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« 2016-03-02 | Page d'accueil | 2016-03-04 »

jeudi, 03 mars 2016

ISIS is Already in Eastern Europe

An interview with Polish MEP Andrzej Zapałowski about the worsening situation in Ukraine and what it means for Europe's security as a whole.

The following is an interview with state security expert, Dr. Andrzej Zapałowski. He was formerly a member of the Polish and European parliaments, where in the latter he was Vice Chairman of the delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and a member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. At the moment he is a senior lecturer at the University of Rzeszow.

You have said that 70,000 prisoners out of a total of 140,000 are to be released in Ukraine. You also suggest that the melting pot of Ukrainian nationalists, released criminals, refugees infiltrated by ISIS, and an uncontrolled flow of weapons can be a threat to the whole Europe – starting from the border with Ukraine. Could you elaborate on this issue in the context of the wall that could potentially be built on the border between Poland and Ukraine?

In Ukraine there is a draft of a bill which proclaims amnesty for about 70,000 prisoners. The head of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine reports that within this group, about 1,000 murderers might be released. On top of that, there is an ongoing criminalisation of political life among the nationalist volunteer units in Ukraine. The nationalists have lost support from some of the oligarchs, so now they lack the necessary resources to continue. They do not answer directly to the Army or the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, so they have to take care of themselves. Therefore, they are trying to take over sectors that were previously dominated by organized crime. It turns out, for example, that a few kilometres of the Ukrainian-Slovak border have been overtaken by criminal groups, according to local media reports. We are dealing with a situation where not only is Ukraine the most corrupt country in Europe, and one of the most corrupt countries in the world, but is additionally a state in which successive groups are making profits from organized crime.

You have to remember that in the war in Donbas, Chechens who are accused of terrorist activities and of having associations with ISIS are fighting on the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainian Security Service estimates that at least 70–80 people might be linked to ISIS in Ukraine.

We know that ISIS and Ukraine have a common enemy: Russia. Turkey, in turn, supports ISIS, something which was recently confirmed by Russia. In this context, how do you understand the statement of the Ukrainian politician and leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, who said that Turkey is ready to consider supplying Ukraine with needed military equipment? In view of this, are we dealing with ISIS setting up in Eastern Ukraine, and thus in Europe?

ISIS is already in Eastern Europe. The Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion has been accused of blowing up pylons that carried electricity to Crimea. Turkey, which has considerable military potential, will probably not support the Tatars in Ukraine so much, but rather Ukraine directly, in an effort to intensify its military operations against Russia. The situation makes it clear that Turkey would be very keen on a Ukrainian offensive in Donbas, and therefore declares that it will provide the Ukrainian Army with modern, offensive military weapons. This is highly dangerous in the context of a further destabilisation of Eastern Europe.

Eight million immigrants will try to get to Europe this year, warns the German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Müller. What do you think will happen to Europe in the long term, in the context of such a large migration and the arrival of ISIS militants hiding among refugees?

It has been officially stated that during this year alone, 80,000 people have already fled to Greece. All these people will soon move through Bulgaria and the Romanian Carpathians and into Ukraine. I’m afraid that with such a deep economic collapse, the entire Ukrainian criminal underworld – and not only that – will make it possible to smuggle immigrants into Poland and Slovakia, and this will create a huge industry. In fact, the ships that will depart from Turkey by sailing through the Black Sea will eventually arrive at the Ukrainian ports and unload thousands of immigrants, who will later be transported to the Slovakian and Polish borders.

If Western Europe continues to put pressure on migration, we will face a situation where Alternative for Germany will have support on the level of several dozen percentage points, and France will elect a president like Ms. Le Pen. If, by the beginning of 2017, we see a big change in Western Europe, these immigrants will be sent back. The only question is where to. Some sub-Saharan African countries have openly declared that they will not take their citizens back, as in the case of the Afghan government (sic). Of course, some of the consequences will also be suffered by the members of the Visegrád Group.

The important issue here is a dynamic Catholicism that pushes Islam back. All these immigrants who are coming to Europe are not only followers of Islam, but they are also actively practicing this religion. These people are part of a mission to convert Europe to Islam, and perhaps this is why the centres which govern them insist that this first wave is arriving in countries that are already so atheistic that they have abandoned their Christian roots. This obviously makes them an easy target. In the context of a living Catholicism, Central Europe will thus witness a violent conflict between vital Catholicism and dynamic Islam.

About The Author

Profile photo of Konrad Stachnio
Konrad Stachnio

Konrad Stachnio is a journalist and political analyst who is working with several different media outlets, most recently New Eastern Outlook.

00:05 Publié dans Actualité, Affaires européennes, Entretiens, Géopolitique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : tchétchènes, europe, affaires européennes, état islamique, isis, eiil, russie, ukraine, europe orientale, géopolitique, politique internationale, islamisme, fondamentalisme islamiste | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

Nordicism Today

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Nordicism Today

Guillaume Durocher

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

In general, northwest European nations and nations of predominantly northwest European descent (such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), have in the modern era been more prosperous, cohesive, dynamic, and civil than other European nations. There is a downright boring regularity with which international organizations and think-tanks report, year after year, that the “nicest” places to live are Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Canada. The most economically prosperous and dynamic Western countries consistently include the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany (the latter despite absorbing an economically deformed and damaged East Germany).

The relationship between northwest Europeans and other Europeans in some respects parallels that between Europeans and non-Europeans: There is often pronounced envy for the Northwest Europeans’ perceived success, often seesawing between imperfect imitation and nativist self-assertion.

There are something like concentric circles of self-confidence and envy as one goes from the northwest European core outwards. This is particularly evident in the politics of the European Union, in which tensions and crises often reflect heterogeneity between European nations.

Thus France, despite being a fairly strong performer generally, looks longingly upon German economic competitiveness. French elites have also been jealous of German economic discipline in avoiding recourse to inflation and monetary devaluations. French elites’ push to create the euro common currency was in part motivated by a desire to lock France into a Germany-style monetary system in which devaluations and inflation would be materially impossible, thus, they thought, forcing Teutonic discipline and virtue upon the country.

Italy, with a prosperous northern part of the country and an underperforming south, is much the same. The Italians adhere to the European Union as a way of achieving a northern European quality of life and civility. Italian participation in the Eurozone was, quite explicitly, predicated on a desire to abandon the undisciplined chaos of Italian parliamentary politics and its associated inflation and deficits. Italian elites quite self-consciously chose, instead, to subject their country to a semi-authoritarian European macroeconomic regime, in the hope of acquiring German-style monetary and budgetary disciplines.

One could say the same thing of Spain, Portugal, Greece, and indeed most of the Balkans, such as Romania and Bulgaria. In each case, the nation’s economics are mediocre and her politics and society are variably corrupt, and each longs to live like northern Europeans by associating with them through the European Union. The same is true for some prospective nations seeking to join the Union such as Ukraine, Serbia, and Moldova. They all hope northwest European virtue will rub off on them as a result of socialization in a joint polity.

One can enlarge the circle further still: Russia has long been torn between Westernizing and nativist tendencies. No doubt Nikolai Trubetzkoy has written most eloquently on the Sisyphean futility of aping northwest Europeans (whom he called “Romano-Germans”):

Europeanized [i.e. Westernizing] nations, finding it impossible to keep pace with the Romano-Germans and so gradually falling behind, try to catch up from time to time by attempting long leaps. Such leaps distort the entire course of historical development. A nation must cover very quickly a distance that the Romano-Germans covered gradually and over a much longer period of time. It must skip several historical rungs and create overnight, ex abrupto, what arose in Romano-Germanic nations as a result of a “series of historical changes”. The consequences of such “leaping” evolution are terrible. Every leap is followed by a period of apparent (from the European standpoint) stagnation, when it is necessary to bring order to the culture, to coordinate the results achieved by a leap in a particular area with other elements of the culture. During this period of “stagnation”, the nation again falls even farther behind. The histories of Europeanized nations are always characterized by brief periods of apparent “progress”, alternating with more or less protracted periods of “stagnation”. In destroying the wholeness and the unbroken incrementalism of the historical process, such historical leaps also disrupt tradition, which is already fragile in a Europeanized nation.

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Let us emphasize: unbroken tradition is a prerequisite for normal evolution. Leaps and jumps create a temporary illusion that the “common European level of civilization” has been achieved, but they cannot advance a nation in the true sense of the word. Leaping evolution wastes national energies, which are already overburdened owing to the very existence of Europeanization. Just as a person who, in trying to keep pace with a speedier companion, will become exhausted and collapse after resorting to long jumps to catch up, so a Europeanized nation will perish after choosing such an evolutionary path and squandering there its national energies. And all of this will happen while faith in oneself is lost, and without the sustaining sense of national unity which was destroyed long before by the fact of Europeanization.

No doubt, trying to acquire northwest European habits through socialization is not an entirely futile idea. But personally, I tend to side with Trubetzkoy and Mircea Eliade in thinking that each European nation should embrace its own personality, rather than lose self-confidence in setting up (northwestern) “Europe” as the ultimate ideal and wasting energies in crudely imitating this imagined model. Nothing is possible, for either a man or a nation, without self-knowledge and self-esteem.

Finally, beyond Europe, Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk made a strategic decision to shed her imperial, Islamic, and Middle Eastern heritage in favor “joining Europe” with the creation of a secular French-style nation-state. This ambition has failed, Turkey remaining what Samuel Huntington called a “cleft country” torn between civilizations, perpetually kept out of the European Union, and increasingly returning to its Islamic and Middle Eastern roots under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This is visible, not least, in the Turks’ partial abandonment of secularism and their almost Semitic attachment to Turkish immigrants and their descendants in the West. Erdoğan explicitly considers ethnic Turks in the West, regardless of whether they are first generation immigrants or born there, to be an extension of his nation (in this, the Turkish attitude is identical to that of North African Arab governemnts).

Conversely, northwest European countries are often the most skeptical of the EU project. Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland have all opted out of parts of the European Union. These countries, being prosperous and civil on their own, do not feel the need for association with other Europeans to improve their lot and are more likely to have the self-confidence to believe they can get by just fine on their own.

There is another aspect of northwest Europeans which is worth consideration: Their nations are consistently the most “pozzed.” Those nations which are the most fanatical and authoritarian in pursuing the imperatives of liberal-egalitarian and multiculturalist ideology, are typically of northwest European stock. Sweden’s notorious excesses are roundly mocked. Canada’s baby-faced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a caricature of an effeminate liberal, almost every day performing a new emasculating profession of Potemkin equality, of literally crying to disown his ancestors in the hope of appeasing Amerindians, and of justifying feminist policies on the utterly mindless grounds that “it’s [the current year]!” (Trudeau’s profession of egalitarianism is suspect by the fact that, like Hillary Clinton, he is only a senior politician by being the heir of a political family. His egalitarianism is shown to be an outright fraud by his attack on the BDS movement, which argues for relatively minor economic sanctions on Israel until the Jewish state lives up to the West’s supposed democratic ideals and ceases to oppress the Palestinians. Hence Trudeau has no interest in applying egalitarianism on the world’s most ethnocentric and most privileged ethnic group.) Germany has been the most enthusiastic major European nation in welcoming millions of uneducated, often illiterate, low-IQ military-age African and Islamic males. Great Britain and the United States are in general not far behind in proudly advertising their embrace of the suicide cult.

Correlation does not always imply causation. The roots of northwest Europeans performance and degeneracy are no doubt very complex and difficult to disentangle. I have no interest in resurrecting crude Nordicist theories, extremist interpretation of which have, no doubt, been the among the most important causes for European fratricide and collapse in the twentieth century.

But I also believe that the truth should never fear investigation. It seems too much to think all these correlations are mere coincidences. The speculation of many human biodiversity scholars about the so-called “Hajnal line” often smacks as a euphemism, conscious or not, of Nordicism. Speaking of which, the quite obvious genetic cluster formed by northwest European nations just happens to largely coincide with the outlines of the Hajnal line.

All this fits rather neatly with the traditional thesis that northwest Europeans — having evolved during the Ice Age in a harsh environment with low population density — would have been selected from relatively lower ethnocentrism, and possibly for moralistic cooperation, defined by cultural group norms rather than ethnocentric boundaries. It would certainly predict lower corruption among northwest European nations and higher ethnocentrism and relatively intractable corruption everywhere else. No doubt northwest Europeans’ relative success in creating prosperous and comfortable societies, also tends to reduce the ethnocentric instinct and lower their guard to the threats posed by multiculturalism.

In any event, all this should be freely investigated.

As an addendum, I would stress that I have no interest in advocating “Nordic superiority.” Firstly, parochialism and the narcissism of small differences dividing our nations has been disastrous in the past and will be equally disastrous if maintained in the future. Genetic differences among Europeans remain absolutely minuscule compared to differences between continents, and most pointedly between us and rising China or the exploding populations of Africa and the Ummah.

Secondly, no doubt there are unique desirable adaptations among each European group, which should be preserved, identified, and cultivated. What’s more, what is evolutionarily adaptive is highly contextual, depending on often fluctuating environment. Northwest Europeans may have traits which fostered their dynamism and success in the past, but today these same traits seem to make them uniquely vulnerable to egalitarian and multiculturalist propaganda, and are making them wreck their own nations with the greatest enthusiasm. On current trends, we can safely say that within a hundred years America, Anglo-Canada, Quebec, Germany, Great Britain, France, the Benelux countries, and the Nordic countries will simply cease to exist as nations. The existential prospects for eastern and southern European nations, not forgetting Argentina, are infinitely brighter.

Céline believed that the White race’s fate was sealed with Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad. Adolf Hitler failed perhaps above all because of his contempt for the Slavs, a catastrophic error of doctrine for which he, his Germany, and all of Europe paid then and are paying still an incalculable price. And yet — what irony! — today these same Slavs seem to be those most likely to survive this century and carry on the torch of European civilization.

 

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La quête du soft power

La quête du soft power

Une notion clé de la stratégie US
 
par François-Bernard Huyghe
Ex: http///www.huyghe.fr

image.php.jpgL’inventeur de l’expression est Joseph S. Nye, sous-secrétaire d’État à la Défense sous Clinton. Pour lui, les États-Unis prédominent déjà grâce au pouvoir « hard », celui de la carotte (les récompenses) ou du bâton (la menace) autrement dit le dollar et l’US Army. Mais une action indirecte peut amener les autres pays à se comporter conformément aux désirs et intérêts US. Dans "Bound top lead", Nye affirmait que cette façon de diriger soft, et qui retraduisait peu ou prou la notion européenne d’influence diplomatique et stratégique, était la voie de l’avenir.

Désormais un État ne prédominerait plus par la contrainte, mais par son attractivité, et sa capacité d’incarner des valeurs universelles. En somme, le soft power suppose que l’autre veuille suivre un modèle, s’allier avec un gouvernement et croie en son discours et en son système.

Cette façon d’inciter autrui à « vouloir ce que vous voulez » suppose, ajoute-t-il, la capacité de «faire l’agenda de la politique mondiale et d’attirer les autres ». Le soft power combine donc initiative diplomatique, séduction d’une image et propagation de valeurs. L’aspect diplomatique concerne la capacité américaine de trouver des alliés pour soutenir ses initiatives et défendre ses thèses dans les organisations internationales, bref de faire apparaître sa politique comme moins unilatérale. La politique d’image consiste à donner une « vraie vision » de la réalité américaine ou de l’american way of life et à combattre les légendes que répandent ses adversaires, notamment en se dotant de médias s’adressant directement aux populations concernées par dessus la tête de leurs gouvernements : c’est l’idée qui a présidé à la création de radios comme Radio Free Europe ou de télévisions comme la chaîne arabophone al Hurrah. Quant à la diffusion des valeurs, de liberté, de démocratie, de confiance dans le marché et dans l’initiative, d’optimisme technologique, etc., il s’agit là d’une véritable conquête idéologique et culturelle . Guerre pour laquelle les Américains croient disposer d’atouts avec l’industrie de la communication et la culture "mainstream", à commencer par Hollywood,

Cette notion de soft power née dans la décennie 1990, en reflète la confiance en l’élargissement (enlargment) du modèle politique, économique et culturel US. Mais, malgré les récents conflits et la "guerre globale contre le terrorisme", la notion de soft-power reste centrale dans le débat stratégique outre-Atlantique (et d'ailleurs dans pas mal de pays dont la Chine ou l'Inde qui ont importé la notion).

19722559.jpgLa vision du soft power se heurte ou se mélange souvent à une autre notion plus populaire chez les Républicains, celle de "diplomatie publique". Cette dernière renvoie aux méthodes de guerre idéologique contre l'Urss employée dès la présidence d'Eisenhower et auxquelles Reagan prêtait un grand rôle dans sa victoire dans la guerre froide : créer des radios qui émettent dans la langue de l'adversaire et jusque sur son territoire (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe...), encourager les mouvements intellectuels anticommunistes, accueillir et garder le contact avec de jeunes étrangers prometteurs (young leaders)supposés pro-Américains. Évidemment la diplomatie publique a retrouvé une nouvelle jeunesse après le onze septembre.

Et, chez les démocrates, on prône désormais un "smart power", une autre idée d Nye, une stratégie mêlant les deux éléments de puissance et d'influence. Mais que l’on parle de soft power ou de diplomatie publique, ces notions relèvent un peu de l’incantation. Il ne suffit pas de proclamer que l’on renonce au pouvoir « hard » de la coercition pour qu’effectivement l’attraction du modèle US suffise à aplanir toutes les difficultés.

Cela supposerait des progrès dans au moins trois domaines :

1 L’attraction du modèle américain (on peut souhaiter atteindre le niveau de prospérité ou de technologie de l’hyperpuissance sans en imiter les moeurs ou la culture, et moins encore s’aligner sur sa politique).

2. La capacité de la diplomatie US de recueillir des soutiens en faveur de ses objectifs. Or après les expériences de la « vitrine démocratique » que les USA voulaient établir au Moyen Orient ou les faux espoirs du printemps arabe, il n’est pas sûr que cette capacité s’accroisse.

3. La promotion de l’image des USA, à la façon d’une marque dont il faut faire la « com » et dont on améliore l’image. Or l’antiaméricanisme n’a jamais été aussi puissant dans le monde.

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Drieu: le Jeune Européen

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Juste avant la débâcle de 1940, à un moment dramatique où il se penche sur son passé, il éprouve le besoin de faire le point sur ses premières œuvres et de publier un recueil de ses Écrits de Jeunesse : deux recueils de poèmes de guerre, Interrogation (1917) et Fond de cantine (1920) ; et deux recueils d’essais et de textes divers, La Suite dans les idées (1927) et Le Jeune Européen (1927). Mais, toujours insatisfait de lui-même, il croit nécessaire d’en retravailler la formulation, perdant ainsi au passage la fraîcheur de ses premières sensations ; cela nuit particulièrement à la nouvelle version de ses poèmes.

Notre nouvelle édition des Écrits de jeunesse reste fidèle au projet de l’écrivain, mais c’est un nouveau livre, puisque nous avons préféré sauvegarder la verdeur des textes originaux, plutôt que de nous ranger aux corrections a priori discutables de l’âge mûr.

Bouleversés par leur expérience atroce de la « Grande Guerre », déçus par le morne immobilisme du vieux monde qu’ils voient retomber dans l’ornière de ses petites habitudes, les jeunes écrivains de cette génération espèrent encore pouvoir donner un sens à une modernité emportée par un perpétuel mouvement d’accélération dans le vide.

Malgré quelques incertitudes juvéniles, ces courts textes de Drieu incarnent avec vigueur cet esprit d’invention et cette sincérité, réalisant une subtile combinaison entre excentricités dadaïstes, enthousiasme futuriste pour l’innovation technique et révolte surréaliste, tout en maintenant vivace le souvenir de la tradition classique.

Professeur littérature comparée, Julien Hervier a notamment édité et présenté le Journal 1939-1945 de Drieu la Rochelle (Gallimard, 2012) et la correspondance de ce dernier avec Victoria Ocampo : Lettres d’un amour défunt (Bartillat, 2009, Prix Sévigné 2010).

Source: http://zentropa.info

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Syria, ultimo bastione di Libertà

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Presseschau - März 2016

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