#Western Balkans route

[trendynewsnow]

Austria's Changing Position on Romania and Bulgaria's Schengen Membership

Austria’s Stance on Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen Membership Austria’s newly appointed EU Commissioner for Migration, Magnus Brunner, has recently advocated for the full membership of both Romania and Bulgaria in the Schengen Area. For the past two years, Austria has been blocking these countries from achieving complete Schengen status, which is vital for ensuring the free movement of…

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

==

Not only did white people not invent slavery - slavery existed for thousands of years before anyone travelled far enough to encounter other races - but it was Europeans who invented the principled opposition to it: abolition.

For most of its long history, which includes most of the history of the human race, slavery was largely not the enslavement of racially different people, for the simple reason that only in recent centuries has either the technology or the wealth existed to go to another continent to get slaves and transport them en masse across an ocean. People were enslaved because they were vulnerable, not because of how they looked. The peoples of the Balkans were enslaved by fellow Europeans, as well as by the peoples of the Middle East, for at least six centuries before the first African was brought to the Western Hemisphere.

Before the modern era, by and large Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Asians enslaved other Asians, Africans enslaved other Africans, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Slavery was not based on race, much less on theories about race. Only relatively late in history did enslavement across racial lines occur on such a scale as to promote an ideology of racism that outlasted the institution of slavery itself. 

Wherever a separate people were enslaved, they were disdained or despised, whether they were different by country, religion, caste, race, or tribe. The Europeans who were enslaved in North Africa were despised and abused because they were Christians in a Moslem region of the world, where they were called “Christian dogs.” Race became the most visible difference between slaves and slaveowners in the Western Hemisphere. As distinguished historian Daniel J. Boorstin put it: “Now for the first time in Western history, the status of slave coincided with a difference of race.” To make racism the driving force behind slavery is to make a historically recent factor the cause of an institution which originated thousands of years earlier. This enshrinement of racism as an over-arching causal factor accords far more with current instrumental agendas than with history.”

-- Thomas Sowell, "Black Rednecks & White Liberals"

The first country to abolish slavery was the United Kingdom in 1807. They then spent their time, money, manpower and political capital on convincing other countries to do likewise.

Nowhere was this more dramatically demonstrated than the West Africa Squadrons, which spent almost 60 years forming the Blockade of Africa, patrolling for, boarding and seizing slave ships.

Today, the largest populations of slaves in the world are located in countries in Asia, while the highest percentage of slaves per capita are found in MENA - the Middle East and North Africa.

The horrors of the Atlantic voyage in packed and suffocating slave ships, together with exposure to new diseases from Europeans and other African tribes, as well as the general dangers of the Atlantic crossing in that era, took a toll in lives amounting to about 10 percent of all slaves shipped to the Western Hemisphere in British vessels in the eighteenth century—the British being the leading slave traders of that era. However, the death toll among slaves imported by the Islamic countries, many of these slaves being forced to walk across the vast, burning sands of the Sahara, was twice as high. Thousands of human skeletons were strewn along one Saharan slave route alone—mostly the skeletons of young women and girls. These skeletons tended to cluster in the vicinity of wells, suggesting the last desperate efforts to reach water. Slaves who could not keep up with the caravans, often because their feet had swollen from walking across the hot sands, were abandoned in the desert to die a lingering death from heat, thirst and hunger. In 1849, a letter from an Ottoman official referred to 1,600 black slaves dying of thirst on their way to Libya. On another route, it was said that someone unfamiliar with the desert might almost be able to find his way just by following the trail of skeletons of people and camels.

Widespread loss of life began with the initial slave raids. As late as 1886, an Austrian who was an apologist for slavery nevertheless reported “Negro villages are burned, all the men killed, and their women and children are taken on months-long, terrible marches.” The march from slave-gathering areas, like the region around Lake Chad, across the Sahara Desert to the Mediterranean Sea took about three months and often only the strongest survived. Other slave routes to Islamic countries were over water, but this meant risking interception by the British Navy, and that in turn often meant that slaves were thrown overboard to drown rather than being allowed to remain on board to be discovered as incriminating evidence. The trans-Saharan caravan route was the most deadly, however. It has been estimated that, for every slave to reach Cairo alive, ten died on the way. Nor was Cairo exceptional. Missionary explorer David Livingstone, among others, estimated that several slaves were captured for every one that reached the Mediterranean alive.

Women were particularly vulnerable—and were more in demand than men. They brought higher prices in the Islamic countries, where they were widely used as domestic servants or as concubines. Ethiopian women sold for higher prices than Negro women, and white women from the Caucasus brought the highest prices of all. A special danger to men and boys was castration, to produce the eunuchs widely used in Islamic countries for work in the harems. Because the operation was forbidden under Islamic law, it was usually performed early—and often crudely—before reaching areas under the effective control of the Ottoman Empire. An estimated ninety percent of the men or boys died from the operation, though some groups of slave traders were sufficiently skilled to have much lower mortality rates. Eunuchs brought far higher prices than other slaves.

Dead and dying slaves were a common sight in the wake of a slave caravan. David Livingstone said that the “common incidents” of the slave trade that he had seen were “so nauseous that I always strive to drive them from memory.” For example: “One woman, who was unable to carry both her load and young child, had the child taken from her and saw its brains dashed out on a stone.” It was not only the Christian missionary Livingstone who was shocked by the brutality of Arab slave raiders and traders. So was Mohammed Ali, the ruler of Egypt, who was a battle-hardened military commander.

-- Thomas Sowell, "Conquests and Cultures"

The fact is that the percentage of students meeting the level of NAEP Proficient for U.S. History resides only in the teens. Not only is this a failure of the curriculum, but as we've seen, many teachers aren't so much "educators" as they are activists. So, literacy as far as World History can only be worse from there.

[ Source: NAEP Report Card: U.S. History ]

No wonder they're cheering on the terrorists.

[yoga-onion]

[Image above: ‘The Celtic Princess’ by Gaston Bussiere]

Legends and myths about trees

Celtic beliefs in trees (2)

- Who were the Celts?

Celtic means 'unknown people' in Ancient Rome and was not originally a term for an ethnic group.

The Celts appear to have migrated to central Europe around the Danube River in the early to mid 1st millennium BCE. They were first discovered around 500 BCE by the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus, calling them 'Kertoi'. Or 'Celtae' in Latin, and later the Romans called them ' Galli'. However, it is unlikely that the Celts in question were conscious of themselves as having a 'Celtic' identity.

The latest archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that the Celts have their roots in western Central Asia, around what is now southern Russia and Ukraine.

It is not clear how the ancestral Celtic peoples arrived in Europe, but as mounted nomads based in the steppes, they probably travelled westwards along the Steppe Route and entered Europe. It is estimated that from around 1000 BCE onwards, they moved inland from around the estuary of the Danube River and extended their settlement into the lower Alps.

As their population grew, they dispersed to all parts of Europe in search of new lands, and by the 3rd century BCE they had settled over a wide area, from the central plains of Turkey in the east, through the Balkans, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy to France, Belgium, Spain, and Britain and Ireland.

木にまつわる伝説・神話

ケルト人の樹木の信仰 (2)

〜ケルト人とは？

ケルトとは古代ローマで「未知の人」を意味し、もともとは民族を示す言葉ではない。

ケルト人は前１千年紀の初め頃から半ば頃に、ヨーロッパ中央部のドナウ川周辺へ移動してきたと見られる。前500年頃に彼らを最初に発見したのは、ギリシャの歴史家、ミレトスのヘカタエウスで、彼らを「ケルトイ」と呼んだ。またはラテン語で「ケルタエ」、のちにローマ人は「ガリ」と呼んだ。

しかし、当のケルト人が、自らを「ケルト人」というアイデンティティを持って意識していたとは思われない。

考古学や言語学の最新の証拠により、ケルト人のルーツは中央アジアの西部、現在のロシアの南部・ウクライナ辺りにあると推定されている。

ケルト人の祖先がどのようにしてヨーロッパに到達したかは不明だが、草原を拠点とする騎馬遊牧民として、草原の道（ステップロード）を西進し、ヨーロッパに入ったのであろう。前1000年頃以降、ドナウ川の河口域あたりから内陸部に入り、アルプスのすそ野に居住地を広げていったとみられる。彼らは人口が増えるにつれ、新天地を求めてヨーロッパ各地へ四散し、前3世紀までには、東はトルコの中央平原からバルカン半島、ハンガリー、チェコ共和国、オーストリア、スイス、イタリア北部を経て、フランス、ベルギー、スペイン、そしてブリテン、アイルランドに至る広範な地域に移住した。

[mariacallous]

New regulations on the screening of non-EU nationals at the bloc’s external borders, which come into force this week, could have major implications for migrants and asylum seekers’ privacy rights, campaigners warn.

Ozan Mirkan Balpetek, Advocacy and Communications Coordinator for Legal Centre Lesvos, an island in Greece on the so-called Balkan Route for migrants seeking to reach Western Europe, says the new pact “will significantly expand the Eurodac database [European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database], creating overlaps with other databases, such as international criminal records accessible to police forces”.

“Specific provisions of the pact directly undermine GDPR regulations that protect personal data from being improperly processed,” Balpetek told BIRN. “The pact only expands existing rights violations, including data breaches. Consequently, information shared by asylum seekers can be used against them during the asylum process, potentially leading to further criminalization of racialized communities,” he added.

The European Council confirmed the deal in May, and it should start being implemented in June 2026.

This legislation sets out new procedures for managing the arrival of irregular migrants, processing asylum applications, determining the EU country responsible for these applications, and devising strategies to handle migration crises.

The pact promises a “robust” screening at the borders to differentiate between those people deemed in need of international protection and those who are not.

The screening and border procedures will mandate extensive data collection and automatic exchanges, resulting in a regime of mass surveillance of migrants. Reforms to the Eurodac Regulation will mandate the systematic collection of migrants’ biometric data, now including facial images, which will be retained in databases for up to 10 years. The reform also lowers the thresholder for storing data in the system to the age of six.

Amnesty International in Greece said the new regulation “will set back European asylum law for decades to come”.

“These proposals come hand in hand with mounting efforts to shift responsibility for refugee protection and border control to countries outside of the EU – such as recent deals with Tunisia, Egypt, and Mauritania – or attempts to externalize the processing of asylum claims to Albania,” the human rights organisation told BIRN.

“These practices risk trapping people in states where their human rights will be in danger, render the EU complicit in the abuses that may follow, and compromises Europe’s ability to uphold human rights beyond the bloc,” it added.

NGOs working with people in need have been warning for months that the pact will systematically violate fundamental principles, resulting in a proliferation of rights violations in Europe.

Jesuit Refugee Services, including its arm in Croatia, said in April in a joint statement that it “cannot support a system that will enable the systematic detention of thousands of people, including children, at the EU’s external borders.

“The proposed legislation will exponentially increase human suffering while offering no real solutions to current system deficiencies,” JRS said.

Despite criticism, the European Parliament adopted the regulation in April.

Individuals who do not meet the entry requirements will be registered and undergo identification, security, and health checks. These checks are to be completed within seven days at the EU’s external borders and within three days for those apprehended within the EU.

Under the new system, EU member states can either accept a minimum of 30,000 asylum applicants annually or contribute at least 20,000 euros per asylum applicant to a joint EU fund.

After screening, individuals will be swiftly directed into one of three procedures: Border Procedures, Asylum Procedures, or Returns Procedures.

[beardedmrbean]

On August 19, a major police operation aimed at dismantling an international migrant trafficking ring operating along the so-called "Western Balkan route" was conducted in the Plovdiv region of Bulgaria, BNT reports. This route spans from Turkey through Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania, ultimately reaching Western Europe. The operation was spearheaded by the Main Directorate "Fighting Organized Crime" (GDBOP) and involved close coordination with the Main Directorate "Border Police" and the State Agency "National Security" (SANS). Oversight was provided by the District Prosecutor's Office in Plovdiv, and the action was supported by EUROPOL agents stationed in Bulgaria, as well as border police and anti-organized crime units from Romania and Moldova.

The coordinated effort resulted in the neutralization of a substantial international criminal organization consisting of Syrian, Jordanian, Bulgarian, and Moldovan nationals. The Bulgarian member of the group primarily handled logistics, including providing vehicles, registering individuals with lower social status, and overseeing their transportation. Moldovan drivers, recruited through online platforms, transported illegal migrants through Romania into Bulgaria. Once in Bulgaria, the migrants were picked up and transported by Moldovan drivers. The criminal network utilized mobile applications for internal communication.

During the operation, eight individuals were detained, with seven—including the leaders of the trafficking ring—facing charges. Authorities carried out 15 searches of residences and vehicles, leading to the seizure of six bank cards, 1.5 grams of cocaine, an illegal firearm with ammunition, numerous documents related to money transfers and vehicles, 16 electronic devices including phones, tablets, and laptops, four GPS trackers, and various identity documents.

Since early April, the GDBOP's investigation has linked the group to 17 cases involving over 130 illegal migrants. More than 20 drivers have been arrested, predominantly Moldovan nationals, with some individuals from Syria and Serbia also involved. The vehicles used were mostly Bulgarian-registered, often with temporary transit numbers.

The GDBOP investigation has received substantial support from EUROPOL and partner services from Romania and Moldova, as well as funding from the "Improving Cross-Border Cooperation in the Fight Against Organized Crime" project under the FFS 2021-2027.

[theculturedmarxist]

Posted onNovember 6, 2023 by Yves Smith

Although some analysts have given reasons why negotiated solutions to the wars in the Gaza and Ukraine are not in the cards, for the most part, they have also been hesitant to say that in a simple noun-verb sentence. Perhaps they hope against hope that a frame-breaking event will radically shift the current boundary conditions for the various parties. Or they hew to the “messaging can create realities” school of thought, and don’t want to legitimate very bad outcomes, no matter how likely they seem. Or it may be that as a matter of personal style, they are averse to being declarative.

So let’s look at why, despite the new round of Western officials (and in the case of Gaza, what is coming to be called the Global Majority) and the press making noises about talks the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine, there are yawing chasms between what the two sides are willing to do, and no prospect of meaningful movement in their positions even if the key players change. If you parse down the problem to key considerations, it’s not hard to find the underlying rigidities.

With Israel and Palestine, there is a widespread consensus, which includes many non-Zionist Jews, that the only route to a durable peace is the two state solution. But the current hard right government and an ever-more-powerful settler cohort are committed to a policy of securing Israel for Jews only, and on top of that, a “historical” Israel which means more territory. Existing conditions, such as the degree of balkanization of Palestinian living space, also render a two state solution untenable. And the Hamas October 7 attacks have radicalized some of the moderate Jews in Israel. A Palestinian state would have a military. Not hard in the current climate to scaremonger around that prospect.

It is true that Prime Minister Netanyahu has powerful personal incentives to keep the crisis going as long as possible. The prospect of imprisonment wonderfully focuses the mind. Therefore US punditocracy too often depicts Netanyahu were the problem. The implication is f he could be removed, the situation would become more tractable. That’s false.

While Netanyahu has been the lead architect of the anti-Palestinian policies and is an extremely cunning politician, those positions and practices are now very well embedded. As former British ambassador Alastair Crooke explained:

“Israel” has shattered into two equally weighted factions holding to two irreconcilable visions of “Israel’s” future; two mutually opposing readings of history and of what it means to be Jewish. The fissure could not be more complete. Except it is. One faction, which holds a majority in parliament, is broadly Mizrahi — a former underclass in Israeli society; and the other, largely well-to-do liberal Ashkenazi. So, what has this to do with Al-Aqsa Flood? Well, the Right in Netanyahu’s government has two long-standing commitments. One is to rebuild the (Jewish) Temple on ‘Temple Mount’ (Haram al-Shariff). Just to be clear, that would entail demolishing Al-Aqsa [one of the holiest sites for Muslims]. The second overriding commitment is to the founding of “Israel”, on the “Land of Israel”. And again, to be clear, this (in their view) would entail clearing Palestinians from the West Bank. Indeed, the settlers have been cleansing Palestinians from swaths of the West Bank over the past year (notably between Ramallah and Jehrico). On Thursday morning (two days preceding Al-Aqsa Flood), more than 800 settlers stormed the Mosque Compound, under the full protection of Israeli forces. The drumbeat of such provocations is rising. This is nothing new. The First Intifada was triggered by (then) PM Sharon making a provocative visit into the mosque. I was a part of Senator George Mitchell’s Presidential Committee investigating that incident. Even then, it was clear that Sharon intended the visit to fuel the fire of Religious nationalism. At that time, the Temple Mount Movement was a minnow; today it has ministers in Cabinet and in key security positions — and has promised its followers to build the ‘Third Temple’.

The second problem is that the economic marginalization and cordoning of the Palestine population has become so advanced that it looks impossible to unwind it….tacitly, without costs to Israelis that they would not accept. Key sections from an article in Vox from February 2023 by Jonathan Guyer. Note his prescient call of the risk of a third Initifada:

The US policy does not take into account how entrenched the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem has become. Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank has made a viable Palestinian state all but impossible. The US-led talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization have been on hiatus since President Barack Obama’s second term, and even at the time, there was little hope that they would amount to much. And Arab states like Morocco, UAE, and Bahrain have abandoned Palestinians, as they normalize relations with the State of Israel and eliminate any incentives for negotiations toward a Palestinian state… But the actions that have foreclosed the possibility of a two-state solution are decades in the making….Israeli actions, like construction of a hulking, concrete separation barrier between Israel and the occupied West Bank, have rendered the proposed borders of the future Palestinian state moot. Further cut off by Israeli settlements, Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank has been reduced to unconnected cantons, with a network of settler-only roads sometimes being the only connection between them. This brutal new geography puts into question a Palestinian state’s economic viability… Meanwhile, the Palestinian government run by 87-year-old Mahmoud Abbas is fractured, dysfunctional, and increasingly authoritarian. It also essentially is the subcontractor of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

The third issue is despite the US in theory having leverage over Israel, in practice we don’t due to the power of the Israel lobby in the Beltway. Guyer’s article pointed out that when the Biden State Department top human rights appointee Sarah Margon had her confirmation held up for two years over a tweet that approved of AirBnB removing listings in settlements in the West Bank. Ranking member and gentile James Risch depicted Jewish Margon as an anti-Semitic. She eventually withdrew her candidacy.

As Professor John Mearsheimer put it in his interview last Friday with Judge Napolitano (starting at 1:34):

The fact is the United States and Israel are joined at the hip. There are no two countries in recorded history that have a closer history that have a closer relationship than the United States and Israel. And when this crisis broke out on October 7, President Biden made it very clear we would give Israel whatever aid it needed, and that meant both weapons and money, that we would support Israel to the hilt. And we have done that. Once you take into account that tight relationship, how committed we already are to this war, it’s very difficult for us to back off and to begin to put pressure on Israel to do X or Y or Z. There is no question that Blinken can try to go to the Middle East and pressure Israel, but the Israelis can tell him “No” and then what is he going to do? And if he decides he’s going to then get tough, which he isn’t going to do, American domestic, the power of the Israel lobby, would kick in and make it very difficult for the Biden Administration to put pressure on Israel.

Mearsheimer charitably depicts Biden and Blinken as interested in curbing Israel, if nothing else for the benefit of Israel. But that’s hard to see. Alastair Crooke pointed out in (also in a Judge Napolitano interview) that Biden had done less than any recent president to advance the two state solution (I infer that means even Trump gave it more lip service).

Biden also has the established habit of saying things that are expedient at the time that have no relationship to his policy aims, like telling China’s President Xi that the US supports the China one-state policy, then turning around and continuing to escalate in Taiwan. So he and Blinken are mouthing the two state remedy because even though it is no answer, it at least makes them appear responsible and fair-minded when they are anything but.

So one has to wonder what the latest Blinken round of visits to the Middle East was supposed to accomplish, since all it did was expose our impotence. Even the Financial Times could not hide that the meetings with Netanyahu and then Arab leaders were a train wreck. Netanyahu rejected even any itty bitty ceasefire, branded a humanitarian pause, to get relief in, demanding that Hamas release all hostages first.1 The fact that Israel has welched or underperformed on its past begrudging promises to let trucks from Egypt in, would make that a non-starter even before getting to Hamas being sure to stick to its position of wanting to trade hostages for Palestinian prisoners. And of course the Arab states are not about to budge. Blinken got a more pointed version of what he was told before. From the pink paper:

Antony Blinken faced intense pressure from regional allies to facilitate an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, laying bare the stark gap between US support for Israel and the outrage in Arab capitals over the siege and bombardment of the strip…. Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, demanded an unconditional ceasefire, a commitment that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly rejected after meeting Blinken on Friday.

This section reveals Blinken as a rank amateur:

Blinken had been expected to “brainstorm” with Arab diplomats the future of Gaza, home to 2.3mn Palestinians, after the war ends. Safadi bluntly rejected those talks as premature. “How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know how Gaza will be left?” he asked Blinken. “Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we talking about a whole population reduced to refugees?”

This comes off as the sort of thing someone who had just read classic texts on negotiating trying to put in practice: “Gee, let’s get a dialogue going! Let’s get to ‘Yes’ on some less fraught issues to pave the way for further agreement!”

In addition, “brainstorming” is cringemakingly American. You don’t do that with people who are mad at you. You don’t do that in a crisis. Between independent entities, you do not do that at the top level. You have low level people or emissaries float ideas.

So why this exercise? The worst is that Biden and Blinken come off as so disconnected from reality that they though they might get someone to accommodate US needs.

But some more generous possibilities: To try to get in front of a mob and pretend we the indispensable power, are leading a parade? To try to reverse some of the damage to our reputation as more of the world recoils from our not stopping or even criticizing the genocide in Gaza? To try to placate American Muslims who are moving away from Team Dem to the degree that the party might lose Michigan? Perhaps insiders comfort themselves with the thought that American supporters of Palestine have nowhere to go; Donald Trump is a rabid supporter. But they forget that these voters can just stay home. If there was a PR angle, that turned out to be a bust too.

The information on the IDF progress against Hamas fighters is thin and not likely to be reliable. But even though it seems likely that Israel will be able to declare a victory even though that will amount clearing Gaza of civilians more than destroying Hamas, Israel is likely to suffer real damage in the process.

As to the inevitable failure of the kinda-sorta revival of the idea of having Ukraine negotiate with Russia, that’s an even more obvious non-starter, despite Putin making polite noises that he’s willing to talk. The excitement about a new NBC article stating that the US is pressing Ukraine to negotiate is just another example of the Ukraine coalition side talking to itself without considering seriously what it might take to get the other side to agree.

However, on a practical level, this does start to let the air our of the Ukraine hype balloon.

As with Israel, we have the apparent obstacle of a non-negotiable leader obscuring other fundamental problems. We can go through the usual litany. The West has repeatedly been a bad faith actor, with its welching on its “not one inch further east” promise, its gleeful admission of duplicity in the Minsk Accords, it not delivering on its part of the grain deal bargain, and getting Ukraine to renege on its preliminary deal in March 2022. The West keeps talking about having Ukraine negotiate with Russia when Russia knows and the West has admitted that Ukraine is a proxy. You don’t talk to the money, you talk to the organ grinder.

The West also continues to be well behind the state of play for what its side would need to concede even to get Russia’s attention. Merely allowing Russia to keep the territory it presently occupies won’t do when the Ukraine army is now increasingly admitted in the Anglosphere press to be low on arms and men with no prospect of getting to adequate levels. That translates into collapse being in the foreseeable future. As many observers, including yours truly, have pointed out, Russian officials have increasingly signaled that they intend to return formerly Russian land to Russia. That has been taken to mean areas with significant ethnic Russian populations, meaning the territory east of the Dnieper and the Black Sea coast.2

But we described the showstopper in our September post, Original Sin: How the Weak Legal Foundations of NATO Make Negotiations With Russia Virtually Impossible. One of Russia’s fundamental demands is that Ukraine never enter NATO. NATO so far has rejected that idea with hostility. But even if NATO were to have a Damascene conversion, “NATO” cannot commit as a body. Each member state has to agree individually. As we wrote then, expanding on an important post by Aurelien:

So this goes a long way towards explaining why the so-called Collective West gets so wrapped around the axle of having to negotiate with itself. If “NATO” has to act in some manner to settle the conflict in Ukraine, every member of NATO (an as Aurelien argues, potentially even interested parties like Switzerland) would have to come to an agreed position, since each country would have to sign off individually on any pact for it to amount to a NATO-equivalent treaty.

Aside from the procedural mess, do you think the Baltic states would ever agree?

So again, we need to remind readers that despite the US floating yet more negotiation trial balloon, nothing had changed. And tragically, it’s pretty certain nothing will change.

____

1 Seymour Hersh’s new article, How the Hostage Crisis Could End, based on accounts from “an American official” on the claim that ngotiations with the Hamas political leadership are underway. Hersh also cites a supposed Middle East expert, but this expert was spitballing on how Hamas political leader Yayha Sinwar might respond (I really do not like Hersh’s slippery formulation with respect to this guy: “…who knows of the seriousness of current hostage talks.” If he really had inside knowledge, he would not need to speculate.) His other sources, which include an Israel general, are not corroborating the fact of these supposed negotiations.

The claim here is that the Hamas political leadership was in the dark as to what the military wing was going to execute on October 7, the military force is collapsing, about to suffocate in the tunnels, and the political leadership is willing to sell the armed forces out to save their hides. Specifically, we are told Israel is negotiating for the men in the tunnels to be released if Hamas also frees all hostages and will subject everyone who participated in the October 7 attack to war crimes trials, including “combat leaders” who are accused of witnessing the purported crimes and not attempting to stop them. This account also presupposes that most of the hostages still alive after all the shelling and the political wing of Hamas can get whoever is left standing in the military wing to release them. Pray tell, why should they cooperate? Even Hersh has to concede this scheme comes off as something “out of a bad novel.” One has to think the Hersh account is nothing more than yet another idea cooked up by the US that is going nowhere.

Perhaps Hersh will be proven correct, but I have trouble buying this as anything more than the US and Israel depicting Hamas as a spent fighting force in Gaza and to get the meme that Hamas committed war crimes back in circulation as Israel is being correctly accused of mass scale war crimes in Gaza, and increasingly, genocide. Scott Ritter can be melodramatic, but as an ex-Marine, he often talks about soldiers putting their lives on the line, as in that’s understood to be fundamental to the role. Hamas fighters had to expect that they could die in this operation. Not that anyone welcomes that outcome, but one has to think that the rank and file, and even more the leadership, were prepared. Why should they let Israel attempt to reclaim the moral high ground, particularly since Israel is also demanding death for any Hamas member who is successfully prosecuted? Dead is dead. Better to die with some dignity, fighting.

2 Putin has started to argue that Kiev might be subject to incorporation as “historical Russia.” However, Putin has also made a point to hold elections to validate territorial acquisition and it’s doubtful there would be a credible win in Western Ukraine ex its South. And holding hostile territory is corrupting. So this section of his speech may be a warning that Russia sees it as legitimate to march to Lviv if it has to….but then what happens? Alexander Mercouris also called attention to his remarks at Meeting with members of the Civic Chamber. Key section:

First of all, we all know very well – these are the facts of history – that all, as you said, the South Russian lands were given to the Soviet Ukraine during the formation of the Soviet Union. There was no Ukraine as part of the empire, there were regions, and it came in the 16th century, Ukraine, consisted of three regions: Kiev and the Kiev region, Zhitomir, Chernigov – that’s all. It came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from Poland voluntarily. We have a letter in our archives – I have already mentioned it – we, the Russian Orthodox people, appeal to Moscow, to the Tsar, and so on. In an attempt to defend our rights, we addressed the same letter to Warsaw: we, the Russian Orthodox people, ask to preserve this and that, demand, and so on. Then what happened happened. They started to form the Soviet Union and created a huge Ukraine, and primarily and to a large extent at the expense of the South Russian lands – all the Black Sea region and so on, although all these cities, as we know, were founded by Catherine the Great after a series of wars with the Ottoman Empire. Ok, so it happened, modern Russia came to terms with it after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But when they started to exterminate everything Russian there – that is, of course, extreme. And in the end they declared that Russians are not an indigenous nation in these lands – it is a complete outrage, you know? And at the same time, they also started exterminating Russians in Donbas to the applause of the West.

So if you read this carefully (and what follows), Putin is still concerned with the treatment of ethnic Russians, but warns this issue could be considered expansively.

[hellshee]

btw for anyone who’s even remotely interested in this: austria is lying. it’s been made clear that the main route to austria for illegal immigration is through western balkans and not romania so again, this is all BS

austrian politicians are lying to their people because guess what, xenophobia and populism buys you votes

[itsyveinthesky]

I see the Austrian chancellor and interrior minister only talk to press they bought themselves.

Holy shit what did I just watch.

Just completely disregarded Romanian and Bulgarian press.

How does Austria constantly get away with being right wing piece of shit government that is in the pocket of Russia.  Unbelievable.

Libertatea, Digi 24 and Antena 3 CNN had journalists at Wednesday evening's press conference in Vienna, where Austria's chancellor sent Romania and Bulgaria with the accession "in the spring". Chancellor Nehammer answered questions from the Austrian press, but refused to answer the question, asked in English, by Romanian journalists.

"Chancellor Nehammer, official EU figures, updated monthly, show that the most frequented route for illegal migrants is the Western Balkans. Fifteen times more migrants come via Croatia than Romania. Can you explain why you agree with Croatia in Schengen but not with Bulgaria and Romania?".

This was the question Romanian journalists asked three times at the press meeting in Vienna. Three times Chancellor Nehammer heard it, but did not answer.  

The Chancellor only took questions from Austrian public television, ORF, and the state news agency: Austria Presse Agentur.

"Why do you accept Croatia and not Romania?"

As the Romanians insisted, the politician left in a visibly irritated mood. Security blocked the Romanian journalists who tried to ask him the question again. One of the local security men used the word "hooligans" against the Romanian journalists.

"I think we have to be realistic. In Austria we have more than 75,000 migrants who have not been registered anywhere. This is not a political discussion, it is a discussion based on facts. We have a problem with EU security. The Interior Ministry wants a new timetable for Romania and Bulgaria for spring. Let's look at the numbers, how many migrants we have and how we can move forward," the Austrian chancellor told the press.

Next to him was the chairman of the EPP group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber. He pleaded for the admission of Romania and Bulgaria, but seemed resigned to the fact that "we need to make a programme", discussing accession in the future.Tomorrow, 8 December, the JHA Council on the accession of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia to the Schengen area takes place in Brussels. The veto of a single country is enough to prevent accession.

https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/intrebarea-pusa-de-trei-ori-de-presa-romana-prezenta-la-viena-si-la-care-cancelarul-nehammer-n-a-raspuns-4372656

[roadie1963]

Ride the Newly Opened Trans Dinarica Route Through the Western Balkans

Image By Ales Krivec collaboration with Unsplash.com Thinking bicycle trails evolved in the United States is an easy mistake. The truth is that cycling trails are in place worldwide but are especially prevalent in bicycle-crazy Europe. Most of us, because we don’t know specific roads and routes in a country we want to visit, just choose to work with a bicycle travel company. A bicycle travel or…

[oipolinternacional]

8 arrested in Romania for smuggling migrants along the Balkan route

Law enforcement authorities uncover criminal network using drivers employed by private taxi services to transport migrants from Türkiye to Western Europe OIPOL & OIJUST Operating in the World / Communication by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (EUROPOL). 30 July 2024. Cooperation and edition Oipol & Oijust. July 30, 2024.- An operation led by the Romanian Police (Poliția…

[head-post]

Italy, Slovenia and Croatia intensify co-operation in fight against illegal migrants

In a joint announcement made on Tuesday in Buzet, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy announced their plans to extend their cooperation to the countries of the Western Balkans in order to combat illegal migration and people smuggling.

The first meeting of ministers Davor Božinović, Boštjan Poklukar, and Mateo Piantedosi was held in November in Trieste with an agreement to strengthen cooperation in the joint surveillance of the border on the Western Balkan migrant route.

On Tuesday, the trio said their joint action had been effective so far, with no major crowding at the borders. Croatia’s Davor Božinović said after the meeting in the western town of Buzet:

“Citizens of Italy, Croatia and Slovenia did not experience any problems in movement because of police controls introduced, especially in border areas. And just this year [in 2024], we arrested 90 traffickers already.”

Read more HERE

[raizinggroup12]

Hungary Permanent Residency Program

Hungary is a member of the European Union and the Schengen area. It is located in the center of Europe and at the crossroads of many trade routes. Although it covers an area of only 93,000 square kilometers and has a population of less than 10 million, it has duty-free access to the EU market of more than 500 million people. In addition to the EU, it also has close relations with Ukraine, Russia and the Western Balkans with their population of more than 200 million people.

[mariacallous]

A new report on biodiversity in the Western Balkans published on Thursday by the German EuroNatur Foundation, a nature conservation organisation, highlights the need for urgent action to conserve threatened natural habitats.

The report highlights areas where the natural habitat is under threat and animal species in need of conservation in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Albania’s Vjose-Narte region, renowned for its birdlife and wetlands, faces severe threats from the construction of the Vlora International Airport, it notes. Over 200 bird species, including the rare Dalmatian Pelican and Greater Flamingo, rely on the habitat there. 

The government’s redefinition of protected areas to facilitate the airport project has excluded 310 hectares of crucial habitat in the south of the country, alarming conservationists. 

“The construction of the Vlora International Airport, part of a sweeping vision to transform this biodiverse haven into a hub of tourism and infrastructure, threatens to mute the lagoon’s vibrant voice,” the report warns.

The report also focuses on the vast karst field of Livanjsko Polje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Ramsar site and Important Bird Area, which remains unprotected at national level. Ramsar Sites are wetlands of international importance designated under the Ramsar Convention.

Seasonal flooding supports diverse habitats and agriculture but unregulated water management, peat extraction and inadequate legal frameworks threaten its future.

Efforts to declare Livanjsko Polje a protected area have stalled, reflecting governance challenges in Bosnia and its fragmented environmental policies.

Montenegro’s Ulcinj Salina, once a thriving salt production site, is another battleground for conservation noted in the report. Recognised as a candidate for the Emerald Network, the area supports over 250 bird species but privatisation and neglect have degraded its ecosystems. 

The report emphasises “a struggle, pitting traditional livelihoods and environmental conservation against closed economic interests, leaving an entire ecosystem and the local community at a crossroads”.

Salina was designated a Nature Park in 2019 but a formal management body has yet to be established, hindering restoration efforts.

The Adriatic Flyway, a critical bird migration route, is under siege from illegal bird killings, particularly in Serbia, the report says. Up to 163,000 birds, including quails and raptors, are killed each year, disrupting ecological balances. Weak law enforcement exacerbates the issue, undermining Serbia’s compliance with international conservation agreements.

The report also emphasises the grave danger facing the Balkan lynx, one of Europe’s most endangered large carnivores, which inhabits the forests and mountains of the Western Balkans, including North Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo. 

With fewer than 40 lynx remaining in the wild, this wild cat faces extinction. Its survival is a critical conservation priority, not only as a keystone species but also as a barometer of the region’s environmental health​

The report calls for enhanced legal frameworks, stricter enforcement of conservation laws, and greater community involvement. Recommendations include restoring damaged habitats, integrating local economies with biodiversity goals, and aligning national policies with EU environmental standards.

[beardedmrbean]

At least nine migrants have drowned after their boat capsized while trying to cross the Drina River, which separates Serbia and Bosnia.

Authorities said at least 18 other migrants, including three children, arrived safely on the Bosnian side of the border.

But teams from both countries are searching for several people still unaccounted for. Parts of the river are up to 200 metres wide.

Local media also reported a search is under way for a smuggler who took the migrants across the river.

Vlada Rankic, the leader of the civil defence rescue team, told reporters that rescuers were also searching for a mother and a baby.

"Unfortunately, we don't think there will be survivors," he added.

Bosnia's border police confirmed the incident took place early in the morning, but did not provide more details.

Serbian officials also confirmed that an incident had taken place near the border town of Ljubovija, with police adding that the majority of the migrants were people from Morocco.

Serbia and Bosnia are among the main transit countries on the route through the Western Balkans into the European Union.

In September 2023, according to the EU's border police organisation Frontex, the route overtook the Central Mediterranean route through Italy in numbers of irregular border crossings, with many migrants crossing through Bulgaria.

The Serbian government says over a million people from Asia and Africa have crossed into the country since the refugee crisis of 2015. More than one million migrants entered Europe that year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

According to government data, the majority attempting to cross into Serbia in recent months came from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Morocco and Pakistan.

But the number of migrants transiting through Serbia has decreased significantly over the years.

Serbian police recorded 10,389 illegal entries in the first half of 2024, which is nearly 70% less than the previous year.

Serbian officials have credited the drop to tighter cooperation with Austrian police and with Frontex.

Many migrants use smugglers to enter Serbia from Bulgaria and North Macedonia and then try to cross into EU members Hungary or Croatia.

[whatsonmedia]

The Balkan Route: refugees and Solidarity in Serbia!

AIDAN FRERE-SMITH reports from the Balkans on the efforts of a small group of humanitarian NGOs to support the desperate migrants crossing the region to reach Western Europe. The Serbian-Hungarian border is increasingly in hostile environment. Many take this route through the Balkans in pursuit of Europe. The concern is that the number of people travelling through this route is on the rise. Many people temporarirly reside at one of the squats and camps in the north of Serbia. Which is in dilapidated buildings, improvised structures and tents. What does the reports suggest? According to a report published by Belgrade Centre for Human Rights that the number of "registered foreigners" have doubled. Data published by the UN refugee agency states that there was a 57% increase in refugees. The migrants passing through Serbia between January and February of 2023 compared withe pervious year. Blankan Route Solidarity and Respect During aid distrubtions,mobile phones and power packs can be changed. Access to mobile phones is not only important phones is not only important for emergencies and navigation but can improve mental well-being and "transform humanitarian action". Hygiene is also maintained through a laundry service at one of CA’s warehouse units. The severity of the lack of sanitation, for example, is not something that can be described lightly. In addition to this, mounds of trash dominate some areas and are ever-growing. Systematic Persecution Squats and camps exist due to a lack of supportive infrastructure from the Serbian government. Refugees have been in inhumane conditions and sometimes under "life-threatening situation". Regardless of where they stay, the migrants have little choice but to endure terrible conditions, exacerbated by hostile authorities. Evictions, for example, are one such method. Conditions of the refugees! Hope to not Return! Men, children, women have been reportedly faced mistreatments from authorities, who enroute through Balkan route. Though there can be a sense of camaraderie among those on the move, the reality is much more complicated. The mistreatment, solidarity and suffering of the refugee conditions of the travellers contributes to the disastrous conditions of humans. The inhumane conditions and the mistreatement from the authorities contribute to a dystopian condition in which humans are dewelling. Balkan Route refugees! Read the full article