The Trump Doctrine In A Regional Context

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

The last section of the new US National Security Strategy (NSS) describes the envisaged application of the Trump Doctrine in a regional context all across the world, and it’s worthwhile to examine what storylines will most likely be advanced by the policy document’s intrinsic infowar component. This analysis is divided according to the geographic categories contained in the NSS and proceeds along that order, after which a brief summary will be presented in highlighting the most discernable global trends.

Indo-Pacific

The US says that “a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region” as China employs multifaceted influence strategies in a concerted effort to get regional states to follow its economic and political models. Although presented by China as being mutually beneficial, the NSS describes Beijing’s Silk Road relationships as being detrimental to its partners’ sovereignty. In response, Washington claims that “states throughout the region are calling for sustained U.S. leadership in a collective response that upholds a regional order respectful of sovereignty and independence”, which implies the creation of what the author has previously described as a ‘China Containment Coalition’ (CCC) to preserve the existing US-led unipolar system them. The suggested outcome of this initiative is the US’ “quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India”, with the latter once again being referred to as a “Major Defense Partner” whose “growing relationships throughout the region” will be supported by the US.

Elsewhere in the area, North Korea is identified as “a global threat that requires a global response”, later revealed in this section as being missile defense cooperation between the US, Japan, and South Korea towards the eventual aim of “an area defense capability”, one which was previously described in the document as “not intended to undermine strategic stability or disrupt longstanding strategic relationships with Russia or China.” Looking southwards, the US wants to “reenergize [its] alliances with the Philippines and ­Thailand and strengthen [its] partnerships with Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and others to help them become cooperative maritime partners”, with it being inferred that “reenergizing” is a euphemism for “winning back” Manila and Bangkok. Altogether, the US plans to use ASEAN and APEC as regional institutions for advancing its geopolitical and economic interests, with the former probably seeing some of the ASEAN states become the US’ “Lead From Behind” partners in “containing China” while the latter will result in more bilateral trade deals.

EU

Russia is fear mongered as engaging in “subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments”, suggesting that any objective developments that even remotely hint at either of these three conclusions will be dismissed as ‘Russian propaganda’ and their messengers discredited as ‘Russian agents/trolls’. China is also mentioned in this section as having “gain[ed] a strategic foothold in Europe by expanding its unfair trade practices and investing in key industries, sensitive technologies, and infrastructure”, showing that the US is now paying attention to the progress that its 16+1 framework has made in the “Three Seas” region of Central and Eastern Europe and will likely go on the information offensive against it in the coming future.

Daesh and the Migrant Crisis are also listed as posing serious threats to the EU as well.

In reassuring the continent, the US says that its “European allies and partners increase [its] strategic reach and provide access to forward basing and overflight rights for global operations”, which explains the self-interested reason why Washington will evidently abide by its Article 5 commitment to NATO. It believes that deepening transatlantic collaboration is necessary to protect Europe from the aforementioned threats that were described, with military spending increases geared towards modernizing capacities and building a ‘missile defense shield’ to ‘protect’ against Russia, Iran, and even supposedly North Korea too, while US efforts to “contest China’s unfair trade and economic practices and restrict its acquisition of sensitive technologies” in the EU will probably mean that Junker’s September 2017 proposal for a “European Enabling Framework” ‘screening process’ will become a roadblock to Beijing’s plans.

Furthermore, the US wants to expand its energy exports to Europe, which might see it getting more involved in the activities of LNG terminal-hosting “Three Seas” states such as Croatia and thus setting the stage for a “Balkan Pivot” to more directly counter China there.

Middle East

Right off the bat, the US blames Iran for all of the region’s woes by stating that “the interconnected problems of Iranian expansion, state collapse, jihadist ideology, socio-economic stagnation, and regional rivalries have convulsed the Middle East”, accusing what it labels as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” of “tak[ing] advantage of instability to expand its influence through partners and proxies, weapon proliferation, and funding” that oftentimes takes the form of Iran “develop[ing] more capable ballistic missiles and intelligence capabilities, and [undertaking in] malicious cyber activities.” Iran is painted as the ultimate evil in order to whitewash Israel, which the US attempts to unabashedly do in the passage where the authors write that “the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems.”

In fact, the NSS notes, “states have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats”, in a nod to the de-facto alliance between the GCC and Israel against Iran. The US lists its chief objectives as strengthening cooperation with the GCC and what it describes as the “independent state” of Iraq, with the latter phrase hinting that Washington will work behind the scenes to counter Tehran’s influence in Baghdad. This presumption is apparently confirmed by the next passage where the US commits to “work[ing] with partners to…neutralize Iranian malign influence”, which again implies a similar “Lead From Behind” strategy just like it wants to employ in the Indo-Pacific.

Moreover, the US says that it will “seek a settlement to the Syrian civil war that sets the conditions for refugees to return home and rebuild their lives in safety”, signaling a step back from its previous regime change obsession and possibly opening the doors for a pragmatic ‘New Détente’ deal with Russia over this issue. In addition, the expected US commitment “to helping facilitate a comprehensive peace agreement that is acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians” is reiterated in the text, though this is nothing more than rhetoric for distracting from the US’ determinedly pro-Israeli policies. Most interestingly, however, is the penultimate policy prescription that the US will “help (its) partners procure interoperable missile defense and other capabilities to better defend against active missile threats”, which demonstrates that its missile defense plans are indeed Eurasian-wide and stretch all across the EU-Mideast-Northeast Asian Rimland.

South And Central Asia

The US draws significant attention what it describes as Pakistan-based threats on multiple occasions, slyly speaking tongue-in-cheek when talking about the Pakistan that it’s supposedly seeking in order to indirectly accuse the Pakistan of today of embodying these said threats. For example, when the authors write that their country “seeks a Pakistan that is not engaged in destabilizing behavior…will press Pakistan to intensify its counterterrorism efforts, since no partnership can survive a country’s support for militants and terrorists who target a partner’s own service members and officials…(and) will also encourage Pakistan to continue demonstrating that it is a responsible steward of its nuclear assets”, it’s essentially saying that Pakistan is destabilizing the region, supporting anti-American militants and terrorists who target US forces in Afghanistan, and irresponsibly wielding nuclear weapons which might one day fall into the hands of the same terrorists that it’s accused of backing.

India, US, Japan annual Malabar naval drills

All of these hostile narratives against Pakistan explain why the US wants the world to think that “the prospect for an Indo-Pakistani military conflict [which] could lead to a nuclear exchange remains a key concern requiring consistent diplomatic attention”, as the thinly veiled inference is that Islamabad is solely responsible for this dangerous state of affairs. It’s predictable that Washington would weave such a one-sided storyline because it envisions New Delhi as its 21^st-century partner for ‘containing China’, with its strategists writing that the US “will deepen [its] strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region”.

Concerning Central Asia, the NSS says that the US “will encourage the economic integration of Central and South Asia to promote prosperity and economic linkages that will bolster connectivity and trade”, and since it’s improbable that this is an oblique statement of support for CPEC, the only realistic conclusion is that it’s an American endorsement for the Central Asian component of India’s Chabahar project. As even the most inexperienced observer would know, this port is based in Iran, so the US will have to work overtime in crafting a semi-cohesive explanation for why it doesn’t mind India working with Washington’s hated nemesis in Tehran, though the answer could probably be simplistically summed up as ‘realpolitik’ for ‘containing China’.

Another point to mention is that the US says that it “seeks Central Asian states that are resilient against domination by rival powers, are resistant to becoming jihadist safe havens, and prioritize reforms”, and that it “will work with the Central Asian states to guarantee access to the region to support [its] counterterrorism efforts.” Evidently, the US is aiming to exploit the new Daesh threat to the region that it helped transfer from “Syraq” to Afghanistan as an excuse for reestablishing the military partnerships that it used to have with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, possibly up to the point of once again basing its troops on their territory. While pretending that this is only in the interests of “counterterrorism efforts”, the real motivation would be to boost their “resilien[cy] against domination by rival powers”, or in other words, try to dislodge them from the joint Russian-Chinese multipolar orbit of the SCO.

Western Hemisphere

The US claims that “democratic states connected by shared values and economic interests will reduce the violence, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration that threaten [their] common security”, but in reality it’s only concerned about leveraging its economic connectivity with Latin American states to counter the three mentioned threats and doesn’t actually care too much about “democratic states” or “shared values”. After all, the US supports the Honduran government of Juan Orlando Hernandez despite the OAS requesting an electoral redo after the incumbent was suspected of stealing the election and then openly resorting to deadly force to suppress opposition protests against him. The Trump Administration’s visceral hatred of anything socialist is also on full display in condemning Cuba and Venezuela, which it believes have served as magnets for inviting Chinese and Russian influence into the region via economic and military means, respectively.

The NSS emphasizes the US’ “regional efforts to build security and prosperity through strong diplomatic engagement” and its desire to “isolate governments that refuse to act as responsible partners in advancing hemispheric peace and prosperity”, suggesting that the incipient anti-Venezuelan coalition model that’s forming could be replicated against the similarly multipolar-aligned ALBA states of Bolivia and Nicaragua due to their socialist ideals and in the event that they forcibly react against any forthcoming Hybrid War provocations against them. The declaration that the US “will encourage further market-based economic reforms and encourage transparency to create conditions for sustained prosperity” adds credence to the claims that it will probably expand its “Operation Condor 2.0” unconventional campaign of restoring its hegemonic hemispheric influence against those states and possibly other ones as well.

US President Donald Trump attends a working dinner with Latin American leaders in New York

On the economic front, the document says that the US “will modernize [its] trade agreements and deepen [its] economic ties with the region and ensure that trade is fair and reciprocal”, which is just a reaffirmation of Trump’s well-known intent to renegotiate NAFTA, but which could also extend to the US’ other hemispheric multilateral trade deal of CAFTA-DR and the bilateral ones that it has with Chile, Colombia, and Peru (the latter three of which plus NAFTA-member Mexico constitute the four states of the Pacific Alliance trading bloc). The phrasing about “deepening economic ties with the region” might indicate the US’ plans to reach bilateral trade deals with the Mercosur members, probably beginning with Brazil and then having the rest of the bloc fall in line afterwards. Altogether, the interweaving of bilateral trade deals all throughout the hemisphere would represent the de-facto fulfillment of the long-sought “Free Trade Area of the Americas” (FTAA).

Africa

The final section of the NSS’ regional context review is the most direct about the US’ intentions to “contain China” and obstruct its Silk Road strategy. The authors confidently write that Africa “represent[s] potential new markets for U.S. goods and services”, the demand of which “is high and will likely grow” because of what it hints as being the desire of many countries to replicate its political and economic models. This is obviously the infowar narrative that will be spun in serving as the ‘carrot’ for attracting African partners (subordinates), while the ‘stick’ is the equally weaponized storyline that “some Chinese practices undermine Africa’s long-term development by corrupting elites, dominating extractive industries, and locking countries into unsustainable and opaque debts and commitments.”

US President Donald Trump congratulates African leaders

In case there was any doubt that the US wants to challenge China’s dominance in Africa, the document unambiguously announces that the US “will offer American goods and services, both because it is profitable for [it] and because it serves as an alternative to China’s often extractive economic footprint on the continent.”

To this end, the US “seeks sovereign African states that are integrated into the world economy”, which is a just another way of saying that it wants its partners to abandon the Chinese model of state-driven development and open up their economies to Western businessmen and their Indo-Japanese partners instead. “Support[ing] economic integration among African states” could be seen as developing an anti-Chinese trading bloc in the future, though this is unlikely since all existing economic organizations on the continent are closely aligned with the People’s Republic, as are most of the countries that are party to the massive 2015 Tripartite Free Trade Area in China’s most active “sphere of Silk Road influence”.

However, where the US is most capable of making African inroads is through military-security relations in “partner[ing] with governments, civil society, and regional organizations to end long-running, violent conflicts”, which carries with it a whiff of “Lead From Behind” “nation-building” that America is much more experienced with (for better or for worse) than China. By using the existing anti-terrorist pretext present throughout most of Africa to degree or another and especially in the transregional Sahel, the US will probably seek to leverage its military advantages to “stabilize” these states in exchange for them disengaging from China and/or clinching profitable trade deals with the US afterwards, since it will otherwise be exceptionally difficult for the US to economically counterbalance China any other way.

Global Trends

 After examining the Trump Doctrine in all of its regional contexts, it’s possible to detect several interconnected global trends that are present in the US’ National Security Strategy:

Demonization Of Strategic Rivals:

The US is hell-bent on framing its strategic multipolar rivals of Russia, China, and Iran as responsible for global destabilization in order to deflect attention from it and its partners’ responsibility for this state of affairs, with the distinct possibility that Pakistan will soon be added to this list of adversaries as America moves towards making India its top international ally in the future.

Assembling “Lead From Behind” Coalitions:

The demonization of the US’ strategic rivals provides it with the ‘plausible pretext’ for assembling regional coalitions against them all throughout the Eurasian supercontinent and potentially even in Latin America too if it gets its way against Venezuela, thus formalizing a new model of unipolar proxy control that has flexibly adapted to multipolar challenges.

Building “Missile Defense Shields”:

One of the most prominent state-to-state manifestations of “Lead From Behind” cooperation between the US and its subordinates is the construction of “missile defense shields” on trumped-up pretexts in order to undermine Russia and China’s nuclear second-strike capabilities, with the possibility existing that the same model can one day be implemented in South Asia to support India against Pakistan.

Exploiting Non-State Threats:

Another way in which the US plans to utilize its “Lead From Behind” coalitions is to exploit the prevalence of threatening non-state actors such as jihadists and transnational criminal organizations by using them as a ‘plausible pretense’ for setting up a range of differently sized regional bases in its partnered countries to support special forces raids against these shared menaces.

Stopping The Silk Road:

The combination of demonizing infowars, “Lead From Behind” coalitions, and multidimensional partnerships with its allies naturally leads one to the conclusion that the US plans to employ all instruments of its power (Hybrid War) in stopping China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity so as to counter multipolarity and indefinitely preserve the declining unipolar system.

Poland"s New PM Wants To "Make Europe Christian Again"

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

Poland’s new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki shared his dream to make Europe Christian again.

The newly appointed premier replaced Beata Szydlo and symbolizes that Poland is taking a more combative posture towards the West than in the past. While Prime Ministers undoubtedly have a very important domestic role to play too, it’s important not to overlook the international implications of Morawiecki’s appointment, especially given what he shared in his very first interview after the announcement when he said that

“My dream is to re-Christianize the EU since unfortunately, in many places, people no longer sing Christmas carols, the churches are empty and are turning into museums, and this is very sad.”

 

In responding to the interviewer’s comment about how the EU might cut off funding for Poland, Morawiecki proudly said that “I do remember one former president telling us earlier this year ‘you have values, we have funds.’ Well, I would love to help the West with proper values.”

Rhetoric such as this would have been unimaginable a few years ago, but it just goes to show how far the intra-EU split has gone ever since Brussels and Berlin teamed up to pressure the bloc to accept the forced relocation of civilizationally dissimilar migrants.

It also speaks to the growing confidence that Poland feels nowadays in officially introducing a conservative-religious ideological vision to challenge the EU’s liberal-godless one, demonstrating how it plans to lead the “Three Seas Initiative” and advance its EuroRealist agenda. Moreover, Morawiecki’s words prove just how strongly Poland and its ruling Law & Justice Party, popularly known by its Polish abbreviation PiS, have been influenced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party. Hungary may have been the ideological heart of the EuroRealist movement and Orban its first national figurehead in the EU, but Poland is now carrying the torch through Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s “grey cardinal” stewardship because this Central European country is actually big enough to make a real difference.

It was one thing for a landlocked nation of less than 10 million people to have this continental outlook, and another for the leader of the regional “Three Seas Initiative” and its 40 million-strong country to promote this perspective, which makes Poland an EU-wide force to be recognized because of how ideologically different its worldview is from Germany’s.

Whereas Berlin will continue pulling the purse strings and exercising its influence through economic means, Warsaw is flexing its soft power muscle by appealing to what matters most to many of the people in Central and Eastern Europe, and that’s the national identity that they fear is under threat because of Germany’s aggressive EuroLiberalism. If Poland can succeed in winning hearts and minds in the region through its religious-conservative EuroRealist ideology, then the next natural step will be to tighten the trading bonds between its “Three Seas” partners in order to generate a stronger economic basis for turning their vision into a reality.

With the right combination of soft and economic power, Poland can return to becoming one of Europe’s Great Powers, but this time with a sway that extends across the strategic “Three Seas” space and enables it to shape the continent’s 21^st-century geopolitics.

Austria"s Anti-Immigrant Freedom Party Enters Government; Wins Key Ministry Posts

Two months ago, in Europe"s latest shocking, anti-establishment outcome, Austria"s 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz became the world"s youngest leader after his conservative People"s Party won the Austrian National Council elections, making him Austria"s youngest Chancellor in history, while the establishment Social Democrat party suffered its "worst result since Hitler rule."

Sebastian Kurz and his girlfriend Susanne Thier

And now, two months later, in a double whammy for Europe"s outraged liberal establishment, the anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) - which finished third in October"s elections with 26% of the vote, less than a percent behind the Social Democrats, has joined a coalition government with Sebastian Kurz and his People’s Party (OVP). The agreement between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, which is returning to government after more than a decade"s absence, was struck on Friday, the two parties’ leaders, Sebastian Kurz and Heinz-Christian Strache announced in a joint news conference.

Austria"s president approved the new coalition on Saturday, two months after inconclusive elections. According to BBC, the coalition government makes Austria the only country in Western Europe to have a far-right party in power.

Sebastian Kurz and Freedom Party chair Heinz-Christian Strache

Introducing the new government, and the 180-page document setting out its agenda, Mr Kurz said the two parties had agreed "on a clear pro-European outlook". Meanwhile, Strache, who in January advocated a law similar to the ban on Nazi practices to be introduced against “fascist Islam,” spoke about “mutual appreciation” with Kurz, adding that they share “the responsibility for our homeland Austria and for the people in this country.”

While the two parties have yet to unveil the details of the coalition agreement, some of the key points that will shape the next government have already been discussed: among them is a further crackdown on migration

“We want to reduce the burden on taxpayers ... and above all we want to ensure greater security in our country, including through the fight against illegal immigration,” Kurz said.

And while the FPO will be the junior coalition partner, it has already secured several critical posts in the new cabinet. Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache will be vice-chancellor, while his party colleagues will run the ministries of the interior, defense and health and social security. Specifically, Herbert Kickl, will be the new iterior minister: the party"s general secretary and campaign director, 49, was a speechwriter for the late party leader Jorg Haider and is a close confidant of the current leader, Hans-Christian Strache.

For one, the sweep assures that any and all benefits for migrants will be eliminated. To be sure, the opposition has expressed concern that the police and the security apparatus are now all firmly in the hands of the Freedom Party.

Separately, the new foreign minister will be Middle East expert and writer Karin Kneissl, who is not a Freedom Party member but was nominated by the party, which to some suggests that the Freedom Party now effectively runs Austria.  At the request of Austria"s president, the posts of justice minister and interior minister would not be held by the same party, Mr Kurz said.

Today"s crowning success of the far-right Freedom Party, which gained 7 percentage points on the previous elections, come amid a backlash to the immigrant wave that swept Europe in 2015 in the aftermath of Angela Merkel"s now defunct "open door" policy. The party"s hardline anti-immigrant stance emerged after Austria was overwhelmed by a wave of refugees fleeing the US-stoked proxy war in Syria.

Since 2015, the Alpine country took in some 150,000 asylum seekers, which accounts for over 1 percent of its population, one of the largest shares per capita alongside Sweden. The signs of the growing popularity of the far-right was evident in December last year, when Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer’s bid to become modern Austria"s first far-right president was only narrowly defeated in a neck-and-neck contest with centrist Van der Bellen.

And so, with Austria set to form a right-wing government, institutionalized opposition to Europe"s liberal “open door” policies on migrants is no longer restricted to the EU"s eastern territories. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with their own conservative governments, remain staunchly opposed to the EU relocation scheme and refuse to take in a single refugee. Now, with Austria joining the "resistance", the anti-migrant wave have officially broken into central Europe.

And now, we await Europe"s response: when the Freedom Party last entered a coalition in Austria in 2000, the country"s fellow EU member states froze bilateral diplomatic relations in response. While they were lifted months later, such measures are unlikely to happen again, as resurgent populist groups have been promoting anti-immigration and eurosceptic agendas across much of the EU, and the last thing any other establishment party wants is to experience a similar revolution in the top political echelons.

From The Caucasus To The Balkans, China"s Silk Roads Are Rising

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao...

The 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress made it clear that the New Silk Roads – aka, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – launched by President Xi Jinping just four years ago, provides the concept around which all Chinese foreign policy is to revolve for the foreseeable future. Up until the symbolic 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, in 2049, in fact.

Virtually every nook and cranny of the Chinese administration is invested in making the BRI Grand Strategy a success: economic actors, financial players, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the private sector, the diplomatic machine, think tanks, and – of course – the media, are all on board.

It’s under this long-term framework that sundry BRI projects should be examined. And their reach, let’s be clear, involves most of Eurasia – including everything from the Central Asian steppes to the Caucasus and the Western Balkans.

Representatives of no fewer than 50 nations are currently gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia, for yet another BRI-related summit. The BRI masterplan details six major economic “corridors,” and one of these is the Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor. That’s where Georgia fits in, alongside neighboring Azerbaijan: both are vying to position themselves as the key Caucasus transit hub between Western China and the European Union.

On the first day of the summit, Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili extolled the drive to “strengthen the economic and civilizational ties between Europe and Asia.” In practice, that translates into a push to build an economic free zone, in accordance with the memorandum of understanding signed by the Chinese and Georgian economic ministers.

Add in the recently inaugurated Baku-Tblisi-Kars railway and a new deep-sea port to be built in Anaklia, in the Black Sea, with Chinese investment, and we have Georgia as a key logistical hub in China-EU connectivity. It helps that, thanks to the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) gas pipeline out of the Caspian Sea, Georgia has already been positioned for years as an energy transportation hub.

Crucially, Georgia has signed free trade agreements with both the EU and China, with the latter coming into effect at the start of 2018. It is also maneuvering itself to profit from the interconnection of BRI with the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). Beijing and Moscow formally signed the BRI/EAEU partnership in June last year – although it will take time for that to translate into actual trade and economic cooperation projects, possibly starting in the Russian Far East.

Mao revisited

The action in the Caucasus was mirrored in Europe earlier in the week as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban opened the sixth “16+1” summit, involving China and 16 Central and Eastern European nations, in Budapest.

“16+1” is yet another of those trademark Chinese diplomatic “away wins.” Some of these nations are part of the EU, some part of NATO, some neither.

From Beijing’s point of view, what matters is the relentless BRI infrastructure and connectivity drive. Beijing may have invested as much as US$8 billion so far in Central and Eastern Europe.

China is having a ball in the Western Balkans – especially in Serbia, in Montenegro, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where EU financial muscle is absent. China has invested in multiple connectivity and energy projects in Serbia – including the much-debated Belgrade-Budapest high-speed rail link. Construction of the Serbian stretch started this week, with 85% of the total cost (roughly€2.4 billion) coming from the Export-Import Bank of China.

The European Commission (EC) in Brussels predictably objected – claiming the tender process might not have complied with EU rules.

The strategic trade importance of Belgrade-Budapest cannot be overestimated. Think container fleets of Chinese merchandise arriving in Piraeus in Greece – a key hub of the so-called Maritime Silk Road – and then being shipped to the EU via Serbia.

In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.

Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”

Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.

What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”

Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.

Geert Wilders: "It"s Time To Drain The Swamp... In Europe"

Authored by Geert Wilders via The Gatestone Institute,

• Our democracies in the Western half of Europe have been subverted. Their goal is no longer to do what the people want. On the contrary, our political elites often do exactly the opposite. Our parliaments promote open-door policies that the majority of the people reject. Our governments sell out sovereignty to the EU against the will of the people. Our rulers welcome ever more Islam, although the majority of the people oppose it.


• Our democracies have become fake democracies. They are multi-party dictatorships, ruled by groups of establishment parties.... The establishment parties control everything, not just the politicians in their pay, but also the top brass of the civil service, the mainstream media, even the courts.... They call us "populists" because we stand for what the people want. They even drag us to court.


• We need to show that Europe"s streets are our streets, that we want to stay who and what we are, and do not want to be colonized by Islam. Europe belongs to us!

Next month, I will be visiting Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. I have been invited to speak to a group of Czech patriots. The Czechs are a freedom loving people. In 2011, on the occasion of the 100^th birthday of Ronald Reagan, they named a street in Prague after this great American president and freedom fighter.

This fact reminded me of a shameful event in my home town of The Hague, the seat of the Dutch Parliament and the government of the Netherlands. Look for a Ronald Reagan Street in The Hague and you will find none. A proposal in 2011 to name a street in The Hague after Reagan ran into fierce political opposition. Leftist parties, such as Labor, the Greens and the liberal D66 party, argued that naming a street in honor of Reagan would "do the image of the city no good." The whole affair ended in a disgraceful political compromise. Last year, a short stretch of a local bicycle path was named the "Reagan and Gorbachev Lane".

This anecdote is indicative of the difference between East and West in Europe. We can see the same difference in the attitude of their ruling elites towards Islam, the new totalitarianism that is threatening Europe today. In the East, political leaders oppose Islam; in the West, they surrender.

Islam has already gained a strong foothold in Western Europe. Its streets have come to resemble the Middle East, with headscarves everywhere. Parts of Western Europe, such as the Schilderswijk district in The Hague, the Molenbeek borough in Brussels, the banlieues [suburbs] of Paris, Birmingham in Britain, the Rosengård area in Malmö, Sweden, and many other neighborhoods, have become hotbeds of Islamic subversion.

Islam"s totalitarian nature cannot be denied. The command to murder and terrorize non-Muslims is in the Koran. Islam"s prophet Muhammad was a mass murderer and a pedophile. Those who leave Islam supposedly deserve death. And everyone who criticizes Islam and exposes what it actually says, ends up like me: on an Islamic death list.

In the past decades, Islam has entered Western Europe with the millions of immigrants from Islamic countries. Now, the European Union wants to distribute third-world immigrants over all the 28 EU member states. The nations in Central and Eastern Europe reject the EU plans to impose permanent and mandatory relocation quotas for all EU member states. They warn about the dilution of their identity, which is not Islamic, but Judeo-Christian and humanist -- rooted in the legacy of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome; not Mecca.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has denounced the EU"s pro-immigration agenda as a means to eradicate the culture and Christian identity of Hungary. Czech President Miloš Zeman is an outspoken opponent of immigration and the Islamification of the Czech Republic. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that "Islam has no place in Slovakia" and warns that "migrants change the character of our country." Polish Prime Minister Beata Szyd?o staunchly defends Poland"s refusal to accept the EU-imposed immigration quotas. "We are not going to take part in this madness," she says. In the Eastern part of Europe, anti-Islamification and anti-mass migration parties see a surge in popular support.

Resistance is growing in the West, as well. This year, we have seen my party, the Party for Freedom (PVV), become the second-largest party in the Netherlands. This is a great achievement in a country with 13 parties in Parliament. In France, Marine Le Pen made it to the second round in the French presidential elections and her party, the Front National, got more votes than ever. In Austria, the FPÖ became the second biggest party. In Germany, the patriots of the AfD forced their way into the Bundestag.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), casts his vote in The Hague during the Dutch general election that made his the second-largest party in the Netherlands, on March 15, 2017. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

However, the political elites in the West do all they can to keep the winners of the elections from power. Last month, in my country, the Netherlands, a new government coalition consisting of no less than four parties was formed. Because they stubbornly refused to talk to PVV, it took the political elites a record seven months to put together a coalition. They preferred to take in D66, the party which had denied Ronald Reagan his street in The Hague, and still they were only able to form a government with a majority of just one single seat in Parliament.

Our democracies in the Western half of Europe have been subverted. Their goal is no longer to do what the people want. On the contrary, our political elites often do exactly the opposite. Our parliaments promote open-door policies that the majority of the people reject. Our governments sell out sovereignty to the EU against the will of the people. Our rulers welcome ever more Islam, although the majority of the people oppose it.

Our democracies have become fake democracies. They are multi-party dictatorships, ruled by groups of establishment parties. They wheel and deal, often selling away the principles for which they have been elected. The establishment parties control everything, not just the politicians in their pay, but also the top brass of the civil service, the mainstream media, even the courts. Parties such as mine are excluded from coalition talks. They call us "populists" because we stand for what the people want. They even drag us to court.

Three decades ago, the countries in Central Europe witnessed a Velvet Revolution: Democratic, political and peaceful. They took to the streets. They decided that enough was enough. Thanks to their Velvet Revolution, they have leaders today who truly represent the people and who are not afraid to stand up for their nation and its identity.

We, in Western Europe, can learn lessons from the Velvet Revolution in the East. We, too, urgently need to make clear that enough is enough. In Western Europe, too, it is time to drain the swamp and to drive the elites from power. Peaceful and democratic, but thorough. We have to make our so-called democratic systems truly democratic again. The political actors should no longer be the professional politicians alone. The crisis is existential. It is time for every man and woman to do his and her duty. Because the survival of our nations itself is at stake.

We, too, have to make it very clear that we no longer want to take part in the madness of leaders, who sell out their country to the EU institutions in Brussels, and the madness of the EU elites, who sell out our continent to mass-immigration and Islam. That is why the PVV will demonstrate in the streets of Rotterdam on January 20^th. We need to show that Europe"s streets are our streets, that we want to stay who and what we are, and do not want to be colonized by Islam. Europe belongs to us!

Forget About Catalonia And Brexit, The Next European Black Swan Could Be Transylvania

Via ValueWalk.com,

Over the past 100 years, the borders in Central and Eastern Europe have been redrawn time and time again, often leaving groups of people separated from their home country by new borders. Although land often changed hands relatively peacefully, suddenly finding one-selves as an ethnic minority in a new country was bound to lead to tension and resentment.

While these resentments may reveal real disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities in Central Europe, politicians, especially populist figures, have seized on the outsider narratives inherent in the diaspora experience.

As the April 2018 election approaches in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been reaching out to the Hungarian minority in Romania, drawing criticism from Romanian leaders, while his supporters insist he is trying to lend his support Hungarians everywhere.

Rooted in History

Tensions between Romania and Hungary can be traced back to World War I and the Treaty of Trianon.

Although the Treaty of Trianon ended hostilities between the Allied Powers and the Kingdom of Hungary, the peace came at a great price to the Austro-Hungarian successor state. Hungary lost 2/3rd of its population and territory, leaving the former imperial hub landlocked in the heart of Central Europe. Most of its territory was ceded to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, as well as Austria, Italy, and Poland. Romania was granted the entire region of Transylvania, where an estimated 1.3 million ethnic Hungarians reside, making Hungarians Romania’s largest minority.

The loss of such a large chunk of territory and population would certainly leave its mark on national memory. Recently in Hungary, politicians have been revitalizing this narrative.

By derivative work: CoolKoon (talk)
Hungary1910-1920.png: The original uploader was Fz22 at English Wikipedia
(Original text: fz22 (talk)) - Hungary1910-1920.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Speaking on the June 4th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, Jànos Làzàr, Minister of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, called on the beneficiaries of the treaty to apologize, insisting, “Trianon was a diktat, a historic injustice against a nation. The entire western world is indebted to Hungary.”

Lazar was careful to say that Hungary does not advocate for the redrawing of borders, rather they merely mean to ensure that the rights of minority Hungarians are protected everywhere. Romania has not taken it that way. The Romanian authorities used words like “provocative” and “dangerous” to describe the Hungarian government’s treatment of the issue.

Diaspora Politics

This isn’t the first time Lazar has intervened on behalf of Hungarians in Romania. Last spring, Lazar interceded in the case of an ethnic Hungarian brewer, Andras Lenard, in Romania who was being pressed by Heineken. Heineken was suing the upstart brewer claiming that their names, although different languages, were too similar. Hungarian politicians reacted by calling for a boycott of Heineken products as well as proposing legislation to ban the use of the Heineken red star as a communist symbol. Heineken responded by dropping the charges against Lenard.

The intervention of Hungary on behalf Lenard reflects a larger government policy of considering the Hungarian minority in Romania as Hungarians. In 2010, the Orban government expanded Hungary’s citizenship laws, making ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries eligible for citizenship and therefore voting privileges. As the 2018 parliamentary elections appear on the horizon, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been encouraging Hungarians in other Central European countries to register to vote.

By The Independent - https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858029095456;view=1up;seq=427 (Jump to 391)
The Independent, (New York), June 14, vol. 98, 1919, p. 391 (Primary source, if any, not cited), Public Domain, Link

Orban’s critics claim that he is merely trying to leverage the 1 million eligible voters in Romania to attain a coveted 2/3rd majority in parliament for his Fidesz party. Fidesz is just two seats away from a majority that would allow them to make constitutional changes. Considering that in the 2014 elections 95% of the vote from citizens domiciled outside of Hungary went to the Fidesz party, mobilizing the Transylvanian vote is of key importance to the Orban administration. The fact that Orban may be able to mobilize thousands of votes in the diaspora is a sign that minority protection in Central Europe is an issue that should not be overlooked.

Orban doesn’t just encourage the dual-national Hungarian minority in Romania to vote in Hungarian elections, drawing further criticism from Romanian figures. In a trip to Transylvania just before the 2016 Romanian elections, Orban stirred angst against the government, claiming that the government is failing to help the ethnic Hungarians. Orban went as far as to say that the Romanian government lacks respect for the Hungarian minority. He urged them to vote in their own best interest in the elections.

Romanian critics of Orban have accused him of trying to meddle in their politics. Former President Traian Basescu even called for the removal of the Hungarian ambassador from Romania.

ReConnect Transylvania

ReConnect Hungary is a birthright program for Canadian and American young adults of Hungarian heritage. The program aims to help Hungarians in North America forge a sense of Hungarian patriotism through travel in the region and volunteer opportunities. Interestingly, the study trip is not limited to the country of Hungary, rather participants visit Hungary, as well as the Hungarian Diaspora in Serbia, Ukraine, or Slovakia to witness, “how young Hungarians outside Hungary are maintaining their identity and traditions.”

As of 2017 the program offers a three month long ReConnect Transylvania program. Participants in this program will spend 3-6 months working with an NGO in Transylvania to “discover the deepest layers of being Hungarian.” ReConnect Hungary also now offers a week long extension on the original two week long ReConnect Hungary program to explore Hungarian culture in Transylvania. By including the Diaspora in the discussion about Hungarian culture, this private-public partnership builds a concept of a Hungarian nation that traverses accepted borders.

ReConnect Hungary is part of a larger trend called diaspora tourism. Proponents of the trend argue that it cultivates a sense of cultural heritage abroad and encourages tourism, while critics claim local leaders are using it to manipulate foreign nationals.

Cultivating strong national identity abroad can be a powerful tool, and not just in dual-citizens. Hungary has already seen some success in this regard. In 1987 the Hungarian Human Rights Foundations, comprising of second generation American citizens, successfully lobbied congress for the removal of Romania’s Most Favored Nation status. The lobbying efforts were in response to the human rights violations of Ceau?escu’s communist regime, as well as specific abuses of the Hungarian population in Romania.

Putin Blamed For Poland"s Bust-Up With Brussels

Russia-gate blame-scaping is accelerating across Europe... and now it is being embraced by none other than European Council President Donald Tusk.

In what is an unprecedented attack by an EU leader on a member state’s sitting government, Bloomberg reports that Tusk explicitly suggests the ruling Law & Justice party is merely a "puppet of Putin" and just forwarding Russian interests...

“Strident dispute with Ukraine, isolation in the European Union, walking away from rule of law and judicial independence, attack on non-governmental sector and free media,” Tusk wrote on his personal Twitter account on Sunday. 

 

“Law & Justice strategy or Kremlin plan? Too similar to sleep well.”

This aggresiver tweet comes just days after Poland"s Independence Day parades "triggered" mainstream media everywhere... as tens of thousands of people, waving tens of thousands of white-and-red national flags young and old, of all walks of life, with whole families take to the streets.  

As we detailed previously, to the western media these are Nazis, racists, anti-semites and islamophobes. An abomination for the European Union.

What has positive overtones in Poland (patriotism, faith, family), has negative ones in Western Europe and the other way round. Migrants, LGTBQ and gender mainstreaming is not welcome in the area between the Oder and Bug Rivers. The EU values cannot be farther from Poland’s values and vice versa.

 

The Independence March denigrated by the Western media was favourably covered by the Polish government and other national media, except for those which are far to the left and very much pro-European. The former shored up the positive aspects of the event, the latter only looked for incidents to blow them out of any proportion and join the chorus of their western counterparts in condemning “fascists” and “white supremacists”.

 

A thirty-six million nation in the heart of Europe (i.e. with a population approximately the size of Spain’s) is throwing down the gauntlet to the EU establishment and its view of European unity based on cultural and religious indifference and anti-nationalism.

As Bloomberg notes, Tusk’s tweet is the latest salvo in a war of words between Poland and the EU, as fears mount in Brussels that Warsaw’s government is shifting toward authoritarian rule. It also adds to speculation that the 60-year-old former Polish prime minister plans a comeback to domestic politics when his term as chairman of EU leaders’ meetings expires in 2019, the same year that current parliament and government’s term ends in Poland.

On Friday, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo criticized her fellow leaders and lawmakers from the bloc for weighing sanctions against the nation over anti-democratic actions and suggested they weren’t being honest. The European Parliament said last week it would examine possible sanctions against Poland over democratic backsliding. That opens a second EU front against Warsaw after the European Commission last year initiated a rule-of-law investigation into the right-wing Law & Justice party due to judicial independence concerns.

“I can’t not tell the prime ministers that we should respect each other, that we should strive for our political families to have respect for other countries in the public debate, in the European Parliament and in other European institutions,” Szydlo told reporters in Gothenburg, Sweden, before a meeting with her EU counterparts on Nov. 17.

 

“Debates should be based on the truth.”

As we conclude previously, at the time when the Soviets were establishing the communist political system in Central Europe someone said (someone ascribed these words to Stalin himself) that communism fits the Polish nation like a saddle fits a cow. Is the attempt to Europeanize Poles another attempt at saddling the cow?

Is America Really "Up" For A Second Cold War?

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

After the 19th national congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October, one may discern Premier Xi Jinping’s vision of the emerging New World Order.

By 2049, the centennial of the triumph of Communist Revolution, China shall have become the first power on earth.

Her occupation and humiliation by the West and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries will have become hated but ancient history.

America will have been pushed out of Asia and the western Pacific back beyond the second chain of islands.

Taiwan will have been returned to the motherland, South Korea and the Philippines neutralized, Japan contained. China’s claim to all the rocks, reefs and islets in the South China Sea will have been recognized by all current claimants.

Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy will have brought South and Central Asia into Beijing’s orbit, and he will be in the Pantheon beside the Founding Father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

Democracy has been rejected by China in favor of one-party rule of all political, economic, cultural and social life.

And as one views Europe, depopulating, riven by secessionism, fearful of a Third World migrant invasion, and America tearing herself apart over politics and ideology, China must appear to ambitious and rising powers as the model to emulate.

Indeed, has not China shown the world that authoritarianism can be compatible with national growth that outstrips a democratic West?

Over the last quarter century, China, thanks to economic nationalism and $4 trillion in trade surpluses with the United States, has exhibited growth unseen since 19th-century America.

Whatever we may think of Xi’s methods, this vision must attract vast numbers of China’s young — they see their country displace America as first power, becoming the dominant people on earth.

What is America’s vision? What is America’s cause in the 21st century? What is the mission and goal that unites, inspires and drives us on?

After World War II, America’s foreign policy was imposed upon her by the terrible realities the war produced: brutalitarian Stalinist domination of Eastern and Central Europe and much of Asia.

Under nine presidents, containment of the Soviet empire, while avoiding a war that would destroy civilization, was our policy. In Korea and Vietnam, Americans died in the thousands to sustain that policy.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of the USSR, it seemed that by 1992 our great work was done. Now democracy would flourish and be embraced by all advanced peoples and nations.

But it did not happen. The “end of history” never came. The New World Order of Bush I did not last. Bush II’s democracy crusade to end tyranny in our world produced disasters from Libya to Afghanistan.

Authoritarianism is now ascendant and democracy is in retreat.

Is the United States prepared to accept a world in which China, growing at twice our rate, more united and purposeful, emerges as the dominant power? Are we willing to acquiesce in a Chinese Century?

Or will we adopt a policy to ensure that America remains the world’s preeminent power?

Do we have what is required in wealth, power, stamina and will to pursue a Second Cold War to contain China, which, strategic weapons aside, is more powerful and has greater potential than the Soviet Union ever did?

On his Asia tour, President Trump spoke of the “Indo-Pacific,” shorthand for the proposition that the U.S., Japan, Australia and India form the core of a coalition to maintain the balance of power in Asia and contain the expansion of China.

Yet, before we create some Asia-Pacific NATO to corral and contain China in this century, as we did the USSR in the 20th century, we need to ask ourselves why.

Does China, even if she rises to surpass the U.S. in manufacturing, technology and economic output, and is a comparable military power, truly threaten us as the USSR did, to where we should consider war to prevent its expansion in places like the South China Sea that are not vital to America?

While China is a great power, she has great problems.

She is feared and disliked by her neighbors. She has territorial quarrels with Russia, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan. She has separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang. Christianity is growing while Communism, the state religion, is a dead faith. Moreover, the monopoly of power now enjoyed by the Communist Party and Xi Jinping mean that if things go wrong, there is no one else to blame.

Finally, why is the containment of China in Asia the responsibility of a United States 12 time zones away?

For while China seeks to dominate Eurasia, she appears to have no desire to threaten the vital interests of the United States. China’s Communism appears to be an ideology disbelieved by her own people, that she does not intend to impose it on Asia or the world.

Again, are we Americans up for a Second Cold War, and, if so, why?

Russia Names The 9 US News Outlets It Will Retaliate Against

After hinting that retaliation was imminent, Russian lawmakers in the Duma - Russia’s lower house of Parliament - have approved a law that would require nine US news outlets to be labeled “foreign agents” in response to Washington"s decision to require Russia Today to register as a foreign agent last week, a decision that Moscow has slammed as hypocritical and infringing on free speech.

Reuters reports that Russia’s lower house of Parliament has approved the law - which allows Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of “foreign agents” and to disclose the source of their funding.

The law must now pass the upper house, which is likely to happen next week. Once President Vladimir Putin signs it, it will become law. The path to passage looks relatively straightforward, and it"s likely the bill will become a law.

The Russian Justice Ministry on Thursday published a list of the news outlets that it said could be affected by the law.

Meanwhile, the outlets are the US-government-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE), otherwise known as Radio Liberty, radio channels, along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

One of the seven outlets provides news on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, one on Siberia, and one on the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region. Another covers provincial Russia, one is an online TV station, another covers the mostly Muslim region of Tatarstan, and the other is a news portal that fact-checks the statements of Russian officials.

Russia"s attack on US-funded media is part of the fallout from allegations that the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential election last year in favor of Donald Trump, Reuters noted.

US intelligence officials accuse the Kremlin of using Russian media organizations it finances to influence US voters. Meanwhile, the US has funded organizations like RFE since the early days of the Cold War. RFE was founded to broadcast pro-capitalist messaging to Soviet Satellites in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Kremlin denies meddling in the election and has said the restrictions on Russian broadcasters in the US amount to an attack on free speech. After the US forced RT to register, Kremlin spokespeople hinted that the government had a “surprise” retaliation at the ready.

The draft legislation would allow Russian authorities to designate foreign media as "foreign agents", making them subject to the same requirements that are applied to foreign-funded non-governmental organizations under a 2012 law. Under that law, "foreign agents" must include in any information they publish or broadcast to Russian audiences a mention of their "foreign agent" designation.

They also must apply for inclusion in a government register, submit regular reports on their sources of funding, on their objectives, on how they spend their money, and who their managers are.

They can be subject to spot checks by the authorities to make sure they comply with the rules, according to the 2012 law, which has forced some NGOs to close.

Radio Free Europe said in a statement it did not want to speculate what steps Russia might take against it next, and looked forward to continuing its journalistic work. Voice of America Director Amanda Bennett has said the station remains committed to providing independent news to global audiences.
 

EU "Values" Fit Poland Like "The Saddle Fits The Cow"

Via GEFIRA,

“We want God”, “Great Independent Poland,” “Death to the Enemies of the Fatherland!” “Christ is Poland’s King”, “Deus vult” (Latin for God wills, a battle cry of the Crusaders)these are the principal banners carried in the annual Independence March that is held in Warsaw and also in other cities on 11 November, Independence Day.

Also, in the one two days ago, at the head of the marching column you could see a few white flags sporting the red Jerusalem cross.

Tens of thousands of people, waving tens of thousands of white-and-red national flags young and old, of all walks of life, with whole families take to the streets.  

The people participating in the march think of themselves as patriots (the word which in Poland still has positive overtones) paying tribute to the fallen heroes.

To the western media these are Nazis, racists, anti-semites and islamophobes. An abomination for the European Union.

What has positive overtones in Poland (patriotism, faith, family), has negative ones in Western Europe and the other way round. Migrants, LGTBQ and gender mainstreaming is not welcome in the area between the Oder and Bug Rivers. The EU values cannot be farther from Poland’s values and vice versa.

The Independence March denigrated by the Western media was favourably covered by the Polish government and other national media, except for those which are far to the left and very much pro-European. The former shored up the positive aspects of the event, the latter only looked for incidents to blow them out of any proportion and join the chorus of their western counterparts in condemning “fascists” and “white supremacists”.

A thirty-six million nation in the heart of Europe (i.e. with a population approximately the size of Spain’s) is throwing down the gauntlet to the EU establishment and its view of European unity based on cultural and religious indifference and anti-nationalism.

While in France or Belgium Muslims pray openly in the streets, Turkish nationalists stage large rallies waving Turkish flags in the heart of Dutch cities and construct mosques, with empty Christian churches as sad witnesses thereto; Poles pray the rosary on the borders of their countryand march, proudly displaying national emblems and flags, demanding God and rejecting multiculturalism.

At the time when the Soviets were establishing the communist political system in Central Europe someone said (someone ascribed these words to Stalin himself) that communism fits the Polish nation like a saddle fits a cow. Is the attempt to Europeanize Poles another attempt at saddling the cow?

Radioactive Cloud Over Europe May Have Come From "Nuclear Accident" In Russia Or Kazakhstan

About a month ago, we noted reports from the French nuclear watchdog ISRN that a spike in airborne radioactivity had been detected in the air in Western and Central Europe: "Ruthenium-106 has been detected by several European networks involved in the monitoring of atmospheric radioactive contamination, at levels of a few milliBecquerels per cubic meter of air."

According to IRSN calculations, the very low levels of atmospheric contamination of ruthenium 106 observed by European monitoring networks had no environmental or health consequences but several agencies across Europe were actively seeking answers on the origin of the contamination.

Fast forward to today, and the IRSN now believes they can narrow down the source of the "nuclear accident" to a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan sometime in the last week of September.  Per the Telegraph:

A cloud of radioactive pollution over Europe in recent weeks indicates that an accident has happened in a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan in the last week of September, French nuclear safety institute IRSN said on Thursday.

 

The IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, saying it was likely to be in a nuclear fuel treatment site or centre for radioactive medicine. There has been no impact on human health or the environment in Europe, the IRSN said.

 

IRSN, the technical arm of French nuclear regulator ASN, said in a statement it could not pinpoint the location of the release of radioactive material but that based on weather patterns, the most plausible zone lay south of the Ural mountains, between the Urals and the Volga river.

 

This could indicate Russia or possibly Kazakhstan, an IRSN official said.

And while the source of the contamination is yet to come forward, IRSN notes that if an accident of similar magnitude happened in France "it would have required the evacuation or sheltering of people in a radius of a few kilometers around the accident site."

IRSN estimates that the quantity of ruthenium 106 released was major, between 100 and 300 teraBecquerels, and that if an accident of this magnitude had happened in France it would have required the evacuation or sheltering of people in a radius of a few kilometers around the accident site.

 

The ruthenium 106 was probably released in a nuclear fuel treatment site or center for radioactive medicine, Peres said. Because of its short half-life of about a year, ruthenium 106 is used in nuclear medicine.

 

The IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, as that would have led to contamination with other radionuclides too. It also ruled out the crash of a ruthenium-powered satellite as an IAEA investigation has concluded that no ruthenium-containing satellite has fallen back on earth during this period.

 

Measurement from European stations showed high levels of ruthenium 106 in the atmosphere of the majority of European countries, at the beginning of October, with a steady decrease from Oct. 6 onwards.

Despite the concern for residents in close proximity to the "accident," IRSN has again confirmed that the concentrations of ruthenium 106 in the air that have been recorded in Europe were of no consequence for human health and the environment.

"Czech Donald Trump" Wins Landslide Victory

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

• The election outcome, the result of popular discontent with established parties, is the latest in a recent wave of successes for European populists, including in Austria and Germany. The populist ascendancy highlights a shifting political landscape in Europe where runaway multiculturalism and political correctness, combined with a massive influx of unassimilable migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have given rise to a surge in support for anti-establishment protest parties.


• "It is unthinkable that the indigenous European population should adapt themselves to the refugees. We must do away with such nonsensical political correctness. The refugees should behave like guests, that is, they should be polite, and they certainly do not have the right to choose what they want to eat.... There is a deep chasm between what people think and what the media tell them." — Andrej Babis, in the Czech daily Pravo, January 16, 2016.


• As prime minister, Babis would share government with Czech President Milos Zeman, who has described political correctness as "a euphemism for political cowardice."

Populist tycoon Andrej Babis and his Eurosceptic political party have won the Czech Republic"s parliamentary election - by a landslide - making the "politically incorrect" billionaire businessman the main contender to become prime minister after coalition negotiations.

With all of the votes counted, Babis"s anti-establishment party ANO (which stands for "Action of Dissatisfied Citizens" and is also the Czech word for "yes") won nearly 30% — almost three times its closest rival — in elections held on October 20. The Eurosceptic Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the anti-establishment Czech Pirates Party and the anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) came second, third and fourth, with around 11% each.

The Communists came in fifth with 7.8%. The Social Democrats, the center-left establishment party that finished first in the previous election, came in sixth with just 7.2%. The Christian Democrats, the center-right establishment party, won 5.8%, just enough to qualify for seats in parliament. In all, nine parties competed in the election.

The election outcome, the result of popular discontent with established parties, is the latest in a recent wave of successes for European populists, including in Austria and Germany. The populist ascendancy highlights a shifting political landscape in Europe where runaway multiculturalism and political correctness, combined with a massive influx of unassimilable migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have given rise to a surge in support for anti-establishment protest parties.

Babis"s victory will also strengthen the role of the Visegrad Group (V4), a political alliance of four Central European states — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — committed not only to resisting mass migration, but also to opposing the continued transference of national sovereignty to the European Union. A stronger V4 will accentuate the divisions between the pro-EU states of Western Europe and the increasingly Eurosceptic states of Central and Eastern Europe. The European Union consequently will struggle to maintain an outward semblance of unity.

In his victory speech at the ANO party headquarters, Babis, who campaigned as a centrist, refused to speculate on the composition of a coalition government, but said he wanted the cabinet to be set up as quickly as possible: "This is a huge opportunity to change our country. I would like to assemble a government that will be of the people and for the people and promotes policies that are in their favor."

Babis also tried to reassure the public that he would not put the Czech Republic on the path to authoritarianism, as some of his detractors have charged:

"We are a democratic movement. We are a solid part of the European Union and we are a solid part of NATO. I do not understand why some people say we are a threat to democracy. We certainly are not a threat to democracy. I am ready to fight for our national interests and to promote them."

Babis has been sharply critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel"s open-door migration policy and has repeatedly denounced EU-imposed migrant quotas and other "EU meddling" in Czech politics. Those positions resonate in the Czech Republic, where citizens have the second-lowest trust in the European Union of all 28 member states (only Greeks have less trust in the EU), according to the latest Eurobarometer poll, published in August.

During the campaign, the 63-year-old Babis, one of the country"s wealthiest people, presented himself as a non-ideological results-oriented reformer. He pledged to run the Czech Republic like a business after years of what he called corrupt and inept management. He demanded a return of sovereignty from the European Union and rejected Czech adoption of the euro single currency. He has also promised to cut government spending, stop people from "being parasites" in the social welfare system, and fight for Czech interests abroad. Babis is often referred to as "the Czech Donald Trump."

Populist tycoon Andrej Babis (pictured) and his Eurosceptic political party have won the Czech Republic"s parliamentary election, making Babis the main contender to become prime minister after coalition negotiations. (Image source: Ji?í Vítek/Wikimedia Commons)

Babis does not want the Czech Republic to leave the EU; he has repeatedly stressed that unimpeded access to the European single market is essential to maintaining the health of the Czech economy, which has the lowest unemployment rate in the EU: "We have six thousand German companies here, investing with us and employing people."

At the same time, Babis is opposed to the country adopting the euro because doing so would, he believes, constrain national sovereignty and competitiveness:

"No euro. I don"t want the euro. We don"t want the euro here. Everybody knows it"s bankrupt. It"s about our sovereignty. I want the Czech koruna, and an independent central bank. I don"t want another issue that Brussels would be meddling with."

Babis has pledged to reform the European Union from within, especially regarding migration policy: "I want to play a more important role in Europe. But we have to fight for our interests and make proposals. If I were a prime minister, I would say: "Close this cursed external European border at last.""

Babis has expressed his opposition to mass migration: "I have stopped believing in successful integration and multiculturalism." He has also insisted that the Czech Republic alone should decide who will work in the country and who will receive humanitarian aid: "I do not want to have a French or German migration policy; we want our migration policy to be completely different from other countries. Every state has some interests, we have to fight for Czech national interests, we do not want to have that multicultural model."

Babis has rejected pressure from the European Commission, which has launched infringement procedures against the Czechs, Hungarians and Poles for refusing to comply with an EU plan to redistribute migrants:

"I will not accept refugee quotas for the Czech Republic. The situation has changed. We see how migrants react in Europe. We must react to the needs and fears of the citizens of our country. We must guarantee the security of Czech citizens. Even if we are punished by sanctions."

In June 2017, Babis reiterated that the Czech Republic would not be taking orders from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels:

"We have to fight for what our ancestors built here. If there will be more Muslims than Belgians in Brussels, that"s their problem. I don"t want that here. They won"t be telling us who should live here."

In an interview with the Czech daily Pravo, Babis said:

"It is unthinkable that the indigenous European population should adapt themselves to the refugees. We must do away with such nonsensical political correctness. The refugees should behave like guests, that is, they should be polite, and they certainly do not have the right to choose what they want to eat. Europe and Germany in particular are undergoing an identity crisis. There is a deep chasm between what people think and what the media tell them."

As prime minister, Babis would share government with Czech President Milos Zeman, who has described political correctness as "a euphemism for political cowardice." In an interview with the Guardian, the 71-year-old Zeman recounted a recent conversation with Angela Merkel: "My first sentence in the meeting with Madam Chancellor was: "If you invite somebody to your homeland, you do not send them to have lunch at your neighbors.""

In an interview with Czech Radio, Zeman, who has called mass migration to Europe an "organized invasion," said: "The Muslim Brotherhood cannot start a war against Europe, it doesn"t have the power, but it can prepare a growing migrant wave and gradually control Europe."

Like Babis, Zeman has also expressed skepticism about Muslim integration: "The experience of Western European countries which have ghettos and excluded localities shows that the integration of the Muslim community is practically impossible."