdown by Russian authorities, who banned the Crimean Tatars’ main representative body and some religious groups. About 80 Crimean Tatars have been convicted of various charges and 15 activists have gone missing, according to Amnesty International.

Last week, Ukraine hosted the Crimean Platform, an international summit aimed at building up pressure on Russia over the annexation. The fate of Crimean Tatars was one of the top issues on the agenda.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry maintained that the latest detentions were carried out in “retribution for participation in the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform” and represented “the latest in a series of repressions by Russia, aimed at intimidating representatives of the Crimean Tatar people and ousting them from the temporarily occupied peninsula.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded the release of the detained Crimean Tatars in a tweet on Saturday.

“The occupants of Crimea once again resort to persecution of Crimean Tatars. Regular raids and detentions take place in their homes,” Zelenskyy wrote. “All those detained must be freed!”

 

[Plain Jane]

Emotions raw before Paris trial for Islamic State carnage

Survivors of Islamic State group's 2015 attack on Paris and those who mourn the 130 people killed that night are bracing for a long-awaited trial that starts this week in Paris.

apnews.com

Click to copy
Emotions raw before Paris trial for Islamic State carnage
By LORI HINNANT and NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY2 hours ago



1 of 22
FILE - In this Friday Nov. 13, 2015 file photo, a victim under a blanket lays dead outside the Bataclan theater in Paris. France is putting on trial 20 men accused in the Nov. 13, 2015, Islamic State terror attacks on Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured. Nine gunmen and suicide bombers struck within minutes of each other at the national soccer stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and restaurants and cafes. Salah Abdeslam, the lone survivor of the terror cell from that night is among those being tried for the deadliest attack in France since World War II. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

PARIS (AP) — For the music lover, it was nearly three hours at gunpoint, wondering if he would become yet another body on the floor of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

For the grieving mother, the night of carnage robbed her of her son and tarnished her view of the vibrant neighborhood they both loved.

For the French president, a celebration of the national soccer team transformed into sleepless days of facing down a shocking extremist attack.

The survivors of the Islamic State group attack on Paris the night of Nov. 13, 2015, and those who mourn the 130 dead, are bracing for the long-awaited trial and hoping for justice.

It begins Wednesday in a secure modern complex embedded in Paris’ original 13th-century courthouse. The main chamber and 12 overflow rooms can accommodate 1,800 victims, 330 lawyers and 141 accredited journalists for the nine-month trial.

Twenty men are going on trial, six of them in absentia. All but one of the absent men are presumed dead in Syria or Iraq. Most are accused of helping create false identities, transporting the attackers back to Europe from Syria, providing them with money and phones, and supplying explosives and weapons.

The attacks sent France into a state of emergency. For Stéphane Toutlouyan and the others held hostage inside the Bataclan, the transformation was intensely personal.

“The reaction to this, afterwards, was to try and take back control of our lives and do the things that maybe we’d not done before, because we had no time to lose,” he told The Associated Press.

On that fateful Nov. 13, a cell of nine IS supporters armed with automatic rifles and explosive vests struck across French capital. Nearly all were from France or Belgium, as were the cell’s 10th member and sole survivor, Salah Abdeslam.

Abdeslam, who ditched his car and malfunctioning explosives vest, is the only defendant facing murder charges in the trial. Another key defendant, Mohammed Abrini, reappeared months later in footage of the IS attack on the Brussels airport and subway.


Many of the dead attackers, along with Abdesalam and Abrini, were childhood friends from the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Some joined the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, including the Paris attack ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Driving three rental cars, they took their “convoy of death” to the highway linking Brussels and Paris on Nov. 12, 2015, and scattered in reserved hotel rooms.

The next day, the German and French soccer teams faced off at the Stade de France, the country’s national stadium just outside Paris.

It was a balmy Friday evening, and the city’s bars and restaurants were packed. Victor Muñoz, a 25-year-old native of Paris’ 11th arrondissement, was with old friends. At the nearby Bataclan concert venue, the American band Eagles of Death Metal were playing to a full house, including Toutlouyan, an enthusiastic fan of live rock.
The sound of the first suicide bombing at 9:16 p.m. barely carried over the noise of the stadium’s crowd. The second came four minutes later. French President François Hollande, at the soccer game with Germany’s foreign minister, was told about the dead bombers outside.
“I stayed in my place for a few minutes to avoid a panic effect. People see me from their seats, and they can’t make the link between the detonations and my departure, or there’s the risk of stampede,” Hollande told Le Parisien newspaper this month.

By then, a squad of gunmen including Abdeslam’s brother and Abaaoud had opened fire at La Bonne Bière and other bars and restaurants in the neighborhood. Muñoz was among the dead.
That bloodshed outside came to an end at 9:41 p.m. at the Café Voltaire when Brahim Abdeslam detonated his explosives. The other two attackers fled.

Worse was to follow. At 9:47 p.m., three more gunmen burst into the Bataclan, firing indiscriminately. Ninety people died within minutes. The gunmen singled out a dozen people, including Toutlouyan. To this day, he doesn’t know why they were spared.

“We stood behind a window for 2½ hours, watching what was going on, all the while wandering whether they would shoot us in five minutes, in two hours or in two days. At that moment, and for 2½ hours, we weren’t the masters of our own lives,” he said.

Their instructions: To report on the locations of police, then to act as go-betweens during sporadic negotiations. Shortly after midnight, Hollande gave the order to move in. Two of the gunmen blew themselves up; the third was shot by police.

Now there are questions that only the men on the stand can answer.
Abdeslam’s decision to abandon the Renault Clio in northern Paris and call Brussels for help is a puzzle. Two friends drove through the night to fetch him, and on the road back to Belgium he slipped through three police checkpoints.

Abdeslam was finally arrested in his Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek in March, days before the IS network attacked the Brussels airport and subway, killing 32 more people.

Abrini’s role is murky as well. He spent a night with the IS attackers, but left Paris on Nov. 12, hiring a driver to take him three hours back to Brussels because he had missed the last train. He popped up again in Brussels months later, accompanying two suicide bombers to the airport but walked away as the bloodshed started.

Two of the defendants are charged with plotting a simultaneous attack at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in 2015 and went to the airport on Nov. 13, but returned to Brussels for unknown reasons. Abdeslam’s car idled for a while that day at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport as well.

The day after the murderous evening, a Frenchman in Syria claimed responsibility for the attacks in the name of IS.

Abaaoud and another attacker died days later in a police raid.

Abdeslam refused to speak to investigators or his lawyers in Belgium. But he did request a young attorney in France known for her eloquence, Olivia Ronen. She will be his primary lawyer.
For many victims, speaking out is the point. A month is dedicated to their testimonies.

“It’s really the participation that is important for them,” said Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer representing 10 victims. “What they’re seeking is the establishment of truth, justice.”
___
Alex Turnbull contributed to this report.

 

[Zagdid]

Last piece of Nord Stream 2 pipeline in place – DW – 09/06/2021

Engineers have welded together the final piece of piping of the controversial conduit, operators say. Gas supply to Germany is expected to begin in October.

www.dw.com

Nord Stream 2: Last piece of gas pipeline is in place
Engineers have welded together the final piece of piping of the controversial conduit, operators say. Gas supply to Germany is expected to begin in October.

Construction on the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline took a major step to completion Monday.
According to the company, the final piece of piping has been welded together. It will then be lowered into place in the Baltic Sea. It must then be connected and will then be expected to begin operating.

Why is Nord Stream 2 controversial?
Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom said once the project has been completed the pipeline will begin supplying Germany in October. The €10 billion ($12 billion) project is expected to double the carrying capacity to Germany.
The construction of the pipeline has been dogged by delays and should have been completed by December 2019.

Its construction has been a sore point in Washington, with US sanctions ultimately delaying the final delivery of the project.
The US is not happy with what it believes will be a more dependent relationship between Europe and Russia. Washington does not want Moscow using energy as a weapon, and has sought assurances from Berlin that it will act if that is seen to be the case.

Role of Ukraine in Nord Stream 2
Kyiv has been opposed to the project because of a bypass which prevents the routing of the pipeline through Ukraine. This bypass will deprive the country out of billions in transit fees. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the project is a "dangerous geopolitical weapon."

"We view this project exclusively through the prism of security and consider it a dangerous geopolitical weapon of the Kremlin," Zelenskyy said at the time.

Those comments were made last month when German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the country, fresh from her last meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

[Plain Jane]

Opinion piece.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Will Germany Finally Start The EU Breakup?

BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, SEP 08, 2021 - 03:30 AM
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,
We’ve all been so focused on the internal divisions in the U.S. and with Davos trying to run the table here that we’ve neglected somewhat old theses about the potential breakup of the European Union.

The EU is a mess. Everyone knows this. Its banks are zombies. Its bond markets oxymorons. Its trade relations with the world degrading. And its relationship with the people it nominally governs is turning toxic.

Moreover, it is led by a bunch of unelected, horrific women who are all the very definition of midwits and ideologues. These are the faces that you want to look at when you consider why women shouldn’t run countries, companies or even school boards.

Hell, the older I get, the less I think women should even vote, but we’ll leave my wife’s wisdom aside for now.



(H/T Martin Armstrong for the picture here)

Honestly, the only woman not pictured here who should be is French President Emmanuel Macron.

These women were all placed in these positions by Klaus Schwab and George Soros to effect the transformation of the EU from a loose quasi-government into a full technocratic police state. Reading Armstong’s comments (linked above) leads you to believe that there is no internal resistance to this plan.

They intent to default on all public debt and replace even pensions with Guaranteed Basic Income. They are moving toward these end goals step by step so the people do not realize what is taking place.
For now, there is still the short-term risk that the dollar rises because Europe has utterly been destroyed and Schwab is in full control. Every strategic person in a key position is also on his board at the WEF.

I do not think, however, that this is the case.

Just like what’s happened here in the U.S. with the placement and selection of various leaders into particularly powerful positions to act as gatekeepers of the New Normal proposed by Davos, they have run into staunch opposition at the lower levels of government.

Here we have state governors, routinely ignored or targeted for destruction by Davos, in open revolt. Well, the same thing is happening in Europe.

Now these evil witches will, of course, ignore people taking to the streets in France or Italy. They will suffer the salient criticisms from people like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. They do this because they know that the system protects them and believe the momentum of the project is greater than that of the opposition.


But, that may also be a bad assumption on their part.

Because things look to be shifting in places where they think they have the most control and therefore gives them the power to stay on their righteous path. That place is Germany. Because when I see German government house organ, Die Welt, declare fighting inflation is more important than what is happening in Italy, there is a lot more going on than just German hysteria, as the mainstream European press (read: Davos) would have you believe.

DW buries the lede about why Germans hate inflation at the end of the article even with the provocative headline:

The German citizens are particularly affected by the devaluation of money, as they prefer to put their assets into the savings book or the overnight money account. But these are forms of investment where inflation hits unhindered. Economists therefore ask how German citizens will react to this unfamiliar situation.
“Germans have a particularly large amount of savings in cash and in non-interest-bearing bank accounts, the value of which is now threatened by rising inflation,” says Schnabl. That could increase the willingness to spend money. This in turn could lead to the fact that the providers use the increased willingness to pay for stronger price increases. Then the risk of an inflation spiral would even increase.

Since cash for depositors in the EU is being taxed at 0.6% annually, 3% inflation in Germany is literally wiping out the middle class there. DW even reminds ECB President Christine Lagarde that she hasn’t even mentioned inflation running ahead of her 2% target, because, well, like Powell she believes it’s “transitory.”

And shouldn’t that necessitate ending all the alphabet QE programs? We’ve reached her target, after all?

Moreover, with gold prices effectively suppressed to be one of the worst asset classes in the world for 2021, Germans have no option there as well.

Let’s also not forget that Germany now records all gold transactions greater than €2000. Why would they change that rule just before embarking on massive QE and spending knowing full well what that central bank policy will do to German savers? Hmm… I wonder.

The official Davos position is summed up in this tweet from a German economic ‘journalist.’


The tweeter is an idiot who believes in all of the Davosian dogma — Climate Change, EU fiscal unity and and neo-Keynesianism if not outright MMT.


Ignore his bias. What’s important is that Die Welt is talking about inflation in these terms a month out from the German Elections where party support can, at best, be described as fluid.



Anyone notice something here? There’s 5% missing from the total. Could be rounding errors, could be something else.

Davos’ goal is to get the Green party installed, officially, into the national government after years of Angela Merkel getting them installed as the minor party with the whip hand at the State level to control the German Upper House, the Bundesrat.



Note however that since the flooding in May that the Greens have not gotten a bounce at all. The argument that this flooding was because of Climate Change didn’t stick. The argument isn’t working. Rising inflation and the Greens bloodthirsty foreign policy set them back a lot, revealing the mind of the German voter about what’s really important, not what they tell pollsters.

With the polls as they currently stand there is likely no way to keep the Greens out, unless they fall back below the 16% Chasm of public support and crater even further. While the FDP and AfD have both been rising in support, their rise hasn’t been fast enough to materially change the electoral calculus, unless the polls in Germany are as fake as they are here in the U.S.

And that’s not been my experience, so I’ll take them at face value. But also understand that a lot can happen in the next three weeks. Because polls this fluid also point to a public that simply doesn’t know what to do.

A significant break could still occur like it did in 2017 when AfD upside surprised polling by 3-5% and took enough to force Merkel into a scramble for months to form a government.

The problem for Davos is that people are not monolithic in how they respond to stimuli, as I discussed at length in this month’s issue of the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Newsletter. They have screwed the pooch by making everyone’s lives so tenuous in their moronic program to destroy the old economic order and ‘build back better’ that anything is now possible.

Because when people are under truly existential stress they make decisions three to six sigmas away from normal, not less than one. And all of those women who Davos put in charge are the very definition of people who can only see options in terms of gradualism — small, incremental changes leading to small, incremental outcomes.

That’s what a midwit is, someone just smart enough to run the production line but not smart enough to deal with it when it breaks.

Davos hasn’t gradually pushed us in the past eighteen months. They’ve broken the world. What they are hoping is people’s normalcy bias dampens their response to these catastrophic (in mathematical terms) changes.

That means people shifting from the German equivalent of Republicans (CDU) to Democrats (SPD), but not even considering the Libertarians (AfD). The German people had their one-night-stand with the Greens in 2020, between elections, but now it’s time for serious decisions.

And the net effect has been to shift the SPD further to the left and now even consider a government with Die Linke, the remnant of the old German communist party.

So, it looks like Davos is going to get the German government of their dreams. But will it matter? Because if this happens Germany will be signing up for the very thing that the German people explicitly DO NOT WANT — massive inflation to pay for the ‘sins’ of countries like France and Italy.

Inflation is ultimately where the rubber meets the road in Germany. And the German industrial class that still needs a weak euro to keep exports high cannot at the same time accept high internal inflation which brings with it rising interest rates and a destruction of the middle class.

Germany is at a crossroads financially. It can’t go forward without going backwards.

Conversely, France, Italy and Spain all need low interest rates and a relatively strong euro to keep them where they are.

To stay solvent they also need a compliant Germany who will monetize all the debt with the ECB acting as the go-between. Remember the ECB doesn’t have the capacity to keep up its various alphabet soup programs going (that all boil down to debt purchases) without the consent of the Bundesbanke in Germany.

The German political polling is therefore at odds with the needs of the German politically-powerful. Because Die Welt running an article that calls German inflation more important than Italy’s future is like the New York Times saying Jerome Powell needs to raise interest rates by 200 bps tomorrow.

So, what does this all mean?

It means that we’re rapidly approaching that moment Jim Rickards has been talking about for more than ten years, the breaking of the European Union into a Northern currency bloc led by the Germans, Dutch and Danes and the remnant EU led by those financially weakened by the euro’s unstable structure for the past thirty years — Italy, France and Spain.

Italy is the prize here. It’s the one country both sides want to validate their vision of the future. I don’t know if there can be the compromise that will allow for a complete scrapping of the current system and replace it with a direct digital euro issued from the ECB that is acceptable to Germans.

The signs are there in Germany that is only possible if they control the purse strings. With Lagarde in charge of the ECB that will not happen. It has been Merkel’s plan to sell Germany out to Davos on this point, manipulating the German electorate into making a confused and disastrous decision at the polls in a couple of weeks.

She may have ultimately succeeded. We’ll see.

But it won’t be a stable arrangement if the hard left parties — SPD, Greens, Die Linke — can’t secure a full majority of seats in the Bundestag (German Lower House). If they don’t and either/both AfD and FDP upside surprise then the CDU/CSU will have to be in coalition talks.

The numbers just don’t work otherwise.

Not that a CDU/CSU run by Armin Laschet is any great shakes, by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, even Die Linke understands that the EU is Germany’s enemy.

The real threat is the one Merkel faced in 2017, which is if they can’t come to an arrangement on a government, the polls will shift even farther away from them in any re-vote. There you can expect FDP and AfD to make real, lasting gains.

So, don’t expect that at all. This will be Davos’ best shot to gain final control over Germany.

Because this Die Welt article is saying that the money behind the CSU/CDU will not go along with what Merkel has maneuvered them into. This is a major shot across the bow.

It’s saying, point blank, they have reached their limit. I firmly believe that Merkel thought she could bribe them with Nordstream 2 to get them off her back but, as always, she’s underestimated the German people’s antipathy to both inflation and creeping totalitarianism, especially in the former East Germany.

Here’s the latest INSA poll from Germany. 7% missing. Undecideds are rising.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1434254798849810435

View: https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1434254798849810435?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1434254798849810435%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fwill-germany-finally-start-eu-breakup



Another five points by AfD/FDP and the German elections are a push. We’ll soon enter the polling blackout period there, so it will be anyone’s guess how this shakes out.

That’s how close it will be, barring any cheating.

All of this said, the odds are that Davos gets its way here and we will have a repeat of what happened when Helmut Kohl brought Germany into the euro by decree because he knew they would never vote for it. This time they may vote for their own destruction simply because they cannot break free of the propaganda.

That programming runs deep in Europe. When I look at polls looking at 2nd round voting preferences in France they all say the same thing, “Anyone but Marine Le Pen.” Even Macron is preferred over Le Pen still, the man that protesting against is literally the only growth industry in present-day France.

But all of that said, even if the Germans vote badly, the government formed will be so weak that it won’t survive for long. And then we have the same situation in Germany that we have in the U.S., a weak government with no real mandate trying to force a complete political revolution onto a people that will rapidly become the worst kind of ungovernable.

And then we’ll see how much Germans prefer listening to the harangues of unelected harpies in Brussels rather than their own desires.

 

[Plain Jane]

Time to end German-China love affair – DW – 09/07/2021

For years Berlin has mollycoddled China in the hope that billions of euros in investments would prompt it to shun its authoritarian ways. Beijing's belligerence shows the tactic has backfired, says DW's Ashutosh Pandey.

www.dw.com

Opinion: Germany must call off Angela Merkel's Chinese love affair
For years Berlin has mollycoddled China in the hope that billions of euros in investments would prompt it to shun its authoritarian ways. Beijing's belligerence shows the tactic has backfired, says DW's Ashutosh Pandey.




German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't know when to stop courting Beijing

German Chancellor Angela Merkel can't be faulted for not giving her all to bring about a change of heart by Beijing. Her dozen trips to China during her 16 years in office are a testimony to her conviction in the principle of "Wandel durch Handel," or change through trade.

German firms invested billions of euros in China, bringing with them critically needed manufacturing know-how to a rapidly advancing country. Heavily subsidized Chinese firms were allowed a free run in European markets for the longest time with many of them ending up acquiring strategically important local firms. The hope was that deep economic ties would prompt Beijing to give up its authoritarian politics and adopt liberal, democratic values.

Merkel's pampering, however, has failed miserably with Beijing turning for the worse under President Xi Jinping. It has been carrying out human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang with impunity, clamping down on pro-democracy activities in Hong Kong, building illegal islands, bullying governments with trade wars, and trapping poor nations with debt.

DW business editor Ashutosh Pandey

Keeping Beijing in good humor
Merkel's big failure lies in the fact that she didn't know when to stop courting Beijing, when to draw a red line. She sought to boost trade ties even on her last official trip to China, carrying with her a large delegation of German business leaders even as pro-democracy protests roiled Hong Kong.

In 2019, the Federation of German Industries (BDI), whose interests Merkel had been promoting in Beijing, described China as a "systemic competitor," concluding that it "will not develop into a market economy or embrace liberalism in the foreseeable future."
Still, Merkel carried on with her pro-engagement policy even if it meant bulldozing through an investment pact between the European Union and China despite the latter not ratifying International Labor Organization conventions on forced labor, something human rights groups had sought amid alleged use of slave labor in Xinjiang.

Stronger China policy
With Merkel on her way out, Berlin should seize the opportunity and adopt a forceful position on China. Germany with its own harrowing history of Nazi crimes must seek to build an alliance with like-minded countries, including the United States and Japan, to make Beijing pay for suppressing human rights.

Maintaining the status quo is not an option. The new government will face increased pressure to strongly condemn and act against Beijing.

Berlin's tough stance against practices contrary to the EU's core values is likely to rally members who have been left frustrated by Merkel's business-at-any-cost approach and help the bloc finally adopt a common policy toward the Asian powerhouse.


Watch video03:28
The costs of dealing with China
Calling China's bluff
Much of Merkel's strategy was driven by a fear of a possible Chinese backlash against German firms active in one of the most lucrative markets. Perhaps she didn't realize that Germany has more leverage over China than it thinks it enjoys. That leverage increases manifold when Berlin works in tandem with its allies.
While China is Germany's biggest trading partner for goods with an annual trade volume of more than €200 billion ($237 billion), it's not the biggest destination for German goods. In other words, Germany buys more products from China than China buys from Germany. German companies employ more than a million people in China.

A 2015 study on Germany-China trade relations by the Bertelsmann Stiftung concluded that "Germany is not — as is generally assumed — significantly more dependent on China than China is on Germany." The Chinese consumer goods industry, whose low-cost products have made the country a global export powerhouse, is largely powered by German machinery.

Germany could easily replace most of the products it buys from China with imports from other countries.

It's also important to realize that the Chinese economy, which has benefited immensely from globalization, is today more integrated with other economies than ever. This means that any pain inflicted by Beijing on a trading partner is likely to be felt even at home.


China is not done with siphoning off intellectual property from Western firms and acquiring critical technology know-how. In fact, it needs them even more as it realizes President Xi's goal of becoming a high-tech superpower. It can't afford to pick a fight with the EU whose technologies and capital have underpinned the Chinese growth story, especially as relations with the US and Australia sour.

Economic interests have taken precedence over values for far too long thanks to Merkel's obsession with keeping Beijing in good humor. It's time that changes.

 

[northern watch]

Russian, Belarusian leaders advance countries' integration
The presidents of Russia and Belarus say they have made significant progress on integrating their countries’ economies, including forming common energy and financial markets

By The Associated Press
9 September 2021, 13:24

The Associated Press
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 09, 2021. The presidents of Russia and Belarus say they have made significant progress on integrating their countries' economies, including forming common energy and financial markets. (Shamil Zhumatov/Pool Photo via AP)

MOSCOW -- The presidents of Russia and Belarus said Thursday they have made significant progress on integrating their countries’ economies, including forming common energy and financial markets.

The moves would bolster Belarus as it faces Western sanctions imposed in response to political repression after a disputed presidential election, and to its forced diversion of an airliner carrying a prominent opposition journalist. They would also give Russia a strengthened position in a country that acts as a buffer with NATO members.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko met Thursday for nearly four hours and announced that 28 programs strengthening integration were approved. The programs fall under a 1999 union agreement that calls for close political, economic and military ties but stops short of a full merger.

Russia has buttressed Belarus’ economy with cheap energy supplies and loans. But ties often have been strained, with Lukashenko scolding Moscow for trying to force him to relinquish control of prized economic assets and eventually abandon his country’s independence.

The programs include establishing a single gas market by the end of 2023.

The talks came as Russia and Belarus began military exercises that are to involve some 200,000 servicemen, including 2,500 Russians sent to Belarus. Officials say the exercises do not envisage specific countries as adversaries.

But the chief of Belarus' general staff, Maj.-Gen. Viktor Gulevich, said the exercises “will become a kind of signal for the collective West of the futility of talking from a position of strength with the peoples of Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and other countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.”

After large demonstrations broke out in Belarus in August 2020 following a disputed election that officials said gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office, Russia said it would be willing to send troops to Belarus if the country requested them.

The demonstrations persisted for months, but subsided in the winter as police harshly cracked down on protesters. Authorities have arrested and imprisoned prominent opposition figures and closed many independent media outlets.

Following the presidents' meeting, Putin said conditions in Belarus had “notably stabilized.”.

Russian, Belarusian leaders advance countries' integration - ABC News (go.com)

 

[northern watch]

Hungary offers to help Poland with border surveillance
Hungary's president said Thursday that his government would assist Poland in conducting border surveillance on its eastern border with Belarus in an effort to deter migrants from entering the country illegally

By JUSTIN SPIKE Associated Press
9 September 2021, 08:22

The Associated Press
Polish President Andrzej Duda, left, and his Hungarian counterpart Janos Ader, right, shake hand after a joint press conference as part of a meeting at Alexander Palace in Budapest, Hungary, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. (Noemi Bruzak/MTI via AP)

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- The Hungarian government has offered to assist Poland in conducting border surveillance on its eastern border with Belarus in an effort to deter migrants from entering the country illegally, Hungary's president said Thursday.

A serious migration crisis has developed on the Polish-Belarusian border, and events in Afghanistan "are likely to put even greater migration pressure on Poland in the future,” Hungarian President Janos Ader said at a joint press conference in Budapest with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda.

Hungary will offer its help in surveillance and maintaining a 370-kilometer (230-mile)-long fence which is currently under construction along the border, Ader said. The country will also share experiences with its own border barrier that it began erecting in 2015 during that year's influx of migrants into Europe.

Poland, a strong ally of Hungary's right-wing government, last week declared a state of emergency at a 3-kilometer (nearly 2-mile) strip of land along its border with Belarus amid increasing migration pressure.

European leaders, including those from Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania, have accused authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of sending migrants across their borders to destabilize the EU in revenge for sanctions it has imposed on his Kremlin-backed regime.

At the press conference Thursday, Duda thanked Ader for the offer of assistance at the border, adding that Belarus had been “taking hybrid measures, pushing migrants into Poland.”

Duda also met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who assured him of Hungary’s full support over what Orban called an “attack” on Poland by the EU's executive branch after it moved to impose financial penalties on the country to ensure compliance with EU law.

The European Commission on Tuesday said it wants the European Court of Justice to impose daily fines against the government in Warsaw in a long-running dispute over Poland’s judicial system.

The conflict comes as both Hungary and Poland face other financial penalties from the EU over concerns that their nationalist governments are not complying with EU rule of law standards.

Orban called the decision to fine Poland “outrageous and completely unacceptable,” his press chief Bertalan Havasi told Hungarian news agency MTI. Hungary's government had agreed to pass a resolution supporting Poland, and will examine possibilities for taking legal action on Warsaw’s behalf, Havasi added.

Hungary offers to help Poland with border surveillance - ABC News (go.com)

 

[northern watch]

Turkey slams Greek 'dreams' to extend territorial waters
Turkey's defense minister says the country will never accept Greek moves to extend its territorial waters in the Aegean sea, dismissing any possible effort by Athens as “empty dreams.”

By SUZAN FRASER Associated Press
9 September 2021, 08:06

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey's defense minister reiterated on Thursday that his country will never accept any Greek move to extend its territorial waters in the Aegean sea, dismissing any possible effort by Athens as “empty dreams.”

Speaking at a symposium in Istanbul addressing Turkey’s troubled ties with Greece, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar also said Turkey was determined to press ahead with efforts to search for energy in the eastern Mediterranean in areas where its believes Ankara and Turkish Cypriots have rights.

Neighbors and fellow NATO members Greece and Turkey have long been at odds over a series of disputes, including territorial rights in the Aegean Sea and over energy exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Tensions flared last year over exploratory drilling rights in areas in the Mediterranean where Greece and Cyprus claim as their own exclusive economic zone.

Greece also says it maintains its right to extend its territorial waters from the current six to 12 nautical miles around its Aegean islands. Turkey has long said it would consider the move — which would block its own access to the Aegean — as a cause for war. In January, Greek parliament voted to extend its waters along its western coastline, on the other side of the country, to 12 miles.

“While we do not accept this claim which disregards the rules of international law, the principles of reason and logic, Greece seeks to expands its airspace further with the dream of extending its territorial waters to 12 miles,” Akar said. “It should be seen and known that these are empty dreams.”

“We will continue our activities in areas where (Turkish Cypriots) have given us license and where we have rights,” Akar said. Cyprus has been divided between its Greek and Turkish communities since 1974. The internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government accuses Turkey of violating its maritime economic zone by drilling off the island.

Meanwhile, in a pre-recorded video address to the symposium, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country has been left on its own to deal with millions of Syrian refugees and accused neighboring Greece of “wasting a historic opportunity” to cooperate with Ankara on the issue of refugees.

“No step has been taken to ensure that refugees can live in security and peace in their own lands,” Erdogan said. “Turkey was left alone in its extraordinary struggle to prevent irregular migration,” Erdogan said.

Turkey hosts more than 3.6 million Syrians who have fled the civil war in Syria and the migration issue has led to flare-ups in tensions between Greece and Turkey.

In 2016, Turkey and the EU signed a deal for Turkey to stop the hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees heading toward Europe, in return for visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and substantial EU financial support.

Erdogan has frequently accused the EU of not keeping its side of the bargain, while the deal led to thousands of asylum-seekers languishing in squalid refugee camps on the eastern Greek islands.

Turkey slams Greek 'dreams' to extend territorial waters - ABC News (go.com)

 

[northern watch]

Massive Zapad 2021 War Games Begin
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 136
By: Pavel Felgenhauer
September 9, 2021 05:53 PM Age: 4 hours


Russian troops arrive in Belarus for Zapad 2021 (Source: TVN24)

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has begun massive Zapad 2021 operational-strategic war games together with its smallish ally Belarus. The quadrennial Zapad (“West”) exercises are designed to test the ability of a joint Russo-Belarus military force to defend the Russo-Belarus Union State against enemies, presumably the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies. Of course, according to the MoD, Zapad 2021 will be “defensive in nature” and “not aimed against any particular nation.” The official Zapad scenario this year envisages a clash between a fictitious “Polar Republic” (the aggressor) and the “Central Federation” (the good guys). The scenario apparently does not mention any rogue terrorist armed groups, as many of Russia’s post–Cold War military exercises did. Both the “Polar Republic” and “Central Federation” are supposed to be militarily on par with each other, with modern, well-developed armed forces. The “Polar Republic” uses its military to put pressure on the “Central Federation.” The standoff escalates into war with massive air offensives (the invented stand-in for the West attempting to use its presumed air and precision weapons superiority). Ultimately in the scenario, the “Central Federation” fights back and defeats the aggressor (Militarynews.ru, August 20).

A joint Russo-Belarusian military force officially exists since 1999; and since 2017, it is comprised of the Russian 1st Guards Tank Army plus the entire Belarusian Armed Forces. To date, there have been no Russian combat troops permanently based in Belarus. According to the Belarusian MoD, during Zapad 2021 some 2,500 Russian soldiers will be moved in to form a joint force with some 10,300 Belarusian troops and a token contingent of 50 uniformed personnel from Kazakhstan—an ally of both Russia and Belarus within the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) (Militarynews.ru, August 5). The number of Russian troops entering Belarus is not big, and the overall joint force formed on Belarusian soil under Zapad 2021 does not seem overly impressive. But the main events of Zapad 2021 will be elsewhere. According to the Russian MoD, up to 200,000 soldiers will be involved in this year’s Zapad drills in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka. Zapad 2021 is scheduled to last until September 16, but a Russian MoD spokesperson announced it will take until mid-October 2021 to redeploy back to home bases all the mobilized troops (Militarynews.ru, August 20).

Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has ruled in Minsk since 1994. President Lukashenka likes to periodically don specially designed military attire, but he has never spent much to upkeep and modernize his country’s regular military. Belarusian defense spending over the years has equaled around 1 percent of GDP, or only some $500 million per annum—hundreds of times smaller than in Russia. The peacetime Belarusian army is conscript-based and small in size, with only five full-strength brigades: three light and two mechanized. Lukashenka’s priorities seem to have been the local KGB, special police and Interior Ministry Forces brigades. Those internal security services have been instrumental in keeping Lukashenka in power by suppressing internal dissent and brutally crushing the mass popular demonstrations that erupted to protest the disputed August 9, 2020, presidential elections. To defend against external threats, the Lukashenka regime has built a mobilization system of reservists and a militia-style, 120,000-strong territorial defense force—a cheap “people’s army.” But actually deploying such a force is tricky for a despot if at least half the population turns against him. With the emergence of the 2020 protest movement, a true mass call-up of reservists or territorial militias in Belarus would have been tantamount to handing out lethal weapons to political opponents. Though he has managed to repress the opposition to a stalemate (see EDM, September 8), Lukashenka remains weak politically and militarily, battered by increasingly punitive Western sanctions and ever more dependent on Moscow’s good will as well as financial, economic and military support to survive.

On September 8, 2021, a batch of Russian Su-30SM jet fighters was deployed to the Baranovichi airbase, in the Brest region of Belarus, with Russian pilots and ground support crews. The Su-30SMs will be part of a previously announced joint Russo-Belarusian air and air-defense training center. And according to media accounts, the Russian jets will stay beyond Zapad 2021. Russian pilots will reportedly “patrol and defend” Belarusian airspace. If that comes to pass, it would mark the first permanent Russian combat deployment in Belarus since the early 1990s (Lenta.ru, September 8).

Unlike Belarus, after more than ten years of intense military reform Russia possesses a large standing armed force that can field hundreds of thousands of permanently ready troops at relatively short notice. Some reservists will be called up during Zapad 2021 and deployed to nearby Kaliningrad Oblast “as an experiment.” The exact number of these specially selected reservists has not been disclosed; but in accordance with an ukaz (decree) signed by President Vladimir Putin, it will be fewer than 5,000 (Interfax, September 6).

Also as part of Zapad 2021, on the South Kurile Islands, Russian infantry and armor will be testing their ability to take on Japanese and US forces (Militarynews.ru, September 8). Moreover, a joint task force of Baltic and Northern Fleet marines supported by warships will be performing a large-scale landing operation with heavy weapons in the Kaliningrad region, mimicking a possible wartime assault on the coast of Poland or the Baltic States (Militarynews.ru, September 6). In the spring and early summer of 2021, the same assault ships and marines were deployed in the Black Sea, together with a massive concentration of warships of different Russian fleets, during a so-called test of “battle readiness” that involved a massive mobilization of Russian military forces in much larger numbers than in Zapad 2021: Over 300,000 men, 35,000 pieces of heavy weaponry, 180 ships and some 900 aircraft (Militarynews.ru, April 29). The fact that the marines and large assault ships of the Baltic and Northern Fleets have finally been moved out of the Black Sea and Crimea and are ready for action in Kaliningrad is presumably good news: this year’s massive war preparations (the spring “battle readiness” concentration of forces on the Ukrainian border and Zapad 2021) turned out to be just that—preparatory drills. As the fall and early winter commence on the East European (Sarmatic) Plain, starting the traditional autumn Rasputitsa (“sea of mud” season), a large-scale regional war in Europe’s East in the final months of 2021 looks highly unlikely, despite the still-simmering tensions between Moscow on one side and Kyiv and the broader West on the other.

Massive Zapad 2021 War Games Begin - Jamestown

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

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German Finance Ministry Raided Over Failing To Report & Investigate Money Laundering

BY TYLER DURDEN
FRIDAY, SEP 10, 2021 - 02:45 AM
On Thursday German prosecutors raided the finance and justice ministries over accusations that the government's anti-money laundering agency, the Finance Intelligence Unit (FIU), failed to probe many instances of banks laundering money.
The allegations center on the FIU failing to pass on the reports to the police and the judiciary, however, it is "still unclear if the FIU failed to pass on the reports of fraud of its own accord, or was directed to do so by someone at one or both of the ministries."
The German Federal Ministry of Finance building in Berlin, via Shutterstock

It's believed the FIU (which is part of the Finance Ministry) looked the other way while cash "in the millions" was laundered, mainly from Africa.
It's not the first time that the financial crimes oversight agency has come under scrutiny in recent months: "The organization has also been suspected of covering up fraud committed by the German fintech company Wirecard, which collapsed last year in spectacular fashion," DW writes.
"This is a security risk for Germany," one lawmaker, Fabio De Masi said, in the wake of the raid. "We need a financial police with criminal expertise. Germany is a paradise for criminals."
Prosecutors have said they don't currently suspect any particular employee of criminal wrongdoing, but a key question that remains over whether the FIU was ordered to ignore warnings from banks over suspect transactions, or whether it was incompetence and lack of resources, despite it recently increasing its staff from 165 to over 460, along with receiving more technical resources.

According to Reuters, "The FIU has long struggled to keep up with the tens of thousands of warnings it receives about suspect money transfers, according to people familiar with its work." And further, "It only stopped using fax machines to receive such reports from banks in the past few years, one German official has told Reuters."

 

[northern watch]

 

[Plain Jane]

Merkel in Warsaw: a difficult adieu – DW – 09/10/2021

Chancellor Merkel has taken her time to pay a farewell visit to Warsaw. It’s hardly surprising — while trade between Poland and Germany is booming, politically, the two countries are growing increasingly distant.

www.dw.com

Angela Merkel in Poland: Bidding goodbye to a difficult partner
Chancellor Merkel has taken her time to pay a farewell visit to Warsaw. It’s hardly surprising — while trade between Poland and Germany is booming, politically, the two countries are growing increasingly distant.




Merkel has always sought to keep the dialogue with Warsaw open, despite increasingly tense relations

After Angela Merkel was elected chancellor of Germany in the fall of 2005, Warsaw was one of the first capitals she visited, along with Paris and Brussels. Poland had joined the European Union a year earlier. Germany was full of hope as it eyed its new partner on the right bank of the Oder River.

Sixteen years later as Merkel gets ready to leave office, everything is different. Until recently, it was not certain whether she would even make it to the Polish capital before the national elections. And, Polish President Andrzej Duda will not find time to meet Merkel on Saturday, September 11. According to his office, Poland's head of state will attend a commemorative event in Upper Silesia.

In happier times: Merkel with then Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Warsaw in 2007

Giving Warsaw a miss after Merkel's trips to Washington, Moscow and Kyiv, would have been a blatant affront to Poland. The German chancellor is also set to travel to Belgrade, Tirana and Paris next week. The circumstances of Merkel's visit to Poland, however, reflect Germany's complicated relationship with its largest eastern neighbor.

Economic success and political doldrums
Ever since the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) came to power in Poland in the fall of 2015, German-Polish relations have been marked by tensions and misunderstandings. Only the economy has been spared from the crisis. While bilateral trade continues to break new records and Poland has risen to become one of Germany's most important trading partners, the political relationship between Berlin and Warsaw is in tatters.

All talk about being part of a community of shared interests and destinies has long been forgotten, and the German-Polish agenda is dominated by the past instead of forward-looking issues. Government representatives in Poland are again openly demanding reparation payments from Germany for war damages, even though the Polish government, unlike Greece, has not yet made any official request to that effect.


Watch video03:25
EU, Poland row over disputed judicial committee
The last joint government consultations between Germany and Poland took place in Warsaw three years ago. Since then, the Polish side has been waiting in vain for an invitation to Berlin.

Great expectations and missed opportunities
Kai-Olaf Lang of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) describes the period after 2005 in German-Polish relations as "a period of great expectations and missed opportunities." While the economy and also the two societies grew increasingly closer, politics became a "dried-up landscape," the expert on eastern Europe told DW. "There is great disappointment on both sides."

Germany's liberal migration policy and the dispute over the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which Poland vehemently opposes, have further soured relations. Lang, however, credits Merkel for the fact that things are not getting worse. He says the German leader has not been interested in escalating the dispute.

Merkel with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw in 2019, commemorating the beginning of World War II

"On the German side, there is disillusionment, fatigue, even frustration, but also a pragmatic approach as well as the conviction that Poland cannot be ignored despite repeated clashes," Lang said.

Merkel's strength or weakness?
"Merkel has tried to keep everyone in the EU on board. She strove to keep Poland permanently anchored in the bloc despite the pushback. She did not allow herself to be provoked, knowing full well that Poland is central to the entire architecture of the EU," Lang said.

Polish magazine Wprost shows Merkel on its cover, along with EU leaders, in Nazi uniforms, in January, 2016

But, what Lang considers to be a strength of Merkel's is, in the view of Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), her flaw. "Afraid of a conflict with Poland and Hungary, Merkel has done too little to denounce the violation of the rule of law in both countries. Her restraint has achieved nothing and only led to escalation," the political scientist told DW.

Buras points to the anti-German sentiment fomented by both PiS politicians and the government-controlled media. Opposition politicians are shown on the covers of right-wing magazines wearing the spiked helmets once used by the German and Prussian military, cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, associated with Merkel's ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU), is branded as treason, and the EU Commission's actions against violations of the rule of law in Polandare portrayed as a German conspiracy and compared to wartime German occupation.

"Anti-German rhetoric is part of the identity of PiS and its electorate," Buras said, referring to recent polls that indicate growing skepticism in Poland toward Germans.

'Neither excellent, nor dramatically bad'
The PiS member of parliament, Bartlomiej Wroblewski, disagrees with the experts' pessimistic assessment. "Relations between Poland and Germany are neither excellent, nor dramatically bad. They are simply good," the national-conservative politician, who heads the Polish-German parliamentary group in the Sejm, or lower house of parliament, told DW.

"Mutual economic relations create a solid foundation, youth exchanges are developing, and municipalities are cooperating intensively. It is true, however, that we differ on essential issues of energy security or history," Wroblewski says. But he admits that "the political climate unfortunately hinders closer cooperation in other areas such as the defense industry."

Trump instead of Merkel
Despite fundamental differences of opinion, Angela Merkel, known to be a pragmatist, has repeatedly been willing to explore opportunities for a deal with Poland's ruling conservatives. After Britain, Poland's most important political partner in Europe, left the EU, the chancellor met with PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in 2016. The media was not invited.


Watch video05:25
Lex TVN heralds loss of press freedom in Poland
The public did not learn of the conversation at the German government's guesthouse in Meseberg near Berlin until months later. But Poland's government was counting on Donald Trump to establish itself as a key US ally in Europe at Germany's expense. With Trump's defeat in the 2020 US presidential election, the plan failed miserably.

To secure the votes of PiS deputies for the European Parliament vote on EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Merkel sent Paul Ziemiak on a secret mission to Warsaw in 2019. The Polish-born CDU secretary-general was able to persuade Kaczynski to support Ursula von der Leyen. Afterwards, none of the parties involved wanted to divulge any information about possible concessions by Berlin.

Is there a chance for pragmatic cooperation despite the crisis? Experts Lang and Buras point to climate policy and energy as vital and fundamental issues that should be tackled jointly by Poland and Germany. "However, this requires political will," Piotr Buras said. "And that is currently lacking."
This article has been translated from German.

 

[northern watch]

NATO Alarmed At Staggering Size Of Joint Russia-Belarus War Games

BY TYLER DURDEN
ZERO HEDGE
SATURDAY, SEP 11, 2021 - 09:55 AM

On Friday Russia and its longtime isolated former Soviet satellite ally Belarus kicked off what's being described as Europe's largest military drills in decades, involving up to 200,000 troops - including elite paratroopers - nearly 800 tanks, and 15 warships plus 80 aircraft, according to Russian defense ministry (MoD) figures.

Dubbed 'Zapad-2021' - the exercises are taking place jointly at nine Russian and five Belarusian ranges and bases, with close to 13,000 Russian troops being hosted on Belarusian soil. By comparison, one of NATO's recent and largest exercises in Europe, Trident Juncture 2018, involved only 40,000 troops.

"The objectives of the exercise are to check readiness levels and the Belarusian and Russian military command bodies' ability to jointly ensure military security and territorial integrity," the Russian MoD said in a statement.

The games additionally have the participation of the militaries of Armenia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, the MoD has confirmed.

The drills will test the allied militaries' "interaction during combat operations and letting commanders and staff practice troop management during joint actions in repelling aggression against the Union State," the Russian military added, referencing the agreement going back to 1999 in which the two countries committed to deeper political and economic integration.

NATO said that it was not invited to send observers to the games, and urged Russia and Belarus to "act in a predictable and transparent way." A NATO spokeswoman said "This is especially important when there is increased military activity along our borders, to reduce risks and avoid any accidents or incidents."

According to analysis in War on the Rocks, Russia is preparing to defend against a Ukraine scenario akin to 2014 and 2015, but centering on Belarus:

The Russian General Staff is concerned by what it has nicknamed a Western "Trojan horse" strategy: first using indirect means to destabilize a country, then employing advanced conventional capabilities to paralyze the armed forces, execute massed airstrikes against critical infrastructure, and rapidly achieve war aims. The Russian military goal is to convince a U.S.-led coalition that it cannot achieve a decisive victory early on, and that the war will result in substantial military, or economic costs, along with likely nuclear escalation. Russian thinking is premised on the belief that Russia can raise costs to a level that will outweigh the gains sought, particularly in a fight over Belarus. The 2021 exercise may simulate calibrated employment of conventional and non-strategic nuclear weapons to manage escalation and compel the opposing coalition to negotiate.

#Footage Russian #Su30SM take up combat duty to ensure security of the Union State's aerial borders within the establishment of the #RussianASF and Belarus Aviation and #AirDefence Forces joint combat training centre near Brest Минобороны России - Заступление российских Су-30СМ на боевое дежурство по охране воздушных границ Союзного государства в рамках ССУ «Запад-2021» | Facebook#Zapad2021 #RussiaBelarus pic.twitter.com/eqc06esi3b
— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) September 10, 2021

One Russian military analyst, Robert Lee, explained to US state-funded RFE/RL that such a joint exercises is geared toward anticipating future West-backed Color Revolutions: "We know that Russia has wanted to expand its military footprint in Belarus, and this exercise may give us an indication of what Belarus would allow."

“It could also involve greater integration of Russian and Belarusian military and security services to put down a Color Revolution-type scenario in Belarus," the analyst added.


NATO Alarmed At Staggering Size Of Joint Russia-Belarus War Games | ZeroHedge

 

[Plain Jane]

Divided over talks with Spain, Catalonia's separatists rally

Tens of thousands of Catalans have rallied for independence from the rest of Spain in their first major mass gathering since the start of the pandemic.

apnews.com

Divided over talks with Spain, Catalonia’s separatists rally
By JOSEPH WILSONyesterday



1 of 10
Demonstrators march during the Catalan National Day in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Thousands of Catalans have rallied for independence from the rest of Spain in their first major mass gathering since the start of the pandemic. The march in Barcelona on Saturday comes before a meeting between regional leaders in northeast Catalonia and the Spanish government. ( AP Photo/Joan Mateu Parra)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Catalan separatists held their first major mass gathering since the start of the pandemic on Saturday, trying to offer a display of unity despite the divisions in their ranks over upcoming talks with the Spanish government.

Tens of thousands waved pro-independence flags and wore T-shirts with messages for their cause in downtown Barcelona. People used face masks for the event, which went ahead after regional authorities dropped restrictions on the number of people who could gather with COVID-19 cases dropping.

There was a brief clash when a large crowd pelted a police station with toilet paper, trash and other objects before scuffling with National Police officers. That prompted Catalan police in riot vans to roll in and clear them out.

The meeting between representatives of the Catalan and central governments doesn’t have a date yet, but it is supposed to be soon. This second meeting between the two sides is supposed to advance negotiations toward the eventual finding a solution to the political crisis that has festered since the failed 2017 bid by Catalan’s secessionists to force a breakaway.

Expectations remain extremely low for a quick fix because the Catalan separatists demand an authorized referendum on independence. The central government says a vote would have to be on a proposal to improve the relationship of the northeast region with the rest of Spain.
Catalonia’s voters have for several years been roughly equally divided over the secession question, with half in favor and half wanting to remain in Spain.

The difference of opinion within the separatist camp on the usefulness of the negotiations marked Saturday’s rally.

Catalan regional president Pere Aragonès and his Republic Left of Catalonia party defended the negotiations with Spain’s government.

“Catalonia is on the brink of doing something that it has never achieved before: opening a negotiation with the Spanish state, government to government, to tackle how we resolve this conflict,” Aragonès said. “And we do so with the commitment from both sides that the result of this negotiation will be put to the Catalan citizenry for a vote.”

The other two main pro-secession parties and the movement’s leading grassroots groups, however, see the negotiations at best as a waste of time, and at worst a betrayal of the mandate for independence that they claim to already have from the illegal referendum held four years ago that most unionists boycotted.

The National Catalan Assembly, the powerful group that organized Saturday´s rally, sees the talks as a ruse to defuse their momentum. The official slogan of the rally was “Fight and We Will Win Independence.”

Jordi Sànchez, the general secretary of Together for Catalonia, also sees the talks as futile.
“We are deeply skeptical of the attitude of the Spanish government and the outcome of this negotiation,” he said.

Sànchez is one of nine high-profile separatists who were pardoned in June by Spain’s left-wing government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for their roles in instigating the failed breakaway attempt.

“Let the spirit of reunion, mutual affection and concord be our guides on this (Catalan holiday),” the Spanish leader said in a message on Twitter written in Catalan. “We are advancing toward that which unites us.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/...id=298792320&dclid=CLyCnbCgyu8CFUUsrQYdMbgPkA

 

[jward]

EHA News
@eha_news
49m

| Vaccine supporters and anti-vaccine protesters clash in the streets of #France.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1436997950484406273

View: https://twitter.com/eha_news/status/1436997950484406273?s=20

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

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In Surprising Reversal, England Drops Vaccine Passport Plan

BY TYLER DURDEN
SUNDAY, SEP 12, 2021 - 12:15 PM
Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Health Secretary Sajid Javid during a visit to the Bournemouth Vaccination Centre, in Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom, on Aug. 4, 2021. (Steve Parsons/PA)
The plan to mandate CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccine passports for nightclubs and crowded events in England will not go ahead, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Sunday.

It comes after British lawmakers across the political spectrum voiced strong opposition to the plans this week.

Speaking on the BBC’s “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, the health secretary said he “never liked the idea” of forcing people to show their papers in everyday activities, but the government was right to look at the evidence.

“What I can say is that we’ve looked at it properly and whilst we should keep it in reserve as a potential option, I’m pleased to say that we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports,” Javid said.

The health secretary added that the government shouldn’t be doing things for the sake of it or because others are doing them.

“So many countries, at the time they implemented it, was to try and boost their vaccination rates and you can understand why they might have done that,” he said.

Javid said that England has so far been “very successful” with its vaccination rates, with 55 percent of 16- to 17- year-olds having had their first doses only a month after the jabs were offered to this age group.

Shortly before his announcement on the BBC, the health secretary said the government hadn’t made a final decision on domestic vaccine passport in a separate interview with Sky News. He also said that he wants to get rid of PCR tests for international travel “as soon as [he] possibly can.”

Also on Sunday, the UK government said Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to repeal some powers from the Coronavirus Act, so that the government will no longer have the powers to shut down the economy, apply restrictions to events and gatherings, disrupt education, extend time limits for urgent warrants, or detain infectious people.

A number of European countries have introduced CCP virus status passports for settings including large events and restaurants.

The Scottish Parliament voted 68 votes to 55 on Thursday to support the implementation of CCP virus vaccine passports in Scotland’s nightclubs and other crowded venues.

A negative test for COVID-19 will not be accepted at this stage. The Scottish government said it was to boost vaccine uptake and to prevent limited PCR lab capacity from being overwhelmed by clubbers. The now-scrapped vaccine passport plan for England also wouldn’t have accepted negative test results.

According to official figures, CCP virus vaccination take-up rates across the UK’s four nations have been broadly similar.

As of Sept. 9, nearly 90 percent of the UK population aged over 16 have received the first dose of a CCP virus vaccine, and over 80 percent have received both doses, the government said.
Alexander Zhang contributed to this report.

 

[Plain Jane]

Netherlands: Thousands protest against nightlife ban – DW – 09/12/2021

Organizers claim as many as 150,000 people showed up to the "Unmute Us" protests, calling for the lifting of coronavirus restrictions that forced music venues to shut down.

www.dw.com

COVID: Thousands protest nightlife ban in the Netherlands
Organizers claim as many as 150,000 people showed up to the "Unmute Us" protests, calling for the lifting of coronavirus restrictions that forced music venues to shut down.




The protesters believe the restrictions on nightlife and festivals are unfair

Tens of thousands of people, including many DJs and musicians, took to the streets in the Netherlands on Saturday over coronavirus restrictions on nightlife.

The Netherlands had allowed music festivals to go on and nightclubs to repoen in July. But the government reimposed restrictions on nightlife shortly after lifting them as COVID cases soared.

What do we know about the rallies?
The protest movement, which has rallied under the slogan "Unmute Us," held demonstrations in Amsterdam and other major cities.

Protesters danced next to a truck in the Dutch capital with the slogan "Give Us Back Our Safe Spaces" while another rallygoer held a banner that read "Culture Is Essential."

"We need to stand up for the events industry, which has been shut down for a year and a half," a website set up by the "Unmute Us" movement said.

The organizers claim over 150,000 people in total showed up for the demonstrations across 10 Dutch cities.

The first "Unmute Us" demonstrations were held on August 21, and drew some 70,000 participants.

Hundreds of musicians and DJs performed during the protests

Will the Dutch government soon lift restrictions on nightlife?
The Dutch government is currently deliberating whether to reopen night clubs at the end of September. The current ban is expected to last until November 1.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is due to lay out the government's coronavirus measures for the fall during a special press conference on Tuesday.

The Netherlands is home to several famous music festivals, such as the Mysteryland electronic dance festival, which has been postponed until 2022 due to the pandemic.
A major company representing the music festivals had filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government in July over the restrictions.

Over 1,000 coronavirus cases in July were linked to the Verknipt festival held in the Dutch city of Utrecht that month.


Watch video02:22
Pumping in the COVID pandemic: Dutch nightclubs reopen
DPA news agency contributed to this report.

 

[Plain Jane]

Northern Ireland's DUP dips post-Brexit – DW – 09/13/2021

Under Ian Paisley Sr., conservative DUP became Northern Ireland's most important loyalist party. But since Brexit, many are turning away, disappointed. DW pays a visit to Ian Paisley Jr. in Ballymena, Northern Ireland.

www.dw.com

Northern Ireland's DUP, burned by Brexit
Under Ian Paisley Sr., conservative DUP became Northern Ireland's most important loyalist party. But since Brexit, many are turning away, disappointed. DW pays a visit to Ian Paisley Jr. in Ballymena, Northern Ireland.




Ian Paisley Jr. canvassing in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, just half and hour north of Ballymena

Ian Paisley's office in Ballymena, a small town in Northern Ireland, is packed with mementos of the "good old days." There are drawings and caricatures of British gentlemen on the wall, an antique green leather swivel chair for visitors, and a matching, massive Victorian-style desk made of polished wood that was a gift from his father.

Alongside photos of gentlemen and racing, there are a few photos of the famous Ian Paisley Sr. "The fact that my father gave me the same name really helped," the politician told DW, pulling out a framed photo from a stack lined up on the floor — the younger Paisley wearing a skull and crossbones scarf and mounted on a red three-wheeler with Stormont, Northern Ireland's parliament building, in the background. The elder Paisley waves a straw hat from the rear seat.

Ian Paisley Jr. presents a photo of himself with his famous father

In Ballymena and other Protestant-majority Northern Ireland towns, the Presbyterian minister and party founder Ian Paisley Sr., who died in 2014, is revered as a legend.

Left in the cold by London
Under his leadership, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) rose to become the leading political force among "unionists" in Northern Ireland; that is, London loyalists with mainly Protestant membership.

Ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, and driven by the idea of strengthening ties with Britain, the DUP urged people to vote "leave."

Brexit, however, has turned out to be a disaster from the unionist point of view. Trade between Northern Ireland and Ireland to the south is flourishing, while goods from Britain have to cross a customs border before they end up in Northern Ireland's stores.


Watch video02:36
Northern Ireland entrepreneurs face new challenges
Many Northern Irish blame Boris Johnson's government, which drew the customs border and negotiated the Northern Ireland Protocol with the European Union — but they also blame the DUP, which in 2017 propped up Theresa May's minority government but failed to secure a better deal for Northern Ireland.

Questions about supporting her possibly more-advantageous "soft Brexit" plan are "irrelevant," said Paisley, who was and is a member of the House of Commons in London, "because she couldn't get it round her own party."

The DUP turned its back on May in favor of Johnson. But his Northern Ireland Protocol, negotiated during Britain's withdrawal to protect the EU single market, have left many Northern Irish feeling left out in the cold by London.

Flagging support for DUP can be traced back to Boris Johnson's (right) penning of the Northern Ireland Protocol

Discontent with DUP
People in the former DUP stronghold of Ballymena are bitter. "We are treated by Britain like we are a foreign country," said a 61-year-old who identified herself as Leslie. She put the blame firmly on the DUP.

"What's happening now is that a lot of the people who did vote for the DUP — I'm one of them — are now voting for the TUV," she told DW. The Traditional Unionist Voice, she said, is the only party that stands up for her identity. "I'm British, Northern Irish, and that's what I want to stay."

In a poll last month commissioned by the Belfast Telegraph, support for the DUP slumped to 13%. It is adrastic shift — in the last regional elections in 2019, the DUP was the strongest party, with 31% of the vote. In Stormont, it leads the coalition government with Sinn Fein, the strongest "nationalist" or pro-Irish party.

The Good Friday Agreement, which ended the Northern Ireland conflict in 1998, stipulates that both sides must always be involved in government.

The Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998 — two and a half decades after Bloody Sunday, when 14 Catholic demonstrators were killed by British troops

"Frankly, I don't believe the poll," Paisley said, adding that "the DUP is considerately more popular than the poll would lead you to believe."

Challenge to Northern Ireland Protocol
The party is, however, under massive pressure. In the spring, dissatisfaction with the party's First Minister Arlene Foster erupted in an internal party debate Paisley described as "revolution and counterrevolution."

Jeffrey Donaldson, elected as the party's third leader within just a few weeks, has since tried to stabilize the party and urge it into a more combative mode. The Northern Ireland Protocol was to be the scapegoat.

A few days ago, Donaldson threatened that the DUP would soon abandon the government in Stormont if the protocol were not substantially changed. Presumably, his comments were meant to set the tone for the visit of European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic to Northern Ireland last week.

Sefcovic tried to deescalate the situation, saying he wanted "a solution that would represent a win-win — victory for all, first and foremost for the people of Northern Ireland."

European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said he seeks a 'win-win' situation

Donaldson's threat is "last-chance saloon stuff for the DUP," according to Jon Tonge, a political scientist at the University of Liverpool. The Irish Times quotes him as saying the DUP "have to throw everything at the protocol to get back that hard-line DUP support."

'DUP has no plan'
Susan McKay, a journalist and author of the book Northern Protestants on Shifting Ground, sees a more fundamental predicament.

"Unionism is floundering," McKay told DW, adding that this is a situation of its own making. "It hasn't a plan for the coming years, whereas Sinn Fen does have a very clear plan — for a united Ireland."

In addition, many younger people reject the DUP's arch-conservative stance on same-sex marriages and abortion.

Back in Ballymena, a young woman fiddling with her cell phone while her daughter played at the playground said she has given up on politics because nothing changes.

An elderly man in a shopping street said he supports the DUP, arguing they are "good, honest people." He said he has never spoken to Ian Paisley Jr. in person. "His father was a good man, but I don't think the son is the same."

Ian Paisley sen headed the DUP for 37 years

The younger Paisley said, "I don't expect people to vote for me to necessarily like me. But I expect them to love the Union."

The unionist camp cannot afford protest right now but must stand together, he added.

Parliamentary elections for Stormont are scheduled for no later than May 2022. Due to a winner-take-all voting system, a fragmented unionist camp facing a strong Sinn Fein could spell a particularly bitter loss for the DUP.

Ian Paisley is confident, yet minces no words: "The only people who can destroy the union and undermine unionism are unionists."

Ballymena remains a unionist town — for now
This article has been translated from German.

 

[Plain Jane]

A visit to Germany's far-right stronghold – DW – 09/14/2021

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has its strongholds in the very east of the country. Its top candidate, Tino Chrupalla, battles against societal change. And is set to win — in some regions, at least.

www.dw.com

The AfD in Saxony: Germany's far-right stronghold
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has its strongholds in the very east of the country. Its top candidate, Tino Chrupalla, battles against societal change. And is set to win — in some regions, at least.




The AfD's Tino Chrupalla has his home base in Görlitz

Whenever Tino Chrupalla travels to the German capital of Berlin, he needs police protection. He is the co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which people in the capital regard as a right-wing extremist party that stirs up hatred against immigrants with racist slogans and whose members sometimes attract attention for their proximity to National Socialism or its relativization.

By contrast, when Chrupalla is in the Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) traditional region of Saxony, he is met with friendly greetings and handshakes, despite the coronavirus pandemic. He is at home in this area, and Berlin — though geographically close — feels far, far away.

He won his constituency of Görlitz for the far-right populist AfD party during the last Bundestag election four years ago with more than 32% of the vote.

He now intends to repeat that success.

On a weekday at lunchtime in September, Chrupalla is out campaigning on the streets of Löbau, a small city of about 15,000 residents that lies about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of the border with the Czech Republic. He is relaxed, standing under a parasol, ready to talk.
There's not much going on at the campaign stand. Heiner Putzmann is among the passersby.

He is born and bred in Löbau, he tells Chrupalla: "I was a home birth. Winter of 1952. It was freezing cold," he says, and goes on to tells how "life is quite good" in Upper Lusatia. Beautiful mountains, chic cities. "That's why we live here and never want to live in a big city." But the infrastructure is bad, and there are far too many burglaries and car thefts. Putzmann's concerns are shared by many in the region, even though crime rates have been falling for years.

Tino Chrupalla stumps in Löbau

Here in the Upper Lusatia region, Chrupalla is simply the master craftsman with his own painting and decorating business who, in a down-to-earth way, fights for ordinary people. "The workers and those who really add value no longer feel politically represented," he tells DW at his election booth.

His sentiments strike a chord with many people in the region.

No room for refugees and gender-inclusive language
Black Lives Matter, gender-neutral language, the rights of LGBTQ people, the situation in Afghanistan and Syria — these debates are not of particular interest here. At most, they serve as topics that evoke anxieties.

"The politicians in Berlin and Dresden [the state capital] must finally take care of their own people before they carry their own people's money abroad," says Chrupalla.

The Upper Lusatia region is characterized by change. Refugees from eastern Europe arrived following the World War II. After the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) ended in 1989, the economy here collapsed. As a result, it became far less socially cohesive. Prejudice, racism, and social envy became dominant strains in the local culture.

Beautiful landscape, conservative values: Germany's Upper Lusatia

This only intensified as young and more educated people moved away as quickly as they could. Today, the region of Upper Lusatia is one of the most economically underdeveloped in Germany — and a stronghold for right-wing parties like the AfD.

Promoting democracy and cohesion
Bernd Stracke has been fighting against right-wing extremist structures on the ground since the late 1990s. At that time, he voluntarily moved to Upper Lusatia. "My parents and friends were shocked: "Are you out of your mind?" they asked him.

As a punk musician, Stracke was an enemy of the state back in the socialist GDR. He stuck out like a sore thumb. In GDR times, the Upper Lusatia region was already considered a cut-off point for the "valley of the clueless" ("Tal der Ahnungslosen") — an East German slang term for places where there was no reception for television broadcasts from West Germany.

Today, Stracke is an adviser to the state premier of Saxony — his job is to bring citizens and politicians together. His position is a recognition that many cities, municipalities, and families are torn between social awakening and a reactionary renunciation of modern democracy.

Stracke is tasked with promoting a new sense of cohesion. He calls it a revolution from within — because the change cannot be prescribed from the outside of that society. "We are now seeing this in Afghanistan too. It doesn't work. Importing new ideas and mindsets here won't work."

Bernd Stracke engages in dialogue — also with the AfD. "It takes a certain aptitude for tolerance to withstand things that are different from what you think yourself."

Görlitz has been the backdrop to Hollywood films that play in Nazi Germany

Upper Lusatia is a region full of contrasts: Some cities still look like ruins of the defunct GDR. In contrast, the city of Görlitz is a tourist magnet. Görlitz was spared the bombs of World War II. Immaculate old streets lined with grand historic buildings have also attracted Hollywood blockbusters: Quentin Tarantino shot his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds here, bringing the Nazi era back to life. The city has proudly dubbed itself "Görliwood" due to the many film productions.

Election campaign with far-right impact
At the Kretscham inn in the small village of Lawalde, Tino Chrupalla is holding an election campaign rally. About 300 people crowd in. Despite the close quarters and ongoing coronavirus pandemic, nobody is wearing a mask.

This DW reporter, who is wearing a protective face covering, is eyed with looks ranging from mocking to hostile. At the door stands a young man in noticably neo-Nazi dress. His neighbor's arm is tattooed with skulls. Every second arrival greets him — they seem to all know each other.

Most of the attendees are retirees. "Bürgerlich" (middle class), as they say in Germany. But among them, there are also those with the skull tattoos — some featuring runes popular in the Nazi era, some with bullet casings slung over their heads. The crossover between right-wing and right-wing extremist is fluid here.

At the Kretscham inn, Tino Chrupalla performs to a home crowd

In this environment, Chrupalla makes no attempt to distance himself from the far-right wing of his party. It was this group that elected him as one of the party's two top candidates in the German federal election.

When he speaks here warning of erosion of supposed German virtues, of overdue deportations to foreign countries, of an impending progressive dictatorship, a resounding "Jawoll!" ("yes Sir") echoes through the hall.

With his supposedly pragmatic course, Chrupalla has come a long way in the AfD. And he has an announcement for his voters in Upper Lusatia: from 2025, the AfD intends to be part of a ruling coalition government in Germany.


Watch video02:54
Why the AfD is so successful in eastern Germany
This text was translated from German.
While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society, with an eye toward understanding this year's elections and beyond. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing, to stay on top of developments as Germany enters the post-Merkel era.

 

[northern watch]

New Serb unity day triggers worries across the Balkans
Serbia has kicked off a new holiday celebrating national unity with a display of military power, triggering unease among its neighbors
By DUSAN STOJANOVIC Associated Press
15 September 2021, 11:22

The Associated Press
People walk past a mural in the colors of the Serbian flag in Belgrade, Serbia, Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. Serbia has kicked off a new holiday celebrating national unity with a display of military power, triggering unease among its neighbors. The new holiday comes decades after similar calls for unity led to the bloody wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. Serbs in the region were told to display thousands of red, blue and white national flags wherever they live in the region or the world to mark “The Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag.” Serbian officials are calling for the creation of a “Serb World,” or political unification of an estimated 1.3 million Serbs who live in Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Croatia with Serbia. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbia kicked off a new national holiday on Wednesday with a display of military power and calls for all ethnic Serbs in the Balkans to unite under one flag, triggering unease among its neighbors decades after similar calls led to the bloody wars of the 1990s.

Serbs were told to display thousands of red, blue and white national flags wherever they live in the region or the world to mark “The Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag.”

Opening the full day of celebrations, populist President Aleksandar Vucic inspected military hardware displayed in a Belgrade park, praising the army's readiness to respond to outside threats.

He said that the army is “five times stronger” than only a few years ago, and announced new military purchases.

Later Wednesday, Vucic spoke at a rally in downtown Belgrade — where nationalist sentiment flew high — attended by government members, Bosnian Serb officials and tens of thousands of his supporters.

Vucic, a former ultranationalist who advocated expansion of Serbia's borders at the expense of its neighbors, said the new holiday is not meant to threaten anyone or change established borders in the Balkans.

“The Serbian flag is threatening someone, and they expect us to apologize?" Vucic asked. “My answer is: Never again. We will carry our flag with pride anywhere in the world."

Also speaking at the rally was the Bosnian Serb separatist leader, Milorad Dodik.

“Our country is not Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is Serbia,'' he said to strong applause from the crowd.

The muscle-flexing by Serbian officials as well as their calls for the creation of the “Serb World,” or political unification of an estimated 1.3 million ethnic Serbs living in Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Croatia with Serbia, have triggered worries in neighboring countries.

In the 1990s, Serb forces with financial and political support from Belgrade led bloody campaigns in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo with the goal of forming a “Greater Serbia.” The campaign unsuccessfully tried to redraw the internal borders of the former Yugoslavia and create a single Serb state.

Denis Becirovic, a lawmaker in the Bosnian parliament, said that Vucic “is restoring the Greater Serbia project” by supporting secessionist policies of Bosnian Serbs.

“Sadly, the expansionist forces in Serbia have a potential to again ignite the whole region,” Becirovic said. “The West has to stop the Greater Serbia demon before it’s too late.”

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said he couldn’t “believe that Serbs have nothing more important or smarter to do” than create holidays which infringe on the internal affairs of neighboring states.

Serbia’s Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin, the most vocal supporter of the “Serb World,” was quick to respond.

“There is nothing more important than the preservation of the Serb identity,” he said.

The new national holiday coincides with a key Serbian and French victory in 1918 against the Central Powers in the Balkan theater of operations during World War I.

New Serb unity day triggers worries across the Balkans - ABC News (go.com)

 

[Plain Jane]

Australia riles France with sudden US-UK nuclear submarine pact

France accused US President Joe Biden on Thursday of stabbing it in the back and acting like his predecessor Donald Trump after Paris was pushed aside from a lucrative defence deal that it had signed…

www.france24.com

DEFENCE

Australia riles France with sudden US-UK nuclear submarine pact
Issued on: 15/09/2021 - 23:41

US President Joe Biden participates is a virtual press conference on national security with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (R) and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 15, 2021. © Brendan Smialowski, AFP
Text by:FRANCE 24Follow
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Video by:Fraser JACKSON
10 min
Listen to the article
Australia decided to invest in US nuclear-powered submarines and dump its contract with France to build diesel-electric submarines because of a changed strategic environment, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday had announced a new US security alliance with Australia and Britain that would develop an Australian nuclear-powered submarine fleet.

As a result, Australia notified France that it would end its contract with state majority-owned DCNS to build 12 of the world’s largest conventional submarines. Australia has spent 2.4 billion Australian dollars ($1.8 billion) on the project since the French won the contract in 2016.

Morrison said US nuclear submarine technology wasn’t an option open to Australia when the AU$56 billion ($43 billion) deal was struck in 2016. The United States had until now only shared the technology with Britain.

Morrison said he told French President Emmanuel Macron in June that there were “very real issues about whether a conventional submarine capability” would address Australia’s strategic security needs in the Indo-Pacific.

“Of course they’re disappointed,” Morrison said. "They've been good partners. This is about our strategic interest, our strategic capability requirements and a changed strategic environment and we’ve had to take that decision.”
it

00:26
Australian Defence Force Chief, Gen. Angus Campbell, welcomed the new submarines.
“Our strategic environment has deteriorated,” Campbell said. “That challenging environment is becoming more challenging and is set to do so into the future at an accelerated pace.”

Australia had not yet decided what class of submarine it would select and did not know how much the nuclear fleet of at least eight submarines would cost, Morrison said.
But Morrison said Australia’s defence budget would grow above the current 2.2% of gross domestic product.

The first of the 97-metre (318-foot) Shortfin Barracuda submarines, an adapted French nuclear sub design, was to be delivered in 2027.

Morrison said he expected the first of nuclear subs, which are to be constructed in the Australian city of Adelaide, would be built by 2040.

Top French officials made clear they were unhappy with the deal.
it

03:45
“The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defence Minister Florence Parly said in a joint statement.

Speaking on French radio on Thursday morning, Le Drian expressed his anger over the deal.
"It's really a stab in the back. We had established a relationship of trust with Australia, this trust has been betrayed," Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio.

Left out of the new alliance was Australia's South Pacific neighbour New Zealand, which in the 1980s enacted policies and laws to ensure it remains nuclear-free. That includes a ban on nuclear-powered ships entering New Zealand ports, a stance which has seen it clash, at times, with the US.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday that New Zealand wasn’t asked to be part of the alliance and wouldn’t have expected an invitation.
“The centerpiece, the anchor of this arrangement are nuclear-powered submarines,” Ardern said. “And it will be very clear to all New Zealanders, and to Australia, why New Zealand would not wish to be a part of that project.”

Ardern said the new alliance didn’t diminish its close ties to the U.S., Britain, Australia and also Canada, which had been solidified through the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement.
Morrison said Ardern was the first foreign leader he called to explain the new alliance. He later called the leaders of Japan and India. The two countries combined with the United States and Australia form the Quad security dialogue.

“She was my first call because of the strength of our relationship and the relationship between our countries,” Morrison said. “All in the region will benefit from the peace and the stability and security that this partnership will add to our region.”

The Chinese government has long suspended minister-to-minister contact with Australia because of soured bilateral relations. But Morrison said he was willing to discuss the new alliance with President Xi Jinping.

“There’s an open invitation for President Xi to discuss these and many other matters,” Morrison said.

“I believe and hope we would both share the same objective of a peaceful Indo-Pacific where the sovereignty and independence of nations is understood and respected and that enables their own citizens to flourish,” he added.

China’s Washington, DC, embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said countries should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties.

“In particular, they should shake off their Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice,” he said.
Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said the submarine decision was a response to China’s takeover of the South China Sea, aggressive bullying of Australia and intimidation of Japan and Taiwan.

“We should call the first submarine in this new category the ‘Xi Jinping,’ because no person is more responsible for Australia going down this track than the current leader of the Chinese Communist Party,” Jennings told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Australia would become the first country without nuclear weapons to obtain nuclear-powered submarines.

Australia would discuss with the US, and Britain how the submarines' nuclear waste should be disposed, Defense Department Secretary Greg Moriarty said.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)

 

[Plain Jane]

EU unveils Indo-Pacific strategy in response to US-led pact – DW – 09/16/2021

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said the bloc was "not informed" about the "AUKUS" security pact in the Indo-Pacific and took it as a sign the EU needs to develop its own strategy for the region.

www.dw.com

EU unveils Indo-Pacific strategy in response to US-led pact
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said the bloc was "not informed" about the "AUKUS" security pact in the Indo-Pacific and took it as a sign the EU needs to develop its own strategy for the region.




The EU is looking to increase engagement in the Indo-Pacific as the US, UK and Australia increase ties

The European Union announced its own strategy to boost political and defense ties in the Indo-Pacific on Thursday.

It comes a day after the United States, UK and Australia unveiled a new tri-lateral defense pact for the region.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Thursday that Brussels had not been consulted on the pact, which has been dubbed "AUKUS."

"We regret not having been informed, not having been part of these talks," Borrell said as he presented the strategy.

"We must survive on our own, as others do," he added.

A particular sore spot of the pact is a new deal for the US to help Australia build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. That canceled a previous $40-billion (€34-billion) diesel submarine deal with France, which drew the ire of Paris.

"I understand the extent to which the French government must be disappointed," Borrell said.

What will the plan entail?
The EU plan also includes "exploring ways to ensure enhanced naval deployments by EU Member States to help protect the sea lines of communication and freedom of navigation," a statement said.

Other areas the plan intends to address include building cooperation with countries in the region on trade, health, data, infrastructure, and the environment.

The new strategy could also beef up the EU diplomatic profile on issues important to the region, and increase the military presence of EU countries in the Indo-Pacific.

Watch video01:53
New security alliance for Indo-Pacific region
This could also involve deploying EU personnel and security presence to assist on international missions, including sailing EU-flagged ships on patrols in the South China Sea.

European Council chief Charles Michel wrote on Twitter Thursday that the "The AUKUS security partnership further demonstrates the need for a common EU approach in a region of strategic interest."

Michel added that the Indo Pacific plan would be further discussed by EU heads of state at the leaders' summit in October.


Why is the Indo-Pacific important to the EU?
The Indo-Pacific is a region conceived as spanning India and China, Japan to Southeast Asia and past Australia into the Pacific.

The AUKUS alliance, and the EU announcement, come amid ongoing tensions between Western countries and China as Beijing increases the size of its navy and continues to build military outposts on man-made islands in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims most of the international waters in the sea as Chinese territory, which has caused concern over critical sea lanes that carry a sizeable portion of global trade each year.

"Given the importance of a meaningful European naval presence in the Indo-Pacific, the EU will explore ways to ensure enhanced naval deployments by its member states in the region," the statement said.

However, Borrell said Thursday that the EU plan was "one of cooperation, not confrontation" with China.

See this thread also:

CHAT - France Accuses "Backstabbing" Biden Of Being 'Worse Than Trump' As UK-Aussie Defense Pact Sinks Sub Deal

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/france-accuses-biden-being-worse-trump-uk-aussie-defense-pact-sinks-sub-deal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29 France Accuses...

www.timebomb2000.com

 

[northern watch]

Greece tightens its border with Turkey amid 'tough but fair migration policy'
Since the Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan, Greece has stepped up measures to fortify its border with Turkey and stem the tide of refugees. Now, the EU is calling for more transparency.

DW
September 17 2021


Greek border guards at the fence on the border with Turkey

The river Evros forms the land border between Greece and Turkey. The waters of this river and its tributaries have made the Evros region one of the most fertile in Greece. Here, on both sides of one of Europe's most controversial external borders, rolling green hills lined with small deciduous forests stretch as far as the eye can see.

"Refugees have been passing through here for as long as I can remember," says local farmer Fotis Chantzis. While migrants cross the region on their way to western Europe, many locals have turned their back on Evros in recent decades.

Thirty-six-year-old Chantzis is one of the few people who have decided to stay. "This is Greece's most neglected region," he says. Despite the fact that conditions for crop cultivation in the region are ideal, the locals face economic hardship. "We had a sugar factory that was really important for the people here, and they closed it down," says Chantzis.

Global competition also makes it difficult for farmers here to make ends meet. But despite the many problems the people of Evros face, the central government in Athens is interested in one thing above all else: making the border impassable for refugees — even after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

The Evros River and the Turkish border run right behind the hills of the village where Chantzis runs his farm. Countless abandoned buildings bear witness to the tough economic reality of life here. Instead of tractors and harvesting machinery, military jeeps patrol the area. The river is now a military exclusion zone and inaccessible for most people. Attempts to film or investigate there are viewed as espionage and can result in criminal charges.

Backpacks, tents and trash

Nevertheless, refugees regularly succeed in crossing the border, although numbers seem to have decreased in recent weeks. Anyone passing through the forests near the border will come across discarded backpacks, tents, empty water bottles and candy bar wrappers from Turkey: "They sleep in the woods after they cross the river and then move on the next day," says Chantzis. The economic and political neglect of the region is fueling xenophobia among many of the locals, he says, emphasizing at the same time that the refugees simply pass through without causing any harm or damage.


Traces of the refugees passing through the region can be found in the forests on the Greek–Turkish border

When asked whether refugees are crossing the border at the moment and if so, how many, locals give contradictory answers. Many of those who speak of "lathrometanastes" (illegal immigrants) claim that people are crossing the border on a daily basis, passing through the villages and stealing from fields and gardens. Others feel that the numbers are decreasing. A waitress in the village of Praggi says it's been a while since she saw any refugees. "They avoid the main roads because they are afraid of the police."

Fear of a refugee influx

Meanwhile, local media claim that large numbers of Afghan refugees began crossing over into Greece at the end of August. They show videos of large groups — including families — trudging through forests and fields. Although it is not known when and where the footage was filmed, the message is crystal clear: Illegal immigrants are entering the country and heading for its towns and cities.


The route through the area where Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey meet is popular with refugees headed for western Europe
Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, is about 400 km (250 miles) away. Most refugees who cross the border at the river Evros pass through here, explains Hope Barker, policy analyst with the Border Violence Monitoring Network. In response to the Taliban takeover in Kabul, Greece accelerated its construction of a fence at parts of the Evros border to make it harder for refugees to cross.

Increased risk for migrants

Somehow, though, they manage it. "Fortifying the borders just increases the risks people face when attempting to cross; it does not deter them from crossing. This means people are relying on smugglers, who are often exploitative," explains Barker.

She points out that the dozens of refugees local media claimed had crossed the Evros never arrived in Thessaloniki and casts doubt on the authenticity of the footage. While she does acknowledge that people from Afghanistan have fled the country, she stresses that it will take them a while to make it to the Greek–Turkish border.


Hope Barker of the Border Violence Monitoring Network says fortifying a border is no answer

Barker explains that once the migrants reach the Evros River after their difficult journey through Iran and Turkey, they face more problems. "When crossing into Greece, people are faced with the military, Frontex officers, unidentified masked men, informal detention sites, army compounds and the list goes on. All of these elements go hand in hand to enforce a very well-developed and systematic pushback regime in which people on the move are constantly forced back across the border to Turkey," she says

Greece stands by its migration policy

This information is mainly based on testimonies from numerous refugees interviewed by the Border Violence Monitoring Network in recent years. The authorities are making it impossible to get a clear picture of what's happening at the EU's external border. "With a lack of access for researchers, NGO workers, human rights defenders and journalists, this regime is allowed to go on undisturbed," Barker says


The Greek–Turkish border along the river Evros is a military exclusion zone

Greece's migration minister, Notis Mitarakis, denies all allegations of illegal pushbacks or human rights violations. In his first statement after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, he said that Greece will not change its "tough but fair migration policy." On his social media platforms, he expresses pride in the steady decrease of new arrivals of refugees via land and sea borders and the significant reduction in asylum-seekers in camps. Mitarakis recently declared that Greece's migration crisis is over.

EU demands more transparency

Hope Barker sees things very differently. Fewer arrivals mean more illegal pushbacks, she says, and fewer people in the camps does not mean fewer people in the country: "The governing Nea Demokratia party has continuously pushed to lessen the support offered to recognized refugees. What this leads to is less people in the camp, sure, but also more people out on the streets." As far as she is concerned, official numbers cannot be trusted.

The European Union, which has given billions to Athens to tackle the migration crisis since 2017, has been reluctant to formally reprimand Greece for illegal refoulement and other human rights violations. But now, even Brussels is starting to demand more transparency from Athens.

When Greece recently asked for an additional €15.83 million ($18.65 million) for its coast guard, Brussels insisted on the establishment of an independent monitoring system. For years, NGOs have been demanding such a system in order to create transparency at land and sea borders and to guarantee the rule of law for asylum-seekers.

This article was originally written in German.

Greece tightens its border with Turkey amid ′tough but fair migration policy′ | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 17.09.2021

 

[northern watch]

From my email inbox

 

[northern watch]

Rift in NATO: Macron recalls ambassadors from US and Australia

Reactions to the AUKUS case

War News 24 /7
18/09/2021 - 09:02

In a decisive move, E.Macron "shows his teeth" to the US, causing the first major rift in NATO.

More specifically, late on Friday night, France's Foreign Ministry announced that it was recalling the country's ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations.

The reason for the withdrawal of the diplomats was the "extremely serious" announcement of the strategic cooperation agreement between Washington, London and Canberra, which led to the cancellation by Australia of the contract for the procurement of submarines from France, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

Jean-Yves Le Drian's statement
"At the request of the President of the Republic, I decided to immediately recall to Paris for consultations our two ambassadors to the US and Australia. This unusual decision is justified by the unusual seriousness of the announcements made on September 15 by Australia and the US,"the minister added in his statement.

"We don't see how we can trust Australia"

France does not see how it can trust Canberra in trade negotiations between the EU and Australia, following the latter's decision to break its commitment to buy French submarines, Deputy Minister for European Affairs Clement Bon said earlier Friday afternoon.

"We are in commercial negotiations with Australia, I don't see how we can trust the Australian partner,"Bon said, during a broadcast on RFI radio network and on France24 and Public Sénat television networks, the day after the announcement of a security agreement between Australia, the US and Britain, which resulted in the cancellation of the contract with France.

"This is a major breach of trust on the part of Australia,"he stressed. "International relations are not about naivety, good intentions, but the reason, the signing of a contract counts. If there is no more trust, we can no longer move forward," he estimated. The European Commission has undertaken since 2018 to negotiate free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand.

Since France is also losing more than EUR 50 billion as a result of Australia's membership of the alliance to which it would deliver submarines, it has decided to cancel a gala at its embassy in Washington.

The event, scheduled to take place on Friday afternoon at the French embassy and a French frigate in Baltimore, marked the 240th anniversary of the "Battle of the Chezapik".

France's top navy official, who traveled to Washington for the celebrations held for Paris' contribution to the U.S. struggle for independence in 1781, will return to Paris. The move is clearly an act of reaction and protest on the part of France.

In essence, however, this move is the first rift within NATO. Because until now France's contestation of the alliance has remained on a verbal level, with French President Emmanuel Macron himself describing NATO as brain dead!

'Fire' against Britain
Britain does not escape criticism of France, accusing it of acting on an earthly way.

"Britain's government joined this agreement in an opportunistic way,"the French diplomatic source said. "We do not need to consult in Paris with our ambassador (in London) to understand the situation and draw conclusions," he added.

As of this stage, the French government has not mentioned Britain in any of its official announcements of the deal.

The White House's reaction
The United States regrets France's decision to recall its ambassador from Washington and will continue to work in the coming days to resolve the differences between the two countries, a White House official said.

This is the first time that Paris has taken such a decision vis-à-vis these two countries, especially vis-à-vis the USA, France's historic ally since the war of American independence.

But U.S. diplomacy reaffirmed that Washington considers France a "vital ally" after Paris' decision to recall ambassadors to Washington and Canberra for consultations in Paris, following the US-UK-Australia security trilateral agreement that sparks a diplomatic crisis.

"France is a vital partner and our oldest ally" and "we attach the greatest value to our relationship," the State Department spokesman said in a press release released; he added that Washington hopes the debate will continue at the highest level in the coming days, particularly at the UNITED NATIONS General Assembly in New York next week.

Australia records "with regret" France's decision to recall its ambassador
For its part, Australia's diplomacy announced that it regretted France's decision to recall its ambassador to Canberra for consultations in Paris following its tripartite security agreement with the US and the UK, assuring that it attaches great value to the bilateral relationship and will seek to continue the dialogue on many other issues.

"We note with regret France's decision to recall its ambassador to Australia," an Australian foreign ministry spokesman said in a press release. "Australia considers its relationship with France to be valuable (...). We will seek to have a dialogue with France again on many issues of mutual interest based on the values we share," the MFA's statement added.

https://easywatch.gr/
Rift in NATO: Macron recalls ambassadors from US and Australia - WarNews247

 

[Plain Jane]

No more lockdowns for the Dutch, Danes, and Swedes? – DW – 09/17/2021

Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are resuming their pre-pandemic life, despite the delta variant risks. What's their secret?

www.dw.com

How some EU countries managed to ditch COVID-19 restrictions
Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden are resuming their pre-pandemic life, despite the delta variant risks. What's their secret?




Sweden never had strict lockdowns, now they're ditching the last remaining restrictions.

In parts of Europe, enjoying a pre-pandemic social life, or at least a close version of it, is no longer a far-off dream.

Fully vaccinated people in the Netherlands can go dancing in crammed clubs and can attend parties without having to keep social distance from 25 September. Instead, the government will begin mandating vaccine passes, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in a press conference Tuesday.

Denmark abandoned all COVID-19 restrictions last week, becoming the first EU country to go return entirely to pre-pandemic daily life. No masks or even proof of vaccination are necessary to go to concerts or gyms.

In late August, Danish health minister Magnus Heunicke, said the government no longer saw COVID-19 as a "socially critical disease." This approach effectively ends the ministry's mandate to implement measures such as national closures and requirements for coronavirus passes.
Joining the league will be Sweden, which has stood out among European countries for its relatively hands-off response to the pandemic. Most restrictions, including limitations on private and public gatherings and the advice to work from home, will expire by the end of September, Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren announced earlier this month.

Travelers to these countries are still required to be tested and quarantine upon their arrival if they are not fully vaccinated.

Danes said goodbye to mandatory face masks last Friday.

Delta variant looms
Denmark and Sweden both have a relatively high vaccination rate. According to the University of Oxford's Our World in Data project, in Denmark more than 80% of eligible adults are fully vaccinated and in Sweden, over 70% are vaccinated. "Among the most vulnerable of our patients and citizens, the vaccination rate is more than nine out of ten," said Allan Randrup Thomsen, virologist at the University of Copenhagen.

In the Netherlands, the vaccination rate stands at about 60%, But caretaker health minister Hugo de Jonge hopes that rewarding more freedoms to residents, in tandem with a vaccine mandate, will boost the country's vaccination rollout, according to the public broadcaster NOS.

Easing restrictions comes at a time when infection rates are rising in some EU countries and the rest of the world, mostly due to the highly contagiousdelta variant. The latest update to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, (ECDC)'s map shows far fewer red zones compared to previous weeks, but it also highlights the radically varied status of the pandemic across Europe.

In countries with slower vaccine rollout, the virus is still raging.

With only 20% of its population fully vaccinated, Bulgaria has resorted to limiting social life and imposing more restrictions on public life and businesses. Despite a surge in infections, most Balkan countries have very few restrictions in place.

But even countries with higher vaccination rates are now experiencing a rise in infections.

Despite having vaccinated about 60% of eligible adults, Austria is seeing a surge in new cases and has therefore shortened the validity period of negative PCR tests, a mandatory document for entering most public places.

Norway, the Scandinavian neighbor of Denmark and Sweden, is experiencing a new wave of infections, despite having a vaccination rate of about 70%, the ECDC data shows.

COVID endgame?

In late May, the Danish government presented its vaccine pass, in the form of an app, a printed QR code, or a green bar for people who had tested negative.

When such measures were mandated in some European countries, like France, Italy, and Greece, the curbs often sparked resistance and in some cases, demonstrations.

But Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark enjoy a high level of trust in authorities , which experts say has given the countries a leg up in fighting the pandemic. It made it much easier for the governments to carry out tracking programs.

"We had a large testing program, which allowed us to track the infected persons very locally, and we had local lockdowns that worked very effectively," Camilla Holten Moller, a Statens Serum Institut epidemiologist, told DW. "We were able to do so simply because the Danes historically have a high level of trust in their health authorities and vaccine programs."

The decision-makers in the three countries are realistic about the possibility of new outbreaks in the fall and especially breakthrough cases, but they have set their policy goals on keeping the virus under control and reducing the coronavirus' strain on hospitals.

"I don't think that Denmark will have to go into national lockdown again. We have proven that our large test system allows us to control the outbreaks with local lockdowns," Holten Moller said.

The Dutch cabinet will be monitoring the number of COVID-19 related hospital and ICU admissions, rather than looking at the number of infections, caretaker health minister Hugo de Jonge said in a letter to parliament, according to the public broadcaster NOS.

The COVID endgame of the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden is a delicate balancing act: Containing the pandemic with restrictions and protections, and carefully resuming pre-pandemic life. High vaccination rates mean the countries can contain COVID-19's worst outcomes — hospitalization and death — with fewer restrictions.

 

[Plain Jane]

PM Morrison rejects French accusation that Australia lied over cancelled submarine deal

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday rejected France's accusations Canberra lied about plans to cancel a contract to buy French submarines, saying he had raised concerns over the deal "some…

www.france24.com

France accuses Australia and US of ‘lying’ over cancelled submarine contract
Issued on: 19/09/2021 - 09:56

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who accused Australia and the US of ‘lying’ and ‘duplicity’ over Australia’s broken contract to buy French submarines. © Jens Schlueter, AP
Text by:NEWS WIRES
3 min
Listen to the article
France on Saturday accused Australia and the United States of lying over a ruptured Australian contract to buy French submarines, warning a grave crisis was underway between the allies.

Australia's decision to break a deal for the French submarines in favour of American nuclear-powered vessels sparked outrage in Paris, with President Emmanuel Macron recalling France's ambassadors to Canberra and Washington in an unprecedented move.

The row has sparked a deep rift in America's oldest alliance and dashed hopes of a post-Donald Trump renaissance in relations between Paris and Washington under President Joe Biden.

Speaking to France 2 television, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian gave no indication Paris was prepared to let the crisis die down, using distinctly undiplomatic language towards Australia, the United States and Britain, which is also part of the three-way security pact.
"There has been lying, duplicity, a major breach of trust and contempt," Le Drian said. "This will not do."

He described the withdrawal of the ambassadors for the first time in the history of relations with the countries as a "very symbolic" act that aimed "to show how unhappy we are and that there is a serious crisis between us".

But Australia has rebuffed French accusations of betrayal, with Defence Minister Peter Dutton insisting Canberra had been "upfront, open and honest" with Paris about its concerns over the deal.

On Sunday, Australian Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said his country had informed the French government "at the earliest available opportunity, before it became public".
He told national broadcaster ABC that it was "always going to be a difficult decision" to cancel the French deal.

"We don't underestimate the importance now of... ensuring that we re-establish those strong ties with the French government and counterparts long into the future," he added. "Because their ongoing engagement in this region is important.”

'The third wheel'
Le Drian also issued a stinging response to a question over why France had not recalled its ambassador to Britain, which was also part of the security pact that led to the rupture.

"We have recalled our ambassadors to (Canberra and Washington) to re-evaluate the situation. With Britain, there is no need. We know their constant opportunism. So there is no need to bring our ambassador back to explain," he said.

Of London's role in the pact under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he added with derision: "Britain in this whole thing is a bit like the third wheel."

NATO would have to take account of what has happened as it reconsiders strategy at a summit in Madrid next year, he added.

France would now prioritize developing an EU security strategy when it takes on the bloc's presidency at the start of 2022, he said.

Admiral Rob Bauer, chair of NATO's Military Committee, earlier played down the dangers, saying it was not likely to have an impact on "military cooperation" within the alliance.

'Resolve our differences'
Biden announced the new Australia-US-Britain defence alliance on Wednesday, in a pact widely seen as aimed at countering the rise of China.

It extends American nuclear submarine technology to Australia, as well as cyber-defence, applied artificial intelligence and undersea capabilities.

The move infuriated France, which lost a contract to supply conventional submarines to Australia that was worth Aus$50 billion ($36.5 billion, 31 billion euros) when signed in 2016.

Le Drian has described it as a "stab in the back" and said the behaviour of the Biden administration had been comparable to that of Trump, whose sudden changes in policy long exasperated European allies.

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Saturday stressed the "unwavering" US commitment to its alliance with France.

"We hope to continue our discussion on this issue at the senior level in coming days, including at UNGA next week," he said, referring to the United Nations General Assembly, which both Le Drian and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will attend.

Australia has also shrugged off Chinese anger over its decision to acquire the nuclear-powered submarines, while vowing to defend the rule of law in airspace and waters where Beijing has staked hotly contested claims.

Beijing described the new alliance as an "extremely irresponsible" threat to regional stability, questioning Australia's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and warning the Western allies that they risked "shooting themselves in the foot".
(AFP)

 

[Plain Jane]

Éric Zemmour: The far-right pundit who threatens to outflank Le Pen

Marine Le Pen has said that she would never treat him as an adversary. But if Eric Zemmour – a popular journalist, author and pundit who has been convicted multiple times for inciting hate speech – throws…

www.france24.com

Éric Zemmour: The far-right pundit who threatens to outflank Le Pen
Issued on: 13/09/2021 - 18:28

File photo of Éric Zemmour © Joel Saget, AFP/File
Text by:Monique El-FaizyFollow
4 min
Listen to the article
Marine Le Pen has said that she would never treat him as an adversary, but if Eric Zemmour, a popular journalist, author and pundit who has been convicted multiple times for inciting hate speech, throws his hat into the presidential ring as expected, he could prove to be the biggest threat to the reigning doyenne of the French far right.

Le Pen has long struggled with likeability, so she has been careful not to take on the popular Zemmour, whom a recent Ipsos poll showed could garner eight percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election if he were to run. Behind the scenes, though, Le Pen and her camp acknowledge the danger that his candidacy could dilute the far-right vote in the first round of next April’s presidential elections.

So who is this man nipping at the heels of Le Pen?

The 63-year-old is a native of the Parisian suburbs and the descendent of Berber Jews who moved from Algeria to France during the French-Algerian war in the 1950s. His father was a paramedic and his mother worked in the home. He graduated from the prestigious Sciences Po university. Twice failing to get a seat at the École nationale d’administration (ENA), the elite institute that was the breeding ground for France’s political class, he got his first job at a newspaper in 1986. Since then he has had an award-winning—albeit profoundly controversial—career as a print, television and radio journalist and author.

He has used his sizeable platforms to throw firebombs into French society with such subjects as the supposed incompatibility of Islam with secular French values, immigration, and the crisis of French manhood. Some observers say that he is merely reflecting the current zeitgeist; at the very least his huge TV audience is a reminder that France has not escaped the deep political polarisation of our era.

But unlike Le Pen, whose notoriously poor performance in a 2017 debate against Emmanuel Macron was nothing short of an embarrassment to her and her party, Zemmour is a seasoned television professional amply endowed with both the appearance of intellect and the gift of gab.

More radical than Le Pen
His views, however, make those of Le Pen look almost palatable. He was twice convicted for hate speech and inciting racial violence, and other legal procedures against him are ongoing. He has said that unaccompanied migrant children from Africa and the Middle East are all killers, rapists and thieves, and that “jihadists were considered to be good Muslims by all Muslims”. He promotes the racist conspiracy theory that Europeans are gradually being replaced by immigrants.

Zemmour, who describes himself as a Gaullist and a Bonapartist, argues in his 2014 book “The French Suicide: The 40 Years that Defeated France,” that neoliberalism has put France into decline; that high divorce rates have led to sexual desperation and a crisis of virility among white men; and that, since the fall of Napoleon, “France is no longer a predator but a prey”. Women, he wrote, are the victims of consumerism and, at their cores, long to be dominated by men.

His discourse clearly touches a nostalgic nerve among those who long for the France of yesteryear; the book was a massive hit, selling more than 5,000 copies a day for the first two weeks after publication and having sold a reported 500,000 copies overall.

Zemmour has yet to formally announce his presidency, but the signs that he intends to do so are there. On Monday he left the “Facing the News” television show after the Superior Council of the Audiovisual (CSA), which monitors French TV to ensure that all political currents are equally represented, found that Zemmour is a politician rather than a journalist and his media appearances must now be subject to the same time limitations as other candidates. This week Zemmour will set out on a nation-wide book tour "to meet the French people".

Weak spots?
While controversy has thus far increased Zemmour’s popularity, there are a few skeletons in an open closet that may prove to be problematic. In April, after a local official said online that Zemmour had forcibly kissed her, the investigative news site Mediapart published the testimonies of several women who alleged that he had subjected them, too, to unwanted sexual contact.

Zemour has no real political experience, nor does he have the support of a party behind him, nor even a cadre of well-funded backers, as did Macron when building his fledging party. And while he’s full of criticism for the path France has taken since the 1960s, he has yet to delineate a path toward fixing what he believes to be the nation’s problems.

None of that may be enough to stop him from declaring his candidacy, as he believes that Le Pen has no chance at electoral success. “Marine Le Pen would never win, and everyone in the National Rally knows it,” he said on France 2 television. “I think the French see that, and she knows it, and today a vote for Marine Le Pen is a vote for Macron. Because that’s what he is hoping for: to face her again [in the second round] and beat her.”

 

[northern watch]

Poland sending 500 more troops to protect Belarus border
Poland's government says it is sending 500 additional troops and special vehicles to the border with Belarus to strengthen it against increasing migrant pressure that it says is orchestrated by Belarus and Russia
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA Associated Press
20 September 2021, 06:25

WARSAW, Poland -- Poland is sending 500 additional army troops and special vehicles to its border with Belarus to strengthen it against increasing migrant pressures which the government says is orchestrated by Belarus and Russia to destabilize the European Union.

“We are dealing with a well-organized action directed from Minsk and Moscow,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference Monday.

“We will defend Poland's border with full determination,” and prevent migrants from crossing in, Morawiecki said after a meeting with Poland's interior minister and the head of the Border Guards.

Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said 500 more troops and eight specialized vehicles will be sent to the border this week.

EU members Poland and Lithuania are facing increasing migrant pressures on their borders with Belarus, which are part of the bloc’s eastern border. They say it is a “hybrid attack” by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Minsk to destabilize the 27-nation EU. The border pressure began after Western countries introduced sanctions on Lukashenko's regime for its oppressive measures against the opposition.

Morawiecki noted, however, that necessary medical care will be extended to those migrants who reached Poland.
He said three migrants, including an Iraqi man, who were found dead Sunday close to the Belarusian border died from hypothermia and exhaustion. A detailed autopsy will be carried on the Iraqi, after his companions reported he behaved strangely before his death. Kaminski said at some point, the men were turned back to Belarus by Poland's border guards.

Polish border guards also saw the body of a woman close to the border, on the Belarus side, according to Border Guards chief, Gen. Tomasz Praga.

Morawiecki and Kaminski said migrants from the Mideast and Africa are paying large sums in Belarus ostensibly to be smuggled into Germany, but are being left by Belarusian servicemen in the dense pristine forests and bogs on the border with Poland. They said Belarus has introduced visa-free travel with some Mideast countries that have “great illegal migration potential” to bring in migrants and push them toward Poland and Lithuania.

Morawiecki said a pregnant migrant woman was recently apprehended as she was leading 13 migrant children that were not hers. The children were hospitalized, some of them with COVID-19.

But humanitarian organizations are drawing attention to the plight of the migrants.

Poland and Lithuania are building razor wire fences, have increased border patrols and have introduced a temporary state of emergency along their borders to stop illegal migration but they are also barring reporters and humanitarian groups from the border strip. Poland is to decide at the end of September whether to extend the 30-day state of emergency that was introduced on Sept. 2.

Authorities said there were over 8,000 attempted illegal crossings from Belarus this year, including over 3,800 attempts so far in September.

Poland sending 500 more troops to protect Belarus border - ABC News (go.com)

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Russia Aware Of Kiev's Military Preparations, Hopes It Won't Turn To Hostilities

BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, SEP 21, 2021 - 02:00 AM
Via Southfront.org,
Russia knows about Kiev’s military preparations, hopes that reason will prevail and that it will not come to hostilities, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told reporters.


The conference of the Valdai Club “Russia and Uzbekistan facing the challenges of development and security at a new historical stage of interaction” is being held in Tashkent on September 20th, organized in partnership with the Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan.

“We know about these military preparations (of Kiev), we know about the assistance that Kiev receives from the United States and other countries,” Rudenko said.

According to him, “it is difficult to predict something with the current leadership in Kiev, nothing can be ruled out.”

“But all these things are taken into account in our military planning. We hope that after all, reason will prevail in Kiev and that the military scenario, including the Donbass scenario, will not reach,” the Deputy Foreign Minister stressed.

Meanwhile, Kiev should not count on Washington’s help in the event of a war with Russia, former US Ambassador to Kiev John Herbst said.

He noted that the White House can provide Ukraine with equipment, but not with troops.

“If the situation changes radically, maybe, but today I don’t see it,” the ex-diplomat said.

However, he admitted the likelihood of Russia’s disconnection from the SWIFT international payment system.

Speaking about Ukraine’s membership in NATO, Herbst noted that he does not see it among the members of the alliance neither in five nor ten years.

However, in his opinion, this is possible if “something radically changes.”

Russia has repeatedly stressed that it has no aggressive intentions towards any countries. At the same time, Moscow is observing unprecedented NATO activity at its borders. The North Atlantic Alliance regularly conducts exercises and simulates battles with the Russian army.

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov noted that Moscow does not pose a threat to anyone, however, it will not disregard actions potentially dangerous to its interests.


Separately, there are reports that the US may deliver an Iron Dome defense system to Ukraine.

The Iron Dome missile defense system, which the United States can transfer to Ukraine, will increase the combat capability of the Ukrainian army, said Oleksiy Arestovich, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, spokesman for the Kiev delegation to the contact group on Donbass.

Earlier, Politico newspaper wrote that several US congressmen included in the defense bill for 2022 an amendment that provides for the sale or transfer of new air and missile defense systems to Ukraine, including the Iron Dome batteries, which are currently used by the US army.

Arestovich expressed the opinion that obtaining such systems would be important for Ukraine.

“The main thing here will be if it is reported that Ukraine receives weapons of the most modern models, an increase in the combat ability of the armed forces of Ukraine as a whole, and will be able to cover either two key cities, or two defense facilities, or two facilities, or maybe more, of critical infrastructure,” he said.

According to Politico, the United States does not have many air and missile defense batteries that could be sent to other countries. An employee of the congress noted that the two batteries of the “Iron Dome” purchased from Israel are the main candidates for being transferred to Ukraine, the newspaper writes.

 

[jward]

Sky News
@SkyNews
8m

UK considers joining existing US-Mexico-Canada trade deal as hopes of standalone post-Brexit agreement fade

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1440429092822605829

View: https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1440429092822605829?s=20

 

[jward]

CBS News
@CBSNews
23m

CBS News' @EdOkeefe reports that during Pres. Biden's bilateral meeting with British PM Boris Johnson, U.S. press questions about the southern border were shouted down by White House aides. The president's answer was undecipherable.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1440432398223622157

View: https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1440432398223622157?s=20

 

[Plain Jane]

Kosovo-Serbia border blocked by protesters amid tensions

The Kosovo-Serbia border was blocked for a second day by ethnic Kosovo Serbs protesting a decision by Kosovo authorities to start removing Serbian license plates from cars entering the country.

apnews.com

Kosovo-Serbia border blocked by protesters amid tensions
By ZENEL ZHINIPOTOKU and LLAZAR SEMINIyesterday



1 of 11
Kosovo police officers walk to replace their colleagues near the northern Kosovo border crossing of Jarinje on Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. Tensions soared Monday when Kosovo special police with armored vehicles were sent to the border to impose a rule on temporarily replacing Serb license plates from cars while they drive in Kosovo. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — The Kosovo-Serbia border was blocked again Tuesday by ethnic Kosovo Serbs protesting a decision by Kosovo authorities to start removing Serbian license plates from cars entering the country. The traffic chaos raised fears that it may unleash much deeper tensions between the two Balkan neighbors.

Serbia doesn’t recognize its former province of Kosovo as a separate nation and considers their mutual border only as an “administrative” and temporary boundary.

Trucks have blocked the road to the Jarinje and Brnjak border crossing where small groups of Serbs spent the night in tents. An Associated Press photographer wasn’t let onto the road by car but other people crossed the border on foot.

Tensions soared Monday when Kosovo special police with armored vehicles were sent to the border to impose a rule on temporarily replacing Serb license plates from cars while they drive in Kosovo. It’s a minor annoyance for drivers with a big symbolic impact. Kosovo authorities say they are only copying a program by Serbian police, who have for years been taking off registration plates from Kosovo-registered cars entering Serbia. Drivers then need to pay 5 euros for a temporary license plate.

Kosovo authorities said a 2016 deal with Serbia reached in European Union-mediated talks had expired and now only proper Kosovo symbols are valid.

Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla told The Associated Press that Serb citizens in Kosovo “should not fear state institutions, police.” He said many Serbs in Kosovo were being “manipulated’ by authorities in Serbia.

Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs drove to the border in their cars and trucks, blocking roads leading to the crossing points. Kosovo police on Monday fired tear gas at the protesters, but they remained.

Igor Simic, a Kosovo Serb official, said this is ”a democratic protest” by Kosovo’s Serbs.
“They are just trying to save their human rights of free movement,” he said.

Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti held a meeting with Western ambassadors from United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union, telling them that “yesterday’s decision was not a provocation or discrimination against anyone.”

“On this reciprocity of the temporary number plates for the cars, either both Kosovo and Serbia are right or they are wrong. Thus they will either keep number plates of both countries or take them away,” Kurti said.

The Kosovar prime minister talked with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday on the issue.

Thousands of people were killed and more than 1 million were left homeless after a 1998-1999 bloody crackdown by Serbian troops against Kosovo Albanian separatists. The war ended only after NATO intervened. Kosovo then declared independence in 2008. It has been recognized by the U.S. and other Western nations, but not by Serbia and its allies Russia and China.

Thousands of NATO-led peacekeepers, including U.S. troops, are still deployed in Kosovo, trying to stave off lingering ethnic tensions between majority Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs.
The EU and U.S. urged Kosovo and Serbia to “immediately, without any delay” exercise restraint and refrain from unilateral actions.

“”It’s important to reduce tensions, restore a peaceful atmosphere & allow for freedom of movement. We stand ready to facilitate talks on all open issues,” tweeted Miroslav Lajcak, EU’s special envoy for Kosovo-Serbia dialogue.

Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vucic, described Kosovo’s car license plates decision as a “criminal action” after a meeting Tuesday of the top Serbian state security body and insisted that Kosovo’s special police withdraw from the Serb-dominated north.

“We consider as inappropriate any statements equaling the blame of Belgrade and Pristina,” Vucic said referring to the EU and U.S. urging both sides to ease the tensions. “The only solution is the withdrawal of all troops, then we can go to Brussels and discuss everything and possibly reach an agreement.”
___
Llazar Semini reported from Tirana, Albania, Jovana Gec from Belgrade, Serbia.