Visigrad Post, “The Three Seas Initiative: Strengthening Cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe”, 13 May 2017:

By Olivier Bault.

Poland, Helenów – Pressed between Moscow’s energy and military pressure in the east, and the economic and ideological pressure of Brussels, Berlin and Paris to the west, twelve Central and Eastern European countries are taking part in the Three Seas Initiative (The Adriatic, Baltic and the Black Sea) aimed at strengthening regional cooperation and infrastructure in the fields of transport, telecommunications, energy and the environment. On 4 May, Polish President Andrzej Duda’s Head of Cabinet met the foreign advisors of the Presidents of the Three Seas countries near Warsaw: the Visegrád Group countries (V4: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary), the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), as well as Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia. The aim was to prepare for the summit which is to be held by these countries in Wrocław, in southwestern Poland, next July, after last year’s Dubrovnik summit in Croatia.

The message that the participating countries want to spread, according to Andrzej Duda’s Chief of Cabinet, however, goes in the direction of integration and solidarity with the European Union as a whole. With regard to infrastructure, this includes strengthening the previously neglected North-South links rather than the West-East links.

The Three Seas Initiative has been at the center of Polish foreign policy since the Conservatives (PiS) came to power in Warsaw. Already between the two World Wars, Poland had dreamed of a great “Międzymorze” Federation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to resist together the supremacy of Soviet Russia and Germany. If this project derived its inspiration from the history of the Republic of the Two Nations, the union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which extended to its peak (around 1600) from the Baltic to the Black Sea, geopolitics of the 1920s and 1930s did not make it possible to realize it. Polish President Andrzej Duda, elected in 2015, re-launched the idea, this time in the framework of enhanced cooperation within the European Union, with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

It is unclear whether US President Donald Trump will attend the Wrocław summit but he has been invited.

Translated from French by the Visegrád Post.

Visigrad Post, “The indisputable success of the Hungarian border fence”, 15 May 2017:

Hungary – The second fence on the southern border of Hungary is complete. Hungary is now endowed with the most monitored border in Europe, whose effectiveness is indisputable.

Along the 155 km of the border with Serbia, the anti-migrant barrier has been reinforced with a second fence, motion detection systems and thermal cameras, and an asphalted road between the two fences. It took about 15 million euros to erect this second barrier. The cost of mobilizing soldiers and policemen at the border has not yet been established, but the results are there: since 28 March, no one has been able to cross the border illegally.

If, however, anyone succeeds in passing, it is unlikely that they will continue their journey. Any clandestine intercepted in Hungary is taken back to the crossing point of the southern border, to the Serbian side. They are recorded as illegals and are no longer able to file asylum applications.

Prevention is better than cure

This could be the watchword of the government, which, in erecting this reinforced barrier, complied to the urgent demand of Mayor László Toroczkai, vice-president of the right-wing populist Jobbik party, and also mayor of Ásotthalom, a town along the Serbian border that gained worldwide infamy after his viral video aimed at discouraging migrants from passing by his place.

“I asked for the barrier in 2014. From its construction in 2015, the results were very convincing,” the Hungarian local official told to the Visegrád Post. “The double barrier was and is necessary, as is the strong police presence on the ground, as no barrier completely deters those who want to cross. This Monday, police discovered a 1-kilometer long tunnel made by smugglers … ” The government maintains that the barrier was all the more necessary as the wave of immigration of 2015 would be only the first of a potential long series.

Erdogan’s recurring threats to the European Union, in particular, and the millions of Africans waiting in Libya are pushing the Hungarian government to believe that the pressure on its southern border is only temporarily low, and the Hungarian authorities are now on a permanent war footing to deal with the migratory waves.

A vision shared by László Toroczkai, who commented during our phone call that “this barrier and the means to curb mass immigration will not just be necessary in the years to come, but also in the coming centuries.”

Henderson Island has long been regarded as one of the most remote and pristine islands in the world, but trash washing up on shore is turning it into a landfill. - J. Lavers 2015

Popular Science, “This remote island in the South Pacific is covered in 18 tons of our trash”, 15 May 2017:

Paradise lost

Henderson Island has long been regarded as one of the most remote and pristine islands in the world, but trash washing up on shore is turning it into a landfill.

Traveling by ship, it takes about 13 days to reach Henderson Island from New Zealand. Hidden in the South Pacific, 3000 miles from anywhere, this UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Pitcairns is “one of the most pristine islands left in the world, never inhabited by humans, rarely visited even for research purposes,” says Jennifer Lavers.

Hundreds of crabs, like this one photographed on Henderson Island, now make their homes out of plastic debris. J. Lavers 2015

After she and her colleagues disembarked on Henderson Island in May 2015 to do some ecology research, they didn’t see another ship until they got picked up at the end of August. But even though humans rarely touch the island, our fingerprints are all over it: during their stay, Lavers and her fellow researchers found that this remote island is home not only to endangered petrels and nesting sea turtles, but approximately 37,661,395 pieces of manmade trash.

Their findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. After digging up a startling amount of garbage during their beach survey, Lavers (a marine ecotoxicologist from the University of Tasmania) and Alexander Bond (a conservation scientist from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) concluded that this remote island has the highest density of trash ever reported in nature.

By their calculations, Henderson is littered with at least 17.6 tons of (mostly plastic) trash—and every square meter of the beach gets around 27 new pieces of junk added to its collection every day.

David Barnes, a marine ecologist who studies plastic pollution at the British Antarctic Survey, calls this number ‘pretty scary.’ “In less than a century, plastic has made a world of difference in so many ways. We may spend centuries undoing some of the very serious problems, even if we start now,” he says. “Unfortunately the most remote wilderness spots are becoming testament to the scale of the problem, not just for biodiversity but for us.”

What’s scarier is that Henderson Island’s 17.6 tons is nothing compared to the the total weight of garbage on the planet. In fact, we create exactly that much plastic every two seconds. (Here’s a list of a few ways you can cut down on the amount the trash you generate, just in case you’re now panicking like I am.) Five trillion bits of plastic are estimated to be swilling around our oceans, but we don’t know where most of it ends up once it gets there. Today’s study indicates that remote islands like Henderson may be holding onto some of those “lost” plastics, becoming our unintentional landfills.

“Remote studies like this help us to understand rates of accumulation, composition, and fate of plastic pollution,” says Barnes, who was not involved in the study. Although the amount of trash that gets deposited varies from coastline to coastline, Lavers and Bond hope that doing more beach surveys will help to plug in some of the missing pieces of the plastics puzzle. Plus, these studies are cheaper than trawling through the garbage patches in the ocean.

“The human footprint is everywhere,” says Lavers, “and it runs deeper than most of us imagine.”

Diversity Macht Frei, Magdalena Żuk, a 27-year-old Polish tourist who fell to her death from a hospital window in an Egyptian resort may have been drugged and gang-raped. Video footage has emerged which showed her lashing out at several men and acting erratically only a few hours before her death.

Polish media report that Magdalena bought two tickets to Egypt for a holiday over the May Day weekend but her boyfriend was unable to travel as his passport had expired.

They agreed she should just enjoy the break on her own. But a few days after arriving she felt unwell and began acting strangely. She then called her boyfriend and in a video chat she begged him to “take me away.” He asked her what had happened to her and she indicated that she could not remember, but was clearly terrified. Magdalena reportedly obtained an earlier flight home to Poland but was prevented from boarding because of her confused mental state.

She then visited two hospitals but was turned away, with doctors telling her: “We do not deal with mental illnesses.”

Krzysztof Rutkowski, a private investigator who has worked on several high-profile cases in Poland, has been hired by her family to find out what happened to her.
He said his initial theory was that her confused state was due to date rape drugs and that her drink may have been spiked at some point.

A comment from the source article:

“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holms for this one. Gang member 1: Receptionist - on the lookout for unaccompanied European women. Gang member 2: Barman who is tipped off and has drug under the counter.Gang member 3 & 4 Hotel security or pretending to be so. Girl comes down for drink. becomes very dizzy and sick. the two helpful security persons offer help to her room - she accepts. You can fill in the rest. In this case she ‘came to’ and can identify the attackers- if she gets to police and relates the facts.. they know what will happen to them and it aint pleasant. She must commit suicide quick before she has time to make a statement. Probably been doing it for years.”

Do not go to muslim countries for holidays, especially when alone.

While a bit cold, New Hampshire is a beautiful state and the University of New Hampshire, Durham, is an exquisite setting - all worth fighting for against anti-racist demands.

Ledger Inquirer, “University of New Hampshire hit by racism claims”, 12 May 2017:

By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press

DURHAM, N.H.

Some University of New Hampshire students say the school has failed to address currents of racism on campus and are demanding that it double the number of students and faculty of color, offer diversity training for all staff and amend the student conduct code to expel students who post “racially insensitive” content.

The actions were called for Thursday night as several hundred students met with the administration in a tense and often heated gathering over what they said has been its failure to address long-running concerns about racial insensitivity on campus.

Sparked by what some saw as offensive actions by white students wearing ponchos and sombreros during a Cinco de Mayo party last week, the mostly minority students told UNH President Mark Huddleston and his administration about racist incidents they had experienced and how they felt authorities had ignored their concerns.

Several black students talked about friends being spat upon and called racial epithets or, in one case watching someone drive past campus with a Confederate flag flying from their vehicle and call their friend a racial epithet. Others recalled a growing intolerance from fellow students following the election of President Donald Trump.

“If you keep poking at a balloon, it’s going to explode,” said Jubilee Byfield, a 21-year-old black sophomore, recounting how black friends were turned away from a fraternity party. “Do you want to be a school that didn’t say anything about it?”

READ MORE...

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JPost, “Lauder: Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are one in the same”, May 2017:

World Jewish Congress president outlines three-pronged approach for tackling Jew hatred.

Ronald S. Lauder at the 2017 JPost Annual Conference .. (photo credit:NOA GRAYEVSKY)

In a powerful speech at The Jerusalem Post annual conference in New York on Sunday, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder presented a clear message to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists and Israel haters everywhere: anti-Zionism and antisemitism are one in the same.

“Being anti-Israel is being antisemitic, plain and simple,” Lauder said, pointing to the latest UNESCO vote that denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, and to rising levels of antisemitism on college campuses.

Lauder argued that anti-Zionism is antisemitism in a new form, one that has emerged in recent years.

“There’s also something new, antisemitism that tries to hide itself and anti-Zionism. People who want to destroy the world’s only Jewish state – having failed to destroy Israel militarily and economically – are now trying to destroy Israel politically and morally,” he said.

To combat these threats, Lauder laid out his organization’s three-pronged plan to combat these issues.

“The World Jewish Congress has a plan to meet these challenges. We at the WJC created three new divisions that are hard at work to defeat this new form of antisemitism. These efforts will form an ‘iron dome’ to defend Israel against anti-Semitism,” he asserted.

To that end, the WJC has launched a communications department to enable Jews in being “proactive and aggressive” against “enemies who define us.”

The organization has also assembled a team of top-tier lawyers to actively promote legislation against BDS, an initiative that has already seen some progress, with 19 states in the US passing anti- BDS laws.

As the third part of its plan, the organization is working to increase its presence on college campuses, where young Jews are most likely to encounter anti-Israel vitriol.

The speech came a day after the New York Times reported that Lauder was pushing US President Donald Trump to broker a deal with the Palestinians.

Lauder praised Trump in his remarks. “We have a new pro-Israel American President, Donald Trump,” he said.

“A man I’ve known almost 50 years. Let me tell you, Israel has a great and true friend.”

“France has already condemned boycotting Israel, and I have no intention of changing this position.” - Emmanuel Macron

TheTower, “Party of French President Macron Boots Anti-Israel Candidate Over Anti-Semitic Tweets”, 15 May 2017:

The party of newly installed French President Emmanuel Macron expelled a candidate for a parliamentary seat on Friday over anti-Semitic comments he made on social media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

En Marche removed Christian Gerin, a journalist, from its ticket for next month’s legislative elections after tweets he made were publicized by LICRA, a watchdog that exposes anti-Semitism and racism.

The tweets in question were posted between 2013 and last year. One tweet by Gerin asked, “When will there be a separation between CRIF and state?” CRIF is an umbrella organization representing the Jews of France. Its opponents say that CRIF wields too much influence in France.

Gerin characterized former Prime Minister Manuel Valls as “virulently Zionist, racist and an Islamophobe.” He also advocated for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

LICRA, which is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in France, characterized Gerins’ tweets as having “clear anti-Semitic connotations.”

A spokesman for En Marche, Laurence Haim, confirmed that Gerin was suspended over the tweets.

As interior minster and later prime minister in the previous Socialist government, Valls was vocal in expressing his opposition to anti-Semitism. In 2014, he said, “Criticism of Israel that is based on anti-Zionism — that’s anti-Semitism today, this is the refuge of those who do not accept the State of Israel.”

A year later he said in a Paris synagogue that the fight against anti-Semitism in France “must be renewed.”

Macron also denounced boycotts of Israel during his campaign, deeming them anti-Semitic, The Jerusalem Post reported.

“The role of France is to conduct an independent and balanced policy that would guarantee a dialogue by all sides and the construction of peace,” Macron said as he visited Lebanon in January. “France has already condemned boycotting Israel, and I have no intention of changing this position.”

The Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, ruled in October 2015 that the BDS campaign is a form of hate speech.