Freedom of expression is a thorn in the side of EU technocrats. The new intellectual property law adopted by the European Parliament in September threatens our fundamental rights.

Internet means freedom. Still. We can (still) freely retrieve content with our search engines. We can (still) freely and without further ado access the sources in a text. This will soon change. Article 13 of the controversial law says that website operators and Internet providers will be held accountable for the content of their customers and readers. The new law thus obliges them to use the so-called upload filters. The filter obligation leaves it to the software to decide what users are allowed to upload and what not. In plain language it says the provider will control and censor our activities on the net: every uploaded photo, video, every text will be checked. The question arises: what criteria will apply to this censorship and how and by whom will this filter software be programmed? The EU Commission will certainly soon be proposing detailed guidelines to combat fake news, the spread of terrorism on the Internet, and to combat those who infringe copyrights. All right, but it will also be a tool to suppress the critics of the EU, independent bloggers who want to throw light on the incompetence and insolence of the Brussels technocrats, dissidents (not left-wing liberals). And I bet: the directives will be introduced very quickly and eagerly in all EU countries.

Source: shutterstock.com

According to 2017 official data, more than 3.7 million people from outside the Community settled in the European Union, of which 565 thousand were granted asylum and 3.1 million received a residence permit. It turns out that Poland, which is considered the opponent of migration, has accepted 18% of this pool, becoming the second – after Germany – most favorable towards non-EU foreigners.

Although in 2017, among 28 countries, Poland was the ninth from the end in terms of the number of accepted refugees (560 positive decisions),it issued the largest number of residence permits. Last year Warsaw allowed for arrival of over 683 thousand people from outside the EU,of which Ukrainians, the largest group, number 585 thousand, to be followed by 42.8 thousand Belorussians and 7.8 thousand Moldovans. In 87% of the cases, a residence permit was issued on the basis of an employment contract.

Among the EU countries, Poland ranks third in terms of the number of immigrants, which is 18, per 1000 citizens. Only Malta (26.8) and Cyprus (23.7) are ahead of Poland, but these are countries with a small population, lying directly on the migration routes from the Middle East and Africa. By comparison, European leading migration advocates, i.e. Germany, France, and recently also Spain, have accepted 6, 17 and 16 foreigners from outside the EU per 1000 citizens respectively.

The celebration of Poland’s Independence Day, which falls on 11 November, has been prohibited by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and almost all the post-war communist rulers of the country. Since 1989 Poland is supposedly an independent state and the Polish nation can enjoy freedom and feel itself at last at home. Spontaneously people began celebrating Independence Day and have continued to do so for a good many years. Every year from the point of view of the powers that be this festivity has been a problem: allegedly fascists and Nazis, anti-Semites and racists made up the long, fifty, seventy or a hundred thousand people strong column of men and women and children marching along the capital’s streets, with unfurled national flags. The message is sent to the whole world that “fascism is raising its ugly head” in Poland and that something must be done about it or else.

This year it is the hundredth anniversary of Poland regaining independence after 123 years of captivity during which it was politically erased from the maps of Europe. This national holiday was officially instituted barely before the Second World War. Its importance for the collective national consciousness cannot be overrated. And lo and behold, it is again a thorn in the flesh of the powers that be.

At first Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who styles himself as a patriot, said he would take part; then, which was only waiting to happen, he revoked;then Warsaw’s mayor said she would forbid the march the moment she learnt about improprieties; then she took the ultimate decision to prohibit the march;eventually President Andrzej Duda said he would form and lead a rival march,with a changed name: no Independence March anymore but a White-and-Red March, named after the colours of the national flag.

The conflict between the European Union and Italy is a full-blown financial war. Euro countries cannot print their own money and for that reason they cannot have an endless deficit. Countries within the eurozone have to live within their means or else, without the intervention of the ECB, they will go bankrupt. Nobody knows the consequences of an Italian default and debt restructuring, but it can lead to the end of the euro.

To make the euro sustainable, the European financial elites want the Italians to reduce their spending and turn a budget deficit into a budget surplus. However, due to the country’s shrinking population the Italian budget deficit — as we have argued many times – can only increase. The European commission rejects the Italian budget because Rome wants to increase its debt far beyond the limit allowed by the ECB. “This is the first Italian budget that the EU doesn’t like,” wrote Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio on Facebook. “No surprise: This is the first Italian budget written in Rome and not in Brussels!”Matteo Salvini added: “This (the rejection of the Italian budget plan by the EU) doesn’t change anything.”“They’re not attacking a government but a people. These are things that will anger Italians even more,” he said.

The country has entered a demographic winterand sustainable economic growth is simply impossible, at least for the foreseeable future. As is the case with the whole of Europe, the continent needs a plan to support an ageing and declining population. As if not aware of it, the Brussels-Frankfurt establishment only wants Italy to stick to their austerity program, i.e. decrease public spending and do away with the current Italian administration, which refuses to comply.

To force Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini out of office, the European Union will go to any lengths to destroy the Italian banking sector the way they did it in Greece and Cyprus. In 2015 Greece shut down its banks, ordering them to stay closed for six days, and its central bank imposed restrictions to prevent money from fleeing out of the country.

The conflict over gas in the eastern Mediterranean is intensifying. In February, the first case of intervention by the Turkish navy took place in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus. Last month, two more flashpoints have appeared.

The dispute concerns gas blocks, i.e. areas into which waters around Cyprus have been divided. Turkey does not recognize the government in Nicosia or its agreements regarding EEZ. Ankara thinks that the right to extract gas should also be exercised by the Turkish Cypriots and also by Turkey in the case of Blocks 4, 5, 6, and 7, through which – according to Ankara – passes the Turkish maritime border (the map below).

At the beginning of October, Cyprus put gas extraction in the disputed Block 7 out to tender,which the Gefira Team has informed about.In response to this, in the middle of the same month, Turkey sent an exploration ship assisted by four naval vessels and began exploration in the area of 44 thousand km², including blocks 4 and 5.Nicosia and Athens consider it a violation of the Exclusive Economic Zone of Cyprus.On October 18, another event took place. Greece reported that the Turkish ship had entered the Greek continental shelf, which provoke Athens to send the frigate Nikiforos to drive the Turks out.

In the end of the nineteenth and almost throughout the whole of the twentieth centuries it was the working class that was adored by them. Everything was done for this class, through this class, for the sake of this class, in the name of this class. They all devoted their lives to the liberation of the working class which was ruthlessly exploited by the capitalists. Who were those working class’ liberators, those do-gooders? Sons and daughters of intellectuals (and intellectuals themselves), sons and daughters of civil servants, of the déclassé or landed gentry, and last but not least sons and daughters of… capitalists. Although they themselves either never did menial jobs or did them but for a moment to “prove themselves”, and although they hardly ever mingled with the working class people, they idolised them nonetheless.

Truth be told, on closer acquaintance with the working class members the intellectual do-gooders very soon grew deeply disappointed with them, with their way of life, jokes, likes and dislikes, mentality and custom and as a result they secretly despised them. In the countries where the do-gooders eventually established their political systems – which were known by the name of socialist or communist countries – they had as little to do with the working class as possible, living in luxurious houses or separate city quarters.

The turmoil in the financial markets and the increase in the Italian bond yield are a prelude to the real crisis we expect to happen next year, or at the latest in 2020. The current Italian government will not change its plan to increase its budget deficit under pressure from the financial markets. Salvini is winning more and more support for his confrontation with the European Union. A part of the Italian establishment wants to regain control over its currency, thus spurning the ECB monetary and borders policy.

Many prominent Italians such as Claudio Borghi, head of the Budget Committee for the Lower House and senior adviser to the Northern League (Salvini’s party), and Paolo Savona, European Affairs Minister, are waiting for the right opportunity to introduce the mini-BOT as a parallel currency. Brussels’ reckless mass-immigration policy has played into Salvini’s hands: he is enjoying popular support, as well as that of the military and security, which strengthens his position against the European Union. Italy’s powers that be are beginning to understand that if they lose sovereignty to the European Union, they will lose their raison d’être.

The ECB is highly likely to buy Italian bonds in order to prevent a further escalation of the yield of these bonds.

The national economies in Europe will start to collapse around 2020, causing government spending in many European countries to go out of control, which will in turn cause the budget deficit and public debt to start growing again. It is only Germany that seems to be in control of, and to benefit from, the European project. Not for long, though. The economic and monetary rulings of Brussels will eventually put an end to the country’s relative prosperity. Its manufacturing base will be taken over by Xi Jingpin, the environmentalists who demand the imposition of various restrictions on the industry will make it all the easier for Vladimir Putin to become Germany’s gas tsar, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is well on the way to becoming the beloved president of large groups of “Germans”

This week in a CNBC interview Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the former Dutch minister of finance who served as the President of the Eurogroup, declared war on the Italian government. The European financial establishment is prepared to destroy the banking system and cause the Italian economy to implode. Like a Mafia boss, Dijsselbloem warned that Italy could run into trouble if it does not comply with Brussels’ directives. Of course, his statement was cloaked in diplomatic language:

“If the Italian crisis becomes a major crisis, it will mainly implode into the Italian economy … as opposed to spreading around Europe,” he said. “Because of the way that the Italian economy and the Italian banks are financed, it’s going to be an implosion rather than an explosion.”

For a man of this format it is unusual to publicly expose Italy as a state in a weak negotiating position or try to act as a scaremonger. We have never seen anything remotely like that, so we think that the utterance could only serve the purpose of giving the green light to the financial markets to orchestrate an attack on Italian bonds so as to drive Italian yield up.

“And there is gonna be a role for the markets, I mean if you look at what Italy needs in funding next year alone we are talking about over 250 billion Euro, refinancing part of the stock of their debt and also, of course, these new spending plans. So markets will really have to look at that very critically.”

Italy’s situation is ‘pretty worrisome’: Dijsselbloem from CNBC.

He reminded the Italian government that Italian banks are a sitting target for the European financial authorities. In order to destabilize a country’s economy, one must break its backbone i.e. banks.

“There will also have to be a role for the Banking authority, banking supervisor to look what this does to the Italian banks. We have already seen their stock valuation are going down” Mr Dijsselbloem said with a smile.

Malmö, once a quiet industrial port. Yesterday’s serenity gave way to today’s widespread violence: shootouts, rapes, robberies, assaults and shoplifting are the order of the day. Swedes are leaving Malmö because the police are unable to enforce law and order. What is the reason behind it? A sharp increase in the number of immigrants. Other Swedish regions are afflicted as well: the authorities cannot cope with the escalation of crime: their incompetence came to the fore on one August evening when in several Swedish cities nearly 100 cars were set ablaze.

Demographic growth based on immigrants
The increase in crime is explained by the increase in the number of people.Our calculations show that within seventeen years (2000-2017), during which 1.76 million immigrants arrived, and the overall number of inhabitants rose by 12%, the sum of registered acts of serious lawbreaking was larger by 25%. Therefore, it cannot be denied that the intensity of lawlessness has a lot to do with the influx of foreigners.

There are 82 million people living in Turkey. Almost five million people of Turkish descent live in Europe (3 million in Germany, about 350 000 in Austria),including many Kurds who can play an important role in ethnic exchange in Europe. Many migrants from Syria, Iran and Iraq who come to Europe via Turkey are also Kurds. They are also important for the demographic developments in Turkey.

The lie that has been untiringly told by EU propaganda since the 1950s is that the European industrialised countries need fresh skilled workers and specialists from Algeria (in France) or Turkey (in Germany), for example, because of the constantly slowing population growth. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt made a fitting statement on the emigration of workers at the time of the economic miracle: “Basically, he [the then Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard] wanted to keep wage levels low by recruiting foreign workers. Instead I would have preferred the German wages to have risen”So the aim was to maximize the profits of the companies at the expense of the German workers, which ultimately led to decades of deflation and stagnation of the economy. The rest is a fairy tale of propaganda. If you take a closer look at who has come to Europe through this insane policy, you will immediately see that they are predominantly unskilled people (mainly because of family reunification) who do not fill any gaps in the economy, but form social and political hotspots and are supposed to slowly but surely exchange the indigenous population of the old continent. If we take a closer look at Turkey, we notice that most migrants do not come from the developed regions of western Turkey, but from the poor and educationally disadvantaged areas in the south and east of the country; the illiteracy rate in Turkey is on average 20%, in Anatolia even 60%. So it is not all Turks who come to Europe as migrants from Turkey, but mostly Kurds.

Donald Trump’s administration regularly increases military presence in Central Europe. The currently discussed idea is to create an American permanent military base in Poland, that is to say, a further shift of the US military presence towards the Russian border. The question arises whether, through the constant presence of the US Army in Poland, Donald Trump wants to improve the defense of the Old Continent or strives to play against each other the interests of individual members of the European Union. The weaker Europe is, the stronger is the United States.

Although the idea of American permanent military presence in Central Europe is not new, it gained much publicity after the September meeting at the White House between Polish President Andrzej Duda and Donald Trump. Warsaw suggested not only building a base but also a name for it: Fort Trump. After initial doubts, Washington, noting the benefits which it might derive, accepted this proposal.That’s why a few days later, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis reported that certain areas are already being evaluated whether they are suitable for this purpose.Leaving aside the issue of allegedly improving the security of NATO’s eastern flank, there is more to see than meets the eye in the permanent presence of Americans in Poland. Warsaw perceives the United States as an ally in an ongoing dispute with the EU. Relations between Brussels and Washington have also deteriorated. Therefore, by relocating its troops to the east, the United States would be putting pressure on Germany to increase defense spending, import US LNG or veto Nord Stream II.

In early October, the Cypriot government invited tenders for gas extraction in Block 7.Ankara believes that this step impairs the interests of both Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots and announced that remedial measures will be taken, which might entail an escalation of tensions in this region of the Mediterranean.

Turkey neither recognizes Cyprus’s maritime borders nor the agreements its exclusive economic zones. Nicosia manages the gas exploration in the waters it considers its own. This leads to a conflict about which the Gefira Team is reporting on a regular basis. In February we described the complex situation in connection with the gas blocks around Cyprus.Then the Turkish navy stopped the exploration ship of Italian Eni from entering Cyprus’ territorial waters by threatening to sink it.In response, Rome sent its own ships to the region.