Greece filed a complaint to NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday after the Ankara-based Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) praised Turkey on social media for its victory against Greece in a war in 1922.

Particularly, LANDCOM wished a “happy Victory and Turkish Armed Forces Day to our host nation […] On this very special day, we would like to express our gratitude to Türkiye for their hospitality as our hosts here at LANDCOM”.

“Since joining NATO in 1952, Türkiye has participated in multiple operations and exercises and has always demonstrated the great professionalism and tenacity of its soldiers,” LANDCOM added.

The post refers to the 1919-1922 Greek-Turkish war, where Greek troops were forced to retreat amid massive military and human losses. Läs artikel

Nyligen var personal från F 7 vid Örland flygbas i Norge för att delta i övningen Arctic Fighter Meet. Det är en övning där svenska, finska och norska stridsflyg övar tillsammans på klassisk kurvstrid, så kallad ”dog fighting”, det vill säga stridsmoment där ett flygplan ställs mot ett annat. […]

Arctic Fighter Meet är en del av nordiska samarbetet och övningar likt dessa gör även att personalen från de olika länderna kommer närmare varandra på ett personligt plan, att känna varandra väl är viktigt berättar ”Spicer”.  Läs pressmeddelande

The Hungarian government has long done its homework on Sweden’s NATO membership application, having submitted the Swedish ratification document to parliament last year. MEPs will have the opportunity to decide when to vote on the issue at the autumn plenary session, starting in September, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told Turkish television channel TRT World.

He underlined that so far it has not been possible to settle the political disputes with Stockholm, adding that he regrets Hungary has become a target and victim of this international political discourse that is “determined by criticisms and judgments” which interferes in Hungarian domestic politics.

Most recently, this was discussed during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Budapest on August 20, but Péter Szijjártó also frequently talks with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, about the issue. As a NATO ally, Hungary takes Turkey’s interests and position into account, as a military-defense alliance must be based on trust, the minister stressed. Just like Hungary, Turkey will discuss Sweden’s membership in the autumn parliamentary session as well. Läs artikel

General James B. Hecker commander of NATO’s Allied Air Command (AIRCOM) and the US Air Force Europe (USAFE) is visiting Iceland. Hecker met with Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjörd Gylfadóttir, Minister for Foreign Affairs, where they discussed the war in Ukraine, NATOs enhanced deterrence and defence in the importance of Iceland for maintaining situational awareness in the North-Atlantic. […]

”This has been a fruitful visit to Iceland, a founding member of NATO a long-standing Ally of the United States,” said General Hecker.  ”It has been valuable to see the extent of NATO infrastructure that is operated by the Iceland, such as the remote NATO Radar and Communication Sites, which form an important contribution to air domain situational awareness in a strategically important region. I have also had the pleasure of visiting the B2 Bomber. We are grateful to our Icelandic partners for enabling this deployment, and to the professional Icelandic Coast Guard that provides host nation support in Keflavik.” Läs artikel

In Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of ‘Indifference’, Agatha Verdebout takes aim at the ostensible agreement among legal scholars that in the 19th century – the ‘golden age of positivism’ – international law neither prohibited nor authorized the use of armed force between states. Paradoxically, the consensus on this ‘theory of indifference’ stands in marked contrast with the endless contemporary debates on the interpretation of the rules on the use of force under the Charter of the United Nations (UN Charter) […]

The condemnation by the UN General Assembly of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – with 141 votes in favour and only five states voting against – rather confirms that there is no place for such discourse in today’s international legal order and that any cross-border military action must fit within one of the narrow categories for permissible use of force provided for in the Charter framework. One could also refer to the wholesale rejection of preventive self-defence against ‘non-imminent’ threats as an indication that the ad bellum rules have grown more ‘determinate’ and far less ‘self-judging’ compared to the 19th century. By way of illustration, explaining why the USA had not invoked the right of self-defence at the time of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, then US Legal Adviser Abram Chayes noted that such a claim would have made the recourse to force essentially a question for unilateral national determination and would have excluded any possibility of meaningful review. The International Court of Justice, for its part, has similarly emphasized that Article 51 of the UN Charter ‘does not allow the use of force by a State to protect perceived security interests beyond’ its strict confines. Läs artikel 

On Wednesday, August 23, India became the fourth nation on the moon and the first nation to land on the moon´s south pole. Behind the complicated autonomous soft landing is a researcher, Avijit Banerjee, at Luleå University of Technology (LTU) in Northern Sweden.

Avijit Banerjee has for three years been the leader of the research focus on space autonomy within the Robotics and AI group at LTU. There he was working with the autonomous soft landing for the lunar lander, Chandrayaan-3, that landed on the rim of Shackleton Crater on the moon.

”Of course, I am very happy and honored that my solution for autonomous and safe soft landing on the moon has been implemented on board the lunar lander by the team of the Indian Space Organization, ISRO, for their lunar exploration mission Chandrayaan-3,” says Avijit Banerjee to North Sweden Business.

Space autonomy is the new challenge in space research, with the goal of completing next-generation space missions, and Luleå University of Technology states that they aims to be at the forefront. Läs artikel

The highly anticipated XV BRICS Johannesburg summit, the first in-person since the COVID-19 pandemic, held in the midst of a very polarised world, displayed more internal cohesion than was expected, given the trust deficit between New Delhi and Beijing. Despite differences over expansion, India and China exhibited a willingness to strengthen BRICS’s global governance circuit as a just forum for trade and regulatory policy. The five BRICS nations also announced the full admission of six new countries – Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.

About 50 other heads of state and government attended the summit, underscoring the appeal of BRICS, which represents at its core the aspirations of developing countries for a greater role in the global financial system. […]

The New Development Bank (NMD or the BRICS Bank), is arguably the most concrete success of the grouping, with a well-designed governance system. If one compares the BRICS Bank’s cumulative disbursements of $14.6 billion by the end of 2021, to the $60 billion disbursed by World Bank in 2021, the NDB’s lending programmes are minuscule. Nevertheless, the central banks of BRICS nations seem ready to let go of the conservatism that has held back the BRICS’s lending potential. NDB started expanding its membership in September 2021 with the admission of Bangladesh, the UAE and Uruguay; subsequently, Egypt was admitted as a new member. The inclusion of Saudi Arabia as the ninth member would strengthen BRICS’s funding options, representing another deep-pocketed shareholder as the NDB assesses its ability to mobilise funds. Läs artikel

Danmarks regering har lagt fram ett förslag om att göra det straffbart att bränna bibeln, koranen eller toran. Detta genom att kriminalisera olämplig behandling av föremål som har stor betydelse för religiösa samfund.

Justitieminister Peter Hummelgaard (S) började dagens presskonferens med att kalla koranbränningarna för ”meningslösa förolämpningar” som syftar till att sprida osämja. Ett resonemang som onekligen väcker en och annan principiell och moralisk fråga. Som exempelvis varför förolämpningar måste vara meningsfulla för att vara tillåtna.

Om det nu ens är möjligt att skilja yttranden som innehåller en mening från dem som inte gör det: något som för en människa har ett djupt innehåll kan för hennes granne vara nonsens och vem som rätt och vem som har fel är inte sällan en hopplös fråga.

Juridiskt öppnar ministernmed sin argumentation också en farlig dörr. Om det är fel att såra religiösa genom att bränna deras heliga böcker, kommer det snart att vara fel att såra dem på andra sätt. […]

Dagens besked kommer dock inte få någon omedelbar betydelse för Sverige. Den svenska regeringen stakade nämligen ut sin väg i förra veckan. En utredning tillsätts som ska se över ordningslagen. Syftet är förvisso att kunna stoppa koranbränningar, men det rör sig inte om ett generellt förbud utan en möjlighet för polisen att kunna sätta stopp under vissa omständigheter.

Även denna lösning är ett utslag av kryperi för despoter, men alls inte lika långtgående som den danska. Det danska förslaget lär sätta tryck på Sverige från en del länder, men får snarare effekt på svenskt inrikespolitiskt spel än på svensk lagstiftning.

Oppositionsledare Magdalena Andersson är på hugget och har redan hållit en presskonferens under vilken hon påpekade att Sverige är ”ensamma och i en utsatt position”.

Vad den socialdemokratiska partiledaren ville ha sagt med det klargjordes aldrig, troligen beroende på att hon själv inte visste det. Andersson uppmanade statsminister Ulf Kristersson att sammankalla riksdagens partier för diskussion och för att staka ut en väg framåt. Läs artikel

Starting early morning on August 28, the Northern Fleet will perform rocket firing in waters north of Norway’s Varanger Peninsula. Caution messages to stay clear of a rather huge area in the Barents Sea are issued, both as Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) and Coastal Navigation warnings (PRIP).

“It may affect fisheries, ship and air traffic, and other civilian activities in the westernmost part of Russia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and the easternmost part of Norway’s EEZ,” says Kristian Åtland with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). He says exercises by the Russian navy like this one are common in late summer, but the size now “is reasonably large.”

The areas for civilian navigation and air traffic are closed “for security reasons,” the Northern Fleet says in a press statement. Läs artikel