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The EU is a ‘failed project’ – AfD

RT | August 7, 2023

The European Union’s migration, climate, and monetary policies have “completely failed,” according to a policy document adopted by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Sunday. However, the party aims to change the EU from within rather than withdraw from the bloc.

AfD delegates adopted the document at a party conference in the eastern city of Magdeburg on Sunday. The paper describes the EU as a “failed project,” and calls for the bloc to be reformed as a “federation of European nations,” with significant sovereignty ceded back to its member states.

“The EU and the globalist elites that support it have strayed from the original idea of the founding fathers of a European community adopted many years ago,” the document states, citing the 2007 Lisbon Treaty – which gave the EU the power to act as a single legal entity and made EU law supersede national law – as the moment when the bloc became “an EU super state.”

Among a lengthy list of reforms, the AfD is proposing that the EU strengthen its external borders, lessen its military reliance on the US by following a policy of “strategic autonomy,” and protect the “diversity of cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe” from immigration.

While a draft version of the document released in June called for the “orderly dissolution of the EU,” this language is absent from the final version.

The party also chose 35 candidates to contest next year’s European Parliament elections at the Magdeburg conference. The list is led by Maximilian Krah, who has been an MEP since 2019. The AfD currently holds nine seats in the parliament, and is the third-largest German party in the EU legislature.

At home, the AfD is currently polling at a record high of 21%, according to Politico. This figure puts the party ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and behind only former chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). However, Germany’s mainstream parties have repeatedly ruled out entering into coalition with AfD, and a government-funded watchdog group recently called for the party to be banned for its “racist and nationalist” positions.

The latest polling figures suggest a doubling in the AfD’s support since 2021, when it garnered 10.3% of votes in the parliamentary elections. This surge in popularity comes as Germany’s economy reels in the wake of Berlin’s decision to impose sanctions on Russia, which was formerly the country’s leading energy supplier. At a rally last year, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla accused Scholz’s government of waging an “economic war” on the German people by cutting the country off from Russian energy imports.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Vilnius Memo: Who’s Going to Bankroll This War?

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 1, 2023

Apparently it wasn’t Abert Einstein who said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. But we like to think it was, so it became a quotation attributed to him. How else to describe the West’s stalwart determination to impale itself further with the agony of the Ukraine war as we are led to believe that NATO and the U.S. are determined now to dig in for a long war. The belief is still upbeat, despite the huge anti-climax of Ukraine’s so-called “offensive” which didn’t even break through the Maginot Line which Russia has built along a 900-km fortified line.

The blinded dogma of NATO members at last month’s Vilnius Summit stems from being drunk on their own fake news which media dutifully pumps out each day from the propaganda factory in Kiev. There’s just so much of it, that it’s hardly surprising that Biden and his European lap dogs overconsume on it without looking at the hard facts. It isn’t simply that Ukraine “has run out of ammo” as Biden put it. It’s more than that. It’s that it has been proven over and over again that they don’t have the will, resources or rank ability to take on the Russian army and that sending more and more military hardware will only delay the inevitable loss. Or at least armistice which is bound to happen on an unofficial level at some point, if an official one can’t be signed.

Zelensky looked worried at the Vilnius conference. And it’s hardly surprising. Even when you look at the pledges made by western countries for military hardware, there’s no question that the speed of these deliveries and the actual quantity has radically dropped. So how can Ukraine or NATO believe that it can win the war, even in years to come? Fighting a war without ammunition is like baking bread without flour, after all.

The truth is that most western leaders already know that the time is up. They know that three key elections are going to play a huge role in putting the brakes on the campaign to continuously supply the Kiev cabal, who by some accounts, are buying 7 million euro villas in Cannes with the money which is being syphoned off. War is a racket after all and Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Should we be surprised that a government minister there has this kind of cash to blow on a wedding present for his offspring?

The three elections are of course the UK general election, The U.S. presidential elections and the European parliamentary elections. All three will take place at the end of 2024 and it will be the first time people will have a real opportunity to make a statement about the war and the abysmal hardship it is imposing on people in western countries. It’s as though Joe Biden knows also that it will be very hard for him to stand again as president when he has to explain why he has sent over 130 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to a country that few Americans can even find on a map of the world.

Money matters. Finally, it matters. The argument on the American side that it doesn’t matter as it is being printed and given over to the industrial military complex has some validity, as this secures jobs and keeps these companies buoyant. But it’s public money. And so, rightfully, people will want to know why couldn’t the same money be spent on the very poor.

For the Europeans it’s very different. They pay a very high price for the Ukraine war and the folly of their governments who indulge themselves with the military aid like children gouging themselves on chocolate cake while the parents are away. Germany’s economy is flat broke. For the UK, homeowners are facing losing their house due to colossal mortgage rate hikes with an entire generation now unable to get on the housing ladder. How will these politicians explain this at the polls?

It really is about the money. NATO knows that it needs much more than just the miniscule offering of 2 % of GDP, which in reality only 11 NATO members adhere to. All western countries’ military stockpiles are depleted and so, not only do NATO and its members need to find trillions of dollars of new cash just to bring their stocks back up to what they were, but also trillions more for Ukraine. The numbers just don’t add up. Even on an EU level, Ursula von der Leyen, who is almost certainly going to be NATO secretary general, when her term as EU Commission president runs out in about a year, has her begging bowl out. She is hoping to raise 20 billion euros to be given to Ukraine over 4 years as military aid. For the Ukraine war, it is pretty meagre.

For the EU itself, there is no clear sign how she will get it when she is already asking member states to contribute 30 billion euros more to the budget to pay for another egregious scam of COVID vaccinations, which at one point she was being accused of having corrupt connections to, until colleagues managed to cover the scandal up. Europe not only has no cash or military kit left to offer Ukraine, it has serious financial problems to tackle of its own for its own elites to retain the power they wield. The only respite would have to be much more cash from the U.S. only which is probably not what Biden is planning on. The Europeans have paid too much. We are an empty Amazon warehouse with all the workers at the foodbank.

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Calls to ban Russian aluminum ‘expose EU market manipulation’ – industry association

RT | July 31, 2023

Five EU-based business associations representing aluminum consumers have called on the London Metal Exchange (LME) to reject demands for sanctions on Russian primary metal, describing the pressure as “obvious market manipulations,” according to a statement by the Federation of Aluminium Consumers in Europe (FACE) released on Friday.

Last week, Norwegian producer Norsk Hydro urged the LME, the world’s largest and oldest market for industrial metals, to reconsider a decision made in March not to ban Russian aluminum from its warehouse network. Norsk Hydro argued that Russian aluminum, which is subject to US sanctions, dominates the LME warehouse stock and poses risks to the market.

According to the letter sent to the LME on Friday by the Belgium-based FACE along with four associations from Germany and Italy, the calls to ban Russian aluminum are “obvious market manipulations by vested interests,” as they were made by major metal producers who are direct competitors of Russian manufacturer Rusal.

Such a ban would be “suicidal” in the current context of the “huge metal deficit” in Europe, high energy prices, and inflation, the FACE statement claimed.

Calls for sanctions “seem one more oligopolistic attempt to easily eliminate a competitor with non-market practices and to turn Europe into a captive market, with full knowledge of the devastating impact any restriction of Russian metal supplies will have on the EU aluminum industry value-chain”, said Mario Conserva, FACE’s secretary general.

He pointed out that small and medium-sized businesses represent 90% of the EU aluminum industry workforce and 70% of its output, but their interests are not taken into account when trade and supply policy decisions are made.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that EU industry group European Aluminium had warned against placing sanctions on Rusal “due to its strategic importance on the global aluminum market.”

According to FACE, the EU is dependent on other countries for nearly 90% of its primary aluminum needs. Rusal accounts for about 12% of the bloc’s current demand, the association said. The industry body described Rusal’s output as competitive and fairly priced, and claimed that it helps decrease the carbon footprint of the entire European aluminum industry.

The Russian aluminum industry has increasingly become a target for Western restrictions. In February, the US imposed 200% duties on imports of Russian-made aluminum products, while the following month Canada banned imports of Russian aluminum and steel. In May, the UK also revealed plans to ban imports of Russian aluminum. The EU has so far restricted imports of only a limited number of specific aluminum products from Russia.

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

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

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