EU: End 50 years of OPEC Foreign Policy Blackmail

Speaking after the visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Brussels, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Frederica Mogherini made an astonishing declaration of ignorance.
Again!
“We always say that the Two State Solution is the only realistic one,” she said. “I have not heard by anyone or from anyone, not only in the last weeks but in the last decades any other idea than Two States to preserve Israeli security. The Palestinians need to have their own country under their own authority.” One reinforced with Hamas, weaponized by Iran, and aimed at the destruction of Israel? Or one with a democratic, peaceful government that does not glorify terrorism and holocaust denial?
Urging the EU to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Mr Netanyahu said: “While I respect Europe, I am not prepared to accept a double standard from it.”
It is a pity the Israeli Prime Minister does not make more frequent visits to point out Europe’s blatant hypocrisy. The previous visit by an Israeli prime minister was 22 years ago. So much for the allegedly powerful Israeli lobby! The PA’s unelected Mr Abbas, recipient of EU millions, comes quite regularly without stopping at the press room to explain why he pays salaries to those who murder children.
Under the British Mandate, “Palestinian” was the term for JEW! Hence we could also add to hypocrisy theft of nationality (by the Soviet KGB Disinformation service). “Palestinians” are not mentioned in the famous 1967 UN Resolution 242. Why? Because they did not exist.
The real Palestinians had changed their nationality to Israeli.
In 1964 Egypt’s dictator Nasser and the Soviet communists invented the Palestine Liberation Organization to arabize and communize the entire territory of the Palestinian Mandate. That included the “kingdom” across the Jordan!
For a viable solution perhaps High Representative Mogherini should look further back in time. Let’s say before she was born in 1973. Perhaps she should also look at home, to the European Community system itself, the astonishing Schuman Plan principle! That brought real change and peace to former Nazis, communists and antisemites! It attacked the core problem.
The Community System has powerful tools to disarm globalist cartels — international cartels that control Europe’s economy and finance and block free media. They were among the main causes of two world wars. The Community created the world’s first international anti-cartel system. BUT IT IS NOT BEING USED AGAINST THE OIL CARTEL.
Jerusalem politics has become Europe’s Stupid Zone. Europe proved many, many times that the “Two State Solution” does not work. European experience extends not just over the last decades but over a period of more than two thousand years!
The Two State Solution coincides with the first major attempt to blackmail Western Europe’s Foreign Policy. It dates from the 1967 Six Day war.
This year is the fiftieth birthday! Oil Blackmail will not bring peace!
It should be recalled that in 1967, there was little that could be called European Foreign Policy. Foreign policy was a national affair. The European Communities provided the only legitimate authority and framework. They could make international agreements only in very specific sectors.
The European Coal and Steel Community was founded when coal was the main fuel in Europe. Euratom was created to exploit the oil-free energy of the nuclear industry and provide for nuclear non-proliferation. The European Economic Community with its Customs Union brought the dimension of international trade agreements. Only these three Communities could make legal, European law.
The founding father of European unity, Robert Schuman (initiator of the European Communities, the Council of Europe, NATO) was sensitive to real Arab interests. Algeria was then an integral part of France. France had colonies and protectorates along the Mediterranean and in Africa. But with judgement of a fine lawyer, he was pro-Israel and pro-truth. He was Prime Minister in the crucial period of November 1947 to July 1948, and Foreign Minister from 1948 to 1953. He instructed France to cast its United Nations vote in favor of Israel.
Warnings were made in the 1950s about Europe’s increasing reliance on oil. The 1956 Suez crisis showed how fragile links to the Middle East oil were. However despite attempts of the good Europeans to face up to potential Islamist energy blackmail by combining the defense of the three Communities, the policy was blocked by one factor. General de Gaulle took power in 1957. He changed the foreign policy of energy-poor France from pro-Europe, pro-Israel to a pro-Arab one because of oil.
That was myopic.
In the 1967 oil crisis France got off the hook. But the Arab oil exporters wanted to use the Oil Weapon to change the foreign policy of the other major States. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria stopped oil shipments to the United States, West Germany and United Kingdom (not yet a member of the Communities). Why? Because they didn’t insist Israel return to pre-1967 borders. And they weren’t friendly to Islamic indoctrination.
That is the real birth of oil blackmail aimed at dictating to the world an Islamist, anti-Israel foreign policy. Although the British came up with a two State solution first, it was as a temporary political measure.
In 1923 the British lobbed off the biggest chunk of the Palestine Mandate territory east of the Jordan and ‘gave’ it to the Hashemite Abdullah, expelled from Arabia and dismissed from Iraq. (They weren’t allowed to take over Syria.)
Bad move! That action was without full legal approval of the League of Nations. No other European State recognized the Trans-Jordan. Nor did Saudi Arabia under the Wahabis. Nor any other country who fancied getting some oil. Only Pakistan. In 1937 the British suggested a two State solution in the Peel White Paper to further skin Israel. It had no traction. In 1948 Hashemite Trans-Jordan illegally occupied half of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria
In 1973 the Arab Oil Exporting Countries (OAPEC) again deployed the Oil Weapon to change global politics. It first tried a total petroleum embargo for some States, cutting oil deliveries 5 percent per month for others. Then it quadrupled the price, reducing the European economy to shatters. It also imposed poverty and seemingly endless wars on developing countries. Then it quadrupled the prices again. So much for Saudi sympathy to fellow Arabs, and even less for Europeans.

If the EU foreign policy chief cannot imagine any other policy than Saudi Arabia’s anti-democratic Two State Solution, 1967 borders and divided Jerusalem, it is because she and many of her officials are now the defenders of Saudi oil blackmail policy. It rules in Europe and at the United Nations. They drank it in with their mother’s milk.
For decades after WW2, the price of oil was under two dollars a barrel. It gave Arab oil exporters fat profits, yachts and a playboy lifestyle. Two dollars then is equivalent to under 10 dollars today. Massive oilfields have since been discovered.
After WW2, thanks to the Community system, Europe’s growth was continuously more than 5 percent for thirty glorious years. De Gaulle put Europe’s anti-cartel tools in the wood shed, and shut the doors. Schuman was written out of history.
Europe became the passive victim of a Trillion Dollar Rip-Off.
The Oil Weapon and the Two State Solution Blackmail reduced the European economy to a horse-driven van. Foreign Policy became

“Yes, OPEC Cartel, sir, we believe in the Two State Solution and deny ourselves an independent opinion about Arabs, Islam, democracy, European values and truth! With oil, truth is so slippery! We dhimmis adhere to your Fake History and Fake News!”

Under the Oil Cartel OPEC, the price rose to near 150 dollars a barrel. At that point, the oil blackmail graft amounted to about ten percent of global GDP. Some blackmail! Saudi Aramco is the richest company in the world bar none. Europe became its dhimmis, its slaves and tax mules.
Wake up Europe! Put an end to hypocrisy and blackmail! Open the doors!

Trump highlights Jerusalem; EU warns of Dark Days ahead

When President Trump confirmed Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the EU warned of Dark Days ahead. Is Jerusalem the light of the world? Does it throw light on Europe's black record?
“President Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact,” EU’s Foreign Policy chief, Frederica Mogherini, said in Brussels. Making a surprise, unannounced visit to the EU Commission’s press room, she forecast that “it has a very fragile context and thus the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we are already living in.”
What on earth did she mean?
What are the darkest days of Europe’s post-war history? Has she forgotten? Oil is blacker than midnight.
Well she has an excuse. She was only a few months old at the time of the Yom Kippur war. That took place in October 1973. It was the year of blackest Blackmail.
Europe is still held hostage. Its Foreign Policy is still owned by the oil sheiks.
Proof? The Saudis and others turn the oil spigot off at will. The supply diminishes, the price rockets. The European consumer consistently pays six or eight times the free market price for petroleum. Or twenty times on occasion, a 2000 percent price hike! (Where a non-cartel oil producer sells on the free market a highly profitable price lies between between five to ten dollars a barrel.)
If the EU had a self-respecting Foreign Policy it would defend its citizens from such predatory international cartels as OPEC, now working in cahoots with Russia. Global cartels would not be artificially hoisting energy prices. They would not be attacking the European economy like blood-sucking leaches.
Second proof. The EU now feels confidence enough to bring anti-cartel measures against American-based modern industries such as Microsoft and Apple. But what about oil? For that the EU External Action Service has no fuel in its tank.
The high cost of imported energy amounts to two or three times the entire EU budget. It could be a fraction of that if the EU had a real Foreign Policy. Europeans would get a boost on a prosperous economic up-curve.
Third proof. The Community system has the power potential to stop international cartels. Action depends on the will of its foreign policy operators. At the start of the EU with its European Coal and Steel Community, ECSC, the Commission, then called the High Authority, dismantled the greatest threat to world war. Even in the early months of its action, it was able to dismantle the steel, coal and armaments cartels that were the cause not only of the WW2 but WW1. Robert Schuman created the ECSC and Euratom to enable Europe to be energy-independent. Today’s EU leaders think they know better.
In August 1973 Saudi's King Faisal warned USA and the world that it would use its Oil Weapon to break any country's independent foreign policy supporting Israel. Then came war. Following the October 1973 Egyptian attack on Israel, Arab nations were surprised then shocked to see Israel was not crumbling like tissue paper. In fact Israel was winning.
That was the year when the Arab OPEC countries attacked Europe. The Arab League told the Europeans that if they did not immediately cease from supporting Israel they would get not one drop of oil. They imposed a 100 percent embargo on Europe. No more oil. The European economy went into a nosedive. Some countries like the Netherlands and Denmark were totally dependent on Arab oil. They were only saved from utter ruin by emergency European measures and sharing, thanks to the European Community’s single market established in 1953.
Did the Europeans stand up with back straight and tell the sheiks where to go? What did they respond honestly and frankly to King Faisal who only a few years earlier, to show his civilization, had issued a decree outlawing slavery in his kingdom? At last! For the first time in a millennium thousands of slaves gained their freedom. During the 1967 Six Day War, the Arab oil exporters had already cut oil by 60 percent to Europe. Had the Europeans learned lessons about potential financial slavery in 1973?
Hardly.
A meeting of European foreign policy chiefs just a few weeks later on 5 November 1973 issued a Joint Declaration on the situation in the Middle East.
Defiance? A search for justice and truth? None of it. It spoke of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. That was the first time they had done so. And there is a good reason why. They bought a lie to get oil. They all knew how Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt maltreated and confined their so-called 'Palestinian refugees.'
Palestinians? Up to the Declaration of Independence by David Ben-Gurion’s government in May 1948, only Jews were known as Palestinians. They were people of the British Mandate for Palestine.

Under the British Mandate, Arabs preferred to be called by their tribes, Southern Syrians, Egyptians, Saudis or Bedouins. Readers of the Jerusalem Post should know that at this time it was known as the Palestine Post.
The parents of Moshe Dayan, hero of the Six Day War, held British passports declaring they were Palestinians.

Dvora Dayan, Palestinian wife of a       Palestinian

But the term Palestinian was not long thrown away in the dustbin of history. Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, working with the USSR Disinformation Department of the KGB pulled it out of the trash. The Arab League met in Cairo in 1964. They created the fake Palestine Liberation Organization, to foment trouble with the Soviets’ many other anti-colonist terrorist groups. After the 1967 war, the brutal Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat became its third chairman in 1969.
Remember at that time Palestine meant the geographical area of the British Mandate. In the League’s Mandate Article 7, ONLY Jews were given Palestinian citizenship!
This was agreed by the world's powers -- including the Arab States!

"Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;     ...

ARTICLE 7.

The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine."

The Palestinian National Charter or Convention glosses over any precise legal and political issues, and legitimate identity, by confounding the geographical term with broad brush appeal to the Arab nation. Warning! Disinformation and Fake History!
There was never in history an Arab nation called Palestine or an Arab people called Palestinians. Neither was Jerusalem ever a capital of an Arab State. It is the 3000 year old capital of Israel that is today legally occupied.  No "Palestinians" are mentioned in the famous 1967 UN Resolution 242. Why? No such people existed! Jordanians, the Hashemite Arabs expelled from Mecca who illegally occupied the vast, eastern Mandate trans-Jordan territory, had in 1948 occupied Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem illegally and militarily.
Warning! Disinformation uses the same words but changes their meanings. The Palestinian National Charter or Convention glosses over any precise legal and political issues, and legitimate identity, by confounding the geographical term with broad brush appeal to the Arab nation.
There was never in history an Arab nation called Palestine or an Arab people called Palestinians. Neither was Jerusalem ever a capital of an Arab State. It is the 3000 year old capital of Israel that is today legally occupied. No “Palestinians” are mentioned in the famous 1967 UN Resolution 242. Why? No such people existed! Jordanians occupied Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem illegally.

Article 1:
Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
Article 2:
Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

It is this poisoned, drugged cake that the Europeans began to bite into when they made a Joint Declaration, under the informal, non-legal framework known as Political Cooperation.
Having seen the Europeans scattered like flocks of sheep before ravenous wolves, an Arab delegation descended uninvited on the European Summit at Copenhagen on 14-15 December 1973. I witnessed the shock of European leaders! They were discussing 'European identity'. In a reference to the planned new holocaust of Jews and the near lethal attack on European economy, they referred to these black events with diplomatic circumlocution as the 'energy crisis'.

"The Heads of State or Government considered that the situation produced by the energy crisis is a threat to the world economy as a whole, affecting not only developed but also developing countries."

As the Arabs worried that total subjection of the European economy might slip out of their control, as other energy sources became available, OPEC quadrupled the price of oil to turn open blackmail into long-term financial blackmail. Then they slapped Europe again to make Europeans sure they knew who was boss. The prices were quadrupled again in 1979, reducing Europe’s huge financial surplus to desperation and impoverishment.

The other side of the ledger is bulging. The multi-trillion dollar Saudi Aramco is by far the richest company in the world. It has ample resources to pay the best public relations and media. It can easily oil the wheels of politics. Such was the way in the 1960s when PR firms recast the embarrassing terminology that the United Nations had used. Samaria (the capital province of the Israelites) and Judea (the tribal land of the Jews) became the West Bank.
  In July of the black year of 2008, the Islamist wrecking ball smashed again. It took a decade to wind up OPEC's explosive demolition machine. Twice as high as before!
 

The petroleum cartel jacked the price up to 147 dollars a barrel. It pilfered from the world economy more than ten percent of global GNP. Again the world fell into destitution. (In 1972 oil was under two dollars!)
But recent events have cooled this theft. Shale oil and gas and the arrival at last of more intelligent energy sources threaten the future of the blackmailers. Hence the major changes in the Arab world.


Europeans are slow and too arthritic to escape from hostage today. Mme Mogherini’s reaction is typical of the Stockholm syndrome of captives defending the hostage-taker. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson needs to spend more time in Brussels to bring those living in the dark into the light of day.
May the captives gain their freedom!

Diplomacy1 Will Europe continue its thirty years of energy and foreign policy FAILURE?

Thirty years ago, the European Communities succumbed abjectly to energy blackmail. It was a shameful act. In fact, a series of shameful events that European leaders would like to forget. My purpose today is to help them remember. At stake is Europe's survival and dealing with its Achilles' heel -- energy.

Under pressure of the Arab-led oil-exporting Cartel, OPEC, which had deployed the 'Oil Weapon,' European leaders meeting at Venice unilaterally changed their foreign policy. They acted out of fear that the oil, their drug of predilection, would again be withdrawn.

Even today some books like to rewrite the Venice Declaration of 1980 as the start of European diplomacy. It was a humiliation! If it is an example, then it shows what principles the new European diplomatic service should NOT follow. With hindsight, everyone can judge this disgraceful episode. Europe appeared like a bag of fighting cats. The leaders were noted for their selfish opportunism to grab the last drop of oil, the devil take the hindmost.

The first casualty of this encounter was truth. That was the price extracted for blackmail. If Europe’s diplomatic service is to act as a reflection of Europe and its values, it should not propagate untruth and encourage and support other, foreign States’ distortions and crookedness. Europe should not bend the truth to the will of others. That is moral cowardice. Yielding to blackmail leads to moral bankruptcy and decline.

The leaders of the European Union as the world's largest economic power cannot afford to act like a bunch of scared school kids. The real answer is to think smart. The whole point of a Community foreign policy is to avoid single States of Europe being attacked and blackmailed. Solidarity around European values brings strength, respect and good judgment. The Community system is a way to unite based on common European values. Truth should be foremost, even at the cost of temporary problems. It has major long-term benefits. The European Community created a system that made 'war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.'

Member States should forge the truth together by discussion among themselves. Among a democratic Community there should be at least one courageous Statesman who values truth. Another could supply shrewdness. A third could help with experience and infrastructure. Europeans have the means and resources not only to solve problems but to give a lead in world politics.

It is no longer the case of the old adage that a diplomat is a person sent to lie for his country. Those days should be over. We have learned that lies, like those of Hitler and Stalin, brought about Europe’s disasters, slavery and mega-deaths. We are faced with major global problems that need honest solutions.

Europe needs to set a firm goal: energy independence by 2020. It is a realistic goal according to some of Europe's top industrialists. Oil will only increase in price as it runs out. Europe must help save the planet from ecological disaster, fueled by petroleum

In the early 1970s European States behaved like a bunch of scared mice who had been found eating someone’s cheese. In this case it was Europe’s addiction to oil. Individually the European States were easily intimidated by the drug-masters.

Tension was rising between Arab States and Israel. In summer 1972 the Saudi King Faisal warned his fellow-Arabs that ‘it is dangerous even to think of the idea’ of using oil supply as a weapon to force European States and USA to change their democratic foreign policy. The USA could survive without Arab oil, he said. The Arabs were also dependent on the West for military support, goods and services. ‘You can’t drink oil,’ other oil-exporting States affirmed.

Alternative plans were afoot, reversing that position. In October 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year when Jews were fasting and praying, Egypt and Syria, heavily armed with Soviet weapons and with the collusion of other States, launched a massive attack against Israel. Israel was taken unawares.

This was clearly a genocidal attack on Jews living in Israel. General Shazli gave this order to the Egyptian troops a few months before battle was joined:

‘The Jews have gone beyond all limits in arrogance. We, the sons of Egypt, are determined to throw them back, to sweep through their positions, killing and destroying them, to cleanse the shame of the defeat of 1967, and to regain our honour and pride.

Kill them wherever you find them. Beware lest they deceive you, for they are a treacherous people. They pretend to surrender to you so that they can overcome and kill you in a foul manner. Kill them. Do not pity them. Show them no mercy.’

(In 1967, in the Six day War, Israelis had defeated Nasser’s blockade and overthrown the Arab forces that outnumbered Israel three to one.)

President Sadat said he was 'willing to pay one million men as the price of this battle.' More than Egypt was involved. The 1973 Yom Kippur war was planned and launched by a coalition of forces extending far beyond Egypt and Syria. Yet only a few days later Israel had beaten back this vicious, cowardly attack. Instead of being wiped out, Israeli forces even crossed the Suez Canal where the road to Cairo lay open.

That heroic reversal of open aggression was the signal for Saudi Arabia to act. On 18 October 1973 the Saudis deployed its Oil Weapon against the West. Yes, ‘weapon’ is another word for war against Europe and USA. In effect the Saudis and others were attacking the most vital interests of USA and certain European States. They threatened a total embargo. Abu Dhabi and other oil-exporters followed the next day. Arab States as far away as Libya and Algeria continued this embargo well into mid 1974. They ordered immediate cuts of oil deliveries to US and European States. Industry and transport ground to a halt.

The supply side war was followed with economic war. The oil cartel OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) doubled the price and then doubled it again. This had a devastating effect on the balance of payments. It hit the developing countries as much or more as the industrialized world.

The Developing countries paid 150 percent more: $12 billion dollars for oil in 1973 and $30 billion in 1974. In Africa the result was a long sequence of debts, aid, corruption and wars.

Who were the Saudis and its coalition mad at? Any nation that they deemed friendly to Israel.
A joint Arab committee of OPEC divided its customers into three categories: States “friendly,” “hostile” or “neutral.”

What if America, and the West reacted in unison at the blackmail, indirectly amounting to a declaration of war? If the United States, Europe or Japan took any countermeasures, Saudi Arabia then threatened, it would cut its output by 80 per cent. The Saudis calculated that it would paralyze not only the West but probably the world economy. It was like emptying the petrol tank of the planet. Or igniting a flame as it lay spilled. Most of the world’s petroleum came from this area. Japan, heavily dependent on imported oil, later issued a humiliating communique about its change in Middle East policy.

France and Britain had already trimmed their foreign policy to be more Arab-friendly. In 1972 France was 77 percent dependent on Arab oil; Britain around two-thirds. Italy imported nearly 80 percent of its oil from Arab sources: Germany three-quarters. (The USA imported only 12 percent its oil from the Middle East.)

Among their dire enemies, guess who was considered top of the Arab list? Holland and Denmark! Were they enemies of the Arab countries? Hardly. They were not known for their massive arms exports to Israel. It was the USA that supplied Israel with arms. Did they have massive Jewish populations that supported Israel? No, they had citizens of all persuasions who could tell right from wrong. The countries mainly re-imported their fuel from other States. That let them be more impartial in their judgements.

Impartiality was Europe's foreign policy mistake according to OPEC. The Arab oil-exporters demanded that Europe should unilaterally change its policy towards Israel. The oil bullies did not want anyone big or small to stand up for the victim. The biggest enemy was not Holland but TRUTH.

In a democracy, foreign policy is not imposed by outside forces but the citizens themselves decide what their policy should be. A subservient government can be thrown out at the polls. The people have to decide how and when and with what sacrifices they wish to preserve their basic freedoms. It also depends on leaders acting wisely.

Unfortunately, Charles de Gaulle who had seized power in 1958 blocked the means for a common European decision. Previously Gaullists acting in conjunction with the large communist vote in the National Assembly had made sure that the agreement for a common foreign and defence policy on supranational, democratic basis — the European Political Community — was stopped.

Experienced parliamentarians had worked out the plan for the Political Community at the Council of Europe. The Gaullists and the Communists (aided by the Soviet Union) made sure it was the subject of one of the most passionate public debates of modern times. The Community plan had been agreed by all governments of the Six. All the leaders of the European Community and their Allies supported it. It had been confirmed in all their parliaments, except France’s.

In the National Assembly the large bloc votes of Gaullists and Communists were opposed to it. It was not even voted down in the French Parliament. The Gaullists merely supported a motion in August 1954 that the question of this Defence Community ‘be not put.’ Europe’s foreign policy system was frozen. A procedural motion had left Europe open to blackmail and war.

Around this time in the 1950s, the European Community's Wise Men issued a report. It warned of dangers of Europe relying on external energy suppliers. More than just the economy was at stake.

The report, An Objective for Euratom, was clear. The Wise Men, Louis Armand, Franz Eztel and Francesco Giordani, said that unless Europe developed a policy of Energy independence, that also provided cheap energy then Europe would be condemned to a victim of ever-increasing energy costs. That would render Europe economically at risk against its main competitors. Recovery was highly vulnerable. At that time the problem lay not so much in the powerful undemocratic forces of energy suppliers but in the ever-increasing need for energy in a modern economy. Alternative energy sources inside Europe were urgently needed.

A quarter of century later, after de Gaulle was dead, his egotism and obstinacy still had lasting effects. His veto and his policy incoherence had stopped a Community diplomacy in its tracks. It practically broke the European economy.
To be continued.