Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Russia has won the oil war

The West doesn’t seem too keen to enforce its $60 price cap on Russian crude

BY PÉTER G. FEHÉR | MAGYAR HÍRLAP | JULY 31, 2023

Moscow’s leadership may not have been cheering loudly, but they probably still celebrated quietly within the walls of the Kremlin. After all, Russia has won the oil war. The news has been widely reported among economists and even in Western press, but it cannot be said to have come as a surprise shock. Those involved in the global oil business knew that they could not win such a war against Russia.

The United States and the European Commission’s measures to reduce Russian energy exports aimed to produce problems for the Russian treasury by reducing its revenues. However, it seems that the punitive measures introduced without any impact assessment have been seriously misguided, especially on the part of the EU. Rather, the EU has punished itself by foregoing cheap Russian gas and being forced to buy expensive U.S. natural gas.

Strange as it may sound, the Brussels officials knew exactly that this would be the consequence of the sanctions they imposed. It is worth looking to Russia expert Christopher Davis, professor at Oxford University: Davis has claimed nothing less than that the European Commission only began to address the impact of the punitive measures after the sanctions against Russia were introduced. At that time, it produced a secret study that was not shared with EU citizens. It said that the decisions were taken too quickly and that they were taken under political pressure without any prior economic impact assessment. The EU thus did not look into the potential impacts of sanctions; it was in essence an abrupt and thoughtless decision.

Moscow, meanwhile, looked for other buyers of its black gold, which was also predictable, and China was one of the first to come forward. Moscow has now built infrastructure to handle the increased traffic between Russia and Asia. Before the war in Ukraine, China was buying 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from Russia. Today, it takes in 2.5 million barrels a day.

Now, publications such as the Wall Street Journal are acknowledging that Russia has achieved a real global victory in the oil wars. The price of the Russian Ural blend oil has for the first time exceeded the $60 cap per barrel imposed by the U.S. and its allies last December. Although this happened just last Thursday, there is no sign that anyone is willing to enforce the sanction.

It is now no longer a mere assumption that the EU and the U.S. have made spontaneous sanctions decisions against Russia with unforeseen consequences. It is understandable that the European Commission does not want to publicly admit the consequences of such clumsy measures.

The question has to be asked again, for the umpteenth time: Why are there no consequences for a disastrous decision taken by the European Commission that once again went over the heads of the member states without even consulting them?

REMIX NEWS:

***

July 31, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Qatar to provide Ukraine $100mln as war profits soar

The Cradle | July 29, 2023

Qatar will provide Ukraine with $100 million in humanitarian aid, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced on 28 July following the visit of Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani to Kiev.

“This money will be channeled for reconstruction in the health and education sectors, humanitarian de-mining, and other important social and humanitarian projects,” Shmyhal told a briefing.

Sheikh Mohammad also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss global food security and the expired Black Sea grain deal in his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the war with Russia last year.

“We appreciate this visit and consider it an important manifestation of Qatar’s support and solidarity with our country. We are sincerely grateful for all the assistance received from Qatar,” Zelensky said.

The grain deal, brokered by Turkiye and the UN in July 2022, ensured that Ukrainian grain could still be exported from its southern Black Sea ports, despite the fighting and that Russian grain and fertilizers could still be exported despite western-imposed sanctions.

The deal came amid fears that a disruption in Russian and Ukrainian grain exports would cause price increases in world food markets, leading to humanitarian disasters in poor countries.

Russia withdrew from the agreement on July 17, claiming Ukraine and the UN had not lived up to their end of the deal.

Sheikh Mohammad and Zelensky’s talks also focused on the Ukrainian Peace Formula and the Ukraine Recovery Plan. Zelensky emphasized the opportunities for Qatari investment funds and business circles to participate in Ukrainian reconstruction, according to the Office of the Presidency of Ukraine.

Qatar has benefited significantly from the war in Ukraine. US and EU sanctions cut off Russian natural gas supplies to Europe, causing prices to skyrocket and allowing Qatar to emerge as an important alternative natural gas supplier.

In late November, QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips signed agreements to export 2 million tons of liquified natural gas yearly to Germany for at least 15 years, starting in 2026.

Europe’s newfound need for Qatari liquefied natural gas comes after Qatar started a $30 billion project to boost its exports by 60 percent by 2027.

Before the start of the Ukraine war, some analysts doubted there would be enough natural gas demand to justify the expansion plan, Bloomberg noted.

July 29, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Western establishment just gave itself a ‘World Peace and Liberty’ award

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen receives World Peace & Liberty Award at UN headquarters in New York, on July 21, 2023 © Yuki IWAMURA / AFP
By Rachel Marsden | RT | July 27, 2023

Get a load of who won – and presented – a new honor that’s modestly being compared to the Nobel Peace Prize.

If you haven’t heard of the World Law Foundation non-profit organization, you could be forgiven. But despite only existing since 2019, it has already created an award described by the Western press as nothing less than the “judicial equivalent” of the world’s top award for promoting peace.

Wonder where they got that idea, if not from the organization itself. Can anyone just create a think tank and put it in charge of an award branded as the latest version of the Nobel Peace Prize? Good luck with that – unless, of course, your board is loaded up with establishment heavyweights – in which case, people just tell themselves that it must be legit since all these VIPs wouldn’t otherwise be involved.

So a few days ago, the humble folks of the World Law Foundation gathered at the United Nations in New York for the World Law Congress. One of the big items on the agenda was to hand out this year’s World Peace and Liberty Award to none other than European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, unelected de facto Queen of Europe, who accepted it on behalf of the commission.

Wow, didn’t see that one coming. Particularly with a former EU commissioner being the vice president of the group’s board, which also includes former Polish and French prime ministers, former Slovenian and Latvian presidents, a former EU vice president, and various Western establishment corporate figures, academics, and jurists.

You’d think that the same Von der Leyen-led EU Commission would have been a controversial candidate for a peace award given that it’s constantly sided with Washington’s military interventionism or at least have done little to nothing to stop it, and even led the way in the case of Libyan regime change. Most recently, the EU had a chance to stop the conflict in Ukraine before it even started by demanding Kiev’s adherence to the Minsk agreements and rejecting the West’s arming and training of anti-Russian fighters on the border with Russia.

“For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack,” von der Leyen said last year, calling it “a watershed moment.” Know what else is a watershed moment? Giving a peace award to someone whose knee-jerk reaction to armed conflict was to flood the zone with even more weapons. Then again, maybe the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed the right comparison, given that it was prematurely awarded to former US President Barack Obama even before he could order more bombing in Africa and the Middle East.

Von der Leyen also embodies the epitome of freedom, apparently. Or at least the best that this group could find. Who was she even up against? Did Genghis Khan’s estate turn down the award or something?

“We’ll present this month a legislative proposal for a Digital Green Pass,” she tweeted in March 2021. “The Digital Green Pass should facilitate Europeans’ lives. The aim is to gradually enable them to move safely in the European Union or abroad – for work or tourism.” She conveniently left out the part about Europeans being denied the basic right to access everyday venues, travel, work, and assemble – all because you chose not to take a jab that prevented neither transmission nor acquisition of an overwhelmingly survivable virus. We’re talking about the same Big Pharma jab about which von der Leyen has yet to hand over, even to an investigative committee of the EU itself, personal communications with the CEO of Pfizer around the time the EU was making a deal with the company.

Von der Leyen has been about as open and free with that matter as she and the EU Commission have been with media platforms and narratives that risk challenging the establishment dogma, issuing top-down bans and legislation that override any due process at the nation-state level.

So after asking themselves who’d be a worthy recipient of this global freedom and peace prize, and coming up with an unelected EU bureaucrat who’s dragging Europe and the world deeper into armed conflict and Europeans into poverty with inflation and intellectual darkness with censorship, they turned to the question of the presenter. These World Peace and Liberty folks were apparently like, “Who could we get to present this that embodies freedom and peace? Hey, how about that dude in Canada who did the Freedom Convoy crackdown and whose country helped train the Azov neo-Nazis to wage war against Russia then tried to hide it from the press to avoid embarrassment?”

Enter Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Nothing says freedom like invoking a martial law-style crackdown over a bunch of honking truckers protesting against the two-tier society fostered by Trudeau’s authoritarian Covid mandates – and then blocking their bank accounts as a dissuasion technique.

“Brexit left many wondering if the union would continue to hold strong. Euroskepticism was on the rise. And protectionism and authoritarianism were becoming more prevalent,” Trudeau said, presumably as a newly-minted authority on authoritarianism, having just recently dabbled in it himself.

“As choruses like ‘America First’ got louder, both Canada and Europe held fast to our belief that growth doesn’t come from putting up walls and turning inwards,” the Canadian prime minister added. Actually, no one has been singing backup to the America First chorus louder than Canada and Europe, blindly following along with the agenda set in Washington on everything from Ukraine to climate, even if it’s to the detriment of their own citizens’ interests.

If both – or either – of these Western entities had unambiguously stood up to Washington on recent key issues of global importance, then the world would be in a much better place, their own citizens first and foremost. And they wouldn’t need to go around blowing their own horn and making a big deal of a fawning establishment entity also offering them a blow on the world stage.

July 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Chief editor at Russian media outlet flees EU country over threats

RT | July 26, 2023

Marat Kasem, a senior journalist at Russian media outlet Sputnik, has fled Latvia after President Edgars Rinkevics suggested that prosecutors had treated him too leniently in a recent case, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Kasem spent four months in a Latvian jail earlier this year before being fined for allegedly aiding and abetting Russia.

“Would somebody from the White House or Downing Street tell Rinkevics that he is failing them by showing the feral nature of the liberal diktat,” Zakharova asked, during an interview with Sputnik on Wednesday.

The Russian official argued that the US and the UK were patrons of the Baltic states, but had failed to keep their “nationalist” clients in check. Latvia specifically presents itself as a nation that supposedly upholds liberal values, including by protecting journalists, Zakharova noted.

Kasem, who is a Latvian citizen, has faced legal problems in the EU due to his work as editor-in-chief of the Lithuanian branch of Sputnik.

He was first arrested in January, when he arrived in Latvia to visit his dying grandmother. Kasem was initially accused of espionage and violation of EU sanctions, charges that could carry up to 25 years in prison. Four months later, the authorities agreed to move him to house arrest.

Two weeks ago, local media reported that the case had been resolved, with Kasem admitting to aiding and abetting Russia and paying a fine of €15,500 ($17,000).

Latvian President Rinkevics, who took office on July 8, responded to the news by tweeting that “some recent decisions” by the Prosecutor General’s Office “raise questions.” He later clarified that in Kasem’s case and several others, he believed the punishments were too mild and indicated that he intended to seek explanations.

The remarks “made it clear as daylight” that Kasem’s problems in Latvia would continue, prompting him to leave, according to Zakharova.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said the public had not been informed about numerous details of the case due to national security, which it claimed “had an influence on the choice of the final punishment.” It hinted that the interests of other nations were involved.

Moscow considers the situation to be an example of political persecution. International journalism organizations and other Western states have turned a blind eye to it, said Zakharova, who implied that Kasem had admitted guilt under duress.

July 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Grain Deal Replacement? Russia to Offer Africa New Food Security Plan

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.07.2023

The second Russia-Africa Summit and Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum will take place in St. Petersburg on July 27-28, with President Putin expected to meet with the leaders and representatives of 49 different African countries which have confirmed plans to take part.

Russia will be offering African countries an alternative to the defunct Black Sea Grain Deal to ensure the continent’s continued food security, Russian Foreign Ministry ambassador-at-large Oleg Ozerov has said.

“Of course, it will be not only a discussion as such, but the discussion with solutions for African nations so that they leave St. Petersburg with clear understanding how these issues will be resolved,” the Russian diplomat, who heads the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, told Sputnik.

Russia has already provided assistance to some African countries earlier, including gratis fertilizer shipments to countries including Malawi and Kenya, Ozerov added.

Moscow suspended its participation in the Black Sea grain deal last week, citing Western countries’ failure to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports, and pointing out that just 3 percent of the grain shipped out of Ukraine under the agreement actually went to countries in need in Africa and Asia, with the vast majority instead ending up in Europe and Turkiye.

Failure to Bully Africa Into Submission

Western powers have failed to bully African countries into submission and to persuade them not to attend the upcoming summit in St. Petersburg, Ozerov said.

“Pressure is being exerted. It is of a permanent character. This pressure was exerted through various channels – through the diplomatic corps of Western nations, which literally on a daily basis are trying to dissuade representatives of African states from traveling to Russia, and which demand that African countries firmly pick a camp,” Ozerov said.

The West’s demands look “very strange,” the diplomat said, as they’re coming “from those countries which publicly proclaim democracy and freedom of choice, but in practice demand submission to their dictates.”

There are also other forms of pressure besides politics and diplomacy, the ambassador-at-large said, including economic and financial coercion, with “political conditions put in place for the provision of economic assistance to a number of states both through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where the United States uses its dominant position to put forward political conditions.”

Similar conditionalities are being set up by the European Union, “when the allocation of loans is conditioned on the termination of contacts with the Russian side, or their reduction to a minimum, the non-attendance of a summit or the non-participation in [other] events,” Ozerov said.

Nevertheless, the diplomat stressed that Russia has not seen “African states following this dictate en masse.”

“It’s now obvious that the Western bloc cannot bend all other countries to its will, for objective reasons,” Ozerov said, likely alluding to the G7’s falling political and economic weight in the world as the BRICS countries slowly move the planet in the direction of genuine political and economic multipolarity.

Delegations from 49 of Africa’s 54 countries confirmed their plans to participate in the Russia-Africa Summit by last week, with about half being represented at the highest level – by heads of state or heads of government, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Ozerov indicated that Russian and African leaders will be adopting an overarching policy declaration, joint action plan, as well as three documents on sectoral cooperation at the summit, with the latter concerned with “the fight against terrorism, the non-deployment of weapons in space and international information security.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry expects that these document will become a platform for joint work with African countries on the creation of a new configuration of international relations, based on equality and a multipolar world rather than on a “unilateral dictatorship,” the diplomat noted.

Security Cooperation

In the security sphere, the Russian ambassador-at-large pointed out that Russia has no military presence in Africa, with requests of certain African countries concerning only security assistance.

“We do not have military presence there. There are requests to Russia to provide security assistance. But it is not military presence. Military presence is when one sends troops. We are not sending them. We are sending instructors at the request of African states,” Ozerov said.

July 25, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The West threw Ukrainians into a meat grinder thinking “courage” would prevail

By Ahmed Adel | July 25, 2023

The West knew that Kiev did not have enough weapons for a successful counteroffensive but hoped that the “courage and resourcefulness” of Ukrainian soldiers’ would compensate for this deficit, reported The Wall Street Journal. Obviously, those hopes did not materialise as one cannot win a battle based on “courage and resourcefulness.”

“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t,” reported the newspaper.

“Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum,” added the Wall Street Journal.

According to the newspaper, the offensive risks a stalemate. It will cost Ukraine lives and equipment without significant progress. The publication also notes that there are not enough reserves in Europe to provide Kiev with everything necessary.

Moreover, according to Western diplomats, European leaders are unlikely to opt for a significant increase in aid to Ukraine if they feel a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the US, which in turn is preparing for the presidential election.

The Ukrainian offensive began on June 4 and has experienced catastrophy. But since the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022, Ukraine has lost 457 warplanes, 243 helicopters, 5,236 unmanned aerial vehicles, 426 air defence missile systems, 10,868 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,139 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 5,585 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 11,860 special military motor vehicles.

This catastrophic loss of military equipment demonstrates the complete failure of the Ukrainian offensive and is why more questions are being raised in Western countries about why support is still being provided when it is evidently making no difference in Ukraine’s fortunes.

In fact, it begs the question as to why the counteroffensive was ever launched to begin with.

As renowned political scientist Max Abrahms highlighted in a tweet, the White House boasted in May that “Ukraine has everything necessary for a counteroffensive.” This is a far cry from the recent revelation that the West believed that the “courage and resourcefulness” of Ukrainian soldiers’ would compensate for the lack of weapons.

For British military expert Jack Watling, Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia has been impeded by Western delivery delays and bureaucracy. The senior researcher on land warfare at the Royal Institute of United Services argues, “A bureaucratic, peacetime approach to training and stockpiling among Zelenskiy’s allies is posing a threat to European security.”

According to the author, Kiev has clearly communicated to Western capitals about what it needs to succeed on the battlefield, requesting artillery, engineering capacity, protected means of mobility, anti-aircraft defence systems and personnel training. Watling points out that Kiev did receive enough artillery and protected mobility assets but had a harder time obtaining other items on the list.

Western countries did not approve deliveries of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine until January 2023, making the situation difficult for Ukrainian forces: “Months of delays gave Russian forces time to build their defences, significantly complicating the task for the Ukrainians,” added Watling.

Effectively, it was a well-known fact, despite the public bravado, that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was going to fail. It questions why Ukrainians are being so easily sent into the Russian meat grinder to die or be maimed. This is difficult to reconcile since Ukrainians are literally being dragged off the street and sent to the front line.

Notably, more prominent voices in the West, such as Douglas MacKinnon, a former adviser for policy and communications at the Pentagon, and British Foreign Secretary Ben Wallace, are beginning to speak out against Zelensky’s entitled and spoiled behaviour. Although this has not deterred weapons transfers to Ukraine, it does suggest that patience could run out, especially as the US elections will take place in November 2024. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is also eyeing November 2024 for the UK’s General Election.

Particularly in the case of the US, the Republicans will likely use all the wasted billions of dollars and failure in Ukraine as a major election discussion point. With more and more revelations emerging that the Ukrainian counteroffensive never stood a chance of success, with foolish beliefs of “courage and resourcefulness” leading to tens of thousands of casualties, criticisms against the ruling governments in the West will only mount.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

July 25, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Hungary may leave EU – former banking chief

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban attends the NATO summit in Lithuania © Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images
RT | July 24, 2023

Leaving the European Union may soon become “a real alternative” for Hungary, the former governor of the Hungarian National Bank claimed in a television interview on Sunday.

Speaking on Hungary’s ATV network, Andras Simor said that while a Brexit-style departure from the bloc is an unlikely scenario, “it is a possible one.”

“It’s probability,” he explained. “If it was 10% last year, by now it has risen to 20%, to 30%.”

Citing the country’s rising inflation rate and the EU’s withholding of $30 billion in funding to Budapest, Simor stated that he is “afraid that Hungary’s government will maneuver the country into a situation where an exit from the European Union becomes a real alternative.”

Although Hungary is a net beneficiary of EU aid, much of this assistance has remained frozen for several years, with officials in Brussels citing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s hardline anti-immigration policies and alleged crackdown on judicial independence and media freedoms as reasons for the holdup. 

While Orban’s government successfully gained access to some of this money by lifting a veto on EU economic aid for Ukraine last year, the Hungarian PM has continued his criticism of the bloc’s support for Kiev. Orban has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, and accused “pro-war Brussels bureaucrats” of stoking conflict with Russia “at the expense of European interests.”

Orban’s disagreements with the EU go beyond the realm of geopolitics. Speaking at a youth event in Romania on Saturday, he declared that the bloc “rejects Christian heritage, carries out the replacement of its population via migration… and conducts an LGBTQ offensive” against conservative societies.

Despite his regular broadsides against Brussels, Orban has repeatedly dismissed the idea of leaving the EU. Polls taken since the 2016 Brexit referendum have consistently found high public support for staying in the bloc, although a recent Eurobarometer survey recorded a 12-point drop in those with a “positive image” of the EU, with only 39% now viewing the union favorably.

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

German Business Fears Best Days Behind It as Economy Crushed by Loss of Russian Energy

By Ilya Tsukanov | Sputnik | July 24, 2023

European industrial behemoth Germany has found itself among the nations hit hardest by the West’s attempt to “punish” Russia for its military operation in Ukraine, with industrial output slumping and the country sinking into a recession earlier this year after losing access to the cheap and reliable supply of Russian hydrocarbons.

German business, administrative, and government leaders have expressed widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s energy and economic policy, and expressed fears that the Central European industrial powerhouse’s economy may have “passed its zenith,” with its best days behind it.

A survey of 484 company board members, managing directors, government ministers, and other senior decision-makers by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research for German media has found that only 24 percent of the country’s managerial class is satisfied with Economic and Climate Minister Robert Habeck’s job performance, down from 91 percent just a year ago.

Fewer than a quarter of those surveyed expect things to improve over the next six months, with two thirds saying there’s “little chance” the country can restore its lost international competitiveness, and 76 percent saying they don’t believe Habeck or the Ministry of Economic Affairs has the interests of German business in mind to a sufficient degree.

Among the top five problems cited by managers which hamper Germany’s competitiveness are high energy costs (77 percent), a shortage of skilled workers (70 percent), excessive government regulation (68 percent), a backlog in digitization programs (65 percent), and dilapidated infrastructure (61 percent).

58 percent of those polled said Germany appears to have “passed its zenith” economically, with just 22 percent expecting the economy to pick up again.

About three quarters of respondents expressed criticism of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Traffic Light coalition (which includes Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, the Greens – represented by Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and the Free Democratic Party). Satisfaction with the coalition government has dropped from 62 percent in 2022 to 21 percent now, with 65 percent of those polled suggesting the coalition’s policies are “weakening the country.”

The Allensbach Institute conducted its survey between June 13 and July 7, with the 484 businessmen and officials polled including 89 board members of large companies, 18 ministers, and 28 heads of firms.

The German economy officially sunk into a recession in May after economic growth shrunk by 0.3 percent in the first three months of 2023.

In the aftermath of the escalation of the Donbass crisis into a full-blown Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine in February 2022, Germany has faced all the problems other Western countries have related to the decision to decouple themselves economically from Russia, like high inflation and spiking energy prices. However, as Europe’s main industrial economy, Germany’s crisis has been even more painful for local businesses, which have expressed concerns about the loss of competitiveness to other global behemoths like the US and China due to the energy-intensive nature of their products.

Washington added insult to Germany’s injuries last year after announcing federal subsidies to certain “green” industries, effectively trying to entice European industry to relocate to the United States for tax breaks and cheaper energy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in May 2022 that decoupling the European economy from Russian energy resources would threaten the entire region with widespread deindustrialization and loss of competitiveness.

Last month, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner announced that cuts in the budget had forced Berlin to halt additional contributions to the European Union’s budget.

“Germany is both an important supplier for other European countries and an important buyer. A lasting recession in the German economy will certainly have significant effects on France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands,” Paris-based economist Jacques Sapir told Sputnik earlier this month.

“If this recession lasts until next spring, the economies of the countries mentioned will also go into depression, which in turn will affect the German economy even more,” Sapir predicted, characterizing Berlin and Europe’s anti-Russian sanctions policy as “a form of suicide.”

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Austrian conservatives oppose EU’s ‘scandalous’ planned expansion of Ukraine funding

Austrian People’s Party (FPÖ) politician Petra Steger. (Wikimedia Commons)
MAGYAR NEMZET | July 24, 2023

The European Union’s desire to increase budget contributions from member states to continue funding Ukraine’s drawn-out conflict with Russia is scandalous, the conservative Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has claimed.

Prominent FPÖ politicians sharply criticized the Austrian government for supporting the pro-war efforts in Brussels. Petra Steger, the party’s spokesperson on European affairs, insisted the European Union should not be fueling the conflict by providing an endless supply of military and financial support to Ukraine, and should instead be promoting peace talks in the region.

Steger slammed the plans proposed by the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell for the European Union to provide, in addition to existing measures, up to €5 billion per year for Ukraine’s defense needs and to guarantee a substantial contribution to the military training program of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

She said the plan represents a “bottomless pit,” and her party therefore reiterated its calls for the Austrian federal government to suspend its additional contributions to the European Union budget.

“The scandalous increase in the EU budget hasn’t even been implemented yet, and here they come with their next crazy demand. In the meantime, more than enough billions have been transferred to Ukraine, which has brought nothing but bloodshed and a boom for the U.S. arms industry,” Steger said.

“All this at a time when the European Union is constantly giving billions in gifts to third countries, openly supporting a warring party while the EU itself is degenerating into a debt union. Moreover, the European Central Bank is constantly overstepping its mandate. The hard-earned money of the Austrians is no longer in good hands in the institutions of the European Union,” she added.

Instead, Brussels should be hell-bent on promoting a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow to help bring peace back to the region.

“Until then, the EU’s behavior can only be described as a brazen Brussels rip-off that has turned into the ultimate disaster for the European financial budget,” she claimed.

More than €60 billion has flowed into Ukraine since the beginning of the war, and the European Union wants to approve even more funding through the European Peace Facility. This, however, comes at an additional cost for member states, and net contributors to the EU budget, like Austria, aren’t impressed.

“Our hard-earned prosperity over decades is incessantly sent to Ukraine by the EU,” Steger said, adding that the federal government supported Brussels in its plans and gave the European Commission its nod.

Her party colleague Axel Kassegger also criticized the European Union and the Austrian government for not being firmly opposed to the deployment of cluster bombs in Ukraine by the United States.

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Indisputable – Covid ‘cures’ caused the excess deaths

By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | July 21, 2023

‘Virologists have been exploiting us and screaming fire where there was none’: Dr Denis Rancourt giving his testimony to the National Citizens’ Inquiry in Ottawa, Canada.

This citizen-led, citizen-funded inquiry into Canada’s Covid-19 response, by definition cannot be commissioned or conducted impartially by the government whose responses and actions are the subject of the investigation. It has already held hearings in Vancouver, Ottawa and Quebec City at which scientific, medical, and legal experts have testified under oath, along with journalists and Canadian citizens who have pertinent testimony to offer. On May 17 Dr Rancourt, a scientist with a PhD in physics who has held key research positions in France and the Netherlands prior to becoming a physics professor and lead scientist at the University of Ottawa 23 years ago, gave his evidence. 

For the last three years, with a team of statisticians and scientific researchers, he has been conducting a vast number of studies on all-cause mortality. These have focused on North America but have  included other Western nations, resulting in more than 30 scientific reports. His findings appear conclusive, and establish that there was no particularly virulent pathogen on the planet in 2020; that excess deaths that year were entirely caused by the measures imposed against a fictitious threat, and then from 2021 onwards, by the vaccines.

He further concludes that none of the various ‘pandemics’ announced by the US and Canada since the Second World War was reflected in excess all-cause mortality. In other words, they too were fiction.

Importantly, at the inquiry hearings Dr Rancourt explained his focus on all-cause mortality data. It is because it contains no bias. It is a simple counting of deaths per age group, by sex, state, city and as a function of time. It enables one to spot and correlate events such as heatwaves, earthquakes, wars, economic depressions; anything that perturbs the population sufficiently to cause mortality. Its ‘power’ is that it provides a clear, unmanipulated picture of a given population.

During a 97-minute testimony he provided detailed evidence to show how he arrived at three core conclusions:

1.    ‘If governments had done nothing out of the ordinary, if they had not announced a pandemic, not responded to a presumed new pathogen, done nothing more than what is usually done when there is high seasonal mortality in the winter, there would have been no excess mortality. There was the usual ecology of pathogens which we live with and are always present. People get ill, they recover, some die, but there was no pandemic that caused excess mortality beyond the historic trend, and that would have remained the case if we had just left things alone.’

2.    The measures that governments applied were many different forms of assault, all of which contributed to excess mortality.

3.    The Covid-19 vaccination campaign has caused huge excess mortality in clearly visible peaks which are seen directly associated with the roll-out of various vaccine doses to different age groups and in different jurisdictions, and likewise with the administration of boosters. The excess mortality occurs immediately following vaccination and lasts a few days, then the curve of mortality declines exponentially over a period of about two months. Dr Rancourt emphasises that it is not possible to have such an unusual pattern without it being causally connected to the injections.

Explaining why there was no pandemic of a viral respiratory disease, Rancourt shows that when one integrates the all-cause mortality in the ‘Covid’ period there were huge variations from area to area, which defies the hypothesis of viral spread.

The US excess mortality in this period was five times higher than that of neighbouring Canada proportionately to its population, which is epidemiologically impossible. These differences were also visible between US states, which means one has to look at social factors to explain the phenomenon. The excess deaths occurred mainly in the Southern states, which have a high incidence of seasonal bacterial pneumonia, and these infections went inadequately treated because during the ‘Covid’ period all Western nations cut antibiotic prescriptions by at least 50 per cent. Another strong population correlation factor was the number of people with disabilities. The US has a large number of registered disabled, and people who rely on outside support for everyday needs cannot function in a society in lockdown. It also has high numbers of poor people, and with the closure of churches, schools and community facilities, these populations were utterly stripped of their usual mechanisms of survival.

Excess mortality in 2020 in Europe was equally inconsistent with the notion of viral spread. Immediately after the pandemic was announced Lombardy in Italy became a hotspot, where hospitals put two people at a time on mechanical ventilators. But Italy’s crisis did not flow into Switzerland, nor did Spain’s high death toll cross the border into Portugal, and Alsace’s peak in Eastern France did not affect neighbouring Germany. This constitutes counter-evidence of a viral respiratory disease. Furthermore, although the lethality of ‘Covid’ was said to be exponential with age, mortality data shows no correlation with age.

Dr Mike Yeadon, who understands the biological effects of fear, told James Delingpole in their recent discussion: ‘Two mg of diazepam, a cup of tea and a biscuit, arm around the shoulder and give them an oxygen mask. I think most people would have gone home, but instead they admitted and murdered them.’ 

As the fraud began with the seeding of an idea of a pandemic, solid, irrefutable data is key in dismantling the illusion. This Dr Rancourt provided.

He completed his testimony with a plea to scientists and physicians to go back and look at the data of who is dying, and where and when, and what it correlates to. He believes there has to be a reset of thinking to recognise that virologists have been exploiting us and shouting fire where there was really nothing present. Clinicians and emergency staff have donned ‘Covid glasses’, he believes, making them see things as dangerous which at any other time would appear perfectly normal.

He postulates that the way to reset thinking is to use hard data that cannot be disputed, and that is all-cause mortality data. Unless this central data issue is addressed, he fears pandemics will be declared without basis, and populations will be assaulted at will.

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Greta Thunberg Gives Finger to Opponents of New EU Environmental Legislation

By Robert Kogon | Brownstone Institute | July 22, 2023

Greta Thunberg was photographed at the European Parliament in Strasbourg last Wednesday smiling broadly while flipping a double-bird – apparently to the opponents of heavily contested new EU environmental legislation known as the “Nature Restoration Law”.

According to the German news site Merkur.de, it was a “winner’s gesture” – if not the most sporting one – because at its last week’s session, the parliament approved the legislation, with some amendments, by the notably slim margin of 336-300. A prior motion to reject the proposal outright was defeated by the even slimmer margin of 324-312.

The proposed Nature Restoration Law, one of the main components of the European Commission’s “Green Deal,” would require 20 percent of allegedly degraded EU land and sea to be “restored” by 2030. (See, for instance, the factsheet on the law here.) A modified version of the proposal which was already rejected in the parliament’s Environment Committee would have raised this figure even to 30 percent.

Fearing the impact of such “restoration” on the livelihoods of farmers and fishers, European agricultural and fishery groups have vigorously opposed the proposal, and it was also rejected by both the parliament’s agricultural and fisheries committees.

The largest group in the European Parliament, the “conservative” European People’s Party (EPP), likewise opposed the legislation. Ironically, the largest national delegation within the EPP group is the German Christian Democrats of none other than European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Nonetheless, the legislation only managed to escape outright rejection in the full parliament thanks to 15 EPP members breaking ranks and voting with the Greens, the Social Democrats and the Left group. (See roll-call here, p. 52.)

It should be noted that, despite the Schadenfreude evident in Greta Thunberg’s “winner’s gesture,” the Nature Restoration Law has not now been passed.

Rather, the European Parliament’s approval of the legislation means that the text will now be the subject of so-called “trilogue” negotiations involving representatives of the three main EU institutions: the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council (in which EU member states are directly represented). The final text will then be resubmitted to the parliament at some future date.

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Poland files legal complaints against “authoritarian” EU climate policies

By Alicja Ptak | Notes from Poland | July 18, 2023

The Polish government has submitted four complaints against EU climate policies, calling them “authoritarian” and pledging that it “will not allow Brussels’ diktat”.

Three new cases filed to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) relate to a ban on the registration of new internal combustion vehicles after 2035, an increase in the EU’s greenhouse gas reduction target, and a reduction of free emission allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).

They follow another complaint filed last week against EU rules on land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), which Poland says infringes the competences of member states.

“Does the [European] Union want to decide in an authoritarian manner what kind of vehicles Poles will drive and whether energy prices will rise in Poland?” tweeted climate minister Anna Moskwa on Monday. “The Polish government will not allow Brussels’ diktat.”

This morning, the minister added in an interview with Polskie Radio that the government would also file a fifth complaint this week concerning 35,000 tonnes of rubbish that it says has illegally entered the country from Germany.

Poland’s current national-conservative government has regularly criticised the EU’s climate and environmental policies. Ruling party leader Jarosław Kaczyński has called them “madness and theories without evidence” and “green communism”.

“At every EU council, we have been against and voted as a government against every single document in the Fit for 55 package,” said Moskwa, referring to the EU’s programme to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

“It is no secret that we were against the whole package, we are against increasing climate ambition and the way [these efforts] are carried and forced [upon member countries],” added the minister.

A recent EU-funded study found Poland to be the bloc’s least green country. It still relies on coal to produce around 70% of its electricity, by far the highest figure in the EU. Poland is Europe’s second-largest producer of brown coal after Germany and the largest producer of hard coal.

In March, Poland was the only member state to oppose the introduction of a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035. In an interview today, Moskwa argued that unanimity should have been required for this decision as its impact is heavily dependent on member countries’ energy mix.

“In our case, [banning combustion engines] is absolutely contrary to climate policy, because it will lead to an increase in coal consumption in the short term if we want to increase electricity production [to power electric vehicles],” she said.

Asked about the other complaints, Moskwa said Poland was challenging most of them on the same grounds as the ban on the sale of combustion cars.

“The argument in most of these complaints is the same, mainly concerning the legal basis and unanimity, the impact on the energy mix,” she said.

One of the EU policies opposed by Poland is changes to ETS stipulating that sectors already covered by the system will be obliged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 62% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. The reform also envisages a gradual phase-out of free emission allowances between 2026 and 2034.

Another regulation concerns the provisions on the new EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which will cover commodities such as iron, steel, cement, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen.

Importers of these commodities will have to pay the difference between the emission fee in the country of production and the price of emission allowances in the EU ETS. CBAM will be phased in between 2026 and 2034, as free emission allowances in the ETS are phased out.

Moskwa argues that Poland is pursuing a “very consistent energy transition” focused on creating incentives rather than restrictions. She cited government subsidies for clean energy sources such as the “My Electricity” and “Clean Air” programmes, which have led to a boom in solar micro-installations and heat pumps.

Data from the European Environment Agency published last month showed that Poland recorded the EU’s largest overall fall in emissions in 2022. However, in proportional terms, Poland’s decline was, though above the EU average, not among the highest in the bloc.

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.

Copyright © 2023 Notes From Poland

July 20, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »