US promised to seize Russian assets – Kiev
RT | January 27, 2024
The US assured Kiev that the Russian assets that remain frozen in the West are going to be seized and used to rebuild Ukraine after the conflict, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal has said.
The US, EU, and their allies blocked some $300 billion of Russian central bank assets as part of sanctions in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Around $200 billion of that money is held in the EU.
Politico reported on Thursday that it asked Shmygal if he was concerned that US funding for the Kiev government would come to a complete stop if Donald Trump won the presidential election in November and returned to the White House for his second term.
”We have all the assurances from the US about long-term support for Ukraine – for example, the seizure of Russian assets to fund the Ukrainian recovery,” he claimed.
On Wednesday, a US Senate committee approved the “Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act,” which should help pave the way for such a move by Washington. If it passes both houses and is signed into law by President Joe Biden, Washington could seize the Russian central bank assets, using such a measure against a country that it’s not directly at war with for the first time in history.
Reuters reported this week, citing a senior official in Brussels, that the EU will be unlikely to join the US in confiscating the Russian funds as there’s no agreement on such a step between the bloc’s member-states.
Earlier in January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that Moscow would respond to a possible seizure of its assets by the West, inducing tit-for-tat measures.
Previously, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the confiscation of Russian funds would amount to “outright theft” by the West. He told reporters that it would undermine the trust in the US and EU financial systems around the globe.
Shmygal also stated that Kiev is “working hard with the administration of President Biden and with Congress to have support for 2024.” As for the continuation of the aid in 2025, “we’ll see how conditions develop,” he stressed.
”I believe that any president of the US will support our fight for civilized values, our mutual values,” the Ukrainian PM said.
The US has provided Ukraine with around $111 billion in economic and military support amid the conflict with Russia. But the flow of funds subsided dramatically in recent months as Republican lawmakers continue to resist attempts by the White House to push through another $60 billion in assistance for Kiev.
Biden halts new LNG exports
The fuel is seen as a vital lifeline for Western Europe, which has cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas imports
RT | January 26, 2024
US President Joe Biden has ordered a pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from new projects in the country, citing their potential contribution to climate change. Energy costs in Western Europe have skyrocketed since nations such as Germany switched from Russian gas to American LNG, but Biden insists the continent doesn’t currently need additional supplies.
The pause will allow the US Department of Energy (DOE) to update the economic and environmental guidelines it uses when approving new export licenses, and will last for several months.
“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment,” Biden said in a statement on Friday. The president added that the pause “sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
According to the White House, roughly half of American LNG exports went to Western Europe last year, and the US has exceeded its annual delivery targets to the EU for each of the last two years. “Today’s announcement will not impact our ability to continue supplying LNG to our allies in the near-term,” Biden claimed in his statement.
Europe remains mired in an energy crisis. The continent’s former industrial powerhouse, Germany, is “in a particularly difficult situation” after abandoning Russian gas supplies, Economy Minister Robert Habeck told lawmakers last week. Prior to the imposition of sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, Germany received 40% of its gas imports from Russia. Replacing this fuel with LNG from the US, as well as energy from Norway and the Netherlands, has come at a cost, with the German government forced to roll out massive subsidy packages to prevent its largest industrial firms from leaving the country.
German industrial output fell by 2% last year, while the entire economy shrank by 0.3% in the same time period, the country’s Federal Statistical Office reported last week. The office blamed the decline on high inflation, soaring energy prices, and weak foreign demand.
LNG is transported on large tanker ships to regasification plants, where it is heated to return it to a gaseous state. Germany has rushed to bring three such offshore plants online since early 2022, and plans to open three more over the coming months. The US has also built out its LNG export infrastructure to cope with the demand, including the Calcasieu Pass 2 project in Louisiana, which once certified will be the nation’s largest export terminal.
The Calcasieu Pass 2 facility will likely come before the DOE for approval in the coming weeks, where it will be stalled indefinitely by Biden’s pause. With half of the terminal’s output set to go to Germany, a spokesman for the project’s developer, Venture Global, told Reuters last week that the pause would send a “devastating signal to our allies that they can no longer rely on the United States.”
French fury: Farmers sowing seeds of revolution against elites in Paris
By Rachel Marsden | RT | January 25, 2024
The French government is scrambling to get a whole lot of tractors off the nation’s major highways. Good luck with that when 89% of French citizens back the protesting farmers, according to a new Odoxa poll.
France is joining a movement that now encompasses nearly 20% of the EU, with farmers in five of the bloc’s 27 countries convoying and blockading major roads. Farmers from Poland, Romania, Germany, and the Netherlands have now been joined by their counterparts from the country virtually synonymous with revolution. And one particular incident here in France has just shifted the nascent movement into overdrive.
Alexandra Sonac, a 35-year-old cattle and corn farmer from the south of France, and three of her four family members were struck by a car in the dark early morning hours at a farmers’ highway blockade near Toulouse. Sonac and her 12-year-old daughter were killed, while her husband is in intensive care. The incident is still under investigation, but to add insult to injury, the three Armenian occupants of the vehicle that struck the family were reportedly under an expulsion order.
The symbolism here is glaring. A productive farmer resisting government economic oppression was killed by someone who has enjoyed the benefits of government laxity. Just 12% of expulsion orders were carried out by France between 2015 and 2021, one of the lowest rates in Europe, according to recent statistics.
French farmers’ complaints converge with those of their counterparts across the EU. They’re angry with their own governments, but only because these elected officials have insisted on sliding into the fitted straitjacket imposed on them by the unelected technocratic tyrants in Brussels and their top-down, ideologically driven policies. There’s a good reason why French farmers this week have ripped up and burned the same EU flag that President Emmanuel Macron insists on placing alongside the French tricolor in his various appearances.
Farmers all across the bloc have similar demands. They want a fair price for energy while the EU not only has imposed costly climate policies that treat fossil fuels like the plague, but has also decided, “for Ukraine,” to destroy its own supply of cheap Russian gas that drove Europe’s economy. Then, again for Ukraine, they decided to lift import duties on goods and services from Ukraine, allowing the EU to be flooded with truckers who undercut local providers and with equally undercutting farm products that don’t even meet the EU standards with which European farmers are forced to comply at their own expense. Farmers don’t want handouts, but they want governments to lay off the increasingly heavy taxation as their solution to filling state coffers emptied as a result of their constantly misplaced priorities. They also want their national governments to defend their interests against Brussels’ attempts to replace them with cheap foreign imports through endless free trade deals with countries whose farmers don’t operate under the same regulatory diktats, all while Brussels pushes member states (notably the Netherlands) to buy out farms whose cattle waste doesn’t serve its climate change policies.
It’s no surprise that the average person sympathizes, since they’re equally fed up with their incompetent heavy-handed government serving as a white glove for Brussels’ iron fist. They see that their gas and electricity costs are endlessly climbing, and their buying power is circling the drain, all while the French defense minister, for example, talks about how the Ukraine conflict, that has served as a convenient pretext for Europe’s transfer of wealth from the people to the elites, is such a wonderful opportunity for the military industrial complex. And when the French National Assembly approved themselves a €300 ($327) a month increase in their own allowances this week, just to offset the inflation that’s crushing the average citizen, it serves as yet another example of their total tone-deafness.
On the afternoon of January 24, a massive row of tires and manure was set ablaze by angry French farmers right in front of the prefecture of Agen, in southwest France. Some farmers present denounced the move, others voiced their support, but all agreed to being fed up. More tellingly, police and firefighters on the scene dragged their feet in reacting as the smoke extended almost to the height of the adjacent building, considered a symbol of the French state. Apparently, even frontline workers who serve the state’s institutions are getting fed up with the establishment elites. And not just in Europe, but elsewhere in the West.
Canadian Freedom Convoy truckers and their supporters were vindicated in Canadian Federal Court this week when a judge ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government constitutionally violated fundamental rights and freedoms when it evoked the Emergency Act against protesting opponents to the government’s Covid mandates, which they considered a violation of basic rights and freedoms. The fact that the government ordered bank accounts blocked as a deterrent against protesting should have been the first big hint of growing authoritarianism, but apparently it took a federal judge to spell it out.
German farmers and truckers who began convoying across the country earlier this month told me in Berlin that they were inspired by the Freedom Convoy as they railed against the German government’s imposition of more taxes on the diesel that fuels their farm vehicles, already pricy as a result of the government’s misguided energy policies driven by ideological, knee-jerk opposition to fossil fuels and to cheap gas from Russia. In both the Freedom Convoy and farmer cases, grotesque attempts by government officials to portray protesters as some kind of right-wing radicals, to absolve elites from responsibility, have fallen flat among the general population.
Truckers, bakers, students, firefighters, and police are already showing signs of solidarity with the farmers, backed by an overwhelming and quantified silent majority. And these national movements are finding common cause with each other around Europe and the Western world. Attempts to foster division by pitting big farms against small ones or right against left fall flat.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who only started in the job on January 9 and probably still hasn’t found all the washrooms at his new office, trudged down to the rural southern Rhone region last weekend. Attal said that “our farmers are not bandits, polluters, people who torture animals, as we sometimes hear.” Where does he hear that? In Brussels? His seduction skills could use some work. It’s like showing up for a date and saying, “Hey, you’re not as psycho as I heard you were.” What a charmer. Can’t wait to see how this diplomatic savant is going to resolve this whole mess.
A meeting last Monday between Attal and farming reps included a delegate for the Young French Farmers Union. I spoke with several of their counterparts in Berlin at that protest earlier this month — young entrepreneurs, so well-spoken and educated. These young farmers say they work 80-hour weeks and feel there is so much red tape or prohibitions from the EU that it’s paralyzing. And yet France is desperate to encourage young people to adopt farming as a profession at a time when it’s a dying business. Gee, big mystery why that might be, geniuses.
The tragic deaths of Alexandra Sonac and her daughter this week will forever stand as a symbol of struggle against the oppression of the working class by an authoritarian global governance that’s fomenting chaos as it caters to special interests increasingly divorced from those of the average citizen. No amount of tinkering by the offending governments will quell the growing unrest. Only a deep and fundamental rethinking of their relationship with their citizens, whose interests they’re supposed to serve exclusively, would have any hope of resolving this deepening crisis.
Brussels’ diktat on climate change and support for Ukraine is seen as more important than the people who actually feed the country
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
Belgium to Allocate $663Mln to Ukraine From Profits Made From Russia Frozen Assets – Reports
Sputnik – 23.01.2024
BRUSSELS – Belgium will allocate 611 million euros ($663 million) to help Ukraine in 2024 from the profits received from the frozen assets of Russia, La Libre newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder.
The funding will be provided from the interests on the accounts of Russia’s frozen assets in the country, the newspaper reported.
Last year the US proposed G7 working groups to look at possible ways to seize $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. The EU, and the UK have stressed that the money received via the confiscation would not be easily accessible and would also be insufficient to cover Ukraine’s reconstruction needs. Besides, the countries have noted that the confiscation of Russian assets should not occur to the detriment of providing financial support to Kiev in 2024.
Moscow has maintained that any attempt to confiscate its frozen assets would violate international law. The Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed the freezing of Russian assets as theft.
“Those who are trying to initiate this, and those who will implement it, must understand that Russia will never leave those who did this alone. And it will constantly exercise its right to a legal battle, internationally, nationally or otherwise. And this, of course, will have — both Europeans and Americans understand this very well — it will have legal consequences for those who initiated and implemented it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said commenting on the issue.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin dubbed the West’s asset seizure an “unseemly business,” and stressed that “stealing other people’s assets has never brought anyone good”.
Poland’s new government moves to crack down on ‘hate speech’
Karina Bosak and Dobromir Sośnierz from the Confederation party
BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | KRESY.PL | JANUARY 22, 2024
Poland’s new government is moving to limit freedom of speech and actively penalize so-called hate speech, a move that has been associated with stifling dissent and limiting opposition to issues surrounding mass immigration, religion, and LGBT issues in other European countries.
Poland’s Confederation party is now voicing its opposition to new proposals outlined in the left-liberal coalition government’s agreement, which will effectively destroy free speech.
“The ruling coalition, as part of its coalition agreement, has announced that they want to penalize so-called hate speech. The current left-wing Deputy Minister of Justice Krzysztof Śmiszek, from the New Left, has stated that his department is currently working on introducing these regulations, which limit freedom of speech and public debate in Poland. We, as the Confederation, strongly oppose this. The direct consequence of criminalizing certain words will, in fact, be the criminalization of conservative, religious, Christian views,” declared Confederation MP Karina Bosak on Friday.
Bosak added that public debate needs to be free, open, and unencumbered. She pointed out that her party “does not want there to be any sacred cows in Poland, that there are social groups whose ideas cannot be criticized at all in a healthy, free public debate.”
“We will defend Poles against such regulations and proposals that threaten freedom of speech and their values,” declared the Confederation MP.
Dobromir Sośnierz, another party member, highlighted concerns about the subjective nature of defining hate speech.
“What the left understands by so-called hate speech, in practice, will mean speech hated by Minister Śmiszek, not necessarily speech that expresses hatred towards someone, but something that leftists dislike,” he remarked.
Sośnierz also warned that such regulations would, in practice, limit public debate.
“This government is starting not by expanding our freedoms but by limiting them again, which will also lead to clogging up the courts,” he added.
In his view, the ministry’s work is “an act of sabotage, especially in this situation where a massive crisis in the judiciary is looming, as well as perhaps the exclusion of certain judges from ruling. Adding more cases for the judiciary to resolve, which are completely unnecessary, will be counterproductive.”
Deputy Minister Śmiszek announced this week legislative changes to introduce criminal responsibility for what his party considers hate speech against homosexuals.
“The time has come to ban disgusting, homophobic, discriminatory statements in the public sphere,” declared Śmiszek, who is openly homosexual.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament is calling on EU leaders to include incitement to hatred and hate crimes in the catalog of transnational crimes, which include terrorism or human trafficking.
France’s and Germany’s Lack of Independence Forces Them to Continue Bankrolling Ukraine
Sputnik – 20.01.2024
While Western powers’ lavish financial and military contributions to Kiev’s war effort have so far failed to produce any meaningful results, many leaders seem eager to keep bankrolling Ukraine until it runs out of manpower.
The EU may be looking to amend the mechanism used to provide military support to Ukraine by creating a new fund in addition to the European Peace Facility (EPF) that has so far been used by Europe to funnel arms to Kiev.
According to Bloomberg, the new fund may have an annual budget of €5 billion but EU member states are yet to come to a consensus on how this initiative is going to work out.
Commenting on this development, Gabor Stier, senior foreign policy analyst at the conservative Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet, told Sputnik that whatever shape and form this new fund is going to take, it will ultimately harm European states.
According to him, the EU leadership is essentially trying to come up with a plan to bankroll Ukraine regardless of what Hungary might think about it, with Stier referring to attempts by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to come up with a plan to provide aid to Ukraine without harming the EU budget in the process.
Orban’s proposals – that involve dividing the aid to Kiev into smaller tranches and keeping track of exactly how this money would be spent – are very much disliked by Brussels, Stier said. The EU leadership is reportedly concerned that the Hungarian prime minister might veto options he does not like (as decisions to allocate funds under the auspices of EPF require unanimous agreement).
“There will be a new fund but with what money?” Stier inquired. “The first option would be a new fund where money from the EU budget would go into. This does not solve the issue with the Hungarian veto. The second option would involve creating a fund outside the EU budget. The problem with this option is that it would take too long as each (EU) country and its respective parliament would have to vote on it separately. There will be arguments and it will all drag on. While this would go on, Ukraine would already suffer a defeat.”
Thus, Stier suggests, the new fund will likely be filled with money from the EU budget.
“It is already clear that this fund will be designed through discussions within the EU, which is clear in light of the new strikes in Germany or in France. It seems that everyone is either not too keen to trust Ukrainian politicians or have reconsidered their approach to the allocation of funds,” he mused.
Stier also noted that some European states use Orban as “cover” by making it look like he is the lone obstacle on the way to agreeing on the Ukrainian aid issue.
“There are internal frictions, this much is clear. Earlier in Budapest, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico voiced his agreement with Orban on everything related to Ukraine,”
he said. “Austria is also on the same wavelength as Orban. But when it comes to voting in Brussels, no one besides Orban says that they are against (the funding of Ukraine).”
According to Stier, even France and Germany essentially use Orban to “force Ukraine, who is brazenly spending all resources of the Western powers, to slow down somewhat.”
Only Poland, the Baltic states and the Scandinavian states wholeheartedly support Ukraine, he argued, along with the “Benelux and the Netherlands,” though the latter two have some “internal problems.”
He did note, however, that even though Germany, France and Italy may not be thrilled by the prospects of continuously financing Ukraine, they simply cannot stop doing so.
“This is how their dependence on the United States manifests,” Stier explained. “Europe is going to bear the financial burden in the future, that much is obvious.”
The analyst also claimed that this year is going to be “critical” for Ukraine in terms of financing, and that “more justifications are required to amass so much money everywhere” to support Kiev.
Letting Ukraine into NATO is ‘basis for World War Three’ – Slovakia
Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico. © Getty Images / Janos Kummer
RT | January 20, 2024
Bratislava will block Kiev’s bid to join the US-led NATO alliance and will stand by a decision to stop supplying weaponry to Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia, Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico has said.
The PM made the remarks on Saturday ahead of his visit to Ukraine to meet his counterpart Denis Shmygal in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod. Fico stressed that his visit serves solely “humanitarian” purposes and promised to openly communicate Bratislava’s stance to Kiev on different issues, including Ukraine’s potential accession to EU or NATO membership.
“I will tell him that there are things on which we have completely different opinions,” Fico told broadcaster RTVS. “I will tell him that we respect them when it comes to joining the EU, but they must fulfill the conditions,” he added, explaining that a situation where “a country that absolutely does not meet any requirements” joins the EU is unacceptable.
He ruled out any possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, insisting such a move would only result in a global catastrophe, apparently caused by a direct collision between NATO and Russia over the issue.
“I will tell him that I will veto and block [a NATO bid by Ukraine] because that is exactly the basis of the third world war and nothing else.”
Fico also promised to reiterate to Shmygal his election campaign pledge to stop providing Kiev with weaponry, stating that the decision remains in force. Still, the weapons restriction applies only to state-sponsored military aid to Ukraine and supplies coming from Slovak military stocks, whereas arms manufacturers are free to sell to the country whatever they like, he noted.
“When Slovak companies don’t make money, American ones will,” Fico noted.
Prior to Fico assuming office following his party’s electoral victory in September, Slovakia had been among Kiev’s top supporters, lavishly supplying it with sophisticated weaponry, including warplanes and anti-aircraft systems. The policy of the previous government has also left the country’s own defense posture badly damaged, new Defense Minister Robert Kalinak claimed earlier this week.
“The former government left us without our own anti-aircraft defenses, without combat aviation, and we don’t even have the promised 700 million for MiGs, which the government also handed over to Ukraine,” Kalinak told the Standard newspaper.
PM Orbán: EU parliament wants to rob citizens of a choice on Ukraine funding
MAGYAR NEMZET | JANUARY 19, 2024
By forcing through a four-year, €50 billion aid package to Ukraine just a few months ahead of European elections, members of the European Parliament want to rob people of the right to choose their future, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote on X.
“Liberal MEPs attacked Hungary once again in the European Parliament yesterday. They want to give money to Ukraine for 4 years, while the European elections are just 5 months away. They essentially want to strip people of their rights to make decisions on their future. What an anti-democratic position! Hungary disagrees. If we want to help Ukraine, let’s do it outside the EU-budget and on a yearly basis! This is the only democratic position just 5 months before the elections,” Orbán wrote.
On Wednesday, two key debates were held in Strasbourg. The first focused on the previous and upcoming EU summits, while the second was entitled: “The situation in Hungary and frozen EU funds.”
After the EU parliament discussed funding to Hungary, the agenda was supposed to focus on the EU summit set for Feb. 1. However, MEPs were so fixated on Hungary, that the country dominated their conversations for nearly the entire session, so much so that even Romanian Socialist MEP Maria Grapini pointed out that the debate was fixated on the vilification of Hungary and the previous session’s discussion on Ukraine.
Hungary proposes plan to end Ukraine conflict
RT | January 17, 2024
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has called for a halt to all Western military aid to Ukraine, saying the massive influx of weapons – as well as Kiev’s reluctance to negotiate – has made peace impossible.
Asked what should be done to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine in an interview with Austrian news site Exxpress, Szijjarto said ending foreign arms shipments to Kiev is a top priority.
“The more weapons that are supplied, the longer the war lasts. And the longer the war lasts, the more people will die,” the minister continued. “It is obvious that what has been done so far has not been successful. Many weapons were delivered, but the war was only prolonged. A lot of money has been paid to Ukraine, but the destruction of Ukraine continues.”
Pressed on the possibility that Russian troops would “march all the way to Kiev” in the event Ukraine is left “defenseless,” the diplomat said this could only be avoided with negotiations and a renewed peace process.
“This should be prevented by ending the war now. As long as that doesn’t happen, the war threatens to intensify further and more people risk dying. The war should have ended yesterday,” he said.
Szijjarto went on to argue for more dialogue between the warring parties and countries willing to mediate talks, saying “the most important requirement is to keep communication channels open.” He noted that he is often “insulted by many European colleagues, and by Brussels” after meetings with his Russian counterpart, but said “there is no hope at all for peace” without negotiations.
Western sanctions have also failed to “bring the Russian economy to its knees” as intended, the foreign minister said, suggesting the more aggressive approach had backfired and could not bring an end to the fighting.
Budapest is among a small number of EU states that have refused to join the sanctions campaign or provide weapons to Ukrainian forces, opting instead to maintain ties with Moscow. Despite pressure from other members in the bloc, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declined to approve Brussels’ latest aid package to Kiev, holding up the funds since December.
The Hungarian leader has also threatened to veto Ukraine’s accession to the union, arguing that it poses many risks to the bloc and its economy, as well as the fact that Kiev is still “at war.”
The EU impasse comes at a time when Ukraine’s largest Western backer, the United States, has run out of aid money, as a $61.4 billion spending package remains stalled in Congress. Kiev’s foreign minister, Dmitry Kuleba, has acknowledged his country has no “plan B” should the funds run dry, saying there is no alternative to US largesse.
Poland’s Morawiecki: ‘Now, I understand Brexit’
Remix News | January 15, 2024
In a Sunday interview with London’s Daily Express, the former prime minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, spoke against increasing centralization within the EU and warned that the “dangerous” EU “will implode.”
Morawiecki, of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, has admitted that he now understands why the British voted for Brexit, pointing to the ongoing centralization of the European Union. Morawiecki warned that while the EU has its advantages, these centralizing tendencies could lead to its implosion.
“Well, I probably differ from most Britons who were in favor of leaving the European Union because I believe that the European Union has its values, its advantages. But I think the trend is now very dangerous. And I now better understand why Britain made such a decision,” stated Morawiecki.
Morawiecki remarked that the European Commission’s decision to withhold funds from Poland under the recovery plan was an attempt to influence the outcome of Poland’s parliamentary elections in October.
“As far as various EU policies are concerned, there has definitely been interference in our internal affairs,” the politician emphasized, noting that the increasing transfer of competencies to Brussels is heading in the wrong direction.
“I think this is moving in a bad direction and will ultimately lead to the implosion of the European Union. I definitely believe that the European Union is a very valuable organization from the point of view of the free market area; cooperation within the internal market; and various freedoms, including freedom of movement of capital, people, goods, and services. But the more competencies are acquired and taken over by the European Commission, the less say a sovereign state has,” Morawiecki explained.
He further expressed concern about the latest plans of the European Parliament and the European Commission regarding treaty reforms.
“I believe this is very, very dangerous for the stability of the European Union. Because it primarily deprives sovereign states of their fundamental rights in the areas of security, foreign policy, tax policy, which are the backbone of every sovereign state, as well as in many, many other areas,” warned the former Polish prime minister.
Palestine: EU’s Borrell bats for US
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JANUARY 11, 2024
The diplomatic arena of the Middle East was dominated in the past week by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s regional tour to Türkiye, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt. It was a ‘road show’ to rally the leaders of the Arab countries behind the US but culminated in an acrimonious meeting in the West Bank between Blinken and the Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas marred by “quarrels and arguments,” according to Sky News Arabia.
The region is gripped by angst that Israel may provoke a fateful expansion of the conflict in the Gaza Strip to Lebanon and Iran after the assassination of a number of senior military figures from Hamas and Hezbollah in the recent days, which overlapped Blinken’s presence in the region and underscored Tel Aviv’s disdain toward diplomatic niceties. Two videos from the West Bank showed Israeli troops shooting a 17-year-old boy and repeatedly running over the dead body of a man they had shot last Friday.
The US fears the expansion of the conflict in the Middle East. Yet, Blinken was burdened with the contradiction that the rhetoric of Washington’s continued support for the Israeli operation is so visibly at odds with the words of President Joe Biden last week that he was doing “quiet” work with the Israeli government “to get them to significantly reduce their presence and largely withdraw from the Gaza Strip.”
Blinken claimed that “the (Arab) countries agreed to work together to help the Gaza Strip stabilise, chart a political path for the Palestinians and work towards long-term peace, security and stability in the region.” At the same time, he conceded that to do this, it is necessary to end the conflict in Gaza and identify a concrete path to the creation of a Palestinian state. Blinken flagged that the countries of the region are still interested in normalising relations with Israel, but only on the terms of a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Arguably, these could be incipient signs of a road map emerging.
The killing of senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials indicates that Israel is not making significant progress on the battlefield and the leadership is under compulsion to gather ‘trophies’ and claim ‘victory’. In a hybrid war, such killings will not significantly weaken the resistance movement. An effective leader was appointed overnight to head the IRGC’S Quds Force when the legendary Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in 2020.
That said, the probability of a direct conflict between Israel and Hezbollah should not be overestimated, since the latter is well aware that an outbreak of hostilities is precisely what suits Tel Aviv. Iran also sizes up Israel’s calculus to drag the US into the war. According to reports, Iran has supplied cruise missiles to Hezbollah.
Against such a tumultuous backdrop, in a carefully choreographed sideshow, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also appeared in the region at the same time as Blinken. Borrell’s destinations were Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The EU announcement said that Borrell’s mission “will be an occasion to discuss all aspects of the situation in and around Gaza, including its impact on the region, especially the situation at the Israeli-Lebanese border, as well as the importance of avoiding regional escalation and of sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance to civilians.”
While speaking to the media in Beirut, Borrell was highly critical of Israel’s war in Gaza and called for a pause “that could become a permanent one.” He also said, “It is imperative to avoid a regional escalation. It is absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict.” Borrell saw his mission as one to take stock of the situation and “to contribute to a way out of the crisis.”
Borrell met with the Head of Mission and Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) General Aroldo Lazaro, a compatriot from Spain. Indeed, there has been some talk of deploying a peacekeeping force on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reported, citing a government source in Beirut, that Borrell also had an unpublicised meeting with a delegation from Hezbollah led by Mohammad Raad, a member of the Lebanese legislature. Conceivably, this might have been a key item on his itinerary in Beirut.
While the US and several European countries, including Germany, the UK, Czech Republic, Austria, among others, regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, the EU restricted itself to merely adding Hezbollah’s so-called “military wing” to its terror list, leaving the door open to interact with the movement’s political leadership if need arises.
That came in the wake of the group’s alleged 2012 suicide bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, which killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver. During a debate on the crisis situation in Lebanon last July, the European Parliament, for the first time, adopted a resolution calling for the EU to add the whole of Hezbollah to its list of banned terrorist organisations, but that hasn’t yet been acted upon.
Borrell’s meeting with the Hezbollah delegation would only have been with the knowledge of the Biden administration — it could even be providing a thinkable (and actionable) leitmotif of Borrell’s trip to Lebanon. BBC had reported a week ago on secret contacts between Israel and Hezbollah as well.
At any rate, by a coincidence, Borrell happened to be in Saudi Arabia when Blinken arrived there, and the two of them had a meeting. Later, in a prepared statement to the media after talks in Saudi Arabia with foreign minister Prince Faisal, Borrell also took a nuanced stance apropos Hamas, saying,
“And now we have to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza. We have to stop this great number of casualties. Hamas has to be eradicated. But Hamas is an idea, it represents an idea, and you cannot kill an idea. The only way of killing an idea –- a bad idea — is to propose a better one, to give a horizon to the Palestinian people, to their dignity, to their freedom, to their security, which has to go hand in hand with the security of Israel.”
Clearly, Borrell strove to break the ice by engaging with Hezbollah. Considering that the EU has been the US’ junior partner on major international issues, Borrell’s mission can be considered as substantive aimed at opening a diplomatic track to ease the Israel-Lebanon border tensions.
Equally, Borrell and Prince Faisal rekindled the so-called Peace Day Effort launched in September last year jointly by the EU with Saudi Arabia, the League of Arab States, Egypt and Jordan as an initiative “to reinvigorate the peace process in the Middle East.”
A joint statement issued at that time on the sidelines of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, in the presence of almost fifty Foreign Ministers from around the world sought “to produce a “Peace Supporting Package” that will maximise peace dividends for the Palestinians and Israelis once they reach a peace agreement, … thus incentivising earnest efforts to reach it.”
As EU foreign policy chief, Borrell navigated international turbulence and divisions within the 28-member bloc to make Europe more united and turn it into a diplomatic heavyweight, but with patchy success. Of course, Ukraine spoiled the party. Palestine could well be Borrell’s last waltz. Borrell’s five-year term in Brussels ends in December.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
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