The EU and the neoliberal globalist project cannot allow Brexit to go through in any form but complete bastardization. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991 Marxism was dealt a near fatal blow. The crown jewel of communism was no more and descended into the worst kind of lawlessness.
Francis Fukiyama famously declared the End of History and the U.S. went on a ‘to the victors go the spoils’ looting of 1990’s Russia that boggles the imagination.
Marxists were left floundering. They were convinced the end of capitalism would occur and communism would win. Their identity was shattered on the shores of collectivism’s inherent inconsistencies.
It’s lack of basic understanding of why man acts and what he hopes to achieve when he acts that dooms all forms of collectivism to eventual failure.
The cries went up among the committed Marxists to then blame the U.S.S.R. that it wasn’t real communism. And their argument shifted to European Democratic Socialism as the superior implementation.
For the past twenty-eight years we’ve been inundated with this by leftists who refuse to give up on the dream. It’s still just warmed-over Marxism but whatever.
The battle over Nordstream 2 is yet another indication that the US empire is splintering. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
The Nordstream 2 pipeline represents the last stand of U.S. influence over the internal affairs of Europe.
Once finished it will stand as a testament to the fundamental split between the European Union and the United States.
Europe will this as its first successful defense of its newly-declared independence. And the U.S. will have to come to terms with no longer having control overseas.
This is a theme repeating itself all around the world right now.
Your view of Nordstream 2 depends on who you are.
If you are the U.S. it is a massive rebuke of the post-WWII institutional order mostly paid for by the U.S. to rebuild Europe and protecting it from the scourge of the U.S.S.R.
From Europe’s perspective it’s, “Job well done and all that but Russia isn’t a threat anymore and it is time for us to come out from underneath the U.S.’s shadow.”
And if you are Russia Nordtream 2 is the wedge driving these two adversaries apart while improving national security on your western border.
Europe has imperial ambitions of its own and Nordstream 2 is a very important part of that. Those ambitions, however, are not in line with those in the U.S., particularly under the “leadership” of Donald Trump.
Under cover of the usual gobbledygook, the EU is trying to impose still more stringent speech and thought controls. From Judith Bergman at gatestoneinstitute.com:
The above initiatives, of course, exist in addition to all the other measures that the EU has put in place to “guide” Europeans onto the path of proper thinking… which the untransparent and unaccountable online tech giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla — signed in October 2018, and their 2019 “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online.”
In the same vein as China’s “reeducation camps” or the former Soviet Union’s “rehabilitation centers” that abused psychiatry for political purposes, Marine Le Pen in September was ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting the pictures, ostensibly to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.
It is probably safe to say that the first victims of the EU’s media literacy policies will be diversity of opinion and free speech.
Marine Le Pen (pictured at podium), the leader of France’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, posted tweets condemning the Islamic State terrorist group, including photos of their murdered victims. For this, she was charged with the crime of “disseminating violent images,” and ordered by a court to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.” (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)
To the consternation of the powers that be in the EU, Salvini is indeed “winning.” From Guilllaume Durocher at unz.com:
A grave Salvini at a press conference after a drunk-driving Moroccan killed two Italians
Really and truly, I did not expect the most promising developments in West-European politics to come from Italy. Who could predict that the strange government appointed in June 2018 – an uneasy alliance of nationalists under Matteo Salvini’s Lega and the populist-but-vague Five-Star Movement – would last as long or achieve as much as it has? Italy’s parliamentary regime is notoriously unstable, governments falling with unnerving regularity, and yet this strange hybrid has gone from strength to strength.
The globalists – notably the EU institutions and the various migrant NGOs, many supported by George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation – had adopted a criminal policy whereby the goal of their operations was not to reduce illegal immigration but to “solve” the problem by “rescuing” migrants at sea, even if they barely left the coast of North Africa, and breaking down Europe’s external and national borders.
Alasdair Macleod documents the reasons behind the EU’s impending failure. From Macleod at goldmoney.com:
Introduction and summary
The monetary, financial and political weaknesses of the EU are about to be exposed by the forthcoming global credit crisis.
This article assumes the combination of end of credit cycle dynamics and the rise in trade protectionism in 1929 is a valid precedent for gauging the scale of a developing global credit crisis today, as described in my earlier article published here. Then, it was heavier tariffs coinciding with a less destabilising inflation cycle than we face today, a combination that saw stock markets collapse. Today, we have the additional factors of far greater monetary inflation, far higher levels of government debt, low savings coupled with record consumer borrowing, and unbacked fiat currencies likely to lose purchasing power instead of gold-backed currencies which increased their purchasing power.
Declining international trade has already become evident in only a few months, and prescient observers detect early signs of a rapidly developing global recession. In response, the ECB has announced it will target lending to non-financial businesses with its TLTRO-III programme from September onwards.
The larger problem is the crony capitalists in the EU have captured the EU institutions, including the ECB, and will demand ever-accelerating monetary inflation. I have chosen to examine the consequences for the Eurozone, which is one of the more vulnerable economic and political constructs likely to be exposed in the severe economic downturn the world faces today.
Who runs Hungary, the EU or Hungary? Hungary is asserting its sovereignty. From Onar Am at libertynation.com:
The E.U. is set to convene to discuss mandatory resettlement quotas. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán was clear in denouncing this, and has decided to hold a popular referendum on the quota system.
As part of the referendum preparations, the Hungarian government recently initiated a public information campaign aimed at informing the populace about the globalist agenda of the E.U. leadership, stating that “everyone has the right to know what Brussels is planning.” The campaign did not go unnoticed. The E.U. responded with a counter-campaign, called “Facts about the EU’s migration policy,” which declared that “you also have a right to know what is fact and what is fiction.”
t is no exaggeration to say that a severe level of distrust reigns in many East-European countries with regards to the E.U., and Hungary has taken a leadership role in challenging the open border policies. Hungary’s Secretary for Diplomacy and Relations, Dr. Zoltán Kovács, admonished the E.U.’s response, saying their own facts refute the claims.
The E.U.’s memo claims there are no migrant quotas, but also says that “it could be expected of every member state to show solidarity with the others.” To “structure” this solidarity, they are working on a resettlement system, and another document from 2018 described how this “will help reduce irregular migration by ensuring safe and legal alternatives. It will replace the current ad-hoc schemes and set EU-wide two-year plans for resettling genuine refugees.” This quote echoes the wording of the U.N.’s Global Compact for Migration, which would flood the West with 250 million migrants.
Kovács clarified: “Brussels is not focused on stopping migration. In fact, they want to legalize it. Europe’s citizens have a right to know.”
Italy’s debt problem makes Greece’s look like small change. From The Oriental Review editorial board at orientalreview.org:
There is a dual Italian crisis brewing in the European Union. On the one hand, it is a political, or even geopolitical, crisis. Italy is undermining the unity of the European Union; blocking the EU’s recognition of those behind the coup in Venezuela as the legitimate authority; preventing the expansion of sanctions against Russia; and even supporting the ‘yellow vest’ movement in France, which is arousing the anger of the French government.
On the other hand, the crisis is economic in nature. Italy is once more sliding into a recession (economic growth was negative in the country); Italian banks are again facing financial problems; and the business media has already estimated that the Italian economic crisis could blow up the entire European banking system.
There is a strong possibility that the EU’s leaders will soon be faced with a choice: try to save Italy (and the whole of Europe) from yet another crisis or set an example by punishing the Italian government for the country’s independent economic and foreign policies. In turn, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government will most likely have its own dilemma to deal with: bow down and sell its principles to get help from Brussels or go all out and regain Italian independence. The choice will not be easy and either decision will be painful. Neither ending to this Italian drama could really be called happy. As this headline in The Telegraph quite rightly notes: “Crisis brewing in Italy will lead to default, exit from the euro, or both.”
Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte delivers his speech during the confidence vote for the new government at the Italian Senate. In the picture at left vice premier Luigi Di Maio and right vice premier Matteo Salvini, Italy, Rome, June 05, 2018
The Trump foreign policy clown posse is leading, but nobody but the usually sycophants are following. From Philip Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:
The humiliation of United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw last week was a good thing. The ancient Greeks, exercising their demonstrated ability to synthesize defining characteristics, had a word for it: hubris. Hubris is when one develops an extreme and unreasonable feeling of confidence in a certain course of action that inevitably leads to one’s downfall when that conceit proves to be based on false principles.
Pompeo was in Warsaw for a “summit” arranged by the US State Department in partnership with the Polish government to discuss with representatives of sixty nations what to do about the fractious situation in the Middle East. In advance, he promised that the meeting would “deliver really good outcomes.” The gathering was initially conceived as a “war against Iran” precursor, intended to pull together a coalition against the Persians, but when it became clear that many of the potential participants would balk at such a designation, it assumed a broader agenda concerning “Peace and Security in the Middle East.”
Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria were not, not surprisingly, invited as some of them were the expected targets of whatever remedial action the conference might recommend. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was, of course, present, tweeting in advance of the gathering that it would be all about “war against Iran.” He also characteristically delivered a warning that Iran was planning a “second holocaust” for his country.
More and more countries are not getting with US program of unipolar domination. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
If the Anti-Iran conference in Warsaw was the opening act, the annual Munich Security Conference was the main event. Both produced a lot of speeches, grandstanding and virtue-signaling, as well as a lot of shuffling of feet and looking at the ground.
The message from the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia was clear, “We are still committed to the destruction of Syria as a functional state to end the growing influence of Iran.”
Europe, for the most part, doesn’t buy that argument anymore. Germany certainly doesn’t. France is only interested in how they can curry favor with the U.S. to wrest control of the EU from Germany. The U.K. is a hopeless has-been, living on Deep State inertia and money laundered through City of London.
The Poles just want to stick it to the Russians.
Everyone else has a bad case of, “been there, done that, ain’t doin’ it again.”
They know supporting the fiction that the War in Syria was a war against the evil President Bashar al-Assad is counter-productive.
The geopolitical landscape is changing quickly. And these countries, like Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic, know that the current policy trajectory of the Trump administration vis a vis Russia, Iran and China is a suicide pact for them.
So they show up when called, receive our ‘diplomats’ and then pretty much ignore everything they said. This is what happened, ultimately, in Munich.
Even the EU leadership has no illusions about the goals of the U.S./Israeli/Saudi policy on Syria. And that’s why they refused to shut Russia and Iran out of the Munich Security Conference despite the hyperventilating of Pompeo’s amateur-hour State Dept.
“I confess,” Salvini said in a video posted to his Facebook page, “there is no need for a trial. It’s true, I did it and I’d do it again.”
“I risk 3 to 15 years in prison for blocking illegal landings in Italy. I have no words,” wrote Salvini, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Lega (League) party, which now rules Italy in a coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S).
If this wasn’t so stupid it would be hysterical, actually. But it exists and it’s an attack on Salvini that has a number of angles to it.
As Dr. Steve Turley explains in the video below one of the goals of this attack is to drive a wedge between Five Star Movement (M5S) and its coalition partner, The League.
Early returns on this look to be it will go nowhere as M5S leader Luigi DI Maio supported Salvini. But, the real issue isn’t the coalition government.
If somehow Di Maio can’t ride herd over his faction with the Italian parliament and they vote to allow this trial to go forward then M5S will continue sinking into obscurity and The League’s rising poll numbers will accelerate.
As Turley points out it is not in M5S’s best interest to betray its partner at this point. They enjoy parliamentary representation well above their current polling.
So, they would jeopardize everything they’ve worked to shape Italian domestic policy.
But that’s not the real issue here. The real issue is this is an attempt by the EU and The Davos Crowd behind them to slow down the integration of the Euroskeptic movement around Europe to challenge the current status quo in the European Parliament.
Salvini called for a “League of Leagues” after his meeting with Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
That’s why Salvini is calling for “A League of Leagues” across Europe. He will succeed.
This is the guy who successfully rebranded the secessionist Northern League into the MIGA party – Make Italy Great Again.
Then he and Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio navigated the Italian Swamp to form a government experts said couldn’t work, while simultaneously neutering establishment stalking horse Silvio Berlusconi.
Thanks to Salvini’s strategic genius Italian politics will never be the same again. His League now polls around 30%, which bodes well for it in next year’s European Parliamentary Elections.
Because now his sights are MEGA – Make Europe Great Again.
In fact, this frivolous lawsuit is prima facia evidence that the EU oligarchs in Brussels are officially scared of what’s coming in May’s European Parliamentary elections.
If Salvini wasn’t a threat they wouldn’t be going after him this way.
If you bind Salvini down with having to whip up support in Italy he’s not spending that time convincing the leaders of Alternative for Germany (AfD) or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally to coalesce into a unified opposition against the hardcore leftist European integrationists.
Populist Euroskeptic movements are still rising all across Europe. And the EU needs to get past this election to ensure that the real power in Brussels remains in the hands of The Davos Crowd. This has become an existential threat to the European project.
It has to stay on course despite the will of the people of Europe.
It’s an act of pure desperation. It’s no different than how they are handling Brexit. And it’s why the EU will not cave on Brexit until the last minute, if at all. They cannot empower Salvini, Le Pen, Kurz, Orban, et.al. against them.
Caving to the U.K. on Brexit will reveal how weak they truly are.
So, Salvini and Di Maio were right to embrace the accusations rather than soft-peddle. The people are craving competent leadership and this initial show of solidarity demonstrates that.
This will have to be dealt with and it will be a real test of the political situation in Italy. If the Senate votes this down then Salvini can ignore it and, worse for Brussels, campaign harder on it.
It will also shore up his support abroad as the real prize, the European Commission Presidency comes into focus. If it fails then that will make it much harder to put together a coalition strong enough to block Jean Claude-Juncker’s expected successor.
The future of the EU actually hangs in the balance on this frivolity. That tells you just how desperate things really are for the current leadership of the rapidly disintegrating European Union.
Marine Le Pen (pictured at podium), the leader of France’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, posted tweets condemning the Islamic State terrorist group, including photos of their murdered victims. For this, she was charged with the crime of “disseminating violent images,” and ordered by a court to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.” (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)
