China executes a French national, two French 'state hostages' in Iran are freed and France to bump up defense spending by 2030

No news is good news? Power plants, bridges, water desalinization plants, a whole civilization… still standing. American power? Not so much. A Western substitute for what it meant at its post-Cold War peak? Even less so.

If you are in the German-speaking world in recent years, the Easter Monday peace march is back even if it was something of a latent ritual among peacenik types between the Iraq War and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. One of the subheadings in the Swissinfo article concerning the Bern march this year states "not naïve". It is a question one of this year's marchers sought to rebuke even though no one, certainly not these days, opposes the notion of peace. In fact, maybe only hundreds turned out because, like winning, we are so tired of peace.

According to Radio France International, Paris wants even more peace with a wider ceasefire to include Lebanon. Before the American President took to bluffing while threatening a whole civilization, he too was marketing himself as something of a peacemaker. The "peace president" received the first ever FIFA Peace Prize from the soccer—or football to appease the European sensibility—federation and a Nobel Prize, not from the committee, but from Venezuelan democracy activist Maria Corina Machado. 

Like the desperate Iranians, the desperate democracy movement in Venezuela did not get what it asked for with the decapitation of Nicolas Maduro as head of state. Hungarian elections are now upon us in Europe in two days. Some are calling it among the most consequential elections this year (the US mid-terms being the top contender). For once in more than a dozen years, it appears competitive with Péter Magyar's Tisza party polling strong. By Sunday, Russian asset and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán could have a less than certain political future.

Even as American power wanes—something rather obvious for those of us looking in from outside but not always the case when you are in America these days—the conventional wisdom is that the number of free states is shrinking and authoritarianism is spreading worldwide. Like our tired peace marchers and our overworked peacemaking peace president, who solved so many wars he had to threaten a whole civilization with annihilation just to balance the scale as the equilibrium with evil was so outweighed by the good, maybe we have to live with the contradiction that this might not be the case.

While the spoiled democratic world grows tired of unaccountable politicians and corrupt elites, inequality and plutocracy spinning out into oligarchy – this could be anywhere – people who experience the alternative in their daily lives are signaling quite depserately in fact the opposite message. So the democracies have captured the hearts and minds of many of those in authoritarian societies and the autocrats have done the same in democratic societies.

When I lived in Baku, a similar phenomenon existed where the Azerbaijanis from northern Iran who I encountered in the capital of Azerbaijan, the country on Iran's northern border, were more supportive of the ruling Aliyev clan than the Ayatollah and among the most pro-American I had met until that point. Traveling in the south of the country of Azerbaijan towards the border with Iran, more looked to Tehran for morality and guidance.

The German social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm called it Fear of Freedom. That fear, along with uncertainty and doubt about the strengths of being able to live and love how we want on this side of the law, is something that we are going to have to get over if we want our civilizations to survive.

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GUANGZHOU, CHINA – China executes a French national convicted of drug trafficking

• The AP reports Sunday that the the French Foreign Ministry said late Saturday that the Chinese government had executed a French national, Chan Thao Phoumy, 62, "despite French authorities' clemency appeals" in a statement that did not offer details as to when the execution in the southern city of Guangzhou occurred.
• A Chinese court had previously sentenced Chan to death in 2010. The French Ministry of Defense blew past concern levels and went straight to "consternation", lamenting the fact that "Mr. Chan's defense did not have access to the final court hearing".
• The Chinese Embassy in Paris did not mention Chan but released a statement noting Beijing "treats defendants of all nationalities equally". France abolished the death penalty in 1981 "and has become a vigorous campaigner against its use and for its abolition" worldwide.

PARIS, FRANCE – French couple detained in Tehran since 2022 returns home

• Le Monde reports Wednesday that "Two French nationals detained in Tehran in 2022", Cécile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, "were released in exchange for lifting the house arrest of an Iranian woman convicted in France for online incitement to terrorism."
• Kohler and Paris were freed on April 7 and left Iran by car to Azerbaijan hours ahead of "the deadline set by Donald Trump, who had vowed to destroy Iranian 'civilization' if a deal with the Islamic regime was not reached by 8pm Washington time" in what may be his last great gift to the regime. TACO (Trump always chickens out) Tuesday indeed, which is fine given the alternative. The journey to the border of Azerbaijan took eight hours with another four hours at the border, a wait described as "grueling for embassy staff, who feared the process could fall apart at the last minute."
• The two former "state hostages", as Paris described them, arrived on a flight from Baku Wednesday. Oman reportedly brokered their release.

PARIS, FRANCE – France to spend €76.3 billion on defense by 2030

• Politico reports Wednesday that the French government has earmarked an additional €36 billion ($42 billion) for defense by the year 2030.
• Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin said the goal was to make the French military prepared for "a potential major deployment within a timeframe that no one can predict". She said "all types of munitions" will be ordered as part of the new tranche that is being set aside. Bloomberg reports "€8.5 billion is earmarked for a 54% increase in munitions spending and €2 billion for drones."
• The fine print: the bill proposed sets aside "€63.3 billion for defense in 2027, €68.3 billion in 2028, €72.8 billion in 2029 and €76.3 billion in 2030" though each amount must be approved annually by Parliament." The amount does not equal the stated goal within NATO of all member states contributing 3.5% of GDP by 2030 as current projections show the latest figures amount only to 2.6%.

BETWEEN BÉTHUNE AND LENS, FRANCE – Train collides with truck with military matériel

• The BBC reports Tuesday that a commercial truck driver "is in police custody" after a high-speed passenger train collided with the truck at a crossing, killing the train driver and injuring more than a dozen others, including two who were badly injured, according to Le Monde.
• Police said "it was too early to determine the cause" but that "An investigation into potential aggravated manslaughter is under way." Jean Castex, the CEO of France's state-owned rail operator said at a press conference that the train driver was "a 56-year-old long term employee of the company". The truck belonged to a commercial truck company and the driver was not a member of the military.
• The train was travelling between Dunkirk and Paris at the time of the incident and continued to move for several hundred meters following the collision.

PRAGUE, CZECHIA – Czech military intelligence helps take down Russian hackers

• Radio Prague International reports Wednesday that Czechia's military intelligence "took part in a major international operation in March targeting hackers linked to Russia's military intelligence, the GRU."
• The American FBI-led investigation "focused on the cyber-espionage group APT 28." The Czechs were able to secure "compromised devices" and were responsible for "adjusting parts of the infrastructure exploited by hackers to collect sensitive military and state data" in Czechia and aligned NATO and EU nations.
• Bottom line: "effective cyber defense requires disrupting entire networks at once". Also effective: decapitating leadership and sending the middle and lower ranks into a panic or fratricidal competition to replace leadership.

VIETRI SUL MARE, ITALY – PM congratulates police over arrest of most wanted mafia boss

• The AP reports Saturday that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni congratulated police after "an alleged crime boss and one of Italy's most wanted fugitives", Roberto Mazzarella, 48, was taken into custody during "a raid Friday on a villa on the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy after allegedly using false documents to rent the luxury coastal property."
• Meloni said the arrest of Mazzarella was "an important blow against the Camorra", the Naples-based criminal syndicate.
• Mazzarella is wanted over "a 2000 fatal shooting at a delicatessen in central Naples." Euronews notes he did not resist arrest and had €20,000 ($23,000) along with "three valuable watches" and forged documents on him at the time.

BERLIN, GERMANY – Defense Minister clarifies men need not report lengthy stays abroad

• The BBC reports Saturday that German men between the ages of 17 and 45 "may need to seek approval for lengthy stays abroad," a bit of fine print that was "introduced as part of a new law which introduced voluntary military service" and went unnoticed until a relatively small outlet, Frankfurter Rundschau, reported it last Friday. By Wednesday, the BBC reports Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in essence that "men of military age in Germany do not need to report lengthy stays abroad."
• Initially, the German Federal Ministry of Defense said the regulation was in place "to ensure a reliable and meaningful military registration system" and added that rules regarding exemptions were under discussion "to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy".
• Before the newest changes to the law, the reporting requirement for extended stays abroad was applicable "only if Germany was in a state of national defence or mobilisation."

BERN, SWITZERLAND – Italian ambassador returns after New Year's Eve club fire

• Reuters reports Sunday that the Italian ambassador to Bern, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, was expected to return to the Swiss capital Monday, according to the Swiss Foreign Ministry, after he was recalled following a New Year's Eve bar fire in Crans-Montana that killed 41 mostly young people, including six Italian nationals.
• Ambassador Cornado returns to post after he was recalled in protest by Rome in January in an expression of "disapproval at the release on bail of the owner of the bar", Jacques Moretti.
• The ambassador was recalled after the incident which was "one of the worst disasters in modern Swiss history." 

Stay safe and civilicized!

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