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Tag Archives: Europe

Italy’s Salvini Stands Up To Merkel – Reduces Migrant Entry By 95%, by Jon Hall

Posted on January 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

Salvini didn’t even have to build a wall. From Jon Hall at fmshooter.com:

During an awards acceptance speech on Monday, Germany’s Angela Merkel called on the international community to “stand up” to “excessive populism and nationalism”.

Merkel’s desperate plea to “stand up” to the frightening boogey-man of nationalism comes on the heels of news that Italy’s migration policy under Matteo Salvini, the interior minister, has dropped migration entry by 95%.

Being awarded the Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, Merkel took her acceptance speech as a chance to lambaste President Trump and attack the growing tide of populism sweeping over Europe.

She thanked Germany’s “American friends” who rebuilt the country, and Europe, after 1945 but jabbed at Trump’s America first domestic policies, claiming that with “all the differences that one has” countries “need to talk with one another, we need meetings, encounters, lines of communications” to solve international issues.

Merkel added that nationalism was working for “the vested interests of others”and that she would never “tire of making a case for the strength of a multilateral, rules-based and values-based global order”.

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Posted in Government, Immigration, Politics

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Trump Derangement Syndrome and the NATO Fetish of the Progressive Left, by David Stockman

Posted on January 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

It’s unthinkable that NATO would dissolve, but nobody can say why. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:

We’ve got NATO on our mind today because we learned this morning that the mere suggestion this obsolete relic of the Cold War should be abandoned tends to trigger an absolutely virulent outburst of Trump Derangement Syndrome in the mainstream media.

As it happened we were appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to promote our new book called, PEAK TRUMP: The Undrainable Swamp and the Fantasy of MAGA.

So long as we were talking about the folly of Trump-O-Nomics and the Donald’s rookie mistake in embracing an egregious stock market bubble that is destined to crash and a failing, geriatric business cycle that at age 115 months has “recession ahead” written all over its forehead, our host, Mika Brzezinski, was happy to nod approvingly.

But when we veered off into approval of the Donald’s efforts to rein in the Empire and make peace with the Russkies, it was an altogether different matter. We no more than launched the thought of it than Mika was sputtering in disbelief – as if we had committed a grotesque sacrilege in public:

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Intelligence, Military, Politics

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NATO is a Danger, Not a Guarantor of Peace, by Robert W. Merry

Posted on January 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

NATO lost its reason to exist when the Soviet Union folded. In searching for new missions, it’s making the world a more dangerous place. From Robert W. Merry at theamericanconservative.com:

Status quo supporters like the New York Times poke fun at Trump for questioning the alliance. But who’s the fool?

Donald Trump at NATO Summit, Brussels, in 2018 Gints Ivuskans/Shutterstock

The New York Times scored a serious scoop when it revealed on Monday that President Trump had questioned in governmental conversations—on more than one occasion, apparently—America’s membership in NATO. Unfortunately the paper then slipped into its typical mode of nostrum journalism. My Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “nostrum” as “quack medicine” entailing “exaggerated claims.” Here we had quack journalism executed in behalf of quack diplomacy.

The central exaggerated claim is contained in the first sentence, in which it is averred that NATO had “deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.” This is wrong, as can be seen through just a spare amount of history.

True, NATO saved Europe from the menace of Russian Bolshevism. But it did so not over 70 years but over 40 years—from 1949 to 1989. That’s when the Soviet Union had 1.3 million Soviet and client-state troops poised on Western Europe’s doorstep, positioned for an invasion of Europe through the lowlands of Germany’s Fulda Gap.

How was this possible? It was possible because Joseph Stalin had pushed his armies farther and farther into the West as the German Wehrmacht collapsed at the end of World War II. In doing so, and in the process capturing nearly all of Eastern Europe, he ensured that the Soviets had no Western enemies within a thousand miles of Leningrad or within 1,200 miles of Moscow. This vast territory represented not only security for the Russian motherland (which enjoys no natural geographical barriers to deter invasion from the West) but also a potent staging area for an invasion of Western Europe.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics

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These New Numbers Are Telling Us That The Global Economic Slowdown Is Far More Advanced Than We Thought, by Michael Snyder

Posted on January 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

Perhaps the whole string of stock markets around the globe that topped out in 2018 were trying to tell us something. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

We continue to get more confirmation that the global economy is slowing down substantially.  On Monday, it was China’s turn to surprise analysts, and the numbers that they just released are absolutely stunning.  When Chinese imports and exports are both expanding, that is a clear sign that the global economy is running on all cylinders, but when both of them are contracting that is an indication that huge trouble is ahead.  And the experts were certainly anticipating substantial increases in both categories in December, but instead there were huge declines.  There is no possible way to spin these numbers to make them look good…

Data from China showed imports fell 7.6 percent year-on-year in December while analysts had predicted a 5-percent rise. Exports dropped 4.4 percent, confounding expectations for a 3-percent gain.

China now accounts for more total global trade than the United States does, and the fact that the numbers for the global economy’s number one trade hub are falling this dramatically is a major warning sign.

And of course it isn’t just China that is experiencing trouble.  In fact, we just witnessed the worst industrial output numbers in Europe “in nearly three years”…

Adding to the gloom were weak industrial output numbers from the euro zone, which showed the largest fall in nearly three years.

Softening demand has been felt around the world, with sales of goods ranging from iPhones to automobiles slowing, prompting profit warnings from Apple among others.

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Europe is Burning, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on January 14, 2019 | 1 comment

Europe’s elite is finding it discomfiting that much of the peasantry can’t see the self-evident righteousness of their views and policies. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at theautomaticearth.com:

There will be elections for the European Parliament on May 23-26 2019. They will likely change the face of Europe more than anything has done since the EU was founded. That is not some wild prediction. Many European countries have held elections since the last European elections in 2014, and just about all had outcomes that shook up domestic political ratios.

In most cases, countries went from traditional parties to newly founded ones. France erased the Socialists and center-right in 2017, and the final round of the presidential elections was between Marine Le Pen’s Front National and Emmanuel Macron’s brand-new En Marche. Macron won sort of by default, because France as a country would never have voted for Le Pen.

In Italy, M5S and Lega have taken over. In Germany, Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition lost bigly though it remained the biggest party, but Angela lost her ‘socialist’ SPD partner which gave up so much it didn’t want to be in government anymore. In Spain, Mariano Rajoy’s center right lost enough to cede power to the Socialists who came up tops because they played a smart game, not because the Spanish wanted it to rule.

We don’t have to go through all 27/28 different countries to establish that there are almost tectonic shifts happening all over, away from traditional parties and towards whoever showed up without insanely extreme views. And if you think this move is now completed, you may want to think again.

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Posted in Collapse, Cronyism, Geopolitics, Governments, Immigration, Media, Politics

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Political Nightmares Multiply for Europe Ahead of Davos, by Tom Luongo

Posted on January 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

The globalist-inspired European integration dream is crumbling. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

Europe’s dreams of integration are slipping away as the people wake up from the nightmare erected for them.

As we approach Act IX of the Yellow Vest protests in France and the threats of creating bank runs we get the news that both Presidents Trump and Macron will not be attending the convocation of globalists known as the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Trump’s not attending because it’s clear he’s no longer a member of The Davos Crowd and Macron isn’t because any public appearance by him will double the number of people donning high visibility safety gear and taking to the streets.

It almost feels like we’ve reached Peak Davos, with these announcements. But, clearly neither of these men are invited because in the minds of The Davos Crowd they no longer figure in their long-term plans.

Macron not attending is also a sign his government will be sacrificed on the altar of the Yellow Vests in the near future.

The Yellow Vest protests will have to be dealt with in a substantive manner that goes far beyond a few temporary injunctions against higher taxes. They are now vandalizing another symbol of middle class oppression in France, speed cameras.

All of the governments of Europe are broke. And the speed camera is simply another in a long line of instances of them trying to squeeze blood from the now impoverished and shrinking middle class.

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Posted in banking, Business, Debt, Economy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Insurrection, Labor, Politics

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Trump to Europe: You’re Vassals and I Don’t Care, a Strategic Culture Editorial

Posted on January 7, 2019 | Leave a comment

There’s nothing new in Trump’s attitutude towards Europe, he’s simply giving voice to the way America’s leaders have felt about Europe for decades. From the Strategic Culture editorial board at strategic-culture.org:

“I don’t care about Europe,” declared US President Donald Trump this week during his White House cabinet’s first meeting of the new year.

The American president probably revealed more about the true nature of US-European relations than he intended.

Trump was speaking in the context of American military involvement with Europe, as well as trade and other issues. He was reiterating the tedious mantra that the US is allegedly being “taken advantage of” by European allies by not spending more on their military budgets.

It was the usual rambling, barely articulate fallacy from Trump who portrays the inherent military profligacy of American corporate capitalism not as a destructive vice, but as a supposed virtuous cause of “protection” for allies and the rest of the world. In short, delusional American exceptionalism.

But it was Trump’s bluntly stated contempt for European allies that was notable. In a quip to a question about his reported unpopularity in Europe, the president said he didn’t care what Europeans think. A few seconds later, in a betrayal of his arrant egotistical state of mind, Trump turned around and claimed that he would be popular if he stood in an election in Europe!

Ironically, though, perhaps we should be grateful to Trump for his brash outspokenness. By dissing Europe with such contemptuous disregard, he lays bare the true face of Washington’s relations with the old continent.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Military, Politics, Trade, War

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