The Alps are the new border of UE

The economical situation of Italy was bad before the corona virus crisis. the country is indebted 130%.
Now there are 1000 dead a day, the country is in lock-down, and in Palermo people they to get away from supermarkets without paying.
All the politicians from Salvini to president Matarella are requesting for UE help now.
UE as usual is slow to react, and Germany, Holland  don't want to open unconditionally the purse, but call for the use of European Central Bank fonds: the European Stability Mechanism.
Any contract is based on trust,UE is based on trust that countries wil cooperate.
A failure to Germany to help Italy will destroy the trust and UE.
So Germany in order to restore the faith in UE and silence anti-EU voice as Salvini, must give an humanitarian aid to Italy.
It must not fear of right wing politicians who are against.
German people including the AfD simpatisants, are in general decent people and they help other countries in need.
They were many donations from ordinary people to Romania.
For sure they will understand to help the Italy the country  were they spend their vacations.
The spontaneous support for Italy in German cities (the singing at windows) shows that an humanitarian aid will be favorably seen.
The humanitarian aid is a thing that must be done even with the risk of political career.
But what Angela Merkel risks ? How many times she can be chancellor ?
Anyway she  lost right wing electorate with refugees crisis, now it cannot win them back, with not aiding Italy.

Limits of globalisation and limits for EU commision

I have read the Jean Claude Juncker speech and I must say that I am glad that someone stirred some debate in the European countries.
This speech made me think about decisions,globalisation,speed and stability.
The cheap transports made the globalisation possible and world much more instable.
The systems to be stable they must have a negative feedback loop, for example in order that a car to stay on the road, it must have a driver to look a the road and to turn the wheel.
But if we have a delay in this feedback loop, driver reacts too slow for example, at high speeds the system (car) will become unstable, because the driver will try to overcompensate. The only solution is to drive slower.
But the international competition doesn't allow you to drive slower.

A good example of instability created by delayed feedback is the Iran SUA relation.
USA overthrow Iranian prime minister Mossadegh in 1953, replacing him with the Shah. Shah was overthrown by Islamic revolution in 1979, and the Iranian-US relations are sour since then.
Between cause and effect was a delay of 26 years.
If the delay was shorter, let's say that Iranians somehow would punish USA for overthrowing Mossadegh, the USA wouldn't overthrow the democratic elect Iranian government and would start a negotiation about oil reserves in 1953 not about the nuclear program of Iran in 2016.
Another example is from nature: the trees give oxygen,regulate weather and fix soil.
If we cut 1 tree nothing happens because we have a buffer, the rest of the trees produce enough oxygen and drain enough water.
We cut 1000 trees, nothing happens, we get money and we develop a forestry industry and we cut trees for decades without something to happen.
Till one day the soil starts eroding, we have flood and droughts.Now we have a feedback that is telling us that we should stop cutting trees. Too late.

The best example of instable situation kept stable by a good and fast feedback is the nuclear threat during Cold War: if one side launched missiles the other would do the same.
The feedback was very fast in few hours after you pressed the button you received the feedback in the form of enemy nuclear missiles.This made th e rulers think twice.

What would happen if we would have the same feedback for damaging the environment? What if when we spill chemical wastes on a field we would lose our crop and die of hunger?
This type of feedback we have it before the railroads, the local communities survived with the local agricultural products. Then and now in poor rural communities from Romania, people take more care about their land.
Coincidently, now  the demand for local products rose with the awareness of the environment impact. Maybe, we as a society we organize our self to be stable.

Maybe the fact that we have in the world long feedback loops with delays, which determine instability, determines an isolationism in some countries such as USA and UK.
What the Europe shall do?
First define which feedback loops have delays.And decide where to act and where to give freedom to national governments.
For example: unemployment  in Romania it is a long feedback loop for Bruxelles: it must gather data, discuss within among other  issues, then implement some measures to be carried out by local authorities.
The feedback loop between national government  it is faster, the collection of data is faster, the interest is immediate and te measures can be implemented faster.
So the national government should replace the EU commission, and EU to be only a trade agreement?
Not at all. There are some issues, like defense and foreign policy where the national government might react slow
For example: Russia attacks Finland, and the French government should take a position.
Finland is far from France and it is not of interest, second France has some special relation with Russia (see armament deals), why should they bother?

Till the situation becomes worse for France, the situation will become worse for Finland and for members of EU from the Baltic Sea.
An supra national organization like EU, or NATO, will feel threaten faster because its border is at the Baltic sea not at the Rhine, and it will react faster.

In my opinion that EU should do few things but well, for more countries.
A 2 speed EU will drive to disintegration of EU due to economic polarization.
EU could become a supranational state with economic discriminations between its citizens.
Habsburgic empire was a supra national state with discrimination between nationalities and it collapsed after WW1, when the nations didn't want to fight for it.
The only multinational state that is working is Switzerland.
Switzerland started as treaty between cantons with equal rights, and the first topics that they agree were extradition of criminals,freedom of trade and common defence.
Let's learn from swiss modesty and start small.

The Brexit is good for EU

The split of Great Britain from European Union can be a good thing for EU because it is creating a challenger for Bruxelles bureaucracy.
If till now the EU official were complacent and they thought that no country will split from the Union. Now they will have to prove that governance is better than national governance.
On the long term they had to reform themselves to survive.
But on the short term they will punish UK, in order to discourage other splits.
I am worry about Great Britain. If they didn't succeed to impose in a  500 millions inhabitants market, how they will succeed alone ?
Now they don't have any more British empire as a cushion.
Even Australia and Canada are orbiting around USA.
India is independent.
African countries are attracted by China.
Brexit remembers me about another British blunder: "Made in Germany" trade mark.
In the late XIX , early XX century, British industry was heavily competed by the German one.
In order to rally in the defence of the national industry, the patriotism of British subjects, the British government enacted the obligation of producers to imprint on their products the country of manufacturing. The side effect was that people were seeking now products "Made in Germany" without giving a second look at the products "Made in England",because they felt that they were of better quality,

The parochial thinking that led to Brexit is not new in Britain:
A Scottish woman who travelled in Romania at the end of XIX century noticed that english products were missing from Romanian stores, being replaced with French and German products.
The few clothes catalogue that arrived in Romania were in Imperial Units, making the ordering of the products impossible.
One Bulgarian importer of British agricultural machines, asked the producer to change the colour of its products from gray to more cheerful colours to make them more appealing to the customers. He was refused.
No wonder that the empire collapsed, in early XX century.

European office for migration

The EU bureaucrats have use their imagination to invent different committees, but they miss an office to handle the emigration towards Europe,
With imposed quota of emigrants, the  Eastern Europeans  are afraid that the Western states will dump all the unwanted refugees in their countries.
And the refugees that put their hopes in reaching Germany will arrive in Romania.
This will create tensions between locals wary of these emigrants that they were forced to accept and the grumpy refugees who see their hopes shattered.
Germany and Sweden cannot accept all the refugees and some of them must be distributed in all Europe, but how to make this without herding people into trains like Hitler and Stalin did?
You send some of the refugees in Poland for example but how you keep them there?
The solution is to distribute them directly from the refugee camps from Turkey or Liban.
You can make there an office for processing paper of refugees.
Each country, will specify a quota of refugees. Let's say Romania will accept 1000 and Germany 100000.
Many refugees will apply for Germany and in this case the process will be slow, and few of them will apply for Romania, in this case the process will be faster.
If you are sick and tired of a refugee camp and you will want to get out of there you will find appealing the faster route to Romania. So the humanitarian cases will arrive in Romania, and they will be supported by EU.
The economic migrants will arrive in Germany were they need workforce, and they will strengthen the economy.
After the refugee will be accepted he will be sent in destination country where he will have the right to work, in order to self sustained.
The paper work will be done by European functionaries from countries different from the destination.
Germans will process papers for Romania, and Romanians will process paper work for Germans. So neither country will slow down artificially the process.
The advantages are clear:
- we avoid human trafficking across
- we ease the burden on Lebanon and Turkey
- we distribute the refugees across Europe
- we have the agreement of the refugees for moving in respective countries.
To stop migration from East we must suspend also the Schengen treaty.

Handbook of disinformation

In these days of information war I found in my library a book by Vladimir Volkoff who treats the subject of disinformation.
According to him the difference between publicity and disinformation is that in publicity you praise an object while in disinformation you praise an subject while you are demonizing another.
For example saying that Germany is an welcoming country because Merkel accepted refugees is publicity.
Saying that Germany is an welcoming country because accepted refugees and Hungary is an unwelcoming country because it is trying to stop emigrants to reaching Germany is disinformation.
Vladimir Volkoff gives details how the disinformation works:

A Client goes to an Agent (a PR firm, a news channel a secret service etc.) who makes a Market Study.
Then the Support object are created to convince people. They can be use original facts as 3 years old boy Aylan drowning, or fact that really happen but long time ago like these images from a Bonn rally in 2012 who were used to show emigrants attacking police. They can falsify the information, but it is easier to tell half truths.
The these fabricated facts are sent via Transmitters news channels,news papers, blogs ,social media,politicians.
The Theme of the campaign can be Muslim terrorist threat in one case, the lack of  compassion of "democratic" European who let 3 years old drown and the fascist Hungarian government who beats refugees at border.
Another theme that I noticed is guilt of the Western Europe for what is happening. Like Sweden has to pay for the fact that Germany supported kurds, or US involved in Syria. And the whole Europe has to pay because shia and sunni don't get along for more than 1500 years. None of the today states existed in 7 century when the fight broke.

The Handling of the theme can be diverse as ignoring information ( like filtering the search on internet or improving searches for a certain result) , sending a false information, an half true, saturating the news channels with useless information, trolling the comments on sites (if you see similar comments from different people on a post it is sure a disinformation campaign).
The Resonance boxes are the people who repeat the message. For example the people who share a viral video, the journalist who analyse a subject, or publish "leaked" documents.
If journalists would analyse the subject and not copying it one from another, the effect of resonance box will decrease.
If we would analyse what we are sharing we would also diminish this effect.
The Target is the public opinion, and less the public opinion knows about a subject the more is sensitive to disinformation. What Europeans know about Arabs and Muslims? They know about the terror attack and they know about the Muslim criminal gangs that control city neighbourhoods in France and UK. So it easy for European to embrace the ideas that all Arabs are Muslim terrorist.
So an Arab Christian will be treated as Muslim. And a Muslim as a terrorist. Despite the fact that they run away from sectarian violence and persecution.
This hostility from the hosts will drive these refugees in the welcoming arms of Islamist from West who will provide them support, and the second generation who will be born as citizens will be soldiers of Islam.
On the other hand blaming the actions of Hungarian government as fascist, and labelling all those who are against these emigration as Nazi, will weaken the support of population for necessary hard-line measures against Islamic terrorists, and will increase the support for xenophobic fascist.
The condemnation of Hungarian fence for keeping out the unwanted emigration is a hypocrisy,nobody condemned Spain because they built a bigger fence in Mellila. The Serbian prime minister criticize the fence, but he doesn't do anything to arrest the emigrants who throw rocks at hungarian police. Maybe they want to settle some scores with Hungary, regarding their involvement in Yugoslavian war?

The Demonization is the part when the other party is dehumanized, it is transformed in pure evil.
The refugees become terrorists,  the government who protects the border became fascist, the rich nations of the west became warmongers who exploited the Muslims.
Then the next natural step is Manichaeism in which we are the good guys and they are the bad guys.
We are true believers who help one each other while they are heartless infidels who drink alcohol and pork, and exploit fellow Muslim brothers. We are the defenders of the Europe and  they are some filthy terrorists, who want to exploit the generosity of west European states.
The final step of disinformation is Psychosis a state in which all we see what we want to see and we propagate willingly the disinformation.
I don't know if Europe will reach this point, because of cultural differences who create a barrier in spreading of beliefs.
I can give as a example of psychosis: the case of Ahmed Mohammed the 14 year boy who was arrested because he made a home made digital clock for a science project.
This psychosis it is lingering since 11 September 2001 attacks, and shows the effects of  propaganda on child who was an infant at the time.


My advice?
1. Stay sane, don't become fearful and psychotic. Judge the people in front of you, don't let the propaganda fool you.
A friend of mine decided not to help refugees from Munich train station after I have sent her a video showing the radical Islamic from London. I told her if she sees people in need, help them regardless of religion, or nationality.After all first we were born humans, later we became citizens or believers in a religion.
2. Inform yourself from books. Books analyse more in depth an issue than an article on internet.
3. Search for written information, it has less emotional impact.
4. Don't spread unchecked information. Don't become a resonance box.
5. Try to identify agents and channels of disinformation.See who is transmitting what.
6.Identify the theme of disinformation. It is easy, it is repeated and repeated.
7.Identify the clients. Who has to gain more if a certain theme is popular? It can be the client, the agent, the transmitter.
Don't believe those who have vested interests in transmitting that information.

Why Eastern Europe is against Muslim refugees?

The current migration crisis has split the Europe between the Western countries in which politicians welcome emigrants hoping that all of them will be skilled workers, and Eastern countries that fear of an Islamic invasion.

But why we have now an anti-Islamic current? In a region that for two centuries we don't have problems with Islam and had positive relations with Islamic countries during cold war?
The roots of this discontent are in the West.
One colleague of mine told me that when he arrived in London, he thought that he was in Saudi Arabia in some areas.
The fact that Muslim have strange suits and a strange religion is not a problem. But the fact that the extermists try to impose their religious belief on others is a problem in a society that should cherish freedom of expression.
The fact that Islamist use violence to promote their agenda puts them in same categories as the fascist:
Except Utoya massacre all the terror attacks in Western Europe were done by Muslims. Most of them recently converted or from second generation of emigrants.

We in Eastern Europe felt the horrors of Nazism and Communism and our social organism still has antibodies against this, and we react more violently. And we fought hard for our free speech and freedom. In 1989 in 2000 people died for freedom in Romania.
Many emigrants from eastern Europe arrived in West and didn't like that they see:
Bearded guys who shout 'Allahu akbar' and "Down with Britain" while they reside in UK and their freedom is protected by British authorities.
They didn't like either the 2005 Paris riots.In which 200 millions damage was done, and showed impotence of French authorities. Impotence reaffirmed once again with Charlie Hebdo massacre.
A welfare state that encourages women to make many children and to stay home helping in this way conservative Muslim families who ban the women from having a job.

They saw this and they didn't wanted back home.

From their communist experience they knew that you can't erase century old beliefs so easily. Soviet Union tried to with a harsh rule to suppress all religions  and didn't succeed. Why the West will succeed with a soft rule?
They didn't bought the stuff with tolerant Islam in Iberic peninsula. Almost 500 years old fight with the Ottomans learned them that Islam can be relentless and cruel.

The problem are not beliefs but the political power, communist, fascist and nazism all were a minority who took control of the country. The challenge is to defend the democracy against these extremist groups. But in order to defend something you must have clear in mind what is the line you hold with price of your life. The political parties have no values and don't have a line to defend.

The Western governments in their need for oil tolerated some extremist stances as for example condemnation of Salman Rushdie to death by Ayatolah Komeini.
It is interesting to read Joseph Anton Memoir by Salman Rushdie regarding this matter:
Margaret Thatcher in order to keep an oil deal with Iran, didn't defend publicly the author Salman Rushdie.
The only politician who supported him publicly was the Czech president Vaclav Havel.
Here you have already a crack between West and East.
The British authorities preferred to deal with extremist that demanded death of Rushdie, instead of supporting the Muslims that accepted the democratic values and supported Rushdie. And since then this radical minority dominated the political debate.
Maybe the Conservatives needed an enemy to show how brave they were in defending the country against foreigners.  And the Left, their political rivals started to defend these extremists because they were attacked by the Right.
From this useless political struggle between Right and Left the extremists won because neither Left or Right have some value to defend: everybody wants power and everybody is annoyed by other freedom of speech.
The integrated Muslims  were left out because they are boring, don't blow trains and buses. The Right cannot scare people with them, and they don't need to be saved by the Left, because they have jobs.

Maybe the Eastern Europe is the economic colony of Western Europe, but it doesn't want to be a full colony, with population displacement.

Bye, bye European Union

Soviet Union fell because of greed. It could not provide common goods, and people feverish hunted for them: socks, cigarettes, booze,meat etc.
European Union will fell because of fear. It cannot protect this huge space, it doesn't have an european police, an european army, and the people will return to the only actors that have army and police: the nations states. The borders will close, and the Brussels bureaucracy will lose its power.
I don't think that countries will go back to pre world war 2 situation, because most of the countries are in NATO.
The EU will be more decentralized Italy, Greece and Hungary will try to solve by their own the problems, not waiting for a fast response from UE.
Maybe the anti-islamic movement will create an ideology that will unite these countries.

Finnally Russia it is at the Mediterranean sea

In 1856 the Crimean war was fought to keep Russia out of Eastern Mediterranean sea.

In 1967 after the six day war Soviet Union was ready to send its army in Middle East to help its allies Syria and Egypt, but it was persuaded not to by the US threat of a nuclear war.

In 2015 US watches how Russia is sending troops in Syria to fight ISIS (maybe with its silent agreement).
It is a second victory after the Iran nuclear deal. The main supplier of nuclear technology for Iran was Russia. Allowing to Iran to have a nuclear program is opening a new market for Russia, who can diversify its revenues.So either you buy Iranian or Russian oil, the money goes to Putin.

A third victory can be, that Russia has its army in a area rich in oil, and can control the supply. An extensive conflict in Middle East will increase the price, and Russia can replenish its gold coffers by selling oil at higher price.
Maybe after they finish off with ISIS in Syria they discover some ISIS fighters in Irak and go there to make some order. (The Iraq people will regret Americans, after they will meet the Russian harsh rule) .
And which is the neighbour of Iraq? Saudi Arabia ? The main competitor on the oil market, and the number one sponsor for terrorism in Russia?
Will USA help it's Arab ally against Russia? They will risk a nuclear war for co nationals of Bin Laden?
The Saudi Arabia in this case is alone, Russia doesn't care about other Islamic nations. It doesn't buy anything from them, it sells them only old weapons. Pakistan will not dare to launch nuclear missiles to defend Saudi Arabia, because it will be obliterated, by Russian or Indian nuclear rockets.
Who will help Saudi Arabia? Europe? No, after the recent wave of propaganda against the Islamic invasion no politician from Europe will dare to defend them in public.
(Very good work Kremlin propaganda office, but a little advice: tell your people to criticise from time to time Russia because it is too obvious).
Anyway Europe is disunited, they don't have a solution to the refugee problem which will become more and more critical, and it will be affected by the high oil prices.
If Russia will move toward Middle East , it will be capable to maintain the Eastern Ukraine?
Russia will be so involved in Middle East conflict that it will consume its resources and make a draw in Ukraine?
Or the turmoil in Middle East will affect Kiev backers and Ukraine wil remain in the orbit of Moscow?
A chinese scholar, after the unification of China by Huang Di said that the rulers who are good at winning wars, cannot make a country prosper during peace time, because the wars are won using cruelty and wile, while a country prospers when it is kindness and rule of law.
Putin's clique is not good at making Russia prosperous, but they are good at war.
Europe on the other hand has a good political bureaucracy which administers well the resources but it is bad to at taking fast decisions during time of crisis. EU must reform itself if wants to survive.

One wall is better than two

Nicolo Machiavelli in his book 'Art of war' says that you should not build a fortress with 2 walls, because the defenders will give up easily the first wall because they have back-up and they will seek refuge inside the inner wall, and thus the enemy will easily build a foot bridge.
Western Europe is like two walled fortress, the Eastern Europe and Ukraine being the external wall protecting against Tatars and Russians, and their economies being the inner wall.

So it is easy for them to trade Eastern Ukraine and Crimea for peace and mineral resources.
If they do so they might strength the inner wall temporary but they will lose forever the outer wall.

If Russia retains Crimea and creates a corridor to there,the Putin regime will get a boost, and the division between West and Eastern Europe will increase because East will feel betrayed.
The east Europe cannot secede from Union because they are weak but they will try to take control, and Poland,Romania, Baltic States and Scandinavian States could coordinate their efforts to diminish the influence of some Russian sympathetic states.
Germany is controlled from left with former communists infiltrated in SPD and from right with business men with ties with Russia.
France internal deficit makes it sensitive to big contracts cancellation, and has to choose between economic losses or political losses within EU in Ukraine crisis.
Most of the  exports of France and Germany are within EU a boycott will damage their economies stronger than an increase of gas price.

Easter Europe has motivated soldiers, because there are people who survived Russian occupation and communism, and know that it is better to live in cold and hunger than under Russian boot.
Western Europe doesn't have a motivated population to endure a war with Russia but has the money and the guns, so all it has to do it is to give money and guns in Eastern Europe especially in Ukraine to assure that their citizens don't have to fight.
But for that they need guts to start a fight.