Category Archives: European Union

Economic, European Union, Government, Italy, Politics, Society

A provocation and insult to democracy

ITALY

ITALY has had no fewer than 65 governments since the War – with an average survival rate of just over a year. The country is hardly renowned as a beacon of democratic stability.

Even by the standards of this volatile nation, however, the current political crisis is becoming more troubling and bizarre by the day. It proves yet again the disastrous folly of imposing the one-size-fits-all euro on countries for which it is so obviously unsuitable. Pertinently, it demonstrates that Brussels has no qualms about trampling on democracy to keep the dream of a European superstate alive.

Italy’s national finances are in a dire state. Marooned in a sea of debt, with a stagnant economy and crippling unemployment rate, citizens of that beleaguered land renounced their mainstream Europhile parties in a general election just three months ago. They rightly blamed membership of the single currency for their misery and elected a coalition of unashamedly populist, Eurosceptic parties – led by the maverick Five Star movement and Right-wing Northern League.

Yet, when radical economist Paolo Savona – a passionate opponent of the euro – was named finance minister he was vetoed by Italy’s slavishly pro-Brussels president Sergio Matarella, who then nominated his own man as prime minister and invited him to form a totally unelected government. It has no mandate of course and will soon fall. Mr Matarella could possibly be impeached for overreaching his powers. But what an affront to democracy.

Had this happened in some Third World state, it would have quickly been denounced as tyrannical and corrupt. Not in Europe. In both Paris and Berlin, Mr Matarella is being praised for his courage. There is no better example or illustration of how people across the European continent are being disenfranchised – and just why they are crying out for change.

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Britain, European Union, Government, National Security, Politics, Society

The Galileo satellite project

BREXIT

Galileo is Europe’s Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS), providing improved positioning and timing information with significant positive implications for many European services and users.

BREXIT talks have turned into an extraordinary row over security cooperation as Brussels accused British negotiators of “chasing a fantasy”.

A senior EU official even threatened to bring talks to a halt due to acrimony over the EU’s Galileo satellite project and a post-Brexit security pact.

Brussels says Britain should not have full access to the £9billion satellite navigation system after it leaves the EU.

Britain has hit back by threatening it could demand the return of £1.2billion of taxpayer investment if Brussels goes through with its threat.

The UK also warned that the bloc’s hard-line approach to future cooperation on crime and security issues was in danger of creating “unnecessary risks to public safety”.

A senior EU official then struck back by warning of a halt to Brexit talks, insisting Brussels “would not negotiate under threat”.

The official claimed that British negotiators were “chasing a fantasy” and ignoring the “consequences of Brexit”.

The comments are likely to have infuriated the Government and Brexiteers, with talks now at a critical juncture ahead of a key summit at the end of next month.

The EU’s approach to Galileo has particularly enraged ministers, because Britain has already invested hundreds of millions in the programme.

Jean-Claude Juncker’s close ally Martin Selmayr is thought to be behind the tough approach, which has caused a split with other EU states that want security cooperation with the UK. Britain wants access to high-security elements of the Galileo programme, started in 2003 to rival America’s dominant GPS system, that have been factored into British military planning.

But Brussels claims that as a non-EU country, the UK should be treated similarly to partners such as America.

Britain warned the bloc that failure to provide the UK access to encrypted parts of Galileo would create an “irreparable security risk” and could cost the EU a total of £2billion.

Brexit negotiators said the EU would face a £880million bill if the UK continues to be frozen out of the programme – as well as a three-year delay beyond its expected completion in 2020.

In a position paper, the UK also said it would seek to claim back its £1.2billion taxpayer investment if Brussels refused to offer immediate unrestricted access. And the Government reiterated that it would push ahead with the development of its own alternative.

The UK’s demands were outlined in a combative paper presented to the EU negotiating team. The UK text said: “An end to close UK participation will be to the detriment of Europe’s prosperity and security and could result in delays and additional costs to the programme.”

The paper suggested that Brussels was deliberately overlooking the UK’s “considerable contribution” to European security.

It added: “The Commission suggestion that UK involvement in such exchanges and discussions ‘could irretrievably compromise the integrity’ of the system risks being interpreted as a lack of trust in the UK.” Brexit Secretary David Davis added: “A relationship based solely on existing third country precedents, as some seem to be suggesting, would lead to a substantial and avoidable reduction in our shared security capability.”

EU officials suggested that handing the UK security codes to the system would give them the ability to turn it off single-handedly while outside the EU.

An official also claimed that UK calls for reimbursement of its investments could breach a so-called “backsliding” clause that could allow talks to be frozen.

 

ARE the bureaucrats running the European Commission determined to damage the continent’s security in the pursuit of their grand project? There is no other way to explain the decision to try and exclude Britain from the Galileo satellite project after Brexit.

If this is an attempt to use Galileo to teach Britain a lesson it’s a mistake. This country’s vast military spending and world leading intelligence services mean the cards are overwhelmingly stacked in our favour. Far too often Britain’s negotiators have underplayed their hand. But rightly they have now issued an ultimatum: access to Galileo or our £1billion investment back, with the threat that Britain could go it alone – or join forces with Australia.

Meanwhile, the European Commission ought to consider much graver threats to the grand projects – Italy, crippled by debt and run by a ragtag coalition united only by loathing for Brussels, and the continuing rise of Eurosceptic opinion across more than half the continent.

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Britain, European Union, National Security, Russia

Putin blasted by MI5 for ‘fog of lies’ over Salisbury

BRITAIN’S INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

Head of MI5: Andrew Parker

Intro: Andrew Parker speaks out for the first time since the Salisbury nerve agent attack

THE head of MI5, Britain’s intelligence service, has launched an excoriating attack on Russia, accusing Vladimir Putin’s regime of flagrant breaches of international law.

Andrew Parker used his first public speech outside of the UK by taking aim at the Russian president and his “aggressive and pernicious” agenda.

He told European security chiefs the Salisbury poisonings were a deliberate and malign act that could turn Russia into a “more isolated pariah”. He also launched a strident attack on the “fog of lies, half-truths and obfuscation” that pours out of Mr Putin’s propaganda machine.

Mr Parker’s speech in Berlin was the first time he has spoken publicly since the attempted assassination in Salisbury of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, in March.

The attack, with the Novichok toxin, marked the first use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War.

The MI5 director-general said that with an unrelenting international terrorist threat and rising state aggression, the UK and Europe need to work together more than ever.

His words are likely to have been interpreted as a warning to Brussels to agree a post-Brexit deal on security cooperation. That has been in growing doubt amid a row over whether Britain will still be allowed to participate in the EU’s multi-billion-pound Galileo global navigation satellite project. But Mr Parker reserved his toughest language for Russia, saying that Mr Putin’s government is pursuing an agenda through aggressive actions by its intelligence services.

He accused the Kremlin of flagrant breaches of international rules, warning that the Salisbury attack was a “deliberate and targeted malign activity”.

Britain’s security agencies are still trying to identify those individuals behind the attack. It is understood there are several persons of interest who are back in Moscow and may have been in the UK at the time of the poisoning.

Mr Parker, who has been head of the security service since 2013, also condemned the unprecedented level of Russian disinformation following the attack, saying it highlights the need “to shine a light through the fog of lies, half-truths and obfuscation that pours out of their propaganda machine”.

In the wake of the attack, Theresa May said “Kremlin-inspired” accounts were posting lies as “part of a wider effort to undermine the international system”.

Mr Parker did, however, praise the international response to the incident in his speech which was hosted by Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence service.

He noted that 28 European countries agreed to support the UK in expelling scores of Russian diplomats.

In 2017, Mrs May’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, said the threat from Moscow was worse than ever imagined. He warned that it was intensifying and diversifying.

 

MR Parker also told EU security leaders in Berlin that Internet giants have an “ethical responsibility” to prevent hostile states spreading a “torrent of lies” online. He said that “bare-faced lying” had become the “default mode” of the Russian state.

He added that there was a “great deal more” that could be done with internet providers to stop the exploitation of the web.

MI5’s director-general said Europe faced sustained hostile activity from states including Russia who he described as the “chief protagonist”.

In his speech, he said: “Age-old attempts at covert influence and propaganda have been supercharged in online disinformation, which can be churned out on a massive scale and at little cost. The aim is to sow doubt by flat denials of the truth, to dilute truth with falsehood, divert attention to fake stories, and do all they can to divide alliances.

“Bare-faced lying seems to be the default mode, coupled with ridicule of critics.”

The Russian state’s now well-practiced doctrine of blending media manipulation, social media disinformation and distortion with new and old forms of espionage, high levels of cyber-attacks, military force and criminal thuggery is what is meant these days by the term “hybrid threats”. Russia’s state media and representatives instigated at least 30 different so-called explanations of the Salisbury poisonings in their efforts to “mislead the world and their own people,” Mr Parker said.

One recent media survey found that two-thirds of social media output at the peak of the Salisbury attack came from Russian government-controlled accounts.

Last October, MI5’s chief said he wanted internet companies to do more to stop extremists using the “safe spaces” on the web to learn illicit techniques such as bomb-making.

This week’s keynote speech was the first time he has called on web giants to do far more. “We are committed to working with them as they look to fulfil their ethical responsibility to prevent terrorist, hostile state and criminal exploitation of internet carried services: shining a light on terrorists; taking down bomb-making instructions; warning the authorities about attempts to acquire explosives precursors.

“This matters and there is much more to do,” the director-general of MI5 said.

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