“Ex-Mercenary CEO Erik Prince Admits To Trump Tower Meet With Don Jr., Saudi Emissary”

9 Mar 2019: Erik Prince, former head of mercenary business Blackwater, revealed in a bombshell interview Friday that he attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and a representative of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss “Iran policy” during the presidential campaign.

The interview marked the first time Prince has publicly acknowledged such a meeting. Prince said in congressional testimony in 2017 that he had no “official” or “unofficial” role in the campaign — other than a “yard sign” and writing “papers” — according to the transcript of his testimony before the House intelligence committee. Nor did he mention the meeting in his testimony, according to transcripts.

The New York Times reported last year that Prince organized the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump’s eldest son and Lebanese-American businessman George Nader. Nader revealed at the meeting that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wanted to aid Trump in his bid for the presidency, according to the newspaper.

The meeting also reportedly included now-top White House aide Stephen Miller and Israeli social media expert Joel Zamel.

The August meeting is yet another secret huddle with a representative of foreign governments that may have provided illegal international aid to sway the American election. Just months earlier Donald Jr. and the president’s son-in-law and now senior White House aide Jared Kushner met at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin.

Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, acknowledged the meeting in an on-camera interview on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head” aired Friday (above).

Asked by host Mehdi Hasan why he didn’t reveal the meeting in his congressional testimony, Prince insisted he had. When his actual response was read back to him, he suggested the transcript was “wrong,” drawing titters from the interview audience.

He later also insisted that “not all of the discussion that day was transcribed.”

Head to Head@AJHeadtoHead
Erik Prince responds that the U.S. Congress “got the transcript wrong”  when asked why he didn’t tell the House Intel Committee about an Aug 2016 meeting he attended at Trump Tower.  @Mehdirhasan goes ‘head to head’ with Erik Prince NOW @AJEnglish.

9:25 PM - Mar 8, 2019

A lawyer for Trump’s son confirmed to the Times after its story that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel.”

The Trump administration later harshly cracked down on Iran, terminating American participation in the international nuclear pact with the nation over the strenuous objections of Europe and Iran — and pleasing the Saudis and gulf allies.

The existence of the Trump Tower meeting — and what may have been discussed or promised — raises questions about the president’s confounding lack of action against Saudi Arabia after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which American intelligence officials determined was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Kushner met with the crown prince and other officials in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Against all protocol, American embassy staffers told The Daily Beast that they were shut out of meetings and were not provided details of what had been discussed. The private huddles followed revelations that the president ordered Kushner to be given top-level security clearance over the objections of the FBI.

Hasan also challenged Prince’s description of Iraqis in his memoir as “barbarians.” Prince responded that he had no problem calling terrorists barbarians. But Hasan pointed out Prince’s team had not been sent to “liberate” terrorists but Iraqi civilians.

Mehdi Hasan@mehdirhasan

I asked Blackwater founder Erik Prince about calling Iraqis “barbarians” and about the murder & manslaughter that happened on his watch in Iraq.

You should really listen to his replies. (Watch the whole @AJHeadtoHead with him this Friday on @AJEnglish)

Blackwater employees opened fire in a crowded square in Baghdad in 2007, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounding 20 others. Three guards were convicted in 2014 of 14 manslaughter charges, and another of murder in an American court.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Remembering Guillaume Faye: November 7, 1949–March 7, 2019

Article by Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents:

1,241 words

I was deeply saddened to learn today of the death of French New Right philosopher and polemicist Guillaume Faye after a battle with cancer. Faye had been sick for some time, but he was so focused on writing what will now be his last book that he postponed seeing a doctor until it was complete. When he finally sought medical attention, he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. There is no stage five. Guillaume Faye gave his life for his work, and his work for Europe.

Faye, like New Rightists and White Nationalists in European societies around the globe, was motivated by a sense of danger: the reigning system — liberal, democratic, capitalist, egalitarian, globalist — has set the white race in all of its homelands on the path to extinction through declining birthrates and race replacement through immigration and miscegenation. If we are to survive, we must understand this system, critique it, and frame an alternative that will secure the survival and flourishing of our race. Then we need to figure out how we can actually implement these ideas.

I like Faye’s approach for a number of reasons.

First, Faye thinks big. He wants to take all of Europe back for Europeans. I completely agree with this aim. Furthermore, to secure the existence of Europe against the other races and power blocs, Faye envisions the creation of a vast “Eurosiberian” Imperium, stretching from Iceland to the Pacific, with a federated system of government and an autarkic economy. He believes that only such an imperium will be equal to the challenges posed by the other races in a world of burgeoning populations and shrinking resources. As I argue in my essay “Grandiose Nationalism,” I think that such ideas are neither necessary nor practical and they entail dangers of their own. But nobody can fault them for visionary boldness.

Second, Faye thinks racially. His answer to the question “Who are we?” is ultimately racial, not cultural, religious, or subracial: white people are a vast, extended family descending from the original inhabitants of Europe after the last Ice Age. There are, of course, cultural and subracial identities that are also worth preserving within a federated imperium, but not at the expense of the greater racial whole.

Third, Faye is not a Luddite, primitivist, or Hobbit. He values our heritage, but he is attracted less to external social and cultural forms than to the vital drives that created them and express themselves in them. He also wishes to do justice to European man’s Faustian drive toward exploration, adventure, science, and technology. His “archeofuturism” seeks to fuse vital, archaic, biologically-based values with modern science and technology.

Fourth, Faye turns the idea of collapse into something more than a deus ex machina, a kind of Rapture for racists. We know a priori that an unsustainable system cannot be sustained forever and that some sort of collapse is inevitable. But Faye provides a detailed and systematic and crushingly convincing analysis of how the present system may well expire from a convergence of catastrophes. Of course, we need to be ready when the collapse comes. We need a clear metapolitical framework and an organized, racially conscious community to step into the breach, or when the present system collapses, it will simply be replaced with a rebranded form of the same ethnocidal regime.

Fifth, Faye is a strong critic of Christianity as the primary fount of the moral universalism, egalitarianism, and individualism that are at the root of our decline.

The only really fundamental disagreement I have with Faye was on the Jewish question. His views are closer to those of Jared Taylor, whereas mine are closer to those of Kevin MacDonald.

I only met Faye once, at the 2006 American Renaissance conference, where we had a couple of enjoyable conversations. We corresponded occasionally before and after that meeting. One of my treasured possessions is a copy of Faye’s first book, Le Système à tuer les peuples (Copernic, 1981), which he had given to Savitri Devi. Unfortunately, he was never able to locate his brief correspondence with Savitri. Perhaps it will come to light in his papers, which should be carefully preserved. If European man has a future, it will be due in no small part to Faye’s works. He belongs to history now, and future European generations will look dimly upon us if we fail to conserve and carry on his legacy.

Counter-Currents will publish several memorial tributes to Faye in the coming days. In the meantime, I wish simply to draw your attention to many pieces by and about Faye at Counter-Currents.

By Guillaume Faye:

“Call to Young Europeans,” trans. Greg Johnson (Translations: Czech, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish)
“The Cause of the Peoples?,” trans. Michael O’Meara
“The Conquest of Europe Begins,” trans. Guillaume Durocher
“Cosmopolis: The West as Nowhere,” trans. Greg Johnson
“From Dusk to Dawn,” trans. Michael O’Meara
“The Essence of Archaism,” trans. Irmin Vinson
“The Geopolitics of Ethnopolitics: The Concept of Eurosiberia,” trans. Greg Johnson
“Guillaume Faye on Nietzsche,” trans. Greg Johnson (Czech translation here)
“The Intentional Genocide of European Peoples?,” trans. Greg Johnson (Spanish trans. here)
Interview on Dominique Venner, trans. Greg Johnson (Spanish trans.)
Interview with Guillaume Faye
“The Islamic Conquest of Europe,” trans. Irmin Vinson
“Islamism is Less Dangerous than Islam,” trans. Greg Johnson
“Jihadist Carnage in Paris,” Part 1 (Spanish trans.), Part 2, trans. Greg Johnson
“The Lesson of Carl Schmitt,” with Robert Steuckers, trans. Greg Johnson
“Macron: Artifact and Puppet,” trans. Guillaume Durocher
“Mars and Hephaestus: The Return of History,” trans. Greg Johnson (Russian translation here)
“The Migratory Invasion,” Part 1 (Spanish trans.), Part 2 (Spanish trans.), Part 3 (Spanish trans,), trans. Greg Johnson
“On the Essence of War,” trans. Greg Johnson
“On the Russian Annexation of Crimea,” trans. Greg Johnson (Czech trans.)
“People” (from Why We Fight)
“State and Society,” trans. Greg Johnson
“Ten Untimely Ideas,” trans. Michael O’Meara
“Traditionalism: This is the Enemy!,” trans. Greg Johnson
“Tribute to Dominique Venner,” trans. Greg Johnson (Translations Czech, Greek, Spanish)
“Trump: Revolution or Simulacrum?” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, trans. Guillaume Durocher
“Ukraine: Understanding the Russian Position,” trans. Greg Johnson
About Guillaume Faye:

Francis Alexander, “Toward Euro-Siberia” (Portuguese translation here)
F. Roger Devlin, “The Rectification of Names: Guillaume Faye’s Why We Fight”
F. Roger Devlin, “A Serious Case: Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism”
Jack Donovan, “‘Corporatism’ or Mercantilism?”
Ricardo Duchesne, “The European New Right and its Animus Against Western Civ”
Georges Feltin-Tracol, “Back to the Future: Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism”
Andrew Hamilton, “Pan-Nationalism”
Thomas Jackson, “Life After the Collapse: Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism”
Greg Johnson, “Grandiose Nationalism” (Translations: French, German, Russian, Spanish)
Greg Johnson, “Project Septentrion: The Last Line of Defense” (French originals here)
Greg Johnson, “Review of Michael O’Meara’s Guillaume Faye and the Battle of Europe” (Czech translation here)
Greg Johnson, “Theory and Practice” (Translations: French, Polish)
Julian Langness, “Desired Storms: Guillaume Faye’s The Colonisation of Europe”
Robert Lind, “A Field Day for the Titanic Pessimist: A Review of Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism 2.0”
Michael O’Meara, “Europe’s Enemy: Islam or America? Guillaume Faye’s Le coup d’Etat mondial”
Michael O’Meara, Foreword to Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism
Michael O’Meara, “Guillaume Faye and the Jews”
Michael O’Meara, “The New Jewish Question of Guillaume Faye”
Michael O’Meara, “Preparing for World War III: Guillaume Faye’s Avant-Guerre”
Michael O’Meara, “Sex and Derailment: Guillaume Faye’s Sexe et Devoiement”
Michael O’Meara, “The Transitional Program: Guillaume Faye’s Mon Programme”
Michael O’Meara, “The Widening Gyre: Guillaume Corvus’ La convergence des catastrophes”
Christopher Pankhurst, “Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism 2.0”
Christopher Pankhurst, “Guillaume Faye’s Sex and Deviance”
Michael Walker, “Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism”

Related at Majorityrights:

Why we fight

...and more this week from Herik and Lana. Nice Job -this week, not giving an across the board endorsement.

Visigrad Post, “The Hungarian Government’s Offensive Campaign for the European Elections”, 4 Mar 2019:

       

By the editors of the Visegrád Post

Hungary – A new campaign by the government against Soros and Juncker; rising criticism in the EPP against Fidesz; and looking ahead to the local Hungarian elections

By undertaking a new billboard campaign against well-known financier George Soros, but also the current President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker (of the European People’s Party [EPP], Christian Democrat), Viktor Orbán’s administration was not afraid to anger either Brussels or Fidesz’s own partners in the EPP – of which they are still a member – three months before the European elections, despite growing criticism.

“Soros – Juncker – You also have the right to know what Brussels is preparing! They want to impose mandatory migrant quotas. They want to weaken border protection in the Member States. They want to make immigration easier by issuing visas to migrants.” Budapest, February 2019. Picture: Visegrád Post

A break between Fidesz and the EPP?

The poor relations between Orbán and Juncker are nothing new. We can remember the “friendly” slap Juncker gave Orbán during a European summit in 2015, at the height of the migration crisis. This gesture was a rare inelegance – even if occurring after an enjoyable champagne lunch – on such a high political level.

Orbán, always a wise strategist, is aware of his strengths and weaknesses. He’s used to calmly facing unpleasant situations, waiting for the right moment to counterattack later. This is how he operates on both the national and international levels.

Already in July 2018, the Hungarian Prime Minister made no secret of the fact that he is glad that the European Commission’s current term, under Mr. Juncker’s leadership, is ending: “The European elite has failed, and the European Commission is the symbol of that failure. This is the bad news. The good news is that the European Commission’s days are numbered. And I have counted them: it has some three hundred days left before its mandate expires.”

During the vote on the Sargentini report in September 2018, when the European Parliament voted to sanction Hungary for its supposed violation of the “rule of law,” the break between a large number of the EPP’s representatives and those of Fidesz was readily apparent. Among the EP’s representatives, the vote went as follows:

114 in favor
57 against (including the 12 Fidesz MEPs)
28 abstentions
20 absentees

Among the 114 MEPs who voted in favor of the Sargentini report, one can find Manfred Weber of Germany, who was chosen – with Fidesz’s support – in November 2018 to be the EPP’s candidate to succeed Juncker as President of the European Commission. After the vote, Mr. Juncker declared that he regarded Fidesz’s membership in the EPP as a problem.

Other leading figures of the EPP, who were previously favorable towards Fidesz, might now turn against it. For example, Joseph Daul, the EPP’s President, was once a defender of Orbán’s; but recently, for the first time, Daul publicly criticized him and the anti-Juncker billboard campaign in a tweet:

Other EPP representatives likewise distanced themselves from the new Hungarian campaign. Unsurprisingly, Austria’s Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, is among them. The MEPs of his party, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), voted in favor of the Sargentini report. Despite the populist rhetoric which brought him to power, the young Austrian Chancellor remains strongly linked to the Soros networks. He recently welcomed Mr. Soros to Vienna to discuss the move of Soros’ university, Central European University, from Budapest to Vienna following pressure from Fidesz. Kurz also didn’t hesitate to distance himself from Johann Gudenus, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) parliamentary bloc, when he criticized Soros, despite the fact that the FPÖ is currently Kurz’s coalition partner.

Another criticism came from Juncker’s possible successor, Manfred Weber. Weber declared that with only 13 MEPs out of 751, Fidesz won’t be able to decide Europe’s future. If this merciless call back to reality seems very true, let’s mention that Fidesz doesn’t have 13 MEPS, but only 12; and also the fact that the next European Parliament will have only 705 MEPs instead of 750, due to Brexit.

Moreover, the likely weakening of the majority groups in the European Parliament (the EPP and the Socialists) in the May 2019 elections will strengthen Fidesz within the EPP. According to the polls, Fidesz might win more MEPs in the EPP (if they in fact remain in the EPP) than the French Republicans. Given the comparative demographic weight of France and Hungary (the number of MEPs each country has depends on the size of its population), this says a great deal about Fidesz’s political strength in a Europe where a lot of the Member States are facing political instability.

With its likely weakening, can the EPP get rid of Fidesz and its partners? The Visegrád Post already raised this question in a study about the possible new combinations of European parliamentary blocs following this year’s elections. At the same time, seeing the anger of a growing number of EPP members over Fidesz’s membership in their group, can this situation continue?

One thing seems clear: Fidesz won’t leave the EPP, which would only become a martyr if the bloc decided to exclude them. Thus, the coming weeks will be rife with tension within the EPP.

The other target of Fidesz’s billboard campaign: Péter Márki-Zay, as a prelude to the upcoming local elections

On the left is a quote from Péter Márki-Zay: “Brussels should have followed Soros’ propositions.” On the right is a quote from George Soros: “I see myself as a kind of God.”

Soros and Juncker are not the only targets of this billboard campaign. Other Fidesz billboards appeared simultaneously, targeting the Mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, a town of 45,000 citizens in southern Hungary.

Why is this? There is no question that Fidesz will lead in the European elections in Hungary. But the issue at stake is not only for Fidesz to gain as many MEPs as possible in order to influence European politics, but also to influence the balance of power domestically prior to Hungary’s local elections in October 2019. In order to retain its rule over the majority of Hungary’s cities, towns, and counties, Fidesz has a vested interest in striking a blow in the European elections as well.

The turnout in the European elections is usually low, so the primary task of the political parties is to mobilize their core voters better than the other parties can do. This might allow Fidesz to obtain an even better result than it did during the Hungarian national election in April 2018, when they received 49% of the votes.

The local elections will also be a fresh opportunity for the opposition parties to achieve what they were unable to accomplish during last year’s national election: coordinating all the Left-liberal parties (the MSZP, DK, and Párbeszéd) with Jobbik (formerly of the radical-Right but nowadays a pro-EU and center-Right party, which is still the primary opposition). This strategy was launched in February 2018 during a local mayoral by-election in Hódmezővásárhely, which led to the victory of Péter Márki-Zay – an independent candidate who was supported by all the opposition parties – against the Fidesz candidate.

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Voice of Europe, “Marine Le Pen to be prosecuted for anti-ISIS tweets”, 4 Mar 2019:

Prosecutors have called for French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen to be tried for tweeting pictures of atrocities committed by the Islamic State group, judicial sources said.

Le Pen shared the gruesome images in December 2015, a few weeks after ISIS jihadists killed 130 people in attacks in Paris – and after a French journalist drew a comparison between the jihadist group and her party. Her move sparked widespread condemnation in France.

One of the pictures showed the body of James Foley, an American journalist beheaded by the Sunni extremists. Another showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being run over by a tank and the third showed a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage.

‘Daesh is this!’ Le Pen wrote in a caption, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.

She is facing a possible three year jail term and a fine of 75,000 euro’s if an investigating magistrate decides a trial should take place for ‘circulating violent pictures liable to bee seen by children’.

Prosecutors demanded that another member of her National Rally party, Gilbert Collard, also be tried on similar charges.

Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential elections, was stripped of her parliamentary immunity over the pictures and thereafter charged with circulating violent messages.

Last year, she expressed outrage after the investigative magistrate called for her to undergo psychiatric tests in connection with her tweeting.

She has denounced the case against her as a violation of her freedom of expression.

“Illegal Immigration to the EU: the V4 Proven Right Again in 2018 – but not all will Admit it”

By Olivier Bault. Originally published on Kurier.plus.

Visigrad Post, 1 Mar 2019:

Central Europe, Visegrad Group – Although the number of illegal immigrants flooding to Europe has been significantly reduced since the crisis of 2015, when about one million migrants made their way north through the Balkans in just a few months, this issue remains unresolved, and many Africans and Middle Easterners continue to arrive illegally in the European Union each year. The permanent compulsory reallocation scheme formerly advocated by the European Commission and by many EU countries including Germany, France, Italy and Greece, but opposed by others, not least by the Visegrád Four, was formally abandoned in 2018, although not all have given up on the idea. In Italy, the League’s coalition partner the 5-Star Movement (M5S) and its leader Luigi Di Maio still demand that illegal immigrants should be reallocated to other EU countries, as does Greece’s Syriza-led leftist government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. In the last days of January 2019, Spanish socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reacted to Italy’s refusal to open its ports to an NGO vessel with 47 African men on board by renewing calls for financial sanctions against countries that do not take their share of illegal immigrants. Spain’s government intends to side with France and Germany to have European funds withheld from countries like Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary until they agree to open their borders to asylum seekers (most illegal immigrants apply for asylum in order to avoid deportation).

As a matter of fact, under its new socialist minority government supported by the far left (Podemos) and regional nationalists, Spain has become, since Sánchez took office in early June 2018, the main gateway for illegal immigration to the EU. This is partly due to signals sent from the very beginning by Spain’s new government, such as the welcoming in the port of Valencia of the 600+ immigrants rescued by the Aquarius, the announcement that razor wire would be removed from border fences in Ceuta and Melilla, and the decision to restore free medical care for illegal residents. The second factor which led to this new situation was of course the formation in Italy of a new coalition government by the M5S and the League, with the League’s leader Matteo Salvini becoming Italy’s interior minister and taking the reins of Rome’s immigration policy. That meant, as the League had promised voters, that Italy would now close its ports to NGO vessels carrying illegal immigrants from the coast of Libya, and also to illegal immigrants rescued by navy ships taking part in Operation European Union Naval Force Mediterranean (EU NAVFOR Med, also known as Operation Sophia). Under the terms of that joint operation, all migrants rescued at sea were to be taken to Italy. With Italy now requesting that migrants rescued by Operation Sophia should be taken to the country of origin of each rescuing ship, some countries are now withdrawing from the operation, as is the case with Germany, which will not replace its frigate after it ends its current mission in early February.

The consequences of Spain’s taking a more pro-immigrant stance while Italy was doing just the opposite can be seen in statistics. While the overall number of illegal immigrants who made it across the Mediterranean in 2018 (135,798) was significantly lower than in 2017 (184,374), the figure increased very significantly on the Western Mediterranean route from Morocco to Spain: from 23,143 in 2017 to 56,644 in 2018, plus some 6,800 illegal migrants who forced their way into the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla on Morocco’s northern border. At the same time, the number of arrivals in Italy – via the Central Mediterranean route – fell from 118,912 in 2017 to 23,276 in 2018. On the Eastern Mediterranean route through Turkey and Greece to the Balkans, the number of illegal immigrants rose in 2018, to 55,878 from 42,319 in the previous year, reflecting the shortcomings of the EU–Turkey agreement.

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From Faces of Ancient Europe and by way of Renegade, 2 March 2019:

Botticelli’s Muse Simonetta Vespucci

Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci (1453 – 26 April 1476), nicknamed la bella Simonetta,was an Italian noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci and the cousin-in-law of Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer, navigator & cartographer.

Simonetta was Botticelli’s muse and Italy’s 15th century Florentine “super model”. Simonetta Vespucci’s figure would help shape the Renaissance. She was born in a village near Genoa, some believe Porto Venere (Venus Harbour, where it is said that the Goddess Venus stepped from the sea). She was married at the age of 15 and died at 22, her short but sweet life inspired one of the greatest artists of Renaissance and the wealthiest men in the world.

She arrived in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, as a fifteen-year old bride, her husband Marco Vespucci was a noble man and had close ties to the Medici’s. In a few short years Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci would catapult to fame as the most beautiful woman in Italy, beloved of an entire city.

In 1469, the city of Florence was entering its golden age of power and influence. Young Lorenzo de Medici and his brother Giuliano had just taken control of the Medici house upon the death of their father Piero. Although the Medici’s did not openly rule in the city, everyone knew to whom the government of Florence answered.

Lorenzo de Medici enjoyed power and banking and used his great wealth to surround himself with the finest painters, sculptors, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals of his day, among them, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli.

These most prominent Renaissance men got together and created a canon of beauty. They decided the rules of what makes the perfect woman. They believed that such a woman didn’t exist outside art, poetry or their wildest imaginations, until Simonetta arrived in Florence.

The prolific artist, Sandro Botticelli, whose masterpieces include The Birth of Venus and Primavera, studied art alongside da Vinci in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio during the 1460s. Botticelli was on his way to becoming a well-known artist, but had not yet met his muse, that is, until Marco Vespucci and his pretty new wife, Simonetta moved next door.

Botticelli fell hopelessly in love with Simonetta, who often posed for him in the nude. Certainly she was Botticelli’s Venus; her long, swan-like neck, straight aristocratic nose, flowing golden hair and curvy figure, were the model on which many of his masterpieces were based. In La Bella Simonetta, Botticelli had met his muse. He painted Simonetta over and over again, even years after her death.

Botticelli wasn’t the only artist to paint Simonetta, she sat for Piero de Cosimo and others. She became the Renaissance equivalent of Marilyn Monroe and though she was married, besotted noblemen lavished her with gifts and parties, poets and musicians wrote about her and for her; Artists competed for her time as a model. She enchanted all of Florence, perhaps all of Italy, with her loveliness and vibrancy.

 

The Political Vocation Of Romania

Visigrad Post, 22 Feb By Thibaud Cassel.

Part 1/3 here! – Part 2/3 here! – 3/3 – Part 3: Romania on the wire – The Celebration of the centenary of modern Romania on December 1, 2019.

The “evil wind” coming from the East, denounced by the French President, could well sweep away the – already flaky – Liberal varnish of Romania, and even weaken its grip on the West of the continent. In a context of profound political recomposition, what is the place for an exceptional country, both Latin and Eastern at the same time, of 20 million inhabitants?

The “evil wind” coming from the East, denounced by the French President, could well sweep away the – already flaky – Liberal varnish of Romania, and even weaken its grip on the West of the continent. In a context of profound political recomposition, what is the place for an exceptional country, both Latin and Eastern at the same time, of 20 million inhabitants?

Cross-cultural season and zeitgeist

Romania has been cultivating an interested friendship with France since her emergence as a modern nation. This echoes today through the fact that the two countries were organizing on the occasion of the centenary of 1918 a “cross-cultural season”, made of temporary exhibitions from one end of the continent to the other. This event was inaugurated in Paris on November 27, by the Romanian and French Presidents, Klaus Johannis and Emmanuel Macron. This was a unmissable opportunity to measure the deep gap that separates the instigator of the Springtime of the Peoples in 1848 from the variegated hexagon of “La République en Marche !” (“The Republic on the move!”, Emmanuel Macron’s party, Ed.); but also an opportunity to gauge what Romania can bring to a Europe in end-of-cycle.

Romania and the West

On November 27, Klaus Johannis stuck himself to celebrate “the common history and privileged relationship between France and Romania”, while the French president gratified the assistance with his complex thinking, alternating commonplaces and absurdities. “Culture is one of the cements of our Europe,” he said in the post-cultural setting of the Georges Pompidou Museum, before adding that “the language of Europe is translation”. The event was not about cultural soft power, for which France is admirably endowed, but was a Liberal-Libertarian mantra least likely to cultivate a real Franco-Romanian fraternity. When a country stops having some esteem, regardless how peripheral it may be, one can only anticipate that it will soon cease to fear; Emmanuel Macron’s France is giving way to more determined actors.

Take advantage of the American-German tussle?

The timid reorientation at work for two years in Romanian politics is to find the sense of national interest: if “America first”, then “Romania first” too. We have recently seen the US government take up the cause for the current Romanian government, while Germany supports the opposition. These frictions between two major Western powers offer unexpected room for maneuver in Bucharest. The country is in the German economic orb, but above all in the American strategic orb: not only considering her border situation with Ukraine and Moldova but also in the Black Sea with the uncertain evolution of Turkey. But today Romania has nothing to lose, or at least not much anymore to give up. To the point that the taxation of banks and foreign multinationals, the refusal of poor quality products flooding its market, etc. are among the options (finally) seriously studied at the last National Council of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in power, last December 16.

Romania and Visegrad

The repositioning of Romania within the West can be compared to that of Poland and other central European countries: Americanophiles, though firmly anchored to the German economy. The countries of former Eastern Europe must cooperate in order to matter. The rallying of Romania to the dynamics of the Visegrad Group proves to be essential for the affirmation of a complete actor on the European scene, that is to say, able to follow a European agenda that is not that of Berlin, nor that of Washington.

Romania is presiding over the European Union in the first half of 2019, and it is in Sibiu that the post-Brexit European summit of May 9, 2019 will be held. This momentary passage in the first row could protect Bucharest from a too virulent ostracism.

An illiberalism coming from the Left?

The political vigor of the countries of Central Europe has re-rooted itself into populism in recent years – that is to say, into democracy. But populism needs vector to succeed. In this sense, it can not be born of an abolition of the right-left cleavage, although it must ultimately lead to it. In Romania, it is the PSD that captures popular aspirations and intends to defend “those from somewhere” against “those from nowhere”. Despite the political vicissitudes (split, fusion and change of name), the PSD remains the main heir to the Communist Party of Nicolae Ceausescu. The “illiberal” turning point in Romania is therefore not initiated, as in Hungary and Poland, by the right. This evolution rests largely on the shoulders of Liviu Dragnea. Deputy Prime Minister from December 2012 to December 2014 and President of the House of Representatives since December 2016, he has been holding even more power from the presidency of the PSD he has been assuming since the summer of 2015.

Romanian pragmatism at work

The Romanian PSD, an important member of the Party of European Socialists (PES), can play a significant role: to undermine Liberalism from the Left as Orban’s Hungary scuttle it from the Right. The flair of the Romanians for the opportune end of reigns could be sensitive to the ever more feverish climate in the run-up to the European elections of May 2019. The stake for the Romanian Left? Do not run with the Titanic of the Liberal Left, turn its back on a derisory and disqualified ideology and rely on the Romanian electorate, tired of the quasi-colonial exploitation of the country. To apply Nietzsche’s pitiless maxim: “That which is ready to fall, shall ye also push!”. This Byzantine versatility, Romania gets it wonderfully.

Towards an alternative Left-wing force in Europe?

The Romanian situation is not unique. This is the case in several peripheral European countries: in Portugal, in Denmark in another way and of course in the CEECs. We can also associate the movement Aufstehen, launched by the German Sarah Wagenknecht inside Die Linke. But the surest partner of this trend, and its forerunner, is no doubt the 5-Stars Movement (M5S) in Italy. Gathered outside the Socialist (PES) and Leftist (GUE) groups at European level, these political forces would play a necessary role in drying up the reserves that the Liberal center always finds on its left to free a majority. If such a platform would emerge in the context of the European elections, no doubt that it would strengthen up during the 2019-2024 term of office of members of the radical Left that current events disillusioned. The case of Djordje Kuzmanovic provides an exemplary case: this spokesman of “Unsubmissive France” has resigned to protest the Leftist and Communitarian drift of the party, unable in his eyes to get out of the Liberal net. Fortunately, European policy opens the field to new perspectives.

Translated by the Visegrad Post.