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Soros Foundation Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 03.09.2023

The Soros family has waged a years-long political war against Donald Trump and his supporters, with George Soros calling Trump a “danger to the world” and characterizing his ideas as a “threat to democracy.” Trump has alleged that “district attorneys hand-picked and personally funded by” Soros are behind the ongoing effort to put him behind bars.

Last month, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations soft power empire announced a dramatic scaling back of funding for operations in Europe, sparking an outcry from liberal activists, NGOs, and think tanks regarding the impact the end of the financial gravy train will have on their operations.

Alexander Soros, the 37-year-old son of the Hungarian-born US billionaire who took the reins at the OSF in June, responded with a manifesto-style appeal this week explaining the shift in focus under his leadership, assuring that the OSF isn’t really “leaving Europe,” and that the region “remains of huge strategic importance.”

Shift in Focus to Eastern Europe and US

Rather, Soros indicated, the shift in funding is the result of a shift in focus, from Western to Eastern Europe and the United States.

“The future of accountable, democratic government in Europe is now being determined not just in Paris and Berlin but also in Warsaw, Kiev and Prague,” he wrote. “This isn’t about funding levels – it’s about priorities as the focus of funding shifts back to the continent’s east,” Soros Jr. noted, recalling that, after all, his father’s soft power meddling in nations’ political affairs began in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

Spending in Ukraine won’t be affected by the cuts, Soros assured, recalling with “pride” the $250 million in cash funneled into the country since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and which played “such an important role in Kiev’s resilience” amid the ongoing NATO-backed proxy war against Russia.

The OSF will also continue to “support” operations in Moldova and the Western Balkans, per Soros, and Central European University – the Vienna-based school booted out of Budapest in 2019 amid allegations of meddling in Hungary’s politics.

The reorganization will also include a redoubling of Soros foundations’ efforts against Donald Trump and MAGA-style Republicans, Soros indicated, expressing concerns over the impact Trump’s possible return to power in 2024 would have on the OSF’s global agenda.

“As someone who spends up to half their time working on the continent and thinks former United States President Donald Trump – or at least someone with his isolationist and anti-European policies –will be the Republican nominee, I believe a MAGA-style Republican victory in next year’s US presidential election could, in the end, be worse for the EU than for the US. Such an outcome will imperil European unity and undermine the progress achieved on many fronts in response to the war in Ukraine,” Soros opined.

Accordingly, he noted, the OSF is being “adapted” to “be able to respond to whatever scenarios might emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Soros Jr. did not elaborate on concrete adjustments in OSF operations, nor the possible “scenarios” he mentioned. However, if the Soros soft power empire’s previously disclosed efforts are anything to go by, the strategy may include pouring even more of the estimated $1.5 billion per year that’s currently been shelled out from the financier’s hedge fund profits for OSF initiatives into US politics.

Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, which the billionaire began discussing decades before ever running for office, sparked alarm with Soros’ liberal globalist vision of world affairs in 2016, when he began pumping millions of dollars into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and super PACs affiliated with her candidacy.

After Trump’s surprise victory, Soros and his allies began plotting an anti-Trump “resistance movement,” which soon manifested itself in a series of street protests, court challenges to his domestic policies, low key communications with members of his administration, support for hawks in Congress lobbying a neoliberal foreign policy, and cash to fuel the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Kremlin agent. Soros’ open meddling in American politics led to petitions from Trump’s supporters demanding that the financier be declared a “domestic terrorist,” stripped of his assets, and expelled from the country.

As the Trump presidency progressed, the Soros empire turned its focus to lower key soft power campaigns, like lobbying tech giants to regulate social media, and campaign funding to dozens, if not hundreds, of of liberal prosecutors, gubernatorial candidates, and various other state and local officials in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

The effort has apparently paid off, with Trump’s defeat in 2020 allowing Soros to push his domestic agenda through into the next administration. An investigation last year found that a Soros dark money-linked think tank had influenced Biden administration policy across nearly two dozen different policy areas.

Earlier this year, after Trump made clear that he would be running for president in 2024, an unprecedented four criminal indictments totaling close to 100 felony counts were leveled against him, with charges ranging from the mishandling of classified governments, to his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, to suspected falsification of records related to hush money payments to a porn star.

Trump, his supporters, and even some of his Republican primary challengers almost immediately connected Soros’ soft power influence operations to the historically unprecedented political “witch hunt” against the GOP frontrunner.

“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave overtaking New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work,” Trump said in March following his first indictment.

And although Soros has denied funding Bragg’s campaign, or even “knowing” the prosecutor, media investigations have confirmed that the billionaire donated at least a million dollars to the candidate, who had established himself as a Trump opponent, in 2021.

“I expect that Trump will be found guilty at least in some cases, and will be in jail by election day in November 2024, though that is not the general expectation today,” George Soros said in an interview last month. “If I am right, he is unlikely to win the election. But if I am wrong, the US will face a constitutional crisis that is likely to bring on an economic crisis as well,” he added.

With a little more than a year between now and election day, it remains to be seen what tricks Alexander Soros and the revamped OSF may be able to pull to stop Trump from entering the White House a second time.

September 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

EU Budget Battle Shows Euroscepticism and Ukraine Fatigue Rising

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 29.08.2023

Divisions are brewing among EU member states as the bloc’s leadership seeks a total of €86 billion ($93.2 billion) in additional funding, including financial support for Ukraine and salary increases for EU bureaucrats.

Brussels’ request for additional funding to fill the gaps of the EU budget and provide assistance to Ukraine has sowed discord among EU leaders who are seeing their domestic budgets dwindling and skepticism over the Kiev regime’s ability to win, according to the Western mainstream press.

EU member states have called for reductions and a longer approval timetable, while Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive makes war skeptics in both the Old Continent and the US even more doubtful about additional military support.

The EU’s €86 billion package consists of €66 billion ($71.6 billion) for the union’s budget and €20 billion ($21.6 billion) in military assistance for Kiev (stretched over four years). The package also contains €17 billion in grants for Kiev, while around €19 billion are meant to cover interest costs on joint EU borrowing; about €2 billion have been requested for the EU administration’s salary increases; €15 billion would be spent on issues related to rising migration and funding for external countries; and €10 billion would cover the EU’s other endeavors.

Per Germany and the Netherlands, it’s a tricky time for Brussels to increase its internal spending when its member states are tightening their belts due to rising interest rates, economic slowdown and still swirling inflation.

“Essentially, what is happening is that the EU is asking for a top-up from member states for its own increased expenses, including increasing its own officials’ salaries, as part of a total long-term budget plan that also includes aid to Ukraine,” Dr. Roslyn Fuller, director of the non-profit think tank Solonian Democracy Institute and the author of the book “Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose,” told Sputnik.

“While the increase to salaries ‘only’ accounts for €2 billion [$2.2 billion] of this package (compared to a reported €19 billion to cover higher interest on loans), there is definitely a perception of European ‘fat cat’ officials in society at large, so increasing their salaries, while many others have seen their purchasing power drop dramatically due to inflation, will certainly not be popular, and this has become a bit of a sticking point.”

The Eurozone has yet to overcome inflation hurdles, with some nations, like Italy, suffering from the European Central Bank’s (ECB) aggressive rate hikes or facing nothing short of deindustrialization, like Germany, over the EU’s energy embargo slapped on Russia in the aftermath of the latter’s special military operation in Ukraine.

“Although Germany is the major economic hub of the EU, and has been particularly hard-hit by energy shortages, it is also a major weapons manufacturer, and thus spending on military aid is not bad news for the German economy. If you look at a company like Rheinmetall AG, for example, its stocks haven’t been higher in the last quarter century than they have been since 2022,” said Fuller.

While Rheinmetall AG apparently feels good, many other German companies are suffering from energy uncertainty. Some big German enterprises, including BASF and Lanxess, closed facilities and relocated their businesses, opening the door to deindustrialization.

As per the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Germany is the only G7 economy which is projected to contract in 2023. What’s more, the nation has already slid into a technical recession and is lagging behind its Western rivals in terms of economic growth. Thus, unsurprisingly, Berlin has no appetite at replenishing the EU coffers at the expense of its dwindling national wealth.

Hence, Berlin’s opposition to Brussels’ latest hefty package.

Meanwhile, inflation in the Eurozone dropped to 5.3% in July, down from 5.5% in the previous month, but is still higher than the European Central Bank’s 2% threshold.

“Although any conflict is obviously a drain on resources, we have so far experienced a much softer economic downturn than anyone was expecting in early 2022. This is likely because Western states were flooded with money and had ultra-low interest rates during the early part of the pandemic. Savings rates were also very high during the pandemic. This created a huge financial cushion that allowed people to absorb the increased costs of energy and inflation far better than was expected,” Fuller remarked.

Still, even though the relatively warm winter of the 2022/2023 helped Europe to weather its own energy sanctions on Russia, it’s unclear what the future has in store for the Old continent during the 2023/2024 winter season.

Tom Luongo, a geopolitical and financial analyst, suggested in his July interview with Sputnik that Europe’s financial cushion could collapse very quickly. According to him, an impending crisis may soon flood “the Potemkin villages” of the EU economy.

Per Luongo, there’s a greater chance that the next global recession, if it does take place, would emanate from Europe due to a commodity wave, prompting a new wave of inflation, and the banking collapse. The first harbinger of the impending trouble was Switzerland’s Credit Suisse bank collapse in March 2023.

While the future of the European economic bloc is still murky, one thing is clear: the EU is not expecting the Kiev regime’s victory any time soon and needs to prolong its agony as long as possible.

“Since the EU is locking in funding for four years, they clearly aren’t planning on victory any time soon, and people eventually grow weary with protracted wars,” Fuller stressed.

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

Latvia’s Planned Expulsion of Russian Nationals ‘Grossly Contradicts’ UN, EU Norms

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 29.08.2023

Russian human rights activists have condemned Latvia’s decision to expel about 6,000 Russian residents, who had lived in Latvia with a residence permit and did not pass the Latvian language exam. The process of expulsion will start as of September 1, 2023.

The members of the Commission for International Cooperation with the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the Russian President have sent a letter to the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in connection with the “threat of forced eviction of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia.”

One of the Commission’s members is Kirill Vyshinsky, executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, a parent company of the Sputnik News Agency.

The Commission’s message was delivered to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov.

“We draw your attention to the gross violation of the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia who have Russian citizenship and live on Latvian territory on the basis of a residence permit (RP) issued by the country’s authorities,” the letter reads.

The members of the Russian presidential human rights commission recalled that more than 6,000 such residents “are threatened with expulsion from Latvia as of September 1, 2023 due to last year’s changes in the country’s legislation and under the pretext that they did not pass the mandatory Latvian language exam.”

“They are mainly people of advanced retirement age who came to Latvia before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their long-standing work added to creating the economic basis of Latvia and until the autumn of last year, Latvian legislation did not oblige them to take any language tests so that they can live with Russian citizenship in the country. Moreover, the very fact that these people lived in Latvia for many years proved that their knowledge of Latvian language was enough to organize their own daily life,” according to the letter.

The Russian rights activists stressed that “especially cynical in relation to these people is Latvian authorities’ requirement to not only pass the language exam, but also fill out questionnaires indicating their attitude to Russia’s foreign policy.”

“In fact, these people are required to not only take language tests, but also reveal their political views and give documented condemnation of Russia’s actions,” the letter points out.

“We believe that such actions by Latvian authorities grossly contradict the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the UN and the European Convention on Human Rights. We urge you to intervene in the situation and prevent the forced eviction of those who have Russian citizenship and residence permits issued by Latvian authorities,” the document concludes.

The letter comes after Ingmars Lidaka, head of Latvia’s Parliamentary Commission for Citizenship, Migration and Public Mobilization, said that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian citizens, who have a residence permit and have not passed the Latvian language exam, will receive official notifications to leave the country “within three months.”

He added that the decision is in line with Latvia’s legislation and that its implementation will be enforced by the country’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.

In September 2022, Latvia’s parliament passed a bill on the transition of all education to the Latvian language within three years, a document stipulating that the Russian can now only be studied as a “minority language”.

About 40 percent of Latvia’s 1.8 million population are Russian native speakers. The country’s state language is Latvian, while the Russian has the status of a foreign language.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

German regional leader calls for repair of Nord Stream

RT | August 28, 2023

The leader of the German state of Saxony has argued that the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline linking to Russia, which was ruptured in an underwater explosion last September, should be repaired. Minister-President Michael Kretschmer warned that unless action is taken soon, sea water will damage the conduit beyond repair.

In an interview with Germany’s WirtschaftsWoche magazine published on Monday, Kretschmer said: “It is important because this infrastructure can secure our energy supply in five or ten years.”

He insisted that it is the “most normal [thing] in the world that the pipeline is repaired, that is, the water is removed and it is sealed and thereby secured for starters.”

The Saxony leader stressed that no one knows what the situation will look like in a decade from now, and that “keeping as many options open for yourself as possible would be a sign of a smart politician.”

Back in June, Economy Minister Robert Habeck warned that Germany may have to scale back or even shut down some of its industrial capacity, should deliveries of Russian natural gas through Ukraine stop next year. He said authorities in Berlin should not disregard the economic risks from energy shortages.

Doubts remain as to whether Ukraine and Russia will renew a contract for gas transit to Europe, set to expire at the end of 2024, as the conflict continues.

Habeck explained that while Germany has mostly weaned itself off Russian energy, other EU member states, such as Austria, Slovakia, Italy, and Hungary are still very much dependent on Russian gas. Should supplies from Russia be discontinued, Berlin will be obliged to come to their rescue under the EU’s gas-sharing rules, creating problems for industrial consumers at home, the minister noted at the time.

The Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline and one leg of Nord Stream 2 were destroyed in a series of near-simultaneous blasts off the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea in late September last year. In February this year, veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that the US was behind the sabotage.

Reports in the German media over the summer have suggested that authorities in Berlin suspect the possible involvement of the Ukrainian secret service in the pipelines’ destruction.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Cyberattack on Strategic Culture Foundation… Now available at new url

SCF | August 25, 2023

The Strategic Culture Foundation’s online journal was this week hit by a massive cyberattack. The assault resulted in the forum being shut down on its regular internet site. Readers who normally access the journal were informed that the site was no longer available.

The online journal has safely migrated to strategic-culture.su and, in addition, we continue to post articles via SCF’s Telegram channel in order to exercise our inalienable right to freedom of speech.

The SCF online journal has been up to now accessed via the “.org” domain. The domain is operated by an organization called Public Interest Registry (PIC) based in the United States. PIC proclaims to be a “trusted” non-profit company “dedicated to the integrity of the internet” and free speech.

The outrageous action to obliterate SCF is a sign of the sinister times. There can be little doubt that the sabotage was carried out by state agencies: those of the United States and its NATO allies. This should not be seen as some kind of petty hacking by cyber vandals, but rather as cyber-warfare at the state level.

This is not the first time that this journal has been subjected to cyberattack. In recent years, SCF’s publishing business has been forced offline on several occasions by malicious attacks. The latest incident this week seems to have been the most serious endeavor to eliminate our publishing forum.

For over 12 years, Strategic Culture Foundation has been publishing articles by authors from all over the world. The forum has earned widespread acclaim for providing a diverse range of intelligent commentary and analysis on international politics. It has gained respect among many readers from a worldwide audience for its open-minded perspectives on geopolitics. In particular, we have provided in-depth critical reporting and analysis of how the United States government and its Western allies have systematically abused international law and the United Nations Charter in their unlawful pursuit of strategic interests in various parts of the globe, from Asia to Africa, and from the Middle East to Latin America.

As the United States and its NATO partners have become increasingly reckless and lawless over recent years in their imperialist depredations, the SCF forum has likewise becstraome increasingly critical. Consequently, the attacks on our journal have apparently intensified.

The U.S. State Department three years ago smeared our journal as a Kremlin propaganda outlet. The U.S. authorities have vilified writers for SCF as “Kremlin agents” even though our writers are based in different parts of the world and have nothing to do with the Russian government.

Subsequently, all our American-based authors were approached in person by U.S. state security agents knocking on their doors and threatened with prosecution and massive financial penalties if they did not stop publishing articles with SCF. All of our former American colleagues were compelled to break off what had been fruitful relations of intellectual exchange.

None of this unprecedented harassment prevented us from continuing to exercise our right to free speech and critical thinking.

However, since the U.S.-led NATO proxy war against Russia escalated with armed conflict in Ukraine 18 months ago, the SCF site has come under intensifying cyberattack.

This proves that Washington and its Western allies are indeed waging a determined proxy war. As the old adage goes: the first casualty of war is the truth.

We have provided trenchant commentary and analysis on the conflict in Ukraine. Our writers have exposed the bigger picture of geopolitical motives behind the confrontation including: NATO’s decades-long expansionism, the desire by Washington to maintain its global hegemony, the U.S. strategic need to exert control over its European vassals, Washington’s objective to displace Russia as an energy provider to Europe, the paramount importance of militarism to Western capitalism, and the imperative objective for the West to thwart the emergence of a multipolar world as advocated by Russia, China and many other nations associating with the BRICS and the Global South.

As the stakes grow higher for Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine so too has the West’s desperation to shut down all critical voices that undermine the West’s bogus posturing as a “defender of democracy”.

Russia-based media have been heavily censored by the United States and European Union. It has become increasingly difficult for an international audience to access Russian media and, more significantly, any media that publishes critical voices and thinking about Western policies.

The internet domains controlled by U.S. companies have shut down many American and European-based alternative media simply on the grounds that such alternative media provide an intelligent and informed critical analysis of the policies of Western governments. Sometimes the censorship is not so overt, conducted by algorithms that relegate accessibility for readers.

Critical thinking and truth-telling are intolerable for liars and despots, which the Western regimes are increasingly devolving into, absolutely discarding their pretensions of virtue, democracy, legality and integrity. The charade of “Western liberal democracy” is increasingly threadbare as Western states become ever more warmongering, authoritarian, dictatorships of economic austerity and elitist, unaccountable rule. In a word, fascist. The Western powers’ full-on association with the Nazi regime in Ukraine is entirely consistent with their own political degeneration.

In the case of SCF, the West’s censorship has degenerated to the level of outright sabotage of our forum.

Here it is appropriate to pay special tribute to Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of Wikileaks. He has paid for his truth-telling about the crimes of the U.S. empire and its vassals with the loss of his personal freedom, incarcerated for years in solitary confinement in a British dungeon on wholly fabricated spying allegations.

At such a perilous time in history when all-out war between nuclear powers is a dreadful danger, the world’s public needs more than ever open access to information and understanding of what are the causes of conflict. Western corporate media have increasingly shown themselves to be nothing but propaganda tools that promote risible pro-war narratives, such as the West “defending Ukraine from Russian aggression”. The Western media are misleading the public with false propaganda that distorts and conceals the real causes of conflict. Thus, making all-out catastrophic war a real danger.

Nevertheless, despite this propaganda onslaught and execrable dereliction of journalistic duty, the international public and the Western public, in particular, have shown an admirably healthy resistance and skepticism towards the Western media and their so-called governments. What is becoming more apparent is the toxic propaganda and the hypocrisy of Western governments and their servile media. This public resistance is fatally undermining the authority of Washington and its NATO allies.

This is reflected in growing public awareness and criticism around the world but in particular in the United States and across Europe leveled at the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine. People are increasingly critical of how the Western powers are reprehensibly fueling the war with endless weapons while the Western public’s own social and economic needs are unconscionably neglected.

So-called leaders like America’s Joe Biden are ridiculed as decrepit clowns while European non-entities like Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron are routinely booed in public.

Strategic Culture Foundation has empowered Western public knowledge and critical thinking through its open forum of intelligent and independent articles.

That is why it has become essential, from the point of view of the Western regimes, to shut us down with a vengeance. This, in turn, only exposes all the more the hypocrisy of Western states who claim to respect free speech and democracy.

It needs to be more widely appreciated what is going on at this time. The Western states, under the sway of ruling elites and corporate propaganda services, are at war. Not just against Russia, China and other dissenting nations. They are at war against their own public who are growing increasingly discontented and angered by the despotism that is the real, inherent condition of Western rulers and their bankrupt capitalist system.

Truth may be an early casualty of war. But that casualty can be repaired with more supportive truth and time. What might be said to be the last casualty of war are liars and their despotism.

And they can’t be repaired – when the damage to their deception is finally done.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Conflict in Ukraine Reveals EU Leaders’ Subordination to Washington: Ex-Italian PM

Al-Manar | August 27, 2023

NATO’s strategy for the conflict in Ukraine, based on military supplies and the logic of escalation, has failed, while the crisis itself has exposed the EU’s inability to show leadership and underlined its subordination to the US. Giuseppe Conte, former Prime Minister of Italy, now the leader of the Five Star Movement opposition political party, expressed this opinion on Saturday.

“The strategy pursued so far in NATO, based on constant military supplies to Ukraine and the logic of escalation, did not lead to a military defeat for Russia: there was no defeat of the Russian army in Bakhmut, there was no collapse [of] its military units, there was no retreat during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The economic and financial sanctions imposed on Russia did not lead to its bankruptcy and did not bring down its economy,” Conte wrote on his Facebook page.

“The isolation of Russia has by no means become a reality. On the contrary, the 15th summit of the BRICS group has just ended with a concrete prospect of its further expansion in 2024, which will cover 45% of the world’s population and 38.2% of world GDP,” Conte went on.

According to Conte, “the conflict in the heart of old Europe has revealed the inability of the European Union to develop an effective common strategy and show independent political and economic leadership, highlighting, on the contrary, the subordination of [European] rulers to the United States.” As the former Italian prime minister noted, his party has always “been convinced of the fallacy of the desire to inflict a military defeat on the Russian Federation.”

Conte has repeatedly called for the start of peace talks on Ukraine. In particular, he said that he was in favor of a “breakthrough in the negotiation process” with the participation of the Vatican and “all other players in the international community.” The former prime minister noted that he “would not leave” President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky “the right to decide how, when and under what conditions to sit down at the negotiating table.”

The Five Star Movement has long opposed sending weapons to Ukraine. This position indirectly caused it to leave the previous ruling coalition, which led to the fall of the previous government of Mario Draghi in the summer of 2022.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU imports from Russia drop at ‘unprecedented’ pace – Borrell

RT | August 27, 2023

The drop in trade between Russia and the EU over the past year is one of the major signs that Brussels’ sanctions on Moscow have been successful, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in an article titled, ‘Yes, the sanctions against Russia are working’, which was published on Saturday on his EEAS blog.

According to Borrell, EU imports from Russia dropped by 58% in 2022, which he called “an unprecedented decoupling.”

“This movement is accelerating: the decline in imports is above 75% for the first quarter of 2023, and the fall is even greater for energy goods, at minus 80%.”

He noted that EU exports of goods to Russia last year also dropped 52% below the annual average prior to 2022.

“Within a year, [the sanctions] have already limited Moscow’s options considerably, causing financial strain, cutting the country from key markets and significantly degrading Russia’s industrial and technological capacity,” Borrell said. He added that Russia’s “technological degradation” and the exit of foreign companies, a number of which left the country under sanctions pressure, “will hamper investment and productivity growth for years.”

“And the outlook for 2023 remains bleak. According to the latest OECD report, Russia’s GDP is foreseen to shrink by up to 2.5%… In short: Russia’s decision to attack Ukraine has obviously pushed the Russian economy towards isolation and decline.”

Meanwhile, both economic data and experts’ projections paint a different picture. Despite the sanctions, trade has been on the rise in both the energy and non-energy sectors due to Moscow’s successful efforts to reorient from Western markets to the East. For instance, according to data from Chinese customs, as of the end of 2022, Russia became the top European country in terms of exports to China, fourth in terms of imports, and second in trade turnover. In recent months, Russia has also become the largest exporter of oil to both China and India.

According to a recent World Bank report, Russia moved into the world’s top five largest economies in 2022 based on purchasing power parity, outpacing the EU’s largest economy, Germany. Both the World Bank and the IMF recently raised their forecasts for the Russian economy, saying GDP would continue to grow amid strong trade and industrial production, as well as higher-than-expected energy revenues. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said this week that the country’s economy is expected to grow about 2.5% by the end of the year, fully recovering from last year’s decline.

By contrast, the Eurozone entered a recession earlier this year after energy prices spiked following the drop in gas flows from Russia, which was once its largest energy supplier. Despite its efforts, the European Central Bank has been unable to bring inflation in the region to the target level and turn the economy towards growth. According to a recent ECB forecast, Eurozone GDP growth is expected to slow to 0.9% by the end of the year from 3.5% in 2022.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

The Digital Services Act Will Give the EU Sweeping New Censorship Powers, Forcing X and Facebook to Remove Content that Challenges Mass Migration, Transgender Ideology or Net Zero

BY DR FREDERICK ATTENBOROUGH | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) comes into force today, obliging “very large online platforms” to swiftly take down what unelected European Commission bureaucrats decide to define as ‘disinformation’.

As Laurie Wastell points out in the European Conservative, the DSA obliges online platforms to swiftly take down so-called disinformation. From today, the EC has at its disposal an aggressive enforcement regime, such that if Big Tech companies fail to abide by the EU’s ‘Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation’, which requires swift censorship of mis- and disinformation, then they can be fined up to 6% of their annual global revenue, investigated by the Commission, and potentially even prevented from operating in the EU altogether.

So, who is to say if something is misinformation? In the case of social media platforms operating within the EU, the EC is the arbiter of that, since it is the Commission that will decide if platforms like X and Facebook are doing enough to combat it. (It is the EU’s executive body, the EC, that is invested by the DSA with the exclusive power to assess compliance with the Code and apply penalties if a platform is found wanting.)

And what kind of speech is the DSA expected to police? The Code defines disinformation as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm”. That sounds innocent and apolitical enough. Yet the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), which was launched by the EC in June 2020 and aims to “identify disinformation, uproot its sources or dilute its impact”, appears to adopt a much broader, deeply politicised understanding of the term “misleading content”.

Consider, for instance, some of the key “disinformation trends” listed in the EDMO’s recent 2023 briefing on disinformation in Ireland. They include “nativist narratives” that “oppose migration”, “gender and sexuality narratives” that touch on drag queens and trans issues as “part of a wider ‘anti-woke’ narrative that mocks social justice campaigns”, and “environment narratives” that criticise climate-change policies and Greta Thunberg.

Clearly, what is common to such narratives is not that they constitute disinformation in the sense outlined in the Code — that is, “false information intended to mislead”. Rather, they represent opposition by members of the public to unpopular policies favoured by European elites — in this case, mass migration, transgender ideology and Net Zero.

In the words of EC President Ursula von der Leyen, it is vital that companies censor disinformation of this kind to “ensure that the online environment remains a safe space”. Safe for whom, one wonders — politicians or citizens?

Well worth reading in full.

Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officer of the Free Speech Union.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Europe ‘dancing on the edge of a volcano’ – Sarkozy

RT | August 24, 2023

The Western push to incorporate Ukraine into NATO can only lead to an escalation of the conflict with Russia, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said, expressing doubt that the opposing parties in the stand-off have used all the tools at their disposal to achieve peace.

Speaking to TF1 TV on Wednesday, Sarkozy stressed that he believes Ukraine must remain “neutral” and refrain from joining the EU and NATO.

“This is not the solution. The solution is to discuss, for reasonable people to sit around the table, for us to give Ukraine security guarantees and for us to engage in a discussion to see at least if we can get out of it other than by annihilating either Ukraine or Russia,” he said.

Victory in the conflict can be achieved either by destroying an enemy, or finding a compromise, according to the French president, who called on the West to “stop talking about buying planes, ammunition, tanks.” He added that the international community must “find a solution that preserves the interests of Ukraine,” noting that “Russia won’t go anywhere, with or without [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

“My analysis is that the world and Europe are dancing on the edge of a volcano. It can get out of hand at any moment. There have been enough deaths, and it seems to me that the path of diplomacy and discussion has not been used to the end and that it is now appropriate to use it.”

Last week, Sarkozy said that despite the current stand-off, Russia will always be Europe’s neighbor, suggesting that Ukraine “must remain” a bridge between the two.
He also stated that any compromise with Moscow would involve recognizing Crimea as part of Russia. The peninsula voted in a referendum to become part of the country in 2014 following a Western-backed coup in Kiev.

His comments, however, sparked outrage in Kiev, with Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, calling the proposal “criminal,” and accusing Sarkozy of complicity in organizing “genocide and war.”

Moscow has repeatedly said that it is open to talks with Kiev. Last year, however, Zelensky signed a decree banning any talks with the current Russian leadership after four former Ukrainian regions overwhelmingly voted in referendums last autumn to join Russia.

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

No security for Europe without Russia – Austrian FM

By Lucas Leiroz | August 23, 2023

Showing political realism, a major Austrian official criticized the European Union’s efforts to “cancel” Russia, recalling the role of geography in determining Europe’s policy towards Russia. In fact, the current crisis in relations between Russia and Western Europe is due to the end of the pragmatic search for good diplomatic ties with Moscow, which tends to be a “suicidal” policy considering that Europe and Russia are geographically close and will always have to maintain dialogue to guarantee regional peace.

The statement was made by the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Schallenberg, at an international panel discussion organized by a university in Spain on August 22nd. According to him, it is not possible to create an efficient security architecture for Europe without Russia, considering both the geographical proximity and the relevant military and economic role played by Russia. Therefore, he is against the anti-Russian isolation campaign, believing it to be an inefficient and anti-strategic policy for Europe itself.

“Whatever happens, Russia will be our biggest geographic neighbor. Whatever happens, it will probably be still number one as far as nuclear warheads are concerned. It is still a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN (…) We cannot cancel Russia. We cannot do ghosting on it”, he said during the event.

At the event, Schallenberg mentioned the legacy of Egon Bahr, an important 20th Century German diplomat, notorious for his attempt to bring West and Eastern Europe closer during the Cold War’s bipolarity. Bahr’s doctrine is known as “Ostpolitik“, being summarized in the permanent search for the normalization of ties between Europe and Russia, given the inevitability of dialogue due to geographical proximity. Bahr said that “America is irreplaceable, but Russia is unmovable”, something Schallenberg seems to agree with.

It is important to note that Schallenberg is obviously not “pro-Russian”, but a European official concerned about the future of his own region. At the event, which was also attended by EU top diplomat Josep Borrell and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, Schallenberg severely criticized Russia, blaming it for the conflict and endorsing the Western narrative that Moscow violated international law by “invading” Ukraine. Furthermore, Schallenberg also reminded the conflict with Georgia in 2008, calling it another violation of international norms.

At a certain point in his speech, Schallenberg even asked: “What in heaven has to happen for us to actually trust this country again?”, clearly showing the “lack of trust” that Europeans have in Russia today – despite the fact that until now only the EU, not Moscow, has acted hostilely in bilateral relations. Also, Schallenberg tried to justify the policy of aid that Austria has been giving to Ukraine. He said that, despite being neutral, Austria advocates a rules-based global order, which is why aid would be “justified”. Until now, Vienna has not sent weapons to Kiev, but has spent millions on financial and humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian side, which sounds like hypocrisy when the Russian population is also affected by the conflict, being simply ignored by the West.

However, despite condemning Russia, Schallenberg shows realistic pragmatism by considering Moscow necessary for the success of European security. He argues that, despite the disagreements, Europe and Russia must work together to build a mutually favorable security architecture, recovering the principles of Bahr’s “Ostpolitik”, which has now been completely abandoned by the EU in favor of automatic alignment with the US. In addition, Schallenberg emphasized that by excluding Russia from European diplomacy, the EU ends up also excluding Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. In other words, instead of isolating Russia, Europe is isolating itself with its policies.

Schallenberg’s words sound like hope for a resurgence of realism and political pragmatism in the EU. In the midst of so many unnecessary hostilities, including even informal declarations of war, it is positive to see that there are still diplomats who advocate classic principles of peaceful coexistence, ignoring the irrational attempts to apply the “cancel culture” in international relations. However, this is still insufficient.

Russian-European dialogue will not be possible as long as the EU continues to believe in a “rules-based global order”. For any serious specialist in international law, it seems evident that the so-called “rules” are imposed to defend the interests of the West, this “global order” being nothing more than a system of geopolitical unipolarity led by the US. Europe has been collaborating with this system for decades, passively accepting to submit to American orders, even when these violate Europe’s own interests – as we can see in the Ukrainian case.

To really live peacefully with Russia, Europe needs to break with this kind of mentality and understand the importance of the rise of a multipolar world. Only in a polycentric geopolitical system will it be possible for Europe to adequately coexist with Russia, since then it will no longer be subservient to the orders of a hegemonic power. More than that, only in a multipolar world will Europe itself be able to become a relevant center of power, capable of defending its own interests.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

West has shown its ‘true Russophobic face’ – Lavrov

RT | August 18, 2023

Washington and Brussels have openly unleashed a hybrid war against everything Russian, dropping their masks after decades of pretending to be civilized and adequate international partners, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with International Affairs, published on Saturday.

“Many of our former partners have been concealing their Russophobic nature under the veil of hypocrisy, but have now shown their true face in all its glory,” he said. “However, there is also the flip side of the coin here, since the Global Majority saw the true face of those who went as far as [to] aspire to a monopoly in defining the so-called universal values.”

“Today’s West is steered by people like Josep Borrell who divide the world into a blooming ‘garden’ and ‘the jungle,’ where the latter clearly applies to most of humanity,” Lavrov added.

The West has spent decades cynically transforming neighboring Ukraine into a “hostile military bulwark against Russia by nurturing an entire generation of politicians ready to declare war on our shared past, culture and everything Russian,” according to Lavrov.

Western capitals even openly admitted that reaching a peaceful settlement in Ukraine was never part of their plan, and that the Minsk agreements were originally designed to “buy some time to prepare a military scenario and deliver weapons to Kiev.”

“I think that the essential thing we must understand in this regard is that the West wants to do away with our country as a serious geopolitical rival,” the top Russian diplomat said “They have not hesitated to use subversive methods and perform acts of sabotage, as was the case with the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea.”

Lavrov also accused Washington and its allies of using all possible coercive means to prevent Russia’s partners from engaging in economic and other kinds of cooperation, while also “making outrageous efforts to disconnect Russia from international cooperation mechanisms in culture, education, research, and sports.”

One thing that the West fails to understand, according to Lavrov, is that “Russia will use all means to defend its people and its vital interests,” and thus would be better for the opponents to realize that “confrontation with Russia is futile and switch to more civilized” means for achieving a balance of interests.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russians gained wealth amid war in Ukraine while Western countries lost trillions of dollars: Report

Press TV – August 18, 2023

Russia got richer last year amid the war in Ukraine, while the Western countries that provided funds and weapons to Kiev to fight against Moscow lost trillions of dollars of their wealth.

Russia added $600 billion of total wealth in 2022, the Business Insider (BI) reported this week, citing the latest annual Global Wealth Report of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) published on Tuesday.

According to the BI, the number of Russian millionaires rose from around 350,000 to about 408,000 last year. However, in 2022, about 1 million of an estimated 23.7 million lost their millionaire status in the United States.

It said 4,500 Russians joined the super-rich people’s club of ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNW) — people with more than $50,000,000 — last year.

In the meantime, the collective West, North America and Europe together, lost $10.9 trillion, UBS said, noting that the US alone shed $5.9 trillion of its wealth.

The Swiss bank suggested that Russia’s gains might be attributed to the rising price of oil, a major export commodity and a key economic engine for Russia.

Russia’s added wealth came amid the West’s unprecedented anti-Moscow economic sanctions.

Western officials have admitted that the West’s sanctions on Russia had backfired, hurting Europeans instead.

Amid the West’s planning for anti-Moscow sanctions shortly after the start of war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin warned European buyers of Russian oil and natural gas that punitive measures imposed by the West would backfire, and those Western countries would be hit worse by the bans.

After Western countries banned Russia’s oil, Moscow turned to the East and increased its sales of crude to other countries which in turn re-exported oil to the European countries.

As a result, Mexico, India, and Brazil also gained significant amounts of wealth in 2022, while the US, Japan, Canada, and Australia lost the most, the UBS report suggested.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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