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Madame President Le Pen – Europe’s next political earthquake

By Finian Cunningham | RT | November 22, 2016

After the shock of Brexit and then election of Donald Trump to the White House, anything now seems possible in the political world. Six months hence, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National (FN), will be within reach of the presidency.

It’s a possibility that Le Pen is not alone in trumpeting, following Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union and Trump’s equally surprising US victory earlier this month. Last week, incumbent French Prime Minister Manuel Valls acknowledged that the FN leader could be elected the French republic’s new president when the country goes to the polls during April-May next year.

The 48-year-old Le Pen, a trained lawyer, is hoping that her bid for Élysée Palace will tap into the zeitgeist of what she calls a “popular uprising against ruling elites”.

Her chances of becoming head of state in the EU’s second largest member after Germany has just received a further boost from the expected nomination of Francois Fillon as presidential candidate of the center-right Les Republicains party. Fillon is way ahead of his party rival Alain Juppé in the nomination process, which concludes this coming weekend.

While Fillon has adopted Le Pen’s agenda of tougher immigration controls, there is a gulf of difference on economic issues, as well as on France’s relation to the EU bloc.

Fillon, a prime minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012), is an economic neoliberal hawk. He proudly claims the late British premier Margaret Thatcher as one of his ideological mentors. Fillon is promising to slash public service jobs and budgets, while also gutting French labor laws to remove statutory caps on maximum working hours and to increase the retirement age.

It is hard to conceive of a more politically tone-deaf candidate for the presidency. This year France has seen months of massive public protests against the very hardline austerity measures that Fillon is advocating.

So, while his tough rhetoric on clamping down on immigration and his socially conservative opposition to gay marriage might appeal to some citizens on the political right, Marine Le Pen appears to be more in tune with concerns of the broader electorate. Those concerns are motivated by economic insecurity and loss of democratic accountability in an era of seemingly implacable financial globalization.

The rise of FN in France and other eurosceptic political parties across Europe is not simply due to xenophobia and racial tensions over immigration. It is arguably much more about counteracting the excesses of a global oligarchy, which the EU and established political parties have come to embody.

Whereas Le Pen wants to follow Britain in quitting the EU altogether to reassert national control over the economy, Fillon has no such ambitions. He is a candidate for globalization and austerity, the very program that has become a totemic hate symbol driving the populist mood for revolt.

The FN has come a long way from its origins when it was considered a bete noire of French and European politics owing to perceived fascist and racist tendencies. Founded in 1993 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine, the party would never receive mainstream media coverage. Now it does.

Marine Le Pen cleans house

When she took over the FN leadership in 2011, Le Pen embarked on a “detoxication” of the party, cleaning up its image as an anti-Semitic, racist fringe movement. This has led to an acrimonious split with her father, who has been banished to obscurity as “honorary president” over his repeated remarks about the Nazi Holocaust being a mere “historical footnote”.

Under Marine, the FN has also adopted a more leftwing economic agenda, such as protecting employment rights, increasing the minimum wage and vowing to fight corporate capitalism by spurning neoliberal international trade deals.

This is perhaps where she promises to rally French voters when they go to the first and second rounds of the presidential election on April 23 and May 7.

The incumbent Socialist President Francois Hollande and his prime minister Manuel Valls have become toxic for French workers and traditional leftwing voters. Since his election in 2012, Hollande’s popularity has plummeted to record single-digit lows. The Socialist party leadership is vilified as “betraying” ordinary citizens by accommodating finance capital and embracing neoliberal austerity.

So abject has the Socialist party become in the eyes of the electorate, it is inconceivable that it will be able muster a viable candidate for the presidential election.

That in effect makes the ballot a face-off between Marine Le Pen and Francois Fillon, whose supporters may be betting on his anti-immigrant rhetoric to decisively capture the rightwing vote. The 62-year-old also has more than three decades of parliamentary experience, which might be viewed as giving him appeal for more centrist voters.

But such calculations are badly amiss in gauging the popular mood in France and elsewhere. The popular discontent with conventional politics goes beyond rightwing concerns over excessive immigration and “multi-culturalism”. It is about challenging the status quo of perceived economic oppression that politicians like Francois Fillon represent.

In this assessment, Le Pen stands to reap votes from a much broader constituency of French citizens, straddling both the traditional left and right, but all united under the banner of demanding democratic control over basic economic matters.

If the FN sweeps to power by May of next year, the European political landscape will be shattered. An outwardly anti-EU French presidency would herald the collapse of the 28-member bloc as we know it.

That will have radical implications for US, European and Russian relations. No longer shackled by pro-Washington Atlanticism, France and Europe would begin to realign with more balanced and mutual relations with Moscow. Given Donald Trump’s more pragmatic friendly intentions towards Russian President Vladimir Putin, the whole geopolitical outlook next year could be upended – and upended for the greater global good. The current US-led hostility towards Russia abandoned and flash-points in Ukraine and Syria defused.

Center-right presidential hopeful Francois Fillon has a more reasonable view of Russia compared with the slavish Socialist party leadership under Hollande and Valls. Last week, he called for a international coalition involving Russia as a partner in the global fight against terrorism.

However, Le Pen is again seen to be more in tune with the electorate on that issue. She has berated Washington and European leaders for demonizing Russia, wants to jettison self-defeating punitive sanctions against Moscow, and she openly aligns with Vladimir Putin on foreign policy objectives, including his support for Syria against illegally armed insurgents who also pose grave security threats to France and the rest of Europe.

Whether Le Pen can deliver on policies to ameliorate French society and the economy is a moot point. But the improved shake-up of France and Europe’s foreign relations with the US and Russia is something that one feels many French voters will be willing to take a chance on.

Brexit, Trump, Le Pen could prove to be three moments in a year of major upheaval. As with any change, there are always risks for downsides. But given the rottenness of conventional politics in the West, the possibility of change is welcome.

And a Le Pen political earthquake might be the final shock to bring a rotten edifice crashing down.

November 22, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Witch hunt’: Report urges UK to ‘map,’ ‘challenge,’ and expose public figures with Russia links

RT | November 21, 2016

An influential right-wing think-tank has proposed a radical clampdown on politicians and other prominent figures sympathetic to Russia by “challenging their credibility,” revealing their “insidious means of funding,” and forcing them to reveal if they receive money for appearing on RT.

The new report, published by the Henry Jackson Society comes as the EU parliament prepares to debate how to resist “disinformation and propaganda” from Russia on Tuesday.

Called ‘Putin’s Useful Idiots,’ the 17-page document was written by Andrew Foxall, the Director of the Russia Studies Centre at the conservative think tank. Foxall said that “Putin makes for a deceptive and dangerous friend” for “those on the left who can be relied upon to stand up for the West’s enemies whoever and wherever they may be, and those on the right who see Moscow as a defender of conservative values.”

Among the examples on the right, are UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who has regularly appeared on RT for a decade, and Nick Griffin, the former BNP leader, who reportedly travels to Russia regularly to participate in nationalist conferences, and has said that he is open to funding from Russia for his anti-NATO activist group.

On the left, the report mentions the Stop the War coalition, which was once chaired by current Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the Scottish independence movement.

Foxall, a former Oxford University lecturer, called Russia’s supporters “tools in [the Kremlin’s] programme of active measures”. The report also takes aim at RT, Sputnik and other foreign-language Russian media, branding them the result of “heavy investment” from the Kremlin, aimed at “influencing European public opinion and improving its international image,” and even working as a means of funding Kremlin sympathizers.

“Many of those on the extremes of the political spectrum, particularly the left, have appeared on RT. If they received appearance fees, then they have also taken money from the Kremlin, thereby establishing financial links between themselves, their organisations and Moscow,” stated Foxall.

While the report said there is no “silver bullet” that could solve the “problem” of pro Russian opinion-makers, it suggested a list of comprehensive measures.

“Activists, journalists and politicians should point out the pro-Russian connections of individuals and parties on the left and right of the political spectrum and challenge the credibility of these entities via political debates,” said the author.

“The personal and organisational connections of left- and right-wing parties and their Russian counterparts should be mapped across Europe,” said Hoxall, claiming that Cold War-era KGB ‘comrade networks’ have either been resurrected or forged anew, to undermine the West.

“As movements on the left and right grow in influence across Europe, the continent must wake up to their insidious means of funding,” continues the report, suggesting that “Parliament should amend current legislation or pass new legislation that forces politicians to declare all media appearances they make, whether they receive money for them or not.”

’21st-century McCarthyism’

“I am shocked and appalled by this report – it is both dangerous and inflammatory. It should be condemned by anyone who believes in free speech” Marcus Papadopoulos, the editor of Politics First, a UK analytical magazine, told RT.

“In essence it says that any person who gives an interview to Russian media – including RT – is an ‘idiot’ and a traitor to Britain, and should be publicly named and shamed. It’s a witch hunt, and 21st-century McCarthyism.”

Annie Machon, a former UK intelligence officer, who has become a regular RT contributor, said she has experienced first-hand accusations of being a Kremlin “collaborationist.”

“I appear on all sorts of different channels, including the BBC, which is state-funded. Most countries have their own publicly funded organizations and media, what is the problem?” she told RT from London.

“I think there is also a knee-jerk reaction by a UK and US-funded think tank against the election of Donald Trump. The establishment in both countries is worried that he might forge a more cordial relationship with Russia.”

November 21, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

EU Seeks to Make European Citizens Aware of ‘Sneaky’ Russian Propaganda

Sputnik – 21.11.2016

liberty-bonds-crucified-soldierThe EU leadership seems to be very anxious about the fact that some Europeans might not notice the influence of “sneaky” Russian war propaganda. Therefore, the EU politicians have something very special to offer to its citizens in order to make sure they “are aware of existing danger.”

The EU’s “East Stratcom Task Force” has prepared the so-called “disinformation review” that explains to simple-hearted Europeans how exactly “sneaky” Russian propaganda spreads on European soil, German politician and former CDU party member Holger Eekhof wrote for Sputnik Germany.

“The expert group, that includes 400 freelancers, […] sends weekly newsletters to journalists and political PR-specialists to remind them of the mayhem caused by Russia,” Eekhof wrote.

According to the expert, these newsletters are used by the European Union and the European Parliament as a proof that “Russia wages a hybrid war against Europe and European values.” At the same time, they also serve as legitimization of the EU’s political agenda aimed at the protection against alleged Russian aggression.

The latest edition of the review refers to several European websites which it labels as “pro-Kremlin propaganda outlets,” Eekhof wrote. For instance, the latest newsletters referred to the Czech web platform ac24.cz and US-based website conservativedailypost.com.

The first one was created in 2011 by Prof. Dr. Petr Zantovsky with the aim of providing readers with alternative information on global political events. The second one is a conservative US media source which recently released an article on the protests against newly elected US President Donald Trump and assumed that the campaign could be organized with the help of oppositional forces.

How these websites are related to Russia, remains unclear. However, the EU task force seems to be more than eager to promote the idea of Russia’s involvement in every sphere of Western life.

Earlier, Eekhof recalled in an interview with Sputnik that the EU Parliament is set to vote on a report on countering third-party information warfare that puts Russian media and Daesh propaganda on the same level. It says that Russia is using think tanks and “pseudo news agencies” to “challenge democratic values” and “divide Europe.”

The task force was established in September 2015 and is a part of the “strategic communications” sector of the European External Action Service (EEAS). The purpose of this department is to promote the EU’s political ideas in the eastern neighboring states, including Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Eekhof wrote.

November 21, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Many Americans Should Un-Stupid Themselves

By Joel S. Hirschhorn | Dissident Voice | November 18, 2016

To be upfront, I strongly believe that President Trump is exactly what the USA desperately needs at this time, a disrupter. I say this as someone who worked in the political world for over 20 years, is white, highly educated, old and affluent. I ask all who have negative views of Trump to open their minds and consider my arguments.

In September 2015 I published an article in which I said: “Trump surely has more current and potential supporters than the media and political establishment can accept. Unlike Trump, they have no imagination. The Donald, to his credit, is really on to something Great. I hope that many more Americans recognize that he is exactly what the nation needs. Stick that middle finger up at all the chronic liars that have sold out the vast majority of Americans.” More than a year before the election I was correct.

The most fascinating post-election fact I have seen is that Trump prevailed with voters making $100,000 or more a year. Second was that Trump won 53 percent of white women. Would you have ever predicted these from what you heard from the mainstream media?

The craziest moment I had was watching President Obama very close to the election support voting by illegal immigrants.

During the campaign I was appalled at the insane pro-Clinton bias among the corporate media; it made me nauseous and caused me to greatly reduce my watching of CNN and MSNBC and all three major television networks.

Not only were most Trump supporters not deplorable, they were not racist, sexist or stupid. But the media, Democrats and establishment Republicans tried to make them feel like they were.

When 70 percent of the nation consistently says that the country is on the wrong track there is enormous pent up demand for change. Did anyone really think Clinton was a change agent? The media dismissed the significance of the demand for change. When you thirst for change you are willing to ignore a lot of negatives of a change candidate. The media and Clinton were just the opposite; they were status quo supporters.

And now what amazes me is that all these media companies have not fired the many, many pro-Clinton anchors, pundits, columnists and reporters. Days after the election all these people who got nearly everything wrong about this election are still appearing in the same venues. A great many columnists, editors and reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post and countless personalities at CNN and MSNBC should be fired. Not solely because they were wrong, but because they showed themselves to lack any journalistic integrity. That means you Wolf Blitzer.

Even more sickening are the countless Democrat politicians and hacks who refuse to accept full responsibility for all the idiotic and disrespectful things they did that caused their terrible candidate to appropriately lose the election. The clearest sign of Democrat stupidity and delusion is the constant garbage bragging that Clinton got more votes than Trump. Why is this so repulsive? Because presidential campaigns are devised and operated on the basis of the Electoral College system that constitutionally determines the victor. This means that a winning campaign must focus on specific states rather than on states with the largest populations. In other words, Clinton’s larger national popular vote total is irrelevant and meaningless. Moreover, millions of illegal immigrants may have voted for Clinton. Clinton herself has clearly refused to accept personal responsibility for her loss. This makes all of us who intensely opposed her feeling justified as well as even more thrilled with her loss.

What the biased media apparently also has not learned is their behavior helped the Trump victory. Why? Because it pissed off many millions of Americans. Sure, politicians lie a lot, including Trump and Clinton. But to constantly see and hear nearly all media outlets distort and lie about the pros and cons of both major candidates irritated rational, smart Americans who supported Trump for valid reasons having nothing to do with racism and other negative characterization.

The media has done of terrible job of properly informing Americans about the true nature of globalization that is pushed by corporate interests. There are two main dimensions. One is the advocacy for international trade agreements that have already sold out middle class Americans by exporting good jobs in manufacturing. The availability of cheaper goods does not outweigh the incredible costs and pain for a large segment of the American population. There has been a transfer of American wealth to countries such as China, but that wealth has been robbed from the middle class, not the upper wealthy and corporate class that has increased their wealth because of trade.

The other side of globalization is the escalating movement of non-white people from terrible situations and countries to white-majority countries. This too has been pushed by corporate interests seeking low cost labor. Both legal and illegal immigrants have been changing the culture and economy of white-majority democracies. What I greatly resent is that Americans have never been given a clear political choice to vote for changing their beloved white-majority country to a very different kind of country. Neither Obama or Clinton or any other politicians clearly told the American public that their long-term objective was to convert the white-majority nation to something very different. Of course Clinton was pretty clear that her campaign was based on getting the votes of blacks and Hispanics, which, in the end, she failed at. This – I strongly say – is not about racism; it is about the right of a majority population to maintain a major characteristic of their nation and culture. None of the historic waves of immigration in previous centuries did what the current kind and scope of immigration is doing to the fundamental character of the USA. It has been imposed upon the white-majority population in a fundamentally undemocratic way. Americans were never given a chance to vote on this change, except to vote for someone like Clinton who never honestly said what she wanted. So white Americans saw the truth this time and acted on their beliefs and fears.

Here is the truth of contemporary nationalism: Any national majority has a democratic right of self-determination to use their political system to reject immigration that threatens to change that majority, whether that majority is based on race, religion, culture or language. Political leaders that use humanitarian arguments to ignore majority resistance to immigration face defeat such as Hillary Clinton’s loss.

Thus the Trump victory is consistent with what is going on in other democracies, namely a rejection of elitist, establishment, corporate driven systems pushing globalization and intense immigration. So called right wing populist movements reflect a rejection of globalization priorities. Not only is this not about racism, it is also not about isolationism. It is about self-determination of majority populations. Swedes have a right to keep their white culture, the French have a similar right and so do Americans. It is not racist to see connections between fast, massive immigration and threats from terrorism and crime.

Give Trump time to show that he can actually help make America great again. If you did not see the true realities that produced the Trump victory, then un-stupid yourself.

The most stupid thing you can do right now is to ignore the several core serious messages of Trump that resonated so much with so many Americans because for one reason or another you hate the messenger.

Joel S. Hirschhorn was a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association; he has authored five nonfiction books, including Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government.

November 18, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Couldn’t prove Iraq war crimes: German court rejects US Army deserter’s asylum application

RT | November 18, 2016

A Munich court has rejected a US soldier’s plea for asylum six years after his application was filed. The soldier deserted his post in southern Germany after being ordered to return to Iraq, where he feared he would be forced to take part in war crimes.

Andre Shepherd, 39, deserted his post at Katterbach Kaserne military base in southern Germany in 2007 after being told he would have to return to Iraq for a second tour. He claims he felt that he would be forced to take part in what he called “war crimes” if he did.

However, that excuse failed to hold up in court and the case was dismissed on Thursday, with presiding Judge Josef Ruber ruling that Shepherd had failed to exercise all available options to leave the military before deserting, making no attempt to join another military unit.

Ruber also said that Shepherd – who served as an Apache helicopter mechanic for the US Army – was unable to prove that he would have been forced to commit war crimes on returning to Iraq, Deutsche Welle reported.

The ruling is the latest in what has become a drawn out case for Shepherd, who initially filed his asylum application in 2008. His original plea was denied by the Federal Ministry for Refugees in 2011, prompting the former soldier to file an appeal under a European directive that protects military deserters who have witnessed human rights violations in combat and consequently fear persecution.

That appeal was taken to the European Court of Justice, which last year remanded the case back to the German court, which ultimately ruled against Shepherd on Thursday.

Shepherd’s lawyer plans to appeal the latest verdict, according to DPA news agency.

In a statement to AP, the US Army in Europe said it was aware of Shepherd’s case, but was not seeking to take part in any legal proceedings.

“We do not, as a general policy, proactively pursue deserters,” the statement said. “However, should Shepherd be returned to US Army custody, his case would be handled as would every other deserter returned to US custody, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and on its own merit.”

Shepherd maintains the right to remain in Germany despite the Thursday ruling, as his wife is German.

The 39-year-old is the first Iraq War veteran to pursue refugee status in Germany, and only the second US soldier to ever have done so in the European country.

Shepherd claims that American forces have done “anything that anyone can possibly imagine in terms of war crimes committed in world history,” telling RT in 2011 that they were “continuing to do this on a daily basis.”

“The soldiers were being attacked, but they didn’t know from where, so they just shot randomly in different directions,” Shepherd said, recalling his Iraq experience.

Even being a helicopter mechanic in Iraq was troubling his conscience.

“I am sitting here and thinking: What am I doing? I’m putting together a lethal machine that is just killing innocent people,” Shepherd was quoted as saying in 2009.

November 18, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Obama on farewell tour says globalization is here to stay

RT | November 17, 2016

US President Barack Obama has strongly defended globalization during his visit to Berlin on his final European tour before leaving office. He will stay in Germany until Friday before heading to Peru for the APEC summit.

In a joint article for business magazine Wirtschaftswoche Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said cooperation was vital in terms of the rapidly growing global economy and “there will not be a return to a world before globalization.”

“Germans and Americans must take the opportunity to shape globalization according to our values and ideas. We are committed to broadening and deepening our cooperation with our businesses and our citizens, indeed the whole of the world community,” they said.

While visiting Athens, Obama acknowledged that globalization had fueled a “sense of injustice” and needed a “course correction” to address growing inequality.

The US and German leaders expressed support for the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the EU, saying it was a chance to “shape globalization based on our values.”

The strong support of the international trade deal comes as a counterweight to US President-elect Donald Trump’s protectionist stance. Trump has been a critic of global free trade agreements and welcomed Britain’s vote to leave the EU.

TTIP “would help us grow and remain globally competitive for decades to come” and that it would “lift living standards” for both European and US “employers, workers, consumers, and farmers,” the Obama-Merkel article said.

Thousands of Europeans have protested against TTIP since the trade deal was proposed three years ago. They have criticized the treaty for its secretiveness and lack of accountability.

Trump has also opposed the agreement, blaming similar economic pacts like NAFTA for job losses in the US.

TTIP aims to promote trade and multilateral economic growth by creating the world’s largest free trade zone between the United States and the European Union.

READ MORE: Merkel warns Trump against slide into protectionism

November 17, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

German court rejects calls for disclosure of NSA spy targets

‘Bad day for democracy’

RT | November 16, 2016

Germany’s highest court has rejected the opposition parties’ bid to make the government reveal to a parliamentary commission investigating the activities of the US NSA spy agency in Germany, the spy targets they had jointly worked on.

The head of the Left Party in the NSA parliamentary commission, Martina Renner, said the ruling was a “bad day for democracy,” which signaled that the “secret services can continue doing what they want, undisturbed by parliamentary control,” Zeit reported.

The ruling is a response to a complaint filed by two opposition parties, The Greens and the Left Party, in September 2015 following reports that the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) intelligence agency had collaborated with the NSA, helping it eavesdrop on European firms and prominent politicians.

The Constitutional Court’s October ruling, that was made public only this Tuesday, said the US was against sharing the sensitive spy target list, and doing so without US permission would hamper German intelligence agencies’ ability to cooperate with counterparts in the future, Reuters reported.

Anna Biselli of the digital research organization Netzpolitik called the Constitutional Court’s ruling “a blow for any clarification on the activities of the BND and the NSA and for the entire parliamentary monitoring of secret services.”

“The government has been successful with its universal argument that the state’s welfare is in danger if the list is revealed. Unfortunately, this argument is widely used to avoid giving out information. This makes the parliament’s job of monitoring the BND effectively very difficult, although that is exactly one of its responsibilities,” she told Deutsche Welle.

Biselli said that one of the commission’s key tasks was to look into the selectors list, which included search parameters from the NSA that the German spy agency to track millions of surveillance targets worldwide.

“The commission wanted to look into the list of selectors because it wanted to know which targets the BND illegally spied on for the NSA,” Biselli said. In the course of its investigation, it was found that the BND monitored sensitive targets, including European governments, institutions and corporations.

“There were several million, probably 13 to 14 million selectors [used to spy on targets], controlled together with the NSA over the course of 10 years,” Greens politician Konstantin von Notz, who is on the parliamentary committee investigating NSA activities, said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk on Wednesday.

“There are probably hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of European and German victims. There will be companies, journalists, probably politicians monitored for years, and this is unpleasant at the very least, and it will all remain under the seal of secrecy,” he added.

The NSA spied on German chancellors and their offices for over a decade, a WikiLeaks report revealed last year. Leaked NSA intercepts indicated that the US tapped the phones of the political offices of the last three German chancellors – Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schröder (in office 1998–2002) and Helmut Kohl (chancellor from 1982 to 1998) – and targeted at least 125 phone numbers of top German officials.

Another scandalous revelation made in April last year suggested that the German BND foreign intelligence agency helped the NSA spy on European firms and officials.

Read more:

BND helped NSA spy on EU politicians & companies ‘against German interests’

November 16, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , , , | Leave a comment

Anti-democracy protests spread to Moldova

Press TV – November 15, 2016

Thousands of Moldovans have protested in the capital Chisinau after a West-leaning politician claimed that a presidential runoff which propelled her pro-Russian rival to victory was “neither free nor fair.”

The protesters gathered in front of Moldova’s Great National Assembly before marching to the Central Electoral Commission where a high number of riot police were deployed.

Final results on Monday showed socialist-backed opposition candidate Igor Dodon won 52.2 percent of the vote against Maia Sandu who had 47.8 percent.

Sandu cried foul, accusing her rival of using “manipulation, lies, dirty money” in his bid to win.

Up to 3,000 mostly young Moldovans then marched to the offices of the Central Election Committee in Chisinau shouting “Down with the Mafia!”

International election observers, however, said “fundamental freedoms were respected,” even though “polarized media coverage, harsh rhetoric detracted from the process.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) described its overall assessment of the election as positive but said reports that some voters were unable to vote due to the lack of ballots were “regrettable.”

The 41-year-old Dodon tapped into popular anger over the approximately $1 billion that went missing from Moldovan banks before the 2014 parliamentary elections.

Many Moldovans hope Dodon’s election will rekindle ties with Moscow, which took a hit after the country signed an association agreement with the European Union in 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Dodon to visit Moscow and said he looked forward to developing bilateral relations.

The eastern European state of 3.5 million is located on the fault line separating Russia from Europe. Dodon has pledged to pursue closer ties with Russia rather than the European Union.

He argues that the recent gravitation towards the European Union has cost the country its ties with neighboring Russia. Dodon’s policy is backed by many Moldovans who suffered financially from the goods embargo imposed by Russia and a broader economic downturn.

Moldova has been in turmoil since the mysterious disappearance of money from three banks, which sparked huge street protests and the arrest of the former prime minister Vlad Filat.

November 15, 2016 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

Euro-Atlanticist course fails in Bulgaria

Katehon | 14.11.2016

In Bulgaria, the country’s first direct elections in the second round of presidential elections were won by the candidate who has been called pro-Russian. General Rumen Radev won the overwhelming majority of votes.

A former chief of the Bulgarian Air Force and the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, General Rumen Radev emphasizes his independence from both Russia and the United States. Before the second round of the elections, he said: “Until recently, I was flying a Soviet-made fighter. I am a graduate of a US military academy, but I am a citizen of Bulgaria, and Bulgaria is my main priority.”

Despite the fact that he is called the pro-Russian candidate due to his policy of lifting the anti-Russian sanctions, reality is different. Moreover, Radev supports his country gaining NATO membership and continuing close ties with the West. However, he is certainly a more advantageous president for Moscow than Tsetska Tsacheva, who represented the ruling liberals.

In Bulgaria, the president does not play a serious role. However, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov announced his resignation and the dissolution of the government over the defeat of their candidate. He stressed that he would be going into the opposition and that “there will no longer be any compromises.” The current president, Rosen Plevneliev, began to make quite sharp anti-Russian statements several days before the election.

It is premature to expect any major changes before the new government is formed. But many agree that relations with Moscow will actually significantly improve even if the new president does not initiate the lifting of the EU sanctions against Russia.

In addition, the socialist Radev’s victory comes alongside the victory of the socialist Dodon in Moldova and, of course, against the backdrop of the high-profile election results in the US. Taken together, all of these new elections and their results allow one to speak of impending global changes across the whole world.

November 14, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Trump effect’ divides European opinion

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | November 14, 2016

The results of the two presidential elections held on Sunday in Bulgaria and Moldova underscore the winds of change blowing over the western edges of Eurasia. To an extent they can be called the early signs of the ‘Trump effect’. In both elections, ‘pro-Russian’ candidates won convincingly. (here and here)

In both cases, the contestation essentially boiled down to whether Bulgaria and Moldova would be better off casting their lot with the European Union or whether they need to realign with Russia. The answer is clear.

The open-ended quest for EU membership no longer holds attraction for Moldova, whereas, Bulgaria appears to be disheartened with its EU membership. On the other hand, Russia is real and it is next-door. The election results yesterday constitute a blow to the EU’s prestige. Indeed, Moscow’s influence is spreading in Eastern Europe.

This is also a swing to the Left in political terms. There is much discontent with ‘reforms’, rampant corruption, etc. in both countries. The Russophile sentiment is very substantial, and there is eagerness to boost trade with Russia to overcome economic difficulties. Also, the local partisans of the West and EU stand discredited in both countries.

In Moldova, only around 30% of population find EU attractive, while 44% would support their country joining the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. Curiously, 66% of Moldovans trust Vladimir Putin; in comparison, only 22% place trust in Barack Obama’s words.

Against the backdrop of the election victory of Donald Trump in the US, how these trends are going to play out will be interesting to watch. Bulgaria’s president-elect Rumen Radev has called for an end to the EU sanctions against Russia. He argues that Sofia should be pragmatic in its approach to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. (This is notwithstanding Bulgaria’s long history of divided loyalties between Russia and Europe.)

The Obama administration in its lame duck phase will endeavour to pressure the EU to extend the sanctions against Russia for yet another 6-month period beyond December. But will Trump follow Obama’s footfalls when the issue crops up again toward the middle of next year? He is unlikely to show Obama’s messianic zeal to ‘contain’ Russia. That is how the EU consensus on sanctions against Russia can break down because many countries in Europe resent the American pressure and prefer to restore trade and economic ties with Russia.

Interestingly, Trump may get resonance in Old Europe as well. The Labour leader in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn made a stunning call in the weekend for Western leaders to ‘demilitarize’ the border between Eastern Europe and Russia or risk a New Cold War. He said the West didn’t have to pile up forces on Russia’s border. Corbyn told the BBC:

I have many, many criticisms of Putin, of the human rights abuses in Russia, of the militarisation of society. But I do think there has to be a process that we try –demilitarise the border between what are now the NATO states and Russia, so that we drive apart those forces and keep them further apart in order to bring about some kind of accommodation. We can’t descend into a new Cold War.

Corbyn also made a thoughtful suggestion that that the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which includes Russia, could replace NATO as a forum for solving issues in the region.

Indeed, some churning has already begun regarding European security even before Trump takes over in the Oval Office. By the way, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Sunday that American statements about possible deployment of a U.S. global missile shield’s radar in the Czech Republic are pure fiction.

He said, “A radar in the Czech territory would mean further escalation in relations with Russia. We need to use the window opening after Donald Trump’s election to have the United States and Russia sit down at one table.” Sobotka pointed out that Eastern Europe’s main security problem today is about putting an end to the war in Syria.

“The United States has considerable influence on the situation in Syria, Russia has considerable influence. So, it is necessary to use this,” he said, adding that Donald Trump can establish more efficient cooperation with Russia on Syria.

However, the fact of the matter is that neither has Trump taken his position yet on NATO nor is it going to be easy for him to seek a separation for America from the western alliance. Simply put, Europe is not ready for a post-NATO future. There is palpable fear in many quarters (both in the US and in Europe) that if the US were to withdraw from Europe, Russia would advance and exercise more assertive behaviour in Eastern Europe.

In an article in the weekend, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg made an impassioned appeal to Trump that now is not the time for the US to abandon NATO. He pointedly invoked the threat perceptions from “a more assertive” Russia. Read the opinion piece here.

The bottom line is that European opinion stands divided. Britain, France and Hungary refused to attend a contentious EU ministerial meeting last night in Brussels, backed by Germany, to align the bloc’s approach to Trump’s election. The rift within the EU on the US vote stands exposed. The irrepressible British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has publicly chided EU politicians to end their ‘whinge-o-rama’ over Trump. (Daily Mail )

Interestingly, the first politician from abroad whom Trump met after the election has been Nigel Farage, the populist Brexit campaigner.

November 14, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Establishment Strikes Back

By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | November 13, 2016

The immediate impact of Donald Trump’s victory among those of us who favored his candidacy over Hillary Clinton’s was triumphalism on the day after. This euphoric mood was very well captured on a special edition of the Russia Today’s “Cross Talk” show, which registered an audience of more than 110,000 on-line viewers, a number which is rare if not unprecedented.

But much of the potential for positive change which came with Trump’s victory will be dissipated if all of us do not do what Barack Obama and Donald Trump did a couple of days ago: reach out to shake hands with political opponents, who will remain opponents, and nonetheless move forward together in a constructive manner.

If left to its own devices, the U.S. foreign policy establishment will continue doing what it has done since Nov. 8: wishing away the whole Trump victory. At present, these think tank scholars and major media columnists are in denial, as we see from op-eds published by The New York Times and other anti-Trump mainstream media. They question his mandate for change and his ability to execute change. They offer to hold his hand, bring him to his senses and ensure that his election (at least regarding its message about trying to cooperate with Russia on shared goals such as fighting terrorism) was in vain.

These spokesmen for the Establishment choose to ignore that Trump’s first moves after winning were to reward those in his party who had first come out in support of him and who stood by him in the worst days of the campaign, of which there were many. I note the rising stars of Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, among others. This makes it most improbable that he will also reward those who did everything possible to stymie his candidacy, first, and foremost the neoconservative and liberal interventionist foreign policy loudmouths.

Perhaps to comfort themselves, perhaps to confuse us, these foreign policy elitists say Trump is interested mainly in domestic affairs, in particular rebuilding American infrastructure, canceling or modifying Obamacare. They call him an isolationist and then fill in the content of his supposed isolationism to suit their purposes. They propose to give him a speed course on why continued global hegemony serves America’s interests and the interests of his electorate.

Yet, the record shows that Trump formulated his plans for U.S. military and foreign policy explicitly during the campaign. He said he would build up the U.S. military potential. He spoke specifically of targets for raising the number of men and women under arms, raising the construction of naval vessels, modernizing the nuclear arsenal. These plans are cited by the Establishment writers today as contradicting Trump’s thinking about getting along with all nations, another major motif of his campaign rhetoric. They propose to help him iron out the contradictions.

Explaining Trump’s Contradictions

But the answer to the apparent contradictions could well be that Trump was saying what he had to say to get elected. Consistency has not been at the center of Trump’s style. I maintain that the apparent contradictions were intentionally planted by Trump to secure the support of unsophisticated patriots while a very well integrated program for the way forward has been there in his pocket all the time.

Expanding U.S. military might will cost a lot, at the same time Trump has said he will not raise taxes nor raise debt. This means, in fact, reallocation of existing budgets. The most obvious place to start will be to cut back on the number of U.S. military bases abroad, which now number more than 600 and which consume $600 billion annually in maintenance costs.

The Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky recently described this spending rather colorfully when reassuring his compatriots that the U.S. is not as powerful as it appears. Said Zhirinovsky, a lot of the Pentagon’s allocations go to buying toilet paper and sausages, not military muscle as such. Moreover, the bases abroad tend to create local, regional and global grievances against the United States that, in turn, increase the need for still more bases and military expenditures.

If Trump begins by cutting back on the bases now surrounding and infuriating the Russian Federation, he would take a big step towards relaxation of international tensions, while saving money for his other security and domestic priorities.

Trump also has said he will require U.S. allies to pay more for their defense. This particularly concerns Europe, which is prosperous, but not carrying its weight in NATO despite years of exhortations and cajoling by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The U.S. pays two-thirds of the NATO’s bills. Trump has declared that this is unacceptable.

The Pentagon budget represents a bit over 4 percent of GDP, whereas in Europe only several countries have approached or crossed the 2% of GDP minimum that the U.S. and NATO officials have called for. As a practical matter, given the ongoing stagnation of the European economies, widespread heavy indebtedness and the ongoing national budgets operating at deficits that exceed the guidelines of the European Central Bank, it is improbable (read impossible) for Europe to step up to bat and meet U.S. demands.

This will then justify the U.S. withdrawal from NATO that figures at the sidelines of the wish list of Trump supporters, not isolationism per se. Trump supporter and military analyst Andrew Bacevich wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. may well pull out of NATO completely in the early 2020s.

As a fallback, the Establishment spokesmen speculate on how the President-elect will be taken in hand by members of his own party and by their own peers so that his wings are clipped and his directional changes in U.S. foreign and defense policy are frustrated before they are even rolled out during the 100 days of the new administration.

Very likely, that same foreign policy establishment will resume its howling in the wind if they are proven wrong after Trump’s Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, and he proceeds precisely down the path of policies that he clearly enunciated during the campaign.

Why do I think that Trump as President will follow through on the foreign policy promises of Trump, the candidate? There is a simple explanation. His announced policies regarding accommodation with Russia, renunciation of “regime change” as a U.S. government priority abroad and the like were all set out by Trump during the campaign in the full knowledge they would bring him lots of well-organized criticism and gain him few votes, given the electorate’s focus on domestic policy issues.

He also knew that his positions, including condemning President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, would cost him support within his own party leaders, which is what happened. He even weathered Hillary Clinton calling him a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the third presidential debate and other McCarthyistic innuendo portraying him as some kind of Manchurian Candidate.

A Clash over Wars

Thus, we may assume that once he is in the saddle, he will not shy away from implementing these clearly stated policies. The impending clash between a foreign policy establishment with its supercilious attitude toward the new incumbent in the Oval Office and a determined President pulling in the other direction will surely create political tension and prompt many angry op-eds in Washington.

Accordingly, I have some constructive recommendations both to my fellow Trump supporters and to Trump’s opponents in the foreign policy establishment and mass media. I earnestly ask the editors of Foreign Affairs magazine and their peer publications serving the international-relations expert community to finally open their pages and give equal time for high quality contributions by followers of the “realist” school, who have been systematically excluded over the past several years as the New Cold War set in.

I address the same message to the mainstream electronic and print media, which has engaged in a New McCarthyism by blacklisting commentators whose views run counter to the Washington consensus and also publicly denigrating them as “tools of Putin.”

To put it in terms that anyone in the Russian affairs field and even members of the general public will understand, we need a six-to-nine month period of Glasnost, of open, free and very public debate of all those key international security issues which have not been discussed due to the monopoly power of one side in the argument.

I am calling for genuinely open debate, which allows for opinions that clash with the bipartisan “group thinks” that have dominated the Democratic and Republican elites. This concerns firstly the question of how to manage relations with Russia and China. Without any serious consideration of where the West’s escalating hostilities have been leading, we have been plunging forward blindly, stumbling towards a potential nuclear war — precisely because alternative policy views were kept out.

For those of us who have been part of the silenced opposition to the Washington consensus of the Bush and Obama years, we must engage with our intellectual opponents. Only in this way can we strengthen our reasoning powers and the quality of our policy recommendations so that we are fully prepared to deal with the fateful questions under review.

Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His most recent book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

November 13, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Trump’s Presidency Is a Win for Europe

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 12.11.2016

By vowing to rebuild American society, scale back foreign militarism, de-escalate NATO and seek friendly cooperative relations with Russia, a United States of America under Donald Trump would not only be a boon for America’s best interests. It would also be a win for Europe.

In such a new international outlook, the European bloc would be freed from its atlanticist subservience which has been dominant and deleterious for several decades. European governments would be freer to have more independent foreign policy, instead of toeing the dubious line that up to now has been ordained from Washington. It has been a disaster for the EU to have adhered so slavishly to US foreign policy. Much of the current discontent and disaffection among EU citizens towards the Brussels-based bloc stems from this unnatural and unhealthy subservience to Washington.

Wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and the attendant problems of blowback terrorism and influx of refugees are direct results of European governments following Washington’s foreign policy of regime change and so-called «democracy promotion». Even though these wars have been illegal and vile transgressions of international law.

Financial and economic policies adopted by European governments have been straitjacketed by neoliberal capitalist doctrine dictated by Wall Street and successive US governments. This boils down to misery and austerity for the masses, while a tiny oligarchy become ever bloated with wealth. In short, stagnation.

Deteriorating relations with Russia – Europe’s biggest energy supplier – have also stemmed from the EU following Washington’s confrontational agenda towards Moscow. European governments have bought into the spurious US official narrative of Russia being «aggressive» and «expansionist». Admittedly, certain EU members such as the Baltic states are all too willingly Russophobic. But for many others, such hostility between the EU and Russia does not make sense. While economic impacts on the US have been minimal, the tensions between the EU and Russia have badly hit European businesses, exporters, farmers and workers.

The looming threat of war on European territory from the irrational enlargement of the US-led NATO military alliance along Russia’s border is also seen by many citizens as another demonstration of the EU’s reckless subservience to Washington. It is Washington, of course, that has been the main advocate of increasing NATO forces in Europe, augmented by atlanticist EU governments like Britain, Germany and France, as well as the anti-Russian paranoid Baltic states. Some 500 million EU citizens are held ransom to war policies by a coterie of governments who behave like vassals to Washington.

In many ways, the political, economic and cultural problems challenging Europe arise directly from the EU’s lack of independence from the US. Often it seems that Brussels is acting as a rubber-stamp for foreign policies authored in Washington. No wonder then that in the view of many EU citizens the functioning of the bloc is seen to be undemocratic and unrepresentative of their immediate needs. This explains the soaring rise of anti-EU parties right across the bloc. The phenomenon has less to do with an inherent popular affinity for parties labelled «far right» or «xenophobic» and more to do with a popular desire for democratic governance that attends to urgent social interests.

There is much overlap with the political rise of Donald Trump in the US. As in Europe, the mass of ordinary working-class American citizens have been disenfranchised, politically and economically, over several decades. A rarefied political class has become ossified and is seen to be self-enriching and servile to a tiny wealthy elite of financiers, corporations and the military machine that underpins this oligarchy. Integral to the oligarchy are the corporate-controlled media monopolies that pontificate to the masses on how they should vote in elections – elections that have become inconsequential to democratic needs.

All that now appears to be changing. A revolt is underway.

Trump’s election, like the Brexit before in Britain earlier this year, is a popular revolt against the oligarchy. The mass of people have become sickened and wearied by endless wars and endless economic austerity, while the rich elite become ever more obscenely wealthy, and all the while the media propaganda system cynically instructs the people who to vote for and who not to, knowing full well there will really be no «hope and change».

This time around though, the US election, like the Brexit, was infused with righteous, raw popular anger against the oligarchy.

Trump struck a deep popular chord when he called US-led wars in the Middle East a «disservice to our country and a disservice to humanity». People got it when he lamented how much American infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, jobs, would have benefited if the trillions of dollars wasted on wars had instead been invested at home. Despite media concealment, a large section of the American people concurred with Trump’s angry denunciation of Obama and past US administrations for criminally stoking terrorism and conflicts. His presidential rival Hillary Clinton was fixed right at the center of this culpability among the Washington oligarchy, which straddles both the Republican and Democrat parties.

Voting Trump into the White House – a property tycoon who has never held an elected office before – is an historic repudiation of the political establishment. It is a political earthquake.

On the eve of election day on November 8, Trump declared that «this will be our independence day… when the American working class will strike back». It may seem incongruous that a billionaire capitalist should exhort the working class to strike. But strike they did.

Trump also said his election would be «Brexit plus, plus, plus». That remark has turned out to be prescient too. The American election earthquake has rocked Europe with greater force than did Britain’s vote to quit the bloc in July. A crevice has been torn open between atlanticist governments and more independently minded ones.

Germany and France in particular have been caught off-side. Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed «shock» at Trump being elected, while French President Francois Hollande – also disapproving the result – called for «united European values» to confront the new American president. Hollande’s bravado for «liberal values» makes him look even more fatuous.

Britain, the other atlanticist voice in Europe, was more congratulatory to President-elect Trump. No doubt, that’s because Britain is seeking to shore up badly needed bilateral trade deals with the US in light of its departure from the EU and therefore it needs to keep Trump sweet.

What really alarms Germany and France is that Trump is no atlanticist or NATO advocate. His nationalist views and tougher stance on immigration controls resonate with EU members like Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece and Austria.

Trump’s views also give a boost to anti-EU parties in Germany and France who are challenging incumbents Merkel and Hollande in elections next year. It was telling that while Merkel and Hollande deprecated Trump’s election, he was heartily congratulated by the anti-EU Alternative for Germany and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, as well as Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party in Britain. These parties also tend to share Trump’s more sanguine view of friendlier relations with Russia.

If Donald Trump can deliver on his avowed program of rebuilding American society and economy from within while abandoning US imperialist hegemony around the world that will potentially transform world relations. For Russia and China it will lead to a much needed normalization of relations, away from the current Cold War-type hostility that threatens to ignite world war. Both Russian and Chinese leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were quick to express congratulations and readiness to work with new president Donald Trump.

The political establishment, including the media, in the EU that is dominated by woefully misguided atlanticism has deplored the election of Trump in the US. There is a snobbish handwringing attitude that Trump’s movement is all about racist, white trash numbskulls. There may be some unsavory elements to Trump’s support, as there are in some anti-EU movements. But in the main what it is about is reclaiming democratic power for the mass of people. What the Americans have done in electing Trump is what the Europeans also need to do in order to sack a corrupt and venal establishment that up to now has only served Washington and the atlanticist elite.

If Trump’s victory invigorates similar trends across Europe then that would be a good thing. And especially if it led to Europe having a more independent foreign policy from Washington and in particular gaining a more normal, mutual relationship with Russia.

November 12, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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