August 21, 19:08
The damage to German industry has been irreparable.
A full recovery of German industry after the collapse during the pandemic and the energy crisis amid anti-Russian sanctions is impossible. The damage to Germany's manufacturing sector has been irreparable, Bloomberg reports“A cyclical recovery in industry should be expected as monetary policy eases and demand returns, but there will be no return to pre-2019 norms,” said Martin Ademmer, an economist at Bloomberg EconomicsThe annual growth rate of potential gross value added in Germany's manufacturing sector fell to 0.5% last year from 1.5% in 2019. The slowdown is expected to leave a capacity shortage of 3.5% compared with a simple extrapolation of the 2015-2019 trend“The German central bank forecasts economic growth of 0.3% this year, saying the economic recovery is “continuing.” However, the recovery in the manufacturing sector remains sluggish, and recent data showed a decline in industrial production and factory orders, which failed to dispel fears about its recovery," Bloomberg emphasizes in conclusion."CRYSTAL ROSTA" previously reported that, according to German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the German economy is no longer competitive
PS. The US has successfully achieved its goal.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9334812.html
Google Translator
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Sunderland and Middlesbrough Race Riots and Anti-Fascist Resistance
21/08/2024
By Sophia Alderson
Unlike previous years, where the English Defence League had a stronghold over Sunderland, these protests appeared to not be organised by any known white supremacist organisation. ‘Unite the right north east’, which is a mostly defunct Facebook page that posts news articles of local sex offenders and drug dealers with the odd racist slogan, shared a post on the morning of Wednesday 29th of July that they’d apparently been asked to share:
Right everyone enough is enough let’s get this country back to normal and STOP PLAYING THE LOTTERY WITH OUR CHILDREN LIVES!!! so on Friday the 2nd off august we will be doing a protest at 7.00pm outside Sunderland city hall let’s round everyone up and stand our ground. And let’s get the country back… BRING A ENGLAND FLAG LETS MAKE A STAND
I asked around to see if there was a planned counter protest; groups like Stand Up To Racism claim to be active in the city, but there was nothing planned. The North East Anarchist Group put a call out alongside the recently decamped Newcastle student encampment for people to attend the mosques in Sunderland. And the local anti fascist group said they should be there. Other small groups of locals planned to be out on the streets, not to act as any sort of anti fascist action but to bear witness to whatever was going to happen.
I told my partner that night that we were going to the mosque on Friday night, as mosques had already been targeted in other towns and I knew the character of the local fascists well enough to know they’d probably end up there. What the two of us planned to do when we got there, we didn’t know. We were underprepared, but we didn’t just want to sit at home either.
Days before the riot, posts circulated on Facebook that showed gaudy AI lions next to crying children draped in the Union Jack. Calls to ‘save our children’, to ‘wake up the lion’, were posted alongside statements about taking our country back. I instantly unfriended the people I knew who shared them, having left my Facebook argument days back in 2018 after far too many unproductive arguments with people who would rather repeat whatever lie they’d read.
On the second of August, the day of the Sunderland riot, I got a message from a friend from Newcastle; he and a group of around 15 anti-fascists also from Newcastle were already at a mosque well before the planned kick off time of 7pm. I asked which mosque and he said they didn’t know. Both mosques are only 10 minutes walk apart from one another, so I waited for my partner to finish work and we headed to Sunderland, parking up a few streets away from the central mosque. We stopped at the Asian supermarket for a bottle of water, and as we were browsing they turned some other customers away. They were in the middle of closing the shutters when we paid and left.
Pages on social media were tracking the beginning of the protest, and children and young people headed to City Hall in the early afternoon as the summer holiday gave them freedom to roam the city. From around 5pm onwards people descended on the town; people turned up on foot, coming from the newly built train station and descending from coaches, before they gathered in Keel Square just opposite the City Hall building which was also recently built. Young girls in shorts and vests congregated with boys in balaclavas, mixing with adults in equally mismatched summer clothes and black tracksuits with their hoods up and their faces covered. What was striking was the amount of children. Not just teenagers but actual children: 11, 12 year olds with skinny arms and legs clutching energy drinks.
Chaos began almost immediately, as people carrying four-packs of lager confronted police and the crowds built up to an estimated 600. Police lined up in their normal hi vis uniforms and blue bib officers mingled in the crowd, chatting with men on mobility scooters.
Not even 10 minutes after the proposed meeting time of 7pm, as soon as the crowd had built up, we got word that large groups of people had headed to the Masjid e Anwaar e Madinah, one of two mosques in Sunderland, excluding the one connected to the university.
Live streams were available on social media, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, showing gangs of people standing outside of the Madinah Mosque with flares of red smoke chanting things like ‘stop the boats’. Police armed with shields stood in formation in the gateway and riot vans lined the street, as men, women and children armed with not long emptied cans, stones and other assorted rubbish faced the mosque.
A loud chugging filled the air and a police helicopter rose above us, and with that we could track the movements of the crowds around us, moving between the town centre and the Madinah Mosque.
Our group of anti-fascists was invited into the Central Mosque by the Imam, who wanted to bring us inside to safety and away from potential threats, but instead I sat across from the mosque with two others, keeping watch for any groups that might be approaching. A comrade tried to encourage us into the mosque, stating that we didn’t have enough fighters to be facing off with the incoming crowd. Plans changed quickly as our group grew and we lined the walls of the building. Younger Muslim men began to pull over in their cars at the masjid, and the crowd eventually grew to around 100. While the crowd was still small, a white man in round rimmed glasses with a large camera approached and I thought we had another ally. His brown trousers and dress shirt seemed like an interesting choice of outfit but at least his heart was in the right place. I later realised this man was a journalist when the lens of his camera pointed directly at my face.
The group of anti-fascists discussed whether to stay at the Central Mosque or move to the Madinah Mosque. We remarked that our group was nowhere near adequate to face off with the mob, although a few of us broke off to make the 10 minute walk toward the other mosque which had become surrounded. Arguments broke out between some of the uncles, some wanting to stay and defend their mosque and others saying we were bringing more attention to the mosque by being there. Some were worried about our welfare and didn’t want their young people to get into fights or end up getting arrested. It was uncomfortable as an outsider: we wanted to respect the communities wishes but we didn’t want to go home and do nothing either. As the crowd of mostly Muslim young men didn’t shift, we decided not to either.
At one altercation between the older men in the mosque, the police rushed over from their resting place at a junction opposite the mosque. They told us we should go home, as we couldn’t hope to defend the building against 600. I asked why they weren’t facing up against the mob, and they said there was no way they could. They mentioned that they had the riot gear in the car and I asked why they didn’t have it on. They went back to their cars across the road.
Every so often a fascist swaggered past, and one man was muttering something about the EDL under his breath. No one on the side of the road where the mosque was could even hear him, and he tottled home with his blue bag. White people filed past us from the direction of the destruction in town, and some glared and some ignored us completely. The odd spotter could be seen in the trees in the direction of the second mosque. A stampede of police horses came past and the helicopter kept circling overhead. Various anti-fascists in the mosque were watching live streams from Keel Square, and some had come right from the thick of it. Most people passing were filming the mosque on their phones and for that reason we expected the mob to appear at any minute.
It started to get dark and looking back across the town into the city we could see black smoke. Through the livestreams and social media posts we could see that a car had been flipped and set on fire, a vape shop had been looted and the Citizens Advice Bureau had been completely destroyed and burnt. It got to around 10pm and the Imam came back and passed on a message, asking us to go home. So we headed back, and we drove past the other mosque to see if there was much damage. The crowds had left and luckily there didn’t seem to be anything but superficial damage, though there was lots of rubbish and debris.
The day after Sunderland – Saturday – I travelled to Middlesbrough, a city that is a 45 minute drive from Sunderland, to do some writing. I parked behind Linthorpe Road to set up in a late night cafe. The area is diverse and there are a range of businesses on that road, from pubs and restaurants to dessert shops and cafes that are open late to serve the Muslim community. I headed to the Main Street to decide which of the Chai spots to go to, and as soon as I stepped onto the path I saw a skinny white man in joggers. He seemed drunk, and was being chased out of an Asian supermarket as he was shouting something about the EDL. He followed it up by saying ‘you’d be scared to walk ‘round my town,’ directed at the brown men on the street. He added that he was from near Bradford, which seemed ironic to me as Bradford is another northern town known for being ethnically diverse.
I had heard that there was another riot planned for Sunday, this time in Middlesbrough, though it wasn’t clear whether anything was going to happen as I hadn’t seen any posts online yet. I ordered a latte in the café and started writing down what I’d seen in Sunderland the night before. A white woman in a blue polo shirt walked into the cafe with a lit cigarette, and even though I was close by I couldn’t hear exactly what she said but I did notice the girls behind the counter take a step back towards the kitchen looking quite confused. She walked back out and walked up to a man in a wheelchair with one leg. I would see the man in the wheelchair the next day, although I didn’t know it yet.
When I was finished, I left and headed back on to Linthorpe Road where the drunk man from earlier was lingering around outside the shops, muttering under his breath. At the same moment I walked past him, a car drove down the road and shouted something out of the window on the opposite side of the road, and whatever was shouted enraged the shop workers and they stormed out on the path, beckoning the driver to return so they could confront them. The drunk man cheered. The energy was dark, and I called a friend because of how unsafe I felt, and I headed back to the car.
I drove to Stockton, the next town over, roughly 10 minutes away by car, pulling over to a nearby pub where my partner was meeting friends. As I picked up my phone to let him know I was there, some children running up and down the path caught my eye, as they came from a restaurant where their family were all in traditional dress. They looked to be in good spirits, so I assumed it was a wedding. I opened Instagram as I had posted back in Middlesbrough to encourage people to counter the far right. A local had commented that there had been an acid attack on a brown woman earlier that day and my heart sank. I looked back up at the kids. We decided we would attend Middlesbrough the next day, despite there being no organised counter demo.
We got back to Middlesbrough the next day at around 1:30pm. I parked in the same place behind Linthorpe Road on a quiet street, and together my partner and I headed towards the designated meeting place: the cenotaph at the end of Linthorpe Road. All the shops’ shutters were either being pulled down or down already as the shop workers lined the streets watching white residents walk towards the meeting point, some with bags of cans, again, some with balaclavas, lots with England flags. I felt distinctly uncomfortable as I noticed the racialised antagonism immediately in front of us, and, selfishly, I didn’t want to be considered as part of the group we were following. I pulled my partner’s hand to slow down, and we ended up at a crossroads with traffic lights in front of the cenotaph.
The night before, I had looked at the main organiser’s Facebook page and he had been arrested on the night of the Sunderland riot for suspicion of possession of a firearm. That drove the situation home, as we tend to head out unprepared for what we could come into contact with. Guns, knives, fists. This man’s posts swore it was only a protest that was going to be peaceful, that there was going to be a vigil, and that there would be a collection bucket for money to go to the families of the Southport murders. Unlike one of the organisers of the Sunderland riots, this man had his comments open and was arguing with people who were trying to convince him away from holding the gathering of fascists. He was speaking to Asian and Muslim locals who pointed out what had happened in Sunderland just two days before. He didn’t care.
The fascists were supposed to meet at 2pm and by that time there were hundreds of them. By 2:30pm, there were what seemed like a thousand people there. Police vans lined the streets, and there were small groups of police, in shields and helmets, but not typical riot gear from North Yorkshire and the surrounding local areas. We stood away from the main square on the street opposite with a mix of supporters, onlookers, people of colour and around three anti-fascists I recognised from other actions. The organiser I had been reading up on the night before arrived and stood on a wall among the crowd of fascists. Before he arrived, the area was strangely static; there was no chanting, no speakers. I saw the man in the wheelchair from the day before amongst the crowd. There was clearly no organisation or point to the meeting. When the organiser held up his megaphone, the policeman next to us got on the radio and told the teams to start making formations – as when the speech and the vigil took place, he suspected the group would be on the move. The megaphone didn’t work, so people started moving. No two-minute silence as promised, no chants or speeches either.
The mob began spilling out into the road, and the policeman next to us frantically asked his team to get in formation. A line of police came out into the road in front of the mob and tried to stop them. This lasted a couple of minutes, and then disgruntled fascists shouted different demands to move forward and they began to march back up Linthorpe Road to the centre of town. Here, I got my phone out to record whatever I could – faces, chants, violence. The police were shouting at each other to stay in front, to stay in formation and to slow down the crowd. The group moved quickly, heading down the Main Street at a quick pace. The chants were similar to those we heard in Sunderland: ‘stop the boats’, ‘we want our country back’. The chants got more explicitly racist with people shouting, ‘black cunts’ and ‘p*ki bastards.’
Luckily, the shops had all shut – but for the unlucky ones without shutters, windows were immediately put through with bricks and stones. Terrified people in cars watched hundreds upon hundreds of angry fascists spitting expletives as they walked past them, and from what I saw these cars remained unscathed. Police tried to prevent groups from splitting off down back alleys and side streets, but they couldn’t hold groups for very long. The odd person began to be arrested and marchers mobbed the police. Women screamed ‘two tier policing’ and referenced Black Lives Matter and Palestine, which had become a popular fascist talking point that supposed that they were victims and that the police let those on the left get away with everything. I laughed, having been involved in both Black Lives Matter and Palestine actions and knowing that the police were far more organised and acted far more brutally towards us.
On two occasions walking down Linthorpe Road, homemade explosives were detonated. They weren’t bombs in the obvious sense, they didn’t cause damage, but the noise was very loud and emboldened the crowd. All around us people were getting more and more riled up, and the police helicopter hovered in the sky above us. The crowd broke through the police’s pathetic attempts to kettle them, overwhelming them in an instant. People with small children broke through the formation, as did children and teens and people who brought their dogs too. Police vans were being kicked and punched and the crowd made its way down towards the town hall, putting out windows of every council owned building they saw. I was still filming, and no one seemed to care – fascists pulled out their own phones and recorded their own crimes without a care in the world.
We turned around a corner and children and teens were attacking a police Matrix van with anything they could get their hands on. This went on for what felt like 10 minutes and no police entered the area. Eventually they moved on towards the MIMA, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, and young people started throwing rocks at the windows that wrapped around the building – shouting about the ‘LGBT agenda’ as there were Progress Pride flags in the windows. A fascist leading the group came over and tried to tell the boys to stop, saying ‘there are better targets’ as multiple men around us mentioned the mosque. Everyone stood aimlessly for a while, unsure of which direction the mosque was. The group ended up passing a small mosque by chance, and someone hurtled a rock through its top window but the reinforced metal gate made sure no one could get beyond its outer boundaries.
At one point, two men looked at us and I heard ‘there’s that woman’. They came up very close behind us, following us for around five minutes. I kept filming and kept quiet, and they eventually got distracted and moved to film someone smashing up a car. At this point, no car went unscathed and fascist teens started running up bonnets and stamping on windscreens, using metal bars to smash in windows. Homes very quickly became targets, both empty developments and homes where families could be seen peeking through curtains. We followed the group up a residential street, and we realised my car had also been done in. As we approached it I saw my windscreen had been stamped on, and some people were busy having a go at the other windows. My partner tackled them to the ground as I screamed at them, and we were quickly circled by fascists. Both young people and adults gathered around us shouting ‘it’s just a car’ and ‘they’re just kids’. I exploded and blew whatever cover we thought we had. Face to face with god knows how many of them, I pushed them away from the car while my partner held off some more from another side.
A woman with fried yellow-white peroxide hair started screaming in my face about how I shouldn’t shout at the kids as they’re just young and don’t know any better. We exchanged some choice words; she called me a slag and moved on. Eventually the masked man who gathered the crowd at the MIMA came over and asked me to leave it, and I told him I’d punch him if he didn’t get out of my face. Another anti-fascist who had been observing the mob got involved and the crowd eventually kept moving, heading back to Linthorpe Road. A man in shorts and a polo shirt who brought his tiny boy child was the last person to scream at us, and after a few minutes he moved on too.
We didn’t follow them any further; instead I was wondering now what exactly you do when your car gets smashed in by a fascist riot. We sat for a while as the street quietened down and residents came to speak to us. An Eastern European family came to ask if we were okay – the husband was visibly angry while the mother, seemingly unphased, clutched her children. Three young people in balaclavas who had been left behind by the crowd were further back down the road, and we didn’t notice the kerfuffle until a tiny older white lady came storming out of her house and chased them up the road, shouting that they were trying to break into the cars. Her husband followed them, putting his shirt on as he followed them all up the street. ‘Go on lass’, I shouted as I was on the phone to the police to get a crime reference number in the hopes that my car insurance would cover the damage. Some residents started passing us now – lots of middle-aged brown men stopped to ask if we were okay, and white residents who stopped to chat about how awful it was.
It became clear that the disorder was not orchestrated by people who lived in the centre of town. The older white man who followed his wife to beat some balaclavas clad children eventually returned and stopped to chat with us too. He said he’d lived there for a very long time and had no problem with his neighbours and couldn’t understand why people were smashing up their own city. More neighbours arrived and advised us to move the car away from the town centre, as riots were moving back around town and now they were burning cars. An older African neighbour came past with a busted out back windscreen and said he was happy – that usually everyone blames black people for crime and disorder, and now everyone will be able to see who really causes the majority of problems. We laughed together before I sat in the glass covered drivers' seat to leave.
We chuntled slowly down the road as more and more residents lined the street, talking with each other. Eventually we pulled over at a closed tyre warehouse so we could assess what to do next. Countless police cars and vans drove past us and the drivers actively looked away. I looked behind and black smoke was billowing from behind buildings. It looked like a scene from a film. A police car pulled over at the side of the road, also observing the smoke.
Elsewhere across the city, hundreds of local residents came out to defend one of the mosques and later videos emerged of altercations between groups of white fascists and brown boys and men defending their community. Police celebrated 48 arrests and announced the next morning that Middlesbrough was now safe as people came out to take part in the clean up.
With fascists feeling emboldened after the country-wide panic, having watched the events of the past weekend unfold, people were hyper aware of potential fascist actions. A post circulated on social media claiming that fascists were planning to attend immigration centres and refugee charities in towns and cities across the country. The post read:
WEDNESDAY NIGHT LADS
THEY WONT STOP COMING UNTIL YOU TELL THEM…
NO MORE IMMIGRATION
8PM
MASK UP
SPREAD THIS AS FAR AND WIDE AS YOU CAN
Immediately counter protests were organised and Newcastle saw a mobilisation of around a thousand local residents. Three friends and I decided to attend the Sunderland protest as it was closest to us and we knew there would be very little opposition if anything materialised. We threw on some inconspicuous clothes and headed to Sunderland and waited close by the North of England Refugee Service building, the location listed as a target on social media. In the hours we waited, we saw maybe four or five people heading to the building and three riot vans and two cop cars. We walked towards the building and there were people milling around with no clear plan. Journalists with huge cameras sat looking bored on the steps of neighbouring buildings. The number of police and journalists clearly outnumbered the attendees. We stood back from the building to watch, and within minutes we were approached by two police officers who told us that a Section 14 Public Order Act dispersal notice, which had apparently been in place since 2pm. I asked to see the paperwork and the officers told me they didn’t need to provide any. We moved away and back towards where we had parked the car. As we left we saw two women refusing to move at the request of the police. There must have been 10 attendees in total. I’m not entirely sure they were all fascists – there were no flags, no masks and no chants – and some people looked as though they were there to be nosy. The two women who refused to leave walked past us later as we were heading back to the car, and they told us that the dispersal order wasn’t legal but that ‘no kick-offs’ were going to happen tonight. I’m not sure what they meant by that, or what their motive was.
By contrast, the fascist mobilisation in Newcastle was confronted by various groups like Stand Up to Racism and hundreds of proud geordies lined Newgate Street, carrying brightly coloured signs declaring that Newcastle was an anti-racist city. Fewer than 50 fascists turned up, carrying union jacks and one fascist carrying a black Celtic cross flag. Speakers on the anti-fascist side gave rousing speeches about the importance of anti-racist work, drawing on historical movements of anti-fascism from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Fascists were stopped and searched, and I saw from a post a friend had made that a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group had been arrested by the police for protesting the attendance of a Labour party councillor at the demonstration. The eye-witness account stated that someone from Stand Up to Racism had handed the activist over to the police.
The demonstration in Newcastle was inspiring to see, and a much needed salve for the violence of the riots, but the presence on the ground was in stark contrast to cities like Sunderland and Middlesbrough. They are forgotten about until they’re in the news for almost voting in UKIP and Reform MPs, or there are white supremacist race riots, but the threat doesn’t go away when it’s ignored. We must confront fascism head-on in the places it operates. I could attempt a material analysis of Sunderland and why fascism thrives here and not Newcastle, a city 20 minutes away by car: the poverty, the lack of opportunities and the wider government policies towards these cities must be addressed, but there must also be organisation by anti-fascists. No communist groups are organising in Sunderland. There is no anti-fascist underground organisation. Not even the Socialist Workers Party bother here anymore. There are groups of liberals but liberalism cannot win this fight. People in safer cities must endeavour to organise wherever fascism rears its head.
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/sun ... resistance
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What the hell is happening in Trieste?
Lorenzo Maria Pacini
August 21, 2024
To answer this question, bearing in mind the subject of the closed-door meeting, a few words are enough: the next theatre of war.
A few days ago, a secret meeting was held in Trieste, attended by authorities of various kinds: members of NATO, members of the Atlantic Council, members of the Hungarian think tank Danube linked to Viktor Orbán, members of Donald Trump’s entourage, members of the Italian Armed Forces and Police force, representatives of the city government and representatives of the local Freemasonry. You will not find this information elsewhere. The topic of the meeting was the militarisation of the port of Trieste. Which is the reason?
The strategic role of Trieste in the Trimarium doctrine
The year was 1942: a book destined to become a cornerstone of American maritime strategic science was published in the United States of America. It was entitled America’s Strategy in World Politics and was written by the academic geographer Nicholas John Spykman, one of the fathers of maritime geopolitics and a spiritual pupil of Sir Halford Mackinder. Apparently, the book in question was not a success with the general public, while it became a veritable bible of ‘sea route’ strategy for all powerful thalassocrats, introducing the Rimland concept that we use in geopolitics today.
There is a small chapter in the text devoted to a particular topic: the Trimarium doctrine, today better known by its modernized name of Three Seas Initiative (3SI or TSI). It is a strategy that will become the golden rule for maintaining American power on the continent of Europe. The 3SI, also known as the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Sea doctrine, is today regarded as a strategic initiative in which 13 member states participate, namely Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, plus 2 de facto added states that are Moldova and Ukraine, and was officially launched as a project in 2015 by Polish President Andrzej Duda and Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovič under the careful coordination of the U.S. State Department.
A coincidence? Definitely not.
When the Americans came to Europe during WWII, having no intention of simply taking a summer holiday but rather of staying and establishing a lasting power, they had to devise a way to keep the continent under control, not only militarily – which they succeeded in doing thanks to the huge number of American military bases spread over all European countries – but also financially and commercially, as well as politically. At that time, Europe was in a phase of division between East and West, between Atlantic and Soviet influence. Central Europe or, more precisely, Mitteleurope, was the geographical fulcrum on which to establish the exercise of this power. A way had to be found to control the continent in a stable and lasting manner, a need that had become pressing at the end of the First World War and with the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire, a veritable geopolitical buffer that had cushioned not a few frictions and claims between Russians, Ottomans and Germans. The political geography that had taken shape with the 14 points of Woodrow Wilson’s programme was not enough to guarantee governability. Even Winston Churchill was well aware of the need for a solid bloc that was impenetrable by the powers to the east.
The idea was therefore launched, in agreement between Churchill and the successor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to find a geo-economic solution: With the help of three Federal Clubs, the Club of London, the Club of Paris and the Club of Rome, the Intermarium Charter was published in 1945, a document based on the theorizations of the American Spykman, which proposed the union of all the peoples from the lower Adriatic Sea (Aegean Sea in particular) to the North European Seas, with the conviction that stability in the region was of paramount importance for lasting peace throughout Europe.
In particular, it was necessary to hold in check a number of ports of enormous importance, such as Hamburg in Germany and Constance in Romania, and the port of Trieste in particular. Since then, the Trimarium doctrine has been pursued with consistency and determination, through various multilateral international agreements involving trade routes, banking institutions, investment funds and the strategic sector. All this was facilitated by the collapse of the USSR, which meant a significant weakening of the political entities of the countries involved in the heart of Eastern Europe.
If we think about it, the Trimarium geographically creates a kind of triangle in the East, running close to the border with the Russian Federation. Exactly what NATO has been doing for 75 years, namely expanding eastwards to provoke and attack Russia. The practice has been consistent with the doctrine. In fact, it’s an instrument of control for the entire Balkan macro-region, which is the subject of speculation, military missions and constant political and social problems, deliberately kept under check and instability.
The new name of Three Seas Initiative does not change the strategic geometry of the old Trimarium: the ports involved have been increased and the American military presence has been implemented in the areas of interest, among which the most important and continuously under U.S. attention is still Trieste. How come?
The Free Port of Trieste and the Free Territory of Trieste
Not many people are familiar with the legal status of Trieste, which is indeed singular and deserving of in-depth study (which we will not carry out in this article, perhaps later). After WWII, the Triestine area was designated to be a free space that was to guarantee a balance of power between the contending Powers, as a demilitarized and neutral space, endowed with an autonomous government and coexistence between the various ethnic groups present. In 1947, the Treaty of Paris was signed, in which peace was established and divisions of influence between the victorious and defeated countries were allocated. With the 16th resolution, the Free Territory of Trieste (Territorio Libero di Trieste – TLT) was established. In 1954 the London Memorandum entrusted the provisional civil administration of Zone A to Italy and Zone B to Yugoslavia. In 1975, however, with the Treaty of Osimo, Italy and Yugoslavia established a border between territories they did not own, violating the autonomy of the TLT and the Treaty of Paris. With the collapse of Yugoslavia and the subsequent division of the land into several states, the TLT found itself divided between three countries – Italy, Slovenia and Croatia – which occupied it illegitimately, violating previous treaties and triggering disputes, political and judicial struggles, scandals and protests that continue to this day.
What is most interesting is the Italian approach. Trieste is placed under administrative and military occupation, as there are possibly armed and police forces of the Italian Republic … and American, as Italy is a colony of the USA under military occupation, as evidenced by the more than 120 U.S. bases all over the territory. Precisely in Trieste, the Americans have placed the UN intelligence school and a special police control, including the Eurogendfor, which keeps not only the city but also the trade routes under persistent military control.
The port of Trieste, which is supposed to be an international free port, is the port par excellence that allows Mitteleuropa access to the Mediterranean Sea, which opens to the East and Africa, with a 73% convenience compared to other European ports. Its location is strategic in every respect. That is why the Americans wanted to take control of it to implement the Trimarium doctrine. To govern Trieste and its port is to govern Southern and Eastern Europe. From Trieste to the Baltic, a straight line is created that defines an imaginary ‘iron curtain’, but also a north-south corridor in terms of gas and oil pipelines, overland trade routes and the unique military administration of territories.
All this violates the sovereignty of the TLT and the international agreements by which it was established, committing a double act of violence.
In the meantime, China and Russia have also intervened in Trieste, the former with important investments, heavily slowed down with Italy’s demotion from the Silky Way in the spring of 2024, the latter already present since the Soviet period and now, after years of investments, blocked due to European sanctions from 2022.
The Cotton Way passes through Trieste
Let us return to the secret meeting a few days ago. The topic was the militarization of the port, which is already under de facto military control, but which would be totally put under siege when Italy starts the Via del Cotone – The Cotton Way. This is an alternative trade route from the Silk Road, realized through a partnership between the USA, India, Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Israel, Jordan, and the European Union, consisting of two links, one rail and one port, with funds from the Global Infrastructure and Investment created by the G7 in 2002 and the European Union’s Global Gateway. The aim is to compete with China and, in general, the Eurasian partnerships and the BRICS+, from which European countries are excluded by virtue of Anglo-American subjugation.
In this economic corridor between India, the Middle East and Europe, Italy will participate by virtue of the memorandum signed in September 2023 precisely through the port of Trieste.
It is a pity that the geopolitical situation in Europe – not to mention the economic situation, which is totally disastrous for all states on the continent – is not exactly favourable: the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is lasting longer than NATO had foreseen and this is causing great instability within the very Trimarium triangle – where Ukraine has been added in 2023, under the pretext of strengthening its military independence -; the situation in the Middle East is an epoch-making disaster; the war economy has not favored the recovery of European countries, on the contrary, it has thrown them one after the other into a long winter of inflation; international support has failed with the advent of an eastern-led multipolar world, crumbling day after day, agreement after agreement, the American hegemony throughout the world.
What to do with the Trimarium and Trieste then?
The militarization of an international free port appears to be a well-conceived provocation. In violation of international law and with the overbearing use of force, the Atlantic bloc wants to raise its voice against Russia and China, trying to limit their interests in the occupied territories. But even more likely, what they are trying to do is to consolidate that ‘iron curtain’ from the Mediterranean to the North Seas, so that they can manage (or almost manage) the eventual geographical misalignment of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Let us try to imagine the following scenario: Ukraine falls, NATO and its proxy known as the European Union, forced to fight a suicidal proxy war, do not let go and agree to extend the conflict into the heart of Europe. Where would they go to fight? Taking a conventional conflict approach as valid, the most optimal territories would be Poland and Germany, via Hungary. Reaching as far as Germany already, however, would mean collapsing the Deutsche Bank, in terrible crisis yet, which is the primary source of money flow for the European Central Bank, and this is unacceptable because it would implode the EU political system and the Euro as a currency, with disastrous consequences for the already battered dollar. We must therefore repel the enemy and keep it beyond a certain border. From Trieste to the North, therefore, by clamping down on Mitteleuropa with the help of Moldavia and Romania, it is possible to establish a circumscribed and manageable theatre of battle, one that has already been dense with NATO military presence for decades and has been steadily increasing in recent years, with exercises and war schools in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania that are preparing soldiers for the clash with Russia. Bear in mind that Croatia has reintroduced compulsory conscription and that Italy will soon do so, as has already been under discussion in Parliament for months.
What on earth is happening in Trieste? To answer this question, bearing in mind the subject of the closed-door meeting, a few words are enough: the next theatre of war.
And they certainly won’t come asking us for permission to start it.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... n-trieste/
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