C.E. European Informant

American F-16 Fighter Jets To Poland?

2011-05-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaAmerica's military footprint could become more robust soon in eastern Europe, further unbalancing the military balance of power with Russia, and sure to more than irritate Moscow. According to Polish media, the U.S. military could station more than a dozen F-16 warplanes on Polish soil, a first for the United States in former Warsaw Pact territory. The agreement, according to the Poles, should be sealed when U.S. President Barack Obama visits Poland on May 27-28. Moscow has threatened to take counter-measures if the Americans go through with the plan.
Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich gave some details on May 9 to the Polish PAP news agency.

"I can confirm that at the moment we are holding talks with the Americans on the topic of a detailed agreement that will govern on what basis the Air Detachment -- the detachment that will permanently service the F-16 fighter jets and Hercules crews and land personnel periodically visiting Poland -- will be stationed on our territory."

According to Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza, the U.S. plans to transfer the F-16 base in Aviano in Italy to the Lask air field in central Poland.

When?

Klich said last year that he hoped the F-16 rotations would begin in 2013.

Talks on the agreement apparently gained traction on December 8, 2010 when Obama and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski met in Washington.

This would not be the first U.S. military deployment on Polish soil.

As the Informant reported, last May the U.S. started unpacking box load cars of equipment for a battery of Patriot missiles and, in a groundbreaking move, equipment to base up to a 100 U.S. soldiers at a airbase in Morag, Poland, just 60 kilometers west of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

It was touted as a tutorial task: the Americans would stay in Poland for two years to teach their Polish counterparts how to handle the deadly weapons.

But even U.S. officials admitted the significance of the move.

Andrew Paul, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy, said the Patriot garrison involves a longer time commitment than anything before, and marks "the first continuing presence," of American soldiers and equipment in Poland.

Commenting on the selection of Morag as the deployment site for the Patriots, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he couldn't comprehend the need "to create the impression as if Poland is bracing itself against Russia."

The F-16 deal has not been the only good bit of news for the Pentagon out of Eastern Europe.

Washington been a busy time for the Americans on the military front. Just days before the Polish reports on the F-16s, the U.S. announced it would be stationing missile interceptors in Romania.

The news was announced May 3 in Bucharest after talks between U.S. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher and Romanian President Traian Basescu who later made a national TV address, in which he added the obligatory yet meaningless statement that the future missile defense shield -- ostensibly aimed at missiles raining down on Europe from 'rogue' regimes like Iran and even more laughably unbelievable North Korea -- was not aimed at Russia, which in fact it is.

The two officials said that the interceptor site will be built at the Daveselu Air Base near the Bulgarian border. The base will host from 200 to 500 US military servicemen, but the base will remain under Romanian military command. Ellen Tauscher has earlier said that the interceptors would be operational as planned by 2015.

Russia was obviously less than overjoyed with the latest U.S. military foray into its former sphere of influence.

Russia either wants to play a part in building a European missile shield, or failing that, a binding guarantee that a Western shield would not target its missiles.

According to Russia Today:

Russia warned that it would closely follow the developments because the planned US system “may pose risks for Russian strategic nuclear deterrence forces in the future.” Earlier, the Russian leadership had said it would have to take “adequate measures” if the US and NATO choose to build the European missile defense shield without Moscow’s participation.

On May 6 in St. Petersburg, General Nikolai Makarov expressed Russian concerns over U.S. missile shield plans to Admiral Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officers, but other than empty words no breakthrough was expected nor made.

All the while, the U.S. military vice grows tighter around Russia.

Kosovo Albanian Organ Trafficking: Who Is Yusuf Somnez?

2011-02-22T02:25:00.000-08:00

In early January, a Turkish doctor walked free from from detention in his land of birth. Yusuf Somnez had been accused of organ trafficking, and an international arrest warrant was hanging over his head. Though little ink has been spilled in the Western media on this Turkish doctor, in legal circles he is well known. Somnez is suspected of being a major player in the murky international trade in human organs. His ties to Kosovo, and a clinic there, Medicus, however, make it clear the charges that Kosovo Albanians were involved in slicing and dicing Serbs before trading them on the international market is much more than "Serb propaganda" as the Kosovo Albanians contend.

Somnez was detained January 13 in Istanbul. He was released later that date on bail.

That news was met with disbelief in Belgrade.

Serbia's Minister for Kosovo Goran Bogdanovic told the Serbian news agency Tanjug he decision to release Sonmez undermines the efforts by the EU Mission in Kosovo, EULEX, to investigate the organ trafficking case related to a private clinic in the Kosovo capital of Pristina.

The clinic in question is called Medicus, and it is the key link that may prove Kosovo 'freedom fighters' from the KLA did in fact chop up Serbs and other unfortunates and shop their organs on the international market.

To understand that, we need to look into who exactly is Somnez, or "Doctor Vulture", or "Doctor Vampire" or the "Turkish Frankenstein", take your pick, as some call the calculating, cold-blooded doctor.

The 53-year-old Somnez admits to doing thousands of transplants, but insists all was copacetic, with the donors signing on the dotted line.

Writing on his web site, Sonmez - who has been convicted on similar charges in Turkey, according to press reports - denied any wrongdoing in the Kosovo case, claiming he was the victim of media "lynching."

However, others are of another opinion, including the international police organization, Interpol.

The organization wants Somnez for "crimes against life and health, people smuggling, trafficking and illegal immigration".

The Guardian accuses Somnez of having been a key player in the unscrupulous organ market for more than 10 years.

The British daily offers up some interesting background:

The Turk has been repeatedly arrested for organ transplants in his native country, where colleagues describe him as an accomplished but rebellious surgeon. In 1998, Turkish TV, whose reporters posed as donors, found seven patients, mostly from Israel. Sonmez was later banned from working in Turkey's public health sector.

Somnez has not limited his moribund practice to his homeland, being linked with countries from as far afield as Azerbaijan, Ecuador and Ukraine.

But it is his ties with Kosovo that could unravel the riddle of whether the KLA was up to their bloody elbows in organ trafficking.

Somnez ties to Medicus became clear in November 2008 when a young Turk, Yilman Altun, fainted at Pristina's international airport.

Altun was weak because his kidney had been removed hours earlier at a Medicus clinic in a poor suburb in Kosovo. The kidney was transplanted to a wealthy old Israeli, who paid some $130,000 for the organ. Altun says instead of the promises riches, he got next to nothing except a flight back to Turkey. The surgeon holding the scalpel? None other than Somnez.

The Medicus office was raided by Kosovo police and others were apprehended, including four anesthetists and shockingly (if you don't comprehend the depth of corruption and wrongdoing in Kosovo) a former permanent secretary in the health ministry and a leading urologist, Lufti Dervishi.

It was Dervishi who set up the clinic with his son.

According to Jonathan Ratel, a prosecutor handling the case for the EU, police found a lot of interesting, incriminating documentation at Medicus.

The Guardian recounts:

Police found such forms at Medicus, along with a "vast quantity" of medical equipment and records of all the transplants, according to Ratel, who said that up to 30 victims lost their kidneys in the clinic in just eight months in 2008. Patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel had received organ transplants at the clinic. But despite promises of payment of up to €20,000, the donors had left empty-handed, he said.

Dick Marty has said the Medicus case is "closely related" to the investigation he has been carrying out for the Council of Europe on the KLA organ trafficking claims.

To recap, Marty has implicated the current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci with involvement in the illegal operations of trafficking organs from executed Serb prisoners held in detention camps set up by Kosovo guerrillas in Albania in the wake of the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.

Afflicted with logic and common sense, Marty connects the dots between the two cases.

"Not in the least through prominent Kosovar Albanian and international personalities who feature as co-conspirators in both," the report said, adding that it would not publish its findings in this regard out of respect for the ongoing EULEX investigation into the Medicus clinic.

EULEX, the EU's law enforcement mission in Kosovo, surprise surprise sees no connection.

“I don’t have any further comments on Mr Marty’s report. I have already said everything about it – we have encouraged Mr Marty and sent him a letter that he is free to present to EULEX all the evidence he has concerning organized crime and other crimes,” EULEX spokesperson Irina Gudeljevic said.

It should come as no surprise that Brussels wants to ignore the deeper implications. Most of its members have backed Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence.

There are other reasons as well.

Former Serbian Ambassador to France and Political Science Faculty Professor Predrag Simić explains that the western countries do not want the investigation to be taken over by the UN because the U.S. do not want to make Serbs and Albanians equal by forming another Hague Tribunal.

“At the moment, it’s out of the question for the U.S. that Albanians are guilty. They can be guilty a little bit but not like Serbs who are being tried in the Hague Tribunal. The U.S. has been trying to cushion the crisis caused by Dick Marty’s report since the beginning,” he pointed out.

The Daily Telegraph paints the bigger picture.

If ever it is proved that the KLA leader whom Mr Blair backed was really a mafia boss, a murderer and traded in human organs, then the history of that campaign will have to be rewritten – and the gloss put on it by Mr Blair will vanish.

The most damning of Mr Marty's claims is that a number of Serb and other prisoners who had been moved to Albania in the wake of the war were executed and their organs sold. The claim was first made publicly by Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of the UN's Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague in a book in 2008. Subsequent investigations have failed to prove the claims, which Mr Thaci says are defamatory.

Despite those efforts, the Kosovo organ trafficking story is not going away.

Marty is expected to address the European Parliament's Foreign Policy Committee on March 10, according to the daily Politika.

The EU is standing firm by its stance that the UN keep its nose out of the Kosovo mess.

“The EU stands by what is already known and that it that EULEX should deal with the investigation into the alleged organ trafficking in Kosovo and that Mr. Marty should provide evidence for the allegations he made in the report. If he has any. EULEX needs to work based on evidence and Marty was asked twice in writing to produce evidence. Therefore, Brussels only supports EULEX,” said the daily’s source, pointing out that EULEX was already conducting a preliminary investigation and that it had capacity to complete the investigation.

And, insofar as the Kosovo Albanians want this affair investigated, which they don't, if it must be, they want the EULEX to do it.

Could they be confident a whitewash would result?

Nah.

Evidence Of Kosovo Organ Trafficking Mount

2011-02-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

It was party time in Kosovo this week as this quasi-country celebrated three years since the day it unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. But do Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have much to celebrate? Unemployment is up in the stratosphere at about 40 percent. Whatever economy exists is dependent on the IV of international aid, which keeps the so-called statelet financially feasible. Amid all the economic gloom, Kosovo Albanians have had to deal with irritating reports their leadership was/is up to their elbows in organized crime and the gruesome trade in human organs. And as the evidence mounts, the question is when will the West be forced to rein in their Kosovo quislings?

Reports of Kosovo 'freedom fighters' chopping up the epitome of evil, the Serbs, and trading their bits to the world's medically needy gained traction this week with fresh revelations revealed in UN documents obtained by the AP news agency.

It makes for grim reading, a depressing reminder of the depravity of man.

The documents quote eight KLA 'freedom fighters' who fess up to UN sleuths that their leaders committing the crimes up to 2000, a year after Kosovo came under the wise, imperious rule of NATO and their junior partners at the UN.

Sounding like some marketing guru, one source said the first surgeries to open up human and pull out their organs were done to "breach the market."

The traffickers were able to rake in $45,000 per dismembered Serb body.

"The largest shipment was when they did 5 Serbs together. ... He said they took a fortune that time," the source said according to the document. "Other shipments were usually from two or three Serbs."

Along the way, palms were appropriately greased to make sure the moribund business ran smoothly.

Airport officials at Rinas airport outside the Albanian capital, Tirana, and at the main airport in Instanbul were blinded with bribes.

It was in Turkey were the 'i's were dotted and the 't' were crossed for the sale of heart, lungs, livers and kidneys.

The sources quoted in the documents give some of the finer details of how they carried out crimes against humanity.

According to the sources, unsuspecting Serbs were driven by vans and trucks to Albania.

There, they were plunked in 'detention centers.' Some went through medical checks.

One source said he was instructed by KLA superiors not to beat the prisoners.

Those medically fit to be disemboweled were sent to a home in northern Albania.

A source said he became suspicious when they were to deliver "a briefcase or a file with papers that would be given to the doctor when the captives were delivered" to the house.

"I thought about how this was the only house where I brought people, but never picked anyone up," one source testified. "It was around this time that I heard other guys talking about organs, kidneys, and trips from the house to the airport."

Here's one of the few video reports on that house that you'll find from the Western press, in this case, the Guardian.

As mentioned in the video, UN investigators found sundry medical supplies including syringes; empty containers of Tranxene, a muscle relaxant; chloraphenical, an antibiotic; and a piece of gauze similar to material used for surgical scrubs.

Splatters of blood were detected in the house as well, one in the kitchen, another in a storage room.

An investigator worth his UN pay would probably conduct forensics test on those stains, but they never were and UN flaks at the time could not explain why not.

But it's illustrative of the lack of eagerness by Western institutions to investigate these charges thoroughly as the UN went through the motions of doing so briefly in 2004.

So, in this case, the 'reliability' of the witnesses and their detailed accounts was questioned.

In a letter dated Dec. 12, 2003, Paul Coffey, the top justice official in Kosovo at the time, wrote to Jonathan Sutch, the official in charge of Yugoslav tribunal investigations in Kosovo, that the alleged crimes were reported to the U.N. in Kosovo by "multiple sources of unknown reliability."

Coffey said the information was "based on interviews with at least eight sources, the credibility of whom is untested, all ethnic Albanians from Kosovo or Montenegro who served in the Kosovo Liberation Army."

The UN documents jive with the what Council of Europe investigate Dick Marty uncovered in his recent report issued in December.

Here's Russia Today's take:

Given the gravity of the charges and the foot-dragging by NATO and the UN, it's not surprising that Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic has called on the UN Security Council to establish an independent international committee to investigate the charges.

"For justice to be done, a full and independent criminal investigation of the reported allegations is essential, establishing an ad hoc investigating mechanism created by and accountable to the Security Council," he said in an address to the Security Council.

But of course if you aided and abetted the Kosovo Albanian "freedom fighters" and turned a blind eye to their gruesome crimes, the answer to Jeremic's reasonable request is no.

And that's what we got out of the mouths of the foot soldiers of power. The UN ambassadors from France, Britain and, of course, the United States said the current anemic probe, which they are essentially overlooking through the European Union Rule of Law Mission or EULEX , would suffice.

Listen to them sing from the same hymn sheet, courtesy of Serbia's B-92 radio station.

U.S. representative Rosemary DiCarlo said that Washington supports an independent and comprehensive investigation into Marty's claims carried out by EULEX, which has the jurisdiction and mandate in matter of war crimes, which it showed in the past.

DiCarlo noted that Washington does not believe an ad hoc investigating mechanism created by the UN is necessary in this case.

British representative in the UNSC Mark Lyall Grant said that the British government expects that the grave allegations made in Marty's report will be taken seriously and welcomes EULEX's decision to launch a preliminary investigation into the claims, as well as the willingness of the Kosovo and Albanian governments to cooperate with the investigators.

Incredible hubris.

Hungary And IMF Break Off Talks

2010-07-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

Hungary's elite have angered the global financial gods at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and EU. Budapest is balking at dancing to the austerity dirge as dictated by the money-men from Washington and the bureaucrats in Brussels. The move has spooked markets with the Hungarian currency, the forint, falling to a fourteen month low.

The IMF and EU broke off talks with Budapest on July 18 after the Hungarians refused to scrap plans to add a bank tax instead of the favorite IMF-type bromide: social spending cuts.

Hungary is trying to get its hands on the rest of a 20 billion euro IMF loan agreed back in 2008.

According to a research note from Citibank, Hungary still has around 4 billion euro available from the 2008 standby agreement which expires in October.

So far in 2010, Hungary has not used any of the IMF funds at its disposal and would need to complete the interrupted review to access more money.

"Hungary needs to make tough decisions and savings," intoned European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.

However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is digging in his heels, announcing his government won't gouge the public any further.

"We've told our partners that further reductions measures are out of the question," said Hungarian Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy.

Talking to Hungarian public TV station M1, Matolcsy said Hungary has already instituted 120 billion forints worth of cuts in government spending.

As the Informant has reported Hungary is reeling from the global financial crisis.

The 2008 financial crisis hit the country particularly hard because many homeowners had taken out loans in foreign currencies at much lower interest rates - especially the Swiss franc. Monthly repayments surged when the forint fell, leading to fears of soaring defaults.

Unemployment is 11.4, one of the highest in eastern Europe.

To deal with the crisis, IMF-prescribed bromides -- internal devaluation in order to lower wages to make them 'competitive' -- are squeezing people further.

Hungary now has Europe's highest VAT tax at 25 percent.

Besides a drop in the value of the forint, insuring Hungarian debt is now at a record high.

For example, insuring a 10 million euro Hungarian bond will cost 365,000 euros.

And with the ruling party Fidesz facing municipal elections on Oct. 3, Orban can hardly afford to jam more austerity measures on prostrate Hungarians.

"Hungary is again on the front pages of the world media," lamented the Hungarian news site, Origo.hu.

But not for the first time.

Just six weeks ago, Orban sent speculators reeling, blathering out the country is in a "very serious situation", a la Greece, Europe's poster child for profligacy.

And there are worries that Hungary's finances could be worse than stated.

The government has strongly denied comments by officials that the deficit could reach 7.5 percent of GDP and is close to defaulting on its debt.

However, a few analysts argue things aren't as bad as they are being reported.

Hungary began implementing austerity measures in 2006 to reduce its deficit, said analyst Sandor Richter of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies in an interview with the AP news agency.

He said the center-right Fidesz party, which recently won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, now faces a tough task of saving face as it realizes its campaign promises of immediate and radical tax cuts are not feasible.

"It is a very delicate situation, but I hope very much that reason will win and that they will follow the economic policy of the previous government," Richter said.

A recent analysis by the Vienna-based bank RZB Group, meanwhile, said the "doomsday words" of Fidesz politicians were "designed to cool down the expectations of the voters (about the tax cuts) and to prepare them for potentially uncomfortable measures."

Hungary is rare but not alone in Eastern Europe in rising up against the IMF.

In Romania, the Constitutional Court declared as unconstitutional plans to cut retirement pensions by 15 percent, as per the dictate of the IMF.

Not deterred, the Romanian government has sniffed out other ways to fleece its people, raising the stealth VAT tax from 19 to 24 percent. All state-sector workers will see their salaries cut by 25 percent, according to Novinite.

The IMF apparently was pleased, agreeing to release the delayed fifth tranche of the 13.6 billion euro bailout package for Romania.

Will it only be a question of time before Hungary bows down fully to the IMF?

Srebrenica Still Clouded In Fog Of Propaganda 15 Years Later On

2010-07-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

July 11 marks the 15th anniversary of what the World has come to know as the Srebrenica massacre, when up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were rounded up and killed by Serb paramilitary forces in what has been called the worst European massacre since World War II. In fact, the killings have been labeled an act of "genocide" by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, (ICTY). For Western media these facts are rarely, if ever, contested or discussed. The chronology of events, figures et al are cemented as part of a solemn narrative, and to question that script is an act bordering on blasphemy. Despite that, nagging questions still hang over what all agree were tragic events.

The highlight of the ceremony at the Srebrenica Genocide memorial will be the reburial of 775 recently identified victims -- 774 Muslims and one Croat. They will join the 3,749 already interned there.

This raises the most obvious question: how can 'only' 3,749 victims of a reported 8,000 plus be buried fifteen years after the event?

How can it be that after such a long time meticulously combing the hillsides in and around Srebrenica more victims of Europe's worst massacre have not been identified and buried?

Supporters of the standard script would say the process of identify the victims is time-consuming and painstaking.

However, Stephen Karganovic, notes forensic specialists from the Yugoslav tribunal have tried their hardest to hit their 'target' of 8,000.

Official exhumations began soon after the event, in 1996, and they continued until 2002. They were conducted by international forensic specialists under the auspices of the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor. In relation to the genocide victim figure of 8,000 that was announced at the start, and which sounded rather like a target for the forensic specialists should use to measure their field performance, the actual results of the exhumations were quite meager. By the end of the process, when prosecution forensic teams ceased operating, all they had to show for their labor were 3,568 autopsy reports (which turned out to not necessarily be as many bodies), clearly not even half of the „target“ figure.

Karganovic points out the legal team for Radislav Krstic -- the first Bosnian Serb commander convicted by the ICTY for Srebrenica -- went over page-by-page the prosecutions -- by then -- 3,568 autopsy reports.

Dr. Simić meticulously categorized mass grave remains by degree of completeness and pattern of injury. The picture which emerged from his investigation was most contrary to the prosecution’s case, yet it was the prosecution’s own evidence that he was dissecting. In the end, he canvassed the number of paired femur bones[6] in the autopsy reports in an effort to determine how many individuals were buried in Srebrenica mass graves, having died of all causes. He found a total of 1,919 right and 1,923 left femur bones. Thus, with a very high degree of reliability it was established that in total there were under 2,000 individuals in all the Srebrenica mass graves exhumed by the prosecution. The patterns of injury were in some cases consistent with combat death, and in others with possible execution.

So where did the 8,000 figure come from?

Edward S. Herman tells us:

The 8,000 figure was first provided by the Red Cross, based on their crude estimate that the BSA had captured 3,000 men and that 5,000 were reported “missing.” [35] It is well established that thousands of those “missing” had reached Tuzla or were killed in the fighting, [36] but in an amazing transformation displaying the eagerness to find the Bosnian Serbs evil and the Muslims victims, the “reaching safety/killed-in-action” basis of being missing was ignored and the missing were taken as executed! This misleading conclusion was helped along by the Red Cross’s reference to the 5,000 as having “simply disappeared,” and its failure to correct this politically biased usage and claim despite its own recognition that “several thousand” refugees had reached Central Bosnia.

This raises a further question: how to determine who was executed in the 'massacre' and who was killed as a result of combat?

Combat? What combat. Srebrenica was a UN safe haven, where huddled Bosnian Muslims had fled to escape the bloodthirsty Bosnian Serbs, you say.

Never mentioned in the West is that Bosnian Muslim 'fighter' Naser Oric and his thugs had used it as a base years before the 1995 'massacre' to launch raids on nearby Serb villages.

Author, Diana Johnstone, has said the Dutch soldier tasked with protecting Srebrenica were stuck in a no-win situation.

"The Dutch soldiers were not supposed to "go to war", but to act as peace-keepers … where there was no peace agreement. This ambiguity put them in an impossible situation to start with. The basic problem was that the "safe area" of Srebrenica was never demilitarized, and was used by Muslim soldiers as a base to attack surrounding Serb villages. When the Serbs attacked, apparently in a vengeful mood, there was chaos, as the Dutch soldiers found themselves caught in the cross-fire while most of the Muslim soldiers abandoned the town to try to flee to Tuzla."

According to the most thorough study of Srebrenica events, by Cees Wiebes for the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation report, the Bosnian Serb forces set out in July 1995 to reduce the area held by Bosnian Muslim forces on the outskirts of Srebrenica, and only decided to capture the town itself when they unexpectedly found it undefended.

"The VRS [Republika Srpska Army] advance went so well that the evening of July 9 saw an important 'turning point' [...] The Bosnian Serbs decided that they would no longer confine themselves to the southern part of the enclave, but would extend the operation and take the town of Srebrenica itself. Karadzic was informed that the results achieved now put the Drina Corps in a position to take the town; he had expressed his satisfaction with this and had agreed to a continuation of the operation to disarm the 'Muslim terrorist gangs' and to achieve a full demilitarization of the enclave. In this order, issued by Major General Zdravko Tolimir, it was also stated that Karadzic had determined that the safety of UNPROFOR soldiers and of the population should be ensured. Orders to this effect were to be provided to all participating units. [...] The orders made no mention of a forced relocation of the population. [...] A final instruction, also of significance, was that the population and prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. On July 11 all of Srebrenica fell into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs."

This video documents that and the Western press' culpability for spinning a story recounted mainly from the vantage point of the Bosnian Muslims, annointed the 'victim' in a bloody conflict in which few were innocent.

Like all conflicts, the numbers were massaged and manipulated by both sides. In the case of Bosnia, it was the Bosnian government which tinkered the most, at one point of the conflict, saying an astronomical 200,000 thousand had been killed.

The International Red Cross put the figures at between 20 and 30,000.

The video notes a CIA report that 90 percent of 'ethnic cleansing' had been carried out by Serbs was only done in areas seized by the Bosnian Serbs. This despite the fact, 40 percent of the refugees of the war were Bosnian Serbs.

But the CIA was feeding figures the Clinton administration in Washington wanted to hear as it was eager to up military assistance to Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.

Ed Herman explains:

The events of Srebrenica and claims of a major massacre were extremely helpful to the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslim leadership, and Croatian authorities. Clinton was under political pressure in 1995 both from the media and from Bob Dole to take more forceful action in favor of the Bosnian Muslims, [2] and his administration was eager to find a justification for more aggressive policies. Clinton officials rushed to the Srebrenica scene to confirm and publicize the claims of a massacre, just as William Walker did later at Racak in January 1999. Walker’s immediate report to Madeleine Albright caused her to exult that “spring has come early this year.” [3] Srebrenica allowed the “fall to come early” for the Clinton administration in the summer of 1995.

Srebrenica has become a defining event used to justify what happens when the West looks the other way and does not resort to NATO-led "humanitarian' intervention a la Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

As such a critical pillar of this narrative, it will never be questioned in 'respectable' circles and those who do will be forever villified.

Despite that, the questions will remain.

Belgrade To Offer Territory Swap On Kosovo

2010-07-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Media in Serbia and Kosovo says Belgrade is gearing up a shocker of a swap: trade parts of southern Serbia mainly populated with ethnic Albanians in exchange for northern Kosovo populated mainly by ethnic Serbs. The Serbs reportedly want to time the offer with a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of Kosovo's independence from Serbia. The land swap would be de facto recognition by Serbia of Kosovo's independence, in part at least. That would be a huge concession on Belgrade's part. But Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is intransigent, ruling out any changes to the territory's present boundaries. News of the alleged offer comes amid fresh tensions between Kosovo and Serbia after the killing of a protester, and shooting of a Serb lawmaker in the Kosovo parliament.

According to the Belgrade daily Blic, Belgrade is not only pondering a soil swap, but would drop objections at the UN against Kosovo taking up a seat at the world body.

But Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of Kosovo, won't even ponder the proposal, let alone discuss it.

Speaking to the Kosovo daily Zeri, Thaci dismissed any possibility of new talks on the status of Kosova, saying "that chapter is closed."

As said, Belgrade plans to time what already appears a doomed offer to the ruling at the ICJ.

That ruling is expected around July 22.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanians could care less what the ICJ rules. Correction, the court is ruling on nothing, it will issue an 'advisory opinion." Meaning, it means nothing; no teeth.

Western officials have made clear their contempt for international law.

Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who sided with the Kosovo Albanians while acting as a negotiator on its status, has said Kosovo will remain independent regardless of what the judges at the ICJ say.

“I think it’s important for everybody to start understanding that whatever happens in the international courts proceedings -- Kosovo is an independent state and will remain an independent state. And I think that’s a fact that everyone has to take into consideration particularly those who have an ambition to try to join the European Union.”

The European parliament is cracking the whip, urging the few EU holdouts not to have recognized Kosovo to do so.

In the EU those countries are Spain, Slovakia, Greece and Cyprus, all with their own separatist headaches.

Globally, 69 nations have now recognized Kosovo's independence.

The European parliament also ruled out any division of Kosovo.

That means EU mandarins will truck no independence for the 120,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo, a powerkeg set to blow.

In fact it already has in Mitrovica.

On July 3, things came to a head, when explosives were thrown into a crowd of Serbs protesting against the opening of an office run by the ethnic Albanian government in Pristina.

A Bosnian Muslim pediatrician was killed, and ten Serbs were wounded.

The incident sparked outrage among Serbs.

Serbian President Boris Tadic called the Security Council to meet over the incident.

"Serbs came in peace, yet they were met with unprovoked violence," Tadic said.

Tadic also through down the gauntlet on Serbia every recognizing Kosovo, telling the Security Council, that "no democratic leadership in Serbia will ever, under any circumstances, implicitly or explicitly, recognize" Kosovo.

Kosovo's foreign minister, Skender Hyseni, said Serbs themselves might have been responsible.

Hyseni also said the gunshot wounding of an ethnic Serb member of the Kosovo parliament showed that Belgrade was "misusing and manipulating a number of the Serb community members in Kosovo."

Interestingly, the articles on offer on the Internet focus more on the shooting of the Serb lawmaker than the killing by grenade of a protester in Mitrovica, indicating where the Western media's sympathies lie.

Reuters notes several Western countries sided with Kosovo during the special UN Security Council meeting, with the U.S. envoy Alejandro Wolff wondering out loud why the session had been called in the first place for what he called "an isolated criminal act."

Given that much of the 'world community' is ganging up on it, the Belgrade offer could be an act of desperation.

But even the West will offer no quarter, not even a small tract of the Serbs' ancestral land.

Slovakia Gets First Female PM

2010-07-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

From a government led by Europe's version of Hugo Chavez to a smart-talking, sensible woman who will charm the staid pols of Europe. That's the jump Slovakia is making. Out: Robert Fico and his quasi-fascist coalition partners, the Slovak National Party, or SNP. In: Iveta Radicova, a member of the center-right Slovak Democratic and Christian Union, or SDKU party. Out: quarreling with Hungary. In: fence mending. Out: anti-NATO rhetoric. In: more Washington fealty and fodder for the Afghanistan quagmire. Overall, bigwigs in European capitals are probably grinning ear-to-ear over this appointment and glad to see Mr. Fico shown the door.

Actually, Fico's SMER won last month's election. In fact their 62 seats, was twelve better than the party won in 2006.

In 2006, Fico took little time to court controvery, picking the SNP to join his coalition, setting off a storm of protests.

Fico's 2006 decision to join forces with the SNP came at a price. Smer was booted out by their comrades of the European democratic socialist parties. That was the first time any Socialist-associated party had been blacklisted by the group.

The SNP party leader is one, Jan Slota, a thuggish type who would love to kick all the Hungarians across the Danube River back to their original home.

In campaigning for June's election, the SNP, resorted to race-baiting to pump up flagging poll numbers, as the Informant reported.

Down in the polls, the SNS churned out stacks of posters showing a dark-skinned man and a golden necklace, accompanied by the slogan, "Do not feed those who do not want to work."

The poster sparked outrage in Slovakia, not least among the Gypsies, or Roma, themselves, who are at the bottom-rung in Europe's socio-economic feeder system.

Smer provided some headlines of its own, proposing that 'problematic' Roma be removed from their families and raised in institutions.

Al-Jazeera called it either Europe's most ambitious or controversial decision to deal with the Roma problem.

Then there are the spats with Hungary, for centuries the overlord of what is today's Slovakia.

A Hungarian proposal to grant citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living beyond the borders of today's Hungary elicited an angry response from Fico, who called a 'national security council' meeting, and threatened a "very tough' response if the legislation went forward; it didn't.

Hungary's premier-elect Viktor Orban pushed the citizenship law in campaigning for April elections which Orban's right-wing party Fidesz won.

Fico was also chummy chummy with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while giving the cold shoulder to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown when the visited Bratislava.

Not surprisingly, Slovakia has become a key Russian energy partner.

And while Slovakia is a card-carrying member of NATO, Fico defiantly stated Slovakia would never base components of a US missile shield, uncharacteristic for usually fawning Eastern European leaders.

So, mandarins from Brussels to Washington can't wait for the door to slam on Fico's backside.

In comes Radicova, with impeccable credentials, having stood with Slovak dissidents in the 1980s.

She did get into a bit of hot water after a failed 2009 presidential bid, when she literally pushed the voting button for an absent colleague in the Slovak parliament.

Presseurop picks up the story:

In the wake of her defeat in the 2009 presidential election, Radičová committed an error when she pressed a voting button for a colleague who was not present in parliament. The subsequent allegations of fraud sparked an outcry and resulted in a political and media witch hunt, which culminated in Radičová's resignation from her parliamentary mandate. At the time, the daily SME announced that she was a defunct force in politics, and it appeared that her career was well and truly over. But everything changed at the end of January.

The 53-year-old will lead a four-party coalition bringing in her Christian Democratic Union, the liberal Freedom and Solidarity, the Christian Democrats and the ethnic-Hungarian Most-Hid.

All told, the SDKU and its allies won 79 of parliament's 150 seats.

She is also talking the talk the IMF like to hear: financial restraint.

The first task of the government will be to make a long-awaited decision on Slovakia's part of a 750 billion euro ($944.7 billion) European safety net for debt-laden countries unable to borrow on international markets, a deal agreed under the Fico government.

The incoming coalition has balked at guaranteeing 4.5 billion of up to 440 billion euros in loans for euro zone states struggling with high debt, saying Slovakia, as the zone's poorest state, should not have to pay for profligate countries with much higher incomes.

Sounds logical, but not what Brussels wants to hear.

Maybe Slovakia retains its unofficial title as Europe's black sheep, or ewe, as it were.

US And Poland Sign Pact On 'Revised' Missile Shield

2010-07-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

U.S. plans to disgorge more military junk on European soil took a big step forward on July 3. In Krakow, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looked on smugly as an agreement was signed between the United States and Poland giving Washington the green light to deploy missiles for their slimmed-down defense shield on Polish soil. The signing will not be welcomed in Moscow, which has looked on nervously as NATO has tightened its grip over Europe, as U.S. bases popped up in the region like mushrooms after rain, and the Baltic and Black Seas became more and more glorified U.S. lakes.

Technically, the two sides signed an "amendment" to a 2008 document that envisaged installing 10 interceptor missiles in Poland to shoot down long-range missiles.

"This is the first agreement that implements the US European-based Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) for ballistic missile defense and enables the stationing of a US land-based SM-3 missile defense interceptor system in the Republic of Poland," said a joint statement issued by Clinton and Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.

Surprise, surprise, Clinton said the missile system was not aimed against Russia, but will "defend the Polish people and all of Europe from missile threats."

From what threat exactly? Well the bogeyman du jour is Iran, and Clinton pulled out that fear card.

With a straight face, Clinton intoned: "The real threats come from the development of short- and medium-term missiles on a faster timetable from Iran."

Washington elites have been marinating the American public with heaping spoonful after spoonful of fear for an eventual attack on Iran.

Shamelessly, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on June 17 that Iran was capable of launching an attack of "dozens or even hundreds" of missiles against Europe.

Really? Any hard evidence to back up that very grave charge, Mr. Gates? No.

Clinton also postured that Washington is eager to work with Moscow on missile defense.

Clinton said an "offer stands" to develop in tandem with Russia technologies for shooting down hostile weapons.

"We believe the threats that we all face are common ones and therefore we hope that Russia will orient itself more toward working with all of us and meet those common threats."

Of course it goes without saying that Russia is invited to 'cooperate' but on terms and conditions set by Washington.

Proof? Look at the response that greeted Moscow's blueprint for a new European security structure.

The Informant covered it, unlike nearly the entire Western media empire.

The Russian blueprint said that parties do not undertake, support or participate in actions that can jeopardize the security of another party to the treaty. The sides also agree not to allow the use of its territory with the purpose of attacking their partners.

The Russians don't intend to step on any UN toes. The Russian treaty would not in any way impinge on a nation's right to self defense as spelled out by Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Nothing imperialistic there from the Russians. But giving the Russians greater voice in the affairs of a continent on which sits a decent portion of its territory is out of the question. NATO calls the shoots.

The former EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the Russian proposal could be considered only if it upheld, "the role of the US in European security."

So, outside a few kind words from European elites, the Russian plan was quickly forgotten.

However, there was no way elites in Eastern Europe would have agreed to any plan giving Russia a place at the European security table.

When Barack Obama first announced he was "scrapping" the Bush-era long-range missile defense shield, elites from Warsaw to Bucharest quaked in their boots, fearing the 'liberal' Obama was caving to the Russians in order to 'reset' relations with the Kremlin.

Some of the region's heavyweights sent Obama a much-cited letter, whining about their concerns.

Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, however, we see that Central and Eastern European countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy. As the new Obama Administration sets its foreign-policy priorities, our region is one part of the world that Americans have largely stopped worrying about. Indeed, at times we have the impression that U.S. policy was so successful that many American officials have now concluded that our region is fixed once and for all and that they could "check the box" and move on to other more pressing strategic issues.

When Obama traveled to Prague in April to sign with much fanfare along with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev the new START Treaty, Obama confabbed with East European elites to allay those fears.

And while the START treaty was hailed as opening a new chapter of cooperation between Washington and Moscow, it has actually made U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield easier, as the Informant has reported.

Well, actually, U.S. military brass say that treaty actually help advance U.S. missile shield plans.

That from the mouth of the Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

"The new START treaty actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program," he told the House of Representatives subcommittee on strategic forces.

O'Reilly said the agreement would allow previously prohibited tests for the development of anti-missile defense systems.

"Our targets will no longer be subject to START constraints, which limited our use of air-to-surface and waterborne launches of targets which are essential for a cost-effective testing of missile defense interceptor against medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Pacific region," he said.

Isn't START wonderful?

The ever busy Tauscher has stated START would no way slow down U.S. missile defense plans.

“There are no constraints to missile defense in the START treaty. That’s one piece of it. Each party – if you look at the START treaty itself, each party has the ability to include unilateral statements. Those statements now are still being negotiated. But each party has the ability to make a unilateral statement,” Tauscher said in March.

Plans have already been moving apace in Poland.

In fact, as the Informant has informed, U.S. soldiers are already on Polish soil to set up a battery of Patriot missiles, in what is the most significant deployment of U.S. troops in that former Warsaw Pact nation. The Americans deployed in just 60 kilometers from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

The Patriots are separate from the anti-missile forces in Poland.

Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, has said Europe would be 'fully covered' in 2018 after more Missile-3 interceptor missiles were deployed at another northern European site.

The treaty signed in Krakow allows for the first Missile-3, or SM-3, interceptors to be place in Poland.

"Phase Two", added Roberts, would put more interceptors and sensors along with a SM-3 battalion at an undisclosed southern European site.

Romanian lawmakers have signed onto the plan, after Tauscher slick talked the Romanians after Vice President Joe Biden began the U.S. charm offensive back in October.

Bulgaria wants in too, according to their prime minister and former track-suit-wearing, body guard brooding, Boyko Borisov.

U.S. Ambassador to Sofia James Warlick said preliminary talks had already taken place with Bulgaria. Warlick also let out a whooper, saying Washington had held talks not only with Bulgaria, but with "other countries in the region."

With the news of the sleeping Russian suburban 'spy' ring stirring old Cold War fears among the U.S. public, and the U.S. missile shield stirring fears in Moscow, it could be only a question of time before a recent 'warming' of relations between Russia and the United States chill again.

U.S. Marines Land On Shores Of Estonia

2010-06-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

U.S. military creep continues apace in Europe. Under the cover of the ever present 'military exercise', some 500 U.S. Marines literally landed on the beaches of the easily forgotten Baltic country of Estonia. The U.S. military says its' probably a first. It may seem insignificant, afterall, it was only about 500 Marines, but it is part of a trend to turn as much of the globe's land and waterways into so much U.S. military terrain.Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo said such exercises add stability in the region.
As mentioned, the Marines were breaking new ground in the Baltic Sea.

In the joint exercise, 130 marines and 50 Estonian troops disembarked from the transport vessel USS Gunston Hall to occupy a beach near the town of Loksa on Estonia's northern coast.

"I'm not aware of us landing with amphibious (vessels) on the Baltic Sea before," said Brig. Gen. Paul W. Brier, head of Marine Corps in Europe. "I don't think we have done that before, we've done offloads of (Marine) ships."

The exercises were part of an annual routine called the slightly awkward, Baltops. Ironically, the Russians, always ansy about any U.S. military encroachment towards their territory, have taken part in the maneuvers in the past.

For the Estonians and the two other Baltic states, Lithuania and Latvia, it's the Russians who are the enemy, potential at least, although never ever bluntly stated as such.

So, NATO putting boots on the ground sends a comforting signal to elites in these parts.

"NATO is not merely a name on paper but an organization offering concrete cooperation," Aaviksoo said. "It gives us the assurance that we will not be alone at a critical moment."

Estonia, a nation of 1.3 million, has all of 3,000 soldiers who earn a wage, and another 2,500 conscripts, plus reserves of around 12,000.

Crucially, NATO has set up its own cyber-defense HQ in Estonia.

It was Estonia that was allegedly the target of a 'cyber attack in 2007, largely blamed on Russia, although as the Guardian points out in today's high-tech world it's hard to find fingerprints.

Just as any hard evidence to suggest the Russian military approved the Estonian cyberattack in 2007 is largely missing, so proving that China or Russia are directly responsible for other attacks is almost impossible. And, experts admit, it would be politically smart for a truly destructive organisation to mask their attacks and make them seem like they originated from a country already under scrutiny.

In truth, it could be almost anybody, almost anywhere. Rudimentary hackers' toolkits are available to buy cheaply online, while an illicit black-market trade in more complex tools takes would-be attackers out of the reach of the authorities on the so-called "darknet". And while a highly intelligent virus such as Conficker may have required some skill to program, other hackers may succeed simply by having the time to experiment rather than any great raw ability. (Gary McKinnon, the Briton accused of hacking into Pentagon computers, bumbled his way into supposedly secure networks by guessing that the password had not been changed from the default "password").

It may be paranoia. The three small Baltic states are independent, integrated into the U.S. war machine NATO and entangled in the tentacles of the EU. The Soviet Union is consigned to history's scrap heat, and the rump of it, Russia, is struggling put down a swelling Islamic insurgency in the North Caucasus, let alone branch out on some imperial mission.

But, as elsewhere in Europe, history always looms.

As the Marines were stomping in the sand of the Baltic Sea, the leaders of the three Baltic states paid tribute to the tens of thousands of their citizens deported to the Soviet Union during World War II.

"In each of our souls there is a deep scar. Every day we complain about small things, but today we need to remember their stories, understand that there is no Latvian family who did not suffer," Latvian President Valdis Zatlers said at a ceremony.

He was speaking on June 14, the date Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia mark as memorial day.

That was the date in 1941 when some 10,000 Estonians, 15,000 Latvians and 18,000 Lithuanians were herded onto cattle trains and sent deep into the Soviet Union, where many died.

Whole families were swept up as the invading Soviets cracked down on opposition -- real and imagined.

"Those things won't disappear from my mind. We lost my mother, the family property, my homeland and health," Lithuanian survivor Vytautas, 70, told AFP.

Also speaking to the French agency was Latvian student Emils Soms, 20, who said he travels every day past an area in Riga where the victims were loaded onto trains.

"I was not directly affected by the tragedy. Instead I look forward to days that celebrate the positive side of Latvian life," he said.

Marines as a guarantee of their liberty and freedom. For many in the Baltics that message rings true. The Russians can complain of U.S. military creep, and justifiably so, but they can't escape history.

Poland Passes Coercive Castration Law

2010-06-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Parliament in Poland has passed a law making castration a suitable punishment for pedophiles convicted of rape and perpetrators of incest. Under the law anyone found guilty of raping children under 15, or close relatives, will be given drugs to lower their sex drive. Chemical castration for repeat sex offenders is already offered in several U.S. states, as well as European countries including Sweden, Germany and Denmark. However, it is a voluntary process. Poland's law would be the first to make it compulsory, and that has angered Brussels.

The law had its genesis in the public outrage to arise after a 45-year-old man was charged with having raped and held his 21-year-old daughter captive for six years.

The suspect was dubbed Poland's Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man guilty of locking up his daughter and fathering seven children with her.

Deutche Welle picks up the story:

The woman in Poland gave birth to two children, in 2005 and 2007, allegedly from her father. She maintains that he pressured her to give them up for adoption.

The case triggered debate in Poland on how to punish sex offenders, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, shedding any liberal tendencies to score as many political points as possible in Catholic Poland.

"I want to gather all the laws in operation across Europe to introduce in Poland the most rigorous law possible regarding criminals who rape children," Tusk said.

"I do not believe that we can call these individuals -- these creatures -- human beings," he added. "So in this case, we don't need to discuss human rights."

But, according to Impunity Watch Europe, Tusk and his center-right government also tried to paint their efforts as best for the "creatures."

"The purpose of this action is to improve the mental health of the convict, to lower his libido and thereby to reduce the risk of another crime being committed by the same person." Prime Minister Donald Tusk added, even more controversially, that he does not believe that one can "use the term 'human' for such individuals, such creatures . . . [and] [t]herefore I don't think protection of human rights should refer to these kind of events."

Impunity Watch Europe notes the tamer Czech version castration law has come in for criticism from within European institutions.

Lawmakers in the Czech Republic introduced a similar measure in 2000, but there castration is not mandatory. Instead, sex offenders can volunteer for either surgical or chemical castration. Even this non-mandatory legislation has drawn criticism from the Council of Europe's anti-torture committee. The mandatory nature of the Polish law would make it the first of its kind of any nation in the world at the federal level, since some states in the United States have individually enacted similar laws.

Whether castration does what it's supposed to do: squelch the temptations pedophiles feel, well the jury is out on that, as Time magazine has reported.

Despite many studies of the effectiveness of castration — both surgical and chemical — the results are inconclusive. Some surveys suggest castration can dramatically reduce recidivism. One 1989 survey in Germany of 104 voluntary castrates showed a 75% drop in sexual interest, libido, erection and ejaculation. But measuring such changes is notoriously difficult and often depends on the subjective self-reports of sex offenders. A 1989 Psychological Bulletin study concluded that "the recidivism rate for treated offenders is not lower than that for untreated offenders; if anything, it tends to be higher." Many other studies emphasize the mental nature of deviant sexual interests, which cannot be cured through surgery. Fred S. Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, argues that even if most sexual offenders cannot be cured, many can be successfully treated through counseling. "It depends on the availability of adequate community-based resources, in some instances following a period of residential care," he says.

Maybe the Polish experiment will make the matter clearer.

Hungary Rocks Financial Markets

2010-06-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

It's like an AA meeting with nation after nation coming out of the closet to admit their addiction to debt. Now it's Hungary, where officials have made some eye-popping assertions to throw markets and speculators around the world into a tizzy. The new government of the center-right ruling Fidesz party says the country is not on the brink like Greece, but a closer look at the ledger books reveals some grim data. A spokesman for Prime Minister Viktor Orban set a shiver through markets, saying the economy of the country is in a "very serious situation." That statement on June 4 sent the forint into free-fall, and dragged along with it other central and eastern European currencies like the Czech koruna and Polish zloty. But is it that bad?

Tim Ash, an analyst at the Bank of Scotland in charge of the bank's Hungarian investments, said he was "surprised" by the statements.

"It is absurb, remarkable, and extremely dangerous. What kind of message does that send to foreign holders of Hungarian bonds?" asked Ash.

Realizing they may have gone overboard with their gloom-and-doom statements, the Hungarian government blushed and tried to backpedal a bit.

Outgoing Finance Minister Peter Oszko said Hungary no way is "on the brink of bankruptcy," and that such remarks were made so much political point scoring.

By June 7, the Hungarian government supplicated at the altars of the global markets, promising not to debt again.

Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy said his government would strive to meet the 2010 budget deficit target of 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, set by the previous administration.

Matolcsy - speaking on television as the Cabinet met on an action plan - also raised the possibility of a flat tax, as well as tax cuts and a reduction of bureaucracy.

Details on the action plan are expected June 8, but Orban already has said efforts would be made to simplify Hungary's tax system, cut taxes and reduce tax evasion.

In late 2008, EU-member Hungary avoided defaulting on its debts with a 20 billion euro loan from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union.

In Luxembourg, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said he "sees no reason to be concerned" about the current situation.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who led talks Monday between euro-zone finance ministers, said the Hungarian situation is in no way similar to that of Greece or other countries.

"It simply shows that there is a large nervousness on the financial markets and a high degree of volatility which is very often provoked by rumors" and lack of verbal discipline, he said at a news conference in Luxembourg.

Hungary began implementing austerity measures in 2006 to reduce its deficit, said analyst Sandor Richter of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies in an interview with the AP news agency.

He said the center-right Fidesz party, which recently won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, now faces a tough task of saving face as it realizes its campaign promises of immediate and radical tax cuts are not feasible.

"It is a very delicate situation, but I hope very much that reason will win and that they will follow the economic policy of the previous government," Richter said.

A recent analysis by the Vienna-based bank RZB Group, meanwhile, said the "doomsday words" of Fidesz politicians were "designed to cool down the expectations of the voters (about the tax cuts) and to prepare them for potentially uncomfortable measures."

"Clearly, the new government has extremely limited room to maneuver - especially in the shadow of the Greek crises and the Euro-zone debt problems," it said.

Mark Mobius, chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd, told Bloomberg, the statements are meant to prepare for the brutal beltightening measures to come for Hungarians.

As the Informant has already reported, Hungary is reeling from the global economic crisis.

Unemployment is 11.4, one of the highest in eastern Europe.

To deal with the crisis, IMF-prescribed bromides -- internal devaluation in order to lower wages to make them 'competitive' -- are squeezing people further.

For example, Hungary now has Europe's highest VAT tax at 25%.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has less than rosy economic prognostications for the eastern European region for years to come.

“The consequences of the world economic crisis will burden this region more than the rest of the world in coming years,” declared the chief economist of the EBRD, Erik Berglöf.

Frustrated and disgusted by the bankruptcy of their ruling elites, Hungarians gave 16.7 of their vote to the far-right Jobbik party in recent parliamentary polls.

And if the crisis deepens, expect those numbers not only in Hungary but elsewhere in central and eastern Europe, heck the whole continent, to rise.

First American Soldiers Set Foot On Polish Soil

2010-05-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

Dozens of American soldiers have set foot on Polish soil along with a battery of Patriot missiles, in what is the most significant deployment of U.S. troops in that former Warsaw Pact nation. The Americans deployed in just 60 kilometers from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The deployment was scheduled, but still seems counter-intuitive for all the talk of the so-called 'reset' between Washington and Moscow. The Russians are wary about having more U.S. soldiers and hardware near their borders. The deployment comes despite President Barack Obama rubbing out Bush Jr's anti-missile defense shield. But as readers of the Informant know, the shield is far from dead, maybe lighter, more mobile, but more widespread further south in the Balkans. Plus, the Czechs and Poles say they are still in the missile plans.

On May 24, the U.S. troops started moving in the equipment, unloading 37 railroad cars, according to the U.S. embassy in Warsaw.

The missiles were railed in from a U.S. base near Kaiserslautern, Germany.

The missiles and U.S. soldiers, from 150 to 200, which rotate in and out of Poland for the next two years.

Officially, this is a tutorial, with the U.S. servicemen 'teaching' their Polish counterparts who to handle a high-tech guided missile.

Andrew Paul, a spokesman for the embassy, said the Patriot garrison involves a longer time commitment than anything before, and marks "the first continuing presence," of American soldiers and equipment in Poland.

There was no immediate reaction from Russia.

Here's how Russia Today has reported the issue.

Back in January when the town of Morag was picked as the site, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he couldn't comprehend the need "to create the impression as if Poland is bracing itself against Russia."

A month later in February, Poland ratified the so-called SOFA deal allowing for the stationing of the U.S. troops on Polish soil.

The Poles said Morag was picked solely because of its existing infrastructure, conducive for the Patriot battery.

Washington and its sidekicks in Brussels contend the planned missile shield is aimed at shooting down rockets fired from "rogue" Iran.

Moscow is depicted as paranoid for not believing this, and claiming the missile shield is meant to further hem them in.

What Western media fail to mention is the battery in Poland, and possible control center in the Czech Republic are not single events, but rather part of an overall move by the U.S. to spread its military footprint even further in Eastern Europe, and Balkans and Black Sea region, with Romania and Bulgaria coming in for extra military largesse.

As the Informant has reported, the Pentagon has earmarked $110 to upgrade a military base a piece in both Romania and Bulgaria.

Elites in both Bulgaria and Romania are eager to turn over their country to the U.S. military, drawing concern from Russia.

Romania has especially become key for U.S. military strategists.

As Rick Rozoff writes:

The Pentagon’s Joint Task Force-East has all but officially been assigned to the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airfield in Romania and also makes regular use of the Romanian Army’s Babadag Training Area and the Novo Selo Training Range in Bulgaria, the latter near the strategic Bezmer Air Base and the Black Sea port city of Burgas (Bourgas).

Rozoff also notes NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has paid visits recently to both countries to discuss missile shield plans.

Again Rozoff writes:

On May 17 the U.S.’s Black Sea Rotational Force 2010 three-month series of military exercises was launched at Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu Airfield.

Several days before “more than 100 Marines from across the United States put boots on the ground in Romania and stepped into history as the first Security Cooperation Marine Air-Ground Task Force in the Black Sea region.

More U.S. military poured into Romania earlier from Ramstein Air Base in Germany for Operation Carpathian Summer 2010, an air force medical evacuation exercise.

“Held at Otopeni Airfield, near Bucharest, Operation Carpathian Summer 2010 was designed to strengthen the partnership between the U.S. and Romanian air forces, while elevating their capability to work together.

But Bulgaria hasn't been shut out of the military exercise sweepstakes.

Again, the invaluable Rozoff was able to sniff out this gem:

On May 18 200 U.S. airmen and ten F-15 multi-role strike fighters spearheaded the launching of Operation Sentry Gold at the Graf Ignatievo Air Base in Bulgaria. “The exercise is designed to provide the U.S. Air Force and Bulgarian air force the opportunity to learn from each other and increase their respective NATO interoperability.”

The American commander involved in the maneuvers emphasized that the Bulgarian air force still uses Russian MiG-21s and MiG-29s, saying: “We simulate fighting MiGs all the time. Being here allows us to really see them in action.”

A Bulgarian officer said of the drills, “Sentry Gold increases the realism of our combat training. We get to see how a unit with a tested and proven combat history does things,” and added, “Training together with [U.S. Air Forces in Europe] and the U.S. pilots moves us closer to NATO standards.”

If you understand the background, you understand the Russian "paranoia."

Unfortunately, most if not all the Western press is not painting the bigger picture.

U.S. And Russia Battle For Czech Nuclear Contract

2010-05-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Czech Republic is the battle ground between the United States and Russia over a lucrative contracts to build new reactors in work that could be worth $25 million dollars. Toshiba unit Westinghouse is up against Russia's Atomstroyexport, with France's Areva also bidding to build two new units at Temelin, in the south of the country, another unit at the Dukovany plant in the east, and possibly three more units in neighboring Slovakia. U.S. President Barack Obama and his junior partner, Joe Biden, have pimped for Westinghouse, which retooled the old Soviet reactor technology at Temelin to bring that plant on line. Czech officials say the stakes are high, no less than the future course of the country: east or west. That may be a bit of overstatement, but the contracts are huge beyond the dollar signs.

One Czech official puts it in pretty stark terms.

"By far the biggest issue over the next four years will be deciding who should be the supplier for Temelin," opined Vaclav Bartuska, the country's ambassador-at-large for energy security.

Speaking to Reuters, Bartuska said, "The decision will define where this country wants to belong."

Judging by his remarks, Bartuska is another rank-and-file Russophobe among Eastern Europe elites.

"We really believed up to 1989 that making it into the EU and NATO meant safety. It took us a few years after joining to realize the world is not so simple. I think it is a bad thing to look east."

When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President swooped into the city of spires, Prague, in early April to ink a much ballyhooed nuclear arms reduction treaty, it wasn't the only atomic topic on the agenda.

Obama talked about the Westinghouse bid on Temelin with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who also was sweet talked by Medvedev on the same topic.

There was some speculation in the Czech media that the Russians and Americans would announce a joint venture to tackle the project, a bit of hard substance to Obama's no-nuke world vision unveiled in Prague exactly one year ago.

However, the Americans quickly squashed the kumbaya vibe, announcing they want to go it alone.

However, the Russians have an ace up their sleeve. AS Skoda, the engineering concern in Pilsen is part of the consortium with Atomstroyexport.

AS Skoda has an inside track as well, winning a deal last year with CEZ, the Czech energy giant that owns Temelin and Dukovany, to service all the reactors at the two nuclear power plants.

The Russians already have their fingers in AS Skoda, which is owned by a consortium, the Russian engineering and steel group OMZ.

Will the Czech government shut the door on a Czech firm -- albeit with Russian ownership but employing Czechs -- already heavily involved in the running of the country's nuclear industry?

Logic would say no, (although AS Skoda says it could still get some of the nuclear booty even if the Russian-led bid fails.)

But don't count Westinghouse out.

Back in the 1990s, before the Japanese took control of Westinghouse's nuclear division, the then Pittsburgh-based company already had gained a less than stellar reputation for its 'efforts' to win contracts to retrofit Temelin's Soviet-designed VVER reactors and a fuel contract.

So keen was Westinghouse on winning the bids that they were accused of resorting to standard graft to win them.

On May 9, 1996, Mlade Fronta DNES reported that the bidding for a critical instrumentation and control system for Temelin [this is a key Western addition to the Soviet-designed complex] was done incorrectly. In a first round of bidding, Westinghouse bid $21.8 million, while Electricite de France bid $16.2 million. These bids were supposed to be kept secret. Despite its own rules, CEZ, the Czech utility, decided to solicit a second set of bids. This time, Westinghouse bid only $14.2 million, while EdF kept to its original bid. Westinghouse got the contract. The question is whether Westinghouse knew of EdF’s bid, and thus modified its own bid. An internal audit of the bidding process stated, according to DNES, "The protocols for negotiations do not contain any reasons that led to such a decision [to organize an additional step of the bidding], although such a procedure is very unusual and does not follow the rules for international biddings."

Two days later, DNES reported on another suspect bid. This time, Westinghouse had underbid its competitors in a contract for nuclear fuel for Temelin. When the first round of bidding was completed, Westinghouse had offered $22.6 million, Siemens had bid $36 million and Framatome had bid $34.5 million. Again, an unusual second round of bidding was held. The other companies held to their bids, while Westinghouse upped its bid to $33.6 million, and won the contract. Said a CEZ internal audit, "such an increase is hardly to be explained reasonably and according to TCT’s [Temelin Control Team] opinion, it may be linked with the disclosure of a business secret with negative impact for CEZ."

The scandal moved on, to accusations of bribery by a Westinghouse employee and slander against a CEZ director who voted against Westinghouse contracts. Details of an investigation into these allegations remain secret, at the order of the CEZ Board of Directors, whose members include the wife of Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus. Meanwhile, the Czech police mounted their own investigation of the charges, but have been unable to obtain any indictments.

So much for those cleaner Western business practices.

Since those heady, corrupt days, Westinghouse has not made much of a dent in the Czech nuclear market.

In fact, the Russians have already outfoxed Westinghouse, securing a key nuclear fuel deal with the Czechs in 2007.

The fate of the juicy nuclear deals likely hinges on the outcome of next week's parliamentary elections.

The ruling right-wing ODS party are seen as more pro-American, and would probably favor Westinghouse.

The opposition left-wing CSSD are seen as a bit more open to doing business with the Russians, and could opt for them, seeing that the Russians already have the nuclear fuel contracts.

Opinion polls show CSSD with a comfortable lead.

Gazprom Comes For Belarus

2010-05-21T19:23:00.000-07:00

Having brought Ukraine and its unwieldy gas bill to heel through the election of the Moscow-friendly Viktor Yanukovich, Gazprom is seeking out the next gas deadbeat in next-door Belarus, whose leader-cum-dictator Alexandr Lukashenko has had an on-again off-again relationship with the Kremlin. Now, things appear in the off mode. Gazprom accuses the Belarus state gas transit company, Beltransgaz, not only of not paying the bill, but of fudging the numbers on how much it owns for the gas flowing through the "Friendship" pipeline. The spat puts to a growing gap between Lukashenko and the Kremlin. But, Beltransgaz is far from innocent in this affair.

Gazprom has a laundry-list of complaints against Beltransgaz.

According to AFP, Belarus's unpaid gas bill nearly tops $200 million.

In a statement sent to AFP, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said, "Beltransgaz has decided to pay for supplies not according to a contract price but according to the one determined by them unilaterally. And as a result, the January-March debt reached $137 million.

The Gazprom flack says Friday was another payment deadline missed by Belarus, clicking up the debt another $55 million.

In a speculative mood, Kypriyanov looked into his crystal ball to predict the debt could top $600 million by the end of 2010.

"The existing situation worries us," he added.

What makes the story a bit more than strange is that Gazprom owns a 50 percent stake in the company it is now demanding payment from, Beltransgaz, according to Wikipedia.

And it seems the Russian gas giant wants to swallow up Beltransgaz in much the same way the Kremlin wants to do to the Ukrainians.

This from Russia Today:

Gazprom deputy CEO, Andrei Kruglov, discussed his company’s interest in boosting its stake in the company.

“As for Gazprom’s corporate policy in the investment area, we are striving to obtain control.”

It seems the Russians are using the unpaid gas bill as leverage to pressure Minsk to fork over Beltransgaz.

It's a tactic the Russians are trying to impose on the Ukrainians as well, as the Informant has recounted.

Unpaid gas bills are nothing new to Belarus, that forgotten authoritarian outpost on Europe's eastern flanks.

In 2007, Gazprom threatened to cut gas deliveries to Belarus by 45 percent over high debt.

The crux of the issue is one of accounting.

Under the old contract that expired December 31, Belarus did not pay customs duties on oil imported from Russsia.

As Foreign Policy explains, Minsk made a tidy bit of profit reselling most of the imported oil, but refined, on to Europe.

Under the terms of the contract, Belarus did not pay customs duty on oil imported from Russia. Minsk did not use all of these oil imports domestically, however, sending much of it on to Europe and keeping the customs receipts, despite participating in a customs union with Russia. The profits from reselling Russian oil have long been an important source of hard currency for the authoritarian government of President Aleksandr Lukashenko, making up around a third of Belarus's export revenue.

In 2001, Belarus unilaterally rubbed out a contract obliging it to share the export money.

That put a big goose egg in the ledger books at the Russian gaspipeline money Transneft, not to mention the Russian state budget.

As Foreign Policy puts it:

Now, Transneft is demanding that Belarus pay full import duties for the portion of Russian oil that it resells on the European market, a demand that could cost Belarus as much as $5 billion per year. The Belarusian government argues that the Russia-Belarus customs union obviates the need for Minsk to pay duty on imports from Russia. Although deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline have not, as of mid-January, been cut off, the prospect that Transneft (whose chairman is Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, a close confidant of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) will turn off the taps to force compliance from Minsk is clearly one that has European leaders worried because the European Union imports about a third of its oil from Russia, mostly via Belarus. Already, the prospect of supply disruptions has driven U.S. crude oil prices to a 15-month high, presumably to Moscow's delight.

Lukashenko has irked Moscow to no end. His latest poke in the eye came when Lukashenko granted asylum to the former leader of Kyrgyzstan in April, after Moscow backed the new interim authorities.

Lukashenko also balked at Russian pressure to recognize the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.

And with Lukashenko flittering with the idea of joining the EU's Eastern Partnership, aimed at pulling out of Moscow's orbit several post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, don't expect the Kremlin to ease up on Belarus in the gas spat.

Skinheads Go On Trial In Czech Republic For Roma Arson Attack

2010-05-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

With armed riot police guarding and the local media watching, a trial of four skinheads has opened in the northeastern Czech city of Ostrava. The four are charged with an arson attack on a Roma home in the nearby village of Vitkov. A two-year-old girl, Natalka, was seriously injured in the attack, suffering burns over much of her body. Natalka became a household name in the Czech Republic, where even the most hardened Gypsy hater had to be repelled by images of a seriously burned child.

According to prosecutors, the four tossed three Molotov cocktails into the house to 'honor' Adolf Hitler.

The attack took place on April 20, 2009, the 120th anniversary of the birth of the German madman.

The Czech Republic, like other eastern European states accused of treating their Roma minority less than far, is treating this case with all seriousness.

The four are accused of a 'racially motivated' attack and could be sent to prison for life if found guilty.

The trial opened Thursday under heavy guard, apparently out of fear skinhead sympathizers would cause trouble at the court in Ostrava.

Inside, the four defendants have been mum or pointing fingers at the others as the initiator of the attack.

The Vitkov attack is not unique to the Czech Republic, or for that matter, the parts of Europe where Roma live, mostly in eastern Europe, and mostly under dire conditions, without running water, electricity and jobs.

Just a month after the arson attack in Vitkov, Molotov cocktails were hurled into another Roma home in Zdiby outside the capital, Prague.

No one was ever implicated in that arson attack, and police eventually forgot about it, much to the disgust of Roma activists.

In August, another Roma home burned in the Czech Republic. Again no one was punished. Again, Czech police ended their investigation inconclusively.

In September, another Roma house was attack in Mikulov in the east. Police did act. They pointed out there was no Molotov cocktail thrown, but something more innocuous. Locals spoke of 'youths' yelling racist chants as they carried out their deed.

Again no charges were filed.

In one of the more chilling attacks, neo-Nazis marched on Roma tenements in Litvinov in November, 2008. Sympathizers of the now banned "Workers Party" clashed with police in running battles, turning the depressed coal town of Litvinov into a war zone.

Czech anti-Roma attitudes are so ingrained, Czech TV recently allowed to air anti-Roma political advertising by the far-right National Party, ahead of the European elections. The video promoted, quote-unquote: “a final solution to the Gypsy question”.

The ads were eventually pulled.

As Romea.cz, relations between ethnic Czechs and Roma have worsened over the past few years.

In a recent poll, the vast majority of people in the Czech Republic continue to perceive the co-existence of Roma and non-Roma as problematic. Relations with the Roma minority were rated “poor” by 82 % of respondents, of whom 33 % rated relations as “very poor”. Only 13 % of Czechs rated relations with the Roma as “good”. The research, conducted during April by the Center for Public Opinion Research, (Centrum pro výzkum veřejného mínění - CVVM) was released today.

CVVM says the ratings have been worsening steadily since 2006. At that time, 69 % of Czechs evaluated co-existence between the Roma minority and non-Roma negatively, with 22 % evaluating it as positive.

Will justice be served in Ostrava?

Probably. The Czechs are under the spotlight, and know if they four get off lightly the country's reputation will take another hit.

Whether it will mean any greater understand between Czechs and Roma. That's another matter.

Slovakia And Hungary Spar Again

2010-05-14T19:19:00.000-07:00

There is little love between the Eastern European states of Hungary and Slovakia. Hooked at the hip for centuries under the old Magyar dynasty, the two states learned how to hate the other, and are still airing out issues today. One issue in particular riles the powerful in Bratislava and Budapest, the fate of ethnic Slovaks and Hungarians living on the wrong side of the border. Hungary has now upped the ante, debating legislation that would grant citizenship to Hungarians living abroad, meaning mainly Slovakia where about a half a million reside. That has sent Slovak Premier Robert Fico berserk, labeling the legislation a "security risk" to Slovakia.

Dual citizenship is a non-issue pretty much every where else in Europe, but not in Slovakia.

On May 13, Slovakia called home its ambassador to Hungary for 'consultations.'

Fico said the Hungarians were dabbling dangerously near the edge of international law.

The Slovaks are angered Hungary never consulted them on the proposed legislation.

Fico threatened undisclosed countermeasures, stating with gusto, "Our answer will be very tough."

Fico dropped a more than subtle hint that ethnic Hungarians in Slovia who take Budapest up on their offer, could risk losing their Slovak citizenship.

"Granting of such citizenship will be linked to a serious risk for the applicants. The Czech Republic has a law under which accepting another citizenship [leads to] a loss of the Czech one," he noted.

TIes between Slovakia and Hungary dropped down a few degrees in 2006 when Fico corralled into his center-left coalition as a junior partner the ultra-nationalist and anti-Hungarian Slovak National Party, or SNP, led by the ever objectionable Slovak hardman, Jan Slota, who yearns for the day when Hungarians and Roma, or Gypsies, will leave Slovakia.

As the Informant has noted, bringing in the SNP cost Fico's Smer, or Direction, Party its good standing among European socialist parties, who for the first time ever, kicked out a party of its comrades.

The SNP has been in the headlines lately for printing up election posters depicting a dark-skinned man and a golden necklace, accompanied by the slogan, "Do not feed those who do not want to work." The poster has sparked outrage in Slovakia, not least among the Gypsies, or Roma, themselves, who are at the bottom-rung in Europe's socio-economic feeder system.

As the Informant reported, Roma groups were outraged with the posters.

SNP leader Jan Slota's campaign was "disgusting", Frantisek Tanko of the Union of Slovak Roma told reporters. "We hear nothing from Mr Slota but 'Roma are dirty and steal'."

However, the SNP is not all that out of sync with the thinking within Smer.

Fico's party has proposed shipping Roma children off to boarding schools to drag them into mainstream society, in what would be one of the biggest, as well as controversial, social engineering projects ever undertaken in Europe.

Fico's Roma-off-to-boarding-schools proposal has been interpreted as pre-election jawing. Getting tough on the Roma, who suffer from unemployment rates of up to 90 percent and are seen in Slovakia, or anywhere else they live for that matter, as deadbeats, is a sure-fire campaign winner.

Slovakia holds parliamentary elections on June 12.

It's obviously not only the Slovaks using emotive issues to score political points.

Hungary's premier-elect Viktor Orban pushed the citizenship law in campaigning for April elections which Orban's right-wing party Fidesz won.

In the end, it all comes down to politics.

Gay Pride Parade In Vilnius Amid Riot Police

2010-05-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

East Europe aired some of its homophobic laundry on Saturday. More police that paraders were on the streets of Vilnius, the capital of the Baltic state of Lithuania. But this was no ordinary march, but the country's, and for that matter one of Eastern Europe's, first gay pride parade, where attitudes towards homosexuals remain far from friendly, unlike Western Europe. Anti-gay protesters had vowed to disrupt the parade, and authorities had eagerly used that threat to cancel the event, before having a rethink after an appeal.

Reports say about 500 marcher took part in the march, under the gaze of some 600 police, many on horseback and others decked out in riot gear, complete with batons and tear gas.

The gas was used when anti-gay protesters tried to break through police barricades.

That incident, however, happened after the main march, which went off without incident.

Given the symbolism of the event, a few top-shelf Euro bureaucrats were on hand to add a pithy phrase or two.

"Today we are marching for freedom, today we are marching for equality, today we are marching for Europe ... that we would never accept homophobia taking over our streets," Swedish Minister for European Affairs Birgitta Ohlsson told the marchers.

She was the highest profile foreign attendee. Some foreign ambassadors, including those of France and Britain, also took part, as well as five members of the European Parliament. Anmesty International sent a delegation, too.

But what about Lithuania's political elite? Only two Lithuanian lawmakers bothered to show up.

That indifference, sadly, is in line with what most Lithuanians think.

Opinion polls have shown that more than two-thirds of Lithuanians are opposed to the gay pride event in the ex-Soviet republic of 3.4 million people, where the Roman Catholic church, which regards homosexuality as a grave sin, has a dominant role.

"Homophobia is a big problem in Lithuania ... I think this is because homophobia here is institutionalized," Roma Pinkeviciene, 50, a secondary school teacher, told Reuters.

She took part in the march to support human rights.

The parade was the second joint in the Baltic states, which included gay activists from Latvia and Estonia, as well as other EU countries.

The Baltic pride event was held for the first time in Latvia last year, and is planned in Estonia in 2011. Latvia and Estonia had separate gay pride events before.

This is still uncharted territory for the former Communist states, and many of the locals don't like it as illustrated.

In 2008, a gay pride march in the Hungarian capital, Budapest got down right violent when far-right never-do-wells started causing trouble.

In Russia, the city's pasha, Yuri Luzhkov, once referred to gay rights parades as "satanic."

The city has banned gays from marching in the Russian capital, and last year police roughed up then locked up about 20 activists who tried to parade despite the ban.

Deutche Welle points out the large divide between East and West Europe when it comes to homosexuals.

While homosexual acts have been decriminalized across eastern Europe, broad societal acceptance of same-sex relationships is often still a long way off. Same-sex marriage is not legal anywhere in eastern Europe; three countries there have instituted constitutional bans. Only Hungary and the Czech Republic have passed legislation giving legal recognition to same-sex couples.

With the Catholic church so dominant, Poland is country where tolerance is a foreign word. Abortions are outlawed, and gays are routinely targeted.

In 2007, the Education Ministry introduced legislation that would outlaw "homosexual culture" from being taught in the classroom, as the Informant reported.

What exactly homosexual culture is was never spelled out, but it seems to mean any information about AIDS and lessons telling kids to be tolerant of homosexuals.

Deputy Education Minister Miroslaw Orzechowski, sounding ever so reasonable, said "there is no place for the promotion of homosexual culture" in Polish schools.

Roman Giertych, his boss and leader of the right-wing League of Polish Families offered the following wisdom" "one must limit homosexual propaganda so that children won't have an improper vew of family."

At the time, Human Rights Watch noted:

The proposed homophobic legislation follows a series of recent threats and abuses against lesbian and gay Poles by state officials. In June, the State Prosecutor’s office issued a letter to prosecutors in the municipalities of Legnica, Wroclaw, Walbryzch, Opole and Jelenia Gora ordering in sweeping terms investigations into the conduct of “homosexuals” on unspecified allegations of “pedophilia.”

Not easy being gay in Eastern Europe.

Slovak Far-Right Target Roma In Campaign Posters

2010-05-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

Down at the polls, go to a push-button scapegoat target to boost the numbers. That's what Slovakia's far-right Slovak National Party has done. Down in the polls, the SNS has churned out stacks of posters showing a dark-skinned man and a golden necklace, accompanied by the slogan, "Do not feed those who do not want to work." The poster has sparked outrage in Slovakia, not least among the Gypsies, or Roma, themselves, who are at the bottom-rung in Europe's socio-economic feeder system.

SNS leader Jan Slota's campaign was "disgusting", Frantisek Tanko of the Union of Slovak Roma told reporters. "We hear nothing from Mr Slota but 'Roma are dirty and steal'."

Slovak media firm euroAWK, a unit of Germany's media group AWK, whose ad space was used for the campaign, squirmed to disassociate itself with the posters.

The company said it would cover up all 29 of the controversial posters in the region of the capital Bratislava. Other firms, however, continued to place the posters in other regions.

The SNS said the billboard referred to all Slovaks exploiting the welfare system.

In a clumsy bit of table-turning, the party's Vice-Chairwoman Anna Belousovava said: "Those who scream the man on the billboard is Roma, or a Gypsy, are racists. How did you come to the conclusion he's a Gypsy?"

Up to 10 percent of Slovakia's 5.4 million people are Roma. Most live on the margins of society in squalid settlements that wouldn't look out of place in sub-Sahara Africa.

These communities on the outskirts of white towns usually lack basic services like sewage and electricity.

Unemployment among the Roma in Slovakia runs as high as 90 percent.

The SNS is no on-the-fringes party in Slovakia, no sirree. The Party is a coalition partner of Prime Minister Robert Fico and his "Smer" or "Direction" Party.

Fico's 2006 decision to join forces with the SNS came at a price. Smer was booted out by their comrades of the European democratic socialist parties. That was the first time any Socialist-associated party had been blacklisted by the group.

The SNS party leader is one, Jan Slota, a thuggish type who would love to kick all the Hungarians across the Danube River back to their original home.

Here he is after tipping back one too many cognacs.

In March, the euro zone member was taken to task by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay for eroding the treatment of Roma.

Last month, SMER proposed that boarding schools were the only way to break a cycle of exclusion in which most Roma grow up without any hope of joining mainstream society.

Al-Jazeera called it either Europe's most ambitious or controversial decision to deal with the Roma problem.

That will be a decision most Slovaks would probably agree with, if not publicly.

Macedonia Ready To Blow?

2010-05-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

Disturbing reports coming out of the Balkan nation of Macedonia. Macedonian interior ministry troops have been shooting it out with ethnic Albanian rebels, evoking fears of a repeat of the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia. Plus, arms, including rocket launchers, and 180 pounds of plastic explosives have been intercepted by Macedonia. Even NATO, authors of the chaos in next door Kosovo has had to pay attention, saying it is "concerned" with recent developments in Macedonia.

Last Friday, Macedonian officials made a chilling announcement.

They had seized weapons, lots of weapons.

Among them, 20 rocket launchers, three mortars, three anti-aircraft guns, 180 pounds of plastic explosives and hundreds of mines and grenades.

The Macedonians didn't just stumble on the weapons. They seized them after battling 'gunmen'.

Reports said one person was wounded in the gun-battle.

Macedonia's private Channel 5 TV station said the 'gunmen' fled into Kosovo.

Confusing things a bit, Kosovo officials announced seven people had been arrested in Kosovo village Begrats near Kacanik for illegal arms trade, Macedonian TV Sitel announced.

KFOR and Kosovo police carried out raids in two houses in the village, where they found weapons.

It was unclear if the gunmen were run-of-the-mill arms smugglers, or something more sinister.

After a week, it turned out to be the latter.

The National Liberation Army said it was involved in the April 29th gunbattle.

To boot, the terrorist group boasted to have killed a Macedonian soldier.

Skopje had said no one was killed in the skirmish.

Who are the NLA? Well they fought an insurgency inside Macedonia in 2001, and they have ties to the notorious Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA.

That 2001 uprising was centered in Tetovo.

As this video shows, tensions seem to simmer just below the surface in this particularly troubled part of the Balkans.

Ironically, Macedonia has recognized Kosovo's independence.

To much fanfare in Brussels and Washington, the two 'countries' have even demarcated their border.

In particular, the deal was meant to prevent the type of cross-border raid carried out last week.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski hailed the move as "a great success for Macedonia, because we are closing the border issue that for years nobody could solve".

So much for intentions.

2010-04-30T20:41:00.000-07:00

Russia is on a roll, feeling truly imperial with the "little Russians" next door in Ukraine. The new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, has acted more like Ded Moroz, handing out gift after gift to the Kremlin. First and foremost, there was the quarter century extension to the lease for the Russian Black Sea fleet at the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Ukraine's opposition accused Yanukovich of selling out the country's sovereignty for cheap Russian gas. While maybe not as explosive but more symbolic, Yanukovich assuaged Russian sensibilities again, opining that the 1930s famine was not a genocide as most Ukrainians feel and the country's parliament has ruled. And now it's Moscow's turn to add to Ukraine's humiliation. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Russian gas giant Gazprom to swallow up Ukraine's gas transit system.

Putin let loose his whooper at talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, in name only, Mykola Azarov, on Russia's Black Sea coast at Sochi.

It was made at a joint press conference, and Azarov, said he was suprised by the 'impromptu' statement.

Owned by the state, Naftogaz is the exclusive importer of Russian gas into Ukraine and about 20 percent of the EU's gas needs flow through its pipelines.

Ever the political opportunist, Yulia Tymoshenko -- the peasant-braided ex-energy queen who lost to Yanukovich in the last presidential poll -- immediately denounced the idea.

"This proposal to merge Gazprom and Naftogaz... could be taken as a joke, if every day an extensive plan to liquidate Ukraine's independence wasn't taking shape before our eyes," she said in a statement.

While Ukrainian officials were blushingly brushing off Putin's proposal, the Russians were telling a different story.

Alexei Miller, the CEO of Gazprom, said negotiations on the issue could start as soon as mid-May.

A Putin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Reuters news agency the deal could entail an equity swap between the two firms, with Ukraine possibly exchanging its 100 percent holding in Naftogaz for a corresponding stake in Gazprom.

Peskov said, "We are talking about a [sic] creation of a single company."

To sweeten the deal, Putin also said export duties would be scrapped on all gas deliveries to Ukraine.

But Putin wasn't done pulling goodies out of his bag for the destitute Ukrainians, socked in the solar plexus by the global downturn and now begging hat in hand to the IMF for money.

Putin said the Russian state bank VTB is ready to offer Ukraine a $500 million loan.

Talking heads in Ukraine were calling a spade a spade: Russia is trying to grab control of Ukraine's assets and subordinate the country to Kremlin rule.

"Russia's objective is to take control of the Ukrainian pipelines and they will try to do this in any way," said Viktor Chumak of the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev in an interview with the AFP news agency.

"This merger will allow them to seal this control," he added.

Others were sceptical a deal can be done.

Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Russian brokerage Uralsib, said it would be "an impossible merger".

"I think that the two companies are different animals in terms of size and transparency," he told the Reuters news agency. "I don't think that Ukraine would agree to a merger."

Weafer said Gazprom's size meant it would completely dominate any joint company. "And that would be unacceptable to the Ukrainian public," he added.

Medley Global Advisors' analyst Douglas Busvine said valuing Naftogaz, which is not a public company, does not disclose its financials and had restructured its debt last year, would be difficult.

"Naftogaz is not viable as a going concern but they have some assets that are worth something," he told Reuters.

I guess we can now expect the president of Ukraine to make the case that a merger makes good sense for all sides involved, except the people of Ukraine.

Yanukovych Says Ukrainian Famine Not Genocide

2010-04-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a good week for Moscow vis-a-vis ties with their Slavic brethren in Ukraine. First, the Kremlin secured a 25-year extension to the lease for its Black Sea fleet. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin smirked smugly as Ukrainian lawmakers rocked and socked amid the a haze from smoke bombs to ratify the extension, which opposition gadflies blasted as a sellout of Ukraine's sovereignty. For Russia, Yanukovich was paying immediate dividends. But he wasn't finished. Now, Yanukovich has had a rethink on the Holodomor, the Stalin-era 1930s famine that Ukrainian patriots, as well as more than a dozen countries, have classified as a genocide.Yanukovich said that Holodomor was “a consequence of Stalin’s totalitarian regime,” but cannot be called genocide against any particular nation, since mass famine was a tragedy for all countries in the Soviet Union.

Yanukovich made his reassessment before the Parliamentary Assemby of the Council of Europe, or PACE, earlier this week.

The gist of Yanukovich's reasoning is that the famine did not target, or single out the Ukrainian people, but was rather a tragedy with suffering all around.

A day later, PACE had a meeting of minds with Yanukovich, refusing to recognize the famine as a genocide.

Its resolution states that the Stalin regime is guilty for the widespread famine that hurt the Soviet Union in the 30s.

"Stalin's totalitarian regime was guilty of the terrible famine in the years 1932-1933 in the Soviet Union," states the document.

The assembly said that the famine was provoked by the premeditated actions and policies of the Soviet regime and that affected millions in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia and Kazakhstan.

According to the head of the Russian delegation Konstantin Kosachev, the abolition of the amendments, strongly opposed by Russia, draws a final line under ex-President Yushchenko’s political project that describes Holodomor as genocide of Ukrainians.

Over at Russia Today, John Laughland from the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, was speaking the same language.

“The attempt to present the Stalinist period – and particularly the famine of 1932-33 – as having been an act directed by Russians against Ukrainians is historical nonsense, and it’s dangerous nonsense,” he argued.

“Everybody knows that the Soviet regime was not led by a Russian but by a Georgian,” he continued. “And in any case, throughout the Soviet hierarchy and the membership of the Communist Party, there were people of all nationalities.”

“In the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, people administering the policies which led to the famine and to millions of extra deaths there would have been Ukrainians as much as many other nationalities,” Laughland added.

What a difference a few months make.

Back in January, a Kiev court adjudged the famine to have been a genocide.

The court case followed an 8-month investigation by the Ukrainian security service that produced more than 300 volumes of evidence including testimonies by survivors and witnesses, and recently declassified materials.

The Kiev court ruling came four years after the Ukrainian parliament voted in favor of a resolution calling the famine an act of genocide.

Critically, from Moscow's perspective, the court ruling did not contain claims against Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the Russians saw something sinister lurking in the shadows.

The decision is “part of a plan aimed at initiating a row with Russia,” said the Speaker of Russia’s State Duma, Boris Gryzlov. Gryzlov, one of the leaders of the ruling United Russia party, believes that such a plan has been on the roll for several years now.

Over the years, the Russians have thwarted Ukrainian attempts to debate the holodomor.

Like in 2008 when Moscow threw a diplomatic wrench into Kiev's hopes to have the UN General Assembly debate the 1930s famine.

Five years earlier in 2003, the UN did agree the famine was the result of cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and other nationalities in the USSR.

On October 23, 2008 the European Parliament did adopt a resolution that recognized the Holodomor as a crime against humanity, but not a genocide.

Now, the president of the country most impacted by the crime is joining the no-genocide camp while Moscow grins.

Chernobyl Sarcophagus Cracking Up?

2010-04-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

Twenty four years after a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the nightmare is far from over. As another anniversary ticks by, attention for a moment turned to the former power plant and the threat it still poses. In particular, the huge concrete sarcophagus that entombed the destroyed the reactor. The concrete was plastered together pell mell after the accident and the work was roughshod. Not surprisingly, the concrete tomb hasn't held up well, and needs to be replaced, or else it could all come crumbling down, unleashing radiation still trapped inside.
Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich used the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster to draw attention to the Chernobyl ongoing outfall, saying around 2 million people have illnesses caused by the radiation, and non-governmental organizations estimate the disaster has caused more than 700,000 early deaths.

Yanukovich pledged to give better care for Chernobyl victims and those who still have related diseases, calling that an issue of "conscience and honor."

The 1986 explosion blanketed Europe in a cloud of radiation, some detected as far away as Japan.

Death tolls, cancer rates linked to Chernobyl have been disputed, with Greenpeace arguing the nuclear industry, backed by spineless UN agencies, have grossly low-balled the figures.

The new data, based on Belarus national cancer statistics, predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.

Here's a link to the 2006 Greenpeace report.

Horrible though those figures are, it's the sarcophagus and its twenty thousan tons of concrete that should send shivers down our spines.

The Chernobyl Children's Project International points out that in 1988 Soviet scientists announced that the sarcophagus was only designed for lifetime of 20 to 30 years.

And now it is starting to crack, with some of the fissures covering 100 square meters.

As CPPI puts it:

These cracks and holes are further exacerbated by the intense heat inside the reactor, which is still over 200 degrees Celsius. The sarcophagus’s hastily and poorly built concrete walls, which are steadily sinking, act as a lid on the grave of the shattered reactor.

What's inside the damaged reactor?

About 216 tons of uranium and plutonium.

CPPI brushes a Guernica-like painting:

Twenty thousand tons of concrete floor is about to collapse into what has been described as a mix of radioactive lava and dust, which resulted from the dropping of tons of sand in the early attempts to put out the fire, formed by the fusion of molten fuel, concrete and dust.

Now, there are expensive, if not ambitious plans, to cover the whole mess up again, this time with an enormous 'arch.'

With lots of American money involved, U.S. business is picking up much of the scraps. Dick Cheney's former employer, Bechtel, is spearheading the project.

The steel arch enclosure—almost three football fields across and 32 stories high—will be the largest moveable structure ever built.

According to Wikipedia, the French consortium Novarka signed a contract in 2007 to build the 190 by 200 meter arch structure.

The project is huge as is the price tag, estimated at $1.4 billion.

A cash-strapped Ukraine just doesn't have that kind of money.

Plus, there have been numerous delays and false starts. The completion date now for the arch is 2013.

Hopefully, the sarcophagus will cooperate and won't cave in on itself before then.

Ukraine On the Brink?

2010-04-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

Fisticuffs, smoke bombs, and a legislator hiding behind an umbrella to avoid the barrage of eggs hurled his way. Such was the scene Tuesday in Kiev, where Ukraine's law givers convened to ponder whether to allow Russia's Black Sea fleet to stay moored at Ukraine's port of Sevastopol for an addition 25 years. The decision by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was a Faustian bargain. Ukraine, tipped to the economic edge by the global financial crisis, is desperate to save money any way it can. In return for the Black Sea fleet lease extension, Moscow is dropping gas prices to Ukraine about a third. However, many Ukrainians, the more patriotic in the Western parts, see the pact as nothing more than a loss of sovereignty and act of treason.

The Informant has covered the background on the deal here.

The folks over at Russian Today, probably had to hold back the snide snickers as the antics unfolded in Kiev.

For those keeping score, the Russian fleet in Sevastopol comprises 16,200 servicemen, a rocket cruiser, a large destroyer and about 40 other vessels.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the gas queen and former prime minister who lost to Yanukovich in this year's presidential poll, was quick to get her quotes into print.

"Today will go down as a black page in the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian parliament," Tymoshenko said.

Later at a rally, Tymoshenko said: "We have one slogan: Ukraine is not for sale. We must build a powerful system for the defense of Ukraine."

Amid the chaos and smoke, the parliament ratified the lease extension by 236 votes -- 10 more than the minimum required for it to pass -- and then promptly adopted the 2010 state budget which is key for securing $12 billion in credit from the International Monetary Fund.

The hryvna, (Ukraine's currency), and sense argument was hammered home by Yanukovich's cabinet members.

"There is no alternative to this decision -- because ratification means a lower price for gas and a lower price for gas means the budget," Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said.

"The budget means agreement with the IMF, the possibility of getting investments. It is a program of development for Ukraine in the future."

In Strasbourg, Yanukovich feigned as if nothing was going on back at home, saying: "Nothing unexpected took place in the Ukrainian parliament."

He also took a dig at his political nemesis, Tymoshenko, saying she too was ready to extend the Black Sea fleet lease if she had been elected.

He said the gas deal she had negotiated with the Russians in January 2009 had not brought in a penny. "I have secured a return of $40 billion on gas purchases," Yanukovich said.

Russian reaction? President Dmitry Medvedev said "sound reason" had won the day.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dismissed the protesters as "opposition hooligans".

Some argue, Yanukovich has trashed the country's constitution to ram through the gas-for-fleet deal.

They argue the deal should be put to a referendum.

"Based on the ideology of the Ukrainian Constitution and current legislation, and in order to give popular legitimacy to the "Kharkiv pact between Yanukovych and Medvedev" relevant changes must be made to the Constitution via a referendum, or a referendum should be held on the idea of the Russian Black Sea Fleet staying in Ukraine until 2042," Mykola Tomenko said, reports the BYuT press service.

The lawmakers may have ratified the pact, but the people haven't had their last say yet. Stay tuned...

Bosnia Gets NATO Roadmap

2010-04-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

The NATO leviathan wants more prey, and the elites in Bosnia are offering their fractured, internationally supervised state, on the military tray. At a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Tallinn, Bosnia had the honor of being issued the dazzlingly named Membership Action Plan, or MAP, which spells out the dos and don'ts to joining the globe's preeminent war machine. Amid a period of warming relations with Russia, NATO is doing its darnedest to piqued Russian paranoia. Croatia and Albania were lassoed into NATO last year. Montenegro got its own MAP back in December. If the statelet of Montenegro and the basket case of Bosnia join, NATO jumps to 30 members.

Bosnia filed for a MAP back in October. But NATO rejected them for failing to meet certain criteria.

Montenegro, however, was issued a MAP. What criteria Montenegro meets is a mystery.

It's better known as the center of Europe's cigarette smuggling trade as reported here.

Montenegro, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, is quite a bit of work.

But, surprise, surprise, Bosnia has made just enough progress now to get the MAP.

What did they do?

Well, a NATO spokesman said they swept up some loose guns and bullets, and trashed them.

There was something else as well.

Oh yeah, Bosnia will send troops to Afghanistan.

Actually, that was a condition NATO set for Bosnia to open the military alliance doors.

So, Bosnia will chip in an infantry unit to join the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.

NATO says it wants warmer ties with Russian. Expanding the alliance closer to Russia's borders won't get them.

Russia's military lists NATO expansion and its attempt to rebirth itself as global policemen as the number one threat to Russia.

That, according to Russia's new Military doctrine, which can be viewed here (unfortunately only in Russian).

Thanks to Rick Rozoff, here are a few of the more salient points:

- The goal of NATO to arrogate to itself the assumption of global functions in violation of international law, and to expand the military infrastructure of NATO nations to Russia’s borders including through expansion of the bloc

- Attempts to destabilize the situation in individual states and regions and the undermining of strategic stability

- The deployment of military contingents of foreign states (and blocs) on territories neighboring Russia and its allies, as well as in adjacent waters

- The establishment and deployment of strategic missile defense systems that undermine global stability and violate the balance of forces in the nuclear field, as well as the militarization of outer space and the deployment of strategic non-nuclear systems precision weapons

Russia delayed releasing the military doctrine, out of deferrence to negotiations on the new nuclear arms reduction treaty.

But when Romania decided to accept U.S. interceptor missiles as part of the U.S. missile defense shield, the Russians issued the doctrine.

Rozoff sums up well what NATO and Washington have wrought in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Twenty years afterward, with no Soviet Union, no Warsaw Pact and a greatly diminished and truncated Russia, the United States and NATO have militarized Europe to an unprecedented degree – in fact subordinating almost the entire continent under a Washington-dominated military bloc – and have launched the most extensive combat offensive in South Asia in what is already the longest war in the world.

Of 44 nations in Europe and the Caucasus (excluding microstates and the NATO pseudo-state of Kosovo), only six – Belarus, Cyprus, Malta, Moldova, Russia and Serbia – have escaped having their citizens conscripted by NATO for deployment to the Afghan war front. That number will soon shrink yet further.

Of those 44 countries, only two – Cyprus and Russia – are not members of NATO or its Partnership for Peace transitional program and Cyprus is under intense pressure to join the second.

Even the peacenik Obama doesn't flinch about expanding NATO, despite his Nobel and alleged left-wing bonafides.

Obama has said is it important to "send a clear signal throughout Europe that we are going to continue to abide by the central belief ... that countries who seek and aspire to join NATO are able to join NATO."

Washington has pushed for Georgia and Ukraine to be dragooned into NATO.

The sycophant Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili is eager as ever to join NATO, but Ukraine, now under the Russian-friendly Viktor Yanukovich, has officially flipped the bird to NATO.

But as the Bosnian MAP shows, NATO takes its licks and marches on.

Russian Black Sea Fleet To Remain In Ukraine Till 2042

2010-04-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

The election of Viktor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine is starting to pay big time benefits to Russia. In a bit of horse trading to secure lower prices for Russian gas deliveries, Yanukovich has agreed to allow the Russian Black Sea fleet to remain anchored at Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Sevastopol until 2042, tacking on a 25-year extension to a lease that was due to expire in 2017. Yanukovych made the deal with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the eastern city of Kharkiv on April 22. Brimming with glee over the deal, Medvedev said it would bring better European security to the Black Sea basin.

Under Viktor Yushchenko, who was pro pretty much all that is Western from NATO to the EU, the Black Sea fleets days were numbered. Yushchenko wanted them out in 2017 when the fleet's lease expired.

The Black Sea fleet is a hot-button issue for Ukraine, with many of the Russian-speakers in the east embracing it, while Ukrainians further west wanting the Russians out.

This Al-Jazeera program, People and Power, lays out the issue well.

But Yushchenko is out, and Yanukovych is in.

Yanukovich has vowed Ukraine will be a 'bridge' between the rest of Europe and Russia, not a chummy friend of Washington as Yushchenko had desired.

As the Informant reported, he's already officially scrapped Ukraine's bid to join NATO, to the delight of Moscow.

Now, Moscow has secured its Black Sea fleet for a good bit longer at the Ukrainian port.

While Yanukovich is depicted by this website and most Western MSM as a Moscow stooge, his decisions vis-a-vis Moscow are also driven by sobering economic realities.

Ukraine is in economic freefall due to the global slowdown. It's main export, steel, fell by fifty percent last year. State revenues are down 30 percent.

Now, Ukraine wants a $12 billion handout from the IMF. That would be on top of a $16.4 billion credit extended by the IMF to Ukraine in 2008. Ukraine has received $10.6 billion of that loot, but the international bankers have shut the taps, angered over Ukrainian pols concerns for social cohesion rather than counting the beans in the budget.

On top of that, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko negotiated a 10-year gas deal with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2009 that left Ukraine paying more for gas than most European countries do.

Ukraine has struggled to pay its gas bill to Russia, which has twice shut off the taps to Ukrainians over unpaid bills. Europeans have been left shivering on the sidelines as the gas spats have left European homes with less of the natural resource needed to heat the heaters.

So, Yanukovich has little wiggle room, and any decision to lighten Ukraine's financial obligations is desired.

On Wednesday, Yanukovich got that. The gas-for-fleet deal means Kyiv will pay up to $100 less per thousand cubic meters, or about a 30% price reduction.
That is a significant price cut for the Ukrainians.

But opponents at home are complaining the price Ukraine is paying is just too high.

Tymoshenko, Yanukovich's rival for the presidency, said the extension "crudely violates the 17th article of the constitution which prohibits the stay of foreign military bases on the territory of Ukraine".

Tymoshenko is calling for people to take to the streets on Saturday for what she hopes will balloon into huge demonstrations.

One deputy of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party said it amounted to "a surrender of national interests".

The foreign ministry, in a statement that clearly foresaw criticism too in the West, said: "We do not regard the Black Sea fleet as a source of threat to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Its presence should not cause concern among our Western partners for the independence of Ukraine."

For the Russians, the deal is crucial to stop the Black Sea from becoming one big U.S. lake.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has opened up his country with open arms to the Americans, with U.S. military personnel coming in and out of the Caucasus country on a regular basis.

In March, US naval forces held exercises with Georgian coast guards along the Black Sea coast.

At least seven US warships have visited Georgian ports since its August 2008 war with Russia, including the USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the US Sixth Fleet, which visited a few weeks after the conflict.

The Russians even warned the U.S. military build up in the Black Sea could be seen as a 'declaration of war.'

Russia's securing of its Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol won't mean Washington will leave the sea. Just last year, the Pentagon announced it would build new Black Sea bases in Romania and Bulgaria.

Expect the Black Sea region to be an area of tension for some time to come.

Poland Emerges From European Economic Meltdown

2010-04-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

The financial tsunami has knocked down one European economy after another. Greece is one heart beat away from economic ruin, an EU cash catheter keeping it alive. Greece is part of a new acronym of the economic down-and-outers, including Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, all mired in high unemployment and low growth. In Hungary, frustrations over the economy catapulted into power a far-right party equipped with its own Nazi-like guard. All is not gloom and doom, however. But the good news can't be found among the sophisticated, and seasoned economies of western Europe. Rather it is the former East Bloc, Poland, to be exact, that has weathered the storm the best. Remember the fears of the Polish plumber?

It wasn't a high number, but in a year of red and minuses, Poland's growth of 1.7 percent in 2009 looks pretty good.

That was the highest in the whole of the 27-nation EU, which was mostly in "shrink" mode last year, according to EUbusiness.

According to Eurostat estimates, gross domestic product across the European Union shrank by 4.1 percent overall, with Poland's Baltic neighbours suffering severe double-digit contractions.

So what is the key to Polish success?

Well, Danske Bank economist Lars Christensen told AFP it had something to do with "good policy and a lot of luck."

The Poles are also lucky not to be handcuffed by the European currency, the euro.

That allowed the Polish currency, the zloty, to head south and spice up Polish exports as even tastier on global markets.

In late 2008 and early 2009 the value of the currency initially plummeted by some 30 percent compared to mid-2008, before recovering to around a 15 percent overall decline in value.

"Poland has benefited from being outside the eurozone in terms of competitiveness," Christensen says, noting its southern neighbor Slovakia, a member of the eurozone, suffered a decline in exports.

The Danske Bank economist expects Poland to see its GDP expand by 2.5 to 3.0 percent in 2010 and predicts fourth quarter growth could hit 4.0 percent.

In Lodz, and elsewhere Poles are asking what economic crisis. Dell has moved much of its production from Ireland to this former textile city.

Once it was Poland with hat in hand, begging the bankers from the IMF for coin.

Now, the central bank has said no-thanks to a $21.8-billion credit line.

"The situation with the Polish economy and the financial system is sufficiently good ... that it is not necessary to ask the IMF for a further extension of the flexible credit line," the bank said in a statement.

The IMF introduced the new system of flexible credit lines in 2009 as a safeguard against external shocks during the global economic crisis. Poland and Mexico both secured credit lines under this scheme whilst other countries needed loan arrangements.

In what would have been inconceivable a decade ago, Poland now wants to loan the IMF money to "help other countries overcome the effects of the global crisis."

Some in the blogosphere, are linking the Polish plane crash in western Russian on April 10, when the president and 95 other Polish elites perished, with Warsaw balking at the IMF money.

More cruel coincident rather than conspiracy, in the opinion of the Informant.

While the country mourns the loss of its president and others, the economy just seems to reap more benefits.

Poland will receive money back from the EU after exceeding economic growth forecasts for 2007-2009.

That will translate into a 633-million-euro windfall over the next year.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia will also get a refund, proving the former Communist countries can teach their more experienced capitalist cousins further west a thing or two.

Fearing dirty east Europeans would swoop in and grab up jobs, France voted in 2005 to nix the EU constitution. The Poles took it all in stride, and launched an ad campaign to lure the French to Poland, featuring a buff Polish plumber.

Now, the Polish plumber is taking his wrench home, along with legions of other Poles, who sense their country just might have turned the economic corner.

If Poland's economic pistons keep firing on full, maybe it will be the Poles who will have to fear an invasion of the wretched poor from the West.

Pentagon Plans To 'Cover' Europe With Missile Shield By 2018

2010-04-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Thought U.S. anti-missile shield mumbo jumbo was jettisoned under the Nobel laureate, Barrack Obama? Think again. Far from trashed, U.S. missile plans are stronger than ever under the left-wing Obama. A Pentagon official has said the U.S. anti-missile shield system will 'cover' the entire of Europe by 2018. And another Pentagon official says the new START treaty on reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear missiles actually "reduces the constraints" on building such a system. That is a huge sticking point between the Russians and Americans. The Russians insist a link between START and anti-missile defense. U.S. officials, not surprisingly, don't see it that way.

The curtain on U.S. plans for Europe was pulled back by Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, speaking at a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee on April 15.

Roberts said Europe would be 'fully covered' in 2018 after more Missile-3 interceptor missiles were deployed at another northern European site.

The first site is Poland.

Under the Bush-era plan, Poland was to get ten interceptor missiles; the Czech Republic a tracking radar. Moscow didn't like the plan, and Obama 'scrapped' it for a leaner, sea-based system, whose final outline still doesn't seem crystallized.

Roberts touched on why it made strategic sense to scrap the 10 interceptors in Poland, arguing they would have only provided 75 percent coverage of Europe.

Sounding ever benevolent, Roberts said the U.S. responded to the concerns of "vulnerable allies."

"We heard immediately from vulnerable allies in the ... 75 percent equation, those left out, that they were looking for protection," Roberts said.

Roberts disclosed Washington is discussing the potential location of a forward-based AN/TPY-2 radar station it wants to deploy in southern Europe by the end of next year.

That's still "Phase One", he said.

"Phase Two", added Roberts, would put more interceptors and sensors along with a SM-3 battalion at an undisclosed southern European site.

As the Informant has reported, Washington is exploiting anti-Russian sentiment among eastern European elites to push forward with this plan.

Romanian lawmakers have signed onto the plan, after Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control (sic) slick talked the Romanians after Vice President Joe Biden began the U.S. charm offensive back in October.

Bulgaria wants in too, according to their prime minister and former track-suit-wearing, body guard brooding, Boyko Borisov.

U.S. Ambassador to Sofia James Warlick said preliminary talks had already taken place with Bulgaria. Warlick also let out a whooper, saying Washington had held talks not only with Bulgaria, but with "other countries in the region."

But you say, relations are on a peaceful track now, after Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the new START treaty in Prague on April 8.

Well, actually, U.S. military brass say that treaty actually help advance U.S. missile shield plans.

That from the mouth of the Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

"The new START treaty actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program," he told the House of Representatives subcommittee on strategic forces.

O'Reilly said the agreement would allow previously prohibited tests for the development of anti-missile defense systems.

"Our targets will no longer be subject to START constraints, which limited our use of air-to-surface and waterborne launches of targets which are essential for a cost-effective testing of missile defense interceptor against medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Pacific region," he said.

Isn't START wonderful?

The ever busy Tauscher has stated START would no way slow down U.S. missile defense plans.

“There are no constraints to missile defense in the START treaty. That’s one piece of it. Each party – if you look at the START treaty itself, each party has the ability to include unilateral statements. Those statements now are still being negotiated. But each party has the ability to make a unilateral statement,” Tauscher said in March.

The Russians don't see it that way.

The chief of the Russian Army General Staff, Nikolay Makarov, said the U.S. system is a 'concern.'

“The development of the missile defense system is targeting Russia,” said chief of the Russian Army General Staff Nikolay Makarov.

“Even though some state officials claim it's aimed at enhancing our security, this is far from being true. We view it very negatively because it might weaken our missile forces,” he added.

Here he is speaking on Russian Today.

The latest Pentagon announcements are sure to be studied carefully at the Kremlin, taking a bit of luster off the fanfare following the signing of START.

Where To Bury Poland's First Couple Causes Rifts

2010-04-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe the shock is starting to wear off. Losing many of their elites in a freak plane crash in fog in western Russia united Poles in grief and even had some rethinking views of Russia, so taken have they been by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's 'embrace" of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the crash site in Smolensk. While still numbed from the shock, Poles are pulling into separate camp over where President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, will be buried. Many are upset the two will be interned at royal palace in Krakow, a site they say should remain only for Polish kings and truly outstanding Poles. These people don't think Kaczynski and his wife rate for Wawel Castle.2,000 people protested Wednesday evening in Krakow against the decision.
And many Poles are passionate about it.

The Polish Press Agency, PAP, reports more than
Protestors carried signs saying "Wawel is for kings" and "Prevent Wawel from desecration."

Here's some video from the protests outside Wawel.

Church authorities and Kaczynski's family decided to bury the president and his wife Sunday in the cathedral crypt, next to Jozef Pilsudski (1867 - 1935), a revolutionary who forged the Polish republic in 1918.

Why is Wawel so sacred to Poles?

During the Middle Ages, the cathedral was used as a national burial site for monarchs and other important political figures in the Middle Ages.

Call it a Polish Westminster Abbey.

Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski said the decision has been taken without the initiative of state involvement, stressing the authorises had not taken a position.

Andrzej Wajda, the director of the film Katyn, also questioned the decision.

“President Lech Kaczynski was an ordinary and good man, but there is no reason for him to lie in the Wawel among the kings of Poland and Marshal Jozef Pilsudski,” he wrote.

A sign of the times, a protest has popped up on Facebook, generating more than 40,000 supporters.

The Daily Telegraph points out the riff has exposed the fact Kaczynski was controversial at the least, not well liked at the worst among his fellow Poles.

Mr Kaczynski had only a 30 per cent approval rating in recent months, and was widely expected to be voted out of office in September elections.

The Irish Times points out the idea has its supporters, too. Surprise, surprisem many of them are from Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party.

Members of Mr Kaczynski’s Law and Justice (PiS) party defended the plan yesterday, pointing out that many of those buried in Wawel were rivals during their lifetime.

“The tombs of Wawel has reconciled Poles in the past,” said Zbigniew Girzynski, a PiS member of parliament. “Who will remember our insignificant arguments in 100 years’ time?” Members of rival political parties have backed the plan, too.

The Irish Times says time is running out to resolve the row and avoid what it calls the unthinkable: pickets outside a state funeral.

Nord Stream Construction Starts

2010-04-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

In Europe's great pipeline sweepstakes, the Russians have taken a crucial step. The Russians have moved beyond talk to construction. Amid much pomp and circumstance, construction has started on the Nord Stream pipeline. When completed, the 1,220-kilometer-long pipeline will be the world's longest to snake under the waves of a sea. If all goes to plan, the pipeline will transport 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The 11-billion dollar project has been championed as a way of bypassing the political troubles surrounding the current Ukrainian supply route.

On April 9, the high and mighty were on hand at Portovaya Bay in Russia not far from the border with Finland to mark the start of a project whose genesis dates back to 1997.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was on hand as was German Chancellor Angela Merkel (kind of via video link from Berlin), plus her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, considered in some European and American circles a 'traitor' for selling out to Gazprom to join as chairman of the Nord Stream board.

The Washington Post wrote back in 2005 that Schroeder's decision was "repugnant."

To make the decision even more unpalatable, it turns out that the chief executive of the pipeline consortium is none other than a former East German secret police officer who was friendly with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, back when Mr. Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany. If nothing else, Mr. Schroeder deserves opprobrium for his bad taste.

Back to the present and Portovoya Bay. Merkel spared no hyperbole, describing the project "one of the largest energy infrastructure projects of our time."

"With this, the European Union and Russia aim to forge an additional strong connection," the chancellor said in a video broadcast from Berlin.

Medvedev signed a section of pipe and said that "the Nord Stream pipeline will secure reliable gas supply to Europe, and at reasonable prices".

Russia Today called it a "win win" for Europe and Russia.

As the Informant has pointed out the Nord Stream project, yes, while Russian controlled, has significant input from European partners.

Yes, Gazprom has a 51 percent majority stake in the project, not surprising since it will be Russian natural gas flowing through it.

But Germany's BASF-Wintershall and E.ON Ruhrgas also hold 20 percent each and Gasunie of the Netherlands has a nine percent stake.

Gazprom deputy CEO, Alexander Medvedev, boasted that although the pipeline is far from completion, Nord Stream has already signed up customers for the entire supply.

"All the gas volumes have either been contracted, or have been formalized in binding obligations," Alexander Medvedev told reporters.

Humbuggers have said the pipeline is too expensive and Europe does not need more Russian gas.

Gazprom is also facing a global gas glut as demand sags due to global economic woes, and the prospect of new supplies from gas produced from shale rock in the United States.

Quoted by AP, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said competition from shale was not an issue in Europe and that the company supported shale gas development as a way to maintain volumes.

Nord Stream vows to build three kilometers of pipeline a day, an incredible rate by any measure.

There are doubtlessly some in Europe, mainly Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine, all being sidelined by the project, hoping things don't go too smoothly.

Merkel said the project would benefit both partners, offering Europe "an important contribution to the security of gas provision," whilst providing Russia with "high stability in the demand for gas."

Nord Stream said that the first three kilometers of the pipeline, which will eventually stretch 1,220 kilometres under the Baltic Sea to Greifswald in northern Germany, had already been laid near the Swedish island of Gotland.

Three specially commissioned ships will be responsible for laying the pipeline. The Castoro 6 is already on the job and in June will be joined by the Castoro 10, which will be based off the coast of Germany. In September the Solitaire will start work in the Gulf of Finland.

If all goes to plan, the pipeline will transport 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Capacity will double in the following year when a second leg of the pipeline is due to be laid.

The gas should be enough to power an estimated 26 million households.

Environmental groups have raised concerns, saying the pipeline would have adverse affects on the environment.

Medvedev addressed these worries in his speech, but said the demand for energy in Europe was growing and the pipeline was one of the best ways to meet this need.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday attended a ceremony near the Finnish border to celebrate the beginning of construction work on the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

The 7.4-billion-euro (9.9 billion dollars) pipeline will from 2011 transport Russian gas to Europe, which the European Union hopes will help to ensure the bloc's future energy security.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, chairman of Nord Stream's board, also took part in the ceremony at Portovaya Bay.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the beginning of construction work on the pipeline, which she described as "one of the largest energy infrastructure projects of our time."

"With this, the European Union and Russia aim to forge an additional strong connection," the chancellor said in a video broadcast from Berlin.

Merkel said the project would benefit both partners, offering Europe "an important contribution to the security of gas provision," whilst providing Russia with "high stability in the demand for gas."

Nord Stream said that the first three kilometers of the pipeline, which will eventually stretch 1,220 kilometres under the Baltic Sea to Greifswald in northern Germany, had already been laid near the Swedish island of Gotland.

Three specially commissioned ships will be responsible for laying the pipeline. The Castoro 6 is already on the job and in June will be joined by the Castoro 10, which will be based off the coast of Germany. In September the Solitaire will start work in the Gulf of Finland.

If all goes to plan, the pipeline will transport 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Capacity will double in the following year when a second leg of the pipeline is due to be laid.

The gas should be enough to power an estimated 26 million households.

Environmental groups have raised concerns, saying the pipeline would have adverse affects on the environment.

Medvedev addressed these worries in his speech, but said the demand for energy in Europe was growing and the pipeline was one of the best ways to meet this need.

Hungary's Far-Right Jobbik Wins Big At Polls

2010-04-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

The people have spoken in Hungary in weekend elections. And their message is sending chills through Europe. The far-right Jobbik party won a very impressive 16.7 at the polls. That's just a few points below the lame duck Socialists, who were kicked out of power by the center-right Fidesz. Bubbly with success, Jobbik leader, Gabor Vona, vows “very distinct and very spectacular politics”. He said that Jobbik would work on “a solution to the problems around Gypsy-Hungarian coexistence. That means eradicating Gypsy crime”. The Gyspies, or Roma, were a major plank in Jobbik's "patriotic" platform. A message that strikes a cord with not only Hungarians, but many in Europe where Roma live.

With his party's success at the ballots, Vona is in no mood to compromise.

Confrontational to the max, Vona said that he would wear the uniform of the Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard), Jobbik’s banned uniformed wing, at the opening of Parliament.

The Garda garb, and its Nazi sartorial sensibility, has been banned in Hungary and police have arrested its members at public gatherings.

Hungarians not sympathetic with the party's message, fear Jobbik will deal Hungary a p.r. black eye at a time it is struggling to deal with the blow administered by the global economic crisis.

But as the Times reports, Jobbik are demanding their ideas be heard.

Zsolt Varkonyi, a Jobbik spokesman, told The Times: “Even within the present political system there is a lot more room for manoeuvre than the previous Hungarian political forces have used so far ... We have to be part of the system to some extent to find out where those walls stand. We are convinced that lots of steps can be take before we reach that point.”

The Garda has been implicated in attacks and even murder of Roma, according to this Respekt piece.

Shortly after midnight on February 23, 2009 in the Roma village of Tatárszentgyörgy, an unidentified attacker set fire to a house using a petrol bomb. When the residents of the house attempted to leave the burning building, the attacker opened fire, killing a father and his four-year-old son. Since last November, there have been five murders of Romas, and every week brings fresh news of further attacks on Roma villages. The police have acknowledged that the attacks were organized by the Hungarian Guard.

Last November, Garda members clashed Roma residents in the northeast Hungarian town of Sajobabony, according to Hungary's MTI news agency.

On their website, (in English, French, German and Russian), Jobbik complains they are being painted as Nazi-wannabes by the MSM.

Jobbik claims the Western press is missing the reasons for the party's success.

It can’t possibly be that Jobbik is the only party dedicated to tackling the endemic corruption that costs Hungarians 3 billion Forints every single day. No! We must be extremists.

It can’t be, at all, that Jobbik is popular because it was the only Hungarian party to raise such taboo subjects as renegotiating the national debt, extending our arable-land sale moratorium, or questioning the role that unrestricted cowboy-capitalism has played here. No! We must be anti-Semitic.

Jobbik’s success in rural Hungary can’t have anything to do with how we suggested both tackling the crime that exists there, through a Gendarmerie, and tackling the causes of that crime through educational and social-security reforms. Not to mention how we promote the restructuring of the agricultural sector to be the rural economy's backbone. No! We must be anti-Roma racists.

Jobbiks is tapping into frustrations of average Hungarians over the dim economic prospects.

Unemployment is 11.4, one of the highest in eastern Europe.

To deal with the crisis, IMF-prescribed bromides -- internal devalution in order to lower wages to make them 'competitive' -- are squeezing people further.

For example, Hungary now has Europe's highest VAT tax at 25%.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has less than rosy economic prognostications for the eastern European region for years to come.

“The consequences of the world economic crisis will burden this region more than the rest of the world in coming years,” declared the chief economist of the EBRD, Erik Berglöf.

In its Transition Report, issued at the beginning of November, the EBRD examined the reasons why central and eastern Europe had been hit particularly hard by the crisis. One of the main problems identified by the ERBD was the manner in which economies in the region had been financed in those years when they experienced sustained growth.

This growth was made possible almost entirely by foreign direct investment. As a result, many national economies in eastern Europe collapsed when foreign investment suddenly stopped following the eruption of the global financial crisis. The EBRD expects that in the coming months the current outflow of capital from the east back to western banks will continue.

Given the backdrop it's no wonder the far right is making inroads in eastern Europe.

According to data from Political Capital Research, Bulgaria with the highest degree of far right support at 25%. Hungary is next at 21%, followed by bankrupt Greece at 15%.

As this policy paper spells out, the far right is cashing in on fears over globalization and migration among other taboo topics among more 'mainstream' political parties.

The rise of the new radical right partly reflects the insecurity and instability brought about by rapid social and economic changes and a technological revolution that has resulted in the re-structuring of the world economy.

As the global gap between rich and poor widens, far right parties like Jobbik will find more and more people willing to listen to their message.

Could Polish Air Tragedy Lead To Better Russian Polish Ties?

2010-04-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

In the fog and trees of western Russia, Poland lost many of those who moved and shook that eastern European country.  The Saturday crash in Smolensk took the lives of President Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of other Polish political, military and religious leaders. Poles are shocked and numbed, noting the bitter irony of the disaster. Poland's who's who were on their way to commemorate victims of the Katyn massacre. In 1940, Soviet secret police gunned down more than 20,000 Polish officers and other elites, effectively decapitating the ruling class. And while completely at different ends of the scale spectrum, the target was the same: Polish elite. And although one appears to be an accident, the other coldblooded mass murder, the two tragedies took place a stone's throw from the other. But there is one other big difference. Katyn painted the Russians as murderers and liars, just another seed of distrust, fear and hatred in these countries' stormy 500 years of ties. However, the Smolensk plane tragedy has brought the two countries together if briefly, to share their grief and condolences.

For the Russians, Kaczynski was no real friend, at least on the political front, as Pakistan's Daily Times points out.

Kaczynski was a political force to reckon with throughout these years. He was known as a pro-American leader who often used anti-Russia rhetoric. He also gave strong support to the controversial US missile shield plan proposed by the Bush administration. In 2009, Poland declared its support for a revamped missile defence system announced by Washington and decided to allow a small US base equipped with SM-3 interceptors on its territory. The base would be used to target short and medium-range missiles. US President Obama assured the Polish prime minister that the new START 2 nuclear arms reduction treaty recently signed between the US and Russia will not affect the planned US missile shield in Europe.

Kaczynski vocally opposed what he branded as Russian "imperialism" in ex-Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine, even braving bullets during Moscow's short war with Tbilisi in 2008 to show his solidarity with President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Some on the fringes of the web have have speculated that maybe the Russians were behind the crash as they were eager to erase an enemy in Kaczynski.

Tusk is seen as more Moscow friendly, if such a Polish leader, let alone average Pole exists.

It was Tusk whom Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin invited for Russian commemorations of Katyn, as this year was the 70th anniversary.

It was the first time ever Polish and Russian leaders joined together to pay respect to those Poles killed by the NKVD on Stalin's orders in 1940.

After mourning the Katyn dead, the two were at each others side to inspect the Smolensk plane crash site, as politics gave way to human emotions and feelings.   For a moment, pan-Slavs everywhere saw a glimpse of what could be.

"We did not expect this gentle, kind approach, this personal involvement from Putin," said Witold Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland's National Security Bureau and one of the few Kaczynski aides not to have been on Saturday's ill-fated flight.

"Naturally it will have a positive impact on the relationship between our countries. I can imagine a high-ranking Russian delegation from Moscow coming to Kaczynski's funeral."

His comments were echoed by Poland's ambassador to Russia.

"We can sense Russian solidarity at every step of the way (since the crash)," Jerzy Bahr told Polish television.

Before the Smolensk plane disaster, the Russians spread more goodwill when Russian TV agreed to air the Polish film, Katya, a day director Andrzej Wajda thought he would never live to see.


It was a sign the Russians were ready to reappraise this gruesome chapter of their history.

But while Tusk and Putin may have a better "chemistry", their countries still have objectives at odds with the other.

According to Polskie Radio, Tusk is glad the new strategic nuclear arms treaty, START 2, will not impinge on U.S. plans to build missile defense components in his country.

“I came with some concerns, I leave with confidence,” Tusk said after the working dinner attended by 11 central and eastern European nations and Barack Obama in the Czech capital, after America had signed a new nuclear reduction treaty with Russian president Dimitry Medvedev.

PM Tusk said that the dinner was dominated by Poles’ and Czechs’ concerns that the New START II will hamper the construction of an anti-missile shield and will weaken NATO. “American defence policy in Europe needs to be consistent,” said Tusk.

He also said he had not spoken with Obama about the stationing of Patriot missiles in Poland, with the addition of 100 American troops, scheduled to arrive this year.

Poland is firmly in the Western-backed camp with membership in NATO and the EU.

The country's elite back any and every role in the U.S. anti-missile shield.

That will remain a very sore point in relations between Poland and Russia.

The two countries coming together now to grieve, however, will, unfortunately, likely only be a blip in their turbulent ties.

C.E. European Informant

American F-16 Fighter Jets To Poland?

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