The Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky wedding of Saturday July 31, 2010 was described in the papers and gowns depicted. The brides parents were in front and the grooms father well – very much in the back as he has  some nasty things on his records.
Well, further, the name itself, may not be considered a great asset to the Clintons – but there is also something quite interesting in this name – it belongs to some sort of Jewish  aristocracy – and no-one seemed to take notice.

So here is our SCOOP.

We have a Scoop – The name Mezvinsky comes with Jewish history that was not noted by the “mavens” of the Chelsea and Marc Wedding. There is a family tree here somewhere that might be as old as the Clinton’s.

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You see – the ending … sky means you come from a particular location.

A name such as Polsky or Polansky  as a family name means you came from Poland and probably ended up somewhere else.
It connects to Polonia or Poland.  Warshawsky is more specific – you come from Warsaw.

Jews had no family names – they were called by a first name the son of a first name – something like David ben Yishai, who was King David – so his dynasty had really no name. When European governments decreed you must have a name they turned around and looked for help in professions, trees, animals…  and eventually names of locations.

As most Jews lived in small towns and rural settlements in the Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Western Russia  region, and eventually many of these Jews migrated to the West, many of these locations became immortalized of sort and in many cases in a Yiddish language form of the name.

So we have Brodsky  based on Brodi. It becomes more difficult with Berdishewsky – that was Berdichevsky based on Berdichev.

Similarly, Mezvinsky – we guess – comes from Mezibish  via  Mezivish – Mezvishsky – Mezvinsky. The “b” and “v” are interchangeable – with certain rules – in Hebrew and thus also in Yidish (Jidish). The shortening and “n” introduction are no surprise either.

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We researched the internet and did not fail to discover the importance of MEZIBISH / Mezibush.

The Baal Shem Tov’s grave is in Mezibush – today thousands of religious Jews travel to Mezibish  on his day of death according to the Jewish Calendar. In 2007 this was May 30th.

THAT WAS AS IF I FELL UPON THE HISTORIC LOCATION OF AN OLD VATICAN!

We found a travelogue from a Viznitz Chassid http://twitter.com/viznitz
 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c…

A Pilgrimage to the Baal Shem Tov’s grave – Baal Shem Tov …
Late in the morning we were off to Mezibush (170 km), where the Holy
Baal … After a three-hour ride, we arrived in Mezibush. The day was
bright blue with …
 Their travels to the grave sites of the Baal Shem Tov in Mezibush and all the Rebbes in the Chabad lineage from the Altar Rebbe Schneur Zalman, the author of the Tanya, to the fifth Lubavich Rebbe Rashab buried in the Soviet Union (The last two Lubavitch Rebbes are buried in New York). In total, we drove over 1500 miles through Russia and Ukraine by bus, sometimes day and night sleeping in contorted positions on our seats.
We visited a number of different Jewish communities each with its own story. For me, the highlight of the trip was standing at the grave of the Baal Shem Tov.

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The Ohel The new synagogue/guest house, although not completed at that time, was very beautiful and contained a Mikveh, several rooms to sleep, meeting rooms, a Bet Midrash and a shule. The views from the synagogue/guest house stretched out over a picturesque valley toward the back and along one side. On the other side of the house, the old cemetery with the Ohel (a small red brick building), sat nestled among some trees.

As we entered the cemetery, we saw a young Lubavitch woman SLK, from our old neighborhood standing at the front door of the Ohel. She was surprised to see us and we reminisced how she had babysat for DMM (the authors son) when he was a baby. Once inside the Ohel, we said the customary prayers and offered our request for blessings written on a piece of paper. Then we
tore up the paper and threw the torn pieces onto the grave, as is the custom. Our Rabbi, Rav Sholom Ber Volpo, delivered a sermon on Torah.

Then, we sang 8 or 9 niggunim (songs without words) originated by each of the Rabbis leading to and including the seven Lubavitch Rebbes. Then, I sang my original composition, “The Baal Shem Tov Blues” accompanied by my guitar. This was a magical moment.

Just outside the cemetery, there was a man selling Russian styled fur hats, a few fox skins and some other souvenirs. We purchased two hats and a fox skin. Both the hats and the fox skin smelled as if they had only just recently been removed from their owners.

Then, we went walked down a long, dirt road towards the center of Mezibush and to a well bubbling up the legendary Baal Shem Tov water that has the power of healing.

Legend has it that the Baal Shem was with his students and they couldn’t find water to wash their hands before praying Mincha (afternoon prayer). The Baal Shem struck the ground three times with his walking stick and the water miraculously bubbled out. Some of us, including DMM and me, jumped into the well to take a Mikveh in the Baal Shem Tov water. Also, we collected some of the legendary Baal Shem Tov water and carried it home.

By late afternoon, we were off to visit the grave sites of the Maggid of Mezritch and his students, Reb Zushe and Rabbi Aaron HaCohan, a few hours away, in Annapole.

To understand some more about Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (The Besht) 18 Elul 5458 – 6 Sivan 5520 (1698-1760), please see - http://www.baalshemtov.com/whowashe.htm

And a few further short notes: “Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer, August 27, 1698 (18 Elul) – May 22, 1760), often called Baal Shem Tov or Besht, was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism (see also Mezhbizh Hasidic dynasty).

The Besht was born to Eliezer and Sara in Okopy – a small village that over the centuries has been part of Poland, Russia, and is now part of Ukraine, (located in the Borshchivskyi Raion (district) of the Ternopil Oblast). He died in Medzhybizh, ( Polish: Mi?dzybórz, Mi?dzyborz or Mi?dzybó?), which had once been part Poland and Russia, and is also now in Ukraine, in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast.

The Besht is better known to many religious Jews as “the holy Baal Shem” (der heyliger baal shem in Yiddish), or most commonly, the Baal Shem Tov . The title Baal Shem Tov is usually translated into English as “Master of the Good Name”,
with Tov (“Good”) modifying Shem (“[Divine] Name”), although it is more correctly understood as a combination of Baal Shem (“Master of the [Divine] Name”) and Tov (an honorific epithet to the man). The name Besht — the acronym from the words comprising that name, bet ayin shin tes—is typically used in print rather than speech. The appellation “Baal Shem” was not unique to Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer; however, it is Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer who is most closely identified as a “Baal Shem”,
as he was the founder of the spiritual movement of Hasidic Judaism.

The little biographical information that is known about Besht is so interwoven with legends of miracles that in many cases it is hard to arrive at the historical facts. From the numerous legends connected with his birth it appears that his parents were poor, upright, and pious. When he was orphaned, his community cared for him. At school, he distinguished himself only by his frequent disappearances, being always found in the lonely woods surrounding the place, rapturously enjoying the beauties of nature. Many of his disciples believed that he came from the Davidic line tracing its lineage to the royal house of King David, and by extension with the institution of the Jewish Messiah.”

Today, The Chabad Hasidic Dynasties exist in the US and no parties running for elections dares to forget them. In New York State the big centers are in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in Monsey, Rockland County. They used to support Mayor Giuliani.

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What was described above is a little hole today but this was a wonderful town with a Rabbi’s court that sent its emissaries all over the Jewish World – think of it as a mini-Jewish Vatican. The fact that someone came from there was not un-noted. We do not know what the Mezvinsky ancestor’s role was at that court – but being part of that court made him into the Jewish counter-part of a knight – albeit a spiritual knight.

To explain why I am susceptible to research of this sort is very simple to me – I am a descendant of a similar court in the town of Emden, Germany. That was Rabbi Jacob ben Zwi – Emden whose acronim is YA’BETZ and then was spelled as Jawetz, with various turns that in the US got also the much more recent spelling Javits by the brothers Benjamin and Jacob Javits who Americanized their father’s name that was Jawetz. Jacob Javits is obviously the famous US Senator from New York who wrote among other things the act that limits the Presidential power to declare war. I vouch that in most vases, when someone has a name with this sort of lineage – this becomes a responsibility for behavior and a shield against the outside world. Does it work in all cases – obviously not. Will it work in Marc Mezvinsky’s case – that remains to be seen.

If by any chance someone shows this article to Marc Mezvinsky or to any of the Clinton’s, my suggestion is that he leave Goldman Sachs and takes his talents and I am sure, good intentions, to a job that will bring honor to him and to future generations of Mezvinskys.

Be’chol Lashon is the Hebrew for “In Every Tongue” and it advocates for the Growth & Diversity of the Jewish People. Today Jews come indeed in every color and every stripes and some leaders do the outreach to embrace them all. Just look at Dr. Lewis Gordon of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Romiel Daniel of Queens, New York, The head of Jews of India in our region, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, of the institute for Semitic Studies. They do not look like your stereotype Jew. I met them and was impressed – the latter actually for the first time as we both visited Addis Ababa at the time of the delayed Ethiopian Millennium. Then Rabbi Hailu Paris with his communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Ethiopian born and graduae of Yeshiva University, and his Assistant Monica Wiggan (http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/RabbiParisEthiopianTrip.html), and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda from whom I got a very distinctive kippah with the menorah – of the old temple worked in. Then Dr. Rabson Wuriga of the Hamisi Lemba clan in South Africa and Zimbabwe and so on – in Nigeria, in Peru, in India, in China.

And who has not heard by now of the present White House Rabbi – Cappers Funnye – the cousin of Michelle Obama – and associate director of Bechol Lashon and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nei Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago?

The New York regional director of DiverseJews.org is Lacey Schwartz who is also National Outreach Director of BecholLashon.org, assisted by Collier Meyerson and to top it all Davi Cheng, Director of the Los Angeles region is Jewish, Chinese, and Lesbian. As I said it is all a new image of the Jew.

Last night, at the Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St., NYC there was a Shemspeed Summer Music Festival event.

The two further upcoming events in New York will be on:

Monday, August 2nd – the Shemspeed Hip Hop Fest at Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleeker Street NYC Featuring Tes Uno, Ted King & guest Geng Grizlee and others with CD Release parties for “A Tribe Called Tes” and “Move On.”

Thursday, August 5th – Shemspeed Jewish Punk Fest at Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, NYC Featuring Moshiach Oil & The Groggers.

info on each event above and at http://shemspeed.com/fest

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A Jewish Woman Living in Ethiopia

Rethinking How U.S. Jews Fund Communities Around the World.

The Forward
Published: May 27, 2010

For more than half a century, North America’s Jewish federation system has divided its overseas allocations between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency has been dedicated to building up Israel and encouraging aliyah, while the Joint has focused on aiding Jewish communities in need around the globe.

Today, both agencies are working to assert their continued relevance in a changing Jewish world. With aliyah slowing, the Jewish Agency is moving toward embracing a new agenda: promoting the concept of Jewish peoplehood. The JDC, meanwhile, has sought to claim a larger share of the communal pie, which had long been split 75%-25% in the Jewish Agency’s favor.

After a recent round of sniping over the funding issue, the two sides are now stepping back from their public confrontation and recommitting to negotiations over the future of the collective funding arrangement. Underlying this fight, however, is a more fundamental tension over communal funding priorities: Should overseas aid be focused on helping needy Jews and assisting communities that have few resources of their own, or should it be used to bolster Jewish identity?

With this debate raging, the Forward asked a diverse group of Jewish thinkers and communal activists from around the world to weigh in and address the following question: How should North America’s Jewish community be thinking about its priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad?

New Century, New Priorities

By Yossi Beilin

During the 20th century, the challenges facing world Jewry were the following: rescue of Jews who encountered existential danger, assistance to Israel, helping with the absorption of those who immigrated to new countries and opening the gates for those who were denied the right to emigrate. In the 21st century, ensuring Jewish continuity is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish people.

Yet too often Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere remain focused on the challenges of the previous century. (Indeed, Jewish groups were not very receptive when I first proposed the idea for Birthright Israel 17 years ago.)

Ensuring the existence of Jewish life (religious and secular) throughout the world via Jewish education, encounters between young Israeli and Diaspora Jews, creating a virtual Jewish community using new technologies — these must be at the top of the global Jewish agenda. This requires American Jewish philanthropy and leadership, which in turn requires discerning between past and present priorities.

Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel, is president of the international consulting firm Beilink.

Reviving Polish Jewry

By Konstanty Gebert

The rebirth of Central European Jewish communities after 1989, though numerically not very impressive, remains significant for moral and historical reasons. It is also crucial for Jewish self-understanding. An enormous proportion of American Jews can trace their origins to what used to be Poland alone. This is where much of Diaspora history happened.

Alongside the courage and determination of local Jews, the far-sighted support of several American Jewish organizations and philanthropies made this rebirth possible. In Poland the Joint Distribution Committee, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation played key roles. Their support has translated not only into Jewish schools and festivals in places once believed to be Jewish-ly dead, but also in most cases into changed relations between local Jewish communities and their fellow citizens as well as clear support for Israel on the part of these countries’ governments.

Yet for all this progress, Central European Jewish communities might never become self-financing. The support given them by American Jewry remains a vital Jewish interest. It must be strengthened.

Konstanty Gebert, a former underground journalist, is a columnist at the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and founder of the Polish-language Jewish monthly Midrasz.

What We Give Ourselves

By Lisa Leff

More than any Jewish community in history, postwar American Jews have used our prosperity to help Jewish communities around the world. On one level, the greatest beneficiaries of this support have been Jews abroad. But we should also recognize that these philanthropic efforts have shaped our communal values and identity.

Through our international aid, we have dedicated ourselves to universalist and cosmopolitan ideas like tikkun olam and solidarity across borders. In helping disadvantaged and oppressed Jews abroad, we have also deepened our community’s commitments to democracy, human rights and economic justice for all. It’s only natural that Jewish groups pitch in on Haitian earthquake relief and advocate on behalf of oppressed people of all backgrounds.

Whatever the outcome of the federations’ deliberations over how to divide allocations between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, it is imperative that American Jewry maintain its commitment to our values through supporting international philanthropy.

Lisa Leff is an associate professor of history at American University and the author of “Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France” (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Putting Identity First

By Jonathan S. Tobin

The choices we face are not between good causes and bad or even indifferent ones but between vital Jewish obligations. But since the decline in giving to Jewish causes means that we must make tough decisions, programs that reinforce Jewish identity and support Zionism both in the Diaspora and in Israel must be accorded a higher priority.

At this point in our history, with assimilation thinning the ranks of Diaspora Jewry and with continuity problems arising even in Israel, the need to instill a sense of membership in the Jewish people is an imperative that cannot be pushed aside. Under the current circumstances, absent an effort that will make Jewish and Zionist education the keynote of our communal life, the notion that Jewish philanthropies or support for Israel can be adequately sustained in the future is simply a fantasy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.

Collective Responsibility

By Richard Wexler

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about framing the national Jewish community’s priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad without first asking the question: Is there actually a collective “North American Jewish community” today?

Collective responsibility has been and remains the foundation upon which the federation system and, therefore, the national Jewish community are built. It is what distinguishes the federations from all other charities. It is embodied in our participation in the adventure of building Israel and in meeting overseas needs through the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, in the dues that federations pay to the Jewish Federations of North America and so much more. But today, federations “bowl alone.”

Collective responsibility gives meaning to kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — all Jews are responsible for one another. Until federations understand once again that Jewish needs extend beyond the borders of any one community, we cannot have a meaningful priority-setting process for funding Jewish needs abroad.

Richard Wexler is a former chairman of the United Israel Appeal.

Originally published here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rethinking-how-u-s-jews-fund-communities-around-the-world-1.292527

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Rabbi Gershom Sizomu and Be’chol Lashon director Diane Tobin at the opening of the Health Center.

Gary Tobin’s Legacy Lives on in New Ugandan Health Center

By Amanda Pazornik

The J Weekly
Published: July 22, 2010

On the day of the grand opening of the Tobin Health Center in Mbale, Uganda, health professionals were already hard at work treating patients inside.

The center was open for business, but that didn’t slow down the lively June 18 celebration, which featured song and dance performances and speakers. About 3,000 people gathered at the center’s grounds to mark the occasion.

Seated under colorful tents was Diane Tobin, director of S.F.-based Be’chol Lashon and wife of the late Gary Tobin, for whom the center is named, along with three of their children, Aryeh, Mia and Jonah.

“Everyone was amazing, friendly and so generous of spirit,” said Tobin, who was visiting Uganda and its Abayudaya Jewish community for the first time. “They were so appreciative of having the center and demonstrated a tremendous willingness to work together. It’s a great model for the rest of the world.”

Andrew Esensten, Be’chol Lashon program coordinator, and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jews and the first chief rabbi of Uganda, joined them, in addition to government and medical officials, and representatives from Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

The Tobin Health Center is named for Gary Tobin, the founder of the S.F.-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, of which Be’chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”) is an initiative. Tobin died one year ago after a long battle with cancer. He was 59.

“He really has left a legacy,” said Debra Weinberg of Baltimore, who attended the opening with her husband, Joe, and their 14-year-old son, Ben. The couple also helped fund the project. “I think he would feel deeply comforted to know it’s improving the lives of people.”

The 4,000-square-foot facility is a major component of the ongoing Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project undertaken by the Abayudaya Executive Council and Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit that reaches out to Jews of color and helps educate the mainstream community about Jewish diversity.

It cost approximately $250,000 to erect the two-story center, using donations collected over five years. While patients pay for their services, continuous fundraising is a necessity, Tobin said.

Construction began in July 2009, enabling more than 50 Africans from diverse ethnic backgrounds to earn a living.

Stars of David are featured in the window grids, ceilings and floors of the health center, a “lovely expression of their Judaism,” Tobin said. Private rooms make up most of the top floor, with patient wards on the ground floor. A mezuzah is affixed to every door.

A large portrait of Gary Tobin hangs in the lobby.

“It’s so heartwarming,” Diane Tobin said of the visual tribute. “Gary would be so honored to have this health center in the middle of Africa named after him.”

Prior to the opening of the Tobin Health Center, the nearest medical facility to the Abayudaya Jews was Mbale Hospital, an overcrowded and understaffed institution not accessible to all the residents of the region. Tobin said there are other clinics in the area, but they lack the preventive health care measures necessary to respond to the community’s needs.

The Tobin Health Center is licensed by the Ministry of Health and is certified to operate a pharmacy and laboratory. It serves all who seek basic medical care in the region, providing life-saving health services and simultaneously creating jobs.

“The goal is to raise the standard of medical care,” Tobin said.

In addition, rental units on the bottom and top floors of the center will provide more job opportunities for locals. The first business recently opened — a hardware store that sells bags of cement, plumbing equipment and sheet metal — with a beauty salon and video rental outlet in the works.

The center “is rewarding on a number of levels,” said Steven Edwards of Laguna Beach, who, along with his wife, Jill, has been involved with the Abayudaya for six years. “The most obvious is to see this beautiful, clean building. On top of that, local dignitaries noted how lucky Mbale is to have the Jewish community and how much they contribute to the larger community by bringing jobs.”

The Abayudaya Jews comprise a growing, 100-year-old community of more than 1,000 Jews living among 10,000 Christians and Muslims. They live in scattered villages in the rolling, green hills of eastern Uganda. The largest Abayudaya village, Nabagoye, is near Mbale, the seventh-largest city in Uganda and the location of the center.

Research conducted by Be’chol Lashon in 2006 showed that contaminated water and malaria-carrying mosquitoes pose the biggest health risks to the community. A year later, the organization launched the Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project with the drilling of the first well in Nabagoye.

Since then, nearly 1,000 mosquito nets have been purchased and distributed throughout the community.

“Our goal is to respond to the needs of communities,” Tobin said. “If there are other communities that need health centers, we will be there.”

Originally published here: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58727/s.f.-researchers-legacy-lives-on-in-new-ugandan-health-center/

The GUAM States are Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova – States on the Western Extended Borders of Russia – that have expressed interest in good relations with the West and in adopting Western Ways of Government and joining Western Institutions. They are not part of the EU. Azerbaijan is a Muslim Oil-State in conflict with Russia backed Armenia.

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SPEAKER: Madam Secretary, on behalf of our entire embassy family, we welcome you to the embassy, and welcome you to our garden.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER: Please.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you, thank you. Well, Happy Fourth of July to all of you.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: This is a wonderful way to celebrate the American Independence Day, here in this beautiful garden, and to be with all of you here in Azerbaijan, where independence and the values of freedom and equality and opportunity enshrined in our Declaration of Independence are all the more meaningful for this young, independent country.
This has been a very whirlwind trip, and I thank every one of you who has helped to make it possible. And I thank you, too, for all the work you have done this past year to further and steady our relationship between our country and Azerbaijan, and we are trying to do everything we can to support you, including working for a new embassy compound — although you won’t have a garden like this, I’m afraid. That’s kind of a trade-off, isn’t it?
Earlier today I had a productive meeting with President Aliyev, and assured him of the importance of Azerbaijan to the United States, and that we are committed to working in partnership to enhance global security and promote democracy and stabilize the region.
I just came from a meeting with some young people at the Mugam Club in the historic, beautiful old city, who are working to promote civil society, protect human rights, develop a free media in the country. They are the reason that I come to work every day, because much of what I do is about the next generation. And I was very proud and impressed to listen to them, and especially 5 of the 10 had studied in the United States under the exchange programs that some of you help to run.
We are very focused in the Obama Administration on working to strengthen our relationship, and supporting the modernization, the secularization, the democratization of this very exciting country at this time in history.
I want to thank Chargé Donald Lu for his steady leadership during this past year. He has kept everything running during a difficult time without the help of an ambassador. We are working very hard to get our new ambassador confirmed, and hopefully he will be joining you shortly. And, in the meantime, I welcome Adam Stirling as the new chargé, and will look forward to working with him.
Now, I can imagine that for our locally-engaged staff, who have never celebrated an American Fourth of July — which means that you have never eaten barbeque or gone to a fireworks or gotten sunburned with your family out in some beautiful place — it might seem a little bit distant to be here in Baku, celebrating the founding of our country. But for Americans this is a very special day. And it’s a day that we really do take time out to appreciate the founding of our country 234 years ago, and all that we have had to do over those years to create a more perfect union, to overcome injustice, discrimination, to make sure that the circle of opportunity grew bigger and bigger, so that it could encompass every American.
So, I thank each and every one of you on this Fourth of July for your hard work: our foreign service and our civil service officers, all of our colleagues from other U.S. government agencies, our Peace Corps volunteers, our family members, and especially our locally-engaged staff. We honor your sacrifices and your dedication. And I wish you a very safe and happy Independence Day. But, more than that, I wish you a day every single day of this upcoming year of greater cooperation and partnership to deepen and broaden our relationship.
And I know that when someone like me comes, it adds to your workload. So I am hoping that with the outgoing chargé and the incoming chargé, that maybe they will give you the rest of the Fourth of July off. What do you think? That’s a departmental, Secretary of State directive.

from U.S. Department of State

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:29:32 -0500

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from U.S. Department of State <usstatebpa@subscriptions.fcg.gov> date Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 5:07 PM

Economic, Energy, Agricultural and Trade Issues: Remarks at the Schindler Factory Museum and Announcement of U.S. Contribution to Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation
Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:56:37 -0500

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Media speculation on whether the collapse of the government would impact negatively on Belgium’s EU presidency stint began immediately following Belgian prime minister Yves Leterme’s decision on this Thursday to resign after a key partner, the Flemish Liberals, withdrew from the Federal governing coalition over a long running linguistic rights dispute between the Dutch-speaking Flemish and Francophone communities.

The collapse of the Czech government during its 2009 EU presidency term caused serious disruption to the EU’s agenda, and concerns have been raised that a long running bout of political turmoil during the Belgian presidency could similarly paralyse the EU’s workload.

The FT quoted an unnamed Brussels diplomat as saying, “The last thing we need is another presidency hobbled by domestic events.

“There are serious institutional, economic and diplomatic questions to be resolved – we cannot afford another vacuum in leadership.”

So, this is the political mess at an EU burdened with three “Presidents” where one Belgian Mr. Herman Van Rompuy heads  the Brussels  so called two year-term “Permanent” Presidency of the European Council, while his successor is losing his Belgian cabinet just in time he was going to take over the 6-months temporary EU Rotating Presidency. All that while the finances of a monetary EURO union that was not backed by a common treasury, is unraveling because on incompetency in Member States that cannot be disciplined, because there is no powerful central home to this chaotic assembly of States calling itself a Union.

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Greece formally requests EU-IMF aid – Euro area states have pledged to give up to €30 billion this year.

ANDREW WILLIS

23.04.2010

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Greece has formally placed a request to activate a €40-45 billion EU-IMF aid package, a day after new budget deficit figures revealed the country’s 2009 shortfall to be worse than previously forecast.

The country’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, transferred the message on Friday (23 April) in a letter addressed to Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker, EU economy commissioner Olli Rehn and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.

“In accordance with the Statement of the Heads of State and Government of 25 March 2010 to provide financial support to Greece, when needed, and the follow up Statement of the Eurogroup, Greece is hereby requesting the activation of the support mechanism,” reads the letter.

Earlier, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said he would instruct his finance minister to place the request. “It is a national and imperative need to officially ask our partners in the EU for the activation of the support mechanism we jointly created,” he said in statements broadcast live from the remote Aegean island of Kastellorizo.

“Our partners will decisively contribute to provide Greece the safe harbour that will allow us to rebuild our ship,” said the embattled premier against a picturesque backdrop.

Fresh figures released by the EU’s statistics office, Eurostat, on Thursday revealed Greece’s 2009 deficit to be 13.6 percent of GDP, significantly higher than the previous 12.7 percent forecast.

Markets subsequently leapt on the new EU data, sending the yield on 10-year Greek bonds to 8.83 percent, the highest since 1998, and prompting credit rating agency Moody’s to cut the country’s sovereign rating from A2 to A3. On Friday, bond yields retreated marginally following the formal aid request.

Next steps?

A significant amount of uncertainty remains however. Greece, swamped by a €300-billion debt pile, is currently negotiating the lending terms with EU and IMF officials in Athens, with the talks potentially lasting for several more weeks.

An agreement between EU leaders in late March indicated that any request for aid must first be approved by the ECB and the European Commission, before then being formally agreed by euro area states.

While governments may be willing to bail-out their profligate partner, doubts remain as to how quickly member states will be able to release the funds, with at least one legal challenge being mounted in Germany against the unpopular transfer to Greece.

Responding to questions from MEPs in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said several times that he is confident the Greek plan does not breach the EU treaties. The solution found so far is “fully in line with the treaty,” he said. “It is simply wrong to say that it is some kind of bailout.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel, faced with crucial regional elections in May, has been at pains to stress that any support must be considered ‘ultima ratio’, or a last resort.

As well as the legal uncertainty, total contributions to the three-year support package have yet to be finalised. Euro area states have agreed to contribute €30 billion, this year, but figures for 2010 and 2011 remain unclear.

German central bank chief Axel Weber recently conceded that “the numbers are changing all the time”, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal, adding that total euro area contributions over the three years could reach as much a €80 billion.

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Further on Greece:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/opinio…

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Greece and Who’s Next?

As Greece careened ever close to default this week, frightened investors also rushed to dump bonds from financially troubled Portugal, Spain and Ireland. But while the markets increasingly see this as a euro zone crisis, many European leaders are in denial.

Unless the European Union and the International Monetary Fund back up Greece, it could default on its debts. And the roughly $40 billion bailout promised — grudgingly — by Brussels with an additional $15 billion to $20 billion from the International Monetary Fund is unlikely to be enough. Greece has more than $50 billion in debt coming due over the next 12 months alone.

Meanwhile, Germany is resisting turning over the money. After George Papandreou, the prime minister of Greece, called on Friday for the bailout plan to be “activated,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Greece first had to negotiate “a credible savings program.” Georg Nuesslein, a lawmaker in Merkel’s governing coalition, told Bloomberg the program “has to hurt.”

Greece’s efforts to curtail public spending have not made enough of a dent in its deficit to persuade investors it can bring its debt under control. But amid a severe recession, which is likely to be exacerbated by budget cuts, even the tightest belt-tightening can’t eliminate a deficit that amounted to more than 13 percent of its gross domestic product last year.

To stop a rout, the European Union must commit to activating the bailout. Then Europe and the International Monetary Fund must start negotiations with Greece for a much bigger bailout package. This would help restore investors’ confidence, allowing interest rates on its debt to fall from the punitive heights of nearly 9 percent reached last week. While some economists believe Greece would still have to restructure its debts, it would have space to negotiate the terms.

As investors made clear this week, the turmoil doesn’t end with Greece. Portugal, Spain and Ireland have seen their deficits balloon as the housing bust and the economic downturn took a toll. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund must put together a pre-emptive bailout package to convince investors of the stability of their finances and head off a flight to dump their bonds on a bigger scale. Speed is essential.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and European finance ministers should start working on that during this weekend’s International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington. This is mainly a European problem. But Washington must ensure that the fund commits adequate resources. The good news, if there is any here, is that American banks do not own much Greek debt. But the American economy won’t be immune if the Greek crisis spreads much further.

——————

But who should work on The EU CHRONIC STRUCTURAL POLITICO-ECONOMIC DISEASE?

A simple intervention by the Belgian King attempting to beat sense into the heads of his two different National groups warring in his own country, doe nothing to the much larger problem of many more ethnically different groups in the EU that have not yet digested the idea that building a Federal Nations means giving up the previously held pretenses at National Sovereignty. If they do not digest this their model becomes the UN and not the US – so they exist on the grace of their interdepedence but not on the basis of being a major global player to sit at the UN-China discussions table – not even as outsiders like India and Brazil, not even as a tolerated South Africa that is there because they represent the consumers of all-of-Africa.

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3d5c4cea-4e6e-…

A Year On, Little Change in Political Climate.

WASHINGTON, Mar 21 (IPS) – This time last year, United States federal legislation on climate change was starting to take shape, seemingly more pressing matters were taking up the bulk of U.S. policymakers’ time, and a major climate conference was looming at the end of the year. Twelve months later, the scene is eerily similar. The U.S. House of Representatives swiftly passed its bill last June, but the Senate now has four different paths it could take to address climate change – and has yet to move decisively toward any of them.

Likewise, while the economic recession has receded from the top of the Capital Hill agenda, reforming the country’s health care system now dominates debate here. And the follow-up to last year’s Copenhagen conference – in Cancún – awaits in November. But hope is far from lost, the European Union’s Climate Action Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, told reporters in Washington Thursday.

As the outgoing Danish Minister of Climate and Energy, Hedegaard was charged with hosting December’s Copenhagen, which has been largely criticised by groups and countries hoping for strong climate action that would halt rising global temperatures. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said global average temperatures should not be allowed to rise more than two degrees.

“Staying below two degrees is a tremendous challenge and when I think about that challenge, I think how are we going to make? But then I remember back to where we were just three or four years back…look at all the progress that’s been made,” said Hedegaard. Her main message Thursday, though, and throughout her trip to Washington, is how crucial significant U.S. legislation to address climate change is to global efforts – and the domestic benefits it would have for the U.S.

In meetings over the past couple days with her U.S. counterpart Todd Stern – the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change – as well as other major players here like U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, White House Climate and Energy Office head Carol Browner and Representative Edward Markey, Hedegaard says she got the sense that they are not sure “what will fly and what will not fly or when” with regards to U.S. climate legislation.

“I definitely get the feeling that if [the legislation] fails this time then it would not come until after the midterm elections,” Hedegaard said. Those elections take place Nov. 2. The Cancun climate conference starts Nov. 29. When the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change last met, in Copenhagen, a late push for the U.S. Senate to approve a climate bill before the start of the meeting had fallen short, and this was widely seen as decreasing both the potential effectiveness and the expectations of the conference.

	Thursday, Mar 4, 2010
AICGS Advisor March 4, 2010 Alliance Asymmetries Issue #5 Alliance Asymmetries In this week’s At Issue, Executive Director Dr. Jackson Janes discusses Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ recent comments about the “demilitarization of Europe” and what this means for the future of both the Afghanistan engagement and the greater mission of NATO. To read this essay, please click here. Robert Gates and the “Demilitarization of Europe” In a speech given at a recent NATO summit in Washington, DC, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticized Europe for what he called an aversion to using “military force and the risks that go with it.” This statement provoked reactions from both sides of the Atlantic: many Americans agreeing with Gates’ assessment, many Europeans criticizing an American hunger for using military force. AICGS has compiled analysis from affiliated experts – including Stephen Szabo, J.D. Bindenagel, Michael Rühle, and others – as well as links to the best coverage of transatlantic reactions relating to the speech, available via the links below. To read Secretary Gates’ speech, please click here. To read Stephen Szabo’s essay, please click here. To access this page of links, please click here. American Institute for Contemporary German Studies 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20036 +1 202-332-9312

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The White House has said that the US President would not be attending what used to be the regularly scheduled EU-US talks, which have been planned to take place in Madrid in May 24-25, 2010 by the Spanish Rotating EU Presidency for the First half of 2010.

Honestly, why should he participate in the European Games while there are so many real problems on his plate?

The EU has three Presidents – if they cannot decide who is their President in fact – do they really expect for Obama to travel trans-Atlantic, and sit at Summits chaired by all three of them – Herman Van Rampuy, The Permanent EU President, Jose Manuel Baroso, the President of the European Commission, and the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero,    who is presently the Rotating President of the EU?

Papers write of a “Snub.” This is ridiculous and for us who watched the Copenhagen Conference that was saved by President Obama under a G-2 arrangement with China, because he had to act fast if he wanted to save the meeting from itself, and there was no strong man or woman of the EU to stand at his side, the above “News” are old hat – and we say – we told you so!  Actually, we welcome Charles Forelle writes as “World News” in the Wall Street Journal of today: “Things haven’t been good recently for Europe’s position on the world stage. Despite the new treaty ambition to make the EU a bigger player, the bloc has sometimes seen itself shut out.  At climate talks in Copenhagen in December, Mr. Obama hammered out a last-minute accord with China and other emerging nations. The Europeans were left out of the picture.” This recognition of reality in a WSJ article is very unusual – but this is real life. If the EU does not get together – and still claims 7 seats at the G-20 – rather then one seat for real – they are turning themselves, by their own choice,  into world political irrelevancy. The same is true at the UN where we see more and more a 2 1/2 seats situation – with France and the UK in Security Council seats but Germany on practical UN Security Commissions, and no EU representative with any powers what so ever.

Obama’s decision not to go to Madrid is no snub to Mr. Zapatero or to Spain – but rather the cleareeded sign that he wants to go and meet the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED EUROPE. Had Obama decided to go to Masdrid it would have been as if someone from Europe would come to a meeting of the US Governor’s Association. Just think – Germany id California, France is New York, the UK is Texas, Spain is Florida, Poland is Illinois, Austria is Vermont … etc etc. Perhapse indeed Van Rampuy should come to the US Governor’s Association meeting in order to learn what is needed in order to create out of the EU the neededpartner for Obama in order to turn the G-2 into a G-3 and to create out of the G-20 a new meaningful global body.

———————–

The best article on this we found is from The Telegtaph:
Barack Obama has snubbed the EU amid confusion in Washington over which “president” of Europe he would be expected to meet at a trans-Atlantic summit this spring.

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  – from Telegraph.com
Published:  01 Feb 2010 -
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew…

The White House has said that Barack Obama will not be attending the EU-US talks planned to take place in Madrid in May.
The White House has said that the US President would not be attending the regularly scheduled EU-US talks, which have been planned to take place in Madrid in May 24-25, 2010 by the Spanish Rotating EU Presidency for the First half of 2010.

Honestly, why should he particioate in the European Games while there are so many real problems on his plate.
US officials have expressed frustration because the Lisbon Treaty, which was supposed to give the EU a single global voice, has created a number of European presidents competing for Washington’s attention.

Even the venue for the summit, Madrid or Brussels, has been “up in the air” after a tussle between Spain, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency and Herman Van Rompuy, the new created President of Europe.

Under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Van Rompuy, President of the European Council which represents EU heads of government, should host the summit in Brussels as Europe’s lead negotiator in global bilateral talks.

But Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, insisted that he should host the summit because the EU was in “transition” after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in December.

A US official told the Wall Street Journal that President Obama had not yet received an a formal invitation to the EU-US summit, a twice yearly meeting that has taken place since 1991.

“We don’t even know if they’re going to have one. We’ve told them, ‘Figure it out and let us know’,” said the official.

Other American diplomats have blamed confusion over which of the three EU “presidents” is in charge of the summit – Mr Van Rompuy, Mr Zapatero or José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president.

“Who attends from the US and at what point will depend on who’s calling the meeting,” said a US state department official.
“There’s a competition in Europe because you now have the standing EU architecture.”

Many national and EU diplomats are dismayed at the institutional infighting that has followed the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

“The Spanish are behaving badly. They’ve made a mess of the summit but Van Rompuy and the post-Lisbon EU institutions will carry the can in the long term. The squabbling has damaged the EU in the eyes of the most powerful nation in the world,” said a senior source.

A European Commission spokesman hinted that the meeting would have to be downgraded or cancelled if Mr Obama did not show up.

“Normally a summit is a summit because it is attended by heads of state and government,” said the spokesman.

A Spanish foreign ministry spokesman said: “The EU-US summit is scheduled to take place in May in Madrid, as was foreseen and we are still preparing it.”

US officials have indicated that Mr Obama might reschedule talks with the EU in the wings of a Nato summit in Portugal this autumn.

The Auschwitz Album

This Album memorializes the arrival of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in May of 1944.

It is the only one of its kind, and it is solely due to this album that we have a visual history of what occurred in the Auschwitz-Birchenau death camp.

The album was discovered after the war by an Auschwitz survivor, Lily Jacob, who donated it to Yad Vashem in 1980.

DEMONIZING THE BIELSKI HEROES

OP-ED in The Jewish Press.
DEMONIZING THE BIELSKI HEROES.

Posted Jan 14 2009 on http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/…

And yet the slurs continue.

On December 31, Paramount Vantage released “Defiance,” which tells the
story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three Jewish brothers from a
tiny village in Nazi-occupied Belarus. They formed a guerrilla unit in
the dense woods, created a makeshift village from ghetto escapees and,
in the end, saved some 1,200 Jews from Hitler. The Bielski brothers
have long deserved to be mentioned with Oskar Schindler and the
fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The film, which is based on a book of the same title by Nechama Tec,
has garnered a shower of positive attention. It stars Daniel Craig,
the current James Bond, as the visionary Tuvia, who ended his life as
a Brooklyn truck driver. Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell (of “Billy
Elliot” fame) play Zus and Asael respectively.

The project has also drawn a more negative response.

Although smears against the brothers have long enjoyed currency among Polish
anti-Semites – who can’t seem to decide whether the Bielskis were
simpering cowards or heartless savages – they had not reached the
respectable press until word of the film’s release began to spread.

In June, Gazeta Wyborcza, an important Polish daily edited by
Solidarity hero Adam Michnik, gave prominent airing to the charge that
“Bielski partisans were involved in the massacre of 128 [Polish]
civilians by a Soviet partisan unit in the village of Naliboki in May
1943,” according to an English language translation of the article on
its website.

As a source, the paper cited an investigation being conducted by the
Lodz branch of the Instytut Pami?ci Narodowej or Institute of National
Remembrance (IPN), a Polish government-affiliated body charged with
prosecuting crimes against the Polish nation.

Since the Gazeta Wyborcza article appeared, other periodicals have
followed suit. A Polish “historian” named Jerzy Robert Nowak told
Variety, the daily newspaper of the entertainment industry in
Hollywood, “We Poles are furious. It is a scandal that anyone could
think of making a film casting the murderers who massacred Polish
villagers as heroes.”

On December 31 The Times of London published a story, “Poland Split
Over Whether Daniel Craig is Film Hero or Villain,” which repeated the
IPN accusation and said that some “Poles fear that in telling
Bielski’s story Hollywood has airbrushed out some unpleasant
episodes.” (The piece concluded by pointing out that “several members
of the Bielski family served in the Israeli armed forces,” which the
writer seemed to regard as a damning fact.)

The Daily Mail (of London) followed up a few days later with a story
on Tuvia Bielski headlined, appallingly, “Jewish Savior or Butcher of
Innocents?” It said that “critics” accuse him of “terrorizing ethnic Poles.”

None of the articles noted that the IPN’s accusation is utterly
lacking in solid evidence. It is, in fact, little more than an
exercise in character assassination.

The IPN, which has been investigating the Naliboki incident since
2001, has said that Soviet partisan detachments – which began a covert
war against the Nazi occupiers soon after the invasion of the Soviet
Union on June 22, 1941 – murdered a group of 128 Polish individuals,
mostly men but also three women, an unspecified number of teenage boys
and a ten-year-old child, on May 8, 1943.

In the roughly 300-word description of the investigation e-mailed to
me in 2007, the word Bielski is only mentioned once, in the final
line: “Jewish partisans from Tweje Bielski’s detachment also
participated in the attack on Naliboki.”

Then in June 2008 the IPN issued another statement, one that
backtracked considerably from its previous statement. Noting that some
eyewitnesses claimed Bielski partisans were “among those who
attacked,” it added that the “eyewitnesses don’t say on what factual
basis this statement is based.”

Their statements were “not supported by any other proof, for instance
by archival documents.” (The Soviet documents on the Naliboki attack
do not mention the Bielskis.) The IPN also said that “some historians”
allege the Bielski detachment was involved “but the authors don’t give
sources of this information in their works.”

“So the fact of the participation of the partisans from the Bielski
detachment in the attack on Naliboki is only one of the versions
accepted in the course of the investigation,” the IPN said.

Yet even the Polish journalist who co-authored the original Gazeta
Wyborcza story, Piotr G?uchowski, has come to believe the charge is
shockingly flimsy. In a December 28, 2008 e-mail message to me, he
said he tracked down a Polish war survivor, Wac?aw Nowicki, who wrote
a memoir in 1993 suggesting the Bielski unit was involved in the
attack.

The book has been a primary source for Polish anti-Semites wishing to
denigrate the brothers’ achievements. “After a two-hour interrogation
he said to us that he is not sure that the Bielskis were in Naliboki
on May 8, 1943,” he wrote.

Nowicki claimed he was relying on testimony from “Lova from
Novogrudek,” whose words were confirmed for him by “Vanya from
Lubocz,” wrote G?uchowski in a subsequent article for Gazeta Wyborcza.

Here’s the simple truth: The Jewish unit was not “stationed in the
Naliboki dense forest” nor “active in the area” in May 1943 at the
time of the Naliboki attack, as the IPN has alleged.

The Bielski brothers, strapping sons of a miller, hailed from
Stankevich, a speck on the map in a borderland region that has been
part of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia at various points in its
history. After the Nazis and their collaborators began conducting mass
slaughters of the Jewish population, they slowly built a ragtag
community of desperate Jews in the woods where they had tromped as
boys. On the day in May 1943 when the Naliboki attack occurred, the
brothers’ group was located in a forest called Stara-Huta near
Stankevich. It is more than 50 kilometers to the west of Naliboki
village.

It is true that since February 1943 the brothers’ unit (then a few
hundred strong) had been formally integrated into the Soviet partisan
structure, pledging allegiance to a cause that provided cover for its
rescue and resistance efforts. At the time of the Naliboki attack, it
was officially known as the second company of the October Detachment
of the Lenin Brigade in the Lida District. (The official name would
change a handful of times over the course of the war.) All of the
group’s movements were recorded in Soviet documents that now reside in
the archives of the Belarussian branch of the Soviet partisan movement
in Minsk and in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

According to the IPN, the attack on Naliboki village was not
perpetrated by detachments from the Lenin Brigade in the Lida
District. Instead, the IPN said it was carried out by three
detachments from the Stalin Brigade and “partisans from” the Chkalov
Brigade. Both brigades, based in the Naliboki forest, were members of
the Ivenets District.

The IPN didn’t respond when I asked if wandering members of the Jewish
unit participated in the attack, acting under the orders of someone
other than the Bielski brothers and operating outside of their
designated brigade structure. It probably doesn’t need to be stated
that the Soviets were very serious about adhering to lines of
authority. Soviet partisans were executed for violating even the most
minor of regulations.

The Bielski partisans eventually did reach the Naliboki forest, which
may explain why they have become mixed up in this allegation. They
first arrived in August 1943, after it became too dangerous to remain
in the area near Stankevich, only to be driven out by German attack.
Then in September and October 1943 they returned with nearly a
thousand men, women, and children and created a legendary shtetl, an
extraordinary place with tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and
gunsmiths.

It had a large kitchen, a central square for gatherings, a mill
powered by a horse, a main street, a theater troupe, and a tannery
that doubled as a synagogue. It was well known to the gentile peasants
in surrounding communities like Naliboki village on the forest’s
eastern edge. They called it Jerusalem.

It is an outrage that wartime achievements of this magnitude can be so
casually denigrated. The Bielski brothers were far from perfect. But
what they accomplished in the woods of Belarus deserves the highest of
acclaim.
———————————

Peter Duffy is the author of “The Bielski Brothers”
(HarperCollins, 2003).  He writes for The New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, and other publications.

From The San Francisco Sentinel - http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=5…

AUSCHWITZ SIGN RECOVERED IN THREE PIECES – FIVE ARRESTED
20 December 2009

“Arbeit macht frei” – “Work makes you free.”

BY BEN QUINN
The London Guardian

Polish police said Sunday night that they had recovered the infamous bronze sign to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after it was stolen on Friday.

They said it had been cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free).

Five men, aged between 25 and 39, were detained in northern Poland and taken yesterday for questioning to the southern city of Krakow, about 40 miles from Auschwitz.

A state of emergency involving tightened border controls and a nationwide search was declared in Poland last week after the theft of the sign, which was cast by camp prisoners and stands as a symbol of the suffering millions endured at the death camp.

The discovery on Friday morning that the sign had been wrenched from the top of the camp’s entrance gate sparked an international outcry.

Avner Shalev, president of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, called the theft “an attack on the remembrance of the Holocaust,” while Jarek Mensfelt, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, said it was a “desecration.”

Police suspected that a gang was responsible because the theft was carefully carried out, with the perpetrators avoiding attracting the attention of night watchmen or CCTV cameras. Sniffer dogs led police to believe that the sign was removed through a hole in the camp fence before being loaded into a van.

More than one million people, 90% Jews, died at Auschwitz, which was liberated by Soviet troops 65 years ago, on 27 January 1945.

About 500 acres of the former death camp was turned into a museum after the war’s end and tens of thousands of visitors from around the world now visit the site.

———————————-

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camps are to become an international memorial as per announcement made earlier this month – this rather then the present Polish State museum, so it seems that this act of vandalism may have been perpetrated because of plain anti-semitism.

The theft comes just days after the German government pledged 60m Euros ($86m) to an international endowment fund to help preserve the camp.
Auschwitz, which receives more than a million visitors a year, has been run as a state museum since 1947, in respect to the Polish National Sovereignty over this region that became universal symbol of humanity meltdown.
It is the first time the sign, made by Polish prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in 1940.
The Letter ‘B’ in the reversed and upside-down form is thought to have been reversed as an act of defiance-symbol by those Poles – making it appear upside-down.
Locals say Red Army soldiers were bribed to leave it in Poland after the camp was liberated.
The wrought iron sign, whose words mean “Work Sets You Free”, was unscrewed and pulled down from its position above the gate in the early hours of Friday.
Polish authorities denounced the theft, while Israel’s Holocaust museum branded it an “act of war”.

Polish ex-President Lech Walesa described the theft as “unthinkable”, while Poland’s chief rabbi said he could not imagine who would do such a thing.
“If they are pranksters, they’d have to be sick,” said Michael Schudrich.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski called on the public to help recover the sign, which he described as a “worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler’s executioners and the martyrdom of their victims”.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also condemned the theft during a special meeting with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk – in Copenhagen – as this happened while both of them were in Copenhagen because of the Global meeting of Heads of State at the High Level part of COP 15.
The bizarre event just formed another link between Holocaust and future destruction because of Climate Change – what a strange world indeed when you start noticing sick elements of what we call humankind.
In a statement, his office said Mr Peres “expressed the deepest shock of Israel’s citizens and the Jewish community across the world”, and urged Poland to “make every effort” it could to find the criminals and return the sign.

FORMER GERMAN PRESIDENT DETAILS WORLD WAR II EXPERIENCES
1 September 2009
‘It Was Horrific, And It Will Always Remain So’

Former German President Richard von Weizsaeker.

BY MARTIN DOERRY and KLAUS WIEGREFE
Der Spiegel

In a SPIEGEL interview, former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, 89, discusses his time as a soldier during World War II, resistance against Adolf Hitler and the issue of whether his father Ernst, then a senior official in the Foreign Ministry, could have stopped Jews from being deported.

SPIEGEL: Mr. von Weizsäcker, in late August 1939 you were a 19-year-old private at a military training camp in Gross Born near the Polish border. What memories do you have of the start of the war?

Weizsäcker: One night, a few days before the outbreak of hostilities, we were taken from our barracks to railway stations for loading. This was done silently and in an orderly manner, and expressly without waving citizens lining the streets. We were then deployed along the so-called “Polish corridor” as part of the first attack wave on Sept. 1. The next day my brother Heinrich was killed just a few hundred yards from me. I buried him myself. I needn’t tell you how that feels.

SPIEGEL: Did this loss of a family member change anything about your attitude to the Nazi regime and its war?

Weizsäcker: No-one who goes to war can imagine what it will do to him. But it’s true to say that the war also had a profound effect on my awareness to this very day.

SPIEGEL: How do you mean?

Weizsäcker: Because war destroys human neighborliness, because it should never be used as a political tool, because politics should promote culture. Culture helps people live together. War does the opposite.

SPIEGEL: Did you view the invasion of Poland as a mistake?

Weizsäcker: A mistake? That’s not the right expression. I’m sorry, but that’s a rather naive question.

SPIEGEL: We didn’t live through the war …

Weizsäcker: Then it’s good that you’re asking about it. That’s far better than simply knowing with hindsight far better what we oldies should have felt and known back then.

SPIEGEL: We really want to know how you perceived the outbreak of war.

Weizsäcker: My mother lost two brothers in the World War I, my father lost one. That wasn’t an exception in Germany, but more or less the norm. As a result we were deeply concerned by the thought that war could break out again. It was the basic attitude of any normal, sensitive person.

SPIEGEL: Do you mean to say that the war was not popular in 1939?

Weizsäcker: No, it probably wasn’t. Most people were distraught and scared. I remember my mother mentioning a few days before the start of the war that only 20 years had passed since people had last lost brothers, fathers, and other relatives in a world war, and that we could be facing another situation where husbands and children were killed in battle. In many families that was truly their predominant, heartfelt and entirely rational attitude.

SPIEGEL: What was your feeling about Poland?

Weizsäcker: I was one of the countless young Germans of my generation who knew far too little about Polish history and culture, and the situation it found itself in. However, we did notice a clear difference in the various sections of the population in terms of how they received us as soldiers. Once we had crossed the Danzig Corridor we arrived in East Prussia, where people were relieved that the corridor was finally being eliminated. By contrast, on the Belgian-Luxembourgian border with (Germany’s) Eifel (region), where we were transported immediately after the invasion of Poland, the local Germans were pleased to see us, although they begged us not to trigger another war by going beyond Germany’s western borders into Luxembourg, Belgium and France.

SPIEGEL: Did you share the view held by many of your contemporaries that Germany should annex Danzig and the Polish Corridor?

Weizsäcker: I was a very young man. What did I know about Danzig and East Prussia? Sure, my married sister lived there, and I visited her once. All I had experienced was personal fate. What I lacked were sound historic knowledge and my own life experiences.

SPIEGEL: In 1939 your father, Ernst von Weizsäcker, was an undersecretary in the German Foreign Ministry and therefore the deputy of Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. How do you view your father’s role today?

Weizsäcker: My father’s entire career, and that of his confidantes at the Foreign Ministry, was geared towards introducing the kind of reforms that would usher in the European peace that the Treaty of Versailles had failed to bring. Without a doubt this also meant changes in favor of the Germans, who had lost World War I. But the basic premise was that this had to be achieved exclusively by peaceful means. That is why my father remained at the Foreign Ministry even after 1933.

SPIEGEL: We get the impression that your father was one of those conservative civil servants who rejected Hitler’s methods but welcomed Germany’s re-emergence as a central European superpower.

Weizsäcker: Why this interpretation? Again I am pleased that you are asking me. What do you mean by “re-emergence as a superpower”? As a colonial power with a navy like that of the Kaiser? No. My father wanted a common European understanding about the necessity of establishing peace in Europe. When Hitler subsequently began planning war in earnest, diplomats from Italy, Britain, and Germany worked together in secret to prevent it.

SPIEGEL: You’re referring to the 1938 Munich Agreement: In an attempt to appease Hitler, the Western powers agreed to his demand for the German annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Weizsäcker: My father conspired with the British and Italian ambassadors, and they managed to talk Mussolini into convincing Hitler to accept the agreement. Nowadays the Munich Agreement is seen as a capitulation by Western democracies in the face of a dictatorship. At the time the Western powers considered it the only possible avenue to peace. In any case they were not militarily ready for another war. However, even Hitler always considered the Munich Agreement his worst foreign-policy mistake. Our present view is influenced by the fact that Munich merely delayed the onset of war.

SPIEGEL: How did your father see the Munich Agreement in retrospect?

Weizsäcker: Without a doubt he believed his mission had failed when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the war gradually spread.

‘It Was Clear Hitler Expected to Win War by Autumn of 1941?

SPIEGEL: You spent most of the World War II on the Eastern Front. In December 1941 you were within a few miles of Moscow, and later your unit was involved in the siege of Leningrad. Many of those who fought in the war are still traumatized by the death and killing they witnessed. Are you?

Weizsäcker: It was horrific, and it will always remain so. In the winter of 1941, I heard Reich Press Spokesman Otto Dietrich say on the radio that the war effort had run into difficulties “because the winter surprised us as we were approaching Moscow in December.” That was the first time I saw many of the soldiers in my regiment angrily waving their fists. Was this “surprise” the reason why we were completely inadequately equipped to fight 40 kilometers from Moscow in the heart of winter? It was clear Hitler and the other leaders had expected to win the war by the autumn of 1941.

SPIEGEL: Did you ever witness any war crimes in the Soviet Union?

Weizsäcker: Not personally.

SPIEGEL: The files of your division contain reports from late June 1941 that the bodies of “brutally mutilated” soldiers had been found. Do you remember that?

Weizsäcker: I never saw those files at the time, but I did see mutilated German soldiers. We were petrified of being captured by the Soviets.

SPIEGEL: The papers also contain an evening report from Infantry Regiment 9 dated June 28, which contains the following sentence: “Prisoners were not taken because, having seen how brutally their comrades-in-arms had been mutilated, the soldiers in the regiment no longer felt able to do so.”

Weizsäcker: Whichever way you look at it, what you are talking about is monstrous. I have never heard such a report, not even the slightest inkling. Nor did I hear about anyone in our regiment acting in the way this suggests. I therefore deny that this happened in our sector.

SPIEGEL: You seem to be annoyed by the question.

Weizsäcker: Annoyed? No, it distresses me. Is that really so hard to understand? Nobody doubts that the war was waged brutally, and that people were brutal. But the German army took millions of prisoners, and it goes without saying that not all these prisoners were abused or massacred. I’d like to point out that our infantry regiment was a long-established part of the army, and placed great store in personal behavior and discipline — even in times of war. Of course we take seriously the questions and research of those investigating the issues today. Much of what they have found after decades of research was not known to us at the time. The important thing is to promote historical and moral understanding between generations, and that can and should involve mutual respect.

SPIEGEL: You didn’t have any knowledge of the Holocaust prior to 1945?

Weizsäcker: It was only after the end of the war that I heard and tried to comprehend the word and the horrors of the Holocaust. But a friend of mine in the regiment, Axel von dem Bussche, had observed to the rear of our position that the region’s Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants had been made to dig a large trench and lay down in it, whereupon they had been shot dead. He came straight back to the regiment, and I’ll never forget how he said he had felt like lying down beside them. Axel was a colossus of a man, and highly decorated. He was deeply moved by his experience, and hearing that from him made you want to participate in the resistance to the extent possible.

SPIEGEL: Could Bussche speak openly about his experiences with his fellow soldiers?

Weizsäcke: There was a small, tightly-knit group of friends who spoke about it — albeit with the almost inevitable impotence of not being able to draw any conclusions from it. What could we have done? After all, we were far from Berlin somewhere in the Soviet Union.

SPIEGEL: What was the main thrust of your conversations?

Weizsäcker: The specific, constantly recurring problem for us in Russia was that we were forever having to pass on orders from above. Time and again it made us wonder who thought these orders up without being able to judge whether or not they could be carried out. So passing orders on and thus colluding with the orders that came from behind the lines was generally the first topic of conversation when we got together and asked ourselves how we could justify all that.

SPIEGEL: So there were several reasons why you chose to join the resistance movement: The experiences of your friend Bussche, your military situation, etc.

Weizsäcker: The entire terrible situation into which our leaders had plunged the entire country.

SPIEGEL: What was your connection to Berlin?

Weizsäcker: An even older friend — Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg — who always spent half his time in Berlin and half with us at the regiment. He collected like-minded people almost to order. In 1943, Count Claus von Stauffenberg saw an opportunity to assassinate Hitler. An officer from the front was supposed to be demonstrating new uniforms to Hitler, and Stauffenberg was looking for someone who was willing to blow up Hitler and himself on this occasion. Schulenburg suggested Axel to him, and Axel agreed to it immediately.

SPIEGEL: What was your role?

Weizsäcker: Stauffenberg, whom I knew, had sent a telegram to the division and the regiment ordering Major von dem Bussche to return to Berlin or Potsdam immediately. That was difficult because the division didn’t want any active battalion commanders being sent back to base in Berlin. I then organized papers and the travel arrangements for Axel with regimental headquarters, and notified Stauffenberg about this. However, the assassination had to be postponed because an Allied air strike destroyed the uniforms. In the meantime, Axel was seriously wounded at the front.

SPIEGEL: Do you consider yourself one of the co-conspirators of the July 20, 1944 plot?

Weizsäcker: I spoke to Schulenburg three weeks before the assassination attempt in Potsdam. He told me the assassination was imminent, and that if the plot was successful we would immediately receive instructions on how to proceed.

SPIEGEL: What would your task have been if the plot had been successful?

Weizsäcker: Schulenburg wanted to bring me and a few friends from the regiment to Berlin straight away. After the abortive attempt on Hitler’s life, 13 former or current members of the regiment were executed or took their lives to avoid falling into the Gestapo’s hands.

My Father’s ‘Sentence Was Neither Morally Nor Humanely Just’

SPIEGEL: After the war, you interrupted your law degree to help defend your father at the Nuremberg Trials. The Americans eventually sentenced him to five years in prison. You have always criticized this sentence as unfair.

Weizsäcker: My father was tried before the wrong kind of court. Foreign policy was the only work he really had any influence over and that he really enjoyed. Although the outbreak and expansion of the war frustrated all his efforts, his actions later prompted the so-called Reich Main Security Office — a part of the SS — to demand he be charged with high treason by the People’s Court. Even the wife of the then foreign minister wrote extensively about this demand in her memoirs. Luckily by the time they got round to it my father was the ambassador to the Vatican in American-occupied Rome and therefore out of the reach of the German bloodhounds.

SPIEGEL: He was also acquitted of the charge of “crimes against peace.” The verdict was based on “crimes against humanity.” In 1942 Adolf Eichmann asked the German Foreign Ministry to issue a statement on the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. Ernst von Weizsäcker replied that the ministry had “no objections.”

Weizsäcker: My father faced a central moral dilemma: Should he stay in office or not? What would and should he be prepared to accept any mission for? What could he influence personally, and what was beyond his control?

SPIEGEL: And your reply?

Weizsäcker: He remained at the Foreign Ministry in spite of all the deep disappointment it brought him. But after fastidiously reviewing the matter, he found that he was powerless to prevent the central domestic crimes against humanity. That’s why he was all the more willing to help in any specific case of persecution he had access to. This is why he remained in office. Hundreds of statements from Jews, from churches, at home, in Britain and in other countries thanked him for the many ways he protected them, as did one of the judges at the Nuremberg Trials, in contrast to his two colleagues.

SPIEGEL: So you say your father was not treated fairly at the trials?

Weizsäcker: During a confidential though recorded meeting before the trial began, the prosecutor asked my father to be a prosecution witness and agree to testify against others. The prosecutor said surely it was worth committing a bit of perjury if it meant he could therefore escape trial. My father vehemently rejected the offer. The sentence was neither historically, morally nor humanly just. The American high commissioner in Germany ordered my father’s immediate release from custody, and the first German federal president, Theodor Heuss, and many others spoke out on my father’s behalf. In a speech during a parliamentary debate in England, Winston Churchill even said American prosecutors had made a “deadly error” over my father.

SPIEGEL: Have you ever asked him what would have happened if he had voiced his concerns to Eichmann?

Weizsäcker: Of course we put this imaginary scenario to him.

SPIEGEL: It’s not an imaginary scenario, but a moral one.

Weizsäcker: The concrete effects were imaginary. Please believe me when I say that we haven’t only just discovered what a moral question is.

SPIEGEL: You mean it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had refused to approve it?

Weizsäcker: I won’t repeat the conversations we had, but of course both he and we were deeply concerned about this issue. What do you think?

SPIEGEL: We’re trying to understand what happened back then.

Weizsäcker: I have come to know and tried to portray him as best as is humanly possible.

SPIEGEL: Does that concern you to this day?

Weizsäcker: Of course. There is no such thing as historical, moral, human immunity, whether in youth or old age. I’m sure we agree on that too.

SPIEGEL: Mr. von Weizsäcker, we thank you for this interview.

The following are the top 28 finalists in the Official 2009 New 7 Wonders of Nature competition – nominated from among hundreds of sites around the world that have been proposed.

ALDE – Distribution: immediate – July 8, 2009, 11:04 am
Watson to withdraw to give Buzek a clear mandate of support

Former ALDE Group Leader and EP Presidential candidate Graham Watson MEP today announced his intention to withdraw from the Presidential contest to give EPP candidate Jerzy Buzek a clear mandate of support from Parliament’s three major political families.

“The EU is mired in a crisis – economic, environmental and constitutional,” Mr Watson said; “and the three political families which founded our Union have decided to unite their forces to save it. The European Parliament is more divided than ever, with no stable majority possible. That is why I am withdrawing from the race to be President in support of a three-party agreement to save the EU.”

“Despite renouncing my plans for the Presidency of Parliament, I will continue to argue for a stronger and more effective Institution more focussed on the interests and concerns of the citizens and more engagement with national and regional parliaments.”

Note: Graham Watson MEP led the ELDR (later ALDE) Group in the EP for seven and a half years, two and a half years longer than any of his predecessors. He built the group from a membership of 46 MEPs in 2002 to a membership of 106 at its peak in 2008.

————

In 1963 Jerzy Buzek graduated from the Mechanics-and-Energy Division of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice specializing in chemical engineering. He became a scientist in the Chemical Engineering Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gliwice. Since 1997 he is a professor of technical science. He is also an honorary doctor of the universities in Seoul and Dortmund.
From 1997-2001 he was Prime Minister of Poland. In 1998 he became a laureate of the Grzegorz Palka Award, was nominated the European of the Year by the European Union Business Chambers Forum and Man of the Year of a Polish political weekly Wprost.
After losing the parliamentary elections in 2001, he stepped back from Polish political life (although he was elected a member of the European Parliament in 2004) and focused more on his scientific work, becoming the prorector of Akademia Polonijna in Częstochowa and professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Opole University of Technology in Opole.

Jerzy Buzek comes from the well-known Buzek family, present in Polish politics since the 20 years of free Poland between the World Wars (World War I and World War II). His family comes from the Polish community in Zaolzie, a region of Cieszyn Silesia which is now part of the Czech Republic. He is a Protestant.
In the 1980s Jerzy Buzek was an activist of the democratic anti-communist movements, including the legal (1980-1981 and since 1989) and underground (1981-1989) Solidarity trade union and political movement in the communist Poland. He was active organizer of the trade union’s regional and national underground authorities. He was also the chairman of the four national general meetings (1st, 4th, 5th and 6th) when Solidarity was allowed to act legally.

In years 1997-2001 he was the prime minister of Poland, first of the right-centrist AWS-UW coalition government until 2001, and then of the rightist AWS minority government. His cabinet major achievements are 4 significant political and economic reforms: the new local government and administration division of Poland, reform of the pension schemes system, reform of the educational system and reform of the medical services system.

On 13 June 2004 Jerzy Buzek was elected Member of European Parliament from Silesian Voivodeship constituency, without printing of any posters, basing his election only on popularity of his name and on direct contact with the voters. He received the record number of votes in the whole Poland: 173,389 (22.14% of the total votes in this region).
His party is the Platforma Obywatelska which joined the European People’s Party and sits now on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.
Buzek is a substitute for the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, a member of the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and a substitute for the Delegation for relations with the countries of Central America.
On 7 June 2009 Buzek was reelected Member of European Parliament from Silesian Voivodeship constituency. Just as in the previous election, Buzek received the record number of votes in Poland: 393, 117 (over 42% of the total votes in the constuency).

============

The Original July 4, 2009 posting:

Will it be   Jose Manuel Barroso or Graham Watson at the helm of a strengthened EU?

Graham Watson MEP

Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group

He is the candidate from ALDE to the left of The European Parliament to stand up as counter-candidate to Jose Manuel Barroso’s bid to become European Commission president for a second time.’s bid to become European Commission president for a second time.

It seems that the elections will now take place mid-September – under the Swedish Presidency of the EU.

08.06.2009 – 00:36
Centre-right dominate as Socialists regret ‘bitter’ result
 http://euobserver.com/9/28261/?rk=1

08.06.2009 – 02:03
Far right make gains in ten member states
 http://euobserver.com/9/28263/?rk=1

08.06.2009 – 01:06
European elections marked by record low turnout
 http://euobserver.com/9/28262/?rk=1

08.06.2009 – 02:17
Libertas vote fails to materialise
 http://euobserver.com/9/28264/?rk=1

————-

From the ALDE – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats – faction of the European Parliament   we received the following:

Liberal and Democrat MEPs will be returning to the new European Parliament after this weekend’s European elections in almost exactly the same proportions as they left the old with approximately 12% of the seats of the House. Precise numbers are yet to be confirmed but they expect to form a group with about 85 MEPs. With no overall majority party, this will confirm their role as Kingmakers in the new Parliament.

Graham Watson MEP (outgoing leader of the ALDE group) called today for a new political deal in the Parliament that makes sense for Europe’s voters:

“Rather than the illogical, technical deals between Right and Left that we have seen in the past, Parliament needs to form a political and ideological majority based on a clear programme of action which will guide our work in the coming mandate.

Voters have expressed, once again, a disengagement with European politics by the falling turnout (43% against 45.5% five years ago) which the next President of the House must take up with some urgency. This will be the leitmotif of my campaign to become President over the weeks ahead.

The polls have also demonstrated that we still run 27 different national campaigns rather than a European one. Votes were cast largely according to national political grievances or as a vote on the performance of an incumbent Government or in reaction to a particular national debate. It is regrettable that we lacked a sense of a pan-European political campaign on the policy issues that are the substance of our work.

Finally, I very much regret the election of a number of far right extremists who advocate values of intolerance and hatred of foreigners which are anathema to the model of Europe we are trying to build. I predict that their own internal divisions and incoherence will prevent them from spreading their ideas further afield.”

————-

from another evaluation – from “The Nation”:

Far-right parties made gains in the Netherlands, where the anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders came second with 17 percent of the vote; in Hungary, where the anti-Roma party Jobbik took three out of 22 seats; in Austria, where the Freedom Party polled 18 percent; in Slovakia, where extreme nationalists won their first seats; and in Britain, which elected not one but two candidates from the British National Party–a racist, neo-Nazi group committed to white supremacy and to “reversing the tide of non-white immigration.”

What explains this ugly result? Obviously, it’s partly the economy: hungry creatures tend to turn against their neighbors. But it’s also a loss of faith: in the idea of Europe; in mainstream politics (seen as disconnected and corrupt); and particularly in the center left’s ability to come up with any alternatives. (A sliver of silver lining: in France, former sixty-eighter Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s green coalition, Europe Ecologie, outpolled the Socialists in greater Paris and in the south-east.) In Britain, BNP leader Nick Griffin actually won fewer votes than he did five years ago; the reason he is now an MEP is that the Labour vote spectacularly collapsed. Because of the expenses scandal and Labour’s recent implosion, Britain might be seen as something of a special case, but the pattern in Europe is similar. In Germany, France and Italy the center-left has been on the defensive, offering no alternative routes out of the recession.

EU turns blind eye to corruption in eastern gas trade
Andrew Rettman, The EUobserver, June 6, 2006

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The EU is sending a “fact-finding” mission to Ukraine to see if its financial troubles could lead to a new gas crisis. But it is wary of tackling deeper problems of politics and corruption in the eastern gas trade, which also threaten EU energy security. The team of senior European Commission officials will travel to Kiev “in the coming days” and produce a report in time for a regular summit of EU leaders in Brussels on 18 June.


The move comes after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine is unable to pay for Russian gas and will probably start stealing EU-bound transit volumes, unless the EU loans it billions of euros.

Ukraine’s state-owned gas distributor, Naftogaz, has poor cashflow and often avoids public audits. But Ukraine sees the Putin statements as part of a propaganda war to damage its reputation and increase political support for new Russian pipelines bypassing the country. The dispute over Naftogaz’ reliability is just one aspect of a major shake-up in the Russia-Ukraine gas business.

Mr Putin and Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are at the same time trying to strong-arm Ukraine gas tycoon Dmitry Firtash, in developments which highlight the links between politics, gas and organised crime in the region.

A Putin-Tymoshenko deal in January ended the role of RosUkrEnergo (RUE), in which Mr Firtash controls a 50 percent stake, in selling Turkmenistan gas to Ukraine. Naftogaz in March also seized €3 billion of RUE gas stocks.

A little-known, Swiss-based firm called RosGas in May took ownership of Mr Firtash’s Hungarian gas supply company, Emfesz, in a transaction that Mr Firtash has called “illegal” and is fighting in the Swiss courts. It is unclear who owns RosGas. But Emfesz has said it belongs to the Putin-controlled Russian firm Gazprom.

The events have already affected European interests. RUE’s problems have seen it cut deliveries to EU states Poland and Hungary. The Emfesz takeover means 20 percent of Hungary’s gas supply is now in unknown hands.

The Putin-Tymoshenko attack on Mr Firtash could be designed to hurt Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, and reformist presidential candidate, Arsenyi Yatsenyuk. Mr Firtash is widely reported to have given financial support to Mr Yushchenko. The Firtash-linked TV station, Inter, has given Mr Yatsenyuk lots of good publicity.

The gas shake-up may have begun back in May 2008 with Moscow’s arrest on tax fraud charges of alleged mafia boss Semion Mogilevich.

Mr Mogilevich is connected to big names in the gas trade. In one example, his lawyer and ex-wife were involved in two Firtash companies. Mogilevich associates have also worked with Oleg Palchykov, a friend of Mr Firtash and a former co-director of RUE together with Konstantin Chuichenko, now a senior aide of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Analysts, such as Roman Kupchinsky from the US-based NGO Jamestown, believe that Mr Mogilevich helped Mr Firtash get started in the gas trade and used to give him protection. One way of looking at the Russia-Ukraine gas wars is not in terms of international commerce or geopolitics, but of one criminal clan muscling in on its rival.

“People can see that Firtash is a dead fish, so they are taking little bites out of him,” one Brussels-based diplomat said on the Emfesz takeover.

See no evil, hear no evil

Mr Firtash, who denies having any business relations with Mr Mogilevich or paying Mr Yushchenko, is trying to engage EU support.

One of Mr Firtash’s employees, Robert Shetler-Jones, last year donated around €57,000 to the British Conservative party.

Mr Firtash’s small, Brussels-based public affairs firm, Macmillan, compares him to “Mazeppa” – a seventeenth century Ukrainian patriot betrayed by a fellow nobleman and forced to flee the country, leading to decades of domination by Russia.

A middleman claiming to represent Mr Firtash has also approached the Brussels offices of two large international PR firms in recent weeks.

The European Commission has so far turned a deaf ear. In March, EU officials said they were “closely monitoring” Naftogaz’ seizure of RUE’s gas – “closely monitoring” is a typical commission “holding statement” when it does not have a real position.

The June fact-finding mission will not ask questions about Emfesz.

“From our point of view, the takeover of Emfesz has to be done in full respect of internal market rules. If there is any suspicion this is not the case, there should be a notification by one of the parties. At this stage we have not received any such notification,” a commission spokesman said.

———–

Concrete steps:

UK-based NGO Global Witness, which is no fan of Mr Firtash, in March wrote to commission president Jose Manuel Barroso urging him to root out corruption in the sector by forcing all energy companies active in the EU to disclose their ownership structure and any payments they make to governments.

A director from the commission’s energy department, Marjeta Jager, replied to say that the issue is being taken care of by the EU’s “political support” for the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI).

The EITI, a global project launched in 2002 by former UK leader Tony Blair, so far counts just one country, Azerbaijan, as fully compliant with its charter.

“The European Commission has failed to recognise the danger these companies [RUE, RosGas or other alleged Gazprom offshoots] present to the energy security of the EU and has not made any attempt to convince member states to investigate the role these companies play in the supply chain,” Jamestown’s Mr Kupchinsky s