The 4 Freedoms Library2024-03-28T15:52:45ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLakehttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/54802804?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://4freedoms.com/group/un/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=097vqiv65r6ui&feed=yes&xn_auth=noReplacement Migration Policy of the UNtag:4freedoms.com,2019-02-27:3766518:Topic:2001682019-02-27T03:18:52.725ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>The original policy document is attached.</p>
<p>The original policy document is attached.</p> The UN is making migration a human righttag:4freedoms.com,2018-11-23:3766518:Topic:1985972018-11-23T06:07:29.623ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MSbzav6UITA?rel=0&wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MSbzav6UITA?rel=0&wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> NATO - collected articlestag:4freedoms.com,2017-12-24:3766518:Topic:1929482017-12-24T15:57:11.106ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<h3 class="edgtf-post-title entry-title">Beyond NATO</h3>
<div class="edgtf-post-info"><div class="edgtf-post-info-author">by <a class="edgtf-post-info-author-link" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/author/npi/">The National Policy Institute</a> December 6, 2017</div>
</div>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>The North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being on April 4, 1949, in Washington, DC. NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, described its purpose with rare candor: “to keep the…</p>
<h3 class="edgtf-post-title entry-title">Beyond NATO</h3>
<div class="edgtf-post-info"><div class="edgtf-post-info-author">by <a class="edgtf-post-info-author-link" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/author/npi/">The National Policy Institute</a> December 6, 2017</div>
</div>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>The North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being on April 4, 1949, in Washington, DC. NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, described its purpose with rare candor: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”<sup><a id="fnr1" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn1" name="fnr1">1</a></sup></p>
<p>Today, some 67 years after the signing of the treaty and 77 years after the war that precipitated it, it is time to take a hard look at NATO and reach an inevitable conclusion—it has to go.</p>
<p>The geopolitical enemies that justified the creation of NATO—National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union—have long since disappeared from the world stage. They have been replaced by new threats, both conventional and unconventional, that cannot be adequately faced through NATO and are, indeed, exacerbated by NATO’s antiquated defense orientation. There is a great deal of truth to Richard Sakwa’s caustic assessment that Washington is trapped in a “fateful geographical paradox—that Nato exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”<sup><a id="fnr2" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn2" name="fnr2">2</a></sup></p>
<p>For the good of the United States and our allies in Europe, NATO must be dismantled and replaced with a new, updated organization prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century.</p>
<h2>The Origins of “Atlanticism”</h2>
<p>NATO, like most treaties, is inescapably a product of its time. The Atlanticist school of thought was based on the idea of a strategic bond between the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe.<sup><a id="fnr3" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn3" name="fnr3">3</a></sup><span> </span>But this no longer has the hard geopolitical grounding it did in the days of the Interwar and Cold War periods. There is no longer a hostile superpower on the eastern edge of the Atlantic sphere. And the familiar binary of “Freedom vs. Socialism” is no longer a useful model for describing the ideological and political divisions in today’s world.</p>
<p>Reality has moved on, but Atlanticism has stayed put.</p>
<h3>1. Hitler’s Germany</h3>
<p>Adolf Hitler’s Germany was the main threat to Atlanticist (that is, British, French, and American) power up until the end of the Second World War in 1945. Despite Germany’s leniency towards retreating British forces in the early days of the war, and its attempts at a reconciliation with London, Churchill’s Britain was fundamentally unable to accept a peace agreement.<sup><a id="fnr4" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn4" name="fnr4">4</a></sup></p>
<p>The continuation of the war required a willing ally in the United States, provided by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.</p>
<p>Lend-Lease and the Atlantic Charter of 1941 were early indications of this Atlantic alignment against continental power (centered in Berlin). The “Allies” coalition and United Nations followed, and were crystallized in postwar NATO. The Atlantic Charter was ratified by Washington and London on August 14, 1941—months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ full entrance into the war. Lend-Lease, which supplied materiel to the UK, France, China, and Soviet Union, was begun even earlier, in March of that year. While Lend-Lease demonstrated Washington’s commitment to defeating Germany, the Atlantic Charter outlined the Atlanticist vision of the world<span> </span><em>after</em><span> </span>the war: free trade, freedom of the seas, “self-determination” of individual nation-states (with echoes of The League of Nations and Woodrow Wilson), and global cooperation for social welfare and the disarmament of “aggressor states.”<sup><a id="fnr5" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn5" name="fnr5">5</a></sup></p>
<p>While the Allies were assembled primarily to defeat Germany, NATO was designed to keep it defeated. And after near-total physical destruction in 1944–45, the replacement of existing German political institutions with U.S.-created ones, and an extensive policy of “de-nazification,” West Germany became a U.S. protectorate. (An analogous process with East Germany occurred in the Soviet sphere.) Put bluntly, Germany was humiliated, divided, and neutered. And even after reunification in 1990, it has never presented a real threat to Washington’s objectives.</p>
<h3>2. Stalin’s Russia</h3>
<p>While Germany inspired NATO’s precursors, Stalin’s Soviet Union inspired NATO itself.<sup><a id="fnr6" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn6" name="fnr6">6</a></sup><span> </span>After extensive cooperation with the Atlantic powers during the Second World War, the USSR became the chief competitor to the United States, Britain, and France immediately following 1945. In the wake of the annihilation of Hitler’s Germany, the Soviet Union became such a threat that the Allies developed a contingency plan “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire.”<sup><a id="fnr7" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn7" name="fnr7">7</a></sup><span> </span>Though this plan remained unimplemented due to its low odds of success—and potentially catastrophic consequences—the geopolitical balance of power between the two superpowers (the U.S. and the USSR) was set in stone for the next four decades. The Cold War had begun.</p>
<p>Predictable economic, political, and moral problems eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the chaotic period of 1989–91.<sup><a id="fnr8" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn8" name="fnr8">8</a></sup><span> </span>The Russian Federation, the legal successor state to the USSR, was half the size of its predecessor in population. American interests quickly waged economic war on a weakened Russia, manipulated major elections<sup><a id="fnr9" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn9" name="fnr9">9</a></sup>, and expanded the influence of NATO and U.S.-backed organizations like the European Union, all the way into former Soviet states on Russia’s border.</p>
<p>In February 1990—after the Berlin Wall had been dismantled but before the Soviet Union had dissolved—Washington and Moscow negotiated the reunification process for Germany. West Germany would effectively absorb East, and the new state would enter NATO; however, James Baker (George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of State) offered “ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward,” according to declassified transcripts.<sup><a id="fnr10" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn10" name="fnr10">10</a></sup></p>
<p>Baker’s “Not one inch eastward” was a promise Washington was unwilling to keep. By the turn of the century, NATO membership had been offered to Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, followed a few years later by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. This was accompanied by NATO’s “humanitarian” bombing campaign in Yugoslavia (a traditional Russian ally), and Washington’s attempts, in conjunction with various non-governmental organizations, to inspire changes of regime in various countries in the former Soviet sphere (the “Color Revolutions”).<sup><a id="fnr11" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn11" name="fnr11">11</a></sup></p>
<p>It is understandable that Russian foreign-policy makers view NATO, not as a “defensive” organization, but as one bent on encircling Russia, perhaps even engaging in regime change in Moscow. Moreover, despite the American and Western European media’s depiction of Russian military activity in Ukraine and Syria as “aggressive,” the geopolitical reality is that they are last-ditch attempts to prevent U.S. encroachment into Russia’s remaining circle of influence around its own borders and few foreign military bases. A Russian invasion of Western Europe, let alone the American mainland, is the stuff of a fever dream or Hollywood blockbuster.</p>
<h2>New Enemies, New Threats</h2>
<p>While Germany has been remade into a vassal and Russia, displaced from superpower status<sup><a id="fnr12" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn12" name="fnr12">12</a></sup>, threats to the United States and Europe have not subsided—they’ve multiplied. The new threats do not come from traditional European great powers, however, but from a number of non-European states and unconventional non-state actors. History has not ended, as Francis Fukyama imagined in the 1990s<sup><a id="fnr13" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn13" name="fnr13">13</a></sup>, but has taken unforeseen and unpredictable turns.</p>
<h3>1. The Specter of Radical Islam</h3>
<p>The morning of September 11, 2001, marked a turning point in America’s place in the world. Radical Islamic terrorism— inspired by Wahhabi Islam out of Saudi Arabia—established itself as a major threat to Western hegemony and set the stage for the next decade of American foreign policy.<sup><a id="fnr14" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn14" name="fnr14">14</a></sup></p>
<p>Islamic terrorism, as it is understood today, did not exist during the creation of NATO in 1949, and was effectively unthinkable. Arab states spent the Cold War mostly aligned with the atheist Soviet Union, and they flirted with secular pan-Arab nationalism (the Ba-ath Party, founded in 1947 and existing to this day, being a prime example). It was not until the late 1970s that the seeds of contemporary Islamic terrorism were sown, ironically, largely by the U.S. and its NATO allies.<sup><a id="fnr15" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn15" name="fnr15">15</a></sup></p>
<p>Even before the Soviet Union’s ill-advised entrance into Afghanistan in 1979, Washington had funded and trained radical Muslim insurgents in the region.<sup><a id="fnr16" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn16" name="fnr16">16</a></sup>During the 10-year Soviet-Afghan War, the U.S. used these non-state actors (“the Mujahideen”) as pawns to be played against a greater power. It was a strategy with terrible unintended consequences, as the networks and individuals (which included none other than Osama bin Laden) would soon exchange one “Great Satan” for another.</p>
<p>After two major U.S. wars in the Muslim world and an international “War on Terror” that has stretched on more than a decade, radical Islamism has not been defeated; it has exploded. Buoyed and supported discreetly by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Western (particularly U.S.) intelligence agencies playing fast-and-loose with Islamic proxy groups, Islamic terrorists have attained a greater position than ever before. This dangerous strategy is particularly obvious in the current Syrian war.</p>
<p>Their reach is evidenced by more frequent, more violent, and more brazen attacks on civilian and military targets in France, Germany, Belgium, and the U.S. mainland, such as the recent atrocities committed in Paris, Nice, and San Bernardino. NATO’s conventional military structure is ill suited for dealing with non-state threats like these, to put it mildly. Garrisons stretched across the European continent—which made NATO powerful in confronting the Soviet Union—are close to useless in addressing the challenge of Islamic terrorism.</p>
<h3>2. Turkey—A Dangerous Ally</h3>
<p>In 1951, Turkey joined NATO as a junior partner. Today, an increasingly Islamist and assertive Turkey, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dreams of re-creating the Ottoman Empire.<sup><a id="fnr17" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn17" name="fnr17">17</a></sup><span> </span>Erdogan’s moves have directly supported and emboldened radical Islamic terrorist groups, destabilized the Middle East, and threatened the safety of millions of Europeans who are supposedly under U.S. protection.</p>
<p>Turkey’s substantial support of the Islamic State (IS) and other criminal groups in Syria is an open secret.<sup><a id="fnr18" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn18" name="fnr18">18</a></sup><span> </span>Moreover, Turkey’s complicity in the 2015–16 “refugee” crisis continues to endanger Europeans and Americans. Its control over the flow of millions of non-European migrants who want to reach Europe is an unacceptable bargaining chip that has corroded European sovereignty and security. Ankara has exploited its geographic location, promising to cut the refugee flow for billions of Euros in aid and accelerated EU membership talks.<sup><a id="fnr19" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn19" name="fnr19">19</a></sup><span> </span>Attempts by Turkey to reassert its erstwhile dominance over the Balkan Peninsula (which includes Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and Greece) can be expected if NATO remains as it is.</p>
<h3>3. Managing the Rise of China</h3>
<p>Enmeshed in a brutal civil war until 1950, China was not an immediate threat to U.S. or European interests, despite the eventual victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist forces over the nationalist Kuomintang and the alignment of China with the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>China’s fortunes turned around considerably in the 1970s under the reign of Deng Xiaoping, following the death of Chairman Mao. China was on the rise as early as 1971–72, with the transfer of the permanent Chinese seat on the United Nations Security Council from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China and U.S. President Richard Nixon’s famous “visit to China.”<sup><a id="fnr20" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn20" name="fnr20">20</a></sup></p>
<p>Today, with the world’s largest population, China’s economy is greater than the United States by some measures.<sup><a id="fnr21" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn21" name="fnr21">21</a></sup><span> </span>The Chinese leadership is putting its newfound might to use militarily, testing their reach in the South China Sea and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Speculation about a Chinese superpower has not been unfounded. Though economic relations are good and military confrontation is unlikely, China’s trajectory puts it on a direct collision course with the U.S. presence in Asia, in the form of military installations in Japan and South Korea. Indeed, being that America and China have achieved such economic interdependence —a relationship commonly known as “Chimerica”–Washington should seriously consider continuing such a presence, which can only be viewed by Beijing as a threat or expression of superiority.</p>
<p>Chinese intelligence operations and cyber-warfare will only intensify in the United States and NATO-aligned countries as time goes on. Much as with terrorism, NATO is neither equipped nor designed to deal with this kind of threat coming from this region of the world.</p>
<h3>4. The Collapse of Mexico</h3>
<p>Mexico has never been a paragon of stability and security, but the total collapse of the Mexican state and surrender to narco-terrorists and drug cartels in the last 20 years is unprecedented. With a relatively unguarded 2,000-mile border with the United States, Mexico’s colossal drug trade and the associated violence have spilled over into the U.S.<sup><a id="fnr22" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn22" name="fnr22">22</a></sup><span> </span>Such chaos has rendered some areas of the United States effectively controlled by Mexican drug cartels, according to local law enforcement.<sup><a id="fnr23" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn23" name="fnr23">23</a></sup>This violation of national sovereignty should be of paramount concern, but goes unaddressed, while Washington pursues spectacular boondoggles in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.</p>
<p>The outdated, Eurasian orientation of NATO has more than a little to do with this failure of defense policy. The threat posed by non-state actors in Mexico to the United States homeland is not just outside the bounds of NATO but unrecognizable to it. Without a major change in defense and foreign policy, particularly policy regarding NATO, incursions across the U.S. border will only increase without any way for U.S. defense forces to reorient themselves away from Eurasia and towards Central America.</p>
<h2>Replacing NATO</h2>
<p>In the seven decades since the formation of NATO, the greatest threats to U.S. and European security have shifted from Russia and Germany to the Middle East, China, and Mexico. The dissolution of NATO would require a new treaty or set of treaties to formalize a foreign policy current with the latest geopolitical developments.</p>
<p>This new defense orientation would require the following three key principles.</p>
<h3>1. Cooperation with Russia</h3>
<p>American policy towards Russia since 1991 has consistently been one of aggression, typically cloaked under the guises of economic and political “development.” Based largely off Cold War inertia, this policy culminated in the 2013–14 U.S.-backed coup in neighboring Ukraine, which threw the country into chaos and prompted a military response from Russia.<sup><a id="fnr24" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn24" name="fnr24">24</a></sup></p>
<p>The threat of nuclear war—Russia inherited the Soviet Union’s entire arsenal—precludes an attempt to intimidate or force Russia into submission. The threats from Islamic terrorism, a rising Turkey, and an ascendant China require cooperation with the only significant power in the region with major exposure to all three—Russia.</p>
<p>Recognition of the changes in the security situation since 1949 requires sincere cooperation with Russia and the cession of Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, and Central Asia. A stable power equilibrium will need to be reached to defend against external threats common to both the U.S. and Russia.</p>
<h3>2. Reviving Western Europe</h3>
<p>Western Europe has depended heavily on the U.S. military for defense since the end of the Second World War. Size and spending of the U.S. military dwarf those of Washington’s closest European allies and former colonial powers.<sup><a id="fnr25" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn25" name="fnr25">25</a></sup></p>
<p>With the Soviet Union broken up and Russia returned to its traditional status, it is time to also break up the unnecessary American “empire” in Europe. The dissolution of NATO must send a strong message to Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the rest of Europe that they must defend themselves.</p>
<p>The defense of Europe from Soviet Communism required tremendous American might and a unified military command, but the threats faced by Europe today require strong national militaries, intelligence services, and borders. Cooperation between the U.S., Europe, and Russia must be done on the basis of sovereign states with mutual interests, not clients servicing behemoths and far-off imperial capitals.</p>
<p>Europeans, in turn, must get tough and recognize that the American shield they have lived under for some 70 years will, eventually, vanish, due to Washington’s unwillingness to maintain Cold War-era military structures or its bankruptcy.</p>
<h3>3. An Eye to Common Threats</h3>
<p>The threats to Atlantic security outlined above—Islamic terrorism, Turkey, and China—also directly threaten the states of Europe and Russia. (Mexico is a North American problem.)</p>
<p>Europe and Russia<sup><a id="fnr26" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn26" name="fnr26">26</a></sup><span> </span>are prime targets of Islamic radicals in the Middle East, both due to interventions in the Middle East and large, troubling Muslim minorities at home that provide safe haven to terrorists. Russia’s bipolar relationship with Erdogan’s Turkey is well-known, as is Europe’s combative and losing diplomatic war against him. China, though a tentative ally of Russia, is eyeing sparsely-populated Siberia.<sup><a id="fnr27" class="footnote" title="see footnote" href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/#fn27" name="fnr27">27</a></sup><span> </span>Chinese money flows freely into Europe, buying property and influence.</p>
<p>A post-NATO U.S. foreign policy needs to be based on countering the common threats faced by the U.S., our European allies, and the Russian Federation.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The change in the geopolitical situation since 1991 demands the dissolution of NATO and a common pan-European defense policy that allows the United States, Europe, and Russia to work as allies against clear and rising threats from across the globe, rather than repeat the unsustainable and outdated dynamics of the Cold War.</p>
<p>While the 20th century might have demanded NATO, the 21st century requires something very different. In this regard, it’s helpful to return to Lord Ismay’s famous trinity of “out,” “down,” and “in.” The U.S. needs to keep, not Russians, but Islamic radicals out of Europe. The Germans do not need to be kept down, but the Turks and Chinese most certainly do. And it’s debatable whether America needs to be in Europe at all.</p>
<p><em>Originally published at<span> </span><a href="http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2016/10/28/beyond-nato%20%22Permalink%20to%20Beyond%20NATO%22">Radix Journal</a>.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/">https://nationalpolicy.institute/2017/12/06/beyond-nato/</a></em></p> EU officials plotted IMF attack to bring rebellious Italy to its kneestag:4freedoms.com,2014-05-17:3766518:Topic:1478032014-05-17T02:52:32.543ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<div class="storyHead"><h1><span class="byAuthor" style="font-size: 13px;">By <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/author/ambroseevans-pritchard/" rel="author" title="Posts by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard">Ambrose Evans-Pritchard</a></span><span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="lastUpdated bylineCategory" style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/category/economics/" rel="category tag" title="View all posts in Economics">Economics…</a></span></h1>
</div>
<div class="storyHead"><h1><span class="byAuthor" style="font-size: 13px;">By <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/author/ambroseevans-pritchard/" title="Posts by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard" rel="author">Ambrose Evans-Pritchard</a></span><span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="lastUpdated bylineCategory" style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/category/economics/" title="View all posts in Economics" rel="category tag">Economics</a></span><span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="lastUpdated" style="font-size: 13px;">Last updated: May 15th, 2014</span></h1>
</div>
<div class="oneHalf gutter"><div class="story"><div class="byline"><p><span class="byAuthor commentsLink"><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100027284/eu-officials-plotted-imf-attack-to-bring-rebellious-italy-to-its-knees/#disqus_thread">538 Comments</a></span> <span class="lastUpdated"><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100027284/eu-officials-plotted-imf-attack-to-bring-rebellious-italy-to-its-knees/#dPostComment">Comment on this article</a></span></p>
</div>
<div class="entry"><div id="attachment_100027285" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100027284/eu-officials-plotted-imf-attack-to-bring-rebellious-italy-to-its-knees/g20_2044676c/" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/files/2014/05/g20_2044676c.jpg?width=460" width="460" class="align-right"/></a><p class="wp-caption-text">G20 at Cannes: incredible scenes behind the scenes</p>
</div>
<p>The revelations about EMU skulduggery are coming thick and fast. Tim Geithner recounts in his book <em>Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises</em> just how far the EU elites are willing to go to save the euro, even if it means toppling elected leaders and eviscerating Europe’s sovereign parliaments.</p>
<p>The former US Treasury Secretary says that EU officials approached him in the white heat of the EMU crisis in November 2011 with a plan to overthrow Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s elected leader.</p>
<p>"They wanted us to refuse to back IMF loans to Italy as long as he refused to go," he writes.</p>
<p>Geithner told them this was unthinkable. The US could not misuse the machinery of the IMF to settle political disputes in this way. "We can't have his blood on our hands".</p>
<p>This concurs with we knew at the time about the backroom manoeuvres, and the action in the bond markets.</p>
<p>It is a constitutional scandal of the first order. These officials decided for themselves that the sanctity of monetary union entitled them to overrule the parliamentary process, that means justify the end. It is the definition of a monetary dictatorship.</p>
<p>Mr Berlusconi has demanded a parliamentary inquiry. “It’s a clear violation of democratic rules and an assault on the sovereignty of our country. The plot is an extremely serious news which confirms what I've been saying for a long time," he said.</p>
<p>There has been a drip-drip of revelations. Italy’s former member on the ECB’s executive board, Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi, suggested in his book last summer that the decision to topple Berlusconi (and replace him with ex-EU commissioner Mario Monti) was taken after he started threatening a return to the Lira in meetings with EU leaders.</p>
<p>I have always found the incident bizarre. Italy had previously been held up an example of virtue, one of the very few EMU states then near primary budget surplus. It was not in serious breach of deficit rules. It was in crisis in the Autumn of 2011 because the ECB had raised rates twice and triggered what was to become a deep double-dip recession. Yet the blame for this disastrous policy error was displaced on to Italy’s government.</p>
<p>Fresh details emerged this week in <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100027284/eu-officials-plotted-imf-attack-to-bring-rebellious-italy-to-its-knees/ft.com/cms/s/0/f6f4d6b4-ca2e-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0.html#axzz31meMwSeI">a terrific account of the crisis</a> by Peter Spiegel in the Financial Times.</p>
<p>The report recounts the hour-by-hour drama at the G20 Summit in Cannes as the euro came close to blowing up. It culminates in the incredible scene when President Barack Obama takes over meeting and tells the Europeans what to do, causing Chancellor Angela Merkel to break down in tears: “<em>Ich bringe mich nicht selbst um</em>.” I won’t commit suicide.</p>
<p>That particular spasm of the crisis – and there have been three episodes (May 2010, Nov 2011, and July 2012) when the would have splintered without drastic action – was set off by the shock decision of Greek premier Georges Papandreou to call a referendum on the austerity terms of his country’s bail-out. He thought a vote was needed to stop Greece spinning out of control, and to pre-empt a possible military coup (as he saw it).</p>
<p>Papandreou was hauled before the star chamber and literally crushed into silence by French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, who was waving his “Position commune sur la Grèce” like an indictment sheet.</p>
<p>The FT report then reveals that the Commission’s Jose Manuel Barroso took charge of the executive details, orchestrating the Putsch that ousted Papandreou in Greece. In this case the EU picked ECB veteran Lucas Papademos to take over.</p>
<p>Parliamentary formalities were upheld in both Italy and Greece. The presidents appointed the new leaders in each of the two countries. Both Monti and Papademos are honourable and dedicated public servants. Yet these were clearly coups d’etat in spirit, if not in constitutional law.</p>
<p>David Marsh from the financial body OMFIF has called for a “Truth and Reconciliation Committee” to expose the abuses that have occurred in EMU affairs from the beginning. Something must be done to hold accountable those responsible for the fateful error of launching monetary union, and for the chronic mismanagement of the project thereafter.</p>
<p>We are told that the euro crisis is now over. I do not see how one can safely reach that conclusion when Italy and Portugal are contracting again, and France is back to zero growth; or when lowflation/deflation is causing the debt trajectories of Southern Europe to spiral ever higher; all against a background of G2 monetary tightening in the US and China.</p>
<p>There will be another spasm to this crisis. So who will Europe’s elites topple next, and what other conspiracies will they hatch to perpetuate a monetary venture that serves no worthwhile moral purpose? They must be stopped.</p>
<p>The FT’s Peter Speigel has a follow-up in today’s edition, with lots more details. These include confirmation that EU leaders not only broached the subject of Greek exit/expulsion from the euro at Cannes, but that this was followed up by a secret Plan Z.</p>
<p>A GREXIT task-force under Germany’s ECB’s board member Jorg Asmussen worked on emergency plans with four clandestine teams and EU lawyers in Brussels. They were careful enough not to reveal anything in emails, which could be leaked.</p>
<p>Merkel’s advisers in Germany were split into the “domino” camp that feared contagion from GREXIT, and the “infected-leg” camp headed by finance minister Wolfgang Schauble that pushed for amputation.</p>
<p>It seems as if Angela Merkel was finally persuaded by Jorg Asmussen that kicking Greece out of the system might snowball and lead all too quickly to a “eurozone of 10”. Greece got its €34bn bail-out in the nick of time.</p>
<p>Though I should not say this about a competing newspaper, it is worth spending £2.50 today on the pink sheet for the story.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100027284/eu-officials-plotted-imf-attack-to-bring-rebellious-italy-to-its-knees/">http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100027284/eu-officials-plotted-imf-attack-to-bring-rebellious-italy-to-its-knees/</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div> Add the EU to the list of myths we’re brainwashed to believe - Boris Johnson at The Telegraphtag:4freedoms.com,2013-12-28:3766518:Topic:1428062013-12-28T03:32:11.973ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<div class="storyHead"><h1>Like corks, and turning off mobiles on planes, 'Europe’ may one day turn out to be pointless</h1>
<div class="artIntro"><div id="storyEmbSlide"><div class="slideshow ssIntro"><div class="nextPrevLayer"><div class="ssImg"><img alt="Like corks, and turning off mobiles on planes, 'Europe’ may one day turn out to be pointless " height="387" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02773/cork_2773437b.jpg" width="620"></img><div class="artImageExtras"><div class="ingCaptionCredit"><span class="caption">Like corks 'Europe’ may one day turn out to be pointless </span> <span class="credit">Photo: Alamy…</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="storyHead"><h1>Like corks, and turning off mobiles on planes, 'Europe’ may one day turn out to be pointless</h1>
<div class="artIntro"><div id="storyEmbSlide"><div class="slideshow ssIntro"><div class="nextPrevLayer"><div class="ssImg"><img src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02773/cork_2773437b.jpg" width="620" height="387" alt="Like corks, and turning off mobiles on planes, 'Europe’ may one day turn out to be pointless "/><div class="artImageExtras"><div class="ingCaptionCredit"><span class="caption">Like corks 'Europe’ may one day turn out to be pointless </span> <span class="credit">Photo: Alamy</span></div>
<div class="ingCaptionCredit"></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="oneHalf gutter"><div class="story"><div class="cl"></div>
<div class="bylineComments"><div class="bylineImg"><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01805/BorisJohnson_60_1805224j.jpg?width=60" width="60" class="align-left"/></a></div>
<p class="bylineBody">By <a rel="author" title="Boris Johnson" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/">Boris Johnson</a> 9:07PM GMT 22 Dec 2013</p>
<p class="bylineBody">Amazing, I thought as I looked at the array of bottles. How did we get through that lot, eh? As far as I could tell we had drunk the last drop of the crate of wine that my friend Jeremy Hunt had sent me after I gave a speech in his constituency. And this wasn’t any old wine, folks. This was English wine – the grapes plumped by the zephyrs of Surrey, lovingly picked by migrant labour, and turned into a delicious and fruity and golden and, above all, drinkable little number that had obviously gone down well with everybody.</p>
</div>
<div id="mainBodyArea"><div class="secondPar"><p>As I looked at the glinting empties, I realised why it was so drinkable. It wasn’t just the superior Surrey loam, or the skill of Denbies the vintners. There was a reason it was so light and quaffable – a reason why people’s hands reached for it reflexively instead of other more pompous wine; and that was that it was literally easy to drink. The bottles had a screw cap, not a cork, and so there was no faffing around with some piece of 17th-century technology.</p>
</div>
<div class="thirdPar"><p>It was just twist-pour-glug! I thought of the advent of screw-cap wine bottles – now seen even on posh French wine – and I thought what saps we all are. For years we have been told that a cork is essential. For decades it seemed sacrilegious to put good wine into a screw-cap bottle. Wine had to breathe through a cork, said the “experts”, and we all pathetically and snobbishly complied. And now it is obvious that it was twaddle all along. It was pure mumbo jumbo and superstition.</p>
</div>
<div class="fourthPar"><p>A screw cap in no way impairs the quality – and helps the party go with more of a zing. The scales have fallen from our eyes. It happens all the time, doesn’t it? We are all taught to believe something – as a matter of quasi-religion – that turns out to be total cobblers. It’s like the ban on electronic devices on aeroplanes. For years we have been told by experts that it is crucial to turn these off during take-off and landing, or else the control towers will somehow lock on to our laptops and cause the planes to fall from the sky.</p>
</div>
<div class="fifthPar"><p>For years the cabin crew have come round and told us in regretful tones that we must comply with this precaution – and though many of us have secretly wondered whether it is all rubbish, we have always obeyed, on the grounds that someone somewhere must know more about it than we do. Then one day – in fact I think it was only last week – they tell us that it was all a myth. It was a misapprehension. You can send a text at take-off, and the plane will stay airborne after all.</p>
<p>The experts solemnly assured us that something was vital for our safety and security – and it turns out that they were talking through the backs of their necks. I wonder, sometimes, whether we will see the same phenomenon in our discussions of the EU. Like the old-fashioned cork or the ban on mobiles on planes, the EU has been assumed to be indispensable. For more than 50 years we have been told that it is a vital part of the “security architecture” of the world.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="body"><p>It was set up by idealists, in the shocked aftermath of the Second World War, to “lock in” Germany: to make sure that no German leader ever went mad again; to stop Germany rolling around the continent like a loose cannon. Well, look at Germany now. Does anyone fear German military revanchism today? The idea is bonkers. Then we were told that the EU was vital as a “bulwark” against the Soviet Union, and communist aggression.</p>
<p>Well, look at Russia today. The main dispute is now about whether Ukraine should be more aligned with Brussels or with Moscow, and even then, no one in western Europe is much exercised. Communism is dead. The threat has been exploded. The “bulwark” argument has been shown to be, er, total bulwarks.</p>
<p>In the next couple of years we are entitled to pose the question: what is the POINT of the EU? I don’t mean, what ghastly penalties will Britain suffer if we should decide to get out. We all know the kind of scaremongering we can expect from the likes of Nick Clegg – the “millions” of lost jobs, the vanishing foreign investment, the giant mutant rats with gooseberry eyes: the kind of stuff they said would happen if we failed to join the euro. I want to hear the positive arguments FOR the EU.</p>
<p>Why have we bubblegummed together this hapless congeries of independent states? Is it to be a united force in international trade negotiations, when the EU’s agricultural subsidies so royally stuff the farmers of developing countries? Is it to have a joint foreign policy, when the EU has been so ludicrously disunited on everything from the Falklands to Libya? Is it to agree standards for widgets, when that could surely be done without this apparatus of supranational law?</p>
<p>Maybe there is a positive vision to be set out – I am just not hearing it yet. Let me give a final example of this phenomenon – the lingering of old ways of thinking, old habits, to the point where they become superstitions. As I was writing this, there was an unfamiliar ringing noise behind me. Prooot proot, it went. It was the landline! I don’t know about you, but in our house the landline has passed into virtual disuse.</p>
<p>The only people who ring it are cold callers; everyone else calls the mobile phone of the person they want to reach. I am starting to wonder whether the landline is actually necessary these days. Is there some elf ’n’ safety reason why a household needs a landline, as we career towards 2014? Do we need a fixed line telephone, or can we do perfectly well without?</p>
<p>I am not sure: but at the moment it feels as if the EU is the Bakelite handset of 21st-century geopolitics, yesterday’s answer to the problems of the day before yesterday. If there is a positive case for this spatchcocked federation, we need to start hearing it now.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10533952/Add-the-EU-to-the-list-of-myths-were-brainwashed-to-believe.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10533952/Add-the-EU-to-the-list-of-myths-were-brainwashed-to-believe.html</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div> UN: Baroness Warsi and Resolution 16/18 - by Anne Marie Waterstag:4freedoms.com,2013-11-28:3766518:Topic:1416612013-11-28T05:02:47.593ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<h1 class="heading"><a href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/images/149692/large.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="http://www.secularism.org.uk/images/149692/350x.jpg"></img></a></h1>
<div class="body"><p class="text"><em><strong>Baroness Warsi's partnership with the OIC means it is only a matter of time before we are completely silenced in the name of religious freedom, argues Anne Marie Waters.</strong></em></p>
<p class="text">Baroness Warsi, our unelected "Minister for Faith", in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington on Friday, stated that the…</p>
</div>
<h1 class="heading"><a href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/images/149692/large.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.secularism.org.uk/images/149692/350x.jpg" class="align-right"/></a></h1>
<div class="body"><p class="text"><em><strong>Baroness Warsi's partnership with the OIC means it is only a matter of time before we are completely silenced in the name of religious freedom, argues Anne Marie Waters.</strong></em></p>
<p class="text">Baroness Warsi, our unelected "Minister for Faith", in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington on Friday, stated that the UK is "committed to working with the United Nations Human Rights Council to <a rel="external" href="http://sayeedawarsi.com/2013/11/16/an-international-response-to-a-global-crisis-speech-at-georgetown-university-washington-dc/#more-2348" title="External Link: http://sayeedawarsi.com/2013/11/16/an-international-response-to-a-global-crisis-speech-at-georgetown-university-washington-dc/#more-2348" target="_blank">implement Resolution 16/18</a>."</p>
<p class="text">We are? I can't remember agreeing to this – can you?</p>
<p class="text">She then went on to make this hilarious statement: "The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also remains a key partner in our quest to promote religious freedom."</p>
<p class="text">I genuinely don't know whether to laugh or cry.</p>
<p class="text">It is difficult to know where to begin with this, so I'll start with Resolution 16/18 – a proposal which received the support of the United States back in 2011. Hillary Clinton, who could well be the next US President, <a rel="external" href="http://www.humanrights.gov/2012/04/19/1618-report/" title="External Link: http://www.humanrights.gov/2012/04/19/1618-report/" target="_blank">set up a meeting</a> in Washington D.C. that year. The aim of this get-together was to explore ways to implement the provisions of Resolution 16/18 around the world.</p>
<p class="text"><a rel="external" href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4db960f92.pdf" title="External Link: http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4db960f92.pdf" target="_blank">Resolution 16/18</a> calls upon UN member states to combat "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief." It was initially introduced in March 2011 at the UN Human Rights Council by the OIC. This coterie, dominated by Islamist states, had made several previous attempts to have a resolution passed which aimed to criminalise "defamation of religions" but had failed. This time, due to some clever re-wording, the tactic worked and non-binding resolution was agreed.</p>
<p class="text">Following this, the Istanbul Process was created in July 2011. This meeting was attended by Hillary Clinton who praised the US and the EU for agreeing the resolution at the Human Rights Council. The conference had been convened by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the OIC. This is a man who frequently speaks out against Islamophobia, and calls for a "<a rel="external" href="http://www.arabnews.com/news/463602" title="External Link: http://www.arabnews.com/news/463602" target="_blank">proper understanding of Islam</a>".</p>
<p class="text">The Istanbul Process continues and last met in Geneva in June 2013.</p>
<p class="text">Baroness Warsi's commitment (on behalf of the UK) to work with the OIC to implement Resolution 16/18 seems to be grounded in the idea that the OIC are equally committed to religious freedom. In making such claims, Warsi shows herself to be either a) completely stupid, b) a damn liar, or c) both.</p>
<p class="text">Why do I say this? Well, have a look at the commitment to religious freedom (and human rights generally) demonstrated by some of the OIC member countries:</p>
<p class="text">The Islamic Republic of Iran – Iran demonstrates its commitment to religious freedom by executing people who leave Islam, or speak out against it. (Oh, and it also stones people to death for having sex). Article 513 of the<a rel="external" href="http://iranhrdc.org/english/human-rights-documents/iranian-codes/1000000351-islamic-penal-code-of-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-book-five.html" title="External Link: http://iranhrdc.org/english/human-rights-documents/iranian-codes/1000000351-islamic-penal-code-of-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-book-five.html" target="_blank">Iranian penal code</a> states that "Anyone who insults the sacred values of Islam or any of the Great Prophets or [twelve] Shi'ite Imams or the Holy Fatima, if considered as Saab ul-nabi [as having committed actions warranting the hadd punishment for insulting the Prophet], shall be executed; otherwise, they shall be sentenced to one to five years' imprisonment."</p>
<p class="text">The Islamic Republic of Pakistan – Pakistan is also deeply committed to religious freedom. So much so that blasphemy is a capital crime. Section 295-C of its <a rel="external" href="http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/1860/actXLVof1860.html" title="External Link: http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/1860/actXLVof1860.html" target="_blank">criminal code</a> says that "Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine."</p>
<p class="text">The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – as well as imposing the death penalty for "witchcraft" (and blasphemy and apostasy), Saudi Arabia does not allow anyone to build a church or read a Bible. So committed to religious freedom is Saudi Arabia that non-Muslims are not permitted to enter its holy city of Mecca. So committed to religious freedom is Saudi Arabia that simply sending a tweet deemed blasphemous can have you arrested and facing the death penalty, as the <a rel="external" href="http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/sacrilegious-saudi-writer-arrested-in-malaysia-2012-02-09-1.442198" title="External Link: http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/sacrilegious-saudi-writer-arrested-in-malaysia-2012-02-09-1.442198" target="_blank">journalist Hamza Kashgari</a> found out to his cost in 2012.</p>
<p class="text">These are some of the countries that Baroness Warsi will be working with to promote religious freedom around the world. There are others of course, <a rel="external" href="http://www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/states/" title="External Link: http://www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/states/" target="_blank">you can find them here</a>.</p>
<p class="text">It is worth noting at this point that the UN Human Rights Council, which initially passed Resolution 16/18, recently<a rel="external" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/12/us-un-rights-council-idUSBRE9AB19E20131112" title="External Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/12/us-un-rights-council-idUSBRE9AB19E20131112" target="_blank">appointed Saudi Arabia</a> to sit on its board. Saudi Arabia kills people not only for blasphemy but for adultery and homosexuality as well. Women there enjoy the official status of property and are not allowed to work or travel or even undergo medical treatment without the permission of a man. It's encouraging to know then that Saudi Arabia will be working for the promotion of both religious freedom and human rights around the world, isn't it?</p>
<p class="text">We are living in a hall of mirrors – nothing is as it seems and we are being consistently and constantly lied to. Resolution 16/18 has got nothing to do with religious freedom, and everything to do with protecting Islam from exposure. The record of the countries behind it prove this beyond any doubt. Anyone who tells the truth about any aspect of Islam, or what happens in Islamic states, will no doubt be guilty of "negative stereotyping" of the religion, and criminalised if Resolution 16/18 becomes law in UN member states. That is the point of it, and Warsi has dragged our country in to helping to make this happen.</p>
<p class="text">So to summarise; Sayeeda Warsi, a woman who failed to secure an elected place in Parliament in 2005, now enjoys a seat at the Cabinet table despite the fact that she remains unelected. She has used this position to commit the UK to assisting in the implementation of a resolution which will effectively criminalise anyone who dares to tell the truth about what happens in the name of Islam (this would be "negative stereotyping" you see). She has no mandate for this, and she wouldn't have if the people were ever asked our opinion on the matter.</p>
<p class="text">She is assisted in her endeavours by the US Government. A Government headed by Barack "the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam" Obama.</p>
<p class="text">Warsi was appointed to the Cabinet by David Cameron, a man equally committed to making us as sharia-compliant as possible. In October, he informed us that we were about to become the only non-Muslim country to issue Islamic bonds. The <a rel="external" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24722440" title="External Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24722440" target="_blank">Prime Minister's ambition</a> is to see London stand "alongside Dubai as one of the great capitals of Islamic finance anywhere in the world."</p>
<p class="text">Given the determination of the USA and UK to promote all things Islamic, and their partnership with Islamist states in their efforts to criminalise us all, it is only a matter of time before we are completely silenced.</p>
<p class="text">So if you have anything to say about Islam — and the barbarism carried out in its name — I suggest you say it now.</p>
<p class="text"><a href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/blog/2013/11/baroness-warsi-and-the-oic">http://www.secularism.org.uk/blog/2013/11/baroness-warsi-and-the-oic</a></p>
</div> EU Study (2007): Islam in Europetag:4freedoms.com,2013-02-11:3766518:Topic:1184682013-02-11T15:45:05.234ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/110491266?profile=original">Islam_in_Europe.pdf</a></p>
<p>Compares the legal status of islam in different EU countries.</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/110491266?profile=original">Islam_in_Europe.pdf</a></p>
<p>Compares the legal status of islam in different EU countries.</p> Getting Real on Human Rights at the UN - Brookings Institutiontag:4freedoms.com,2012-07-12:3766518:Topic:1066782012-07-12T00:10:33.441ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<div class="article-header"><p class="metadata"><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/06-human-rights-piccone" target="_blank">Getting Real on Human Rights at the UN</a></p>
</div>
<div class="article-detail section"><div class="lede"><p><em>Editor's Note: This opinion originally appeared on the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-piccone/united-nations-human-rights-council_b_1651483.html">Huffington Post Blog</a>.…</em></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="article-header"><p class="metadata"><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/06-human-rights-piccone" target="_blank">Getting Real on Human Rights at the UN</a></p>
</div>
<div class="article-detail section"><div class="lede"><p><em>Editor's Note: This opinion originally appeared on the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-piccone/united-nations-human-rights-council_b_1651483.html">Huffington Post Blog</a>.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="additional-resources"><h3><span class="font-size-2">ADDITIONAL RESOURCES</span></h3>
<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/07/11-un-human-rights" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/images/u/uk%20uo/un_human_rights001/un_human_rights001_16x9.jpg?w=190" class="align-right"/></a><br />
<p class="type"><a id="content_0_ctl03_rptRelatedContent_hlContentTitle_0" href="http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/07/11-un-human-rights" name="content_0_ctl03_rptRelatedContent_hlContentTitle_0">Translating Human Rights into Practice: A Conversation on the United Nations Human Rights Council</a></p>
<p class="date">July 11, 2012</p>
<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2012/catalystsforchange" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/press/books/2012/6/catalystsforchange/catalystsforchange.jpg" class="align-left"/></a><br />
<p class="type">BOOK</p>
<p class="title"><a id="content_0_ctl03_rptRelatedContent_hlContentTitle_1" href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2012/catalystsforchange" name="content_0_ctl03_rptRelatedContent_hlContentTitle_1">Catalysts for Change: How the UN's Independent Experts Promote Human Rights</a></p>
<p class="date">2012</p>
<p class="date"></p>
<p class="date"></p>
<p class="date"></p>
<p class="date">In the past several days, sound and fury again erupted in Geneva, with allegations of hypocrisy leveled against the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thor-halvorssen/testimony-at-the-united-n_b_1635544.html">testimony before the Council</a>, Thor Halvorssen argued that allowing Venezuela and other bad guys seats on the Council prevents it from promoting human rights. I agree that states with egregious human rights records should not be elected to the Council and I have campaigned with others (successfully) to deny seats to states like Belarus, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan and Iran. But Halvorssen and other <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/truth-telling-at-the-u-n-human-rights-council">like-minded critics</a> miss an essential point: governments care enough about their public image to take corrective action when the Council shines a global spotlight on their rights violations.</p>
</div>
<p>Despite its flaws, the Council gives advocates a chance to bring violators to the court of world opinion, and, in many cases, creates leverage that makes a difference for victims on the ground. Governments willing to reform use the UN’s scrutiny and assistance to improve their human rights records, while those against change are exposed as emperors with no clothes. To ensure this dynamic continues, the United States and other democracies must remain fully engaged.</p>
<p>Since the UN created a special political body to promote and protect the principles established in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> in 1946, a remarkable beehive of activity has grown around it. Twenty international human rights treaties have been adopted governing a wide range of rights, including most recently for the disabled. The <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx">High Commissioner for Human Rights</a> and her staff of over 900 personnel monitor rights and assist governments and victims across the globe. A <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/UPRMain.aspx">peer review system</a>, established in 2006 with the creation of the more elevated Human Rights Council, ensures that all 193 member states take public account of their performance. Civil society organizations, academic experts and the media use this platform to contribute evidence, ideas and visibility to our incessant global clamoring for more and better defense of human rights.</p>
<p></p>
<blockquote><p>But at the end of the day, the fight for human rights in our current system of nation states matters most on the home front.</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>But at the end of the day, the fight for human rights in our current system of nation states matters most on the home front. The trick, then, is to connect the universal aspirations and commitments for more and better rights to the realities of distinct cultures, forms of government and legal systems.</p>
<p>This challenge is met in large part by the UN’s system of independent <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Welcomepage.aspx">human rights experts and special rapporteurs</a> assigned by governments to gather facts, identify problems and make recommendations for addressing them. First created in 1967 to monitor the situation in southern Africa, the system of independent experts has mushroomed to cover over forty themes from violence against women to freedom of expression; an additional ten experts are mandated to cover specific countries like North Korea, Iran and Sudan. The unique combination of independent expertise deployed under the banner of the UN’s blue flag makes them the Council’s most effective tool for catalyzing change at the local level.</p>
<p>It is difficult at first glance to understand how one individual, assigned to address such complex issues as freedom of religion, modern slavery, internal displacement or arbitrary detention could have any impact on getting governments to do the right thing. Governments, indeed, grant them minimal resources to do their work and often block them from visiting their countries and disregard their allegations of abuses. Yet an exhaustive review of the record reveals that their interventions have sparked reforms and even saved lives:</p>
<ul>
<li>Shortly after a special rapporteur visited a prisoner accused of “counterrevolution” in China, his sentence was reduced.</li>
<li>When a special rapporteur revealed that security forces were involved in violations against internally displaced persons in the Central African Republic, the government removed the personnel in question from the camps.</li>
<li>Laws criminalizing defamation in Cambodia and the Maldives and blasphemy in the United Kingdom were repealed in response to direct appeals by special rapporteurs.</li>
<li>The highest authorities in Jordan issued clear instructions to end torture and abuse of prisoners and increase penalties for violations on the recommendation of a special rapporteur.</li>
<li>Lawyers for a political activist in Vietnam won a case before the UN working group on arbitrary detention, adding greater legitimacy to their claim and eventually leading to the prisoner’s release.</li>
<li>In response to an urgent appeal by a special rapporteur, a plane carrying a detainee at risk of execution in his country of origin was stopped on the tarmac in Australia and his deportation was reversed.</li>
</ul>
<p>These, and hundreds of other documented examples, are the unheralded achievements of a UN human rights body that is too quickly dismissed as useless because a majority of the UN’s members have elected a minority of authoritarian regimes to the chamber. Spoilers on the Council undoubtedly do the system harm when they harass independent experts and NGOs, or defend egregious human rights abusers. The Council’s failure to remove the bias created by its standing item on Israel’s occupation of Palestine is particularly damaging. Myopic focus on these shortcomings, however, is a disservice to those victims and defenders who benefit from the Council’s lifesaving tools. The remedy to the body’s deficits must not be to throw our hands up and walk away, as the Bush administration did, but to strengthen the tools that are proven effective.</p>
<p id="">The only real solution is to roll up our sleeves and get to work. That is precisely what the Obama administration has done since it took up a seat on the Council in 2009, <a href="http://www.cfr.org/un/advancing-human-rights-un-system/p28414">forging coalitions with a range of democracies</a> to create new mandates to monitor <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/01/not_just_for_israel_anymore">Syria, Iran and Cote d’Ivoire</a> as well as on freedom of association and discrimination against women. Its leadership and record of success prove that smart strategy and deft execution can make a difference, not only in Geneva but, more importantly, for human rights defenders on the frontlines.</p>
</div> Leaked Documents Show the U.N.'s Internet Power Grabtag:4freedoms.com,2012-06-20:3766518:Topic:1044722012-06-20T08:49:57.511ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>Let's consider which parts of the world would like to impose such censorship: the OIC, China, Russia, (maybe even Britain and the Netherlands). </p>
<hr></hr><p><a href="http://thenerfherder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/leaked-documents-show-uns-internet.html">http://thenerfherder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/leaked-documents-show-uns-internet.html</a></p>
<h3 class="post-title">Leaked Documents Show the U.N.'s Internet Power Grab...</h3>
<div class="post-body">With very low visibility, a small agency in…</div>
<p>Let's consider which parts of the world would like to impose such censorship: the OIC, China, Russia, (maybe even Britain and the Netherlands). </p>
<hr/><p><a href="http://thenerfherder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/leaked-documents-show-uns-internet.html">http://thenerfherder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/leaked-documents-show-uns-internet.html</a></p>
<h3 class="post-title">Leaked Documents Show the U.N.'s Internet Power Grab...</h3>
<div class="post-body">With very low visibility, a small agency in the United Nations - the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunications_Union">International Telecommunications Union (ITU)</a> - might be about to quietly try and regulate the entire Internet.<br/><br/>The ITU has planned a meeting this upcoming December where each of the 193 member nations will vote on various proposed Internet regulations. What's striking is that <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303822204577470532859210296.html">the details of the proposals have been kept secret</a>, so it was impossible to know what authoritarian governments were plotting or how the U.S. was responding.<br/><br/>Until now. A pair of researchers from George Mason University created a website called <a href="http://wcitleaks.org/">WCITLeaks.org</a> in the hopes that someone with access to the secretive proposals would leak them and make them available to the public. Last Friday, that's exactly what happened. Someone leaked the 212-page planning document being used by governments to prepare for the December conference. You can read it yourself <a href="http://files.wcitleaks.org/public/CWG%20WCIT12%20TD62.pdf">here</a>.<br/><br/><strong>What it shows is breathtaking. First, China is proposing "to give countries authority over the information and communication infrastructure within their state" and require that online companies "operating in their territory" use the Internet "in a rational way"- in short, to legitimize full government control.</strong><br/><br/><strong>Second, several proposals would give the U.N. power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam.</strong><br/><br/><strong>Third, Russia and some Arab countries are proposing to be able to inspect private communications such as email.</strong><br/><br/><strong>Fourth, Iran and Russia are proposing new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls - essentially creating national toll booths for data.</strong><br/><br/><strong>Fifth, there is a proposal that would give the U.N. control over the Internet's Domain Name System, replacing ICANN which operates under a contract from the U.S. Commerce Department.</strong><br/><br/>Take all of this in its totality and what we see are proposals that would A) grant power and authority over the very functioning of the Internet to the United Nations, and B) grant authoritarian governments the ability to censor, monitor, and more strictly control both the content of the Web itself and people's behavior on it. What's at stake is nothing less than a system based on open flows of information, as opposed to an "information world order" based on government controls.<br/><br/>L. Gordon Crovitz from the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303822204577470532859210296.html">Wall Street Journal</a> is right in his assessment: "Authoritarian regimes are busy lobbying a majority of the U.N. members to vote their way. The leaked documents disclose a U.S. side that has hardly begun to fight back. That's no way to win this war."<br/><br/>Everyone better wake up. Soon.</div> Islam Conquers European Footballtag:4freedoms.com,2012-04-10:3766518:Topic:989772012-04-10T13:04:54.466ZAlan Lakehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/AlanLake
<p>Money talks, screams, shouts!</p>
<p>--</p>
<div id="print_content"><h1>Islam Conquers European Football</h1>
<p><b>by <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Soeren+Kern">Soeren Kern</a><br></br>April 5, 2012 at 5:00 am</b></p>
</div>
<div id="print_content_3"><blockquote class="content_preface"><p>As part of the agreement, however, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah required Real Madrid to remove the cross from the crown on its logo for all promotional materials. The president of Real…</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Money talks, screams, shouts!</p>
<p>--</p>
<div id="print_content"><h1>Islam Conquers European Football</h1>
<p><b>by <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Soeren+Kern">Soeren Kern</a><br/>April 5, 2012 at 5:00 am</b></p>
</div>
<div id="print_content_3"><blockquote class="content_preface"><p>As part of the agreement, however, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah required Real Madrid to remove the cross from the crown on its logo for all promotional materials. The president of Real Madrid dutifully complied.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The top-ranked football team in Spain, Real Madrid, has removed a Christian cross from its official logo as a way to strengthen its fan base among Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.</p>
<p>According to Spain's top sports newspaper, <a href="http://www.marca.com/2012/03/30/futbol/equipos/real_madrid/1333103798.html"><i>Marca</i></a>, the change was made to "avoid any form of confusion or misinterpretation in a region where the majority of the population is Muslim."</p>
<p>Real Madrid says its decision to remove the cross from its logo (see image <a href="http://www.alertadigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/madrid-escudo.jpg">here</a>) is simply a cost of doing business in a globalized world. But critics say the move represents yet another erosion of European culture and tradition in the face of encroaching Islam.</p>
<p>The cross controversy comes as Real Madrid begins to build a $1 billion sports tourist resort in the United Arab Emirates. The foundation stone for the 50 hectare <a href="http://www.realmadrid.com/cs/Satellite/en/Actualidad/1330092832085/noticia/Noticia/Real_Madrid_Resort_Island_presented_in_the_Presidential_Balcony_of_the_Santiago_Bernabeu_Stadium.htm">Real Madrid Resort Island</a> was laid in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah on March 29; the complex is scheduled to open in January 2015.</p>
<p>Real Madrid says its resort island will be the first theme park on an artificial island to combine tourism and sports, and it will be the first recreational tourism complex built under the Real Madrid trademark. The complex will include a 450-room luxury hotel, luxury villas, a sporting harbor, and the world's first-ever football stadium that is open to the sea.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.realmadrid.com/cs/Satellite/en/Actualidad/1330092832085/noticia/Noticia/Real_Madrid_Resort_Island_presented_in_the_Presidential_Balcony_of_the_Santiago_Bernabeu_Stadium.htm">Real Madrid</a>, "This is a decisive and strategic step that will enhance the strength of this institution in the Middle East and Asia, a key region in which the passion for this club has been apparent. Real Madrid and the Government of Ras al-Khaimah want to transmit the passion of Real Madrid and what it means throughout the world."</p>
<p>As part of the agreement, however, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr al Qasimi, required Real Madrid to remove the cross from the crown on its logo for all promotional materials related to the resort island. The president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, dutifully complied.</p>
<p>The cross was first to Real Madrid's logo in 1920, when King Alfonso XIII granted the club his royal patronage. The word <i>Real</i> is Spanish for royal, and the cross still forms an integral part of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_the_King_of_Spain">coat of arms of the King of Spain</a>.</p>
<p>To be sure, Real Madrid is not the first Spanish football club to remove a "religiously incorrect" cross from its logo in an effort to appease Muslim sensibilities. Some observers, in fact, say Real Madrid's move is part of a concerted effort to prevent a rival football team in Barcelona from winning over the Middle East.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fcbarcelona.com/Sponsors/qatar-foundation/detail/card/qatar-foundation">FC Barcelona</a> recently signed a five-year €150 million ($200 million) shirt sponsorship deal with the Doha-based Qatar Foundation, a so-called charitable trust that has been accused by the Spanish newspaper <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/blogs/elmundo/orienteproximo/2010/12/17/el-jeque-y-la-ira-de-los-cules-israelies.html"><i>El Mundo</i></a> of providing funding to the extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an advocate of terrorism, wife beating and murderous anti-Semitism. The agreement permits the Qatar Foundation to place its logo on FC Barcelona's official team shirt.</p>
<p>In addition to earning €30 million per season, the agreement has enabled FC Barcelona -- which claims to be "the undisputed brand leader in world football" -- to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.</p>
<p>FC Barcelona's public relations efforts in the Muslim world have not been without controversy. Like Real Madrid, FC Barcelona has a cross in its official logo. But after Saudi Arabia complained that the so-called <a href="http://www.elconfidencial.com/cache/2007/12/18/77_barcelna_modifican_escudo_paises_musulmanes.html">Cruz de San Jorge</a> -- a red and white cross that forms an integral part of FC Barcelona's logo -- was offensive to Islam because it evokes memories of the medieval Crusades, the horizontal line (and thus the offending cross) was removed from all FC Barcelona shirts sold in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Football clubs in Italy have also had run-ins with Muslim fashion police. In Milan, for example, the football team Inter Milan was sued by a Turkish lawyer named Baris Kaska. He filed a complaint with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) against Inter Milan after the team wore shirts with a "Crusader-style" red cross that Kaska alleged was "offensive to Muslim sensibilities."</p>
<p>The shirt's design -- to mark the 100th anniversary of the club -- included a big red cross on a white background, a symbol of the city of Milan. But Muslims said the emblem reminded them of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar">Knights Templar</a>, which Kaska said symbolized "Western racist superiority over Islam."</p>
<p>In an interview with the Barcelona-based newspaper <a href="http://hemeroteca.lavanguardia.com/preview/2007/12/10/pagina-64/65942077/pdf.html"><i>La Vanguardia</i></a>, Kaska said Inter Milan had "manifested in the most explicit manner the superiority of one religion over another." He also said that Inter should be "heavily fined for displaying an offensive symbol."</p>
<p>In neighboring Germany, the Gelsenkirchen-based FC Schalke 04, which plays in Germany's top league, the Bundesliga, asked an Islam expert to consider whether the team's anthem is insulting to Muslims.</p>
<p>The third verse of the anthem, which is titled "<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,640393,00.html">Blue and White, How I Love You</a>," contains the words: "Mohammed was a prophet who understood nothing about football. But of all the lovely colors he chose [Schalke's] blue and white."</p>
<p>Although the song was written in 1924, the football team began receiving complaints -- hundreds of them -- after a Turkish newspaper reported that the song is insulting to Mohammed. Muslims are now demanding that the offending line be struck from the song, which is chanted by Schalke's fans before every match.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in Germany, the German Central Council of Muslims issued a fatwa (religious ruling) stating that Muslim football players <a href="http://www.fnp.de/fnp/sport/special-fsv/profifussballer-duerfen-im-ramadan-fasten-brechen_rmn01.c.8003881.de.html">are not required to fast</a> during the month of Ramadan.</p>
<p>The ruling was issued after the German football club FSV Frankfurt issued an official warning to three of their players for fasting and failing to tell their manager. The club said fasting harms the performance of its players.</p>
<p>In France, the referee of a <a href="http://www.english.rfi.fr/sports/20120319-referee-refuses-officiate-french-womans-football-match-where-players-wore-muslim-hea">woman's football match</a> on March 18 in the southern French city of Narbonne refused to officiate the game when players for one of the teams took to the pitch wearing Muslim headscarves. The incident involved players from Petit-Bard Montpellier, who had been due to play Narbonne in a regional promotional tie.</p>
<p>The international governing body of football, known as FIFA, banned players from wearing the Islamic headscarf, also known as the hijab, in 2007, saying it was unsafe. But on March 3, FIFA accepted in principal that <a href="http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/ifab/01/57/76/27/6152ifabagenda_final3_withoutcrops.pdf">female footballers could wear headscarves</a> when playing in official competitions.</p>
<p>The rule change, instigated by the brother of the King of Jordan, Ali bin al-Hussein who is also FIFA vice president, is due to come into effect on July 2.</p>
<p>FIFA secretary general, Jerome Vacke, says al-Hussein successfully convinced FIFA that the hijab is a cultural rather than a religious symbol, and that the rule change will allow women all over the world to play football. But the change has angered many Europeans, including some feminist groups, who say the Muslim headscarf is a sign of "male domination."</p>
<p>In an interview with the French newspaper <a href="http://www.leparisien.fr/sports/bientot-des-footballeuses-voilees-19-03-2012-1913197.php"><i>Le Parisien</i></a>, Asma Guenifi, the director of a women's rights group called Ni Putes, Ni Soumises, said the rule change is "a total regression." She added: "I think FIFA is influenced by intense lobbying from rich Middle Eastern countries, like Qatar."</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.soerenkern.com/">Soeren Kern</a><i> is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on</i> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Soeren.Kern">Facebook</a><i>.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p><b><br/></b></p>
</div>