European Union

Ursula von der Leyen’s evangelism

On March 21st, President of the European Commission (read prime minister of the European Superstate Government) Ursula von der Leyen saw it fit to impress on Europeans – in a patronising, chaperon-like manner – the ugliness of racism that some of them display and indulge in. In a tweet, she is recorded to say that racism is ubiquitous, pervading our streets, and our workplaces and also penetrating institutions, which is the reason why the European Commission (government) has adopted the first ever EU Anti-Racist Action Plan. An ardent apostle of diversity, Ursula von der Leyen said that the Commission members were inspired upon seeing many Europeans taking to the street and shouting the slogan Black Lives Matter. She expressed her pride at the EU organizing the first ever European Anti-Racism Summit on 21st March and then went on to engage in threats aimed at racists all cross the Union, levelling at them (existing and not yet existing) criminal law provisions because – she explained as if in anticipation of possible accusations – racism could not be subsumed under the concept of free speech in – “our” as she put it – union. Who does she mean by our? Never mind. These anti-racist measures – continued the head of the EU – must be adopted by all the provinces (commonly referred to as member-states) because anti-racism is a founding principle of – again – our union, which is a red threat (obviously she meant thread) running through seventy years of history. Then, on a positive note (a piece of carrot after the stick) she waxed lyrical recalling the late eighties when eighty thousand young people had been asked to come up with a motto for “our” union and – surprise, surprise – they had chosen “Unity and Diversity”, surely without anybody prompting them to do so. At this point, Ursula von der Leyen spread her arms out, approvingly, as if she wanted to embrace the European Red Guards and she lavished praise on the politically savvy young people. What they had done was perfect, she said, what they had chosen reflected – as she put it – raison d’etre of the Union and its greatest aspiration: the Union’s starting point and the Union’s destination. Amen.
Continue reading →

Turkey: the Game Changer

The deal between Ankara and Moscow has been signed and sealed and the first shipments of the S-400 air defence system have just landed on Turkish soil, at a military airbase located at the vicinity of the country’s capital. The second-largest NATO army is acquiring weapons and materiel from a state that by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is viewed as inimical.

Turkey occupies an area which is bridging Europe with Asia and neighbouring some of the war-ridden countries like Iraq and Syria in the volatile region known as the Middle East. It is also strategically important for NATO because it controls the Straits between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and because it outflanks Russia from the south. A NATO member since 1952 Turkey – although a Third World country – wanted to remain a loyal member of the Alliance with ever closer ties to the Western world. Not only did Ankara join its troops to the NATO but also lent its territory to the pact. The reader will have remembered that it was the American missiles deployed to Turkish territory which caused anxiety at the Kremlin and induced Nikita Khrushchev to retaliate by deploying Soviet missiles to Cuba, which led to the international conflict threatening to culminate in a third world war. The strained relations between the two superpowers were only eased when both the Soviets withdrew their missiles from the largest island in the Caribic and the Americans removed theirs from Turkey.

Turkey’s membership in the Alliance has never meant that Ankara was a patsy in Washington’s hands. It skilfully guarded its sovereignty and pursued its own interests. Thus in 1974 Turkish armed forces landed in Northern Cyprus, establishing there of a separate Turkish state and a permanent – as yet – division of the island predominantly inhabited by Greeks. Thus Ankara dared to thwart the interest of another NATO member – Greece – and Athens could do nothing about it. Turkey was strategically too important and that is why it could afford to act independently of NATO’s most important allies.

Continue reading →