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Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Wednesday, 02 December 2015 09:30.
The Turkish airforce shot down a Russian Su-24M last week, and since that time, critical examination of Turkey has brought a number of issues that people had been warned about before to light in the media, which until now had been mostly ignored.
I had intended to write an article at Majorityrights about this, but then I realised that the Independent was actually saying everything that I was going to write, so in the interest of saving time, I will just quote them verbatim:
The US is demanding that Turkey close a 60-mile stretch of its border with Syria which is the sole remaining crossing point for Isis militants, including some of those involved in the massacre in Paris and other terrorist plots.
The complete closure of the 550-mile-long border would be a serious blow to Isis, which has brought tens of thousands of Islamist volunteers across the frontier over the past three years.
In the wake of the Isis attacks in Paris, Washington is making clear to Ankara that it will no longer accept Turkish claims that it is unable to cordon off the remaining short section of the border still used by Isis. “The game has changed. Enough is enough. The border needs to be sealed,” a senior official in President Barack Obama’s administration told The Wall Street Journal, describing the tough message that Washington has sent to the Turkish government. “This is an international threat, and it’s coming out of Syria and it’s coming through Turkish territory.”
The US estimates some 30,000 Turkish troops would be needed to close the border between Jarabulus on the Euphrates and the town of Kilis, further west in Turkey, according to the paper. US intelligence agencies say that the stretch of frontier most commonly used by Isis is between Jarabulus, where the official border crossing has been closed, and the town of Cobanbey.
It has become of crucial importance ever since the Syrian Kurdish forces known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) captured the border crossing at Tal Abyad, 60 miles north of Isis’s capital of Raqqa in June. Turkey had kept that border crossing open while Isis was in control on the southern side, but immediately closed it when the YPG seized the crossing point. The Turkish authorities are refusing to allow even the bodies of YPG fighters, who are Turkish citizens and were killed fighting Isis, to be taken back across the border into Turkey.
The US move follows increasing international criticism of Turkey for what is seen as its long-term tolerance of, and possible complicity with, Isis and other extreme jihadi groups such as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham. Not only have thousands of foreign fighters passed through Turkey on their way to join Isis, but crude oil from oilfields seized by Isis in north-east Syria has been transported to Turkey for sale, providing much of revenue of the self-declared Islamic State.
Last week a Turkish court jailed two prominent journalists for publishing pictures of a Turkish truck delivering ammunition to opposition fighters in Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that the weapons were destined for Turkmen paramilitaries allied to Turkey fighting in Syria, but this was denied by Turkish political leaders close to the Turkmen.
Turkey is now under heavy pressure from the US and Russia, with President Vladimir Putin directly accusing Ankara of aiding Isis and al-Qaeda. In the wake of the shooting down of a Russian aircraft by a Turkish jet, Russia is launching heavy air strikes in support of the Syrian army’s advance to control the western end of the Syrian Turkish border. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a Russian air strike on the town of Ariha yesterday killed 18 people and wounded dozens more. Meanwhile Turkey said it had now received the body of the pilot killed when the plane was shot down and would repatriate it to Moscow.
The US demand that Turkey finally close the border west of Jarabulus could, if Turkey complies, prove more damaging to Isis than increased air strikes by the US, France and, possibly Britain. The YPG has closed half the Syrian frontier over the last year and defeated an Isis assault aimed at taking another border crossing at Kobani. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they want to advance further west from their front line on the Euphrates and link up with a Kurdish enclave at Afrin. But Turkey insists that it will resist a further YPG advance with military force. Instead, it had proposed a protected zone on the southern side of the border from which Isis would be driven by moderate Syrian opposition fighters.
The US has opposed this proposal, suspecting that the Turkish definition of moderates includes those the US is targeting as terrorists. It also appears to be a ploy to stop the YPG, heavily supported by US air power, expanding its de facto state along Turkey’s southern flank. US officials are quoted as saying that there could be “significant blowback” against Turkey by European states if it allows Isis militants to cross from Syria into Turkey and then carry out terrorist outrages in Europe.
Meanwhile in Iraq, officials said three more mass graves had been found in the northern town of Sinjar, which Kurdish forces backed by US-led air strikes recaptured from Isis earlier this month.
This is relevant to two flashbacks from last year, to stories that were made available in Al-Monitor via Taraf:
A man works at a makeshift oil refinery site in Raqqa’s countryside, May 5, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Hamid Khatib)
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has been selling smuggled Syrian oil in Turkey worth $800 million, according to Ali Ediboglu, a lawmaker for the border province of Hatay from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Speaking to Taraf, Ediboglu recounted the findings of his research on ISIS activities.
“ISIS is a terrorist organization that poses a global threat, a group that kills recklessly and believes that killing people is a ticket to heaven,” Ediboglu said. “One would expect such a group to engage in certain attacks in Turkey any time. Turkey’s cooperation with thousands of men of such a mentality is extremely dangerous. You can never know what demands they could make to Turkey, a country whose regime they consider to be un-Islamic. No one can guarantee they will not repeat the massacres they commit in Iraq today or carry out similar attacks in Turkey tomorrow.”
Oil revenues
Ediboglu said: “$800 million worth of oil that ISIS obtained from regions it occupied this year [the Rumeilan oil fields in northern Syria — and most recently Mosul] is being sold in Turkey. They have laid pipes from villages near the Turkish border at Hatay. Similar pipes exist also at [the Turkish border regions of] Kilis, Urfa and Gaziantep. They transfer the oil to Turkey and parlay it into cash. They take the oil from the refineries at zero cost. Using primitive means, they refine the oil in areas close to the Turkish border and then sell it via Turkey. This is worth $800 million.”
Is Turkish intelligence helping fighters?
Ediboglu further stated: “Fighters from Europe, Russia, Asian countries and Chechnya are going in large numbers both to Syria and Iraq, crossing from Turkish territory. There is information that at least 1,000 Turkish nationals are helping those foreign fighters sneak into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) is allegedly involved. None of this can be happening without MIT’s knowledge.”
Taraf’s earlier report on diesel smuggling
Last Aug. 20, Taraf carried a report headlined “Smugglers riding on a billion dollars.” It reported that Turkish soldiers clashed with and repelled hundreds of horse riders and thousands of foot smugglers at the Syrian border on a daily basis. It pointed out that the biggest fight between the [Syrian Kurdish] People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra in Rojava [northern Syria] was over the revenues from the sale of the region’s petroleum products to Turkey.
The report noted that some 2,000 oil wells exist in the Rumeilan region, which lies on the other side of the border stretching between [Turkey’s] districts of Cizre in Sirnak province and Nusaybin in Mardin province. “The region’s oil is being smuggled to Turkey. The daily amount of smuggled diesel fuel has reached 1,500 tons, which corresponds to 3.5% of Turkey’s consumption,” it added.
A vehicle carrying supplies stands at a checkpoint of the Islamist rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria’s Deir al-Zour countryside, July 27, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Karam Jamal)
During the 2½ years of clashes in Syria, there has been constant debate about how Turkey’s borders were crossed. There were reports that Islamic groups going to fight regime of President Bashar al-Assad — first and foremost al-Qaeda, which has supporters in Turkey — were crossing over the Turkish border.
Interesting claims
To find out more, we met with people close to al-Qaeda in Istanbul. These people are shopkeepers who live in the Fatih district of Istanbul, but who won’t give their names. They have interesting things to say about the Syrian war. These sources told us that following the eruption of war in Syria, al-Qaeda elements from Europe, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and North Africa began crossing into Syria via Turkey. These sources also had interesting things to say about the clashes with the Kurdish PYD and how the border is crossed.
Met by intelligence officials
O.E., one of our sources, said he crossed the border and went to Syria before the Jabhat al-Nusra-PYD clashes. He crossed from an unsupervised area on the Turkish side to the Syrian side controlled by the PYD. O.E. said, “We told the PYD we were there for Jabhat al-Nusra and they let us pass.” O.E. said many people cross the same way: “Fighters coming via Chechnya and Afghanistan are met at the Syrian border. There are intelligence officials there. Those crossing the border inform the intelligence people of their affiliation and under whose command they will be. Then, they cross the border and report to their units.”
Treated in Turkey
O.E. said those heavily wounded in clashes are brought to Turkish hospitals. He added, “Some return to their countries by the same route. There are al-Qaeda mujahedeen from Afghanistan and the Caucasus fronts who come with their families. Most of them settle in Syria. There are hundreds of militants who come the same way from Northern Africa, the Caucasus, Europe and Afghanistan. They simply cross the Turkish border and join the fight.”
1,000 Chechens to Syria
O.E. said Chechens are now one of the strongest groups in Syria. “Under their commander Abu Omar, about 1,000 Chechens came to Syria. First they were with Jabhat al-Nusra, but now they have moved over to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” he said.
There are also Turks
O.E. said many Turks had gone to Syria to fight. “Some were martyred. Some stayed for a while and returned. Some couldn’t resist going back to Syria. A retired policeman who is a friend of mine went to Syria to fight. He trained fighters in weapons. Several of us went to Syria before the fighting between the PYD and Jabhat al-Nusra broke out. Without being asked anything on the Turkish side, we just crossed to an area of Syria controlled by the PYD. We told them we came to [fight with] Jabhat al-Nusra and they let us enter,” O.E. said.
The ISIS fans the clashes
O.E. claimed that it was the ISIS that was flaming the clashes with the PYD. “The ISIS declared that Jabhat al-Nusra was its subordinate organization. Jabhat al-Nusra commanders refused this claim and said they were under al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. These claims caused disputes within the organization. Chechen groups under Abu Omar in Syria split from Jabhat al-Nusra and joined the ranks of the ISIS. It was the ISIS fighters who provoked the recent clashes with the PYD. Reports said the ISIS entered and opened fire in PYD-controlled villages to disrupt the non-hostility agreement between the PYD and Jabhat al-Nusra,” he concluded.
Syria-bound trucks operated by MIT were searched in January 2014 after prosecutors received tip-offs that they were illegally carrying arms to Syria. (Photo: DHA)
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday seemingly validated claims previously made by critics who alleged that the Turkish government was sending weapon-filled trucks to radical groups in Syria by sarcastically asking, “So what if the MIT [National Intelligence Organization] trucks were filled with weapons?”
Pro-government figures had previously claimed that trucks belonging to MIT that were intercepted en-route to Syria contained “humanitarian aid” for the Bayir-Bucak Turkmens who live just over the border from Turkey’s southern Hatay province. Many claims were made by the opposition and Turkish media that the trucks were, in fact, transporting weapons to radical factions in Syria.
Early in 2014, an anonymous tip led to the interception of a number of trucks on the suspicion of weapons smuggling. The first operation took place in Hatay on Jan. 1, 2014. Another anonymous tip led to three more trucks being stopped and searched in Turkey’s southern Adana province on Jan. 19, 2014.
Speaking to a room full of teachers on Tuesday gathered for Teachers’ Day, Erdogan said, “You know of the treason regarding the MIT trucks, don’t you? So what if there were weapons in them? I believe that our people will not forgive those who sabotaged this support.”
Erdogan was speaking just hours after Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 aircraft near the Syrian border on Tuesday morning after, Ankara has said, it violated Turkish airspace despite repeated warnings.
Erdogan accused the prosecutors investigating the MIT trucks of denying Turkmens the power to defend themselves. “Those [MIT] trucks were taking aid to the Bayir-Bucak Turkmens. Some were saying, ‘Prime Minister Erdogan said, there were no weapons inside those trucks;’ So what if there were?”
Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials called the 2014 investigation of the MIT trucks “treason and espionage” on the part of the prosecutors because the trucks were claimed to be transporting humanitarian aid to the Bayir-Bucak Turkmens.
Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, said during a television program immediately after the interception of the trucks became public knowledge that the trucks were carrying aid supplies to Turkmens in Syria.
Many high-level Turkish officials, including then-President Abdullah Gül, said the trucks’ cargo was a “state secret,” which led some to speculate that the trucks were carrying arms.
However, Syrian-Turkmen Assembly Vice Chairman Hussein al-Abdullah said in January 2014 that no trucks carrying aid had arrived from Turkey.
The recent military operation of the Syrian government, backed by Russian air strikes, in the rural area of Latakia, inhabited by Bayir-Bucak Turkmens has caused thousands of Turkmens to flee to the Turkish border. A Turkmen brigade commander called for Turkey’s assistance and expressed his frustration that Turkey’s helping hand had not been extended far enough.
Turkmen Commander Ömer Abdullah of the Sultan Abdülhamit Brigade, who is fighting against the forces of Syrian President Bashar al- Assad, recently called on Turkey to help the Turkmens being pounded with cluster bombs by the Syrian regime and Russian forces.
“We are trying to survive under unbearable brutality and we need Turkey’s help,” said Abdullah. Expressing criticism of the AK Party, Abdullah said: “Every day our Turkmen brothers are dying. We expect the government to support us. Why have they abandoned us? Our martyrs fall every day. Why are we being left alone? I don’t understand.”
Abdullah’s claim pokes an important hole in the AK Party’s claims, while also posing the question of to whom the MIT trucks, now widely accepted as transporting weapons, were sent.
CHP leader says they told AK Party not to send weapons to Syria
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu said on Wednesday that Turkey had become a country importing terrorism from Syria.
“We told them [the AK Party] not to. They said they were sending humanitarian aid. Later the documents were revealed [refuting these claims].”
Kiliçdaroglu was referring to the Cumhuriyet daily’s headline story in May which discredited AK Party and Erdogan’s earlier claims that the trucks were carrying humanitarian aid to Turkmens. The article showed photos from the search of the MIT trucks which were revealed to be carrying heavy munitions. Kiliçdaroglu consequently asked to whom the trucks were going, if not to Turkmens.
After the publication of the stills as well as video, Erdogan lashed out at Cumhuriyet and its editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, for publishing the evidence, publicly vowing that Dündar would “pay a heavy price” for his report.
According to the report, there were six steel containers in the trucks which contained a total of 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells. All of this is registered in the prosecutor’s file on the MIT truck case, the report said.
Erdogan personally sued Dündar and is requesting that he be given a life sentence, an aggravated life sentence and an additional 42-year term of imprisonment on charges related to a variety of crimes, ranging from espionage to attempting to topple the government and exposing secret information.
Following the Cumhuriyet report, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that it is “none of anybody’s business” what the trucks contained. Speaking in a live broadcast on the Habertürk news station, in May, Davutoglu said, “This is a blatant act of espionage.”
Tugrul Türkes, who made it into the AK Party cabinet on Tuesday after switching from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in September, said in June that the trucks were not destined for Syrian Turkmens. Speaking on CNN Türk in June, Türkes said: “I swear that those weapons were not sent to Turkmens as they [Erdogan and other government officials] claim. We [the MHP] have connections with Turkmens [in Syria].”
Prosecutor admits 2,000 truckloads sent to Syria
A pro-government prosecutor who was appointed to the MIT trucks case inadvertently admitted in May that weapon-laden trucks made 2,000 trips to Syria, according to the lawyer of one of the defendants in the case.
Hasan Tok, the lawyer for former Adana Provincial Gendarmerie Regiment Commander Col. Özkan Çokay, who was involved in the search of MIT trucks in January 2014, said that he learned that there had been at least 2,000 trips made by MIT trucks to Syria from the prosecutor, Ali Dogan.
Dogan, known as a government loyalist, filed for a verdict of non-prosecution regarding the investigation after he was appointed to the position of Adana chief public prosecutor. According to Tok, Dogan had asked the defendants in a previous hearing, “2,000 trucks have passed [into Syria], why was this one specially chosen?”
“We didn’t know 2,000 trucks had passed into Syria; may god bless Ali Dogan,” said Tok.
Of course, the weapons did not go to the Turkmens. The weapons on those trucks actually went to groups like the FSA 10th Coastal Brigade which has conducted operations in line with Jahbat Al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham. It’s also reasonable to speculate that significant amounts of those supplies also found their way into the hands of ISIL.
Turkey’s intense protectiveness about Russian interactions with their border, may have been due to the fact that they didn’t want the Russians to be able to do air interdiction against what was an ongoing logistics operation taking place across that border.
It’s a depressingly ridiculous sequence of events which gives Russia the ability to create a media narrative about how ‘only Russia’ is ‘fighting the terrorists’ with real determination, because Turkey is a part of NATO and is basically embarrassing NATO with its duplicitous behaviour.
There is a silver lining to these dark clouds, though. Up until just recently, Russia had been seeking to work with Turkey on the provision of oil and gas pipeline projects into Europe, which would have increased European dependence on Russian energy companies. Thanks to this sequence of events, Russia and Turkey are now at odds with each other, and Russia is seeking to suspend those projects and to place sanctions on Turkey.
All of this has not worked out too badly. Not only has Turkey’s duplicity finally come to light in a way that makes it impossible for anyone in western governments to avoid dealing with it, but additionally the Russian government is now politically incapable of partnering with Turkey against the European Union’s geostrategic interests with regards to energy concerns, at least in the near term, as negotiations on the Turkish Stream pipeline project are suspended.
This gives more time for the effects of the Iran deal to come into play, since Iran was able to enlist Russian assistance in the P5 negotiations to make the case for sanctions being removed, while at the same time positioning itself against Russia as an alternative energy supplier for Europe, which would be able to substitute its natural gas in place of Russia’s and increase the diversification of supply. This would in turn lessen Russia’s political influence in Europe.
Iran’s infrastructure would not be ready to supply Europe in the near term, and so the near term quarrel between Russia and Turkey, gives the European Union more time to coordinate that infrastructure development with Iran, and potentially tilts the tables by making Russia appear less reliable as a supplier.
From that perspective, all of this is a win for the North Atlantic.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
France is to opt out of some aspects of the European Human Rights Convention while the state of emergency declared after this month’s Paris attacks is in force. As well as raids on mosques and Islamic charities, police have swooped on radical environmentalists since the measure was introduced.
Some of the measures taken because of the state of emergency are “likely to necessitate exemption from some of the rights guaranteed” by the convention, the French authorities have told Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland.
States are allowed to opt out in case of war or a danger “threatening the life of the nation”, although they cannot be exempted from certain provisions, including bans on torture and cruel and inhuman treatment.
Exemptions can be challenged at the European Court of Human Rights.
There have been 1,616 searches of premises, 211 arrests, 161 people charged and 293 weapons seized since the state of emergency was declared.
Among the premises raided have been mosques, prayer rooms and shops targeted because “radical Islamists” were said to frequent them or because some sermons given were judged extreme.
But others have been on the homes of people who have taken part in environmental protests and occupations, such as the camp at the site of the proposed airport near Nantes in western France and one aiming to stop a dam in the south-west where a protester was killed.
Several activists have been placed under house arrest, apparently for fear that they might have defied the ban on demonstrations ahead of the Cop21 climate conference, which opens on Sunday 29 December.
“Special measures are necessary for the conference’s security” and there have been calls for “violent actions”, according to warrants seen by Le Monde newspaper.
On Tuesday a group of intellectuals published an appeal to defy the state of emergency in Libération newspaper and a Facebook page calling for “disobedience” of the ban on Sunday’s planned march for the climate had attracted 4,700 participants on Friday.
A person might be tempted to laugh, and indeed I myself am laughing. But at the same time, you have to think soberly to yourself, “How many people had to die in order to reach this point?”
Is it actually the case that European civil society is re-learning what ‘being in a conflict’ is about, the hard way?
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Friday, 20 November 2015 22:07.
Events in France affect Germany.
There’s only so long that an idiot can keep-on-keeping-on, until all sections of the more rational elements of the establishment begin to question that idiot’s ability to remain politically viable.
We’ve all heard already about how the defence and security sector has found Germany to be a land of absurdity for quite a while now. But that alone is not enough to see someone removed from office. The preponderant political power in a liberal state is the haute-bourgoisie. Economic power precedes political power. This means that understanding the background financial and economic signals and the way that these signals interact with the overt political landscape, enables us to see an event developing from far off, and allows us to adjust our own tactics accordingly.
The Paris attacks have been a nightmare for Merkel because it has awakened criticism not only from German people in the street, but also among opportunistic members of her own party who are seeing now that she is at the weakest she ever has been, and that now is a chance for them to mount a political challenge. But the success of that challenge, when it comes, depends on the acquiescence or at least the sign of a resigned inevitability from financial players who are the stakeholders in the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of Germany.
The time when it would be politically expedient to remove Merkel, would be in December at the CDU conference, where someone would be able to demand that she should hand in her resignation, and twist her arm until she does. Who would be most likely to replace her in such a case? Most likely Wolfgang Schaeuble.
So our big question is: How likely is it that Angela Merkel will be forced to resign in December and be replaced by Wolfgang Schaeuble?
One way to find this out, would be to look at the macroeconomic stances of Merkel and Schaeuble, compare them, then watch and see how the ECB and the large players are behaving, to see if they are making any moves that would suggest that they don’t expect Merkel to still be there by the end of December.
Therefore, it stands to reason, that if you see Mario Draghi at the ECB suddenly deciding to rush through a lot of actions to carry out more expansionary economic policy (something which he certainly ought to do) within a time frame before the end of December, and that if you see big global economic stakeholders ‘forecasting’ interest rates that are even more subterranean than at present, along with ‘forecasting’ more quantitative easing, one of the factors motivating that choice could be that they are positioning themselves for a future in which Merkel is forced to resign. Why? Because it’s easier to carry out those actions before Schaeuble gets in. That way, when Schaeuble gets in, he would have to accept that it is already happening.
So, let’s see what people are saying as of this Friday evening:
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi set the scene for further stimulus in two weeks’ time, saying the institution will do what’s necessary to reach its inflation goal rapidly. The euro fell.
“If we decide that the current trajectory of our policy is not sufficient to achieve that objective, we will do what we must to raise inflation as quickly as possible,” Draghi said in a speech in Frankfurt on Friday. “In making our assessment of the risks to price stability, we will not ignore the fact that inflation has already been low for some time.”
Draghi’s comments underline the ECB’s concern that the inflation rate in the 19-nation euro area, currently 0.1 percent, will slip further from its target of just under 2 percent amid a high degree of economic slack and slumping oil prices. Policy makers are weighing the need for an expansion to the 1.1 trillion-euro ($1.2 trillion) quantitative-easing program that started in March, or measures such as taking the deposit rate further below zero.
The yield on German 2-year bonds slid to a record low of minus 0.389 percent and the euro dropped. The single currency was down 0.4 percent at $1.0689 at 2:47 p.m. Frankfurt time.
Power Tool
“A further stimulus announcement in December is a virtual certainty,” said Marco Valli, chief euro-area economist at UniCredit SpA in Milan. “‘We will do what we must’ leaves little room for interpretation: if they fail to reach target, they do more.”
The ECB’s Governing Council will meet in Frankfurt on Dec. 3 for its next monetary-policy meeting. While Draghi and Executive Board member Peter Praet, the institution’s chief economist, have indicated more easing is in the cards, some governors have expressed unease.
Estonia’s Ardo Hansson, Slovenia’s Bostjan Jazbec and Germany’s Jens Weidmann have signaled since the last meeting that they see no need to ease policy further just now.
“I see no reason to talk down the economic outlook and paint a gloomy picture,” Weidmann said in a speech at the same event as Draghi. “Crucially, the decline in oil prices is more of an economic stimulus for the euro area than a harbinger of deflation.”
Praet said in an interview this week that taking no action in circumstances of such low inflation risks the ECB’s credibility, and has argued that the fall in oil prices is increasingly a sign of weakening demand.
QE Adjustment
“If we conclude that the balance of risks to our medium-term price stability objective is skewed to the downside, we will act by using all the instruments available within our mandate,” Draghi said. “In particular, we consider the asset-purchase program to be a powerful and flexible instrument, as it can be adjusted in terms of size, composition or duration to achieve a more expansionary policy stance.”
He added that the interest rate on the deposit facility “can empower the transmission” of asset purchases, “not least by increasing the velocity of circulation of bank reserves.”
Draghi said core inflation, which excludes energy and food, is also a signal of too-weak price pressures. The rate was 1.1 percent in October. While that’s the highest reading in more than two years, it’s still barely half the goal for the headline rate.
Core Concern
“Low core inflation is not something we can be relaxed about, as it has in the past been a good forecaster for where inflation will stabilize in the medium-term,” he said. “While core industrial goods will receive support from the depreciation of the euro, an increase in core services inflation –- today close to an all-time minimum –- will depend on rising nominal wage growth. For that to pick up, the economy needs to move back to full capacity as quickly as possible.”
The ECB is currently buying 60 billion euros a month of bonds and intends to do so through at least September 2016. The deposit rate is at a record-low minus 0.2 percent.
There is “little room for doubt that the central bank is not only about to step up its monetary stimulus, but plans to do so decisively,” said Nick Kounis, head of macro research at ABN Amro Bank NV in Amsterdam. “We expect the ECB to step up the pace of QE by 20 billion euros per month, signal that purchases will go on beyond September, and expand the eligible universe of assets to include regional bonds. We also expect a 10 basis-point reduction in the ECB’s deposit rate and guidance that it would be cut further if necessary.”
The euro fell for the first time in three days after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy makers will do what they must to raise inflation “as quickly as possible.”
The shared currency weakened to almost a seven-month low against the dollar and dropped versus all of its 16 major peers. Draghi said in Frankfurt that downside risks to price growth have increased in recent months. The euro also fell after German producer prices declined more in October than forecast.
“It was clearly meant to stress that the ECB remains active and we’ve seen market responses accordingly—the euro has dropped back,” said Shaun Osborne, chief foreign-exchange strategist at Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto. “The market is taking on board the message from Draghi that we should be prepared for potentially quite aggressive actions in December.”
The euro declined 0.7 percent to $1.0655 at 12:07 p.m. New York time, after gaining 0.9 percent in the previous two days. It touched $1.0617 on Nov. 18, the lowest since April 15. The shared currency fell 0.8 percent to 130.86 yen.
Draghi said last month that ECB policy makers would review the degree of monetary stimulus at their December meeting. Since then, the euro has weakened almost 6 percent versus the dollar as traders increased bets that officials may extend the bond-buying program or further cut the deposit rate.
German producer prices fell an annual 2.3 percent in October, after a 2.1 percent decline the previous month, the nation’s federal statistics office said Friday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast a 2 percent drop.
“We should be in little doubt that the ECB are again attempting to adjust the monetary policy dial, likely via extending and increasing QE, while another cut in the deposit rate is also on the cards,” said Jeremy Stretch, head of foreign-exchange strategy at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in London. “While far from an explicit aim, easing monetary conditions via a cheaper euro is also a positive by-product of such policies.”
The euro pared its decline as ECB official and Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said he didn’t see any reason to “paint a gloomy picture” of the region’s economy. He warned that the longer ultra-loose monetary policy was in place, the less effective it can become.
Rebecca Patterson, chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, which oversees more than $100 billion in assets
The biggest risk for Europe in the year? “It’s the refugee crisis,” says Patterson. “I think it’s the biggest challenge to the European Union yet. The horrible terrorist attacks in Paris increased the risk that the refugee crisis could result in a political and/or policy shift, or simply lead consumers to change their spending patterns. Either could weigh on sentiment around European growth and corporate profits.” Patterson is on alert for any such changes but remains overweight European equities and positioned for a weaker Euro, she says. “The Paris attacks sadly shone a light on the European refugee crisis; I assume more investors globally now are thinking more about what millions of immigrants can mean for an economy and respective markets. However, I am still not sure that investors globally have adequately thought through what market spillovers the European refugee crisis could trigger over the coming year.”
[...]
Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit
“Expect further divergence between the Fed and the ECB, with the former hiking rates a couple of times next year and the latter expanding its balance sheet more than it has presently announced.”
[...]
Of course, the situation in Germany is not the only reason why the ECB would take the actions that it is going to take, it was likely something that was always going to happen. But the time frame within which it is occurring and the reaction of market participants to that risk event, seems to indicate that a lot of people are paying attention to this. Look at the 3 week and 1 month Euro-dollar volatility term structure, and you can see that they are reacting to European risks and not just to the upcoming 16 December Federal Reserve meeting in the USA:
Also, given that there are numerous arguments for why Mario Draghi did not have to take the earlier-described actions in the short term (one of those being the oil prices argument), and given that he is determined to do it anyway, it would indicate that it is an attempt to get out in front of Schaeuble so as to pre-emptively make it more difficult for Schaeuble to get his way on monetary policy, and it would therefore mean that it is possible to be confident that Merkel is going to be gone by the end of December.
What does this mean for ethno-nationalists? Well, it means that it would probably be prudent to begin altering our rhetoric and policy suggestions with an eye toward a near-term future in which Merkel is not there. This will require some adjustments which would be best made sooner rather than later. We should be particularly vigilant against the idea that the removal of Merkel is a magical solution to all problems. Schaeuble’s disposition is one that presents a slightly altered set of problems to the European Union, and we would need to explore what those are ahead of time and be ready to criticise them when they come.
There needs to be an urgent study of all facets of Wolfgang Schaeuble’s politics. He might be chancellor of Germany very soon.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Friday, 13 November 2015 12:10.
Guess which one of these is applicable to Colin Liddell.
The situation
It is said that one does not always have the luxury of being able to choose where one is sent to fight. What first started out as a criticism carried out by Colin Liddell at the Alternative-Right against Andrew Anglin’s Daily Stormer, has morphed into something completely different, because of one line—one truly breathtaking sentence fragment—that Liddell tried to slide past the readers:
As for the palatability of Streicher-esque anti-Semitism, it is certainly palatable for many White Nationalists – indeed in-itself it hardly bothers me as history is full of unsavoury characters and I rather like history – but for other Whites, not to mention those Jews who might want to identify as Whites and help our cause (and there are some), it is certainly a different story.
Amazing. Apparently, Colin Liddell is okay with allowing the Jews to form the intellectual equivalent of a forward operating base which would of course be geared entirely toward sabotage, behind the lines of ethno-nationalist movements.
It’s one of the most breathtaking things I’ve ever seen from a European ethno-nationalist, ever.
Now, Majorityrights contributors don’t like the Daily Stormer, and our platform differs significantly. I am not defending the Daily Stormer, I have no interest in that, since I disagree with them on almost everything. However, for Colin Liddell to say that there are Jews out there who want to identify as whites and ‘help’, that is a truly stunning statement. In reality, there are no Jewish groups that have any interest in helping European ethno-nationalists. That is a phenomenon which absolutely does not exist anywhere.
Why should any ethno-nationalist want to give space for Jews to enter a movement that they have been historically hostile toward and are hostile toward even today? It’s impossible to understand it. Everyone has criticisms of the Daily Stormer and negative comments to make about the viability of Andrew Anglin’s approach, but if the criticism is coming from an angle that is beneficial to the Jewish lobby, then that cannot and should not be accepted.
However, we do not believe that the Jews can be a real ally in that conflict.
Why do we not believe that? It’s because the Jewish position is one where they would like to avoid having terrorists menacing them in their neighbourhoods in Europe, but Jewish civic groups also have no problem whatsoever balancing their concern about that against their other concern which is to avoid having an environment where a single culture predominates in the continent.
In Brussels, leaders of Islamic and Jewish communities from several European countries today presented a joint declaration to the presidents of the three main European Union institutions. Ahead of a meeting of European religious leaders representing all major faiths in Europe, Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric and Brussels Chief Rabbi Albert Guigui handed the document on behalf of the 33 signatories to Commission President José Manuel Barroso, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
The declaration stresses that “Jews and Muslims live side-by-side in every European country and our two communities are important components of Europe’s religious, cultural and social tapestry. Both Muslims and Jews have deep roots and historical experience on this continent.” It raises concern about “increasing manifestations of Islamophobia (anti-Muslim bigotry) and anti-Semitism in countries across Europe.”
The joint declaration goes on to say: “Bigotry against any Jew or any Muslim is an attack on all Muslims and all Jews. We are united in our belief in the dignity of all peoples” and urges “all Europeans of conscience to put a stop to any group that espouses racist or xenophobic ideologies long before they are in a position to gain legislative or other power. We must never allow anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia or racism to become respectable in today’s Europe. In that regard, we call upon all political leaders not to pander to these groups by echoing their rhetoric.”
The signatories also declared: “We remember together the horrors that took place on this continent in the 1940s - a campaign of mass murder, unique in history, which resulted in the annihilation of one third of world Jewry in the Holocaust. That atrocity and others, such as the mass killing of Muslim civilians in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1990s, resulted from the triumph of racist and xenophobic ideologies that demonized those that they targeted.”
This Europe-wide interfaith initiative – the first of its kind – was set in motion last December with the first Gathering of European Muslim and Jewish Leaders in Brussels. It is modelled on a similar cooperative effort in the United States organized by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. Co-sponsors are the European Jewish Congress, the FFEU, the Muslim Jewish Conference the World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations and the World Jewish Congress.
What kind of activities might be necessary in order to make sure that Muslims and Jews would both end up on the same page in that regard? They would have to schedule some kind of symposiums in which the Jewish cultural critics would brief their Muslim counterparts on what works against Europeans and what does not work, and the Jews would have to begin some kind of outreach to so-called European Muslims so that an understanding could be reached, right?
BEST PRACTICES: A EUROPEAN JEWISH MUSLIM DIALOGUE
Jewish as well as Muslim Authorities from Serbia, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Sweden were heard. Several speakers explained the efficiency of their strategies to fight extremism. In Germany where many neo-Nazis groups are violent, the Jews will help the (Turks) Muslims to be heard. They speak out together to defend their rights especially on the important subjects of circumcision, ritual slaughtering, at the government. They want to be sure that their children go through the right path. Their relations as well as their cooperation are excellent and they want to make it official. In United Kingdom, where anti-Muslim bigotry is strong, the extreme right aggravates tensions in promoting hatred and violence in the Muslim districts. Jews will enhance the role of the Muslim righteous who saved Jews during the Holocaust; A conference of British Imams and Rabbis work together productively with the ministries on the field.
The most remarkable step greeted by the participants was the case story of the creation by Rabbi Michel Serfaty of Amitié Judéo Musulmane de France with his partners and his Muslim co-chair Scherazade Zerouala for the Paris district: the bus of Friendship between Jews and Muslims has since 2007 crisscrossed the French towns and suburbs with local press conferences. The most efficient means to fight against discriminations and prejudices are Jews and Muslims involved to speak out together and “SAY NO TO HATRED”. Ignorance, fear and contempt breed violence, and that is the way to face it. This action carried on for 9 years, going on round France 8 times, with 10 people, and 15 sub-branches in the country was a challenge: mostly to build a united front to make a correct presentation of the Jew and the Muslim in our work with children and their mothers.
[...]
Jewish lobby groups are triangulating, they are positioning themselves so that in the case where Muslim groups become the largest share of all ethno-religious minority groups in the European Union, they would be ready for that scenario, and could survive in it.
Jews and Muslims are right now in ‘the season of twinning’, and what a time for them to have chosen to do that! See here:
In the face of escalating sectarian violence and increasing expressions of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry across North America, Europe and around the world, thousands of Muslims and Jews will be coming together in scores of cities around the globe to declare: We Refuse to Be Enemies.
We Refuse to be Enemies is the theme of the 8th Annual Season of Twinning, which every November and December brings together Muslims and Jews - and people of other faiths as well - to hold joint events focused on educating communities about one other, working together on behalf of people in need and standing together against bigotry.
The Season of Twinning officially kicks-off on Sunday, November 1 with an Interfaith rally in Trenton, NJ, to be followed by events in Washington, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Tel Aviv Rabat, Morocco, and scores of other cities in nearly 20 countries around the world. There have already been several events associated with the Season of Twinning over the past several weeks, including an inspiring Interfaith Peace Walk in Melbourne, Australia and a Surfers for Peace aquatic manifestation by Jewish and Muslim surfers off the beach in Biarritz, France.
The Season of Twinning was initiated in 2008 by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU) - a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to building a global movement of Muslims and Jews focused on strengthening ties between our communities.
“In the face of multiple crises now roiling Muslims and Jews in the Middle East and around the world and of increasing efforts by demagogues and extremists to incite our communities against each other, it is more critical than ever that Muslims and Jews come out in public to say ‘We Refuse to Be Enemies,’” said FFEU President Rabbi Marc Schneier. “We can agree to disagree respectfully on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while resolving to build ties of communication and cooperation for the betterment of both communities and the larger communities in which we live side by side.”
[...]
Quelle surprise! The Jews want to have an amicable relationship with the Muslims. They want to explore the possibility of continuing to undermine the European Union together, while they leave the disagreement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Levant.
Anyone who understands the strategies that have been used by Jews when dealing with Muslims in the past, should actually not be surprised by any of this. This kind of political manoeuvring has happened in the past:
711 July 19, TARIK IBN ZIYAD (Spain)
A Moslem general. He defeated King Roderick, the last of the Visigoth kings, at the Battle of Rio Barbate (Guadalete) near Xeres de la Frontera. The Jews backed [Tarik ibn Zayid] in his battles. After each city was conquered (Cordova, Granada, Malaga), Jews were often given positions of safeguarding Moslem interests. One of his generals, Kaula al Yahudi, had many Jews under his command.
712 March, TOLEDO (Spain) The Jewish inhabitants opened the gates for the Moslem invaders under Tarik ibn Zayid marking the end of Visigothic rule in Spain and the beginning of 150 years of peace. Thus began what was known as the Golden Age of Spain. The Iberian caliphate was independent of Baghdad and encouraged the flowering of Spanish-Jewish culture at the same time that it was being suppressed by the Baghdad caliphate.
‘150 years of peace’. Also known as ‘150 years Arab Muslims raping and killing the Europeans’.
Why do the Jews seek a situation where one culture cannot dominate? Why do they want to flood your countries with hostile migrants? The answer is less complicated than you might think:
When Earl Raab served as executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, he posted in his office an article citing a study that concluded that cigar smokers have a longer life expectancy than non-smokers.
One might wonder about the credibility of the study — but Earl turns 90 next week. His cigar-smoking days are behind him, and the Underwood Noiseless typewriter, on which he banged out hundreds of articles and uncommon wisdom for this paper, is in mothballs.
But Earl and his fertile mind continue to go strong.
Although he retired more than 20 years ago, his influence endures. A man of great humility, who claimed to be the national ping pong champion of the Galapagos Islands during World War II, Earl shaped the field of Jewish community relations nationally.
His genius was to recognize in San Francisco an extraordinary laboratory for studying and shaping the Jewish community at large — which he wrote about in an October 1950 piece for Commentary magazine. He had come to San Francisco on assignment from his and Kassie’s farm in Maine and decided never to leave.
In the “From the American Scene” column, Earl wrote a piece titled “There’s No City Like San Francisco.” In it, he wrote: “There are 55,000 Jews in San Francisco, and not even the historic traces of a ghetto. There is a Jewish community that has been called, with reason, the wealthiest, per capita, in the country. There is at the same time a startling poverty of ant-Semitic tradition. San Francisco, for cities of its size, is the nation’s ‘white spot’ of anti-Jewish prejudice… So far as the city and its institutions are concerned, the Jew is a first-class citizen. It may well be that he can live in San Francisco with a greater degree of personal dignity than in any other large city in the country.”
Raabisms will long endure at S.F.-based JCRC, among them: “A certain kind of America” (the idea that American Jews and other minorities are most secure when democratic institutions are strong) and “An educable moment” (Earl’s way of explaining why a bad thing happens to a good community and how to turn it into an opportunity).
[...]
In 1993 Earl Raab also wrote:
Earl Raab / San Francisco Jewish Bulletin, 23 Jul 1993:
We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country. We have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make our constitutional constraints against bigotry more practical than ever.
That is a positive feedback loop. As the level of heterogeneity increases, so increases the adherence to constraints against ‘bigotry’ for the sake of civil concordance under liberalism. Those constraints then make it more difficult for anyone to make arguments in favour of taking action against further increases in heterogeneity, which then results in a ‘requirement’ for more constraints against ‘bigotry’, and so on.
The same plan is on the agenda for Europe. It’s crucial for everyone to understand that this is what their intention is. There are no compromises or negotiations that can be had with the Jews. It is what it is.
Only pretending to be retarded
Later on, a torrent of criticism was poured in Liddell’s direction from Daily Stormer and from every other angle, because despite all the differences that may exist between the strands of ethno-nationalist thought in the North Atlantic, most people seem to agree that the Jews are not to be underestimated.
First off, let’s deal with my previous article, as it managed to trick most people. It was—in case you hadn’t realized—a deferential tribute to the actual style of The Daily Stormer.
This came off as particularly hollow in the context of the Jewish Question, given that when I asked Colin Liddell about whether he still stood by his earlier statements on alliances with Jews, he said that he still stood by those statements, as you can see from the comments sections.
So it was not a pretence of any sort. It’s more like Liddell’s follow-up post was a form of damage control after he had made a spectacular misstep and didn’t want to back down from it.
Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents however seems to have taken the claim of pretence at face value, without addressing the Jewish Question, and so he responded to Liddell, saying:
Well I’m relieved. I took your last article as in earnest and regarded it as a serious lapse by an otherwise sound writer, not as a parody of Anglin himself.
This is really surprising to me. Was he not aware of what Liddell was saying just earlier? The things that Liddell had said, are really 180 degrees contrary to the clearly-articulated and laudable stances that I had come to associate with Johnson. For example, a while ago, Greg Johnson ran this really good article at Counter-Currents:
Some nationalists pursue these questions, but others choose to abstain, merely advocating ethnonationalism but not touching the “J.Q.”
I wish to suggest that this framing of the Jewish question is entirely wrong. The Jewish question is not something distinct from ethnonationalism. It is not a separate, higher-order, entirely optional set of questions from which ethnonationalists can recuse themselves. On the contrary, the Jewish question is a simple, straightforward application of the basic principle of ethnonationalism.
If ethnonationalism calls for the replacement of multicultural societies with monocultural ones, then Jews, as a distinct people, belong in their own homeland and not scattered among other nations. Thus if England is to be English, Sweden to be Swedish, Ireland to be Irish, alien populations need to be repatriated to their own homelands, Jews included. That is the ethnonationalist answer to the Jewish question.
[...]
That is exactly the correct stance there.
But that is exactly the opposite of what Colin Liddell was calling for on 08 Nov 2015. Since Colin Liddell thinks that Jews should be part of European ethno-nationalist groups, whereas Greg Johnson clearly visualises a future in which Jews would not be inside the European continent. Quite clearly Johnson does not believe that Jews should be part of European ethno-nationalist groups, or he would not be able to come up with such an opinion.
To repeat, the reason that Greg Johnson is able to conceptualise a future in which Jews are not in Europe, is because he does not see them as part of the European ethno-nationalist advocacy group.
How then can Johnson be okay with Liddell, given that from Johnson’s perspective, Colin Liddell would be doing ethno-nationalism precisely wrong? This looks like a clear contradiction.
Those arguments that were made by the commenter UH, were rebutted by the commenters Verlis and Theodore, here, here, and here.
The need for consistency
The Alternative-Right has a big tent. Their big tent is completely incoherent, because it contains a whole array of people who don’t agree with each other on core issues and whose outlooks are totally irreconcilable with each other.
Majorityrights has the correct platform for the advocacy of European peoples, and their regional autonomy. It formulated this platform by firstly considering the diverse opinions of ethno-nationalists. Secondly, after a process of argumentation an authentic theory emerged, which is known as left-nationalism or national-syndicalism. Step three is to equip European peoples with these ideas which are necessary to facilitate a transition toward true ethnostates and to enter into sustainable alliances within regional frameworks.
Having an actual platform and consistently communicating that platform, is more important than trying to create the largest possible tent. The events of the past week only throw the truth of that observation into stark relief.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 10 November 2015 23:17.
For any weary reader who needs a little cheer in these dark times here is a video of a speech by Zsolt Bayer, the Hungarian journalist, publicist, author, co-founder of the ruling party Fidesz, and friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. It was given in September to a meeting of patriots protesting the front cover of a Soros-funded magazine Magyar Narancs which pictured Orbán adorned with a Hitler moustache shaped in barbed wire.
The speech itself is perhaps three-quarters honest, which is a definite step up from Orbán’s widely publicised and ritually deplored calls for the preservation of Christian culture and European “patterns of living”. Among other things it reveals that influential figures in Hungary, including Orbán himself I understand, are Tolkien fans!
My thanks to Breitbart commenter Melissa Mészáros for the link. I might just add that Bayer’s stirring rhetoric encouraged someone named David Peppiatt to seek out a Hungarian-American blog which specialises in being nasty about Orbán. The usual one-sided war on liberal nonsense ensued.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Saturday, 24 October 2015 03:22.
Yes, the North Atlantic was completely destroyed, but for a wonderful moment in time we had no Islamophobic comments on Facebook!
There are few things in politics more fulfilling than seeing greed and fear—which are not ‘bad’ emotions, it’s all about context—combine to create genuinely good performance art, a kind of art that is a work of genuine originality. That’s how it is with the Facebook censorship story, it just gets better by the day.
The law firm Jun Lawyers, which specialises in IT Law and is headed by Jun Chan-jo, has seen an opportunity for publicity and profit. It is going to be found through the fact that between Angela Merkel, Heiko Maas, Anetta Kahane, Eva-Maria Kirschsieper and Mark Zuckerberg, they have virtually no capability at all of actually policing all the ‘hate speech’ that now exists on Facebook due to the reaction of a sizeable number of German citizens to the migrant influx that Angela Merkel herself invited into Germany.
The continued existence of ‘hate speech’ all over Facebook means that the liberal government is violating its own laws and its own constitution. Since Facebook is also possibly violating those same laws, and since none of them can do a single thing about it without installing something akin to the ‘Great Firewall of China’ or the ‘Great Keyword Filter of South Korea’ —except aimed at the all-pervasive ‘Far Right hate speech’ rather than say, ‘reactionaries’, or ‘Far Left Marxists’, or ‘anarchists’—Jun Lawyers can be sure that the German legal tangle is a gift that will keep on giving. The liberal government has effectively promised to win at whack-a-mole, has made it illegal to lose, and is now finding itself unable to stop losing.
Now finding themselves trapped in a forest of the censorship laws of their own making which they are legally obligated to enforce, and with social media being used to propagate messages of ‘hate’ toward everyone and everything, the liberal-capitalist occupied German government is considering suing Facebook, the German court system is considering whether to find the German government to be in violation of its own constitution, while the Jun Lawyers firm is suing both the liberal government and Facebook simultaneously.
I would urge all ethno-nationalists out there not to be angry with Jun Chan-jo. His name will appear a lot in the media going forward, but it is prudent to regard him as the ‘Gordon Gecko’ of IT Lawyers, and to take a tolerant stance toward him. I’ve heard some unfortunate stories about people sending him hateful emails and tweets which insult him on the basis of his Korean ethnicity and so on. Please do not do this to him. It’s just business, isn’t it? Jun Chan-jo should not be regarded with hatred, he should be regarded with love, because he’s just doing his job and he’s doing it very well.
Let’s remember the relevant section of that famous speech that Gordon Gecko made in the 1987 film ‘Wall Street’:
Gordon Gekko, ‘Wall Street’, 1987:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
The aggregate effect of the self-serving actions of Jun Chan-jo is that he’s basically calling the liberal government and Facebook on their own bluff and forcing them to try to follow through on their own laws. He’s performing the socially useful and totally logical function of holding the liberal government and the clique of Jews who own Facebook to account for the laws that they themselves committed to. But the government can’t comprehensively follow through on these laws, because it’s operationally impossible for them to police all of the things which are being said about Muslim migrants daily on social media in Germany. All the state apparatus can really do is strike a small number of ‘offenders’ randomly, and then when this proves ineffective, it turns on itself to play internal blame-games in response to legal challenges.
Look for yourself at the circular firing-squad which has manifested:
Chastened by its Nazi past, Germany long ago banned incitement of racial hatred
Refugees crisis has prompted posts that many feel violate those laws
Posters have been charged, and Facebook officials might be
BERLIN—The anti-refugee post on Facebook by a 29-year-old Berlin woman last spring seemed little different from many of the hate-filled rants that pop up on social media sites.
“Let’s get rid of the filth,” she wrote. Then, referring to a series of arson fires that have destroyed refugee housing under construction across Germany, she continued: “many more refugee centers will burn, hopefully with the doors boarded up.”
But there was a difference between her words and many others that appear online: She was a German, posting in Germany. And while social media globally might assume a more American character of erring on the side of free speech over censorship, Germany does not share this view when it comes to hate speech.
The woman was charged with violating Germany’s hate speech law, convicted and sentenced to five years of probation. She’s not the only poster to have run afoul of the law: A 25-year-old man from the small town of Passau in Bavaria was fined 7,500 euro (about $8,500) for a Facebook post offering to deliver “a gas canister and hand grenade, for free,” to a group of asylum seekers. A 34-year-old Berlin man was fined 4,800 euro (about $5,500) for posting: “I’m in favor of reopening the gas chambers and putting the whole brood inside.”
Now, with the swelling number of refugees prompting still more such posts, German prosecutors are considering going after Facebook itself for acting as a home for posts that advocate racial hatred and violate laws against neo-Nazi speech.
German prosecutors are investigating possible charges against three Facebook managers, prompted by a complaint that they failed to act against racist comments about Europe’s refugee crisis.
The complaint came from German attorney Chan-jo Jun, of Wuerzburg. In it, he claimed to have flagged more than 60 Facebook entries that would violate German hate-speech laws. In an interview in Die Welt newspaper, he noted that the posts he flagged – some even featuring Nazi insignia and people posing while giving a Nazi salute – are strictly forbidden by German law.
But, he said, Facebook responded to his complaints by saying the content didn’t violate Facebook’s community standards, and the posts were not removed. He made copies of the posts and sent them to Facebook’s German managers by registered mail.
“We need to put an end to the arrogance with which some companies try to translate their system of values to Europe,” he said.
In the complaint he filed, he noted, “Facebook Germany encourages the dissemination of offensive, punishable content through its actions in Germany.”
Germans have complained for years about what they see as warped morality on Facebook and other U.S.-based social media sites, where nudity is strictly controlled but posters are allowed to spout hate-filled screeds that Germany outlawed after the Nazi reign of Adolf Hitler.
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas recently announced that Germany would establish “a task force to combat hate speech on social media platforms, notably Facebook, and a number of social networks, including Facebook, are to take part.”
“Racist, inciting statements are inconsistent with our system of values and cannot be justified under any imaginable aspect,” he said. “One thing is clear: If Facebook gets complaints about racist and xenophobic messages that violate criminal laws, then the company must react and delete such posts quickly and reliably. . . . There must be as little space in social media for racism and xenophobia as there is on the street.”
Facebook has agreed to take part in and partially fund the task force, but for many it’s showing too little concern about a matter Germans take seriously.
Facebook has announced measures to counter hate speech. However, in the past it has also noted that the site “allowed discussions on the network to be conducted using robust diction.” Overall, German officials claim they have received word from Facebook that it prefers a policy of “discuss, not delete,” in many cases.
German news stories have quoted German Facebook policy manager Eva-Maria Kirschsieper as defending her company’s policies by noting that Facebook reaches a billion users far beyond Germany’s borders.
“It is a constant challenge to balance the interests of this diverse community and we are constantly working to adjust our policies and procedures to be even more effective and sensitive to the concerns of local communities,” she said.
Konstantin von Notz, a member of the Green party who is considered the group’s top expert on the Internet, questioned whether Facebook is following its own anti-hate speech guidelines. He noted that members of his party have been attacked on Facebook and have filed criminal charges. “Some of what is being posted not only goes against German law but also against Facebook’s own terms of business,” he said.
This week, the German tabloid Bild ran a two-page spread of nothing but hateful Facebook comments, complete with user names and profile photos. The comments were directed at the large number of refugees seeking asylum in Germany, and those who support them.
“Green pig, hang them all,” said one post directed at Claudia Roth, a pro-refugee Green politician. Another was more general: “A bullet for every Muslim and their supporters.” “Muslims are worse than cockroaches. We don’t want Islam in Germany and Austria,” read another. Another poster, identified as Silvio Bettin, asked, “Aren’t we all a little Nazi?”
The best thing that can happen is for this chaos to continue. It’s an unlimited and unwinnable censorship battle which the liberal-capitalist occupation government in Germany has plunged itself into. About 35 million migrants in total may be heading toward Europe, and Germany is refusing to permit political discussion of Angela Merkel’s monstrous open-doors policy to take place on the public political stage. So, the conversation persists on the internet, and then the liberal government chooses to include such conversation under the rubric of the enforcement of its ‘racial hatred’ censorship laws.
If the liberal occupation government wants to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward ‘hate speech’ and if they promise to follow through on that impossible task, then I give my warmest regards and a jaunty salute to anyone who is able to engage in culture-jamming or legal-jamming actions to put that ridiculous censorship system under stress. The liberal occupation government might as well be trying to censor discussion of the weather.
To all the patriotic Germans out there, I encourage you to keep posting ‘offensive’ things, and to keep organising and engaging in street actions, and in so doing, keep jamming up the liberal censorship system.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Tuesday, 20 October 2015 10:10.
Dutch TV subtitle: “The European Union and Turkey together will accelerate Turkey’s accession.”
Even the title of this article does not do enough to convey the scale of the stunningly disingenuous ‘negotiation’ that Angela Merkel engaged in on Sunday. It was not a negotiation, it was Merkel just taking Europe’s queen piece and both rook pieces off of the chessboard and tossing them through the window as Turkish mouths widened in grotesque delight.
As is well known, many of the migrants that are flowing into Europe at Angela Merkel’s own invitation—and because of the perverse incentives created by governments like Germany and Sweden—make their transit through Turkey before arriving in Europe. At the same time, Merkel has been facing an internal party revolt as various opportunists are taking the crisis as a chance to challenge her leadership. Some others are revolting against her because the number of migrants that their regions are being asked to accept are more than their infrastructure can ever hope to efficiently handle.
Under these pressures—particularly the pressure arising from the fact that Merkel’s concept of ‘no upper ceiling to migration’ was bound to clash with material constraints eventually—Merkel then found herself thrust into a negotiation with Turkey. The European Union had attempted to bribe Turkey with 3 billion euros, but the Turks decided that it was not enough.
So Merkel went to Turkey and offered them a faster track toward EU accession and visa-free travel, in addition to the bribe that had been previously offered.
Predictably, Erdogan and Davutoglu immediately decided to retract their side of the pseudo-informal ‘agreement’ as soon as Merkel went home. They have clarified that they actually made no promises to stop the migrants within their territory from travelling into Europe, ultimately. In fact, they have no intention of doing anything to stop the migration wave itself either:
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that an agreed sum of 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in return for Turkey’s cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants in Europe would not be regarded as sufficient.
Speaking on Turkish television one day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Istanbul on Sunday, Davutoglu said that the money would come from the “IPA” fund - money already earmarked for Turkey as an EU membership candidate . He said that Turkey wanted additional cash.
The 3 billion euro IPA fund proposal is no longer on the table, as we have said we will not accept it,” Davutoglu said. “As for fresh resources, we’re talking about a 3 billion euro amount in the first stage. But we don’t want to fixate on this because the requirements may go up, and the assessment for this would need to be done annually.”
Tit-for-tat diplomacy
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday offered Turkey the prospect of support for faster progress on its bid to join the European Union as well as an accelerated path to visa-free travel for Turks. This followed the summit in Brussels last week where EU leaders had agreed on a migration “action plan” with Turkey, where the figure of 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) had been discussed.
Chancellor Merkel on Sunday had hailed as “very promising” progress on an EU-driven “action plan” after talks in Istanbul with Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both Turkish President Erdogan and Davutoglu, whose ruling AK Party faces a general election on November 1, appeared keen to avoid any impression of weakness in dealing with European nations. They said earlier the EU had only recently realised Turkey’s value in the crisis.
Davutoglu: Turkey ‘not a concentration camp’
Prime Minister Davutoglu caused further controversy on Monday, saying that his country was “not a concentration camp” and that it would not host migrants permanently to appease the EU.
“I said this to Merkel too. No one should expect Turkey to turn into a concentration camp where all the refugees stay in,” Davutoglu said.
The talks had however resulted in a “positive response” to the government’s request for visa liberalization, he said.
His comments came as the flow of people along the so-called “Balkan Route” into Europe via Turkey continued, with thousands of people streaming Monday into the Balkans, where tighter border controls forced people to sleep in freezing temperatures. More than 630,000 people have landed on Europe’s shores so far this year, most of them making risky sea crossings from Turkey to Greece.
ss/msh (Reuters, AFP)
All of those events were actually absolutely unnecessary from a straight power perspective. Why? Because, while Turkish politicians have a lot of bluster, and while they can deploy the threat of unleashing the migrants, the Turks were nevertheless negotiating from an extremely weak position.
Despite having had historical cultural connections to the regional groups to their west, south, south-east and east, Turkey has spent the past 20 years burning all of its bridges in all directions. In summary—and it is definitely a summary—Turkey’s position looks like this:
Westward, they’ve been unable to make much of an advancement toward European integration, and still have infamously bad relations with Greece over the issue of Cyprus and a variety of other issues.
To their south-east they are faced with an increasingly Kurdish population which is territorially coincident with the ancient land that they refer to as part of ‘Kurdistan’. By the year 2050, both Turks and Kurds will have gone through a population correction—a decline which must take place—but the asymmetric nature of that decline will be characterised by a change in the ratio of Turks and Kurds. The overall number of Kurds will have increased relative to the number of Turks, so that about 50% of the people in Turkey by then will be residing in homes where Kurdish is the first language. The geographic area where those Kurds are and will be living, is a place which also happens to potentially have a significant amount of oil play under it and comprises almost 40% of the territory of Turkey.
To their east, Turkey had been more or less ignoring Central Asia and letting it sit in squalor until China decided to start making economic inroads there which are only becoming more integrated, at which stage Turkey made the monumental mistake of funding Uigyur Islamic terrorists in Xinjiang province to destroy Chinese infrastructure. China immediately responded by threatening to fund and arm Kurdish Marxist-Leninist terrorists to erode the territorial integrity of the Turkish state. Since Turkey did not stop funding the Islamists in Xinjiang, China seems to have gone forward with its threat, as the new presence of Chinese weapons among the PKK arsenal would indicate. Evidence of such a presence would be that a year after the warning had been given, 1690 of the machineguns and 40 of the rocket launchers that Turkey had captured from the PKK were of Chinese origin. The Turks have also recently taken to impotently complaining about how sympathetic the western media is to the PKK. Overall, the net gain for Turkey in that area has been somewhere in the range of nil.
Turkey is not some shrewd player. It’s one of the most clownish and absurd players in the world at the moment, and although it has experienced some significant economic growth internally, its foreign policy is a complete shambles and it is nowhere near to being a serious world power.
Should we really believe that Merkel is so stupid that she could not find anything to use to twist the arms of the Turks? The Turks should never have been in a position to be the ones making any demands there.
Any European negotiator who wanted to really play the game the tough way could have given a variety of responses that could twist the arms of the Turks based on the above facts, such as:
“Do you understand the situation you’re in? How about we just don’t talk to you about EU accession ever again, until you remove the remnants of the Turkish Army from Cyprus?”
“Do you understand the situation you’re in? How about we cancel all the NATO events that are on the calendar concerning Turkey?”
“Do you understand the situation you’re in? How about we continue using the National Endowment for Democracy to assist your domestic political opponents so that they can erode your electoral powerbase and replace you with someone who will run Turkey in the way that we want?”
“Do you understand the situation you’re in? How about we just ignore you and hedge against you demographically on a 30 year time frame, cultivating links with Kurds in the eastern part of your country so that we can encourage them to defy Ankara later and block you from having political control over a large section of your domestic energy resource base?”
“Do you understand the situation you’re in? How about we just close the border between Turkey and the European Union, and build a giant fence surmounted by barbed wire and security cameras? The amount that it costs to take care of the migrants for a week is probably the same amount as it costs to build the fence.”
Those kind of responses from a European negotiator, would have been the correct signalling and would have likely produced a much more satisfactory response from Turkey.
Rather than doing anything like that, Merkel instead went in and sat down on a golden throne next to Erdogan, and followed the exact choreography that the architects of Erdogan’s election campaign wanted her to follow. She let Erdogan—a man who literally has been implicated in electoral fraud multiple times and is presiding over a ramshackle failure of a foreign policy—look strong, let him look competent, let him look like he was in charge, and gave him absolutely everything he wanted, absolutely for free.
No one is that absurdly fucking stupid by accident. Merkel had to have been doing that on purpose. That is the only reasonable conclusion that can be reached. It really is.
Furthermore, whose idea was it to send Merkel—a person who actually wanted the migrants to enter Europe in the first place—to have a negotiation with Turkey to try to keep the migrants out of Europe? I would love to know who was responsible for that absolutely stupid idea. Who on earth in their right mind would send Merkel to negotiate for the defence of Europe’s borders while knowing about all the pro-migration actions that she had engaged in prior to that?
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
