Category Archives: China

Greece, Nazis, Germany, Russia and the Euro

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Greece has a new government and on tap is a huge payment of debt to the International Monetary Fund. Greece is in no position to meet this payment of $450 million. So Greece is looking to other countries for help and could be prepared to give up several pieces of key infrastructure. Iran, Greece and China are eager to come to the rescue, which could add to the power balance in Europe.

The Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras is himself has a communist background.

Greece Nazi occupation: Athens asks Germany for €279bn

The Greek government says Germany owes Greece nearly €279bn (£204bn; $303bn) in war reparations for the Nazi occupation during World War Two.

It is the first time Greece has officially calculated what Germany allegedly owes it for Nazi atrocities and looting during the 1940s.

However, the German government says the issue was resolved legally years ago.

Greece’s radical left Syriza government is making the claim while struggling to meet massive debt repayment deadlines.

 

Reacting to the Greek claim, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it was “dumb” to link Greece’s bailout by the eurozone with the question of war reparations.

“To be honest I think it’s dumb. I think that it doesn’t move us forward one millimetre on the question of stabilising Greece,” he said.

He said ordinary Greek citizens however deserved “huge respect” for their economic sacrifices under the bailout programme. The Greek elite had “plundered” the country, he complained.

‘Legally closed’

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras raised the reparations issue when he met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin last month.

The new figure given by Greek Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas includes €10.3bn for an occupation loan that the Nazis forced the Bank of Greece to pay.

“According to our calculations, the debt linked to German reparations is 278.7bn euros,” Mr Mardas told a parliamentary committee investigating responsibility for Greece’s debt crisis.

Mr Mardas said the reparations calculation had been made by Greece’s state general accounting office.

German soldiers raising the German war flag over the Acropolis
Greece was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941 – here German soldiers raise their flag over the Acropolis

Berlin paid 115m Deutschmarks to Athens in 1960 in compensation – a fraction of the Greek demand. Greece says it did not cover payments for damaged infrastructure, war crimes and the return of the forced loan.

Germany insists the reparations issue was settled in 1990, before Germany reunified.

The budget spokesman for Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats, Eckhardt Rehberg, reiterated on Tuesday that “the reparations issue is for us closed, politically and legally – the same applies to the so-called forced loan”.

Syriza politicians have frequently blamed Germany for Greek citizens’ hardship under the austerity imposed by international lenders.

Mr Tsipras is trying to renegotiate the €240bn EU-IMF bailout that saved Greece from bankruptcy. Greece has not received bailout funds since August last year, as the lenders are dissatisfied with the pace of Greek reforms.

A Greek repayment of €448m to the International Monetary Fund is due this Thursday.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has said that Greece “intends to meet all obligations to all its creditors, ad infinitum”.

Obama Defers to Ban Ki MoonBat

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Gigantic global policy decisions are always deferred to the United Nations. Only recently did residents of Detroit appeal to the United Nations in the case of water. Countless residents in Detroit were not paying for water and it was shut-off so an appeal was made to the UNI declaring water is a right and no one needs to pay.

The U.N. has become dangerous. It has failed to disarm terrorist states like Iran, Iraq and the Sudan, and it has failed to halt nuclear proliferation in outlaw nations like North Korea, China and Iran. If the U.N. did not pose a danger to the future of America, we could just be amused by its failures and move on. But what’s amazing is how the U.N. has continued to exist as the defeats accumulate.
This is no small matter. This body is supposed to enforce world order, but it aids and abets mass murderers and genocide. It places some of the most despicable governments you can think of — Libya, Cuba, Sudan, China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe — on its Human Rights Council, which is supposed to uphold the highest standards in human rights protection. Yet the council is controlled by African and Middle Eastern countries, which vote in blocs and protect one another from criticism over their own human rights violations.

During the process of the P5+1 discussions with Iran on their nuclear program, Barack Obama has telegraphed that he is going to bypass Congress and take the framework/agreement to the United Nations for ratification. The scandals at the hands of the United Nations are historic and countless including the Oil for Food Program. The United States provides 22% of the United Nations budget and more than 27% of the UN Peacekeeping operations.

So it screams credulity on the causes of why all deference is delivered to the United Nations. Let’s go deeper.

Ban Ki Moon, age 70 is the Secretary General of the United Nations. The short bio on Ban Ki Moon reads as follows:

Ban Ki-moon is the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations. His priorities have been to mobilize world leaders around a set of new global challenges, from climate change and economic upheaval to pandemics and increasing pressures involving food, energy and water. He has sought to be a bridge-builder, to give voice to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and to strengthen the Organization itself.

“I grew up in war”, the Secretary-General has said, “and saw the United Nations help my country to recover and rebuild. That experience was a big part of what led me to pursue a career in public service. As Secretary-General, I am determined to see this Organization deliver tangible, meaningful results that advance peace, development and human rights.”

Beyond the historic tragedy in human history, the Holocaust, there is yet another tragedy that is all but forgotten in history and Ban Ki Moon was derelict in his duty, the Khmer Rouge.

Justice Squandered: Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was preparing to fight a civil war in 1997 when a senior United Nations official stopped by to ask if he’d like help putting the former leaders of the Khmer Rouge on trial. With a figurative wave of the hand, Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander himself, said in effect: Sure, go ahead. At that moment, his mind was obviously elsewhere.

Eventually, he and his co­–prime minister, Norodom Ranariddh—the opposition in this little internal war—separately signed an agreement asking the UN for help staging a trial. But then, after Hun Sen defeated Ranariddh and became the nation’s sole leader, he probably looked back and realized that agreeing to a trial was one of the greatest mistakes he had ever made. After all, he and most of his colleagues in government were former Khmer Rouge officers themselves.

So, Hun Sen set out to sabotage the idea he had agreed to. And now, ten years after the court opened for business, he has largely succeeded.

Today, the court is saddled with charges of rampant corruption and malign Cambodian government interference in its operations. Several judges and staff members have quit in disgust. Its reputation is now so bad that donors have largely stopped giving money, so the court is broke. And the trials have dragged on for so long that defendants are growing ill and dying.

Theary Seng, who was left an orphan after the Khmer Rouge killed her parents, became the court’s first “civil party” victims’ representative. She withdrew from the proceedings in 2011, saying the trial had become “an irredeemable political farce.”

The problems began cropping up just as soon as the UN and the Cambodian government began negotiating the trial’s terms in the months following that initial agreement in 1997. Hun Sen and his aides threw up one objection after another. They professed concern about national stability. They complained about infringement upon Cambodian sovereignty. They insisted that any trial take place in home courts—even though Hun Sen knew full well that his court system was thoroughly corrupt. In fact, reforming the courts had been on his own campaign agenda during the most recent election. Today, that has still not been done.

“If foreigners have the right to lack confidence in Cambodian courts,” Hun Sen said defiantly, “we have the right to lack confidence in an international court.” But the UN continued to object to the government’s obstructive pronouncements and refused to use judges handpicked by, and utterly beholden to, Hun Sen and his aides.

“It became such a difficult, convoluted, lengthy, very, very difficult process,” said Kent Wiedemann, the US ambassador to Cambodia at that time, largely because “as far as the UN was concerned, there was no Cambodian qualified to participate in the tribunal in any meaningful way. The secretary general wanted to appoint judges with eminent standing in the international community.”

Finally, Kofi Annan, then secretary general of the UN, threw up his hands and said he’d had enough. Hun Sen must “change his position and attitude,” he declared, and “send a clear message that he is interested in a credible court, a credible tribunal which meets international standards.” Until that day came, Annan announced, the United Nations was backing out of the discussions.

Ten months later, however, the UN General Assembly stepped into the debate and rescinded Kofi Annan’s previous order. It passed a resolution directing “the secretary general to resume negotiations without delay, to conclude an agreement with the Government of Cambodia, based on previous negotiations, to try those suspected of being responsible for the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.”

So it was that the UN and Cambodia commenced negotiations over how the court would be structured, and eventually they agreed to establish a hybrid court with both Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors. They called it the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (widely known as the ECCC) to differentiate it from Cambodia’s debased domestic court system.

David Scheffer, who was the US ambassador at large for war crimes issues, visited Cambodia and came up with the compromise that made the negotiations succeed. Under Scheffer’s plan, a majority of the trial judges could be Cambodian. But no decision could be reached unless at least one international judge agreed as well. That formula settled six years of tortured, acrimonious debate. Finally, the court opened for business in 2003.

Two years later, David Tolbert, a United Nations lawyer working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, got a call. Could he please go to Cambodia and try to straighten out the war crimes courtroom there? Nothing was moving. The court was stuck.

Tolbert, a tall, garrulous North Carolinian with a world-weary manner, was to bring his experiences in the heart of the world’s worst recent genocidal moments to Cambodia, where a past genocide was being litigated. The problems he found there were altogether different from the ones he had been dealing with. The court had been trying to organize itself for several years, but Tolbert says that when he arrived, “it had no administrative leadership, particularly with respect to court management, including translation and interpretation and the witness-protection program.”

The international side had essentially given over judicial management to the Cambodian side. But, Tolbert says, “there was really very little judicial management in place. The Cambodian staff in charge had virtually no knowledge or experience, as most had no judicial background. And yet there were a large number of them,” hundreds in fact. What’s more, Cambodian human rights groups alleged that each of the Cambodian judges had paid a large bribe to get his seat on the court’s bench, which would not be at all unusual in that state.

Tolbert concluded that there was no way a trial could proceed at that point. He spent a few weeks drawing up a series of recommendations to get the process moving. Then he returned to Yugoslavia.

In 2008, when the new UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, asked Tolbert to step back into the Khmer Rouge trial, he quickly found that five years after the agreement to set up the court, “very little progress had been made. I proposed reducing the budget by 35 percent. The staff was bloated. They had 15 gardeners, which looked like a job-creation program to me.” He also quickly found that Cambodia’s endemic corruption had reared its head in the courthouse, where Cambodian employees were required to turn over a portion of their paychecks to their supervisors.

All during Hun Sen’s battle with the United Nations about the trial, he had been trying to ensure that the UN did not set up an autonomous body inside his country that he could not manipulate to protect himself and his fellow former Khmer Rouge friends. But as he and the rest of the world soon discovered, the Khmer Rouge trial presented a new and different liability. It exposed Cambodia’s way of doing business—incompetent, indolent, rapacious, corrupt—for everyone in the world to see, like a dollhouse with no back wall.

Despite all of that, the court proceeded with the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, widely known as “Duch”—the commander of S-21, the prison and interrogation and torture center in Phnom Penh, where fifteen thousand people died. On July 26, 2010, the court convicted Duch of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to thirty-five years in prison—by almost every reaction, an exceedingly light sentence for a man who oversaw the torture and deaths of so many thousands of innocent civilians. Even with that, he won’t serve the full thirty-five years. After subtracting his time already spent in jail, more for cooperation and good behavior, and still more for a period of illegal detention in a military jail, the court left him with nineteen years to serve. On the day the judge sentenced Duch, he was sixty-seven years old, meaning he could conceivably walk out of prison a free man one day.

After that, the court took up what it called Case 002, four senior Khmer Rouge leaders who were to be tried together. At the same time, more than a dozen legal investigators, foreigners on the UN payroll, were researching new suspects. And in the fall of 2009, the court announced that it intended to charge roughly half a dozen additional suspects. These were labeled cases 003 and 004.

But Hun Sen, implacably opposed, almost instantly went on the offensive. The prime minister was already well known for his “colorful” quips. For example, he had labeled anyone criticizing the trial’s Cambodian judges as “not human; they are animals,” who “even want to seduce their own parents.” Now, referring to the additional defendants, he insisted, “This will not happen on my watch. The UN and the countries that supported Pol Pot to occupy Cambodia’s seat at the UN from 1979 to 1991 should be tried first. They should be sentenced more heavily than Pol Pot.”

Then later that year, undeterred by its illogic, he took up a new line of argument. “If you want a tribunal, but you don’t want to consider peace and reconciliation, and war breaks out again, killing two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand people, who will be responsible?” he asked. “Finally, I have got peace in this country, so I will not let someone destroy it. The people and the nation will not be destroyed by someone trying to lead the country into instability.”

No one bothered to point out that during the Duch trial, there was no unrest, no protest, no sign of any trouble at all. In fact, the vast majority of Cambodians were largely unaware that the trial was under way. Eighty percent of the people live in the countryside, most of them with no modern conveniences such as radio or television. They’re uniformly preoccupied with finding enough food to feed their families each day. The trial was on during the day, when they were at work in the rice paddies. The few who did have car battery–powered televisions, if they had time to watch them, most likely just wanted to be entertained.

Some of the handful who did watch, largely in urban areas, were outraged by the treatment the defendants were getting—three meals a day, hand-delivered; living in air-conditioned cells; sleeping on actual beds with mattresses, a luxury in Cambodia. Bou Meng, a Khmer Rouge survivor, remarked: “I am extremely envious of Duch and the treatment he receives. I don’t understand why the court treats him so well, much better than me.” But most preferred to ignore the trial.

One reason was that many older Cambodians were beset with traumatic mental illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, still lingering after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge years. (In one clinical study of Cambodian refugees who came to the United States in the early 1980s and now live in Long Beach, California, sixty-two percent were diagnosed with PTSD—twenty-five years after their trauma.) The last thing most people in Cambodia wanted to do was watch someone on TV describing their years of horror.

Hun Sen blocked several past and present Cambodian officials from testifying, despite subpoenas from the court. And a Cambodian judge he appointed to the ECCC had a documented history of accepting bribes in exchange for verdicts while he presided over a Cambodian court.

But while Hun Sen’s frontal attacks may have been little noticed by most Cambodians, they had a strong effect in the courtroom. One international judge resigned, blaming government interference in the proceedings, as did half of one defendant’s defense team. A reserve justice, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, who is Swiss, was promoted to fill the empty judge’s chair, per ECCC protocol. Kasper-Ansermet then tweeted that he looked forward to hearing cases 003 and 004. That was enough to do him in.

On obvious orders from the prime minister’s office, his domestic co-judge refused to work with Kasper-Ansermet. He was denied use of court cars and drivers. He was not given access to the official stamps used to validate affidavits and other court records. And the Cambodian government’s Supreme Council of Magistracy refused to approve his appointment—even though this domestic body answerable to Hun Sen had no authority to involve itself in the appointment of international judges.

After less than six months, Kasper-Ansermet resigned because, as he said, he was unable to work with rampant Cambodian obstructionism. Nearly all of the international investigators quit, too.

 

For many legal experts today, the ECCC remains an embarrassment to the international legal system. Since its inception in 2003, the court has tried only one individual for the horrific genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge: Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch, giving him a sentence so light that many Cambodians were appalled. Just one conviction and the court reports that it has already spent $208.7 million over the last ten years. Last year it asked for another $92 million from international donors to fund operations going forward.

But by all accounts donor fatigue has set in alongside disillusionment with Cambodian corruption and obstructionism, and very little money has been raised. In fact, this spring the court’s Cambodian staff went on strike because they had not been paid since last November. Without staff, including court reporters, transcribers, and translators, the court could not function. It shut down. Finally the court management promised to pay them—“sometime soon.” The staff went back to work but vowed to quit for good if the promise was not kept. Still, as international court officials repeatedly pointed out, the Cambodian government was responsible for paying these people. Apparently it was not unhappy to see the court shut down.

That was hardly the only problem. The four former Khmer Rouge leaders in case 002—Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea, Ieng Thirith, and —looked likely to be the final defendants. But all of them were already so old that they were making the case moot.

Last September, Ieng Thirith, minister of social action in the Pol Pot regime, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, so severe that she could not function in the courtroom. She was released. Then in March 2013, Ieng Sary, her husband and former minster of foreign affairs, died. He was eighty-seven years old.

That left only eighty-six-year-old Nuon Chea, who was known as “Brother No. 2” after Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, eighty-one, former president of the so-called Democratic State of Kampuchea. Both are frail and sickly.

The court has said it will need another year to complete these trials. Whether there will ever be a verdict, and if there is, whether the remaining defendants will live to see it, are questions on everyone’s mind. Also, we can’t know what deleterious acts Hun Sen may still have planned.

As the Cambodian government’s Office of the Royal Prosecutor recently put it: The prime minister “has an obligation to ensure political stability and the well being of the Kingdom of Cambodia,” suggesting that Hun Sen can do whatever he wants about the trial and say his actions are intended to assure “stability.”

But Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, is pessimistic—like so many Cambodians. “This really is a case of now or never,” he said. “Both the ECCC’s reputation and justice for victims of the Khmer Rouge are in the last-chance saloon.”

One last question: Where was Jane Fonda on the Khmer Rouge?

Meanwhile, More Land to the BLM

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Obama today requested $1.2 billion in appropriations for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management for Fiscal Year 2016. The request for BLM’s operating accounts represents an increase of $91.4 million above the 2015 enacted level. The proposal includes strategic investments that underscore the Administration’s continuing strong support for facilitating and improving management of increased energy production, conserving sage-grouse habitat in the West, strengthening BLM’s National Conservation Lands, and establishing a BLM Foundation to foster public partnerships that support BLM’s missions.

“The Bureau of Land Management is proud to play a central role in our Nation’s economy through energy development, recreation, grazing, timber, and conservation activities,” said BLM Director Neil Kornze. “We greatly appreciate the support of the President and Congress in helping us take important steps forward in responsible and robust energy development, and in properly managing some of America’s wildest places.”

The BLM delivers significant economic benefits for communities across the Nation. Each year, lands under the Bureau’s management contribute over $100 billion in local economic activity and support more than 440,000 jobs.  In the last fiscal year, the BLM generated over $5 billion in receipts from public lands, benefiting State governments and the U.S. Treasury.

The BLM is concerned about managing energy production, restoring the habitats for grouse, conservation and wants to create a BLM foundation. Don’t be fooled America.

Federal Land Management Not a Good Deal for Americans

“By nearly all accounts, our federal lands are in trouble, both in terms of fiscal performance and environmental stewardship.” That was an assertion made earlier this month in a study released by the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). The study focused on the difference between state-managed public lands and federally managed public lands. The federal government is ill-suited to manage vast amounts of land in the West. Short of private ownership, state and local governments are best suited for the task.

Federal Land Ownership. The federal government is the largest land owner in the United States, owning roughly 640 million acres, about 28 percent of the country. The federal government owns nearly half of the land west of the Rockies, and roughly 81 percent of Nevada alone. However, east of the Rockies, the federal government owns an average of only 5 percent of the land in each state. Such a high level of federal ownership of land in Western states has led to controversy over ownership and management of public lands.

Western states have considered resolutions requesting that the federal government transfer title of much of the public land held within their borders. Utah, for example has passed legislation that “requires the United States to extinguish title to public lands and transfer title to those public lands to the state.” Several other states such as New Mexico, Montana, and Wyoming have passed legislation to study the transfer of certain public lands from federal to state agencies. These transfers generally exclude public land such as national parks, national monuments, and tribal lands.

PERC’s Findings. PERC conducted its study by comparing revenues and expenditures for the management of federal land and state trust land in New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana. State trust lands are the most common form of state-owned lands in the West. State trust lands were created by land grants made to the states by the federal government and are used for the benefit of public institutions, like schools. The lands generate revenue through uses ranging from timber and grazing to mineral extraction. The study looked at two federal agencies that manage public land: the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the United States Forest Service (USFS). According to the study,

  • “The federal government loses money managing valuable natural resources on federal lands, while states generate significant financial returns from state trust lands.”
  • “The states examined in this study earn an average of $14.51 for every dollar spent on state trust land management. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management generate only 73 cents in return for every dollar spent on federal land management.”
  • “On average, states generate more revenue per dollar spent than the federal government on a variety of land management activities, including timber, grazing, minerals, and recreation.” For example, New Mexico receives $12.78 of revenue per dollar spent on administering grazing fees, whereas the USFS and BLM receive $0.10 and $0.14, respectively.
  • “These outcomes are the result of the different statutory, regulatory, and administrative frameworks that govern state and federal lands. States have a fiduciary responsibility to generate revenues from state trust lands, while federal land agencies face overlapping and conflicting regulations and often lack a clear mandate.”

The PERC study calls into question the ability of federal government agencies to manage public lands in the west and supports states’ ability to manage those lands. As The Heritage Foundation’s Nick Loris and Katie Tubb note, “States are already well positioned to help make a transition to better management of these resources.” States are best suited to manage these public lands due to their vested interest in seeing the lands produce revenue and are also held responsible for achieving that objective.

What About the P5+1 and Iran/North Korea

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If you are inclined to read about the technical cooperation agreement between North Korea and Iran go here.

 

Ed Schroeder’s Military Intelligence Report: Does Iran Have Secret Nukes in North Korea?

In October 2012, Iran began stationing personnel at a military base in North Korea, in a mountainous area close to the Chinese border. The Iranians, from the Ministry of Defense and associated firms, reportedly are working on both missiles and nuclear weapons. Ahmed Vahidi, Tehran’s minister of defense at the time,denied sending people to the North, but the unconfirmed dispatches make sense in light of the two states announcing a technical cooperation pact the preceding month.

The P5+1—the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany—appear determined, before their self-imposed March 31 deadline, to ink a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its nuclear energy program, which is surely a cover for a wide-ranging weapons effort. The international community wants the preliminary arrangement now under discussion, referred to as a “framework agreement,” to ensure that the country remains at least one year away from being able to produce an atomic device.

The P5+1 negotiators believe they can do that by monitoring Tehran’s centrifuges—supersonic-speed machines that separate uranium gas into different isotopes and upgrade the potent stuff to weapons-grade purity—and thereby keep track of its total stock of fissile material.

The negotiators from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China are trying to get Tehran to adhere to the Additional Protocol, which allows anytime, anyplace inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. If Iran agrees to the IAEA’s intrusive inspections, proponents of the deal will claim a major breakthrough, arguing for instance that Iran will not be able to hide centrifuges in undisclosed locations.

There were so many North Korean nuclear and missile scientists, specialists, and technicians at Iran’s facilities that they took over their own coastal resort there.

But no inspections of Iranian sites will solve a fundamental issue: As can be seen from the North Korean base housing Tehran’s weapons specialists, Iran is only one part of a nuclear weapons effort spanning the Asian continent. North Korea, now the world’s proliferation superstar, is a participant. China, once the mastermind, may still be a co-conspirator. Inspections inside the borders of Iran, therefore, will not give the international community the assurance it needs.

The cross-border nuclear trade is substantial enough to be called a “program.” Larry Niksch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., estimates that the North’s proceeds from this trade with Iran are “between $1.5 billion and $2.0 billion annually.” A portion of this amount is related to missiles and miscellaneous items, the rest derived from building Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

Iran has bought a lot with its money. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, thought to be Tehran’s chief nuclear scientist, was almost certainly in North Korea at Punggye-ri in February 2013 to witness Pyongyang’s third atomic test. Reports put Iranian technicians on hand at the site for the first two detonations as well.

The North Koreans have also sold Iran material for bomb cores, perhaps even weapons-grade uranium. The Telegraph reported that in 2002 a barrel of North Korean uranium cracked open and contaminated the tarmac of the new Tehran airport.

In addition, the Kim Jong Un  regime appears to have helped the Islamic Republic on its other pathway to the bomb. In 2013, Meir Dagan, a former Mossad director,charged the North with providing assistance to Iran’s plutonium reactor.

The relationship between the two regimes has been long-lasting. Hundreds of North Koreans have worked at about 10 nuclear and missile facilities in Iran. There were so many nuclear and missile scientists, specialists, and technicians that they took over their own coastal resort there, according to Henry Sokolski,  the proliferation maven, writing in 2003.

Even if Iran today were to agree to adhere to the Additional Protocol, it could still continue developing its bomb in North Korea, conducting research there or buying North Korean technology and plans. And as North Korean centrifuges spin in both known and hidden locations, the Kim regime will have a bigger stock of uranium to sell to the Iranians for their warheads. With the removal of sanctions, as the P5+1 is contemplating, Iran will have the cash to accelerate the building of its nuclear arsenal.

So while the international community inspects Iranian facilities pursuant to a framework deal, the Iranians could be busy assembling the components for a bomb elsewhere. In other words, they will be one day away from a bomb—the flight time from Pyongyang to Tehran—not one year as American and other policymakers hope.

The North Koreans are not the only contributors to the Iranian atom bomb. Iran got its first centrifuges from Pakistan, and Pakistan’s program was an offshoot from the Chinese one.

Some argue that China proliferated nuclear weapons through the infamous black market ring run by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. There is no open source proof of that contention, but Beijing did nothing while Khan merchandised Chinese parts, plans, and knowhow—its most sensitive technology—from the capital of one of its closest allies. Moreover, Beijing did its best to protect the smuggler when Washington rolled up his network in the early part of last decade. The Chinese, for instance, supported General Pervez Musharraf’s controversial decision to end prematurely his government’s inquiry, which avoided exposing Beijing’s rumored involvement with Khan’s activities.

And there are circumstances suggesting that Beijing, around the time of Khan’s confession and immediate pardon in 2004, took over his proliferation role directly, boldly transferring materials and equipment straight to Iran. For example, in November 2003 the staff of the IAEA had fingered China as one of the sources of equipment used in Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons effort. And as reported in July 2007 by The Wall Street Journal, the State Department had lodged formal protests with Beijing about Chinese enterprises violating Security Council resolutions by exporting to Tehran items that could be used for building atomic weapons.

Since then, there have been continual reports of transfers by Chinese enterprises to Iran in violation of international treaties and U.N. rules. Chinese entities have been implicated in shipments of maraging steel, ring-shaped magnets, and valves and vacuum gauges, all apparently headed to Iran’s atom facilities. In March 2011, police in Port Klang seized two containers from a ship bound to Iran from China. Malaysian authorities discovered that goods passed off as “used for liquid mixing or storage” were actually components for potential atomic weapons.

In the last few years, there has been an apparent decline in Chinese shipments to Iran. Beijing could be reacting to American pressure to end the trade, but there are more worrying explanations. First, it’s possible that, after decades of direct and indirect illicit transfers, China has already supplied most of what Iran needs to construct a weapon. Second, Beijing may be letting Pyongyang assume the leading proliferation role. After all, the shadowy Fakhrizadeh was reported to have traveled through China on his way to North Korea to observe the North’s third nuclear test.

Fakhrizadeh’s passage through China—probably Beijing’s airport—suggests that China may not have abandoned its “managed proliferation.” In the past, China’s proxy for this deadly trade was Pakistan. Then it was China’s only formal ally, North Korea. In both cases, Chinese policymakers intended to benefit Iran.

In a theoretical sense, there is nothing wrong with an accommodation with the Islamic Republic over nukes, yet there is no point in signing a deal with just one arm of a multi-nation weapons effort. That’s why the P5+1 needs to know what is going on at that isolated military base in the mountains of North Korea. And perhaps others as well.

Widespread Refugees from Middle East to Europe

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From hundreds of thousands to millions of refugees from one country to another speaks to failed policy, failed government and failed control. There is Cuba, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya. An examination of Libya speaks to a global problem and the costs to Europe. Not only is Europe failing in a duty, but the United States and the United Nations fail equally. I had a little communications exchange with the journalist from the WSJ to gain more insight.

When there is mass evacuation, humanitarian conditions take a nose dive. Can there be integration? What about housing, education or healthcare?

Where does the money come from and what about the country of origin, does it get classified as a failed nation with no solution?

Immigrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to seek asylum in Europe have disrupted shipping. Above, the Italian navy rescued shipwrecked immigrants off the coast of Africa in June.

Europe’s Cargo Ships Diverted to Sea Rescues

Commercial vessels on busy Mediterranean routes asked to assist with waves of migrants

By: Liam Moloney

ROME—In September, Italian authorities ordered oil tankers owned by Mediterranea di Navigazione SpA to help in five operations to rescue 600 boat people trying to cross from Libya to Italy in flimsy vessels.

The rescue operations cost the group €100,000 ($109,473) in extra costs, such as fuel and personnel. Now, managing director Paolo Cagnoni is considering changing his vessels’ routes to avoid the flow of migrant boats that is likely to surge this spring.

“We’ve been drawn into this human exile, but our crews aren’t equipped,” Mr. Cagnoni said. “It’s a disaster.”

The waves of African and Middle Eastern seaborne migrants attempting to reach Europe—218,000 tried to get to Greece and Italy last year—are causing a little-noticed but serious problem for the mercantile ships that ply the Mediterranean.

Last year, Italian authorities called on 700 mercantile vessels to help rescue about 40,000 migrants. One ship supplying the oil platforms off the Libyan coast participated in 62 operations. Many of the ships are Italian, but Greek vessels, as well as ships of other nationalities, are also involved in rescues of migrants trying to reach the Greek coast.

The busy maritime traffic around the world’s biggest seaborne migration route leaves private vessels on the front line of a major problem. Mercantile traffic in the Mediterranean accounts for about a fifth of the world’s total. And the area between North Africa and Italy—which has the highest flow of migrants—represents about a third of total Mediterranean traffic.

As a result, the rescue operations have placed a heavy burden on private vessels, which typically have crews of fewer than 20 and lack the training, medical support and life jackets to help several hundred migrants at a time. Crews often ransack their own food and clothing supplies to help the migrants once they get on board.

The ships—which must, according to maritime law, come to the aid of a boat in distress—have also been drawn into dangerous situations. In February, the Italian coast guard ordered one ship to act as a barrier to help pull scores of migrants from an inflatable dinghy in gale-force winds. Coast guard officials from the command center in Rome often have to guide crews on very large vessels to assist flimsy boats and dozens of migrants who often don’t know how to swim.

For instance, last year vessels owned by Denmark’s Maersk Line, which move huge cargoes of electronics, clothing and food and can be 1,312 feet long, rescued 1,100 refugees in four separate operations and played a supporting role in an additional six incidents. A couple of weeks ago, a Maersk ship helped rescue 150 migrants near the Libyan coast, it had to divert its course and sail some 150 miles to bring them to a Sicilian port.

“Container ships are big vessels that don’t maneuver easily” and are packed with containers, leaving limited space for migrants, says Steffen Conradsen, Maersk Line’s head of incident and crisis management. “We are not equipped for such operations.”

The diverted ships lose as much as a week disembarking the migrants, cleaning the vessel and resupplying, at an extra cost of up to $500,000. Insurance covers only part of the extra costs, and appeals from owners for government compensation have had little impact.

Now, shipping groups fear the problem will explode this year. Last year, Italian Navy ships patrolled close to the Libyan coast to help migrant boats as part of an operation dubbed Mare Nostrum. But the Italian patrols were replaced a few months ago by EU patrols whose mandate is to venture no farther than 30 miles from the Italian coast.

Meanwhile, the number of boat people continues to soar, up 43% in the first two months of 2015 compared with a year earlier. The head of EU border control agency Frontex recently said that hundreds of thousands of people in Libya could be ready to make the passage.

The EU’s limited patrols and the expected surge in boat people when the weather improves in the spring mean that coast guard authorities are likely to call on mercantile vessels more often. Shipping owners’ appeals for countries to mount large-scale sea patrols to deal with the problem—akin to the international response to piracy around the Horn of Africa—have fallen on deaf ears.

“We have become part of a rent-a-vessel program because countries can’t get their act together,” says Luca Sisto, a senior official at the Italian shipping lobby Confitarma.

Mr. Sisto says that concern about the safety of their vessels and crew—particularly when oil and natural-gas tankers are involved—may push some captains to refuse calls for help.

Big players such as Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container operator and a unit of shipping and oil giant A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, can absorb the extra costs resulting from the rescue operations. But smaller ones more dependent on the central Mediterranean corridor grumble that the rescues could result in serious financial problems.

“The flow of refugees has reached a size where we can no longer cope,” says Thomas Rehder, president of the European Community Shipowners’ Associations. “This is the responsibility of governments, not merchant ships.”

Frontex Joint Operation Triton

Concerted efforts for managing migrator flows in the Central Mediterranean

What is Triton?

Triton is a Frontex coordinated joint operation, requested by the Italian authorities that will start its activity as from 1 November 2014 in the Central Mediterranean to support Italy.

How have the details of the operation been defined?

The details of Triton, including the operational area and the necessary assets, have been agreed between Frontex and Italy as the host state on the basis of the requests for assistance made by the Italian authorities. The final setting of the operation fully matches the requests made by the Italian authorities. Triton will rely on human and technical resources made available by the participating Member States.

How many Member States have made available technical and human resources and what?

Today 21 Member States have indicated their willingness to participate with human (65 guest officers in total) and technical resources (12 technical assets) at the start of the joint operation Triton; others might follow in the coming months. Technical equipment: 4 Fixed Wing Aircrafts, 1 Helicopter, 4 Open Shore vessels, 1 coastal Patrol Vessel, 2 Coastal patrol boats. Human Resources: 65 men/months in total.

What is Triton’s budget?

Its monthly budget is estimated at €2.9 million per month. In order to finance the launch and the first phase of the operation, funds have been reallocated from the Internal Security Fund and from within the Frontex budget. An increase of the Frontex 2015 budget has to be agreed by the European Parliament and the Council in order to finance the operation with the same intensity in the year 2015 and in the longer run.

Which rules will apply to the Frontex coordinated operation when it comes to migrants’ rights?

As for all Frontex operation, Triton will be operating in full respect of international and EU law, including respect of fundamental rights and of the principle of non-refoulement.

Will Triton also be participating in search and rescue activities?

The role of Frontex is key to support Member States towards effective border control in the Mediterranean region, and at the same time to provide assistance to persons or vessels in distress during these operations. Frontex is entrusted with assisting Member States in circumstances requiring increased technical assistance at the external borders, taking into account that some situations may involve humanitarian emergencies and rescue at sea. Although Frontex is neither a search and rescue body nor does it take up the functions of a Rescue Coordination Centre, it assists Member States to fulfil their obligation under international maritime law to render assistance to persons in distress.

Will Triton replace Mare Nostrum?

Joint operation Triton is intended to support the Italian efforts at their request, and does not replace or substitute Italian obligations in monitoring and surveying the Schengen external borders and in guaranteeing full respect of EU and international obligations1 in particular when it comes to search and rescue at sea. It implies that Italy will have to continue making continued substantial efforts using national means, fully coordinated with the Frontex operation, in order to manage the situation at the external borders.

Background on Frontex assistance to Italy

Weeks after the tragic drowning of over 300 persons around the Island of Lampedusa in October 2013, Italy launched a major search and rescue operation called ‘Mare Nostrum’ operated by the Italian Navy.

The Mare Nostrum operation is on-going close to the Libyan coast with Italian naval assets. The EU has supported the operation financially with €1.8 million from the emergency actions under the External Borders Fund.

Frontex has also provided assistance to Italy through the two coordinated joint operations Hermes and Aeneas. Both these operations will be replaced by Triton.

The joint operation Hermes coordinated by Frontex has, in one form or the other and with few interruptions, been going on for several years. Italy has acted as the sole host state.

This joint operation has been on-going close to the Italian coast to control the EU external borders in line with the mandate of the Frontex Agency with a yearly budget for 2014 of around €5 million. In accordance with the host state’s request, sea borne assets in the joint operation come from Italy (Coast Guard and/or Guardia di Finanza); other Member States have contributed with one surveillance aircraft and guest officers on land to help with screening/debriefing.

Frontex also coordinated joint operation Aeneas with Italy as host state. This operation mainly focussed on migratory flows from Egypt and Turkey (via Greece) to Italy.

Among others, the obligations stemming from the Schengen Borders Code and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as the International convention for the safety of life at sea (SOLAS), the International convention on maritime search and rescue (SAR) as well as resolutions from the International maritime organisation (IMO).