A new report by the Washington Post sheds light on migrants who went missing in the Mediterranean with inadequate identification efforts, leaving families in anguish.
Over the past decade, the Mediterranean Sea, separating Europe from the MENA region, has transformed into a theater of mass tragedy. Of the over 2 million migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East who have undertaken the perilous journey, at least 28,000 remain missing.
A recent report by The Washington Post details the tragedies that irregular migration has claimed in the Mediterranean.
The first quarter of 2023 marked the deadliest period in the central Mediterranean since 2017, as reported by the International Organization for Migration. Director General António Vitorino expressed his deep concern that these deaths may have “been normalized”.
Shockingly, of the known deceased, only 13 percent of the bodies are ever recovered by European authorities, as estimated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The vast majority of those who perish are never identified. The chances of a relative receiving confirmation of their missing loved one’s death are as slim as winning the lottery, as described by a humanitarian official.
“It’s certainly more challenging than, say, a domestic air crash, but with the right will, it can be done,” said Cristina Cattaneo, a professor of forensic pathology at the University of Milan, who works tirelessly to identify the bodies of migrants recovered by Italian authorities.
However, Cattaneo’s Labanof laboratory receives no state funding. European governments allocate minimal resources for the recovery, preservation, and identification of human remains arriving on their shores.
“You collect all the information that you need and put it in your data,” she explains. “The difficult part is looking for the relative, but it’s not impossible.”
“People are voluntarily and consciously turning their heads from the problem,” remarks Cattaneo, highlighting the dire need for coordinated efforts to address the ongoing Mediterranean migrant crisis.
In Italy and Greece, limited coordination exists among different offices and regions handling cases of missing migrants.
An agreement from 2018 between Italy, Malta, Greece, and Cyprus to share forensic information with the European Commission has yet to be fully realized.
Analysts believe that Iran’s alleged ramped-up seizing of ships and bold maritime activities are payback for Western oil seizures and a blatant failure of US sanctions on Tehran.
According to individuals familiar with the situation, US federal prosecutors are unable to sell nearly 800,000 barrels of seized Iranian oil lying aboard a Greek ship off the coast of Texas, a report by The Wall Street Journal revealed.
Although the coast guard has certified the ship for unloading, the firms that execute those transfers, known as lightering, are too concerned about Iranian retaliation to handle the seized oil.
A Houston-based energy executive entangled in the situation admitted that companies “are literally afraid to do it.” According to him, numerous companies that were contacted rejected the offer to unload the oil.
Another executive wondered “if anybody’s going to touch it.”
A former US official believes that the current situation represents “a much bigger drama that’s playing out about how we deal with Iranian threats.”
A week ago, the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps announced that its forces seized a foreign oil tanker carrying one million liters of smuggled oil.
On July 6, the forces of the IRGC 2nd Naval District inspected Nada II-a Tanzania-flagged chemical tanker carrying smuggled fuel.
Brigadier General Ramezan Zirahi recalled that the Americans were forced back in November 2021, during a complex operation in the Sea of Oman, to flee the area “humiliated” with 5 military frigates, a number of fighters, helicopters, and manned and unmanned aircraft.
Some analysts believe that the recent escalated confiscations of smuggled oil are in retaliation to Western oil seizures.
According to US sources, the Pentagon is deploying F-35 fighter jets and a Navy destroyer to the Middle East to prevent Iran from allegedly attempting to hijack oil tankers and to respond to what the US dubbed “Russian aggression” in the region.
An Iranian representative to the United Nations expressed that Iran rejects the allegations made by the US, stressing that Tehran “insists on the security and stability of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. However, if oil tankers violate harmless passage, pollute the environment, or smuggle Iranian fuel, Iran does not hesitate to address those irregularities and infringements based on its laws as well as relevant international obligations.”
Iranian state media cited Tehran authorities as saying the Advantage Sweet was detained after it collided with a fishing boat. The owners of the ship did not respond to comment requests.
Mark Wallace, the chief executive of UANI – the United Against Nuclear Iran nonprofit organization – warned that the US would not be able to enforce “oil smuggling sanctions” if the industry was too afraid of Iran.
Sources say the owner sent the tanker to the Texas refinery hub as part of a plea deal, while the Justice Department refused to corroborate that information or explain the delay in unloading the oil.
The State Department declined to comment on the Suez Rajan but stated that penalties are being enforced.
Federal prosecutors and security officials are currently disclosing such seizures as warning to anyone who assists Iran in evading sanctions.
A former US official called the situation “unusual”, adding that it was a “mystery” why the tanker has been stationed off the coast for that many weeks.
Last year, the US ordered the seizing of an oil tanker flying an Iranian flag near Greece, while the cargo was stolen and sent to the US through another ship while its owner was charged with evading sanctions.
Lebanese Resistance icon and freed prisoner, Suha Bechara (Social media)
Hezbollah considers the detainment of Resistance icon Suha Bechara an illegal act and a form of submission to the Israeli occupation entity.
Hezbollah denounced on Wednesday the Greek authorities’ detainment of Lebanese Resistance icon and freed prisoner, Suha Bechara.
In a statement, Hezbollah considered the detainment of Bechara an illegal act and a form of submission to the Israeli occupation entity.
The Lebanese Resistance party deemed the step as completely unacceptable and unjustified, stressing that it contradicts European laws that claim to protect human rights.
Hezbollah called on the Lebanese government to carry out its national and moral duties toward Bechara.
Elsewhere, it urged the Lebanese government to take appropriate steps and measures regarding the unacceptable behavior of the Greek authorities.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Lebanese Communist Party confirmed that Greek authorities briefly detained Suha Bechara, a Lebanese Resistance icon and liberated prisoner, on Tuesday night at Athens airport, during a transit on her way to Switzerland, where she is a citizen, Lebanese media reported.
Omar Al-Deeb, the head of the party’s political office, explained that Greek authorities told Bechara that she was considered a “persona non grata” and “poses a threat to Greek national security.”
The Lebanese news website L’Orient Today quoted Adnan Bechara, Suha’s brother, as saying, “We immediately contacted the Lebanese embassy in Greece, Swiss authorities, and lawyers. We have many friends who were keen on helping Suha get released.”
“Eventually they told us that they can’t allow her to leave directly to Geneva, Switzerland where she was heading because that would be a violation of the decision to not allow her into Greece, so she was sent back to Lebanon for a transit before flying back to Switzerland,” he pointed out.
“We will follow up on what happened to get to the bottom of who initiated this move. We want to know whether this is a mistake or whether it’s an attack on the left or on us personally. We have many friends within the European Union’s parliament, and many European politicians who are friends and we will not be silent,” he told L’Orient Today.
On its part, the Lebanese Communist Party denounced in a statement Bechara’s arrest as a “dangerous precedent which constitutes a flagrant attack against a Lebanese national heroine who contributed to achieving liberation and freedom for the Lebanese, and spent 10 years in captivity in the Khiam detention camp, which is famous for its inhumane torture practices that were documented by international organizations, including the International Red Cross,” as cited by Lebanese media.
The party also urged the “Greek government to arrest the Zionist officials who established the Khiam detention center and supervised the torture of Suha Bechara and thousands of Lebanese, instead of arresting patriots.”
The United States seized an Iranian oil tanker just days before Tehran detained a tanker carrying American cargo in the Gulf of Oman, Reuters reported on Saturday.
The Islamic Republic announced on Thursday that its naval forces seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, which was headed for the US after it violated international and navigation laws.
Iranian state news agency said on Friday that the oil tanker ignored radio communication for eight hours before colluding with an Iranian boat, which caused injuries among its crewmembers, while three went missing in the sea.
“Before using force, we tried to call the vessel… to stop but they did not cooperate,” Iranian deputy navy commander Rear Admiral Mostafa Tajodini told the media outlet.
Washington has been struggling in the past few months to refill its Strategic Petroleum Reserves SPR after Biden’s administration released historic amounts of oil in efforts to cut Moscow’s and Iran’s energy revenues and fight rising petrol prices driven by Western anti-Russia sanctions.
The US planned on refilling its reserves when oil prices were between $67-$72 a barrel, which was reached back in March, but as soon as the mark hit the desired price, OPEC+ announced a surprise further production cut, sending prices $5 higher per barrel, signaling a close end of an era where the US dictates global oil supply volume through its hegemony.
According to Ambrey, a maritime security firm, the US snatched the Iranian oil ship at least five days before Iran’s naval forces took control of the sea tanker.
“Ambrey has assessed the seizure by the Iranian Navy to be in response to the U.S. action,” it told its clients.
“Both tankers were Suezmax-sized. Iran has previously responded tit-for-tat following seizures of Iranian oil cargo.”
Last year, the US ordered the seizing of an oil tanker flying an Iranian flag near Greece, while the cargo was stolen and sent to the US through another ship.
Blinken says Greece will also be a military hub for NATO allies to strengthen the coalition’s eastern flank.
Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias (R) and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ahead of launching the fourth round of the US-Greece Strategic Dialogues, Greece, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023 (AP)
Greece has emerged as a “strategic hub” that serves to expand the US military’s presence in the region and strengthen NATO’s eastern flank, US State Secretary Antony Blinken said on Tuesday during a visit to Athens.
“One of the new sites supports military transport around the Port of Alexandroupoli, which has become, indeed, a key strategic hub, including bringing in defensive weaponry, trucks, artillery for U.S. military units that are operating in Eastern and Northern Europe, as well as NATO Allies,” Blinken stated during a meeting with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.
The two senior officials met in the framework of the Fourth US-Greece Strategic Dialogue that “builds off of the last [Third US-Greece] Strategic Dialogue” held in 2021, Blinken noted.
The State Secretary announced that the US invested $123 million in Greece’s Souda Bay naval base and the Larissa air base.
“This port [of Alexandroupoli] has been vital to reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank since President Putin launched his brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. The United States is grateful for Greece’s unwavering support for Ukraine since the invasion,” Blinken added.
Dendias, on his part, praised the relations between the two countries, which are being developed amid the deep tensions the world is witnessing.
“In the meantime, we have seen war returning to Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have also witnessed a revisionist rhetoric in defiance of international law emanating from a number of international actors,” the Foreign Minister said.
“The fact is that, in the middle of all this, the strong Greek-U.S. cooperation has been enhanced even further. That speaks volumes for our relation. The strengthening of this cooperation promotes our mutual interest, as well as regional peace, stability, and prosperity,” he added.
Dendias also reiterated the “common values” that both Athens and Washington share.
“The Fourth Strategic Dialogue is a culmination of a series of working group meetings and initiatives of our experts from various ministries. There has been progress in all the Strategic Dialogue subjects: defense and security; law enforcement and counterterrorism; humanitarian challenges; trade, investment; energy and environment; and last, but certainly not least, people-to-people contacts,” he said.
The US Secretary of State will also meet on Tuesday with the leader of the Greek opposition and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and will also open a new building in the American embassy in Athens, all part of a Europe trip he is conducting from February 16 to 22.
Since the historic Special Military Operation to liberate the peoples of the Ukraine from their US puppet tyrants in Kiev began on 24 February 2022, the post-1945 settlement has been over. In fact, it should have been over with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or, at latest, at the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. However, the USA was blinded by its exceptionalist hubris as ‘the only Superpower’ and engaged in its latest fantasy of destroying Islam, which it mistakenly saw as a serious rival, arrogantly dismissing Russia, China and India as minor players. So, as a sectarian rogue-state, the USA began its war of terror on all who thought differently, which it so humiliatingly lost. This can be seen in the dramatic pictures of the last flights out of Kabul in 2021.
In other words, after the end of the Soviet Union, which had been born directly out of World War One and formally founded in 1922, the end of the American Union (= NATO) should have followed, and with it the end of the worldwide American Empire. Thus, today NATO is an anachronism, well past its best before date, which is why has begun meddling all over the world, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the Pacific Ocean. NATO is just like the alphabet soup of other US organisations and fronts, IMF, EU, WTO, OECD, G7, G20 and UN, with its mere five Security Council members, including minor Great Britain and France. What might await us as a result of the liberation of the Ukraine on the centenary of the 1945 settlement, in 2045?
1. After the Ukraine
First of all, probably within the next fifteen months, we shall see the full liberation of the Ukraine. With the eastern Novorossija half of the Ukraine returning to Russia, the remaining half, Central and Western Ukraine, perhaps minus Zakarpattia (returning to Hungary as an autonomous region under the Balogh brothers) and Chernivtsy (returning to Romania), will return to being Malorossija, its capital in Kiev. Thus, the way will at last be open to form the Confederation of Rus’. The at last freed East Slav lands and peoples, Eurasian Russia and the Eastern European Belarus and Malorossija, could together form such a Confederation of Rus’, with a total population of just under 200 million.
2. The Reconfiguration of Eurasia
After the Ukrainian question has been solved and the USA has lost its political, military and, above all, economic power to bully the rest of the world, all of us in Eurasia will be able to start living in our new-found Freedom and building Justice and Prosperity for all. We foresee first of all the expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
a. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)
At present consisting of the Russian Federation, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the EEU will surely be joined by a host of other countries, including firstly China, by now reunited with Taiwan, and Mongolia, then India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Cambodia. They will be followed by the rest of Asia (60% of world population). Thus, the EEU will largely replace the present SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation). However, true to its Eurasian name, the Economic Union will also receive and grant applications from a new organisation in North-Western Eurasia. This could be called the European Economic Alliance (EEA). This could be formed through the economic co-operation of all forty-four countries in the extreme western tip of Eurasia, to be known simply as ‘Europe’. This will include what was once known as Western, Central, Northern and Southern Europe, representing nearly 7% of world population.
b. The European Economic Alliance (EEA)
This Confederation could be formed as EU coercion collapses, with Brussels disarmed as the American Union of NATO dissolves. This will follow the long-overdue withdrawal of US occupying forces from Europe and the closure of their bases. All there will find freedom again. The founding member of the EEA would perhaps be Hungary and its Capital could be fixed in Budapest in honour of Hungarian courage and its geographical closeness to the resource-rich Confederation of Rus’, the gateway to Eurasia, on which the EEA will be so dependent. The Budapest Parliament building would make a fine administrative headquarters for the EEA. Other countries would follow Hungary like dominos, possibly in the following ten phases, after rebellions in each European country, one after another overthrowing their corrupt US-installed puppet-elites. This would resemble the rebellions that took place with a domino effect in the then Soviet Eastern bloc between 1989 and 1991.
i. The Western Balkan Four
After the European Economic Alliance has been founded by Hungary, it would next be joined by Serbia. No longer held under the heel of the US bully, the ancestrally Serbian province of Kosovo would return to Serbia. However, this would only be possible if its Albanian inhabitants, like those also in Montenegro and North Macedonia, first moved to Albania. For this to happen they would have to be attracted by a huge package of investment and development to pull Albania out of grinding poverty and chronic corruption and into prosperity, to make int into a magnet for Albanians. We suggest that China could invest in the massive rebuilding, and building, of infrastructure in Albania, as China already has a history of links with Albania. With such a just solution, all Albanians could at last live decently and work in decent jobs in their own country and not be forced to live like cuckoos in the countries of others. On this Albania could join the EEA. At this point Montenegro, (North) Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina could also join the EEA. These countries would perhaps form together with Serbia a Trade and Cultural Federation, perhaps to be called Yuzhnoslavia, though each would absolutely retain its political independence. Investment in Yuzhnoslavia could come from the Confederation of Rus’.
ii. The Eastern Balkan Three
After their example, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria would almost immediately join the EEA, attracted by links with Eurasia and the resources and linked culture of the Confederation of Rus’.
iii. The Greek World
They would naturally be followed by Greece and Cyprus, in the latter of which Russian investment is already huge. These three phases, i, ii and iii, of linking up with the Confederation of Rus, but remaining as sovereign nations within the EEA, would complete the reconstitution and restoration of the Orthosphere. This is the Orthodox Christian Commonwealth, whose natural centre has for 500 years been Russia.
iv.The Former Habsburgs
Next would come Croatia, Slovenia,Slovakia, the Czech Lands and Austria.
v. Italia
They would naturally be followed by Italy, San Marino and Malta.
vi. Germania
The real turning-point would come if these countries were followed by the central domino of Germany. Germany, fixed between Western and Eastern Europe, knows that it cannot live without Russia and countries and markets to its east. It would immediately be followed by Germany-dependent Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium.
vii. Nordia
Closely linked to Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and finally Finland would follow almost at once.
viii. Gallia
After Germany, France, which is so dependent on Germany, with Monaco and then Switzerland and Liechtenstein, would also be obliged to join the EEA in fairly quick succession.
ix.Iberia
Spain, with newly-independent Catalonia, and then Andorra and Portugal would swiftly follow France.
x. The Isolationists, East and West
Now we come to the end of this game of dominoes. The last mohicans, the once irreductibly isolationist Russophobes, the Johnson fantasy, would realise that they could no longer remain alone. The people would revolt against their elite-imposed poverty and depopulation and the absurd propaganda down the generations. First, Estonia, under pressure from Finland, and then in a chain, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland could join the EEA. However, the first three would have to throw off their US puppet-elites and at once grant human rights to their Russian minorities.
Then, under economic pressure from Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, the British Isles and Ireland, would at last follow. Thus, now separated into their four natural components, there would appear an independent England, freed after a millennium of the delusional yoke of the invented ‘Great Britain’ (an invention on a similar scale of delusion to the old ‘Ukraine’) and of the British Establishment. Immediately would follow newly-independent Scotland and Wales and a united Ireland. After the collapse of the oppressive British Establishment elite and their London-run institutions, the people and the pragmatists would proclaim that there is no alternative to co-operating with Eurasia through joining the EEA. All the more so, given the debt crisis, chaos, division and poverty in the USA, the former British colony which had become Britain’s colonial and ideological master. Step by step, opened archives would reveal the MI5 and MI6 manipulations like Litvinenko, MH 17, the Skripals, the Kerch Bridge explosion and the Nordstream destruction and how the tabloid media (the whole British media, including the State-run mouthpiece of the BBC) were used to perpetrate these lies.
3. Outside Eurasia: Continental Councils, the Inter-Continental G30 and The World Alliance
Thus, a united Eurasia (some 70% of world population) will stand together with Africa (17% of world population), Latin America (South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean – 8% of world population), and the small Northern America (under 5% of world population) and even smaller Oceania (a tiny 0.5% share of world population, with its economies increasingly dominated by China. This would only be natural justice, as the Pacific islanders originated from Taiwan). Each Continent could elect a Council, creating a Eurasian Council, an African Council, a Latin American Council, a Northern America Council (basically, the USA, or whatever it will break up into, with Canada and Greenland) and an Oceanian Council (Australia, New Zealand, Western New Guinea, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia). Each Council would be made up of all the nations in its Continent.
On an Inter-Continental level, there could also be formed the G30. This would be composed of all 30 nations of the world which each have a population of over 50 million + Australia, representing all Oceania, and would replace BRICS, the G7 and the G20. These nations in order of size at present are: China, India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Confederation of Rus, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, Ethiopia, Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam, DR Congo, Turkey, Iran, Germany, Korea, Thailand, France, Italy, Tanzania, South Africa, England, Myanmar, Kenya, Colombia and Australia. 18 are in Eurasia (13 in Asia and 5 Europe-based), 7 in Africa, 3 in Latin America and 1 each in Northern America and Oceania). The composition could change as the populations of new countries grow to more than 50 million or alternatively some contract to fewer than 50 million.
On a global level, the 235 nations of the world, including the 143 with populations of under ten million and the 75 with under one million, could assemble in a World Alliance, replacing the old New-York UN. The Capital of the Alliance could be fixed in a central position, not in an off-centre position like New York, but in the Eurasian heartland, for example, in Yalta in the Crimea. Its Security Council could be composed of the ten most populous nations, essentially all regional powers in the new multipolar world: China (also speaking for Oceania), India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, the Confederation of Rus’ (the only country with the vast majority of its population in Europe, which it would therefore represent), Bangladesh and Mexico. Six are in Eurasia, two in Latin America, one in Africa and one in Northern America.
Afterword: Towards the Future
Fantasy? Fiction? Faction? Frankly, if only 10% of the above came to pass, that in itself would be world-transforming. And if you dismiss the above out of hand, just think for a moment of how all would have mocked predictions of the generational chain of World War I (1914), World War II (1939), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and in quick succession the fall of the Soviet bloc, and, on the centenary of World War I, in 2014, the US-orchestrated coup in Kiev which has led directly to the world-changing events which began in the Ukraine in 2022, the centenary of the USSR. Yet it all happened. In 2021 nobody had predicted the events in the Ukraine either, for nobody could have imagined the Mariana Trench depth of the suicidal stupidity of the Anglozionist elite.
A generation ago, as a Russian Orthodox priest stranded in Western Europe, the Northern Sahara, as so much of it seems to be, I did not dream of any of this. Would I live to see the revival of corruption-bound, post-Soviet Russia, enslaved to and humiliated by the West and all its vices? My impression then was that the whole world was living on borrowed time. Then came the miracle of the events of August 2000 in Russia and the appearance of President Putin. After the shamefulness and shamelessness of the CIA’s useful idiot, the drunkard Yeltsin, Putin was a miracle. And I began to think that I would live to see the future. And since 24 February 2022 I have been living it. The English Shakespeare once wrote in his Twelfth Night: What’s to come is still unsure’. I will agree, but I will still try to pierce the darkness to glimpse the light.
A U.S. 51-star flag has already been created just in case there ever is a 51st state.
Foreword
Joke of the Decade from the quisling Stoltenberg: ‘NATO is united’. (Amazing what a few million dollars deposited into their bank accounts will do to some people’s sense of truth-telling. Ask the President of the Ukraine, if you do not believe me). Apparently, Stoltenberg has not heard of Greece and Türkiye (whose President the NATO US tried to assassinate). Or Romania and Hungary. Or try Germany and Poland. Many Non-Norwegians, for example all Germans and Poles, are aware that Germany and Poland are not on good terms. The current Polish government wants even more money back from Germany in war reparations – yes, for that war which ended 78 years ago.
Meanwhile the Germans continue to use the expression ‘polnische Wirtschaft’, literally ‘Polish economy’, meaning total chaos. And then there are Germans who would like Silesia back, those cities like Breslau and after all, why not Danzig? As for the provincial Polish obsession with recovering their ‘greatness’, a Polish Empire from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, by taking over and perhaps ethnically cleansing the western Ukraine (remember Akcija Visla in 1947; the parents of some of my best friends lived through it), Germans shake their heads in despair. However, there is also another international ‘rift in the lute’, or crack in the violin creating disharmony. It could be fatal. Read on.
London and Washington
Nationalism is always inherently narcissistic because it is all about imagined self-preening superiority. Once upon a time this was an imagined racial superiority, also known as racism. Thus, the British novelist Delderfield wrote a series of novels about the Victorians (1) called ‘God is an Englishman’. ‘Send them gunboats and missionaries’ (in that order), proclaimed the Victorians with their patronising ‘civilising’ mission. Their imperialist poet Kipling spoke of the Maxim gun and the Bible. Same thing. ‘Wogs begin at Calais’, proclaimed the splendid isolationists, right up until the 1950s. I remember a conversation a few years ago with an Indian, who told me that very, very few Indians had accepted Protestantism in India because, as he said, apart from anything else, Protestant English ‘missionaries’ had told Indians that if they wanted to become Protestants (or ‘Christians’, as the Victorians miscalled it), they would first have to agree to wearing trousers. In other words, it was never an issue of faith or the spiritual, but of becoming second-class Englishmen.
A century later the same mentality came to rule over the USA, where it was called ‘White Supremacism’ and the people who accepted it were called WASPs, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. However, that is now all taboo. There is no such thing as racial superiority among modern woke Americans, only of moral superiority. This is in fact even more insulting and condescending nonsense, which means the acceptance of ‘our’ values, i.e. ‘freedom and democracy’. Thus, Victorian London imposed the Puritan Englishman as the model for salvation (‘wash more often and your skin will become as white as ours’), whereas ‘liberal’ Washington says ‘wear jeans and trainers, eat at MacDonalds, drink coca cola and watch Disney, and you too will be saved, even though you are the wrong skin colour’. Same old, same old.
Greatness and Decline
Among the Victorians there were politicians with personalities: Palmerston, Disraeli and Gladstone, the only one adored by Bulgarians. Of course, the first two were obnoxious imperialists – but they did have personalities. Among them we can also include the Kurd-gassing Churchill and the Pinochet-loving Thatcher. They were Victorians in their mentality. Racist to the core. But they did have personalities. It seems now that they were the last of the line.
After Thatcher came a series of nonentities, the believing in his own delusions Blair and then in 2022 the three geniuses: Johnson, whose name is now a synonym for a buffoon; Truss, who gave the world a new word, a ‘Trussism’, e.g. ‘Peru is the capital of Africa’ or ‘Inflation is overcome by printing more money’; and then there is the Indian banker, sunny Sunak, not quite a billionaire, but well on his way:
Say no more.
Such British geniuses should recall that the neocons who run NATO and then think that if they extend their war in the Ukraine and hope to drag it out for a decade or so, that will destroy Russia. Clearly, they live not in the real world, but in a virtual world. The longer it lasts, the greater the damage to the West. This is what they will create: Civil war in the USA. Bankruptcy in the UK. Collapse in Germany. Revolt in France and Southern Europe. Chaos in Eastern Europe. The end of NATO. The trouble is that, as Col. Douglas MacGregor always quotes his Spanish NATO friend as saying: ‘The USA is not another country, it is another planet’. Having been to different parts of the USA four times, visiting from the Old World, I can confirm the words of the Spanish officer.
Continents and Islands
The point is that those who live on Continents are always pragmatists. They have to be. They have to live alongside those who have different religions and therefore different cultures, speak different languages and eat different food. No American-style ‘one size fits all’ here. However, the UK is an island. When you live on an island, you can run away to Dunkirk and go home for cups of tea in Brexitland, as the Germans call it. Britain can be to the USA what New Zealand is to Australia, i. e. a bit of a joke, as Texans say, ‘that iddy-biddy liddle island off the coast of Europe’.
So, before you make the choice, just remember that the USA is also an island. Or more precisely Northern America (the USA and the Frozen North, also called Canada, is an island. (Mexico is neither South, nor Central, America, but it still belongs to Latin America, not Northern America; remember Trump’s promised wall?). And since Northern America is thousands of kilometres away from any Continent, it is not like Britain, thirty kilometres from a Continent, but a very insular island.
And just remember that if you want to be taken over by Washington and become the 51st State, the Americans are really bad losers. Bad losers are those who if they can’t have what they want, throw their toys out of the pram and destroy everything. They would sooner choose self-destruction, as they cannot destroy others. Coming second is not an option for bad losers. And when their toys are nuclear, be careful. The British, say what you will, are not like that. (Probably because they have been coming second for a whole century now, so they have an awful lot of experience).
Bad Losers
I can think of half a dozen examples, but the most ‘actuel’, as the French say, is Meghan Markle. Here we are, the American actress who wanted to become a Princess, so then she could be ‘the Queen of England’. They would not let her, as she came too late and snatched the wrong baby, the ‘Spare’ (Harry) and not the Heir (William). In any case, William sems to have some backbone, whereas the depraved, drug-taking, Afghan-murdering Harry appears to be the classic weak-willed man, who will do anything, including maligning his own family, for the sake of going to bed with an American actress. (Remember his great-great uncle, the Hitler-saluting Edward VIII?) Another case of Hugh Grant and the strong American woman. And Meghan Markle has simply thrown her toys out of her pram, because she could not get her way, using Harry as her ventriloquist’s dummy. The classic American bad loser. It is a bit like homosexuals who are in denial: ‘I hate you and I am jealous of you because you are normal and therefore I am going to destroy you’. And that is what necons, Victoria Nuland a prime example, do.
Now this family argument between Harry and the Family Business in itself is not about the big political questions, but it is symptomatic of the ‘special relationship’ (i.e. London licking the boots of Washington every time Washington has walked on some turd). The fact is that the German House of Windsor is on its way out, Harry, Duke of California, or not. The fact is that there is no war between the Ukraine and Russia. The war is between Washington and Moscow, and quite a few British people are starting to cotton on to this fact. The Ukrainians, like most Western Europeans, including the British, are just naïve pawns in the Great American Game in their struggle to maintain their world domination. And therefore Britain is going to have a choice to make quite soon. Neither the dying and obsolete gerontocracy of the grandchildren of Nazis, known as the EU, nor insular English nationalist Brexit, but Eurasia or the 51st State. Choose wisely. You might get a better deal from those who are 21 miles away than from those who are 3,000 miles away.
Johnson, who was born in New York and Sunak who studied at Stanford, be careful of bad losers. They can get you into big trouble, especially if they decide to throw their nuclear toys out of their pram on top of you. As the Victorian poet Lord Tennyson wrote in 1859:
It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute.
9 January 2023
Note:
1. Just for the sake of historical accuracy, let it be said that the whole 19th century period is miscalled ‘Victorian’. It should have been called Alexandrinian, as Queen Victoria’s real first name was Alexandrina, held in honour of her godfather, Tsar Alexander I.
The AKP barely passes 30% of popular support as Erdogan still amps up preparations to enter Syria and dissolve Kurdish militias, which Turkey views as tied to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas.
The Turkish presidential election is set to take place on June 23 and is anticipated to be the most polarized this new year, determining the fate of 85 million citizens in the nation of 3 continents: Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Although the election is still six months away, Erdogan’s conservative Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or AKP), which came to power in 2002, may face a difficult challenge.
The country is already dealing with high inflation and a depreciation of the Turkish lira against the US dollar.
The AKP is barely passing 30% of popular support, according to recent polls in Turkey. Despite that, Erdogan is still amping up preparations to enter Syria and dissolve Kurdish militias, which Turkey views as tied to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas.
He has also threatened to strike its NATO ally Greece over the regional disputes of Cyprus, alleged “militarization” of Greek islands, and expansion in the Aegean Sea.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar accused Greece on Monday of sabotaging bilateral meetings with Turkey, which intend to be for trust-building and cooperation in NATO.
Greece took advantage of the meetings to present its problems “as Turkey’s issues in its relations with NATO, the US, and EU,” according to Akar, while simultaneously attempting to steer public attention away from domestic scandals. After Greek politicians’ called Turkey a threat, Akar responded by asserting that his country is a reliable ally and poses no threat.
Erdogan placed Turkey as an irreplaceable mediator between Russia and Ukraine, proven in the most recent Black Sea Grain Deal initiative and by hosting talks between US and Russian security officials.
Not only so, but he has worked both sides by supplying Kiev with arms and simultaneously safeguarding trade and energy ties with Russia.
History repeats itself
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) was sentenced by a court last month to more than two years in prison, which prevented him from practicing politics for the same period, on charges of insulting members of the Supreme Electoral Council in 2019.
The Istanbul Mayor is among a handful of opposition leaders that polls show could beat Erdogan in a head-to-head race during the presidential race next June. Thousands of Turks gathered in a square in the center of Istanbul last month to protest the political ban against the opposition mayor of the city.
In light of that, the US State Department expressed that it is “deeply troubled and disappointment” at the possibility of excluding one of Erdogan’s biggest rivals from the political scene.
Germany described the decision as “a heavy blow to democracy,” while France urged Turkey “reverse its slide away from the rule of law, democracy, and respect for fundamental rights.”
Erdogan denied his involvement with the verdict against Imamoglu, as he said: “What is behind the storm sparked by a verdict these past few days? This debate has nothing to do with us – neither with me nor with our nation.”
It is worth recalling that Erdogan was a former Istanbul mayor, who was sentenced to a year in jail for reading an alleged Islamist poem in 1994 and was prohibited from running for office until further notice.
Millet, iradesine sahip çıktı.
Bugün Saraçhane'de bu iradeye sahip çıkan kıymetli liderlerimize, vekillerimize, belediye başkanlarımıza ve bizi hiçbir zaman yalnız bırakmayan İstanbullulara teşekkürler. Hiçbir yargı oyunu, hiçbir engelleme çabası bizi yolumuzdan döndüremez. pic.twitter.com/jsoHBnDHht
In his political lifetime, Erdogan went from having no problems with neighboring nations to full-launch attacks on Syria and Greece. But, a ground execution of military operations in Syria could come and bite back as it already triggers US and Russian reactions against it.
In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, Erdogan confirmed that it is “important to clear the (Kurdish fighters) from the border to a depth of at least 30 kilometers,” noting it was “a priority”.
Erdogan has been threatening to conduct a new military incursion into northern Syria to move out Kurdish forces, which he blames for the November bomb blast that killed six people in Istanbul.
The Turkish President also said his country is committed to destroying the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) “until its last militant is neutralized” and raised the possibility of conducting a ground operation soon.
It is worth noting that on November 20, Turkey launched airstrikes that targeted military bases belonging to the PKK and its armed wing, the YPK, in northern Syria and Iraq.
This year, November will mark the 100th anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s foundation of Turkey from the remains of the Ottoman Empire.
It seems like Erdogan is taking advantage of the current multipolar world order between the US and Russia in order to replace both and make Turkey the global hegemonic power as it was back in the days of Ataturk.
In the midst of all of this, the EU stands on the sidelines, watching the fight as it struggles with inflation and the energy crisis.
Turkey is the EU’s largest trade partner, but after delaying Turkey’s entry into the EU bloc, it has lost influence in Ankara, and Belgium now has to persuade and buy off Turkey in order to keep the nearly 4 million Syrian refugees from crossing into Greece.
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You may be asking the question what on earth is “international fascism” and how could NATO be in support of such a thing?! Well, the ugly truth is that what took over world policy in our post-WWII era was in fact a continuation of a fascist outlook for a new world order. Fascism, contrary to what we were told, had not in fact been defeated but was given a brand new face for its public endeavours and went underground for some of its more unsavoury methods. The now official recognition of NATO’s Gladio networks, effectively made up of secret armies in service to NATO including a prominent membership of Nazis, trained to commit acts of terrorism and assassinations against Western citizens and their democratic governments is now acknowledged by historians, yet much of the Western populace remain uninformed about this decades long horrifying abuse of power which was used to support a transition towards far right-wing governments.
The thought behind International Fascism in a post-WWII world, was that it would be an alliance that would allow a superior form of organisation that would build up a new European world entity which would function as a model for what would in turn be used on the world stage under a League of Nations mandate.
It is for this reason why so many fascists who had dishonestly referred to themselves as “national socialists” happened to also be promoters of pan-Europeanism and pan-Americanism, and supported the continuation of the British Empire, for these three spheres would function as the three leading regionalisations under a new system of empire under the League of Nations construct. Africa was openly discussed amongst these imperialists and fascists as the necessary slave labour camp to support Europe’s needs.
It is for this reason that individuals such as Oswald Mosley, a leading British fascist who supported both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s reign, began advocating for a “united Europe” as a defense against the supposed communist threat immediately after the Second World War. A “united Europe” reunited with “former” fascists who had now become supposed “defenders of freedom” against the evil totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. Mosley complained in his Europe: Faith and Plan (published in 1958) that this resistance from some European quarters to ally themselves with the fascists against this communist threat was putting the free world in danger. He encouraged Europeans to forget the past abuses that were committed by the fascists, since they were ultimately doing what they thought best for Europe, and that they were not wrong in their outlook but perhaps too hasty and impatient in their execution of such a vision.
With the end of the Second World War, there appeared an almost instantaneous agreement among the Western European nations the need to defend their sovereignty against the rise of Soviet communism. Ironically the solution to this was the idea of a ‘New World Order’[1] for Europe. The Fifth Column was sold as a communist one, and thus the need to work with ‘former’ Nazis and fascists was justified to secure the European civilization from the threatened invasion by the ‘Asiatic hordes.’ Of course, the common people were not notified of this decision to reunite with the fascists; that not even before the end of the Second World War, there were discussions of aligning with the fascists to secure what was to be the ‘New World Order’.
To ensure that Europe would stand strong, it seemed only logical that it should form a European unity, able to collectively use their resources and military in a coordinated defense against this looming “Asian threat”. It would be interesting, that many nations who treated the army of Hitler with seeming indifference up to the very moment of invasion, would now trumpet loudly the need to prepare for war on all fronts (economically, culturally, politically, militarily including paramilitary) against the Eastern barbarians, and Mosley had positioned himself at the forefront of this clarion call.
In his The World Alternative (1936) Mosley wrote: “We must return to the fundamental concept of a European Nation which animated the war generation of 1918.” In reference to the openly pro-fascist former British Prime Minister Lloyd George’s (1916-1922) War Cabinet. When the Axis began losing crucial battles in 1943, this only intensified Europeanism as the new order’s last line of defense that would be entrusted to the younger generation. On November 14th, 1944 Mussolini proposed in the Verona programme “a European Community, with a federation of all nations and the development of Africa’s natural resources.”[2]
Stephen Dorril writes in his book Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism:[3]
“The Eastern Front was transformed into the ‘European Front’ as Europe’s defence became a supra-national moral obligation. The Waffen SS assumed the role of Europe’s army and its struggle to hold back the Bolsheviks from overrunning the West invoked an embryonic Europeanism, which became a central myth of post-war Fascism. Neo-Fascist thinker Maurice Bardeche wrote that ‘the Defense of the West has remained in the memory, and this is still the chief meaning of fascist ideas’.”
Churchill would also support such a direction with the United Europe Movement.[4]
On October 1st, 1947 Mosley published The Alternative, where he writes “Chaos looms and the people of Europe seek the alternative…Our creed was brought to dust because the Fascist outlook in each land was too national, we had no sense of European union.” A year later he wrote in The European Situation: The Third Force, that a united Europe will “insure that Europeans shall never be slaves either of West or East; either of finance or of bolshevism. We shall neither be bought by Wall Street nor conquered by the Kremlin.” However, the road to Europe’s salvation would not end there, according to Mosley, there would also be the need to secure labour from Africa to serve the needs of Europeans.
In 1948, the FBI, who were oddly stationed in London, had forwarded to J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence headquarters that Mosley was planning a Fascist International.[5] The U.S. counterintelligence corps (CIC) also wrote a report noting that Mosley viewed “the national socialist elements in West Germany as the most suitable partners at the organising of a fascist concentration movement in Europe…[Mosley] was continuing the tradition of a Fascist International which Hitler was forced to abandon. He has hit on a stratagem which gives him the air of a progressive spirit.” The Austrian neo-Nazi paper Alpenruf wrote Dec 31st, 1949 “the spiritual centre of a cleansed Fascism is today neither in Germany nor in Austria, but – strange though it may seem – in England.” In the Swedish Fascist paper Vaegen Framat, they “claimed the European underground movements were growing but needed to be brought together to preserve everything that had been valuable in the past. The war had weakened their position and co-operation was essential, even for racial policies. Nations were not strong enough to enforce the unity of Europe.” [6]
This was the new chosen direction towards a Fascist International and none of it would have been possible without Churchill’s announcement of the Iron Curtain, for it pushed the European countries into this very configuration and justified the need to partner with ‘former’ fascists. The fascists did not need to militarily win the war, for the Europeans had walked into the Fascist International out of their own accord.
From this standpoint, WWII was in fact never won, rather it has been continued in the form of a Cold War to this very day. During this over 76 year long Cold War, fascist cells grew and were dispersed globally, and have come only relatively recently to be acknowledged under the umbrella term Gladio due to newly declassified intelligence dossiers. Mosley would also be at the forefront of these post-WWII paramilitary fascist cells, along with Karl-Heinz Priester and the legendary Nazi Otto Skorzeny who was one of the primary masterminds behind the entire Gladio network.[7]
The Gladio network was beholden to NATO, and thus it should not be surprising that the position of NATO Commander and Chief of Allied Forces Central Europewas a position that was filled SOLELY by ‘former’ Nazis for 16 YEARS STRAIGHT, from 1967-1983.
Mosley had concluded in his eerie introduction to his book Europe: Faith and Plan in support of a Pan-Europe:[8]
“In the light of all Europe’s recent history it is disingenuous nonsense to pretend that Germany is the only guilty party. It is more, it is a deliberate lie circulated for the vile purpose of perpetuating the division of Europe and for promoting the ultimate victory of communism. In the meantime it serves also the squalid purpose of those who snatch financial gain from the decay and collapse of a dying system, rather than make the effort to benefit both themselves and all Europe by honestly carrying the far greater rewards of constructive tasks in building the new system.
… In all nature the pangs of birth are severe, particularly in political nature. No fully grown man should be blamed for the pain or even the blood that accompanied his birth. For the long memory to linger on these things is to create a complex which can be disastrous to the whole psyche of Europe. That is precisely why we are continually invited to think about them.
Things were done in haste and passion which should now be forgotten. All who were drawn to the new movement of European dynamism and renaissance were people in too much of a hurry. It was a fault on the right side, for the results of the succeeding inertia are now plain to see. We felt that something must be done, and done quickly, to release the new and beneficent forces of science[9] and to wipe away unnecessary suffering from the face of humanity. We were impatient with the forces of inertia, reaction and anarchy which opposed the new European order of mind and will that we believed alone could do these things with the speed that was necessary.
…The catastrophe of this generation has destroyed the old landmarks of politics, and the modern mind should equally eliminate their memory. We have passed beyond Fascism and beyond many tenets of the old Democracy, because science has rendered them irrelevant in a world which confronts us with new facts. Not only are the facts of the post-war period new, but science is continually adding still newer facts.[10] Old policies have no relevance to the present, and old memories of bitterness should have no place in it either.
One great lesson alone we can all derive from the past. We owe to Europe self-restraint in moments of passion, and kindness at all times to our kindred. These evil things which have occurred are not only wrong, they do not pay. In the end they destroy those who commit them. The time-honoured standards of the European alone can endure. In the events of a great age, honour, truth and manly restraint are not only as necessary as in the past but more than ever essential. The great qualities in man should grow in proportion to the age, not diminish. Let us remember the past only long enough to learn this. Then let us forget [the past].
Europe needs a great act of oblivion, before a new birth.”
Operation Gladio: NATO’s Dagger
With the Second World War ‘won’, the world was very much under the impression that we were to take the phrase ‘Never Again’ to heart. Unfortunately, those in charge of forming Western policy and geopolitical strategy post-WWII could not have disagreed more.
Operation Unthinkable is a prime example of the sort of thinking that was ruminating within Britain and the United States post-Roosevelt. Operation Unthinkable was the name given to two related possible future war plans by the British Chiefs of Staff against the Soviet Union in 1945. The creation of the plans was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff (Roosevelt passed away on April 12th, 1945). One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to “impose the will of the Western Allies” on the Soviets. The second plan was a defensive scenario in which the British were to defend against a Soviet drive towards the North Sea and the Atlantic following the withdrawal of the American forces from the Continent.
Though the first plan of the operation would be shelved with the new government under Clement Attlee, this remained a predominantly governing mindset for British and American intelligence. However, contrary to what we are told today, the second plan of Operation Unthinkable was not shelved. It was in fact fully implemented under the initiation of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This plan would continue through every other British Prime Minister’s term that followed afterward, without the knowledge of most members of the British government.
During the Second World War, preparations were made in the case of a possible German victory and ‘stay-behind’ guerilla warfare units were stationed throughout Europe. The model was the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, a top-secret guerilla-commando force established in 1940. It was the brainchild of Winston Churchill and was called ‘Churchill’s secret army.’ This program would eventually be adopted into NATO. After the Allied victory, these ‘stay-behind’ units were not disbanded but rather were strengthened and expanded in almost every European country, with direct aid and encouragement from the United States.
Daniele Ganser, a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland published NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe in 2005, which is regarded as an authoritative overview of NATO’s Operation Gladio networks and functions. This chapter will reference extensively Ganser’s pioneering work on this crucial history of Western clandestine warfare that was waged on Western civilians and their democratically elected governments for several decades under the guise of Soviet terrorism.
Daniele Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:[11]
“The clandestine network, which after the revelations of the Italian Prime Minister [Andreotti] was researched by judges, parliamentarians, academics and investigative journalists across Europe, is now understood to have been code-named ‘Gladio’ (the sword) in Italy., while in other countries the network operated under different names including ‘Absalon’ in Denmark, ‘ROC’ in Norway, ‘SDRA8’ in Belgium. In each country, leading members of the executive, including Prime Ministers, Presidents, Interior Ministers and Defense Ministers, were involved in the conspiracy, while the ‘Allied Clandestine Committee’ (ACC), sometimes also euphemistically called the ‘Allied Co-ordination Committee’ and ‘Clandestine Planning Committee’ (CPC), less conspicuously at times also called ‘Coordination and Planning Committee’ of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), coordinated the networks on the international level. The last confirmed secret meeting of ACC with representatives of European secret services took place on October 24, 1990 in Brussels.
…Leading officers of the secret network trained together with the U.S. Green Berets Special Forces in the United States of America and the British SAS Special Forces in England…In case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe the secret Gladio soldiers under NATO command… [formed a] stay-behind network operating behind enemy lines.”
However, the expected Soviet invasion never occurred. And thus, these secret armies found another purpose. They were to be used against the people. The desire was that by staging false-flag operations that were blamed on communists, panic and revulsion would be invoked sending voters flocking to the welcoming arms to so-called ‘secure’ right-wing governments. Italy, which had the largest and most powerful communist party in Europe, would be first on the hit-list. The Communist Party of Italy, admired for leading the fight against Mussolini, was expected to win in Italy’s first post-war election in June 1946. This, of course, was considered intolerable under the Iron Curtain diktat.
Investigative journalist Christopher Simpson writes in his book Blowback, how a substantial part of the funding for the opposition to the Communist Party of Italy, which was the Christian Democratic Party, came from captured Nazi assets, largely held by the Americans. This intervention tipped the balance in favour of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party, which hid thousands of fascists in its ranks. The Christian Democratic Party would be the dominating party in Italy for five decades until it was dissolved in 1994.
In March 2001, General Giandelio Maletti, former head of Italian counterintelligence, suggested that next to the Gladio secret army, the Italian secret service and a group of Italian right-wing terrorists, the massacres which had discredited the Italian communists had also been supported by the White House in Washington and the CIA. At a trial of right-wing extremists accused of having been involved in the Piazza Fontana massacre, General Maletti testified:
“The CIA, following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left, and, for this purpose, it may have made use of right-wing terrorism…The impression was that the Americans would do anything to stop Italy from sliding to the left… Italy has been dealt with as a sort of protectorate [of the United States]…”[12]
In order to ensure that no further communist support were to arise in Italy, Operation Gladio, with direction and support from the CIA and MI6, led a campaign of brutal violence against Italians that stretched into the better part of two decades known as the ‘years of lead,’ the anni di piombo.
Daniele Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:[13]
“According to the findings of the Belgian parliamentary investigation into Gladio, a secret non-orthodox warfare even preceded the foundation of the alliance [NATO]. As of 1948, non-orthodox warfare was coordinated by the so-called ‘Clandestine Committee of the Western Union’ (CCWU).
…When in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, CCWU [Clandestine Committee of the Western Union] was secretly integrated into the new international military apparatus and as of 1951 operated under the new label CPC [Clandestine Planning Committee]. At the time European NATO headquarters were in France and also the CPC was located in Paris. Like the CCWU before it the CPC was concerned with the planning, preparation and direction of non-orthodox warfare carried out by the stay-behind armies and Special Forces. Only officers with the highest NATO security clearance were allowed to enter CPC headquarters…under the guidance of CIA and MI6 experts the chiefs of the Western European Secret Services met at regular intervals during the year in order to coordinate measures of non-orthodox warfare in Western Europe.”
In 1959, an internal NATO briefing minute, dated June 1st, 1959, slipped into the hands of a British newspaper, which revealed that the task of the stay-behind units had been switched from confronting a Soviet invasion to confronting an “internal subversion”. The secret armies were henceforth to play a “determining role…not only on the general policy level of [domestic] warfare, but also on the politics of [domestic] emergency.”[14] What this meant was that a secret army of stay-behind units, under the direction of NATO, in absence of a Soviet threat, were to direct their actions to internal matters which would include espionage and acts of terrorism on the citizens of Europe with the support and cover of those nations’ police units. This would be used to further centralise control within right-wing governments who supported the NATO apparatus.
Operation Gladio, which used the tactic Strategy of Tension, functioned on three basic levels. The first was a guerilla war to be fought primarily on the streets, in order to draw loyalties away from the Soviet Union. The second level was the political front and would involve NATO-inspired conspiracies, which typically accused certain governments of being in secret partnership with the USSR, in order to evict democratically elected governments unfriendly to the NATO state apparatus and replace them with puppet regimes. The third level was the assassination (hard and soft) of figures who were deemed obstructive to NATO’s aims. Examples of Gladio assassinations include Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 (known as Sweden’s JFK), Turkey’s Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in 1961 along with two cabinet colleagues, and U.S. President Kennedy in 1963. As well as the soft assassination (character assassination) of UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These assassinations would typically be followed by a NATO/U.S. supported putsch. Attempted assassinations from Operation Gladio included President de Gaulle (more on this shortly) and Pope John Paul II.[15]
Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio
“He [Yves Guerin-Serac] was in thrall to his personal vision of a Christian-Fascist New World Order. He was also the intellectual mentor of Gladio terrorism. He wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”
– Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart to Europe
Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment:[16]
“Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favouring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.”
“Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)…
This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”
Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state.
On the 27th of February 1933, Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, shouted outside the burning of the Reichstag:
“This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up!”[18]
It is quite incredible that people never seem to grow tired of these sort of theatrics as part of the popular narrative of what we are told shapes our history, no matter how many times we have heard it played before. The line of obvious patsies is also something that seems to never grow tiring. In the case of the Reichstag fire, now widely acknowledged as a false-flag, it was some befuddled Dutch Jew that was instantly accused.
The day after the fire, six days before the scheduled general election, Hitler persuaded the elderly and confused President von Hindenburg (the icon of the First World War) that the crisis was of such profound gravity it could only be met by complete abolition of all personal liberties. The Reichstag Fire Law conferred by Hindenburg gave Hitler many of the instruments that he required for a total seizure of power. Within two weeks, parliamentary democracy was also reduced to the smoking embers of history. It would not be the only false-flag to be orchestrated by Hitler.
Richard Cottrell writes in Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe :[19]
“SS units forced a small group of concentration camp victims ‘released’ from Buchenwald and disguised in Polish uniforms, to stage a false flag mock attack on the main radio tower in the Nazi controlled free state of Danzig. Citing provocation by the Poles, the German invasion of Poland followed.”
Guerin-Serac spent his life dedicated to a new Black Empire[20] which he dreamed would combine the universal divinity of the Roman church with the United States and Europe as successor to the Holy Roman Empire. This was Christian Fascism and Yves Guerin-Serac was its Crusader.[21] He belonged to several old gangs, including the first generation of ‘former’ Nazis and fascists. He also belonged to a veteran clan of French officers blooded in the Indochinese and Korean struggles and was a member of the elite troop of the 11ème Demi-Brigade Parachutiste du Choc, which worked with the SDECE (French intelligence agency). His connection to French Intelligence would be key in his becoming a founding member of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), a French terrorist group, made up of disaffected French officers, based in Spain which fought against Algerian independence. Guerin-Serac would form an intricate paramilitary and terrorist network throughout Europe, as well as training facilities to service Operation Gladio, via the cover of Aginter Press.
“Guerin-Serac arrived in Lisbon in 1966 with an inspirational blueprint for the next stage of the struggle against godless liberalism. He proposed…an organization that would act as nothing less than an international travel agency for terrorists. The principal funding was supplied by the CIA, according to the Pellegrino Commission established in 1995 by the Italian Senate to investigate the anni di piombo [years of lead]. Guido Salvini was the magistrate appointed to examine the 1969 bombing of the agricultural bank in Milan’s Piazza Fontana. He pinned the blame firmly on Guerin-Serac’s Aginter Press. Salvini told the senators that Aginter operatives were active in Italy from 1967 onwards, instructing local militant neo-fascist organisations in the use of explosives. From this nugget, the CIA is positively connected to the Gladio wave of terrorism sweeping Europe.”
Behind the plain business shopfront of Aginter Press lay an invisible network designed to shuttle terrorists around Europe, Latin America, and Africa providing false documents and passports for killers posing as reporters and photographers including Guerin-Serac.[23]
“Aginter… was a Gladio finishing school, where recruits to the secret armies from all over Europe were trained in the arts of bomb making, assassination, psychological operations, destabilisation and counter-insurgency. Much of this was borrowed from the textbooks of the U.S. Army’s centre for covert warfare at Fort Bragg.Guest instructors from time to time included members of Britain’s SAS, the Green Berets …Guerin-Serac was blithely summoned to next door Spain to organise the death squads crushing resistance to the Franco regime. Aginter activities have been traced to all those countries where the Strategy of Tension operated at peak volume: Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Germany and Belgium.”
Britain’s Betrayal of its Greek Brothers-in-Arms in Support of Fascism
Britain did not wait for the end of WWII before cooperating with Nazis. Under Mussolini’s direction, Italian troops attacked Greece during the Second World War in 1940 but were defeated by the massive resistance of the Greek population. Hitler, in turn, sent his German troops which conquered the country and placed it under the control of the Axis Powers in 1941. The Greeks once again organised a massive resistance operation and throughout the war the German army faced great difficulties keeping the country under control. As in Italy and France, Greece’s strongest resistance organisation to the fascist occupation was dominated by the communists. ELAS, the People’s Liberation Army, had been founded on the initiative of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) some months after the German invasion. EAM, the political wing of the People’s Liberation Army was also dominated by the Greek communists. Out of a population of seven million up to two million Greeks were members of the EAM party, while 50,000 were actively fighting in the ranks of the ELAS army.[25]
ELAS’s operations were supported by the British secret army SOE.[26] Many personal friendships developed between the Greek ELAS resistance fighters and the British SOE liaison officers. However, this was abruptly severed in March 1943 when Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to halt all British support for ELAS, as he feared that Greece after the defeat of the Axis Powers could come under communist control. At that time, Greece was at the peak of fighting a war with the German Nazis.
In order to minimise the power of the Greek communists and socialists, London planned to reinstall the Greek conservative King George II, who had cooperated with the fascist dictator Ioannis Metaxas (Prime Minister of Greece from April 1936 – January 1941), to form a pro-fascist government. Metaxas had called for a fascist “new order” in Greece, argu1943,that the Great Depression proved the failure of democracy and that fascism was the solution.[27] This fascist solution occurred in alignment with the restoring of the Greek monarchy.[28] The crucial British Foreign Office directive of March 20th, 1943 stated “SOE should always veer in the direction of groups willing to support the King and Government, and furthermore impress on such groups as may be anti-monarchical the fact that the King and Government enjoy the fullest support of His Majesty’s Government [of Britain].”[29] King George II was less than popular among many Greeks after having cooperated with the fascist dictator Metaxas. Yet London pursued the conservative policy and in October 1943, the British Foreign Office even contemplated “a downright policy of attacking and weakening EAM by every means in our power.”[30]
‘Former’ Nazi collaborators and right-wing special units such as the fascist X Bands, with British support started to hunt and kill ELAS fighters. However, these groups did not enjoy popular support and recruitment levels were only at around 600 men. Thus, Churchill decided to up the ante, and in late 1944 gave the order for a new Greek army unit, which came to be known variously as the Greek mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or LOK, its Greek acronym Lochos Oreinon Katadromon.[31] As it was aimed against the communists and the socialists, the unit excluded “almost all men with views ranging from moderate conservative to left wing. Under British military supervision and at Churchill’s express order, the unit was filled with royalists and anti-republicans.”[32]
“As ELAS fought against both the German Nazi occupiers and the British-sponsored Hellenic Raiding Force, Churchill feared a public relations disaster should it be revealed to the British public that London was secretly supporting the fascists against the Communists in Greece. In August 1944 he therefore instructed the BBC to eliminate ‘any credit of any kind’ to ELAS when reporting on the liberation of Greece. But only weeks later ELAS secured victory over the German occupiers and Hitler was forced to withdraw his soldiers also from Greece. Churchill immediately demanded that the resistance should disarm, an order which ELAS was willing to obey if it was equally applied to their only remaining enemy on the field, the British sponsored Hellenic Raiding Force.”
Britain refused to disband the secret right-wing army and thus large Greek demonstrations against Britain’s support for the fascist monarchy took place on December 3rd, 1944, a mere six weeks after Hitler’s forces had been defeated and pushed out of the country. A small group of 200-600 peaceful protestors, men, women and children, gathered at the Syntagma Square in Athens, the main square in front of the Greek parliament. A much larger group of 60,000 protestors were delayed by police blockades. British troops and police with machine guns were positioned on the rooftops.[34] Suddenly, and without warning, the peaceful demonstration was turned into a massacre as the command was given: “Shoot the bastards.” Shortly after the bloodbath, the main group of protestors arrived in the square. In a display of remarkable restraint, these 60,000 protestors held a peaceful demonstration against Britain’s support for the fascist monarchy, while among the dead bodies of their recently slain comrades.
In London, Churchill faced an angry House of Commons which demanded an explanation for the barbarity. While admitting that it had been a “shocking thing,” Churchill stressed that it was equally stupid to bring large numbers of unarmed children to a demonstration, while the city was full of armed men. The role of the secret right-wing army in the Syntagma massacre was never investigated.[35]
After the demonstration of force, the British reinstalled King George II and a succession of weak British puppet governments with right-wing leanings followed. A Greek resistance faction rearmed and took to the hills and in the fall of 1946 started a civil war against the British and the local right. An exhausted Britain asked in early 1947 for the United States’ support. Truman with his famous ‘Truman Doctrine’ in March 1947 was able to convince Congress to openly intervene in Greece. Greece was the first country to be invaded by the United States during the Cold War.[36] In the following decades, Washington put forward the argument used in Greece to justify its open or covert invasions of Korea, Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Panama and several other countries.[37]
The United States secretly started Operation Torch and used chemical warfare to defeat the Greek resistance by dropping thousands of gallons of Napalm on Greece.[38] By late 1948, the Greek resistance which had defeated the Italian fascists, the German Nazis and the British troops, finally collapsed after years of heroic fighting. A hollowed out Greece joined NATO in 1952 and by that time “had been moulded into a supremely reliable ally-client of the United States. It was staunchly anti-Communist and well integrated into the NATO system.”[39]
Peter Murtagh writes in The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance:[40]
“The [Hellenic] Raiding Force doubled as the Greek arm of the clandestine pan-European guerilla network set up in the 1950s by NATO and the CIA which was controlled from NATO headquarters in Brussels by the Allied Coordination Committee…The Greek branch of the network was…known as Operation Sheepskin.”
Is this what Kalergi was referring to as his “Crusade for Pan-Europe”; a “clandestine pan-European guerilla network” to ‘defend’ Europe?
“The Greek junta consolidated its power through a regime of imprisonment and torture…Communists, Socialists, artists, academics, journalists, students, politically active women, priests, including their friends and families were [horrifically] tortured…’We are all democrats here’ Inspector Basil Lambro, the chief of the secret police of Athens, was fond of stressing. ‘Everybody who comes here talks. You’re not spoiling our record.’ The sadist torturer made it clear to his victims: ‘We are the government, you are nothing. The government isn’t alone. Behind the government are the Americans.’ If in the mood Basil also offered his analysis of world politics: ‘The whole world is in two parts, the Russians and the Americans. We are the Americans. Be grateful we’ve only tortured you a little. In Russia, they’d kill you’.”
The National Security Act of 1947, a Trojan horse, was a part of the new breed of legislation post-Roosevelt and led to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), placing it under the direction of the National Security Council (NSC). Although it did not explicitly authorize the CIA to conduct covert operations, Section 102 was sufficiently vague to permit abuse. By December 1947, less than four months after the creation of the CIA, the perceived necessity to “stem the flow of communism” in Western Europe—particularly Italy—by overt and covert “psychological warfare” forced the issue and NSC 4-A[42] was born. NSC 4-A would be replaced by NSC 10/2[43] less than one year later, approved by President Truman on June 18th, 1948, creating the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). NSC 10/2 was the first presidential document which specified a mechanism to approve and manage covert operations, and also the first in which the term “covert operations” was defined.
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the U.S. parliament investigated the CIA and the NSC via the Frank Church Senate Committee Hearings[44] and found that:
“The national elections in Europe in 1948 had been a primary motivation in the establishment of the OPC…By channeling funds to centre parties and developing media assets, OPC attempted to influence the election results – with considerable success…These activities formed the basis for covert political action for the next twenty years. By 1952 approximately forty different covert action projects were under way in one central European country alone…Until 1950 OPC’s paramilitary activities (also referred to as preventive action) were limited to plans and preparations for stay-behind nets in the event of future war. Requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, these projected OPC operations focused, once again, on Western Europe and were designed to support NATO forces against Soviet attack.”[45]
George F. Kennan selected Frank Wisner as the first commander of the CIA covert action unit OPC. Wisner and other U.S. OPC officers “tended to be white Anglo-Saxon patricians from old families with old money…and they somewhat inherited traditional British attitudes toward the coloured races of the world.”[46] Wisner became the chief architect of the network of secret armies in Western Europe. From 1948-1950 the OPC was a renegade operation run by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. In 1950 the OPC was renamed the Directorate of Plans and continued under the direct commandership of Frank Wisner. George F. Kennan, OPC overseer at the time, would strongly support the passing of NSC 10/2 and CIA covert actions in Italy and beyond.
“…next to the Pentagon the U.S. Special Forces were also directly involved in the secret war against the Communists in Western Europe, as together with the SAS they trained the members of the stay-behind network. After the U.S. wartime secret service OSS had been disbanded after the end of the war the U.S. Special Forces were reborn with headquarters at Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1952. General McClure established a Psychological Warfare Centre in Fort Bragg and in the summer of 1952 the first Special Forces unit, somewhat misleadingly called the 10th Special Forces Group was organised according to the OSS experience during the Second World War, and directly inherited the latter’s mission to carry out, like the British SAS, sabotage missions and to recruit, equip and train guerillas in order to exploit the resistance potential in both Eastern and Western Europe.
…At all times the U.S. Special Forces were set up in Fort Bragg in 1952 the name of the CIA covert action branch changed from ‘OPC’ to ‘Directorate of Plans’ (DP), and Wisner was promoted Deputy Director of Plans. Together with CIA Director Allen Dulles he intensified U.S. covert action operations on a global scale. Dulles authorised CIA assassination attempts on Castro and Lumumba as well as the CIA’s LSD experiments with unwitting subjects…”
Edward Lansdale who was chief of the Saigon Military Mission and a protégé of General Lemnitzer; who wanted to send a submarine to the shore outside Havana where it would create an “inferno of light.” At the same time, according to Lansdale’s plan, Cuba-based agents would warn the religious natives of the second coming of Christ and the Savior’s distaste for Fidel Castro. The plan was called ‘Elimination by Illumination,’ but was ultimately shelved.[48] It would be funny if such plans stayed on paper, but these men were responsible for the torture and deaths of countless individuals for the plans that made it into reality.
As soon as General Lemnitzer became Army Chief of Staff in 1959, he installed Lansdale at a desk in Deputy Defense Secretary Gilpatric’s office in the Pentagon. Lansdale was put in charge of Operation Mongoose under direct patronage of Lemnitzer with the main object to eliminate Castro in direct defiance of federal law prohibiting political assassinations. Operation Mongoose was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians and covert operations carried out by the CIA and was run out of JM/Wave in Miami. Lansdale would participate in many covert operations including raids and bombings in Cuba and other targets all over Latin America.
In March 1962, General Lemnitzer, not taking a hint as to what happened to Dulles, Bissell and Cabell, decided it would be a good idea to propose Operation Northwoods to President Kennedy for approval. Operation Northwoods was a proposed false-flag operation against American citizens, which called for CIA operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets and subsequently blame the Cuban government in order to justify a war against Cuba. The plan was drafted by General Lemnitzer specifically and had a striking similarity with NATO’s Operation Gladio. The logic of Northwoods was the stripe of Gladio. The general staff inclined towards prefabricated violence because they believed benefits gained by the state count more than injustice against individuals. The only important criterion was reaching the objective and the objective was ultra right-wing government.
There was not a single item in the Northwoods manual that did not amount to a blatant act of treason, yet the U.S. military establishment dispatched Top Secret – Justification for U.S. military Intervention in Cuba straight to the desk of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, for onward transmission to President Kennedy. Needless to say, President Kennedy rejected the proposal and a few months later General Lemnitzer’s term was not renewed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having served from October 1st 1960 to September 30th 1962.
However, NATO lost no time, and in November 1962 Lemnitzer was appointed commander of U.S. European Command and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of NATO, the latter to which he served from January 1st, 1963 to July 1st, 1969.
Lemnitzer was a perfect fit to oversee the cross-continental Gladio operations in Europe. He had been a prime motivating force in setting up the Special Forces Group in 1952 at Fort Bragg, where commandos were trained in the arts of guerilla insurgency in the events of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Before long the men who proudly wore distinctive green berets were cooperating discreetly with the armed forces of a string of European countries and participating in direct military operations some of them extremely sensitive and highly illegal if not downright treasonous.
One of these operations was the NATO/CIA coalition which had sponsored at least two attempts to assassinate President de Gaulle.[49] In response to this, de Gaulle had kicked NATO’s headquarters out of France, removed France from NATO and had given Lemnitzer a summary order to quit NATO. If President de Gaulle’s orders had been denied, he would have been prepared to go to war, and thus there was a bit of reshuffling, but essentially the game continued intact.
“France is determined to regain on her whole territory the full exercise of her sovereignty.”
– President of France Charles de Gaulle
It was thought by many of the pro-fascist imperialist persuasion that de Gaulle was ultimately going to play ball. That though he may have had his criticisms of fascism, he was at the end of the day an anti-communist and an imperialist and thus, it was inevitable that he would eventually ‘see the light’. This was something that the pro-fascists thought they could work with in the ‘restructuring’ of Europe amidst a Cold War.
“On the initiative of the U.S. and the British Special Forces SAS, a secret army was set up in France under the cover name ‘Plan Bleu’ (Blue Plan) whose task was to secretly prevent the powerful PCF [Communist Party of France] from coming to power. The Blue Plan, in other words, aimed to prevent France from turning red…The SAS, specialised in secret warfare, contacted the newly created French secret service Direction Generale des Etudes et Recherche (DGER) and agreed with them to set up a secret army in northern France across the Channel in the Bretagne.”
One month after having ousted the communists from the government, the French socialists attacked the military right and the CIA and exposed the Plan Bleu secret army. On June 30th, 1947, French socialist Minister of the Interior Edouard Depreux exposed that a secret right-wing army had been erected in France behind the back of politicians with the task to destabilize the French government. “Towards the end of 1946 we got to know of the existence of a black resistance network, made up of resistance fighters of the extreme-right, Vichy collaborators and [pro] monarchists…They had a secret attack plan called ‘Plan Bleu’, which should have come into action towards the end of July, or on August 6 [1947].”[51]
“The secret war against the Communists did not end when Plan Bleu was exposed and closed down in 1947. Much to the contrary, French Socialist Prime Minister Paul Ramadier saw to it that his trusted chiefs within the military secret service were not removed by the scandal. When the storm had passed he ordered Henri Ribiere, Chief of SDECE, and Pierre Fourcand, deputy Director of the SDECE, in late 1947 to erect a new anti-Communist secret army under the code name ‘Rose des Vents’ (Rose of the Winds, i.e. Compass Rose), the star-shaped official symbol of the NATO. The code name was well chosen, for when NATO was created in 1949 with headquarters in Paris, the SDECE coordinated its anti-Communist secret war closely with the miliary alliance. The secret soldiers understood that within its maritime original context the compass rose is the card pattern below the compass needle according to which the course is set, and according to which corrections are undertaken if the ship is in danger of steering off course.”
(left) NATO’s symbol, (right) ‘Rose des Vents (Rose of the Winds i.e. Compass Rose) name of a French anti-communist secret army established in 1947. NATO’s first headquarters was established in France in 1949.
However, there was one very large mistake that was made in establishing NATO’s base in France. De Gaulle was not going to play ball after all…
After the Second World War there was increasing pressure for European nations to commit to the NATO diktat. President of France Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969) disagreed with this orientation. One of the major points of this disagreement was over the force de frappe (nuclear striking force), which de Gaulle believed should be kept firmly outside of NATO’s control. He refused the prospect of France getting automatically dragged into a shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. De Gaulle’s relentless pursuit of French nationalism and independence in foreign and military policies was clearly incompatible with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s charter. When de Gaulle began talk of delivering Algeria her independence, it was decided by former allies, and members of his own military and police that de Gaulle had to go.
On April 21st, 1961, a plot to overthrow President de Gaulle, organised by the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète, the French terrorist group run by Yves Guerin-Serac) swung into action. On that day, four disaffected generals known as the ‘ultra group’ staged a coup in Algiers. The civil caucus in Washington, Pentagon and NATO headquarters in France were all implicated in the plot to eliminate the French president and secure Algeria for the West. The coup leader, air force general Maurice Challe, was formerly commander of NATO’s forces in Central Europe.
The first outlines of the coup were agreed in the summer of 1960, when the former governor of Algeria, Jacques Soustelle, had a secret tête-à-tête with Richard M. Bissell. Bissell, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans (formerly called the OPC), the covert operations wing of the CIA, and close associate of Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. In the same year, Challe stage-managed his resignation from NATO. In January 1961 the main plotters assembled, the chief item on the agenda was to form the OAS as an alternative government that would replace de Gaulle’s government once he had been toppled. Key figures in Plan Bleu were all present.[53] Challe’s forces in Algeria were secretly funded using channels closely connected to the French Gladio.[54] On the eve of the coup, Bissell, had an undisclosed meeting with Challe in Algiers. Challe was told that if he could get the country under control inside 48 hours, then the U.S. government would formally recognise his regime.[55] The putsch ultimately failed.
“When NATO was founded in 1949, its headquarters, including the SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe], were built in France. France was thereafter particularly vulnerable to NATO and CIA secret warfare as de Gaulle lamented – for together with NATO also the secret Gladio command centre CPC [Clandestine Planning Committee] was located in Paris as the Italian document ‘The special forces of SIFAR [Italian intelligence] and Operation Gladio’ of June 1959 revealed. ‘On the level of NATO the following activities must be mentioned: 1. The activity of the CPC of Paris…attached to SHAPE.’”
What this meant was that the Gladio command centre, the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) was located in Paris to directly coordinate with NATO’s headquarters. In other words, Gladio was working directly for the NATO command centre.
Ganser continues:
“Furthermore also the secret Gladio command centre ACC [ Allied Clandestine Committee] repeatedly met in Paris. It came as a massive shock to the White House in Washington when de Gaulle in February 1966 – due to a number of strategic and personnel motives that historians still struggle to explain – decided to challenge the United States head-on, and ordered NATO and the United States either to place their military bases in France under French control, or to dismantle them. The United States and NATO did not react to the ultimatum whereupon in a spectacular decision de Gaulle took France out of NATO’s military command on March 7, 1966 and expelled the entire NATO organisation together with its covert action agents from French territory. To the anger of Washington and the Pentagon the European headquarters of NATO had to move to Belgium. In Brussels, Mons and Casteau, new European NATO headquarters were being erected where they have remained until today. The Belgium parliamentary investigation into Gladio and secret warfare later confirmed that ‘in 1968 the Chair of CPC moved to Brussels.’ [in order to be with NATO] Research in Belgium furthermore revealed that the ACC secret warfare centre held a meeting with international participation in Brussels as late as October 23 and 24, 1990.
Belgium Gladio author Jan Willems drew attention to the sensitive fact that when de Gaulle withdrew the French army from the military-integrated command of NATO, some of the secret agreements between France and the United States were cancelled. ‘On this occasion it was revealed that secret protocols existed concerning the fight against Communist subversion, signed bilaterally by the United States and its NATO allies. De Gaulle denounced the protocols as an infringement of national sovereignty. Similar secret clauses were also revealed in other NATO states. In Italy Giuseppe de Lutiis revealed that when becoming a NATO member Italy in 1949 had signed not only the Atlantic Pact, but also secret protocols that provided for the creation of an unofficial organisation ‘charged with guaranteeing Italy’s internal alignment with the Western Block by any means, even if the electorate were to show a different inclination.’ And also in the initial NATO agreement in 1949 required that before a nation could join, it must have already established a national security authority to fight Communism through clandestine citizen cadres’.”
Not only was de Gaulle not going to go along with the secret armies of NATO, but he was going to actively intervene to ensure the sovereignty of Europe’s nations against the fascist imperialist end-goal of NATO and its secret Gladio arms. It was a full all-out-war in the underground world of intelligence and clandestine warfare, and de Gaulle was one of the very few that was fully equipped to play the game.
There would subsequently be over 30 assassination attempts on de Gaulle’s life during his presidency. After 43 years, in 2009, France would finally rejoin NATO, a decision made by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has had “an interesting record of winning elections with dramatic perfectly timed post-terror interventions…”[57] It should be noted that there has been a great deal of effort to either flatly deny or downplay France’s role in Gladio, and the involvement of NATO, however, these are demonstrably false. When Italy’s Operation Gladio was finally revealed to the world in the early 1990s (more on this shortly), there was a media frenzy inquiring into whether other governments within Europe were also implicated.
The French along with the British denied that their governments had any involvement in the Gladio networks. Italian Prime Minister Andreotti, not wanting to be the only boat sunk, mercilessly shattered the French cover-up when on November 10th, 1990 he declared that France also had taken part in the very recent meeting of the Gladio directing body ACC (Allied Clandestine Committee) in Belgium on October 23rd, 1990. It was only with Andreotti’s accusation that France changed its tune and acknowledged its role in Gladio, with French Defence Minister Jean Pierre Chevènement claiming that the French secret army was “completely passive…”[58]
In the Quiet of a Small Town
“Sex trafficking, industrial paedophilia, the reports of snuff movies made for political and financial blackmail, or just for profit, were all entangled in a black cobweb of spies, officially connived drug running, the secret paramilitary network, and the constant meddling of NATO’s high command in the internal affairs of the country.”
– Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe
Belgium is made up of a Flemish and French ethnic population. During WWII, many Flemings either openly or symbolically sided with the Germans, in hopes of Flemish nationhood – even within a Nazi commonwealth – doing away with Belgium altogether.
Richard Cottrell writes in Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe:[59]
“A residue from wartime fraternisation with the Germans led to Nazi-style paganistic symbolism and mystical blood bonding ceremonies within the Belgian stay-behind network and elements of the national armed forces, which in any event inclined to the Right. This mystical streak was set for a chilling significance in shaping many of the perversion yet to be wrought on Belgium.”
“According to Belgian Gladio author Jan Willems, the creation of WUCC [Western Union Clandestine Committee] in spring 1948 had been a direct consequence of a public speech by British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin held in London on January 22, 1948. In front of the British parliament Bevin had elaborated on his plan for a ‘Union Occidental’, an international organisation designed to counter what he perceived to be the Soviet threat in Europe…”
Ernest Bevin (Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs July 1945-March 1951) aided in the creation of NATO and was instrumental in the founding of the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, specialised in pro-colonial, anti-communist, disinformation propaganda, including black propaganda.[61] His commitment to the West European security system, made him eager to sign the Treaty of Brussels in 1948. It drew Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg into an arrangement for collective security, opening the way for the formation of NATO in 1949.[62] Bevin also played a role in Parliament misinforming MPs and failing to extradite the Mufti of Jerusalem, while in French custody, who had been installed and funded by the British government in Palestine and had worked closely with the Nazis during the Second World War.[63]
Little Belgium soon after NATO’s move to Brussels, had the second most powerful and intrusive crime cartels in Western Europe. In a very short time, Europe’s cockpit was also its chief narcotics and illegal arms hub, with a sideline of sex trafficking. According to investigative journalist Richard Cottrell,[64] the CIA had recruited Belgian Nazis – mostly, but not exclusively, Flemish – as soon as the war ended, and selected them for high offices at state and provincial levels. Such ‘former’ Belgian Nazi figures were protected from justice and released from prison under the protection of the CIA. NATO’s machinations along with General Lemnitzer’s imported experts in counterinsurgency[65] were responsible for the formation of the Belgian Gladio operations; divided into SDRA-8 (French) and STC/Mob (Flemish) divisions.[66]
“According to journalist Manuel Abramowitz – a leading investigator of the far Right in Belgium – neo-Nazis were egged on to infiltrate all the mechanisms of the state, with special attention reserved for the police and the army. By the 1980s, this level of penetration had become so deep – thanks to fascist fronts such as the neo-Nazi militia Westland New Post and its French speaking counterpart, Front de la Jeunesse – that Belgium’s military forces could be said to have fallen almost entirely under extremist control. Not once in the wake of the many false-flag operations over the coming decades, did convincing proof ever appear of a credible coordinated Left-wing subversive force operating on Belgian soil, while seditious organisations of the Far Right flourished openly.”
Senator Hugo Coveliers chairman of the special investigating committee probing gangsterism and terrorism in Belgium (1988-1990) tracked the presence of incriminating materials to a special unit called the ‘judicial police’. Here is what Coveliers said on what became known as the ‘scandal of the X-Dossiers’:
“Imagine, everywhere you hear that story about a blackmail dossier in which organisations of the extreme right are in the possession of pictures and videos on which a number of prominent people in and around Brussels have sex with young girls; minors it is said. The existence of this dossier has always been vehemently denied. Until it was proven that testimonies and videos of this affair indeed were in the possession of the police services.
The at first non-existing dossier turns out to exist. The videos without substance then turn out to be interesting enough after all to be handed over to the examining magistrate tasked with the investigation into the Gang of Nivelles [held responsible for some of the shop massacres]. But this person is subsequently afraid to testify about that! What do you think is going on here!”[68]
Cottrell, who is a former European Parliament MP and has conducted formal investigations ordered by the European Parliament, explores these avenues in greater detail in his book. He concludes that these sex-trafficking rings within Belgium, involving the abuse and murder of children, are encouraged among public officials for two reasons. The first is to produce incriminating blackmail making political retreat impossible. The second reason is that some of these activities that were recorded and retained in top secret files, were part of cultist initiation ceremonies.
“It was alleged these involved paganistic neo-Nazi traits such as blood rituals, practised by elements within the state’s secret forces, as well as the orthodox military structure.”
In the context of this, NATO’s twitter scandal posting the Black Sun Nazi occult symbol[70] for international women’s day in 2022, might not have been a slip-up after all…
Among the plethora of books H.G. Wells wrote, was “The New World Order,” (1940). It appears that Wells was among the very first to pioneer the now infamous term. ↑
Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 560-561. ↑
Chung, Cynthia. (2022) The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set: The Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy. See Chapter 2. ↑
Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 577. ↑
Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 15-16 ↑
Mosley wrote to Wells to congratulate him on a speech supporting ‘Liberal Fascism’. Mosley included a copy of his book The Greater Britain, and wrote “I am afraid the word ‘Liberal’ has not much relation in my book, but it certainly is an attempt to create a scientific Fascism which is free from the excess and repressions of the Continent…like most prophets, you will probably have the unpleasant experience of recognising many of your own teachings of the past reproduced and reshaped by less capable hands.” From Stephen Dorril’s book ‘Blackshirt.’ ↑
Refer to Chapter 1 of my book “The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set” for Mosley’s concept of a “scientific dictatorship” which was almost entirely influenced by H.G. Wells. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005) NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, London, New York, pg. 1. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005) NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, London, New York, pg. 28 ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. Richard Cottrell is a former European Parliament MP and investigative journalist. Cottrell has also conducted formal investigations commissioned by the European Parliament. ↑
For more details around the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II see Richard Cottrell’s book Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 115-121. ↑
William L. Shirer. (1959) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, pg. 192. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, Nato’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Black Empire is in reference to a Fascist Empire. ↑
Recall from Chapter 2 Kalergi’s Catholic Crusade for a Pan-Europe. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Recall in Chapter 1, that Mosley and his son were working for a Spanish travel agency that was organising Otto Skorzeny’s travel itinerary, which was likely connected to Aginter Press. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 212. ↑
Cliadakis, Harry. (January 1979). The Political and Diplomatic Background to the Metaxas Dictatorship, 1935-36. Journal of Contemporary History. 14 (1): pg. 117–138. ↑
The United States Senate. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence activities. Book IV: Supplementary detailed staff reports on foreign and military intelligence, pg. 36. ↑
Powers, Thomas. (January 1979) The man who kept the secrets: Richard helms and the CIA. Alfred A. Knopf, pg. 37. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 57. ↑
Kruger, Henrik. (1980) The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism. South End Press, pg. 143. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Baylis, John (1982). Britain and the Dunkirk Treaty: The Origins of NATO. Journal of Strategic Studies. 5 (2): pg. 236–47. ↑
See Chapter 11 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.’ ↑
Richard Cottrell is a former European Parliament MP and investigative journalist. Cottrell has also conducted formal investigations commissioned by the European Parliament. ↑
See Chapter 8 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.’ ↑
Richard Cottrell. (2015) Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. Progressive Press. ↑
European Parliament, which is investigating the use of “Israeli” spyware by EU governments, has slammed the Tel Aviv regime for a lack of transparency in allowing the sale of Pegasus to European governments to use it against critics.
The European lawmakers condemned the approach of the Polish government for refusing to meet and talk with them during the meeting of the fact-finding committee in Warsaw, which ended on Wednesday.
“It is regrettable and we condemn the fact that the Polish authorities did not want to cooperate with our investigation committee,” Jeroen Lenaers, the head of the delegation, said at a news conference in Warsaw.
“We think it also is a telling sign of the complete lack of importance this government attaches to checks and balances, to democratic scrutiny, and to dialog with elected representatives.”
The European Union’s fact-finding committee is investigating the use of the entity’s Pegasus spyware and other invasive surveillance tools by the European governments, saying the technology poses a serious threat to democracy in European countries.
Pegasus is “Israeli” spyware that was designed and developed by the entity’s NSO group and is used to break into mobile phones and spy on a large part of personal information including text messages, passwords, locations, and microphone and camera receivers.
The “Israeli” company marketed this technology as a tool to target its desired targets in the world.
Many European governments have used this controversial software to suppress dissidents, journalists, and political opponents around the world.
In Europe, some cyber detectives have found traces of the use of Pegasus or some other spyware in Poland, Hungary, Spain, and Greece.
Sophie in ’t Veld, the rapporteur of the inquiry, said the committee found out in its research that the NSO group sold this spyware to 14 European Union member states with official permission from Tel Aviv.
According to reports, Poland and Hungary are not allowed to buy this spyware from NSO due to some political issues, details of which remain unclear.
“Why can we not say with certainty that Poland was one of the two countries of which the contract has been terminated?” she said.
“Why is it that NSO is allowed to operate in the European Union, conduct its finances through Luxembourg, sell its products to now 12 member states, products that have been used to violate the rights of European citizens and to attack democracy of the European Union?”
Recently, Greece revealed that Nikos Androulakis, a member of the European Parliament and the head of the third largest political party in Greece, was monitored using Predator software last year when he was running for the leadership of the PASOK party.
It is said that a journalist from Mali was also under surveillance.
Recently, it was revealed that Poland, Hungary, and some Catalan separatists in Spain were using this software to suppress their critics and opponents.
The 10-member delegation of the EU’s fact-finding committee during its trip that began on Monday met with Poles targeted by the Pegasus spyware, including a prosecutor and a senator, and some members of the opposition-controlled Senate.
A report of the obtained results as well as some recommendations and solutions are supposed to be published on November 8 of this year.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned of the threat posed by spying programs such as the Pegasus spyware to UN human rights activists in a report to be released next week.
In recent days, Pegasus and some other spyware have threatened a group of UN human rights activists.
Guterres warned that the increase in digital surveillance by governments and some non-governmental sources has affected the activities of civil society activists in providing reliable information to the world body and has made them vulnerable to fear and threats of retaliation.
“United Nations actors have pointed to growing and concerning evidence of online surveillance, privacy intrusion, and cyberattacks by state and non-state actors of victims and civil society communications and activities,” the UN chief noted.
“The lack of trust in the digital sphere among those sharing information and testimony with the United Nations on sensitive issues can discourage future cooperation.”
The findings are part of an annual report that tracks the challenges facing those seeking to work with the organization and focuses on April 2021 to May 2022.
During this period, much of the UN’s activities following the Covid-19 pandemic have gone digital, and at the same time, espionage threats have increased.
According to UN officials, this software has also spied on the activities of Palestinian, Bahraini, and Moroccan organizations and some human rights activists of the UN during this period.
In his recent report, Guterres warned that in 2021, the mobile phones of employees of three prominent Palestinian NGOs – Addameer, Al-Haq, and Bisan Center for Research and Development – were hacked using Pegasus spyware.
The “Israeli” NSO Group has earned notoriety for trying to have its spy apparatuses maintain an edge over their international counterparts.
The regime makes extensive use of Pegasus and other locally-made spyware for espionage.
According to observers, Tel Aviv has treated NSO as a de-facto arm of the regime, granting licenses for the sale of the spyware to countries to forge stronger security and diplomatic ties.
In January, the New York Times reported that the FBI had purchased Pegasus software in 2019.
It also stated that in 2018 the CIA had purchased Pegasus for the government of Djibouti to conduct counterterrorism operations, despite that country’s record of torturing political opposition figures and imprisoning journalists.
Phil Butler We are the terrorists. Americans are the terrorists creating tremendous suffering and tragedy around the world. And no, I am not the only one admitting to this. Deep down, all of my fellow citizens know what we are up to. A recent incident in Yemen drives home the hegemony my country has created, having looted, and still looting the whole.
I watched talk show host Jimmy Dore a few moments ago, laying out how the US, France, and other nations are robbing other people of this world to prop up failed super-capitalism. Dore, who has an uncanny ability to drive at the heart of matters, was interviewing Ethiopian-American Journalist Hermela Aregawi in a story about the French Foreign Legion securing Yemeni natural gas for sale to the EU. The story begins something like this from The New Arab:
“France could be gearing up to help protect a gas facility in Yemen to allow for exports in a bid to cut Europe’s reliance on Russia, according to an ex-Yemeni foreign minister.”
Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, told reporters the other day that the French Foreign Legion has arrived in Yemen’s Shabwah province to secure control of the Balhaf gas facility. He said the French are making “preparations being made to export gas from the Balhaf facility.”
Hermela Aregawi commented with Dore about how current American policies are building up massive resentment toward the United States, even in countries that were once highly favorable towards us. I know from my experience here in Greece too. As recently as three years ago, criticizing the US in any way at all brought about a look of shock among the Greek population. Today, many Greeks question our role not only in Greece but in Ukraine and other lands where proxy wars over resources burn.
The larger Yemen story also reveals the meaning of a July Paris – Abu Dhabi LNG cooperation that depends on securing Yemen’s gas resources via the Balhaf facility, owned by French multinational oil and gas company Total.
Abdulaziz Saleh bin Habtoor, Yemen’s Prime Minister, has called the world’s attention to the recent looting by the Saudi-led coalition under the watch of the United States. He says Washington is bent on getting control of the resources through Gulf proxies.
Yemeni forces have been in deadly clashes with UAE-backed southern separatist forces in Shabwa province, where Balhaf is located. Looked at in the broader scope, the Yemen situation is just a facet of a much larger looting program underway. Syria, where U.S. forces have essentially taken over the eastern oil-producing region, and the Ukraine conflict reveal the larger canvas. Looking from outer space, the battle for Earth has been raging for decades. But now, the conflict and competition have reached a crisis stage. America and the Europeans are out of gas, literally. And no matter who has to suffer and die, the liberal order cannot let the big lie slip out. Worse, the people in the so-called west don’t want to know or admit our role in pirating the whole world.
Finally, On 22 August, Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein al-Ezzi warned that the presence of foreign forces in the Gulf of Aden or any part of Yemeni waters is illegal. The minister was speaking in response to US Fifth Fleet Admiral Charles Bradford Cooper’s announcement that the US will deploy unmanned drones in the Gulf of Aden. However, the entire Yemen situation is easier to break down by revealing what all these nations want there. And, of course, the answer is precious oil and gas. I’ve discussed this before and the nature of so-called “peak oil.”
To fully cordon off Russia, Europe needs oil, gas, and plenty of it. The US cannot supply enough. It’s too far away, and America has her own needs. Yemen, however, is a relatively untapped source. Only two of the 12 significant basins on and offshore have been developed. The other ten are what’s known as “frontier basins,” according to readily available data. I believe, however, that Total and other significant players know full well another bonanza is offshore of Yemen. This GEOExPro report hints at this. The information puts current Yemen recoverable oil reserves at 4.731 Bbo, and proven gas reserves at 18.6 Tcfg. But this is 2010 estimates.
We do not need to establish the oil and gas reserves the Yemeni people are entitled to benefit from. The fact the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the EU have their militaries, bureaucrats, and energy corporations sinking their teeth in is proof enough that the blood of Yemen children will be spilled not for some high romantic future, but so that the same people bleeding Syria, Ukraine. So much of the rest of the world dry can thrive. The French Foreign Legion defending an oil depot in the middle of nowhere says it all. We, the collective “west,” are the real terrorists.
A Russian national, Alexander Vinnik, who now faces more than 50 years in prison, has been arrested in the United States. On Thursday, he was actually fraudulently taken out of Europe to San Francisco in violation of all international legal norms. Apparently, this is how Washington responded to the verdict of the Brittney Griner, convicted in the Russian Federation for drug smuggling. Why is Washington abducting Russian citizens and is there a way to stop this, in fact, hostage-taking?
Alexander Vinnik, whom the United States accuses of cybercrime, was taken from Greece to the United States. “Everything happened and was staged as a kidnapping,” RIA Novosti reports the words of one of Vinnik’s family members. Relatives reported that the Russian citizen was taken from Greece to Boston on a private plane in violation of all legal procedures. “Alexander was allowed to call home from Boston,” a member of Vinnik’s family said. Later, the Russian was transported on a company plane to San Francisco.
The police at the Athens airport on Thursday evening claimed that they knew nothing about Vinnik’s extradition and that he had been taken to Athens. Employees of the consular department of the Russian Embassy in Greece were not allowed to see a Russian citizen, although he asked for a meeting. The Kremlin is monitoring the fate of Vinnik, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The procedural norms of Greek law did not allow to immediately send Vinnik from Greece to the United States, but in Athens “they turned a blind eye to this,” a relative of the captured Russian told RIA Novosti. “The Greeks will again say that they did not know, forgot, were confused, that they are sorry. As before, there was an extradition document with a fake signature of the Minister of Justice, and then it turned out that he did not sign anything,” the source said.
From an international legal point of view, the entire mechanism of Vinnik’s deportation to the United States via Greece is inadequate, so Russia equates such cases with kidnappings, Pavel Gerasimov, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Vice President of the Union of Lawyers of Russia, explained to the newspaper VIEW. “In any case, foreign security forces had to appeal to the representatives of Russia in Interpol with the justification for sending Vinnik to the United States. But no one contacted either our Foreign Ministry or law enforcement officers,” the lawyer stated.
It should be noted that simultaneously with the American operation to kidnap a Russian from Greece, Joe Biden complained about the “unlawful” detention in Russia of US citizen Brittney Griner and the “unacceptable” sentence. Recall that a Russian court on Thursday found Griner guilty of smuggling drugs into our country. The judges sentenced the American to nine years.
Biden promised that the US authorities would use “all possible means” to return Griner and another American serving time in Russia, Paul Whelan, to their homeland. In mid-June, the Moscow City Court found this former Marine guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in a strict regime penal colony.
It can be assumed that the American side will try to use Vinnik captured in Greece (along with another compatriot of ours serving time in the USA – Viktor Bout) to bargain for the extradition of Griner and Whelan. Note that at the end of July, reports appeared in the American press that Biden approved a plan to exchange Whelan and Griner for Booth. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken discussed the exchange of prisoners in a telephone conversation. Lavrov urged the head of the State Department to return to “quiet diplomacy” on this issue, the Foreign Ministry said.
It is also worth noting the briefing held on Thursday by the Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council (NSC) USA by John Kirby. According to TASS, a White House official was asked whether Washington believes that Russia will accept the American proposal, which does not involve an equal exchange of prisoners – one for one or two for two? That is, it was initially assumed that the United States intended to offer one Russian in exchange for two Americans. “I can say that we have made a serious offer… I won’t go into details, but we urge them (the Russians) to accept it,” Kirby replied evasively. It can be assumed that Vinnik, who was taken by private plane to the United States, may become this second Russian, who is supposed to be exchanged for convicted drug smuggler Griner and spy Whelan.
Regardless of whether a person is guilty (in this case, a Russian Vinnik) or not, the law must act, but the absolute arbitrariness on the part of the United States is comparable to extortion,
State Duma deputy Oleg Morozov told the newspaper VIEW. “This practice is on a par with the bombing of Iraq, when the United States didn’t care what others thought about it. They are detaining a Russian citizen on the territory of a third country and they don’t care what the law says and the world community thinks about it,” the politician stressed. Incidents like the capture of Vinnik have long been part of the international practice of the United States, stated Deputy Morozov. “There are many cases when Russian citizens are detained on the territory of third countries, and then absolutely illegally and secretly extradited to the territory of the United States, where they are put on trial,” the source said.
Let’s explain – several countries are involved in the Vinnik case, which has been going on for more than five years, and the Strasbourg Court was involved. In July 2017, a Russian IT specialist was arrested in Greece at the request of the United States. The American investigation accused Vinnik of creating a BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange without a license from the United States authorities, through which, according to the American side, billions of dollars were laundered. The Russian was also accused of failing to register his activities with the US Financial Intelligence Service (FINCEN) and failing to comply with anti-money laundering requirements. In the United States, 33-year–old Vinnik faces 55 years in prison – in fact, life imprisonment.
In January 2020, Greece extradited Vinnik, not to the United States but to France. Here, a Russian IT specialist was charged with 19 criminal offenses. A French court acquitted Vinnik of all charges brought by France and sentenced him to five years on one American charge. Moreover, the judges considered that the Russian had committed not a criminal offense, but a misdemeanor. The term of imprisonment ended, but Vinnik remained in prison. He was already supposed to be returned to Greece for extradition to the United States. However, the European Court of Human Rights banned the transfer of Vinnik to Greek justice. On Thursday, a Paris court decided to release Vinnik as part of the extradition case to the United States – Paris formally refused to transfer the Russian to the Americans. But the same French court immediately ordered to detain the Russian citizen and redirect him under escort to Greece. The very next day, a private plane took Vinnik from Athens to Boston.
As lawyer Gerasimov explained, the normal scheme from the point of view of international law should have looked like this: Greece detains Vinnik at the request of the French, since the case against him was opened in France. Further, in the French court, the process takes place with the participation of a representative of Russia, and the Russian consulate had to respect the rights of our citizen. Including consideration of the issue of Vinnik’s extradition to Russia.
“But the participation of American representatives in this case without substantiating the cross–border nature of the crime in general would be impossible by law, since Vinnik is not a US citizen,” the lawyer pointed out. – Another justification for American involvement could be that it was the United States that suffered the main damage from Vinnik’s alleged crime. But Washington has not provided any justification.” Moreover, at the stage of discussing extradition, the American side did not contact Moscow in any way, so the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a note of protest.
Now, in order to be able to exchange Vinnik or simply extradite him to Russia, he must be convicted in the United States, Gerasimov explained. “After that, Moscow tells Washington that the Russian side is ready to accept Vinnik to serve his sentence in Russia. This starts a two-way dialogue. If the two states agree, and if Vinnik arrives in Russia, then here he has the right to appeal for a judicial review and try to prove that the American court made an unfair decision,” the lawyer detailed.
At the same time, lawyer Gerasimov added, it cannot be ruled out that the arrested Russian may be transported to Puerto Rico or to the base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where a special prison is still operating. “Legally, this will not be an American territory, but the same US law enforcement agencies will “work” with the detainee there,” the lawyer noted. “You can only be safe without committing crimes. But in any case, it is better to rest in the Crimea, and not abroad,” the interlocutor added, not without sarcasm.
The issue of countering American international racketeering is primarily a political issue, said Deputy Morozov. “It’s impossible to live by the principle of “what if the Americans accuse me of something, so I can’t move beyond the Ural Mountains.” The only way to answer is what Russia, China and many other countries are doing now: they break the world order established by the Americans, refuse to participate in an unfair world order and will offer the world completely different norms and rules,” the interlocutor stressed. – Sooner or later we will come to a world where Americans will no longer be allowed to engage in extortion. In the meantime, the United States, unfortunately, acts on the principle of might is right, that they themselves are the law.”
In the meantime, the Russian Foreign Ministry has outlined Moscow’s position: our side is ready to discuss the exchange of prisoners with the United States, but only within the framework of the channel that was approved by the presidents of the two countries at a meeting in Geneva last June. This was stated on Friday by the head of Russian diplomacy Sergey Lavrov, commenting on reports about the plan approved by Biden to rescue Griner and Whelan.
تطورات متسارعة ومتناقضة ترافق انتظار لبنان عودة الوسيط الأميركي عاموس هوكشتين، بعدما حمل من بيروت الى تل أبيب، الأسبوع الماضي، الموقف اللبناني الذي وثّقه اجتماع بعبدا بموقف موحّد من الرؤساء الثلاثة، يقوم على الإقرار بحق لبنان في الخط 23، مع كامل حقل قانا، وإعطاء ضمانات للشركات بالتنقيب بعد إنجاز الترسيم، ورفض أي كلام عن أي تنقيب مشترك تتولّاه شركة واحدة.
ومع أن هوكشتين عقد اجتماعات مع كبار المسؤولين الإسرائيليين، وناقشت الحكومة الإسرائيلية المُصغرة الأمر الأربعاء الماضي، إلا أنه تبيّن أن العدو لم يصل إلى قرار في هذا الشأن، وأن التركيز كان على خطة العدوان على قطاع غزة. فيما يبدو أن الحكومة الإسرائيلية المؤقتة تميل إلى التسويف وتأخير بتّ الملف الى فترة لاحقة، مع إعطاء إشارات متناقضة، من بينها احتمال تأخير بدء الاستخراج من حقل «كاريش»، بالتزامن مع معلومات عن أن انشغال الإسرائيليين بالعدوان على غزة قد يؤخّر مهمة هوكشتين، علماً بأن الأخير حاول خلال زيارته لبيروت التقليل من أهمية تهديدات حزب الله، من زاوية أن «إسرائيل لا يمكنها الخضوع لابتزاز حزب الله لأن ذلك سيفتح الباب أمام ممارسة أطراف أخرى هذا النوع من الابتزاز»، بخلاف السفيرة الأميركية دوروثي شيا التي قالت لزوار لبنانيين ولمسؤولين في الإدارة الأميركية إنه ينبغي التعامل بجدية مع تهديدات الأمين العام لحزب الله السيد حسن نصر الله.
وسيط عربي وعلمت «الأخبار» أن رسائل أميركية وصلت الى الجهات اللبنانية المعنية بالملف، ليس عبر القناة القطرية هذه المرة، بل عبر الكويت التي نقل مسؤول فيها أن الولايات المتحدة حصلت من إسرائيل على ضمانات بأنها ستعطي لبنان ما يريده في مسألة الترسيم، لكنها تميل إلى تأجيل الأمر الى ما بعد انتخابات الكنيست في إسرائيل. وبدا ناقل الرسالة مهتماً بمعرفة موقف المقاومة من هذا الطرح أكثر من أي أمر آخر.
وأفادت المعلومات بأن الوسيط الكويتي سمع كلاماً واضحاً بأن المقاومة غير معنية بالانتخابات في إسرائيل، وهي أساساً لا تميّز بين حكومة وأخرى وبين حزب حاكم وآخر، بل تعتبر الجميع مسؤولين عن كيان عنصري يحترف الحروب وسرقة موارد العرب وثرواتهم وحقوقهم. كما أن المقاومة تعمل وفق أجندتها وليس وفق الأجندة الإسرائيلية أو الأميركية، وهي غير معنية من قريب أو بعيد بالتفاوض القائم المتروك للدولة اللبنانية، لكنها معنية بحصول لبنان على كامل حقوقه من دون زيادة أو نقصان. كما أنها معنية أيضاً بأن يفهم الأميركيون قبل الإسرائيليين أن حقوق لبنان تعني سيادة كاملة على المناطق الاقتصادية الخاصة به، وحرية العمل فيها وفق ما يراه مناسباً، وبالتالي فإن رفع الفيتو الأميركي عن عمل الشركات العالمية في التنقيب والاستخراج في الجانب اللبناني مطلب أساسي. وبحسب المعلومات، فقد أُبلغ الوسيط (لم يعرف ما إذا كان هناك لقاء مباشر بينه وبين المقاومة أو عبر وسيط) أن على العدو أن يتذكّر بأن المقاومة أعلنت أنها لن تنتظر طويلاً وأن المهلة الزمنية غير مفتوحة قبل أن توجّه ضربات مباشرة الى منصات العدو. ورغم أن الأميركيين سبق أن أشاروا الى ضرورة إنجاز الملف من دون ربطه بالانتخابات الإسرائيلية، انتشرت تحليلات بأن حكومة يائير لابيد ستجد نفسها أقوى في حال خروجها من معركة غزة قوية، ما يمكّنها الذهاب نحو اتفاق يتضمّن «تنازلات» في ملف ترسيم الحدود البحرية.
شياطين التفاهمات وسط هذه التطورات، قالت مصادر رفيعة المستوى إن «لبنان ينتظِر الرد الإسرائيلي المكتوب»، وإن «اجتماع بعبدا تولّدت عنه مقاربة جديدة لملف الترسيم، بيّنت أن العدو الإسرائيلي يريد أن ينُجز حلاً في المضمون، لكنه يبحث في الشكل عن مخارج له»، علماً بأن «كل ما حصل منذ الزيارة لم يصل إلى مرتبة الإجراءات العملية»، معتبرة أننا في حالة من «اللاسلبية واللاإيجابية في آن». ولفتت المصادر إلى أنه في حال عودة هوكشتين حاملاً الجواب المكتوب «سيدعى الوفدان اللبناني والإسرائيلي إلى الناقورة مجدداً لتوقيع النصوص برعاية الأمم المتحدة». وقالت مصادر سياسية إن «التفاهمات المفترضة حول ملف الترسيم لن تكون رهن توافق عام فقط»، لأن «ما طرحه الوسيط الأميركي كان على أساس أن يتولى هو مواصلة المفاوضات وصياغة التفاهم، وأن يصار الى عقد اجتماع واحد أو اجتماعين في الناقورة لأجل الإقرار». لكن رئيس مجلس النواب نبيه بري قال لزواره إن «العناوين العامة جرى النقاش حولها، وهو (هوكشتين) سمع منا وذهب الى الإسرائيليين ليعود بجواب، ونحن ننتظر. وفي حال حصول تقدم، سيحال الأمر الى مفاوضات غير مباشرة في الناقورة». وبحسب المصادر، فإن «ما يهدف إليه الوسيط الأميركي ولو برعاية الأمم المتحدة هو توقيع اتفاق أو تفاهم بين لبنان والعدو برعاية دولية يشتمل على كل نقاط الخلاف». وبالتالي، يعتقد مطّلعون في بيروت أن مثل هذا الأمر «لا يقف عند حدود تفاهم عام، بل هو مرتبط بتفاهم مفصل». ما يعني أنه سيكون هناك جهد حثيث، له بعده القانوني والأمني والتقني، وهذا يتطلب فريقاً متخصصاً، ما يعيد الحديث عن تشكيل الوفد اللبناني الى جولات التفاوض غير المباشر في الناقورة. ورأت المصادر نفسها أن كلام رئيس كتلة الوفاء للمقاومة النائب محمد رعد عن «أننا نريد أن نرى بأعيننا الاتفاق لا أن نسمعه مجرد أخبار»، يتضمن إشارة واضحة الى أن «المقاومة ملتزمة بموقفها منع العدو من أي عملية استخراج قبل الوصول الى تفاهم يحفظ كامل حقوق لبنان. وهو ما يعني ضمناً أن المقاومة التي تنسّق مع الرؤساء الثلاثة وتتواصل مع جهات دولية، لن تكون بعيدة عن تفاصيل الاتفاق، من دون أن تكون شريكة لا في التفاوض ولا في الصياغة».
اليونان تتراجع وتقرّ بملكية سفينة الاستخراج وتخشى على حياة العاملين على متنها
وكان لافتاً ما تمّت الإشارة إليه من أن لبنان لم يحصل بعد على إقرار إسرائيلي كامل بحقه في كل ما هو شمال الخط 23، بالإضافة الى بقية حقل قانا. إذ لفت مصدر مطّلع الى أن «نائب رئيس مجلس النواب إلياس بوصعب كان قد تهرّب من سؤال الصحافيين حول هذه النقطة بعد اجتماع بعبدا الأخير،. ليتبيّن أن الأميركيين يشيرون الى أن إسرائيل قد تقبل بأن يُصار الى التمييز بين الملكية والسيادة القانونية. بمعنى أن تحسب كامل حصة حقل قانا للبنان، على أن تحتفظ هي بحقها في جزء من الحقل عند الترسيم، وهو أمر يرفضه لبنان بصورة قاطعة». ورغم انشغال قيادة العدو بالعدوان على قطاع غزة، إلا أن الدبلوماسية الأميركية تتحدث كما الجهات الأوروبية (التي يقول دبلوماسيوها بشكل صريح إن الملف كله في عهدة الأميركيين) عن استمرار المساعي والاتصالات لضمان حصول الوسيط الأميركي على موقف إسرائيلي يعود به الى بيروت لضمان الأجواء الإيجابية، وخصوصاً أن هوكشتين لم يتمكن من الحصول على أي وعد من أي جهة لبنانية بأن المقاومة ستقف مكتوفة الأيدي أمام المماطلة.
قلق يوناني إلى ذلك، طرأ تطور تمثّل في تبدّل الموقف اليوناني من مسألة ملكية سفينة الاستخراج «إنيرجيان». وقد طلبت سفيرة اليونان في لبنان كاثرين فونتولاكي موعداً للاجتماع اليوم مع وزير الخارجية عبد الله بوحبيب لمناقشة ملف ترسيم الحدود والسفينة. وكان الوسيط الأميركي قد استغرب نفي اليونان علاقتها بالسفينة، مؤكداً أن اليونانيين يملكون الحصة الأكبر من الشركة وأن مديرها العام يوناني. وفي وقت لاحق من الأسبوع الماضي، سارع اليونانيون الى تبديل روايتهم الأولى، بعدما أبلغوا لبنان، بعد تهديدات الأمين العام لحزب الله، عبر رسالة رسمية أن اليونان تملك حصة تأسيسية في الشركة. قبل أن تعود أثينا، في الأيام القليلة الماضية، إلى إبلاغ لبنان رسمياً أن يونانيين يملكون أسهماً كبيرة في الشركة، وأن المدير التنفيذي يوناني الجنسية وأن معظم البحارة العاملين على السفينة يونانيون. ويعكس هذا التطور، بحسب مصدر معني، القلق اليوناني المتعاظم من احتمال ضرب السفينة. وبحسب معلومات، سمع اليونانيون الذين تواصلوا مع مسؤولين في حزب الله كلاماً واضحاً بضرورة سحب السفينة، وأن أثينا وأصحاب السفينة يتحمّلون المسؤولية عن أي ضرر مادي أو بشري يصيبها.
الكلام «الإيجابي» الذي سُرّب في اليومين الماضيين، في واشنطن وبيروت، حول مستقبل مفاوضات ترسيم الحدود البحرية مع فلسطين المحتلة لم يتجاوز حدود الرسائل التي لا تستند إلى وقائع صلبة. فحتى اللحظة، لا يبدو أن «الوسيط» الأميركي عاموس هوكشتين في صدد العودة إلى لبنان، فيما دخل الأوروبيون على الخط لمصلحة إسرائيل. في وقت شهدت المياه الإقليمية اللبنانية والفلسطينية المحتلة سلسلة خطوات عسكرية وأمنية توحي بدرجة عالية من التوتر.
وبحسب معلومات «الأخبار»، فإن سفينة الاستخراج التابعة لشركة «أنيرجيان» تقدّمت مع سفينة أخرى نحو الخط 29، وتجاوزت إحداهما الخط بأميال قليلة، في وقت كشفت مصادر في قوات اليونيفل عن وصول بوارج حربية أميركية إلى قبالة حقل «كاريش»، ومباشرتها إجراءات لتوفير حماية للمنصة العائمة. وترافق ذلك مع قيام سرب من طائرات تجسس بريطانية وأخرى تابعة لحلف شمال الأطلسي بمسح لكل المنطقة البحرية التي تلامس الحدود اللبنانية وتجاوز المياه الإقليمية لكل من لبنان وفلسطين المحتلة.
وأوضحت مصادر الأمم المتحدة في لبنان أن المناورة العسكرية البحرية التي أجرتها قوات بحرية من اليونيفل قرب الحدود خلال الأيام القليلة الماضية لا تستهدف أحداً، وأنها «تمرين عادي يواكب التطورات السياسية والأمنية في المنطقة». لكنّ مصادر معنية لفتت إلى أن طبيعة المناورة التي جرت بالذخيرة الحية «لا تقود إلى هذا الاستنتاج، خصوصاً أنها تزامنت مع نشر الأميركيين قطعاً بحرية عسكرية قبالة حقل كاريش، في وقت فعّل حلف الناتو عمل طائرات مُسيَّرة ذات طابع تجسسي في كل المنطقة البحرية، بالتزامن مع نشاط أمني إسرائيلي في محيط حقل كاريش». في غضون ذلك، سمع لبنان الرسمي «نصائح» أوروبية غير مباشرة، خصوصاً من فرنسا وبريطانيا وألمانيا، بعدم التصعيد في هذا الملف. وبحسب المصادر فقد شرح الأوروبيون لمسؤولين لبنانيين بأن «ما تقوم به إسرائيل هو استخراج كميات من الطاقة التي تحتاج إليها أوروبا، وهي بالتالي تحظى بغطاء دولي، أميركي وأوروبي، وأن عملية استخراج النفط أو الغاز من حقل كاريش باتت جزءاً من أمن الطاقة العالمي، وأن تهديدات حزب الله لن تفيد في معالجة الأمر». وفي الوقت نفسه، تحدّث الأوروبيون عن مساعٍ يقومون بها لإقناع إسرائيل بالتوصل إلى تسوية تتيح للبنان بدء التنقيب والاستخراج لمواجهة أزمته الاقتصادية والمالية المتفاقمة. إلى ذلك، علمت «الأخبار» أن المنسّقة الخاصة للأمم المتحدة في لبنان يوانا فرونتيسكا زارت تل أبيب أخيراً وبحثت مع المسؤولين الإسرائيليين في ملف ترسيم الحدود، وعادت إلى لبنان بـ«مناخات لا تتطابق مع الكلام المسرّب عن استعداد إسرائيلي لتقديم تنازلات جدية». وقد زارت الدبلوماسية الأممية الرئيس ميشال عون أمس ووضعته في أجواء زيارتها للكيان الإسرائيلي. وفيما يُفترض أن تتبلّغ الجهات الرسمية في لبنان تفاصيل المحادثات خلال الساعات المقبلة، فُهم أن الإسرائيليين يطرحون مجدداً الخط الـ 23 المتعرّج الذي سبق أن اقترحه هوكشتين على لبنان في شباط الماضي وتبلّغ رفضاً شفهياً له الشهر الماضي.
منسّقة الأمم المتحدة تعود من تل أبيب بأجواء سلبية ومناورات عسكرية إسرائيلية وأممية وأميركية وأوروبية قبالة سواحل لبنان وفلسطين
ويُفترض أن السفيرة الأميركية في بيروت دوروثي شيا، التي عادت إلى بيروت أمس، تحمل رسالة من هوكشتين بعد المحادثات التي أجراها مع مسؤولين إسرائيليين لمناقشة الردّ اللبناني. وقال مقرّبون من مرجع رئاسي إنه يجب الاستماع إلى الوسيط الأميركي بصورة أوضح قبل الركون إلى ما تسرّب عن لسان مسؤولين أوروبيين وأمميين. وكرّرت المصادر أن الجديد في ما نُقل عن الإسرائيليين يتلخّص بأن التنازل عن الخط 29 يعني أن حقل «كاريش» هو حصة إسرائيلية كاملة، وأن «الخط 23 هو خط التفاوض الجديد انطلاقاً من كون الخزان الكبير الموجود في حقل قانا يجب حسم حصة كلّ من الطرفين فيه، ما يشير مجدداً إلى فكرة الخط المتعرّج، الأمر الذي يرفضه لبنان».
توضيحات يونانية
في غضون ذلك، وبعد زيارة قام بها دبلوماسي يوناني رفيع إلى حزب الله لشرح موقف أثينا، أبلغت الخارجية اليونانية القائمة بأعمال السفارة اللبنانية في أثينا المستشارة رانيا عبدالله رسائل إلى لبنان تطابقت مع الكلام الذي أبلغه الدبلوماسي اليوناني لحزب الله، وفيه: أولاً، إن اليونان ترفض «الخطاب غير اللطيف» للأمين العام لحزب الله السيد حسن نصرالله، انطلاقاً من أن اليونان ليست طرفاً في المشكلة. ثانياً، إن سفينة الاستخراج ليست يونانية ولا تحمل العلم اليوناني، بل تتبع لشركة عالمية ويوجد بين مالكيها من يحملون الجنسية اليونانية. ثالثاً، اليونان تدعم توصل لبنان وإسرائيل إلى اتفاق، وترفض أيّ اعتداء من إسرائيل على حقوق لبنان في المياه الإقليمية. رابعاً، اليونان ليست على عداء لا مع الحكومة اللبنانية ولا مع حزب الله ويُفضل عدم إقحامها في هذه القضية.
A US navy official has claimed that three speedboats belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had a near-miss encounter on 20 June with two US warships in the Persian Gulf.
The IRGC vessels allegedly came within 45 meters of the two US warships at “dangerously high speed.”
“[The Iranian Navy] did not meet the international standards of professional or safe maritime behavior, increasing the risk of miscalculation and collision,” said the spokesman for US Central Command (CENTCOM), Colonel Joseph Buccino.
Buccino added that the USS Sirocco, a Cyclone-class patrol ship, and the USNS Choctaw County, a fast transport vessel, were in “routine transit” through international waters in the Persian Gulf.
According to an unnamed US official, the IRGC vessels diverted course only after the Sirocco issued an audible warning signal and fired a flare.
Iranian officials have not yet responded to the US allegations.
“CENTCOM forces will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere in the area of responsibility international law allows while promoting regional stability,” Buccino went on to add.
The alleged confrontation comes at a time when tensions are rising between Iran and the west over Washington’s refusal to provide guarantees to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
Over the past year, the IRGC navy has led efforts to stop the smuggling of Iranian oil by foreign actors, including the US.
Last month, Washington illegally seized a shipment of Iranian oil in Greek waters, before a court in Athens ruled against what Tehran described as “maritime piracy.”
Last year, the IRGC released footage of a daring operation to stop the US navy from stealing oil from an Iranian tanker in the Sea of Oman.
The operation was launched after US forces tried to redirect the tanker to an unspecified location in order to steal the cargo. However, the IRGC navy took control of the tanker by boarding it with helicopters, and were able to direct it toward Iranian territorial waters.
In response, the US sent out helicopters and warships hoping to redirect the ship, even blocking its path, but their attempts were unsuccessful.
The European Union on Wednesday inked a deal with Egypt and Israel for shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG) to its member states. Brussels hopes the agreement will help the continent to reduce energy dependence on its major supplier, Russia. RT explores whether those expectations are realistic.
What does the trilateral agreement mean? It is expected to increase Israel’s exportation of natural gas through pre-existing pipelines to Egyptian ports, where it can be pressurized and liquefied, before being transported to Europe by sea. Some Israeli gas is already being sent by pipeline to liquefaction plants on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, from where it is re-exported as LNG.
How much gas could Israel export? Israel currently sends around five billion cubic meters of gas per year to Egypt. Cairo had earlier signed contracts with the country for the purchase of 64 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas over a decade. The two sides later extended the deal to 15 years, with an increased volume of supplies of up to 6.9 bcm per year.
How much fuel could be rerouted to Europe? Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar stated earlier that it’s unlikely the country would be able to send “huge quantities,” given that most of its present capacity is committed to Egypt, Jordan and the domestic market. Officials have said it would likely take a couple of years before the exports could be significantly expanded.
Is the infrastructure adequate? According to estimates, a significant increase in gas exports by Israel would require major long-term infrastructure investment. Moreover, Egypt’s extensive natural gas facilities on the Mediterranean have stood largely inactive since the country’s 2011 uprising.
Is there any other route for Israeli gas to the EU? The EastMed project, a seafloor pipeline linking Israel to Greece and Italy via Cyprus, could be another option for gas supplies to the European countries. The project, which is heavily supported by the United States, is expected to deliver around 10 bcm of natural gas to the European Union through Greece and Italy. However, the EastMed is expected to meet just 10-15% of the EU’s projected natural gas needs.
Could the volumes be sufficient for Europe? No. Europe’s total gas demand stands at 512 bcm a year. According to estimates, Israel’s supply, extracted from three offshore Mediterranean gas fields, will be nowhere near Russian capacity. Israel produces roughly 12 bcm of natural gas a year, though industry analysts say at least double that amount exists in unexploited reserves. Meanwhile, Egypt’s Idku and Damietta LNG plants have a total capacity of 12.2 million tons per year, which could provide around 17 bcm of natural gas. A significant boost in supplies would require the development of new large gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean area.
How much gas has Russia supplied to the EU? In 2021, the European Union imported 155 bcm of natural gas from Russia, accounting for about 45% of its gas imports, and close to 40% of its total gas consumption. The trade bloc has faced energy difficulties since imposing sweeping sanctions on its major gas supplier.
Can Europe replace its Russian gas? It won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap. The European Union will have to compete with Asia and other buyers for limited global supplies, and will pay higher prices – much higher. Europe relies on Russian natural gas to heat homes, cook meals, and generate electricity in most of the bloc’s 27 member states. Weaning the continent off cheap and abundant Russian gas would be a far more disruptive prospect for the region’s economy.
“إسرائيل” تستعين بشركة يونانية – بريطانية للتنقيب عن النفط والغاز في حقل “كاريش”، فما العلاقة التي تربط هذه الشركة بـ”إسرائيل”، ولماذا أبدت حماساً لعمليات التنقيب في الحقل؟
ما هي شركة “إنرجيان باور” مالكة باخرة التنقيب في كاريش؟
“على الشركات المالكة لسفينة التنقيب في كاريش أن تسحبها سريعاً، وعليها تحمل مسؤولية ما سيلحق بها من أضرار مادية وبشرية”.هذا ما جاء في كلمة الأمين العام لحزب الله، السيد حسن نصر الله، يوم الخميس، حين وصف تنصيبَ الشركة البريطانية اليونانية منصة في حقل “كاريش” لاستخراج الغاز خلال 3 أشهر، بأنّه اعتداء على لبنان.
بدأت حكاية شركة «إنيرجيان» اليونانية – البريطانية مع مياه البحر الفلسطيني المحتل قبل 3 أعوام، تحديداً في العام 2019، بعد أن جذبتها رائحة الغاز من السواحل اليونانية نحو سواحل الشرق الأوسط، ولا سيما حقل “كاريش” الشمالي، على بعد 90 كم من حيفا.
ويقع جزء من حقل “كاريش” ضمن الخط الحدودي رقم 29 الذي يعدّه المفاوضون اللبنانيون حدوداً لبنانية، وبالتالي فإنّ الأعمال التنقيبية التي تقوم بها هذه الشركة بتوصية من “إسرائيل” غير شرعية.
من هي شركة “إنرجيان باور” مالكة باخرة التنقيب؟
أنشأت شركة “إينرجيان باور” في أوائل العقد الأول من القرن الحالي، وهي شركة لاستخراج وتنقيب النفط والغاز تركز على منطقة شرقي البحر الأبيض المتوسط، وتنشط حالياً في اليونان و”إسرائيل”، وتتوسع إلى مواقع جديدة في أوروبا وشمال أفريقيا.
أسسها رجلا الأعمال اليونانيان ماتيوس ريجاس وستاثيس توبوزوغلو، وتم تسجيلها في قبرص، وفي العام 2018 أصبحت شركة عالمية محدودة مقرها المملكة المتحدة، ومدرجة في بورصتي لندن و”تل أبيب”.
نمت الشركة بشكل كبير في بضع سنوات، بفضل ضخ السيولة من عدد من المستثمرين العالميين الأميركيين والبريطانيين والإسرائيليين، وأكبر مساهم فيها هو صندوق “النقطة الثالثة”، الذي يملكه الملياردير الأميركي دان لوب الذي استفاد بشكل كبير من المقامرة على السندات اليونانية خلال أزمة الديون في البلاد.
وتمتلك الشركة مكاتب في اليونان (أثينا وكافالا) والمملكة المتحدة (لندن وأبردين) و”إسرائيل” (“تل أبيب” وحيفا) وقبرص ومصر والجبل الأسود، وفي بداية العام 2019، كان لديها 416 عاملاً، حوالى 80% منهم يعملون في مكاتب كافالا.
وتعتمد آلية عملها على امتيازات النفط والغاز التي تخولها البحث عن مصادر الطاقة في مناطق محددة، ويتم منح عقود “الامتياز” من قبل الحكومات، وتستمر لعقود، وقد تدفع الشركة رسوماً ثابتة مقابل الامتياز، و نسبة مئوية مما تنتجه أيضاً.
يأتي عمل الشركة على ثلاث مراحل:
-التنقيب: البحث عن النفط والغاز، باستخدام أدوات مثل المسوحات الزلزالية (التي تشمل الانفجارات وغيرها من التقنيات المدمرة)، ثم اختبار الحفر.
-التطوير: وضع البنية التحتية من منصات الحفر، وخطوط الأنابيب، وما إلى ذلك لاستخراج النفط والغاز.
-الإنتاج: حفر وضخ النفط أو الغاز، ويمكن أن تستغرق كل من مرحلتي الاستكشاف والتطوير وقتاً طويلاً، لذلك قد لا يبدأ الامتياز فعلياً في الإنتاج لعدة سنوات، وبعض الحقول قد لا تنتج أي شيء على الإطلاق.
وبمجرد استخراج النفط والغاز، يتم نقله باستخدام الشحن أو الأنابيب إلى العملاء، وتكريره إلى منتجات مختلفة، وهنا لا تشارك «إنيرجيان» في هذه المراحل النهائية، فهي تبيع منتجها مباشرة إلى شركات أخرى مسؤولة عن “offtake”، حتى خلال المراحل الأولية، لا تمتلك «إنيرجيان»” الموارد للقيام بكل العمل بنفسها، بل تتعاقد مع شركات شريكة ومساهمين ومستثمرين لإتمام عملياتها.
أين بدأت العمل؟
كانت صفقة «إنيرجيان» الأولى، ضمن آبار في حوض برينوس قبالة الساحل اليوناني الشمالي الشرقي في كافالا، ويتضمن الموقع 3 حقول نفط تسمى برينوس، وبرينوس نورث، وإبسيلون، إضافة إلى عقد منفصل في حقل غاز مجاور جنوب كافالا.
في العام 2018، بلغ حجم مبيعات الشركة حوالى 90.3 مليون دولار كان معظمها من بيع النفط الخام لشركة “بريتيش بتروليوم” من آبار حوض برينوس.
ووقعت شركة «إنيرجيان» صفقة لشراء أصول النفط والغاز لشركة “اديسون” الإيطالية، والتي تشمل آباراً نشطة في مصر والجزائر وإيطاليا وكرواتيا.
وتدعي شركة «إنيرجيان» أن لديها سجلاً “نظيفاً” في ما يتعلق بالتسريبات النفطية أثناء عمليات الاستخراج والتنقيب، لكن شركاءها في الحفر مسؤولون عن بعض أكثر كوارث النفط شهرة في العالم مثل شركة “هاليبيرتون”، التي كان لها دور في أكبر تسرب نفطي على الإطلاق في مياه أميركا الشمالية.
المعروف عن شركة «إنيرجيان» أنّ مالكيها ومستثمريها يراهنون على النفط والغاز، لذا كانوا يتطلعون دائماً إلى توسيع نشاطهم بشكل أكبر في حقول البحر الأبيض المتوسط، لذا أخذت الشركة تتطلع إلى مد نشاطها في حقول أكثر عبر البحر المتوسط، مثل حقلي “كاريش” و”تانين” اللذين يحتويان على أكثر من 5 أضعاف احتياطيات الأصول اليونانية الحالية للشركة، حسب تقاريرها.
علاقتها بـ “إسرائيل” وقصتها مع “كاريش”
تربط شركة «إنيرجيان» علاقات وثيقة بالحكومة الإسرائيلية، والشركات الإسرائيلية أيضاً، ويعتبر أكبر مقرض لها هو بنك “هبوعليم” الإسرائيلي، الذي يمول المستوطنات غير القانونية. وأحد مساهميها الرئيسيين هو “مجموعة التنمية أي بي دي “، وهي شركة قابضة تمتلك العديد من الشركات المتورطة في أعمال غير قانونية في الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة.
وعلى مدى سنوات، كانت هذه الشركة المشغل المحلي الوحيد لحفر آبار النفط في اليونان، ثم انتقل نشاطها إلى “إسرائيل” وفازت بعقود تشغيل حقلي غاز “كاريش” و”تانين”. كان هذا بداية لتوسع سريع للشركة، تم تمويله من قبل عدد من المستثمرين العالميين.
في العام 2017، استحوذت شركة «إنيرجيان» على امتيازات حقلي غاز “كاريش” و”تانين” قبالة سواحل البحر الفلسطيني المحتل، وبدأت حفر الآبار في الحقلين في آذار/مارس 2019، وتوقعت حينها البدء في الإنتاج عام 2021.
في نيسان/أبريل 2019، أعلنت «إنيرجيان» أنها حققت اكتشافاً جديداً للغاز في شمال “كاريش”، ما أدى إلى زيادة سعة الحقلين بشكل كبير، إذ تقدر إجمالي الاحتياطيات بنحو 297 مليون برميل.
وبحسب مخطط الشركة، بعد التنقيب والاستخراج سيذهب الغاز في البداية لتزويد السوق الإسرائيلية، وسيتم نقل الغاز إلى “إسرائيل” عبر خط أنابيب بدأت «إنيرجيان» ببنائه بالفعل، لكنه انتقل إلى شركة مملوكة للاحتلال تسمى “خط الغاز الطبيعي الإسرائيلي ([ي أن جي أل).
وتستخدم «إنيرجيان» سفينة متخصصة لاستغلال الحقول، بدلاً من المنصات الثابتة التقليدية أو بجانبها، وقالت الشركة إنّ السفينة المستخدمة في المياه المحتلة تم بناؤها في الصين وسنغافورة ووصلت مياه البحر المتوسط للتنقيب في حقل “كاريش”.
وبحسب صحيفة “هآرتس” الإسرائيلية، فإن “سلاح البحرية الإسرائيلي يقوم بحراسة المنصة”، وقام بتأمين انتقالها منذ خروجها من قناة السويس آتية من سنغافورة، حتى وصولها مياه الحقل.
European Union approval of the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, including the phasing out of Russian crude and petroleum products, is more likely among politicians, business leaders, economists and market experts. Caused a fierce debate about. Bruegel’s director, Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic think tank, said Guntram Wolf, a “treasure of war” or Europe is plunging into a recession with shocks of new energy prices and rising inflation.
Spiegel. Economists predict that businesses and consumers will feel a pinch of rising energy prices as well. Economists also predicted that the European Central Bank would be caught in a bond between tackling inflation by raising interest rates and keeping interest rates from rising, oil and gas market experts. “The new decision turns Russia into other markets and the EU refuses to expire energy contracts,” said Steffen Bukold, head of Energy Comment, a Hamburg-based research and consulting office.
Spiegel recalled that the EU’s attempt to ban the transportation of Russian oil through tankers owned by European companies could not be driven by the support of Greece and Cyprus. Resistance to ideas. Brussels agreed to ban insurance on Russia’s oil supply, but Moscow predicted that it would “probably find an insurance company from another region.”
A similar trick has already been done. In April, Bloomberg was sent by the British and Dutch energy giant Shell by mixing 49.99% Russian diesel and 50.01% non-Russian oil in the Baltic countries and sending supplies with the non-Russian mark. Reported on how to make “Latovia Blend” diesel fuel. West. According to Bloomberg, “many” oil companies and commodities traders apply tricks to meet European energy demand, while ensuring that Shell is not “subsidizing Vladimir Putin’s war machinery.” There is only one.
In 2021, nearly 40% of oil demand, 55% of gas and 53% of coal will depend on Russia for steel production and power generation, expressing serious concern about the economic implications of attempts to break these relationships. doing. Network agency Chairman Klaus Müller warned Germans of possible gas shortages, saying economic minister Robert Habeck could not eliminate the shortage of gasoline supplies.
In April, the German state-sponsored interdisciplinary institute, the Julich Research Center, said it would cut Russia’s gas supply by two-thirds (Brussels recommends) to help industrial companies fill the country’s gas storage. He warned that he would be forced to stop for several months. Because there are no alternative sources available. At the same time, the government encourages the general public to wear a sweater to keep them warm, not to wash them with hot water until a penny pinch, and to ride a bicycle to save gas. Friday’s new sanctions prohibit “buying, importing, or transferring crude oil.” “Specific petroleum products from Russia to the EU”.
A “phasing out” is expected to take 6 months for crude oil and 8 months for refined products. A “temporary exemption” will also be provided to oil pipelined to European countries in landlocked countries where Russia’s energy “has no viable alternative”, threatening Hungary to block restrictions indefinitely. A carve out was added later. “In addition, Bulgaria and Croatia will benefit from temporary criticisms of Russia’s imports of offshore crude and vacuum gas oil, respectively,” the EU directive said. Last month, Putin said Moscow could not stop Europe’s “economic suicide.” “We must proceed from practical and primarily our own economic interests” in order to respond to the “unexpectedly chaotic” decision made by our western partners in Russia.
Naval forces from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized two ships sailing under the Greek flag in the Persian Gulf on 27 May, in retaliation of the coordinated theft of its oil by Greece and the US.
Local sources have confirmed the ships’ names are the Delta Poseidon and Prudent Warrior, with just the former being operated by a Greek crew. They were seized near the Iranian ports of Bandar Lengeh and Asalouyeh.
The Prudent Warrior vessel loaded its cargo at Basrah, Iraq, and was on its way to the US. The Delta Poseidon also loaded its cargo at the same port, however its destination remains unknown.
According to AP, the US navy’s 5th Fleet said it was “looking into” the seizures, which came on the heels of Tehran threatening to take “punitive action” against Athens.
Earlier in the day, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss chargé d’affaires in order to lodge a complaint over Washington’s illegal seizure of its oil, which was confiscated from a Russian-operated Iranian tanker impounded by Greece the day before.
“The Swiss chargé d’affaires was summoned to convey Iran’s concern and strong protest over the continued violation of international laws and maritime conventions concerning free navigation and trade by the US administration,” Director-General of the Foreign Ministry’s department for US Affairs said in a statement.
Switzerland’s envoy is the official representative of the US in Tehran.
The Foreign Ministry also called for the immediate release of the tanker and the confiscated oil, as the Swiss chargé d’affaires assured officials that Iran’s message has been conveyed to US officials.
On 25 May, the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the Greek embassy chargé d’affaires in Tehran, explicitly condemning the seizure of the tanker and laying the responsibility on the Greek government, who it accused, alongside the US, of engaging in “maritime piracy.”
Iran’s Ports and Maritime Authority said that the vessel had to stop in Greek waters due to bad weather conditions and technical problems. However, the ship did not receive assistance and was instead seized by the Greek government.
A day later, the US seized the tanker’s oil cargo, and is reportedly shipping it to a US port aboard another vessel.
The illegitimate seizure was confirmed by a separate western source familiar with the matter, who added “that the cargo was transferred onto the Liberia-flagged tanker Ice Energy, which is operated by Greek shipping company Dynacom.”
Iran openly condemned the Greek decision, referring to it as an “unacceptable” surrender to US pressure.
This is not the first time the US illegally seizes Iranian oil in international waters. In August of 2020, the US seized four Iranian tankers headed for Venezuela in the Straits of Hormuz. According to reports, the Iranian oil was then sold for over $40 million.
The oil seizure comes as the sanctions-removal talks in Vienna have been stalled due to Washington’s unwillingness to meet Tehran’s conditions, such as the removal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) off the terrorist list.
“Now, we have reached a point [during the negotiations in Vienna] that if the American side makes a realistic decision, an agreement would be within reach… Zionists tell many lies about Iran’s nuclear issue, but Americans exactly know what they must do if they want to return to the JCPOA,” Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 26 May.
The Israeli media outlets continued reflecting the case of frustration prevailing in the occupation entity in light of the latest developments ‘locally’, regionally and internationally.
to begin with, Mossad chief appears in the worst situation of weakness after a cyber attack hacked his personal laptop, which exposes the electronic security of all the Israelis.
Moreover, the Iranian missile attack on the Zionist intelligence sites in Erbil and Tehran determination to strike again of the Mossad posts remain in Kurdistan indicate that Iran is engaging in a wider military confrontation with ‘Israel’.
Meanwhile, the United States is heading towards rejoining the Iranian nuclear, which would give Tehran an opportunity to improve its capabilities in the various fields of confrontation with Tel Aviv.
Last but not least, the scenes of the refugees escaping the war in Ukraine abandoned by the West have augmented the Israelis’ fear of a similar destiny in case of any war with the Resistance.
Amid such developments, Zionist politicians and journalists started proposing purchasing deterred territories in Greece and Uganda in order to evacuate the settlers into them during the war.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 