The original concept of supranational democracy for Europe brought long-lasting peace to the Continent. EU's founder Robert Schuman described democracy as being in the service of the people and acting in agreement with the people. What's going on today? See also www.schuman.info and http://democracy.blogactiv.eu .
The UK is about to change the main focus of its intelligence surveillance operations.
Russia.
Was Russia involved in the Brexit referendum? Did it influence the Scottish independence referendum?
How can governments know where the main threat is? Intelligence is about deception. The agencies are not only in the business of collecting information on others, foes and friends, but of deceiving enemies.
Sometimes they are so good at deception that they fool themselves. And the Public is at the end of the whole business. It gets deception information from all sides.
So should we be surprised if governments feel the main threat comes from a smaller State while ignoring a powerful foe with a population of 1.3 billion and an economy second only to America’s? And significantly Communist countries set a premium on propaganda to subvert and undermine those they consider their strongest enemies.
So shouldn’t we be a little leery of pat answers based on old prejudices?
Science not Prejudice
Who is in charge of the Intelligence agencies? It is the public in the shape of bureaucrats and politicians. If politicians cannot always be trusted, can the top spies they place in position to run the intelligence services always be trusted? Are they always honest? Politicians come and go. bureaucrats remain. If they are not honest, what can be done?
Thus Democracies often end up being run by deceived politicians trying to control the deceiving machines of the spy community.
Take the case of the recent report on Russia by the UK Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. This has hit the headlines because Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed the publication till after the election that brought him a large majority of seats in Parliament (although a minority of popular votes.)
The politicians enquiry was conducted in the years of Prime Minister May and draws on interviews of the time and published material dating even further back.
Much information has come out since then that throws the evidence into a critical light.
The Concluding Decision.
The report has led politicians to the conclusion that the intelligence services underestimated the role of Russia in the two referendums. They say that the services did not take the danger seriously. They did not investigate thoroughly or properly.
So what must be done? In the future Russia must be analysed with more care and more money.
Is this the correct conclusion? Let us turn to the key paragraphs that leads the parliamentary rapporteurs to come to this decision.
The main sources of Russian propaganda are:
Broadcaster RT and Sputnik,
Trolls and bots on the internet,
Hack and Leak of important documents, as exampled in the US elections,
Real life interference such as giving bank loans to the French National Front party.
If this is the evidence then it is pretty thin except for one point.
In a footnote the Report admits that only 1300 people on average watch the Russian broadcaster, RT. Hardly enough to swing a referendum of 46 million voters.
Trolls and bots might increase FaceBook traffic etc but what influence do these have?
Did the Russians actually turn the US elections to their favour by getting the American public to vote for Donald Trump? His opponent, Hillary Clinton and her husband, seemed to have intimate relations with the Russian government.
As for one Russian bank making a loan to a French nationalist party, it was refused loans from all Western banks. What was it to do? What loans do other parties get from foreign-owned banks or foreign millionaires such as the oil-States?
One could contrast this with China’s success in its Unrestricted Warfare policy:
taking over British Steel Ltd (after massive Chinese steel dumping destroyed the viability of EU’s steel sector).
taking over a major sector of the UK nuclear power industry as constructors.
implementing of Chinese Huawei connectors into the UK communications networks. This has made the new 5G upgrade seem inevitable. But this could lay the whole network susceptible to infiltration. What better potential for spying?
Thus the Chinese have a grip on UK construction and defence materials, the energy sector and communications. How can a State build battleships and canons if the steel is controlled by foreigners? How can you compete if the lights go out? Who needs spies on the ground when you can tap into their communications?
Russian hack is ‘evidence-free’
This UK conclusion also contrast with a group of US intelligence veterans who say that when certain politicians claim a Russian hack changed the US election results, it is 'evidence-free'.
So what is the key triumph of the Russians that shows their guilt and proves they are the main foe of the West? Surely having swung the US elections in favour Donald Trump. But did they? What is the evidence?
The UK report says:
42. It was only when Russia completed a ‘hack and leak’ operation against the Democratic National Committee in the US – with the stolen emails being made public a month after the EU referendum – that it appears that the Government belatedly realised the level of threat which Russia could pose in this area, given that the risk thresholds in the Kremlin had clearly shifted, describing the US ‘hack and leak’ as a “game changer”, and admitting that “prior to what we saw in the States, [Russian interference] wasn’t generally understood as a big threat to [electoral] processes”.
43. It appears that the Intelligence Community did learn lessons from the US experience, and HMG recognised the Russian threat to the UK’s democratic processes and political discourse.
Let’s examine the ‘Game Changer‘ as it is the main ground for the report’s conclusion. The report admits here that this was an allegation in a far different league than bank loans, trolls or propaganda TV with no audiences.
FBI hierarchy fired under Trump
It was clear from the US election campaign and later events of 2017 involving the US intelligence service that corruption ran deep in the State system. Three and a half years on, we find that almost the entire intelligence superstructure has been fired.
Spying on the President
A notable exception was Admiral Rogers head of the NSA, the National Surveillance Agency. On 17 November 2016, he revealed to President-elect Trump that his staff’s communications were under illegal surveillance by both the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation). This is not only highly illegal but treasonous as it undermined the newly elected president.
So who is in the right, the top FBI agents or the president? The FBI mandate is to investigate US-based criminal personalities. The CIA is the external agency for intelligence. But the CIA works with friendly intelligence agencies such as the British and Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand services in the Five Eyes collaboration. These other agencies can, if the CIA requests it, tap into US citizens in the USA. Hence the CIA has track on whomsoever it wishes.
Corruption and Big Money
Where does the corruption come in? Money and power. The US spends as much on Defence and intelligence as most of the rest of the world combined. A candidate who promises to clean up the Swamp is suspect and to be eliminated.
An early manifestation of the efforts of the intelligence community to oust President Trump was the ‘Dirty Dossier‘. This, according to FBI chief Comey, alleged that Trump had been caught with prostitutes and framed by the Russians when in Moscow.
This utterly untenable tale was soon proved false. Who had fabricated this fraudulent file? Who paid for it and spread it abroad?
It was a former British spy now open for hire as an independent adviser. His name: Christopher Steele. He was found to be paid by the lawyers who worked for the Democrat National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton.
Steele’s rewriting of unsubstantiated material in the dossier were so outrageous that even the supposed subsource of the information is suing him for deformation. Steele’s defence: The material should not have been divulged as it was secret.
What else do we know about Steele? He was known as virulently anti-Trump. And he is one of the contributors to the UK Parliament’s report on Russia! Mr Christopher Steele, director of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, is listed as one of the five ‘external expert witnesses.’
In the US his Dirty Dossier was mischievously introduced as grounds, countersigned by FBI chiefs, to further surveille president Trump and his colleagues. Hundreds of documents have now been released showing how this fake document was used time after time in the FISA court to sustain a criminal and treasonous activity against the president. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that requires a court to agree to any surveillance.)
The intelligence chiefs knew the key dossier was fraudulent!
It was also used to initiate the Mueller enquiry. Over several years of investigation and multiple millions of dollars, it could not find any case for Trump being involved in illegal activity with the Russians. Some 2800 subpoenas were issued by Mueller, 500 witnesses called and 500 search warrants were executed.
The Democrats then turned to an attempted impeachment based on supposed mishandling of anti-corruption matters in Ukraine. That too failed. Why the Ukraine? A cover-up is the most obvious motive as Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has now been declared to be a criminal suspect in what the Ukrainian president Zelensky declared may involve treason there.
So what about the key factor in the UK parliamentary report that is the real ‘game changer‘ for intelligence work to refocus on Russia? The allegation is that Russian hackers were able to penetrate the computers at the DNC and download files of Democrat leaders. These Russian hackers then allegedly passed them on to WikiLeaks who published them.
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange denied the information came from a State actor, that is, Russia. He hinted broadly that he received the data from a disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporter and DNC employee. He was later assassinated in unusual circumstances.
UK report’s main evidence
This ‘cyber hacking‘ is the key to how UK may spend its intelligence budget, so what have later investigations shown?
William Binney
One man should know. That is Wlliam Binney the former technical director at the NSA, the top surveillance agency in the world. He broke with NSA as a whistleblower, because it was taking and storing all data of Americans contrary to its statute. This is the spy-on-everyone, Stasi version of intelligence. Besides his career, his integrity cost him dear.
He examined the metadata of the supposed downloaded files. It was not hacked, he concluded. It was downloaded locally. The internet would not support the speed stamps that the data recorded. The files could not have been downloaded and transmitted over the internet, and certainly not across the Atlantic. The speed of the download was so fast it could only have been accomplished by attaching a drive into the DNC computer itself. It was an inside job.
This view was confirmed by a group of former Intelligence community experts who wrote a memo to President Donald Trump, emphasizing that the data was taken locally.
They wrote:
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?
Executive Summary
Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.
Something smelt foul. The intelligence community in charge refused to make any scientific evidence to back up their political assertions. They said that no evidence had been adduced that Russians were involved. Any attempt to analyse the evidence was resisted!
Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.
They concluded:
From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:
-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and
-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”
The second leak by ‘Guccifer 2.0’ was alleged to be a Russian or he may have been dressed up to be one using the CIA tool box. CIA Director Brennon was sacked by President Trump and his security clearance removed.
Thus it is highly unlikely that any Russians were involved at all. The FBI management refused to make a direct investigation of the DNC computers. They were never confiscated and examined by forensically. Instead, they contented themselves to have a contracted company, Crowdstrike, who worked for the DNC issue a report that was never finalised.
Secretary of State Pompeo has discussed this conclusion with Binney, as far back as 24 October 2017 when Pompeo was the new CIA Director. Is the UK parliamentary committee on Intelligence not familiar with this? Is the EU?
Given the importance of the issue it is appalling that the key ‘game changer’ issue has not been properly investigated in open Court.
The European Commission seems also to hold to the, as yet uncertain and probably untenable, idea that Russians cyber-hacked the DNC computer across the Atlantic internet. On June 2019 the Security Union Commissioner Julian King still repeated the Russian hack story as if it were a fact.
Are the UK, the EU and millions in the USA and across the world being fooled by what is easily testable Fake News?
How should politicians unify Europe for the health of all its citizens? How can Europeans best gain the maximum of benefits with a minimum of disadvantages? Schuman‘s presentation of the European Health Community demolishes several myths about the European Community design and also its origin.
OEEC Headquarters at Chateau de la Muette in Paris established during Schuman’s first Government in April 1948.
The first striking feature of the EHC explodes the myth that all efforts must be centred on the same Member States. The first Community of Coal and Steel had six member States: France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy. Later Communities, Euratom and the Economic Community, with treaties signed in Rome in 1957 also had the same six countries as members.
Hard core Europe is wrong
Must a Community be based on these States only? The ‘hard core Europe‘ idea is wrong. The Community is provably based on values not geography. It reinforces those values in a positive way, wherever they are found.
The EHC shows that this idea of restricted membership was not part of Schuman’s thinking. It derives from later politicians who misunderstood or purposely wanted to change the design and founding concept. Their mistakes have proved costly. So it is important to study the original principles that brought Europe peace and prosperity.
The EHC also shows that it was even further from Jean Monnet’s ideas, vague though they were. (Documents that Jean Monnet Foundation subsequently released show that Monnet had little to do with the political and legal scheme behind the supranational Community idea. His office and relationship to the Prime Minister’s office allowed Schuman to bypass hostile interministerial committees. Other accounts of the Schuman Declaration co-authors, like Schuman’s legal adviser, Paul Reuter, show the same thing.)
Europe in its diverse needs and challenges
On 12 September Foreign Minister Schuman and Health Minister Paul Ribeyre presented the plans to the French Cabinet. The Cabinet agreed. But the decision was not to present it to the Six alone but to the much larger OEEC, Organisation of European Economic Cooperation.
The OEEC was the body set up in 1948 following the US Marshall Plan. The French Government invited all its Member States to join in this common European effort of well-being. Besides the Six, it included Austria, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Turkey. Ireland was the only State to decline.
Thus the invited countries included:
One country that was still partially occupied by the Soviet Union (Austria),
One country extracting itself slowly out of dictatorship (Portugal),
Several countries that later joined the Economic Community including UK,
Neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden,
Two States at the opposite extremities of Europe (Iceland and Turkey).
Geographical Spread By making the Community open to countries like Turkey and Iceland, Schuman, Ribeyre and the whole French Government were saying that all European countries were potential members. That should not be surprising. But it is to modern ears.
Schuman’s original proposal for the European Coal and Steel Community was open to all European countries without exception. That included Russia. Schuman was asked at the press conference on 9 May 1950 whether Russia could join. He answered: Yes, of course (Mais oui!). Why did Russia not join? Simply because the European Community was based on the human rights provisions of the Council of Europe. Human Rights were the foundation for healthy rule of law. But Russia then part of the Communist system of the Soviet Union, did not allow freedom of thought or freedom of religion. It refused to join the Council of Europe. The announcement of the Schuman Government on 20 July 1948 proposed that Europe should be built on a free Assembly and a Customs Union. The Assembly saw life as the world’s first international parliament in the Council of Europe. It was aided by a Committee of Ministers, representing the States. They decided conjointly that in order to establish a lasting European Union, all States must agree to the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
The European Coal and Steel Community started with a Single Market of the main resources. This made a move to a Customs Union inevitable. At the time of the Schuman Declaration, Germany was not a member of the Council of Europe. In fact the Adenauer Cabinet were discussing whether they should join and many of the German politicians were against it. Adenauer saw the human rights guarantees as the most important decision that Germany could make as they would make a resurgence of Nazism impossible and they would block a Communist take-over of a Germany re-united with the Soviet occupied ‘German Democratic Republic’ DDR in the east. The Proposal made the Cabinet’s acceptance of membership to the Council of Europe possible. Human rights and a Community of resources with its own institutions were intimately linked together.
The Austrian anomaly
Austria occupied by UK, USA, France, USSR 1945-55
The European Health Community proposal proves that Schuman considered that the Community system is not an exclusive operation for the founding Six States. Nor must all future European integration be concentrated between Member States which had already joined the first Community or the EEC.
If human rights in the Council of Europe was vital for assuring the rule of law inside the Community, what lies behind the Austrian case? Austria did not join the Council of Europe until April 1956.
Did Schuman relax this guarantee on human rights for Austria?
No. Diplomatic papers of the time show that Schuman was leading the way in order to get Soviet troops to leave the country. He wanted Austria to have a chance to redeem itself as a normal country. After all Hitler had come from Austria and the Austrians had warmly welcomed the union or Anschluss with Nazi Germany.
The choice was to postpone the rehabilitation of Austria or to welcome it into a European Community that would help it get back on its feet again. Even though Austria was not yet a Member State of the Council of Europe, the potential of entering the Health Community would have boosted that possibility. That was already the case with its membership of the OEEC.
By making the offer for all States of the OEEC to join the Community, Schuman showed the positive aspects and benefits of a Community solution. Even though politicians did not persevere with the Health Community idea, the offer of membership to Austria underpinned its potential to have guarantees on human rights via the Community institutions. Portugal did not join the Council of Europe until 1976 but was not threatened by the USSR.
This shows the pragmatism of Schuman’s politics. The supranational institutions of the Health Community would have acted as an accelerator in the process of regaining human rights and ending dictatorship.
With all the advantages of arresting epidemics and solving health problems across Europe, and also reinforcing human rights, why did the European Health Community fail to gain the persistent support of politicians?
On 12 December 1952, before representatives of European States, French Foreign Minster Robert Schuman opened a conference on the proposed creation of a European Health Community.
If politicians had listened, Schuman’s Plan for a European Health Community would have solved today’s Covid-19 problems and much more besides.
How?
Robert Schuman, with Health Minister Paul Ribeyre on his right, opens the conference on the European Health Community.
This European Health Community would have given Europeans today a streamlined machine to deal with a broad range of problems.
It was not exclusively for the Europe of the Six. Those invited included Austria and Turkey to Portugal, UK and Iceland in the West.
Today’s Tumult
Today’s virus tumult has already cost untold billions in damage to the economy. It will cost untold billions more.
European top leaders met in an extraordinary five-day European Council in mid-June 2020 to work out a multi-trillion euro plan to rescue the European economy from mortal collapse. The world’s largest trading unit is in danger of falling down as the centre of its historic age of prosperity it had enjoyed since 1950. That’s when the first European Community set Europeans on a path to three-quarters of a century of peace and prosperity.
Today Europe is left with a ramshackle, uneven way for tackling the COVID-19 crisis. The Health Community, in contrast, aimed to provide a democratic and scientific way to reach consensus. It also had safeguards against global politics that today we see wrecking the western economy.
Would it have saved lives?
Yes.
Would the economy have avoided such a costly lockdown?
Yes.
Would it have replaced today’s secretive Councils that extract trillions of extra taxes without taxpayer representation?
Yes. It would have put all financial fiddling under the spotlight of open democratic control.
It would have also tackled the future problems that only some politicians will face Europe in the coming years when most people are closing their eyes.
The Community Thread
The European Community was a revolutionary idea of genius. Instead of war, it brought peace and prosperity. Instead of hatred, it brought trust among nations and cooperation between former foes.
Five short years after WW2, on 9 May 1950, the French Government had proposed a European Coal and Steel Community, ECSC.
Why did Schuman, the Father of Europe, consider that this further Community was required? What have medicine and pills in common with coal, steel, canons and battleships?
Schuman was not motivated by utopian ideas of a Federation of Europe (he denounced it as unrealistic) or by American theories of ‘functionalism‘. He was not interested in adding further bureaucracy, rather the reverse. He was not interested in creating a huge European budget. In contrast to many leaders today, he wished to reduce taxes and make individuals freer and more prosperous.
He worked for one goal.
Stopping War
Stopping the outbreak of a further war in Europe was the key concept behind the ECSC. It succeeded. By 2020 none of the Community’s Member States had had attacked another for three-quarters of a century. No period in Western European history has witnessed such an event.
How did it stop war? Schuman government in July 1948 proposed the formula: a democratic European Assembly — that saw light in Council of Europe and a customs union. The Assembly was instrumental in setting up Europe’s first Court of Justice, the Court that responded to governments’ abuse of power. All States who joined the Council of Europe had to sign up to the Convention of the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Citizens could take their grievances to the Court, not only to get redress but to stop governments slipping down the slope of autocratic powers against the citizens, like the Nazis and the Fascists.
Armed with this shield to defend democracy, Europeans then benefited from the Coal and Steel Community that outlawed industrial cartels. In the lead up to two world wars industrial cartels had manipulated governments by stoking an arms race. The great national champions of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia had been working together with a common design to make the national governments procure more arms, build more ships and exploit their patents for profit.
The European Coal and Steel Community combined with the Council of Europe created three major advances for all Europeans. They
reinforced Democracy,
outlawed war between themselves,
strengthened their common defence against aggressors.
The later European Communities, Euratom and the Economic Community did the same things.
Euratom outlawed Atomic war between European States,
The EEC or Common Market outlawed Trade War.
The Council of Europe ensured that citizens’ rights, such as freedom of thought, assembly and religion were respected. And the freedom to criticise their leaders.
That stalwart defence of democratic values and human rights is now clear to all who wish to study European history. But what was behind the European Health Community that Schuman proposed in 1952?
Its Purpose and Compass
French detractors called the Coal and Steel Community Schuman’s ‘Pool‘ as if the only function was to share the resources of coal and steel. The European Health Community was therefore dubbed ‘the White Pool‘ to contrast it with the black pool of coal.
Was the proposed Health Community merely going to share or pool white bandages, garments and pills?
Far more!
If that had been the motive then there was no need for the elaborate draft treaty that had been prepared. It tells the whole story. Disease is as devastating as war. Health is the way to prosperity.
Schuman’s supranational idea of a European Community was focused on two goals:
Primarily his motive was to create a means to stop war. Schuman wrote:
‘We must remove any motive for a war {between Europeans Member States} suppressing it so no one has the temptation to undertake one.’
Secondarily, the peace-enhancing Community would seek out all means to create benefits for all by drawing on a single market, shared contributions and strategic outcomes.
Paul Ribeyre, the Minister for Health who worked on the project with Schuman, declared that the health of citizens was the first consideration of the State, to which all other values must be subordinated. The first duty of the Statesman was to assure the health of citizens because the foundation of the State depended on it.
But there is far more.
The agreement in the Cabinet of the French Government on 24 September 1952 was merely a first step to broadening the domain of better health to a wider geographical boundary. It extended far beyond France, far beyond the Europe of the Six of the black pool of coal and steel.
On 16 September M. Ribeyre presented his plans to the French Cabinet who gave him approval to take it to members of the OEEC, Organisation of European Economic Cooperation. This was the body set up following the US Marshall Plan, now called the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Ribeyre invited Member States to join in this common effort of well-being. Besides the Six, it included Austria, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Turkey. Ireland was the only State to decline.
The broad compass of States indicated the extent and importance of the plan.
Could a Near East Community arise to become a prosperous body like the European Community did after the devastation of two world wars?
Schuman created
1. the Council of Europe that oversaw Human Rights and abuse of powers by States and governments.
2. He created the Community system that identified the cause of war and replaced the temptation for enterprises or States from going to war by a single market that ensured better prosperity.
The Community was given institutions that represented:
State ministries as representatives of national interests;
organised civil society including consumers and
a parliament that represented the rights of individuals.
The High Authority or Commission was to provide independent arbitration and was able to make proposals to the advantage of all.
A court ensured fair-play.
What should Europe do about ‘Israeli occupation‘ and the ‘Palestine problem’?
Europeans should first get the facts:
Free themselves from bad habits after years of blackmail.
Be objective. Stick to real human rights and property law, not pretence.
Be pragmatic.
Above all analyse the Fake News.
Don’t be deceived any more by the Disinformation Deception from Soviet Cold War times.
Question:
Is part of Palestine really being occupied and colonised by Israel?
If Europeans get the wrong answer to this question, then it can seriously affect European internal stability. It requires a general application of principles of law. Remember parts of Europe have been occupied by military force many times in its history.
Let’s start with analysing how and by whom Europe is pressured at the moment about ‘Palestine’. We will also discuss Why.
UN leverage
The United Nations created a U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. The Rapporteur, Michael Lynk, is urging the European Union to take action against Israel if Israel moves forward with its plans to extend its sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, and parts of Judea and Samaria. He called upon the European Union to ‘develop a menu of countermeasures.’
In his 26 June 2020 statement to the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, Lynk said:
‘It has sometimes been said by critics of the EU’s foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine that it suffers from paralysis and inaction. Nothing could better demonstrate that this argument is misplaced than for the EU to back up its criticisms of Israel’s occupation and looming annexation with a decisive menu of counter-measures.’
Why is Europe hesitating?
Mr Lynk urged European States to suspend certain Israeli goods from entering the EU. He wants the EU to downgrade its EU-Israel Association agreement and also the research and high tech programme Horizon and Horizon Europe 2021-27. Israel ranks third in participation in this high tech research collaboration. So this decision would cost Europe dear in economic development.
What does Lynk want? He urged the EU to ‘insist that Israel honour its obligations under international law and end the Gaza blockade, while taking the necessary steps to enhance Gaza’s economy.’ He does not mention that Gaza is ruled by Iran-funded Hamas that has declared jihadi war against Israel. He does mention it conducts: ‘beatings, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill treatment‘ of Gazans.
Nor does Lynk mention that Hamas is on the EU’s List of Terrorist groups. Why?
What sort of lawyer would advocate agreement with a terrorist group aimed at jihadi destruction of democratic States and civilised values? Is the UN being used as a ventriloquist dummy? For whom? Is it being used as leverage for anti-Israel policy and global antisemitism? Should Europeans obey the voice of this Canadian associate professor of labour law as above that of the European people and their interests for peace?
First we have to disentangle two layers of disinformation:
Soviet and
Arab anti-semitism.
How Europe first got blackmailed
When parties cannot agree or a legal process is impracticable or unwanted, then force is often used.
Ever since the 1973 and 1979 Arab Oil Embargo, Europe has succumbed to blackmail on its foreign policy about Israel. Petrol was rationed. The motorways were closed at the weekends.
In the seventies, European governments were told to either change their pro-Israel policy or they would get no oil. To reinforce this message the Arabs quadrupled the price of oil in 1973 and quadrupled it again in 1979. They also wanted Europeans to deal with the poverty that high oil prices had caused across north Africa and elsewhere. That is not free trade. It is blackmail for political ends.
In 1972 European Community States had a huge budgetary surplus. It was cut to ribbons.
So at a meeting in Venice 22-23 June 1980, European foreign ministers, meeting outside the framework of the European Communities, agreed to Wahabi demands to change their foreign policy. It supported the aims of Saudi global religious domination and also radical Palestinian and Marxist groups. The European ministers were afraid to present their submission to blackmail to European democratic institutions, like the Parliament. They were enslaved but Europeans got their oil.
Half a century later things have changed. Today, the blackmailing cartels no longer have the same power to control Europe’s energy policy. EU refused to deal with it using its own anti-cartel powers that Schuman provided. But US shale oil and its energy independence bust the cartel. Europe has nuclear power and now some native ‘green’ energy.
Oil spurts out of the ground in Saudi Arabia costing a couple of dollars a barrel. Anything above that is pure profit and was used without real supervision of the West. No viable energy policy. No safeguards about misuse of this wealth.
A mega-disaster was inevitable. Consumers have been fleeced by the oil producers and distributors for half a century. The cartel, trying to enforce its anti-Israel policy, pushed the oil price to nearly $150 a barrel in 2008. Western economies collapsed but survived.
Recently when the Covit-19 virus also crashed the economy by other means, the oil cartel was taken unawares. The oil glut crashed its market. Petroleum was being sold at negative prices! People were paid to buy it and take it away.
That exposed the cartel.
What exactly is Israeli “Occupation”?
At the United Nations, the Soviet Union had consistently taken an anti-Israel position. With bag-loads of money being dispersed, many poor States voted agreement with UN resolutions arguing that Israel is always in the wrong. It has been in ‘Palestine‘ too long and its ‘occupation‘ is bordering on colonisation. It is therefore wrong. Is Israel guilty of ‘prolonged occupation‘ and its victims of colonisation?
In 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed a Canadian associate professor Mr Michael Lynk to try to establish a legal basis to condemn the Israeli based on ‘occupation‘ of ‘Palestine.’ But many States in the UN occupy others. So how can Israel be categorised further? Colonisation. He presented his case to the UN by inventing a new concept of ‘prolonged occupation‘ as a form of colonisation. It was therefore illegal. All States would agree.
At first Lynk tried to create general legal principles about ‘Prolonged Occupation.’ These were hardly general as they were his means to deal with Israel specifically and what he sees as the ‘Palestine problem‘. Prolonged occupation leads to annexation, he says. It differs from colonisation or licit defensive occupation. He postulates four criteria to declare ‘prolonged occupation‘ illegal:
• An occupier cannot annex;
• Occupation must end soon;
• Occupier must act for interests of the occupied people;
• Occupier must act in good faith.
Are these valid? There are general principles and they can be applied but not at the expense of oversimplifying the Palestine Arab problems of the West Bank or Judea /Samaria.
No occupation by one culture of another can be expected to be without complaints about civility and overreach. Nor does hardly any government expect a free pass about civility from its own citizens. Demonstrations are a part of democratic life. And so a civility deficit cannot be the criterion for colonisation.
No army will leave soon based on a partisan list of offences. Nor would recourse to violence help a civility deficit. Forbidding annexation assumes the occupier has no inherent interests or rights there. That is seldom the case or the claim.
But occupation, whether military, humanitarian or otherwise, does not override Human Rights.
Whether occupations are ended soon or not, the Human and Property Rights involved cannot be ignored. Some rights are hereditary. No army or political organisation such as the United Nations can abrogate them by partisan resolutions.
Mr Lynk has a flimsy basis under international or universal law, especially when other countries get a free pass. When, however, Mr Lynk turns to the interests of the occupied people and acting in good faith, he is on more solid ground, not for constructing artificial international laws as an excuse for war or sanction against Israel, but for arriving at solutions to international problems.
Let me give some examples.
Occupied Europe
Germany occupied Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 and swallowed up France’s strategic iron ore resources. It tried to create what it called Reichsland, imperial territory, tied to Prussia. The Prussian administration tried to change the population by encouraging emigration of natives and implanting Germans. It changed the administrative institutions to German ones. However, after WW1, it was returned to France without a formal referendum.
The question of who was the occupier, whether French occupying German territory or vice versa or whether Alsatians and Lorrainers had the right to independence was liable to make the Alsace-Lorraine question insoluble.
How was it resolved?
In 1910 the Lorrainer, Robert Schuman, architect of European Community system and Europe’s longest peace, wrote his D Jur on the juridical concepts behind occupation but in the restrained and theoretical terms necessary to gain a distinction of summa cum laude from a German university. He had been an undergraduate at different German universities. He was taught by professors who were the German delegates at The Hague peace conferences. They had taken opposite positions on several issues relative to international law. He learned both arguments.
Examples how occupation was resolved
Schuman was later active in resolving three crucial occupation problems of Europe that could have led to further war. The Council of Europe brought West Germany into a framework of human rights that gave citizens the means to refuse neo-Nazis and Communists. That move was a greater prize than instant reunion with Communist East Germany. The Community solution was also crucial for ending the Soviet occupation of central and eastern Europe.
De Gaulle wanted to make the Ruhrindustrial complex a separate entity from Germany. He wanted to move French borders up to the Rhine. That was military thinking. Schuman took a different tack. His policy and legal understanding created a permanent solution.
The Saar also was an area alternatively occupied by both French and Germans. This too was solved by Schuman’s understanding of occupation law and supranational rights.
Palestine and the Geneva Convention fraud
With this understanding we may turn to Mr Lynk’s comments about Palestine. He maintains that the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 applies to the Palestine-Israel dispute. Various UN Resolutions, including Resolution 237, mention this Convention in a sideways fashion.
It is nonsense to use it in this context. Palestine — that is a theoretical Arab State called ‘Palestine‘ — did not exist in 1949. Nor does it exist today. The Palestine Liberation Army/ Organisation was not even formed until the 1960s.
Even today, the so-called ‘State of Palestine‘ is an observer, not a signatory member. It is a phantom State.
Despite several applications for membership to the Geneva Convention, it was refused. Why? it was told:
Because the international community is uncertain as to “the existence or non-existence of a State of Palestine.”
That’s why the Resolution recommends use of the Convention. It is not mandatory or a legal process.
Only signatories of the fourth Geneva Convention are allowed to bring a dispute under this Convention.
Attempts to use the Fourth Geneva Convention in European law have failed.
French lower court and the Appeal Court threw out a case on east Jerusalem by Palestinian Arab activists trying to apply the Geneva conventions against Israel. The complainants have to be signatories, and the latter have to be States. The French Courts did a thorough study of the laws, That contrasts to political declarations and resolutions.
The Courts examined the fraud that politicians were trying to foist on them. Both the original case and the appeal exposed the fake ‘State of Palestine‘.
Why is it a fake?
Which Occupation?
Saladin: a Kurd born in Tikrit, modern day Iraq
One Arab declared to the press that Israeli occupation was illegal because, he said, his ancestors had been given the land by Saladin.
The problem with that argument is that Saladin was a Kurd from Tikrit in modern day Iraq. He has as much right as Saddam Hussein, who came from the same town but more recently. A twelfth-century, foreign invader won’t cut it. Saladin’s alleged donation and any claim based on it is on shaky, legal ground.
Military conquest provides no long-lasting legality. Subsequent prolonged occupation provides not an atom of sovereignty to the occupier. Once the army leaves the natives can reassert or reclaim their property if necessary. They can re-establish their own laws. Anyone “given” property by a foreign military invader is automatically suspect.
On this argument Saladin’s offspring or the Kurds of Iraq would have a legacy not only on Israel, but on the future of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, regardless of who is now in charge.
A lot of events have happened since Saladin. The Arab in question would have to explain legalities under various subsequent changes of military occupation, whether Kurdish, European Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks or the British.
Murdering an owner or killing him in battle does not change property rights of the surviving family. Once the army has left, identifying oneself with the murdering group (especially a foreign one) generally excludes anyone from a property claim.
Many armies have also displaced and slaughtered Jews there.
The Crusader Europeans were involved in a mere score of battles in the area. They claimed they were trying to recuperate religious access to sites. They occupied what they claimed to be the Temple Mount. This occupation does not grant later believers or churches the deeds of ownership. The same goes for some Muslim claims for the Al Aksa mosque that involve mythical inventions based on supposed dreams and fabulous beasts, misapplied geographically. They would be laughed out of court.
Only one claim can stand up in any international court when it comes to the Temple Mount. That is because it has been reaffirmed by countless international and national legal judgements.
Palestinian ‘legitimacy’
When speaking to western politicians the Palestine leaders claim sovereignty of the ‘West Bank’ but their flag and documents show they claim all the land called Israel.
Why is their emblem the eagle of Saladin? Did Saladin, the twelfth century warrior in the Sunni-Shia Isma’ili power struggle, provide their only fig-leaf of legitimacy? They claim to own Palestine but it is spelt Falestin in Arabic.
Saladin marks the triumph of the Sunnis over the rival Shia Fatimid caliphate, based in Egypt. He undermined it from within. So is the use of the Saladin eagle the dominant story behind the ‘Palestinian’ claims? Does this claim rest and fall with Saladin?
If so, then they will have to be tested in a Court of Law. The evidence that the ‘Palestinian Arabs’ cannot even spell the name of the region properly, ‘Falestin’, shows fraud is taking place. Palestine, that derives from ancient Greek. The name was imposed later by the Romans. Arabic has no letter ‘P’.
Why not the Ottoman Turks?
Why Saladin and not the Ottoman Turks? The Ottoman Turks held the land from 1517 to the First World War.
Sultan Selim I conquered Egypt the seat of the Abyssid dynasty. Its last caliph, as prisoner in Constantinople, caliph Al-Mutawakki III surrendered the seals and titles of office of the caliphate to the Turks.
The British had conquered Palestine in WW1. They were aware of whose land it really was. That is why the League of Nations declared it a Homeland for the Jews.
In Israel then most of the territory was not owned by people such as farmers as the land was barren. In the Ottoman Empire some land was owned by absent landlords and the law said if they did not re-iterate the claim the ownership lapsed. The deeds had to be signed and witnessed by the authorities. The largest part of the land thus fell to no control or that of the Turkish caliphate. But it was strictly speaking not the owner except by conquest. Under the British Mandate it was therefore controlled by the British acting for the League of Nations. When the State of Israel took over, then the land came under control of the new State -- but it was not the owner by deeds. Individual property is a different matter. There property deeds are important to argue who is the real owner.
A person who was robbed of his property has another option. He can buy the property from the squatter. That is what some of the characters in the Bible were forced to do. Then there is no further dispute: he has his original claim and the claim of the squatter is annulled.
Global agreement under the League of Nations
The British under Prime Minister David Lloyd-George reinstated the Jewish claim. They did not do this out of favouritism, as in some ways it was against their national interests and their relations with some Arab States.
After the resolution at Sanremo on 25 April 1920, standing from left to right: Matsui, Lloyd George, Curzon, Berthelot, Millerand, Vittorio Scialoja, Nitti
The British and other States represented at the League of Nations were familiar with the history of the region. They created a special Mandate for Palestine for the return of Jews to their homeland at Sanremo in April 1922. The Jews were to be known as Palestinians.
Most of the land area was held in the name of the Ottoman Turks and became in consequence the national property of the new State– Israel.
The League of Nations were motivated by principles of international law. It was also clear from historical documents and the Bible that Jews and Israelites had from the days of Abraham possessed the title to the land for four millennia. They had continually reasserted their claim despite waves of military conquests. Their ownership was recognised by historical figures such as Cyrus of the Persians and Alexander the Great of the Greeks, It was recognized by Julius Caesar and confirmed by Augustus.
That is why the Mandate for Palestine traces the borders of what were ancient Israel. When the British decided to cede some of the Mandate territory ‘temporarily’ to Abdullah, the Hashemite from Mecca, they cut off a major part of the territory.
The Dead Sea Scrolls from the Judean desert provide proof of the connection.
Archaeological finds show that the land was Jewish from the time of King David well into modern times. When there was any dispute with those who occupied the land, they had bought the land from these alleged owners, often at exaggerated prices. That should have solved the legality issue.
Israel at the time of Jesus Christ
Which expulsion?
Judea is the ancient Jewish heartland. It is named after Judah, the patriarch of all Jews. Samaria was the land of the northern Israelites.
Where is it today? It was illegally occupied by a foreign power in 1948. The name was an embarrassment so it was changed to the ‘West Bank‘.
That foreign power was Jordan, ruled by the Hashemite monarchy that was driven out of Saudi Arabia by the Wahabis. What right have Arabian refugees to a place called Judea? What right do they have to the ancient land of northern Israel called Samaria? Then called Transjordan, it was recognised only by Britain and Pakistan.
Centuries before the Crusades and before the Arab-Muslim invasion, many families of Christians and Jews had been living in Judea/Samaria/ West Bank and Jerusalem. They were expelled or forced to flee especially in the post 1947/8 period. Many still do not feel safe to return to their properties in such areas, even under ‘prolonged Israeli occupation‘ – but not because of the Israelis but because of the later occupiers turned terrorists. The UN resolution 242 says that Israelis must ‘have the right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders, free from threats and acts of force‘.
So who owns the property rights of the land?
King Hezekiah bulla found at Jerusalem.
Property rights and occupation
When some Britons bought property in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, the Greek families of the original owners reasserted their property rights in both European and UK Courts. The Courts decisions were unanimous. The occupant has no right to sell a house there to a British would-be buyer. A occupant is not the owner for a legal sale.
The families of those Jews chased from their properties in Poland during WW2 have a right to reclaim them.
How far does this principle go in Law? Independent Israel was occupied by the Roman Pompey around 61 BCE. Then it was further occupied militarily by the Roman Empire at Constantinople. All this while Jews expelled abroad claimed their ancestral property and other Jews lived in parts of the land proving the claims. Parthians and Persians came and went.
The Jewish claims were repeated frequently orally and in writings. Archaeological finds, such as royal seals, are evidence of property ownership dating continuously from more than 3000 years. The League of Nations rightly recognised these claims and interests. The UN confirmed them in its founding Charter. For the best part of a century before the 1948 war, Jerusalem, capital of Mandate Palestine, had maintained a largely Jewish majority despite its afflictions.
Which “Palestinians”?
‘Palestinian‘ property is complicated by other factors. Disinformation.
The League of Nations Mandate on Palestine (Article 7) defined the Jews wanting to live in the land as ‘Palestinians‘. The Arabs refused almost without exception to be called by that name.
Official documents of Palestine, including bank notes and stamps, bore the initials for Land of Israel, aleph yod. It stands for Eretz Israel, the term in Hebrew used multiple times in the Bible and Jewish writings.
Only after 1948 was the name of the country (Palestine = land of the Jews) dropped. The Jewish government changed the country’s name.
It became Israel.
British Passport of Moshe Dayan’s mother, Dvorah Dayan. ‘Palestinian citizen’ meant that she was Jewish.
Moshe Dayan’s mother, Dvora, had a passport issued by the British authorities that gave her nationality as a Palestinian citizen, meaning Jewish. Palestinian, according to the international legal authorities of the time, meant a Jew who was legally recognised by all the Member States of the United Nations. He or she was entitled to own property and form the government of the lands of the Mandate territory.
Legal Passports
The Dayan family were not unique. This was the general rule for all Jews under the Palestinian mandate. Jews in the land of the Mandate and those who entered it as part of the Mandate were given such Palestinian passports as their unique passports. They had to give up any other passport or national identity they had.
That means that Palestine passport-holders, Jews and a small minority of others in Palestine, were the only persons legally able to call themselves Palestinians.
That still applies today, except that the Palestinian passport holders have all now changed their passport for one saying Israeli citizen.
Then in the Cold War period, the USSR and some others tried to muddy the waters and stir up confusion.
First, they tried to distort what Palestinian identity meant in general terms for the public and then they tried to change or distort what it meant in international law by resolutions in the United Nations where the USSR had the controlling influence over many developing States.
Only in the decades after Israeli independence did the Egyptian-organised, Soviet-backed ‘liberation army’ take up the name Palestine. This was part of the ideological Cold War effort of the USSR. It funded the ‘armed struggle’. It educated leaders of the ‘Palestine Liberation Organisation’ in Moscow to join its other liberation movements in the Cold War.
It as a fraud. It showed. Syria’s leaders and others refused to accept Yasser Arafat because of his Egyptian accent and links, fearing it was a plot against them.
USSR changed the meaning of Palestine
Changing the meaning of a key word is a powerful tool of disinformation. Lawyers should designate it as criminal fraud. Propagators show their own culpability and purpose.
The Soviet Union’s spy agency, the KGB, was expert in this type of confusion. Disinformation was the KGB’s largest department, not spying.
Before Israel became independent again in 1948, the whole land of the Mandate was known as Palestine (in Greek, it means the old narrows, a thin stretch of land between Babylonia and Egypt). It is the chokepoint of the Fertile Crescent.
During the Palestine Mandate period, Jews were called Palestinians. The Arabs there refused to be called Palestinians. They usually called themselves South Syrians or said they were Arabs from Egypt, Saudi Arabia or elsewhere as their surnames usually indicated this. Their civil rights were protected under the Mandate.
Palestine = Israel
In Mandate times the general public around the world recognised who Palestinians were — Jews in Palestine. In the 1920s Americans who liked jazz sang about Lena, the Queen of Palesteena who played the concertina for Jews there.
Jews around the world came to the country under the Mandate and called themselves Palestinians.
Palestine Post is today’s Jerusalem Post
Up to independence in 1948, the main newspaper was called the Palestine Post. After independence it became the Jerusalem Post.
After independence the Palestinian Jews and others with passports became Israelis. British Palestinian passports were changed for Israeli ones.
All the institutions of the government under the Mandate and its financial obligations became Israeli.
The Israeli government signed a financial settlement with the UK in 1950 on such things as the currency and bonds as successor to the Palestine Mandatory government.
Palestinian as a national descriptor disappeared for a decade or two. it became defunct. But some plotters saw an opportunity for trouble. It took the best part of a generation for memories to fade and another story or myth to be inserted into the public’s minds.
Then in the 1960s the USSR’s KGB invented the concept of the Palestinian Liberation Army, PLA. It was formed by the Arab League meeting in Alexandria in 1964 and had brigades from Syria, Egypt and Jordan, largely under their rival national control.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation was under Egyptian control. After the failures of these States who invaded in the Six Day War, Yasser Arafat and his militant Fatah movement took control.
What Liberation?
To anyone who has lived through the events the idea of Palestine Liberation was utter nonsense. A military re-occupation by rival Arab States would have been a bloodbath. The Egyptian president Nasser had made clear what he would do to any Jews found there.
Palestinian meant Jew! But the USSR policy was then against Israel, so they chose an Egyptian-born Arab, Yasser Arafat. He was trained in the KGB’s centre at Balashikha outside Moscow with others. They were educated them in revolutionary tactics. In the mid-1960s the USSR set them up to lead a liberation of Israel- Palestine by plane hi-jacks and terrorism!
The trick involves changing the meaning of an important name in history by terror to mean something else, the trickster’s ideological position. This obscures the older, true history. Changing the meaning of a key word is well known disinformation technique. It is a subtle way to alter the real context of a problem.
Which land?
Geographical fluidity, shifting border demands, is another evidence of fraud. Jordan had illegally occupied the region previously called Judea.
Surprise, surprise!
The original PLO of the early 1960s did not make any claim to this area of Judea, the ‘West Bank’. Only later by a clever public relations campaign was it called the ‘West Bank‘. The PLO targeted only the liberation of the area West of Jerusalem such as Tel Aviv and including all the coastland to the Mediterranean.
The PLO refused to say Jordanian occupation of Judea/ West Bank was illegal. In any case it was then no part of its ‘Palestine’.
In its 1964 PLO Charter, promulgated from Jordanian-occupied east Jerusalem, the PLO stated:
‘This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area.’
So there should be no question about claiming the West Bank! After 1967, Judea and Samaria, the area militarily occupied illicitly by Jordanians but recuperated by Jews, then became ‘Palestine‘ for the PLO. Jordan, not the PLO, claimed East Jerusalem.
Shifty borders, shifty thinking, but not a legal process.
The PR term ‘West Bank‘ dates from this same factual fluidity. Arab rejectionists saw little political mileage in saying they wished to eradicate Jews from Judea (a term used earlier in UN and League documents). Arabs from Arabia would have zero credibility as owners of Judea.
What was rejected as ‘Palestine‘ before 1967 cannot suddenly become a long-standing claim of land sovereignty. Nor can a city like Jerusalem that was never an Arab or Ottoman capital suddenly become its long-standing capital by say-so post-1967. Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab entity. It was never a capital under the Ottoman Turks.
The geographic shift.
Unable to take over French-occupied Syria after WW1, the Hashemite Abdullah became “Emir” of the sparsely populated Trans-Jordan. Like his brother Faisal who occupied Iraq as its king, he had been expelled out of Mecca and Arabia by the Wahabis and ‘king’ Saud, who renamed the country after himself.
Post-facto changes to recognition are not allowed in law.
The League of Nations recognised the territory of Palestine Mandate as the historic land of the Jews. No subsequent decision by the League or the UN can change that decision once made. The case is already closed. Any further decision rests with the sovereign power.
In 1920 the UK Foreign Office decided to ‘postpone or withhold‘ conditionally on later League decision the inclusion of the Transjordan area in the Palestine Mandate. Abdullah’s territorial occupation was thus seen as temporary. Abdullah showed that ‘his‘ area was still Mandate Land when he invited Jews to colonise and encourage agriculture there.
In 1948, it was renamed the ‘Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan.‘ But the world knew this was a shifty, shady deal. The country taking over part of the Mandate region was still not recognised by the UN or the USA but only by UK and Pakistan. That shows that most States in the UN knew it was already designated to Jews originally and not legally belonging to the Hashemites de jure.
Besides this dubious legal status, Jordan’s military incursions into Israel, its expulsion of Jews, its sniping across cease-fire lines, desecration of synagogues and religious sites in Judea/West Bank make Jordan a signal example of prolonged, illegal occupation.
The main question that the international community has to tackle is not one of Israel and ‘prolonged occupation’ as an intermediary between colonisation and legitimate defence. It is rather one of recuperation of rights for a people like the Jews that have suffered prolonged serial colonisation for two thousand years by Romans, Persians, Ottoman Turks, and finally British who recognised it was Jewish homeland. It has at last regained its human rights and freedom under Jewish leadership.
Conclusions
Europeans today can rejoice in more than three-quarters of a century of peace. That has never happened before.
No one today doubts that Robert Schuman helped resolve permanently some of history’s trickiest, most enduring and explosive ‘occupation‘ issues. He did so fully in the spirit and letter of both national and international law.
• the Ruhrgebiet, called ‘the problem of the century’ as the arsenal of Germany. Today, everyone has forgotten,
• French Rhine borders,
• Berlin,
• the Saar,
• (together with numerous other ‘occupation‘ and border disputes resolved by the Community method).
His understanding of Human Rights and the nature of international law were the main instruments freeing Soviet-occupied Europe (including Russia) from illegal occupation.
Schuman brought the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms into force as Prime Minister in 1948 (with the proposal for a European Assembly and a Customs Union) and as Foreign Minister in 1949 with the signing of the Council of Europe Statute and the signing of the Convention in 1950.
Jurists and politicians should best analyse his practice and method about how this was achieved rather than bending the letter of the law and the facts of history to what they see as the power politics of the day.
Real peace, as Schuman demonstrated, depends on truth (verification of facts) and human rights.
Take the case of the recent report on Russia by the UK Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. This has hit the headlines because Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed the publication till after the election that brought him a large majority of seats in Parliament (although a minority of popular votes.)
Is this the correct conclusion? Let us turn to the key paragraphs that leads the parliamentary rapporteurs to come to this decision.
When speaking to western politicians
