The Divided State of Europe

The TRUTH behind Sarajevo's 'human safaris': Shocking testimonies of men who watched 'elite, wealthy hunters' shoot civilians after paying huge sums for a chance to murder women and children​

In chilling detail, the case alleges that war tourists from Italy, Canada, Russia and the U.S. spent between £70,000 - £88,000 to take part in the 'manhunt', even paying extra to kill minors. While the Italian investigation is new, the rumour of foreigners engaging in bloody murder in Sarajevo has been festering for more than a decade - and now the truth may finally be uncovered.

The TRUTH behind Sarajevo's 'human safaris': Shocking testimonies of men who watched

(More on the link)

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Cries of 'Starmer out' as thousands protest against plans to house 600 lone male asylum seekers in an army camp on the edge of their town​

The march in Crowborough, East Sussex, this morning followed an angry public meeting where local politicians were shouted at and chased out of the community centre hall on Thursday night. Around 2,000 people are understood to have joined the march today, organisers said. Locals walked through the town with their children to demand the Labour government drops its plan to use the army camp for male asylum seekers. Refugee status will become temporary and subject to regular review, with refugees removed as soon as their home countries are deemed safe.

Cries of 'Starmer out' as thousands protest against plans to house 600 lone male asylum

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Sex attack horror as young Italian couple are surrounded by three migrants who smash into their car and force boyfriend to watch as they rape his 18-year-old fiancée​

A man was held down and forced to watch as migrants who smashed into his car raped his 18-year-old fiancée in Italy, according to police in Rome.

The couple, said to have been naked prior to the incident, had parked in a quiet corner of Tor Tre Teoste, a park in the eastern part of the capital, minutes before they were surrounded by the group who attacked their vehicle.

Police said the attackers broke the window and first pulled the man, 24, from the car before forcing the woman out as she tried to cover herself with an item of clothing.

The man told cops he was restrained by two of the attackers as his fiancée was dragged a short distance away.

As she was sexually assaulted, he screamed for help, begged them to stop and even threatened revenge, but was unable to break free.

After the attack, all three perpetrators fled the scene. The couple, both Italian, then contracted police and filed a report.

According to the authorities, the couple were terrified and confused. Cops also added that it was possible that there were up to five attackers involved.

Officers have since arrested three Moroccan men on charges of gang rape and robbery.

Two were traced by officers from Rome’s Flying Squad unit and detained only days after the October 25 attack, and a third was picked up in Venice a few days ago.

Investigators said the arrests were kept quiet while they continued gathering evidence.

(More on the link)

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Keir Starmer gives another huge hint he wants to unwind Brexit as he says country was 'missold' EU vote and 'wild promises' cannot be delivered​

Keir Starmer last night dropped another huge hint he wants to unravel Brexit as he hit out at 'wild promises' made about the UK's departure from the EU. The Prime Minister used his annual Guildhall speech on foreign policy to claim Britain was still 'dealing with the consequences' of severing ties with Brussels.

In an attack on the Tories and Reform UK, he said Brexiteers were now making the 'same spurious argument' to quit the European Convention on Human Rights. Sir Keir took a further swipe as he added it would be 'utterly reckless' to use Brexit as 'a template for our future foreign policy'.

Earlier this year, the PM agreed a Brexit 'reset' with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen as he negotiated closer trade ties with Brussels. But he has since hinted he could go further in moving the UK back towards the EU, with the PM having frequently attacked the 'significant' economic damage of Brexit. It was recently reported that Sir Keir's chief economic adviser, Minouche Shafik, pitched rejoining the EU's customs union to get the UK's economy growing. Observer said the suggestion, made soon after she took on the Downing Street role in September, was swiftly rejected.

In his speech at the Lady Mayor's Banquet in central London on Monday night, Sir Keir said Brexit 'broke' a 'broad' consensus about Britain's role in the world. 'We were of one mind that Britain should be outward-looking, engaged and active on the world stage. A powerful voice at the top table,' the PM said. 'That was taken as a given. Part of who we are, in line with the greatest traditions of this country, as British as fish and chips or the Guildhall itself. But then Brexit broke that consensus. I want to speak very frankly. The Brexit vote was a fair, democratic expression and I will always respect that. But how it was sold and delivered was wrong. Wild promises were made to the British people and not fulfilled. We are still dealing with the consequences today in our economy, and in trust – in the degradation of political debate.'

'Now I raise this not to rake up the past, but to learn from it. And to use it to inform what comes next. The idea that leaving the EU was the answer to all our cares and concerns has clearly been proved wrong. But that same spurious argument is now being made about the European Convention on Human Rights. With the same wild promises being made to the country by the same people: Walk away, and all our problems will be solved. To consider Brexit a template for our future foreign policy is utterly reckless.'

Elsewhere in his Guildhall speech, the PM defended his Government's thaw in relations with China. Sir Keir rejected a 'binary choice' between the 'golden age' of engagement with Beijing under David Cameron and the 'ice age' under more recent Tory PMs. Arguing that failing to engage with China was 'a dereliction of duty', he said: 'This is not a question of balancing economic and security considerations.

'We don't trade off security in one area, for a bit more economic access somewhere else. Protecting our security is non-negotiable – our first duty. But by taking tough steps to keep us secure, we enable ourselves to co-operate in other areas.

(More on the link)

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Yeah, we are to re-join EU just at a time when we are doing far better then they are.

EU is in the right state of mess now. Germany had been in recession for x2 years, France gov. is in huge debit, all the while EU parlament is pumping legislation that is out of a touch with reality.
 

Mutant 'superflu' outbreak: Schools shut down, London hospitalisations triple and people are told to wear masks as 100 cruise passengers are struck down with norovirus​

Schools are closing amid escalating flu outbreaks that are seeing hundreds of pupils off sick at a time - with staff saying it is like 'being back in Covid times'. Headteachers across the UK have warned escalating sickness rates are causing alarm with some even reducing singing in assemblies to cut the spread of illness. One of the worst-hit has been St Martin's School in Caerphilly, South Wales, where a temporary closure has been imposed after more than 250 pupils and staff fell ill.

Mutant 'superflu' outbreak: Schools shut down, London hospitalisations triple and people

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Literal war on Christmas: 5 Africans, Middle Easterners arrested over plot to murder 'as many people as possible' at Christmas market​

One year after a deadly attack on a German Christmas market, police in the country have detained five men linked to a plot to replicate the crime. The plot called for driving a vehicle into a Christmas market, as was done a year ago in Magdeburg, killing six people, according to the BBC. Three Moroccans, an Egyptian, and a Syrian were detained on Friday. Officials said an "Islamist motive” was suspected.

The 56-year-old Egyptian was alleged to have "called for a vehicle attack... with the aim of killing or injuring as many people as possible.” The German newspaper Bild said the Egyptian man was a local imam. Police said the Moroccans linked to the plot were allegedly going to be the ones to implement the plan. “Police said the Moroccan men - aged 30, 28 and 22 - were arrested accused of having agreed to commit murder, while the Syrian man, a 37-year-old, was accused of encouraging the suspects 'in their decision to commit the crime,'“ the BBC reported.

Officials indicated that a Christmas market in the Dingolfing-Landau area, which is northeast of Munich, was the likely target. Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria's state interior minister, said the "excellent cooperation between our security services" averted "a potentially Islamist-motivated attack.”

Christmas markets have become targets ever since 2016, when a failed Tunisian asylum seeker drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing twelve people and injuring 56. In last year’s Magdeburg attack, more than 300 people were injured in addition to the six people killed, according to DW. Fox News noted that Germany has beefed up security for the popular markets, citing a 43 percent increase in security spending on such events.

"The requirements have become increasingly stringent," David Russ, head of production at Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt, said. Some officials said the events may have run their course in a world of potential threats.

"The real question is why European governments are tolerating a situation where they must deploy extraordinary security just so people can safely celebrate a tradition that has been central to European life for centuries," Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, said. "They’re responding to the threat, but they’re not pushing back against the radical extremists causing it. Why are Europeans forced to navigate layers of security instead of authorities making life difficult for the people who are spreading hatred and posing the threat?" he said.

“Europe needs an aggressive strategy that targets the radicals — imprisoning them, deporting them if they’re not citizens — because you can’t secure your way out of this forever," Mendoza said. "Every year the security will increase unless the root causes are addressed. Europeans are increasingly fed up with what’s happening to their societies, and if current leaders won’t deliver transformative change, voters will eventually choose leaders who will,” he said.

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We are governed by a class of gullible idiots. It’s that simple​

Just three days have passed since the Prime Minister told us he was “delighted” by the arrival in Britain of Egyptian dissident, and alleged Islamist extremist, Alaa Abd el-Fattah.

Since then countless “abhorrent” posts from his social media have emerged. In those posts he expresses hate for Jews, says he rejoices “when US soldiers are killed”, repeatedly states that he hates white people, that “humanity will no b redeemed until we commit genocide against all white people” and that white people are “a blight on the earth…good thing they stopped breeding”.

He also expresses a particular loathing for England, describing us as “the nation responsible for the greatest number of massacres in human history”. As a result the Prime Minister is now facing demands from Reform, the Tories and even Labour MPs to strip el-Fattah of his citizenship.

We are now being told that the Prime Minister was not aware of these social media posts before they became public. This is an astonishing admission of incompetence. But much as it’s tempting to lay all the blame on Keir Starmer, the truth is that this disaster has been years in the making, is the fault of hundreds of people, and has revealed quite how stupid and incurious much of our political and media class are.

Starmer made freeing el-Fattah from an Egyptian jail and bringing him to Britain a “top priority”. This is unusual. The British state does not generally intervene when dual nationals are imprisoned in a country they are a citizen of. But el-Fattah had an organised campaign behind him. Dozens of celebrities, including Bill Nighy, Dame Judi Dench, Emma Thompson, Naomi Klein, Stephen Fry and Riz Ahmed joined the “Free Alaa” campaign, as did Philippe Sands KC, and Paul Mason.

Presumably all of them either didn’t bother to conduct the most cursory due diligence on el-Fattah, or thought that his anti-Semitic, anti-white and anti-English views were perfectly fine. I suspect it’s the former. Our silly, Left-wing celebrities love the idea of supporting a brave prisoner of conscience, especially if he’s foreign.

The campaign has also featured an utterly implausible story. El-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, has claimed that she has been on a hunger strike for eleven months, consuming “only herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts”. Soueif said that she would continue this “hunger strike” until her son was released. Campaign groups like English PEN, Amnesty and Families for Freedom all shared this nonsense without a hint of scepticism.

This lack of curiosity is apparent amongst our political class too. On December 15 last year 107 parliamentarians wrote a letter to David Lammy, then the foreign secretary. In that letter they pleaded with Lammy to do everything he could to secure el-Fattah’s release. They also claimed Laila Soueif had been on hunger strike since September 30, meaning she would have been without food for 76 days. For context, the longest verified hunger strikes in history took place in Cork County Gaol in 1920, lasting 94 days.

Even more laughably, on 26th February 2025 Radio 4’s Today programme conducted an interview with el-Fattah’s sister, Saana.

At that point we are asked to believe that Laila Soueif had been on hunger strike for 149 days. In the interview Saana told us that “I don’t want to lose my mother” to unquestioning empathy from presenter Emma Barnett. Apparently no one in the production team at Radio 4 stopped to ask whether it was in any way plausible that an old woman would survive a hunger strike for months longer than anyone else in history.

Even politicians with supposed expertise have embarrassed themselves. In September Alicia Kearns, the Tory shadow national security minister, tweeted a celebration of el-Fattah’s release from prison. She has subsequently posted an evasive explanation, in which she insists that she was “not aware of his grotesque tweets”, that she “trusted the process to give Alaa citizenship”, complains that “at no point had anyone raised them with me” and apparently tries to frame herself as the victim, telling readers that she feels “deeply let down”.

Kearns goes on to insist that she will continue to work for “British citizens arbitrarily detained abroad”, seemingly having learned nothing from the el-Fattah affair.

She isn’t unusual. Remember that 107 other parliamentarians signed that letter pleading with David Lammy. Presumably they all “trusted the process” too. That none of these people bothered to conduct the most cursory due diligence on an Egyptian prisoner they knew nothing about is a damning indictment of our political class.

These people are not serious. In no other walk of life would this blithe incompetence and lack of personal responsibility be acceptable. We are fools to tolerate it in those who govern us. It’s time for them to go.

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Marco Rubio, free-speech hero, sticks it to Europe’s censorship goons​

There are few things members of the legacy media hate more than free and “unfettered” conversations, which means there are few things they love more than the censorial European technocrat.

Thus, to absolutely no one’s surprise, certain members of the American press have come to the defense of the five Europeans hit last week with visa restrictions by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Trump administration sanctions five foreigners it considers at odds with American values: Russians? Chinese? Iranians? No, Europeans who fight disinformation and online abuse but stand accused by Trump officials of censorship,” writes New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker.

It might interest Baker to learn that the Trump administration is currently enforcing travel restrictions on Russian businessmen and government officials, Chinese students and CCP members and Iranian citizens.

NBC News published a report none-too-subtly headlined, “Europe pushes back at Trump’s ‘authoritarian’ sanctions on anti-disinformation figures,” which described the sanctioned Europeans simply as “online safety campaigners” who are “accused” of censoring “American viewpoints.” The Atlantic’s David Frum, meanwhile, made sure to shoehorn a reference to Jeffrey Epstein into his criticism — “Trump position on free speech: treason trials for Americans who report on Trump’s Epstein connections; punitive sanctions on Europeans who report on Russian disinformation.”

But if you actually read up on these Eurogoons — former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate Imran Ahmed, Clare Melford of the Global Disinformation Index and HateAid’s Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg — you’ll find they have actively worked to suppress free speech in the United States.

That’s a violation of our Constitution, their defenders might recall.

Breton is a key figure behind the Digital Services Act, the tool by which EU countries impose massive fines on US companies for violating Europe’s concept of “acceptable” speech. In December the EU fined X (formerly Twitter) $141 million for failing to comply with its speech regulations. Imran Ahmed leads pressure campaigns to strongarm social-media platforms into censoring users or removing them entirely, including an effort to get Google to ban the Federalist from its advertising platform.

Before Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Ahmed held secret meetings with his company’s London staffers to discuss deplatforming specific individuals. Afterward, according to internal documents, Ahmed listed “kill Musk’s Twitter” as a top goal.

Clare Melford specializes in turning US websites that don’t fully comply with EU speech regulations into pariahs for advertisers. Her GDI created a “dynamic exclusion list” that it shared with ad companies, labeling news sites as “high-risk” for “disinformation.” Melford has bragged that the GDI’s defunding list has had a “significant impact” on ad revenue for its targeted sites.

Tellingly, the GDI’s top 10 “riskiest” outlets are almost all right-leaning, including The New York Post, the Daily Wire and the Federalist. Reason magazine and RealClearPolitics are also in the organization’s top 10 “riskiest” news sites, even though they’re clearly nothing of the sort. Laughably, among the sites the GDI approvingly cites as carrying “the lowest level of disinformation risk” are NPR, ProPublica and HuffPost. Oh, come on!

Then there’s Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the leaders of HateAid, a group based in Germany that acts as a “trusted flagger” for the DSA, responsible for reporting and monitoring undesirable online speech.

President Donald Trump is right to ban these people.

Contrary to the sacraments of the new left, just as the United States is not morally obligated to host everyone who crosses its borders, we have no duty to welcome anyone who wants to travel here — especially not those who openly disdain the liberties explicitly outlined in our founding documents.

We don’t, in fact, have to host a Eurocrat who sees freedom of speech as a disease to be cured. We can tell him to stay home in his nation-sized museum.

But because this is the Trump era, members of the American press have naturally shown sympathy for these Euro goblins, making them the latest martyrs of the church of the resistance — whose catechism views the US State Department, rightly exercising its discretion, as an affront to Western civilization and the international order.

What nonsense.

There are a great many things for which Trump and his cabinet deserve criticism. But telling a handful of Eurotrash censorship fanatics to find somewhere else to peddle their Big Brother baloney is not one of them.

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This German is delusional, his world order also includes letting Islam absorb all of Europe through mass migration, he's a traitor to his people and a fool...

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German president says US is destroying world order​

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has strongly criticised the U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump and urged the world not to let the world order disintegrate into a "den of robbers" where the unscrupulous take what they want.

In unusually strong remarks, which appeared to refer to actions such as the ousting of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro at the weekend, the former foreign minister said global democracy was being attacked as never before.

Although the German president's role is largely ceremonial, his words carry some weight and he has more freedom to express views than politicians.

Describing Russia's annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a watershed, Steinmeier said the U.S. behaviour represented a second historic rupture.

"Then there is the breakdown of values by our most important partner, the USA, which helped build this world order," Steinmeier said in remarks at a symposium late on Wednesday.

"It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers," he said.

Active intervention was needed in threatening situations and countries such as Brazil and India must be convinced to protect the world order, he said.

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Trump imposes shock tariff on EIGHT European countries to force them into Greenland deal:

Trump imposes shock tariff on EIGHT European countries to force them into Greenland deal: Levy to increase until agreement reached​

Donald Trump has announced that he will impose increasing tariffs on eight European countries unless they agree to let the US take over Greenland. Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands will be hit by a 10 percent levy on 'any and all goods' entering the US from February 1, the president announced on Truth Social on Saturday.

Trump said that if no deal was reached by June 1, the tariff will increase to 25 percent. The president, who referred to himself as 'the tariff king,' called on Denmark to relinquish the mineral-rich territory by claiming world peace is at stake. 'Only the United States of America, under PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, can play in this game, and very successfully, at that!' Trump wrote. 'Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land, especially since the National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake.'

Trump said that the eight countries had been targeted in direct response to them sending troops to Greenland in the last few days. The president added that 'on top of everything else' the eight countries 'have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown.' 'This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,' Trump wrote.

'Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question.' The president has invoked tariffs largely under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

(More on the link)

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nivek said:
This German is delusional, his world order also includes letting Islam absorb all of Europe through mass migration, he's a traitor to his people and a fool...

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German president says US is destroying world order​

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has strongly criticised the U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump and urged the world not to let the world order disintegrate into a "den of robbers" where the unscrupulous take what they want.

In unusually strong remarks, which appeared to refer to actions such as the ousting of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro at the weekend, the former foreign minister said global democracy was being attacked as never before.

Although the German president's role is largely ceremonial, his words carry some weight and he has more freedom to express views than politicians.

Describing Russia's annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a watershed, Steinmeier said the U.S. behaviour represented a second historic rupture.

"Then there is the breakdown of values by our most important partner, the USA, which helped build this world order," Steinmeier said in remarks at a symposium late on Wednesday.

"It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers," he said.

Active intervention was needed in threatening situations and countries such as Brazil and India must be convinced to protect the world order, he said.

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Click to expand...
The US also had one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world until a year ago. What Trump is currently doing is stupid and is effectively positioning the US as a hostile adversary of Europe in an unforced manner. The US already has a treaty with Denmark that permits it to place as many military personnel in Greenland for security purposes as it deems necessary. Anything Trump has said about the US requiring sovereignty of if for this purpose is therefore bogus. The US reduced its military presence in Greenland voluntarily when the Cold War ended.
 
AD1184 said:
The US also had one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world until a year ago. What Trump is currently doing is stupid and is effectively positioning the US as a hostile adversary of Europe in an unforced manner. The US already has a treaty with Denmark that permits it to place as many military personnel in Greenland for security purposes as it deems necessary. Anything Trump has said about the US requiring sovereignty of if for this purpose is therefore bogus. The US reduced its military presence in Greenland voluntarily when the Cold War ended.
Click to expand...

The immigration issue in the US is dividing the country, but the core problem is illegal migration, not using the legal and accepted immigration program the US government already has established and available...If I was to sneak into Poland or Mexico, its likely I would be caught sooner than later, later with inside connections, and deported, if not imprisoned first...All countries typically protect their borders and limit migration, except perhaps a few countries in Europe...

I'm with you concerning Greenland, Trump has no business messing around with Greenland and pissing off our European allies...Trump needs to keep focus on domestic policies and keep an eye on Iran...Quit screwing around with Venezuela as well, he got their president who was wanted by our federal courts anyway...Now leave Venezuela alone and let those people sort out their own affairs...Trump needs to focus on America and our internal issues rather than all that other nonsensical aspirations...

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One can never trust politician, but out of all the UK politicians I like the most the way Liz Truss picks up her topics. Here she describes how delusionally overblown activism around green causes created a system in which electricity cost is x3 what it is in the rest of developed world. That in turn causes many British businesses to become uncompetitive and fail. She's even talking about danger of having blackouts, Not even to mention that we are falling behind in AI revolution because there is not enough electricity going around:


View: https://youtu.be/_46H9LWEpHs
 
Venezuela has already passed out of the news cycle. I hadn't noted any rioting or civil war; apparently the policy of leaving various people in place worked despite moral objections. Convincing US oil companies to make major investments will be far more difficult than snatching Maduro.

Greenland is an extension of the 'Donroe Doctrine' to tell China to GTFO of this hemisphere which I have no objection to. Trump has said several times he doesn't want to defend treaties, he wants to defend land we own. True motivations are not seen in what passes for news anymore and personally I wish he would stop antagonizing them and the Canadians but have to assume there's more to it all that we don't see. Certainly, the token deployments just made by European powers had more comedic effect than deterrent and I can't imagine anyone realistically expecting us to get into a real shooting war over this. Anybody needs that just wait a bit and look toward Iran.

I am not defending this but can see a point to be made there and there is a precedent of sorts in the Lend-Lease program. It's not being done in a vacuum.
 

It has finally dawned on Strasbourg’s blob that the European dream is dead​

The European project is dead. It was strangled by its most loyal lieutenants to avoid further humiliation at the hands of its American adversary. While European leaders might be sighing with relief at Donald Trump’s tariffs U-turn after they put on a stern front in Davos, they are not fêting their pyrrhic victory.

The final act of the EU Project BT (Before Trump) unfolded on two fronts this week, in Davos and in Strasbourg.

In Davos, the atmosphere was gritty but grief-stricken as Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen took to the stage. The former proclaimed the end of the rules-based order and the need for Europe to understand the true nature of power; the latter cautioned Europhiles against the seductions of nostalgia.

Inside Strasbourg’s EU Parliament, where I have been this week, the atmosphere was electric with indignation, defiance and disgust. In recent days, the European district of the city has been paralysed not just geopolitically but literally, as tractor processions protest against the EU’s faltering Mercosur trade agreement with Latin America. Though the EU wants to use it as a shield against US trade bullying, European beef farmers fear bankruptcy. As a tetchy gendarmerie blocked off neighbourhoods and petards exploded in the fog like bombs, the drama epitomised an EU vision under siege like never before.

There have been chants of MAGA – Make America Go Away – and rallying cries for the EU Musketeers, “all for one one for all”. Many view Trump as the new enemy. Several I spoke to compared the implosion of US-EU relations to the bloc’s broken relationship with China – as if these two malignant imperialists are in the same category. With Trump having merely paused tariffs rather than taking them off the table, hawks called for the EU to get on a long war footing.

But for all the fighting talk, the paralysing divisions in Parliament speak for themselves. While the Hungarians have gone rogue, the Slovakians denounce Europe as “absolute losers”. One Lithuanian MEP suggested that Europe would be safer with Greenland under American control. The Germans – who have a car manufacturing lobby breathing down their necks – have been keeping a low profile, while its most eccentric representatives call for the abolition of Nato and reactivation of NordStream. In the corridors, the Spanish mutter to the Italians about their wine and olive oil industries being set alight to protect Denmark’s “hielo colonial” (colonial ice).

The mood among parliamentarians is not only fractious but also weighed with dread. True, the EU’s threat to deploy its “trade bazooka” has won it a reprieve, as Trump delays the Greenland tariffs that were due to hit in February. But some officials doubt whether the EU can win the war.

Many fear that the Commission is too cautious to follow through on the nuclear option. The reality has also dawned that while the EU can make the US hurt, the US can cripple the EU. The bloc’s reliance on the US for cloud computing and other crucial software means that Washington can “turn the lights off” in Europe. Indeed, one heavyweight trade negotiator suggested to me that the EU has struggled in its US talks in recent months because a lack of technological and military investments has left it with a severely weaker hand.

It is a world away from the EU’s Brexit heyday. Officials who once chortled despairingly at Britain’s no-deal belligerence now dryly savage the EU’s weak negotiating position. In the members’ bar, Europhile MEPs brood about “sovereignty” and “vassalage” between sips of their Crémant d’Alsace.

EU representatives are right to feel frustration at their own side. One must not downplay America’s arsonism, but Brussels must take responsibility for a chain of historic errors which have mortally weakened the EU. Officials who shouted for years about Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic to no avail are fuming.

The EU’s conviction that it could be a major global power based on economic might alone has been unmasked as pure delusion. The Europhile blob has misunderstood not only the role but the nature of economic power in the 21st century. High on the hype of 1990s hyper-globalisation, the EU made the mistake of believing that it could reign supreme as a regulatory superpower. The “Brussels Effect” – whereby European rules inevitably evolve into the global standard – once inspired awe as a “natural law” of the global economy, inexorable as gravity; now even Europhiles morosely talk of this superpower being “long dead”. In other words, Brussels has woken up that it is not market size or legislative reach that counts.

As the EU stews over the fact that Europe’s tech stagnation has left US tech titans with the power to switch off machines in European hospitals, Brussels’ construction of a bloc dedicated to facilitating trade rather than stimulating innovation is being exposed as pure folly. The EU has become bogged down in governing the next big companies rather than building them; with protecting existing industries rather than nurturing them; with lubricating trade (not particularly effectively) over stimulating venture capital flows. It is a disgrace that Europe was once a pioneer in critical digital infrastructure, not least internet hardware, only for bureaucrats to surrender this advantage to US hyperscalers. If there was any justice they’d be held accountable.

Fatally for the EU, it will take at least a generation to correct its errors – by which time it may be too late. If anything, Europe’s technology gap with the US is growing. Military self-sufficiency is a decade away at best.

As someone who has long argued that the EU model carries fatal flaws, even I am struck by the speed at which reality has punched Brussels off its axis. It is also a sobering prospect for those who insist that the UK must respond to the American volatility by going back into the EU. Should we really be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

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Trump is right: The UK Chagos deal is an ‘act of great stupidity’​

The British government’s proposed deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to an unrelated African country would be one of the most detrimental and self-inflicted wounds in the history of global foreign and security policy. The deal would also deprive America of access to the joint U.S.-United Kingdom. military base there that was largely paid for with Americans’ tax dollars.

I am not surprised that such a bad idea should have risen to the top. I previously worked inside the politicized U.K. Civil Service, where leftist-woke obsessions take precedence over everything else. U.K. Civil servants see all British overseas territories as embarrassing reminders of Britain’s imperial past that must be expunged, no matter the cost in practical foreign policy terms.

This is especially so with the British Overseas Territories Directorate staff, with whom I personally worked. They are happy to pay Mauritius, a satellite of China with no legitimate claim to the Chagos Archipelago, to take the British Indian Ocean Territory off British hands.

To be clear, Mauritius has never held sovereignty over this territory, which has never been inhabited by Mauritians. It just happens to be within 2,500 kilometers of Chagos, and it is one of the locations to which displaced Chagossians moved starting decades ago.

Speaking of which, if these woke officials really want to make amends for Britain’s past sins, they should permit displaced Chagossians to return from the United Kingdom and Mauritius to their native islands.

It was a previous left-wing U.K. Labour government that removed the Chagossians and sent them to Mauritius and elsewhere starting in 1968. The Chagossians are not a security threat, but China and its satellite — Mauritius, with its Militant Socialist Movement government — are indeed threats to U.S. interests.
Currently, the U.S. and the U.K. rely on Filipino guest workers at the joint U.S.-U.K. military base on the island of Diego Garcia. It would be better to foster employment for the indigenous people of these islands.

Importantly, it should be noted that the Chagossians are pro-British and pro-U.S. They support keeping the base, as a provider of security and employment. The Chagossian community has been outspoken in its opposition to the proposed deal with Mauritius as referenced in governmental reports. If anything is imperialistic, it is ignoring the wishes of the indigenous community, which Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s U.K. Labour government has clearly done.

The Chagos deal absurdly requires British taxpayer to pay $62 billion to lease back the military base of Diego Garcia for the next 99 years. But if the U.K. wants to assuage its colonial guilt, it would really be better off investing that money in developing the islands for the Chagossians and the depleted British military.

The U.S. would prefer no longer continually footing the bill for global security everywhere. It is embarrassing that the UK can fit its 74,000 regular army forces in a football stadium — yet another British self-inflicted wound. That is only slightly better than the Canadian Army, which is smaller than the New York Police Department. The United Kingdom needs to start pulling its weight, rather shifting that responsibility.

One should also remember that it was the equally disastrous Biden Administration that signed off on the UK Government’s Chagos agreement with Mauritius in the first place. We should add this to the litany of Biden’s failures that President Trump is now correcting.

Ironically, the environmentally conscious Biden administration agreed to this deal, despite the threat of encroachment by Chinese fishing vessels, which are notorious for overfishing in other countries’ waters. Mauritius couldn’t hope to and will not stop that threat, which would damage the world’s largest marine protected area.

The British legal justification for this deal is totally flawed. It is based on a non-binding decision of the International Court of Justice, of which the US is not a member. Moreover, it can never become binding between two Commonwealth countries like Mauritius and the U.K. The U.K. also cites international obligations under two treaties, but these don’t apply, as they provide specific military exemptions for the Chagos Islands.

China has been spying on US military operations in Diego Garcia for years, and the Chagos deal would make it much easier. The U.S. would have no influence on the more than 60 islands around the base at Diego Garcia, on which Mauritius plans to build settlements and infrastructure with Chinese assistance.

China has expressed interest in building environmental “research stations” and other facilities that would compromise security. The deal would require the U.S. to inform Mauritius of any active operations, providing China easy access to intelligence. Equally, the U.S. can’t accept Mauritius’ membership in the Chinese-agreed Pelindaba Treaty (African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone) and other treaties that would threaten U.S. military security.

If the U.K. is content to keep trashing its interests and strategic position in the world, that is its leaders’ business. But the U.S. administration should not follow the U.K. off this cliff into what Trump has called an act of “total weakness.”

If the U.K. is so desperate to diminish itself on the world stage and sell out Chagos’s indigenous population, it would be better just to pay the U.S. to take full ownership of the archipelago. We could even name one of the Islands after Trump and repopulate it with indigenous Chagossians.

This would be a much better deal, and a lasting legacy to American justice and military supremacy in the region.

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