[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
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[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
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Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 02 August 2018 06:10.
Ewa Faryaszewska (1920-1944) - Museum of Warsaw, Public Domain
Generally speaking, I don’t like to go into World War II, because I view it as a nasty history for Europeans, about which few people alive had anything to do - therefore, I prefer to uncouple the ethnonationalist cause from it - and especially from Nazism - for the sake of Germans perhaps especially. However, because a needless and counterproductive tendency to try to fully exonerate and redeem Hitler and the Nazis persists - e.g., Mark Collette and “ComfyTangent” recommending that people attend to the schlock revisionism of “The Greatest Story Never Told”; David Duke persisting in blaming anyone but Hitler for WWII - there is yet need to address the issue enough to put it to rest for anyone reasonable - not something to expect from the Stormfront crowd, e.g; and many have not yet gotten Dr. Lindtner’s message regarding the disingenuousness of Faurisson and other revisionists. We will be engaging podcasts on the matter with a Swedish colleague, et al. in days to come to straighten-out the record on WWII - why White Nationalism need not and should no be burdened with Hitler/Nazi association, denial, let alone its idealization and idolatry.
In the meantime, while you will hear a great deal from American White Nationalists about the terrible fire-bombing of Dresden, you can expect them to remain irresponsibly silent (or make revolting excuses) regarding events like the quelling of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
If anyone has better information to add, they are welcome, but again, because I don’t like going into WWII history, at this point I’ll merely set forth a textual sketch of the event from Wikipedia and this video:
Berlin 1st Army: 5,660 casualties[7]
Warsaw Airlift: 41 downed aircraft German forces:
8,000–17,000 killed and missing
9,000 WIA
150,000–200,000 civilians killed,[8] 700,000 expelled from the city.[7]
Poland 1944–45: The Warsaw Uprising (Polish: powstanie warszawskie; German: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa), to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance.[9] While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to raze the city in reprisal. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.[10]
The Uprising began on 1 August 1944 as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the time of the Soviet Lublin–Brest Offensive. The main Polish objectives were to drive the Germans out of Warsaw while helping the Allies defeat Germany. An additional, political goal of the Polish Underground State was to liberate Poland’s capital and assert Polish sovereignty before the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation could assume control. Other immediate causes included a threat of mass German round-ups of able-bodied Poles for “evacuation”; calls by Radio Moscow’s Polish Service for uprising; and an emotional Polish desire for justice and revenge against the enemy after five years of German occupation.[11][12]
Initially, the Poles established control over most of central Warsaw, but the Soviets ignored Polish attempts to maintain radio contact with them and did not advance beyond the city limits. Intense street fighting between the Germans and Poles continued. By 14 September, the eastern bank of the Vistula River opposite the Polish resistance positions was taken over by the Polish troops fighting under the Soviet command; 1,200 men made it across the river, but they were not reinforced by the Red Army. This, and the lack of air support from the Soviet base five-minute flying time away, led to allegations that Stalin tactically halted his forces to let the operation fail and the Polish resistance to be crushed. Arthur Koestler said the Soviet disposition will rank on an ethical level with Lidice.”[13]
Winston Churchill pleaded with Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt to help Britain’s Polish allies, to no avail.[14] Then, without Soviet air clearance, Churchill sent over 200 low-level supply drops by the Royal Air Force, the South African Air Force, and the Polish Air Force under British High Command, in an operation known as the Warsaw Airlift. Later, after gaining Soviet air clearance, the U.S. Army Air Force sent one high-level mass airdrop as part of Operation Frantic.
Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded.
85% of Warsaw was destroyed deliberately by Hitler’s order that the city be razed.
In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. German casualties totalled over 8,000 soldiers killed and missing, and 9,000 wounded. During the urban combat approximately 25% of Warsaw’s buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically levelled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945, when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 21 July 2018 05:33.
Putting an end to three decades spent of looking almost exclusively towards the West.
The Three Seas Initiative, a super Visegrád-Group?
Visigrad Post, “The Three Seas Initiative, a new forum of cooperation of twelve Central European countries countervailing the Berlin-Brussels-Paris Axis?”, 13 July 2018:
Talks on regional pipelines at Regional Forum of Three Seas Initiative, 3 July 2018, Rzeszów, Poland. Photo: Olivier Bault.
By Olivier Bault.
Originally published in French on Réinformation TV.
Poland, Rzeszów – The first Forum of the Regions of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) took place on July 3, in Rzeszów, Poland. This initiative has been started in 2015 by the Polish President Andrzej Duda and the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. The 3SI groups twelve Central European countries between the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea: the three Baltic States, the four ones of the Visegrád-Group (V4) as well as Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This meeting aimed to transform this simple intergovernmental cooperation into a border crossing cooperation between the regions concerned by the Three Seas Initiative. Another dimension was then also announced by the President of the Polish Sejm (parliament) with the project of a parliamentary assembly of the Three Seas that could extend beyond the 12 3SI countries by also attracting countries that are not members of the UE, beginning with Ukraine and Moldova.
The Polish president quotes the French Robert Schuman in order to justify the Three Seas Initiative
In its current form, the 3SI is first of all an economic cooperation framework with concrete projects. Because, as the Polish president Andrzej Duda said, quoting the French Robert Schuman when he came to greet the participants from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.” Furthermore, Duda emphasized that the Three Seas Initiative had also a political and social dimension, that is particularly important at a moment when the European Union is losing touch with its fundamental principles. Considered by the participating countries as complementary structure and not as a concurrence to the EU, this platform of regional cooperation might potentially – with its 120 millions inhabitants – rebalance the West-East relationship within the 28, and soon 27 members of the Union.
Putting an end to three decades spent of looking almost exclusively towards the West
While they represent 22 % of the EU population, they only produce 10 % of its wealth, as the economic catch up that began after the fall of Communism (except for Austria) is far away from being achieved. And the first goal of the Three Seas Initiative is to develop the energetic and transport infrastructures along the North-South axis and to develop trade on this same axis after thee decades of a development that was principally in a East-West direction. In the domain of energy, the Polish and Lithuanian gas terminals will be connected in the middle term with the Croatian gas terminal on the Adriatic.
This aspect does particularly interest the United States, with which Poland has just signed two very big contracts for the delivery of gas after 2022, after expiration of the contract binding it with the Russian company Gazprom. Not all countries of the Three Seas Initiative wish, like Poland, to stop buying Russian gas but they all support the diversification that the construction of these new gas pipelines will lead to, as there are also important gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea and the planned Baltic Pipe will also allow to deliver Norwegian gas to the region. For the President of the Polish gas company PGNiG (Polish Petroleum Mining and Gas Industry), who was present at the Forum of the Regions of the Three Seas Initiative, the development of connections between the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic is a concurrence to the alliance between the German and Russian companies concerned by the Nord Stream pipeline.
Another project that is being achieved within the 3SI is the Via Carpatia, which includes a motorway and expressway network that will lead from Klaipėda in Lithuania to Thessaloniki in Greece along the Eastern side of the European Union. There are also some long-term projects for creating railway and waterway transport axes, as today in Central Europe, these are all the transport infrastructures that are less developed on a North-South direction than on the East-West one. It might also be discussed in the future – the question has been arisen at the Forum of the Regions of the Three Seas Initiative – to develop direct exchanges for media information for the Central European societies to avoid being informed of what happens at their neighbours’ through the ideological filter of the press agencies and the Western European mainstream media, as it is unfortunately the case nowadays.
The Three Seas Initiative, a super Visegrád-Group?
After the fall of the Berlin wall, the satellite countries of the USSR in Europe fixed their eyes towards the West for a long time and neglected the relationships between each other. Today, with the identity and society crisis that Western Europe is going through, but also with the awareness of an economic relationship where the former communist countries got themselves being dominated, there is a great temptation to meet up with the other Central European countries to speak, when possible, with a single voice in Brussels. That is already done with success by the four countries of the Visegrád-Group (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary). The Three Seas Initiative could allow twelve countries to make it the same way.
Translated from French by the Visegrád Post.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 18 July 2018 18:00.
Prometheus unbound. Orban cracks down on immigration (AP) Photo: AP/Press Association Images
ITV Report, “Hungary to pull out of UN accord on migration”, 18 July 2018:
Hungary’s foreign minister said his country will pull out of a United Nations accord on migration to be adopted in December because it goes against his country’s security interests.
Foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said the UN’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, the final draft of which was released last week, also goes against common sense.
He added that Hungary has doubts about the accord’s non-binding status.
Under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was elected in April to his third consecutive term, Hungary has adopted strict anti-migration measures and made it very difficult for refugees to obtain asylum.
The UN document is a “non-legally binding, co-operative framework” meant to foster “international co-operation among all relevant actors on migration, acknowledging that no state can address migration alone, and upholds the sovereignty of states and their obligations under international law”.
Netanyahu had a significant role in arranging the Trump-Putin meeting along with some of its key objectives. Note that Netanyahu has been close to the highly corrupt Kushner family since Jared was a child; and it was Jared who negotiated Trump’s route to the White House by means of an avowal to undo the Iran Deal.
The Jerusalem Post, “Intelligence Report: Israel needs Trump and Putin in Syria”, 15 July 2018:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin . (photo credit: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
Though he hasn’t been present there, the spirit of Israel’s prime minister hovered all over the summit meeting between the US and Russian presidents in Helsinki in mid-July. Benjamin Netanyahu worked laboriously mobilizing all his influence in Washington to persuade Donald Trump to meet Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders have mysterious relations that are unfolding as a special investigation of former FBI director Robert Muller into alleged Russian meddling in the last US presidential elections is progressing. Trump and Putin were scheduled to discuss international matters from North Korea to the Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine to the trade wars declared by Trump and the conflicts in the Middle East.
The Israeli prime minister, however, is mainly interested in two topics: Iran and the civil war in Syria. He needs both leaders to back his policy on these fronts.
On July 11, four days before the summit, Netanyahu was set to meet Putin and sit next to him in his private box at a Moscow soccer stadium watching together one of the two World Cup’s semi-finals.
It will be Netanyahu’s 10th meeting with the Russian leader in the last three years. He has more Putin’s hours than any other leader in the world.
The frequency and urgency of his encounters with Putin are a result of the fact that the Syrian civil war appears to be reaching its end and the army of President Bashar Assad is on its way to regain its position along the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.
Israel’s interests are to allow the Syrian army to return to its posts along the border as mandated by the 1974 agreement on “Disengagement of Forces” between the two sides, which ended the 1973 Yom Kippur War, while preventing any presence of Iranian, Lebanese Hezbollah or Shi’ite militias in undefined areas near the border.
After seven-and-a-half years of violence and bloodshed, including the use of chemical weapons, the death toll among Syrian government forces, opposition forces and civilians is estimated by UN and civil rights groups to be more than 500,000. As of December 2017, approximately 13.1 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria, with 6.3 million people displaced internally, and an additional 5.4 million registered refugees, making the Syrian situation among the largest humanitarian crises in the world.
Throughout the war years, Israeli policy remained more or less unchanged. Though some of the Israeli intelligence estimates were wrong (“Assad will be toppled within three weeks,” then- defense minister Ehud Barak predicted in 2011), the policy of non-intervention and not taking sides was consistent, with a few minor exceptions.
The Israeli “red lines” set by Netanyahu and the three defense ministers who served under him during this period – Barak, Moshe Ya’alon and Avigdor Liberman – consisted until a year ago of the following.
• To ensure the peace on the Israeli side of the border by responding to any violation of its sovereignty, deliberate or errant, by the Syrian army or rebel groups.
• To provide humanitarian aid to the villages next to the border, thus ensuring their gratitude and minimizing their incentives to act against Israel. So far, Israel has treated in its hospitals 3,500 victims, many of them children and women, and supplied more than a hundred tons of medical aid, food, clothes and tents worth nearly $100 million, which mostly was financed by contributions from evangelical communities in the US.
• According to foreign reports, the “good border” relations also included a supply of light weapons, ammunition and communication gear to the moderate, national-secular rebels groups near the border. In return, according to these reports, Israel, gleaned good intelligence on what was happening in Syria and beyond.
• To secure the safety of the Syrian Druze community (roughly half a million people), in order to calm down Israel’s own small Druze community (about 120,000), whose members serve in the Israeli armed and security forces and are considered loyal citizens of the Jewish state.
• To crush by military force efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to create a terrorist infrastructure on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
• To conduct air strikes and demolish transfers from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah of sophisticated weapons.
These goals were more or less achieved by a wise policy of the Israeli military and government by employing the tactics of a tightrope dance that combined determination, sensitivity and caution.
Even the arrival of the thousands of members of the Russian contingency and especially its air force and state-of-the-art anti-aircraft batteries didn’t stop Israel from preserving and enhancing its national interests. This was possible by establishing direct “hotlines” between Hmeimim Air Base in northwestern Latakia, where Russian headquarters is located, and the IDF and Israel Air Force headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The occasional talks between Israel and Russian officers helped “deconflicting” and the prevention of dog fights between Israeli and Russian pilots. On top of that, in his rounds of meetings with Putin, it seems that Netanyahu obtained from the Russia leader the license to almost freely operate in Syria as long as targets were not fully identified with the Assad regime.
But a year or so ago, Israel’s red lines were redefined and extended. While all the above interests are still in place, Israel has added a more important goal: to remove the presence of Iranian, Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias as far as possible from the Israeli border.
On Thursday 28 and Friday 29 of June the leaders of the 28 Member States of the European Union met in Brussels for a summit to discuss in particular migration policy at a European scale. A summit that has brought some progress but which is not a decisive victory for anyone, even if the V4 can celebrate having imposed its themes and some of its solutions, as well as having overcome the domination of the immigrationist paradigm.
Belgium, Brussels – Once again, the European Union seems to be paralyzed. The leaders of the 28 EU Member States, however, all wanted to move the debate on the migration issue forward, and the discussions dragged on late into the night. Nothing helps, the migration issue is not settled, and no idea is unanimous.
The Hungarian Prime Minister represented the Visegrád countries during the V4-France meeting preceding the summit, in order to negotiate with Emmanuel Macron. The immigrationist governments, like those of the French Republic or Germany, have agreed to abandon the idea of mandatory quotas for all, which is already a great victory for Viktor Orbán and V4. For the strong man of Budapest, who announced on his arrival in Brussels his willingness to put an end to massive and uncontrolled immigration to Europe and initiate remigration, the summit can not however be seen as a total victory.
Certainly, the EU is starting to be in tune with the solution proposed by the V4 three years ago, namely the setting up of refugee camps outside the EU borders – to make the registration of applications and to distinguish refugees from cheaters and economic migrants – and Frontex control over the Mediterranean Sea. But if we do not know the exact content of the negotiations, we understand that each side had to make concessions.
Quotas will only apply to Member States wishing to participate in the relocation of immigrants, but those who oppose it may well be required to participate more heavily in the funding of protection structures. Frontex should indeed significantly increase its workforce in the coming years, and that will have a cost. Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini announced that Slovakia was volunteering to temporarily accommodate 1,200 migrants to relieve neighboring countries – referring to Austria. He insisted, however, that every migrant should be accepted by the government, and that none of them could enter and stay in Slovakia without prior government control and acceptance.
No details on the technical solutions: the EU is talking about increasing aid to the countries of origin of the migrants, but the population of these countries is expected to double by 2050. And what about the migrants which will be refused in the registration camps? Many questions still arise.
A concrete progress for the Visegrád group, certainly because of the Italian pressure on the issue, is that NGOs should now stop picking up in the Libyan territorial waters migrants on smugglers’ ships, and let the Libyan coastguard do their work. This should considerably dry up the massive influx of illegal immigrants into Italy, and therefore into Europe.
So if the V4 has managed to establish itself as a key and influential trading partner, it has not – yet? – obtained total gain of cause. The fight within the EU on the migration issue has not been resolved this week.
Euractiv, “EU summit approves tortured conclusions on migration after sleepless night”, 29 June 2018:
EU leaders reached a much-needed deal on steps to tackle migration after resolving a bitter row with Italy’s inexperienced prime minister. Extended talks lasted through the night and only wrapped up on Friday morning (29 June).
Europe’s leaders got the bitter taste of what anti-system diplomacy, or creative disruption means. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who heads Italy’s month-old populist and anti-immigration government, took the entire summit as hostage.
Conte blocked the summit conclusions in a bid to get his reluctant counterparts to share responsibility for asylum seekers landing on Italian shores.
A summit ending without conclusions would have been a political disaster with unpredictable negative consequences for the EU bloc, so the stakes were high
A relieved Merkel in backround as an agitated Conte gets a pat on the back from Tusk and Macron
Disruptive diplomacy
Former law professor Conte, until recently a virtual political unknown, came to Brussels emboldened by the announcement of an upcoming visit to Washington to visit US President Donald Trump, who has hailed Rome’s tough stance, and who himself blocked the conclusions of a recent G7 leaders meeting on trade.
The summit which is expected to end today by noon, was called the “mother of all summits”, in particular because of the potential impact on the political future of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is wrestling to preserve her fragile government at home.
“Europe has many challenges but migration could end up determining Europe’s destiny,” Merkel told German lawmakers hours ahead of the summit.
There are very few migrants arriving in Germany recently but Merkel’s conservative CSU ally warned it would send back migrants who reach the German border after having registered in other EU states.
Such a move could see a domino effect of re-introduction of internal borders and the collapse of the Schengen area.
In contrast, Italy is actually under migratory pressure from the Central Mediterranean route with significant numbers of arrivals salvaged at sea and brought to its ports. Since the new government took over, Italy has refused to let several migrant rescue boats dock at Italian ports, reopening EU divisions.
“Italy does not need more words, but concrete actions,” Conte told reporters as he arrived at the summit, adding that if EU leaders did not offer more help “we will not have shared conclusions”. Italy wants the responsibility for migrants on ships arriving on its shores to be shared out across the 28-nation European Union.
Drama at summit
European Council spokesman Preben Aamann said that after several hours of talks, conclusions on all issues from the summit – which is also dealing with trade and defence in addition to the core subject of migration – had been blocked.
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” an Italian source added.
Other sources said the other 27 EU leaders were “astonished” and unhappy over Italy hardening its position and that “it was a very virulent discussion and everyone jumped on the Italian”.
The ‘mother of all summits’ wrapped up earlier. Check out how it all unfolded here. It was all supposed to be about unity but there wasn’t even a family photo, in what seems like a new tradition.
Jean-Claude Juncker was in full House of Cards mode about his upcoming trip to Washington to try and avert an all-out trade war. Conclusions on the eurozone were, as expected, the bare minimum.
Brexit barely got a mention, except on “insufficient progress”. Emmanuel Macron has lost patience and wants a final withdrawal deal done by the autumn. British actor and repentant Leave voter Danny Dyer summed up ex-PM David Cameron’s role in one moment of genius.
One overlooked result of the summit was an agreement between the Baltics, Poland and the Commission on decoupling Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from Russia’s power grid and sphere of influence.
Euractiv, “EU, Baltics, Poland target Russia grid separation by 2025”, 29 June 2018:
The Baltic nations, Poland and the European Commission agreed Thursday (28 June) on a roadmap to synchronise the region’s electricity network with the rest of continental Europe’s by 2025 and end their reliance on the Russian grid.
The leaders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the European Commission all signed up to a political agreement during a special ceremony on the sidelines of the ongoing European Council summit.
According to the roadmap, the deadline for concluding the synchronisation of the Baltic grid is set for 2025, using an existing electricity interconnector between Poland and Lithuania, as well as a planned undersea cable.
The latter project will only be undertaken if results of a study by the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) show that it guarantees energy security, security of supply and if costs are within reason. Results due in September.
Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said that “since the beginning of our mandate, my Commission has been committed to having full integration of the Baltic states’ grids with the rest of Europe”.
Energy Union boss Maroš Šefčovič called the deal “solidarity at its best“, adding that the project will “cost us a lot from the European budget”, through the Connecting Europe Facility.
Poland’s role in the preliminary deal is crucial as it will act as the primary link between the Baltics and the rest of Europe. In March, the three countries revealed they would not support any EU sanctions against Warsaw as part of the ongoing rule of law spat with Brussels.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L-R), Estonian Prime Minister Juris Ratas, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, Latvia’s Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis during Prime Ministers Council of the Baltic Council of Ministers with Polish counterpart in Vilnius, Lithuania 9 Mar 2018. [EPA-EFE]
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have confirmed that they are against imposing EU sanctions on Poland for alleged breaches to the rule of law. EURACTIV Poland reports.
Thursday’s agreement was long overdue, after disputes about how best to cut ties with the Russian-Belorussian network stood in the way of any progress.
Estonia and Latvia initially both favoured setting up a second alternating current (AC) connection with Poland to complement the existing LitPol link but Lithuania and Poland did not support that idea, despite studies showing that two AC connections would be best.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 13 June 2018 11:27.
While John Ziegler is a darling of (((the neo-cons))) in their criticism of Trump and his (((paleocon))) agenda, Ziegler’s criticisms of Trump remain informative nevertheless. In this podcast he criticizes Trump’s deal making preparation for meeting Kim Jong-un:
John Ziegler: “There are so many elements of this that are just mind-blowing. I can’t believe that he’s even meeting without any agreement being made to begin with. If you remember, when this whole thing started, the story was that he would meet IF North Korea would gave-up unilaterally their nuclear program. That was going to be a precondition for meeting. That’s gone! This is just an equal-footing get-together - giving-up what ever is left of the prestige of The Presidency of The United States, elevating this evil dictator, this horrible piece of crap - I mean Kim Jong-un is a horrible human being! who tortures people, tortures his own people, has threatened this country with nuclear war, and we’re elevating him! Trump has already called him ‘a very honorable person.’
Can you imagine if Obama or Hillary Clinton had decided to meet with Kim Jong-un with no precondition, with no agreement on his part - Kim doesn’t have to give up anything in order to meet with Obama or Hillary? Can you imagine the heads of Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh exploding into fourth of July fireworks? over even the suggestion of this?
But instead, this is now praised as a great idea, and I think it’s a horrible idea. One of the more baffling takes I’ve heard on this is that ‘well, you need to give Trump credit for meeting.’
Why? What? Credit for meeting? The meeting does us no good. The meeting of itself only does Kim Jong-un good. We’re being brought down to their level, he’s being brought up to our level for nothing! He’s giving up nothing in return; and that’s just the best case scenario…
All Trump cares about is the headline of the day, ‘Trump Makes Historic Deal’, doesn’t matter that the deal might suck, and we get noting in return or that it creates further dangers down the road - Trump doesn’t care about anybody but himself - that is a double whammy when it comes to negotiating nuclear deals with deranged dictators. It’s effectively like he’s got the world’s credit-card and he’s having a big party for himself, and he’s not going to be around when we have to pay the bill.
And, by the way, the fact that comes out of the G7 meeting makes this even more vulnerable to a bad deal. Why? Because Trump had this bizarre temper-tantrum and we’re now - this is not an exaggeration folks, and its mind blowing to even contemplate, but - based upon the statements of our President in the last few days, Russia and North Korea are our allies, they’re the ‘good guys’ and Canada, Germany, Great Britain and France - they’re ‘the bad guys.’
And that’s the other part of this. There are people who think, bizarrely, that Trump knows what he’s doing!
There are two things I’m positive about - I’m not a foreign policy expert (but neither is Donald Trump) - there are two things that I’m positive about - if he was doing exactly the same things, and his name was Obama, or Hillary Clinton The Right would be going bananas! That is a hundred percent factual. And number two, there is absolutely no evidence, what-so-ever, that Donald Trump is playing some amazing eight-dimensional chess and knows what the hell he’s doing. He has no idea what he’s doing - none!
And more importantly, his goals are completely at odds with what is good for the world and good for the country because he wants the headline and he wants the history - and he needs it even more now that he took a dump at the G7. This dump at the G7 wasn’t just a little stinky-one. This was a massive dump.
....when Donald Trump said, on the eve of the G7, that Russia should be let back-in, there is no other way to interpret that but that they’ve got something on him!
...the key wasn’t the statement that Russia should be allowed back in the G7 - that got a lot of play - but what is most interesting was that he prefaced it with, ‘I have been Russia’s worst nightmare’ - that’s classic Trump; why is that classic Trump? Because Trump knows his own weaknesses. And Trump lies the biggest to cover those weaknesses. It’s been part of his M.O. for ever. So whenever he makes a declarative statement, for instance, ‘nobody reads the bible more than I do’, you know that’s bullshit - that means he never reads the bible. So when he says, ‘I have been Russia’s worst nightmare’, if you put that through the Trump translation machine, that means Putin has something on him. That’s the way Trump operates, he believes in the big lie theory - you cover your weakness with a massive lie because you know nobody will call you on it.”
Sword raised in power and defiance, the figure is a monument to the brutal Battle of Stalingrad, as the city was then called. It is also a reminder of a time when Russia and Britain were allies.
But as Volgograd prepares to host crowds of England fans, that World War Two alliance is distant history.
The political hostility that exists now appears to have dampened appetite for Russia’s World Cup.
There were clear signs of the new reality as city residents made their annual pilgrimage up to Volgograd’s iconic war memorial to mark the anniversary of the Soviet victory over the Nazis.
One man climbing the long flight of steps wore a T-shirt depicting Mother Russia slicing the head off the US Statue of Liberty. “Welcome to Stalingrad,” the slogan read.
“I’m wearing this because the West is Russia’s enemy. They want to kill us all,” explained Ivan, a former history teacher. “I see that they hate us, and they have done for hundreds of years.”
Such hostile talk is increasingly common, fed from the top by both politicians and the state-run media machine. Both now portray the West as intent on “containing” Russia as Vladimir Putin oversees the country’s “rightful” return as a global power.
The same message came from spectators at last month’s Victory Day parade of soldiers and tanks through central Volgograd. “England was never our ally,” a pensioner in military uniform snorted. “No-one wants a strong and powerful Russia.”
Relations were far warmer in 2010 when Russia won the right to host the World Cup.
Then came the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s military campaign in Syria and, most recently, the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter using a military nerve agent.
With cheerful taken-for-grantedness of the ‘unassailable’ virtue of their motives, this panel at CFR discusses the prospect of “democratization” of “illiberal democracies” by having them accept non-White migrants and integration; i.e., cheerful acceptance of the destruction of our European genome. Primarily with the targeted “problem” of Eastern European countries Not accepting immigrants.
Published on Apr 23, 2018 by Council on Foreign Relations -
Speakers discuss the growing trend toward populism around the world and the current global state of democracy.
Speakers
Michael Abramowitz
President, Freedom House; Former White House Correspondent, Washington Post
Nicole M. Bibbins Sedaca
Chair, Global Politics and Security Concentration and Professor in the Practice of International Affairs, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown U; Former Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, US Department of State
Timothy Snyder
Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University; Author, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
Presider
Kati I. Marton
Author and Human Rights Activist
Kati I. Marton (15:56): We haven’t yet mentioned one of the most powerful motives for the rise of populism, which is the fear of refugees - migrants. Most graphically on display in Hungary where you can’t go a block without seeing a billboard showing George Soros’s smiling face, and the headline over that face is, ‘don’t let him have the last laugh.’
Six months ago George Soros was known to a very small handful of Budapest literati. Now he is probably the second best known person in Hungary after Victor Orban. And this manipulation of the fear of migrants, of which by the way, there are virtually none in Hungary and very few in Poland, as opposed to over a million in Germany, where this problem doesn’t exist…is something that uh, that we haven’t really dealt with sufficiently.
We seem to step-by-step, accept that his is the way of the world now. I frequently ask myself what didn’t my Hungarian grandparents, whose lives didn’t end well, what didn’t they do in the 30’s? that we should be doing today? Rather than sleepwalking thought this rather dangerous passage.
So, the migration problem and how it relates to the rise of populism - AdF (eg) is entirely about fear of outsiders.
When an audience member suggest the problem of Eastern European countries having a bad track record with regard to democracy, Snyder draws comparisons -
Snyder: (36:00): When the Supreme Court decides in 2013 that racism is no longer a problem, twenty two states then pass voter suppression laws - that’s not democratization, whatever you think of the legality of it.
...its been very hard for the West European countries to extend democracy over second class citizens (empire/subject relation)...asking about the things that make democracy possible….which for me precisely have to do with integration - the European Union, whatever its chances are, is the hope for democracy.
Kati I. Marton (38:00) ...these countries are not destined to be undemocratic, there are a whole bunch of other factors and one of them, frankly, is the luck of leaders (Merkel!)
Ewa Faryaszewska (1920-1944) - Museum of Warsaw, Public Domain
85% of Warsaw was destroyed deliberately by Hitler’s order that the city be razed.
Prometheus unbound. Orban cracks down on immigration (AP) Photo: AP/Press Association Images
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaité during the signing ceremony with Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker. [European Commission]
A relieved Merkel in backround as an agitated Conte gets a pat on the back from Tusk and Macron
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L-R), Estonian Prime Minister Juris Ratas, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, Latvia’s Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis during Prime Ministers Council of the Baltic Council of Ministers with Polish counterpart in Vilnius, Lithuania 9 Mar 2018. [EPA-EFE]
