Tag Archives: Europe

Putin Takes Nord Stream 2 Victory Lap: “Either Buy Cheaper, Cleaner Gas From Us” Or “Dubious” US Shale, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 5, 2021 | 1 comment

Putin has outsmarted American and European politicians many times, but it never gets old. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

On Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the successful reaching of a major milestone in the Nord Stream 2 Russia to Germany natural gas pipeline despite an aggressive US sanctions campaign toward thwarting the project which began under the Trump administration (and ironically somewhat softened under Biden, at least on the German side), which will imminently bring the controversial project to completion.

In an address to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which is often referred to as “Russia’s Davos”, Putin said “I am pleased to say that today, just two-and-a-half-hours ago, we have completed laying the pipes for the first section of Nord Stream 2, and works are advancing on the second segment.”

Just days ago TASS cited the governor of the Leningrad region, where the pipeline originates, as saying testing will begin as early as next week. At the end of March, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom had declared it to be 95% complete.

Via AP

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U.S. Spying on ‘Allies’ Spoils Biden’s Set-Piece Visit to Europe, by Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on June 4, 2021 | 1 comment

It’s hard to cast spying on your friends in a good light. From the Strategic Culture editorial board, at strategic-culture.org:

Biden is to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva only days after his embarrassing encounter with European vassals, er, “allies”.

American President Joe Biden flies to Europe next week for a series of major summits in what was being billed as a happy revival for the transatlantic alliance. Four years of bitter and divisive chaos under Trump were supposed to be sutured by the new president declaring the importance of a strong U.S.-European partnership and “shared values”.

Unfortunately for Biden, the scandal over U.S. spying on European governments looks like casting a shadow on the “happy family reunion”. What’s more, this American president is fully implicated in the illicit snooping.

The timing also upsets Biden’s attempt to burnish America’s image as a defender of “rules-based order” and “shared Western values” when he meets Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Geneva for their first face-to-face presidential summit.

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Posted in Eurasian Axis, Financial markets, Politics, Propaganda, Surveillance

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Europe: Anti-Israel Protests Descend into Anti-Semitism, by Soeren Kern

Posted on May 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

There are many Europeans, particularly the newly imported Islamic variety, who are rabidly anti-Israel and antisemitic regardless of what Israel does and want to drive the Jews out of Europe. From Soeren Kern at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • The current crisis of anti-Semitism is a testament to the failure of European multiculturalism, which is making Jewish life in Europe increasingly unviable.
  • “Open, disgusting hatred of Jews and Israel, but not only: It was also hatred of our free, tolerant democracy.” — Peter Wilke, correspondent, Bild.
  • “It is astonishing that, only 76 years after the Shoah, many people fail to understand that the Jewish state cannot accept a threat to its existence without being able to defend itself. The anti-Semitic attacks of the past few days have once again made it clear how fragile Jewish life is in Germany.” — Andrei Kovacs, managing director, “321-2021: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany.”
  • “Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, which no longer bothers to identify true war refugees, has imported hundreds of thousands of times an ideology that focuses on the Jew as an eternal enemy… Too many streets were in the hands of people at the weekend who want a different Germany, a country without Jews.” — Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief, Bild.
  • “A large part of this mob consists of people who came here as refugees and brought their hatred of Jews with them and continued to expand it here.” — Michal Kornblum, German commentator.
  • “German politicians have not understood that immigration from Iraq and Syria, from the Arab countries, also brings more anti-Semitism to Germany. Anyone who says that is immediately branded as right wing and there is no fair discussion or debate about it.” — German-Egyptian political scientist and author Hamed Abdel-Samad, Die Welt.
  • “In the end, not even schools can talk about anti-Semitism or the Middle East conflict. Or about Erdogan or about Islamism. Even at universities, Muslim students refuse to speak about such topics. Universities should be a safe haven for opinions. But for many Muslim students, universities are now safe spaces from opinions and criticism, even though that is where we have to start.” — German-Egyptian political scientist and author Hamed Abdel-Samad, Die Welt.
  • “This isn’t about Gaza. We’ve never seen such hate after any Western action in Syria or Afghanistan. No British crowds marching through malls to protest airstrikes in Iraq. This is bigotry in its most ugly, rawest form. Gaza is an excuse to find a socially acceptable way to publicly express Jew-hatred while pretending that your hate is righteous…. Arab persecution of Palestinians is ignored by the anti-Israel crowd as well.” — Elder of Zion blog.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Culture, Governments, History, Immigration, Law, Morality, Politics, Propaganda, Religion

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Passenger Locator Forms: When You Become A Health Threat, And Removing Your Rights A Formality, by Children’s Health Defense Europe

Posted on May 10, 2021 | 1 comment

If you think Covid totalitarianism is bad in the US, check out Europe. From Children’s Health Defense Europe at childrenshealthdefenseeu.eu:

Since the WHO declared a pandemic, Europe has seen the advent of two curious legal instruments: the Digital Green Certificate (DGC) and Passenger Locator Forms (PLFs). Working shoulder-to-shoulder as a draconian ‘universal framework’, they are digging a six-foot legislative hole in which to lay freedom of movement and the concept of bodily integrity to rest.

Until now you have been able to travel freely. Generally, you required proof of identity and citizenship, ie a passport. Sometimes there were visa and medical requirements. Within the Schengen Zone meanwhile, European citizens didn’t even need a passport.

And until now, you had command over your own body. You could choose your medicine, for example. If you got sick, generally speaking, you decided on your treatment. You could only be imprisoned if you did something wrong.

Until now you were a person, a citizen; free to move and bodily autonomous.

You may have noticed that this has all changed. However you may not realise how and to what a dramatic extent this has changed, or why.

It’s not that you can’t travel anymore. The State will still let you travel—in return for certain permissions. Before you can move, you will let the State do things to your body; conduct an unsanitary test or administer an experimental gene therapy for example—whether or not you are sick. Then, as you begin to move, the State will track and imprison you as it sees fit.

So, to travel, you will have to give up the right to decide what happens to your body. Instead, in certain matters, you will let the State decide. Why? Because the State presumes you are a threat to public health, and you accept this.

Now let’s look at the two instruments that make up this new pact between government and ‘passengers’ or, better understood, all members of our presumably plague-bearing society.

The first is the Digital Green Certificate, DGC, which followers of Children’s Health Defense Europe will be familiar with. It’s is a health control system incorporating medical certificates which you will carry on your phone.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, Medicine, Propaganda

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Barbarians Rampage Through Europe’s Cemetery, by Dmitry Orlov

Posted on May 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

Russians have long admired the rest of Europe and sought to emulate Europeans, but that’s fading. From Dmitry Orlov at Club Orlov via lewrockwell.com:

Around the world, very few people are capable of wrapping their heads around the European reaction to the migrant crisis. On the side of the migrants, we have avid displays of barbarism, fanaticism and aggression; on the side of the Europeans, we have abject fear of appearing… intolerant. In an out-of-control situation where we would expect people to organize, protest, put up road blocks and vote en masse for nationalist parties, we are instead subjected to the ridiculous spectacle of meek, effeminate Europeans dressed up in unisex outfits chalking “No to terrorism!” on sidewalks. Most people around the world see in this an orchidaceous display of anthropological nullity. “Is Europe dead?” they wonder aloud.

Lest you think that this impression is politically incorrect or undiplomatic or somehow marginal rather than mainstream, Russia’s FM Sergei Lavrov, a senior Russian statesman and a diplomat’s diplomat, is on the record saying that the European Union is “committing suicide” by letting in the invading hordes from the Middle East and North Africa.

Here we have a flood of people coming in, the majority of them young adult males shirking military service back home, and relatively few of them are qualified to seek asylum. Most of them are unqualified to do any sort of work within the EU due to lack of literacy, education or work ethic. Many of them would not be trainable in any case, coming as they are from populations bred for physical stamina and disease tolerance rather than intelligence.

Quite a few are Islamic radicals who see themselves as actual colonizers; many more have no qualms about robbing Europeans and raping European women. A few thousand are actual terrorists being sent in to await orders. For most of them, crashing into the EU and freeloading there is part of an excellent adventure—far more exciting than herding cattle or growing millet in their native villages.

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Posted in Collapse, Geopolitics, Governments, Immigration, Law

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Washington’s Green Branches in Europe, by Diane Johnstone

Posted on May 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

How a fringe party goes mainstream in Europe: cozy up to the United States government and toe its line. From Diane Johnstone at consortiumnews.com:

The German Green Party has a chance to join a ruling coalition in September’s election, after turning its back on its roots, to root for Washington.

The core of the American empire is its domination of Europe, directly through NATO and indirectly through a web of treaties, institutions and elite organizations which develop policy consensus and select upcoming leaders in European countries. Pervasive American influence has caused drastically deteriorating relation between Western European countries and Russia.

Russia is a great nation with an important place in European history and culture. Washington’s policy is to expel Russia from Europe in order to secure its own domination of the rest of the continent.

This policy entails creating hostilities where none exist and disrupting what should be fruitful relations between Russia and the West.

It is quite obvious to all serious observers that trade between resource-rich Russia and highly industrialized Germany is a natural fit, beneficial to both – and not least to Germany. A symbol of that beneficial cooperation is the Nordstream 2 pipeline, now nearing completion, which would provide Germany and other European customers with much-needed natural gas at reasonable prices.

The U.S. is determined to block the completion and operation of Nordstream 2. The obvious motives are to block “Russian influence,” to sell Germany more expensive gas from U.S. fracking and eventually to weaken support for Putin in the hope of replacing him with an American puppet, like the drunken Boris Yeltsin who ruined Russia in the 1990s.

But for those Europeans who prefer to reject Nordstream on the basis of high-sounding moral posturing, an abundance of largely fictional pretexts are available: Crimea’s vote to rejoin Russia, falsely portrayed as a military takeover; the incredible saga of the non-poisoning of Alexei Navalny; and the latest: an obscure 2014 explosion in the Czech Republic which is suddenly attributed to the same two Russian spies who allegedly failed to poison the Skripals in Salisbury in 2018.

According to the liberal doctrine justifying the capitalist “free market,” economic self-interest leads people to make rational choices. It follows that many sensible observers have placed their hopes for effective opposition to Washington’s policy of isolating Russia on the self-interest of German politicians and especially of German business leaders.

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Eurozone inflation is high when it comes to the prices of daily purchases, by Daniel Lacalle

Posted on April 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

One way to keep inflation down is to take out the things that people actually buy out of the price indexes. From Daniel Lacalle at dlacalle.com:

For more than ten years, ECB monetary policy has been ultra-expansionary, whether there was crisis, a recovery, economic growth or stabilization. The worst excuse of all that was used to justify endless quantitative easing has been the often-repeated mantra that “there is no inflation.”

Defenders of aggressive monetary policy have always used the same arguments really.

First, they say there is no inflation – as if an average 2% increase in prices during a crisis whereby many salaries fell up to 20% does not constitute “inflation”.

After, they say it is temporary, so to justify maintaining aggressive easing policies.

Next up, the “inflationistas”  seek to blame businesses or some kind of external enemy for the rise in prices, whereby they ask governments to impose price controls.

Important to understand here is that money creation is never neutral. It disproportionately benefits the first recipients of newly created money – governments -, and negatively affects real wages and savings of those that are not able to buy financial assets: the poorest.

There clearly is massive inflation when it comes to financial asset prices. Negative-yielding sovereign bonds of nations with weak solvency ratios amount to massive inflation. Continuous price increases of both quoted and private assets amount to high inflation, and all of this is caused by monetary policy.

Furthermore, anyone can understand that the official headline consumer price index (CPI) is masking the increase in the price of goods and services that we really purchase on a daily basis, relative to the ones we only purchase occasionally, or for leisure. Any European citizen understands that tourism and technology may become cheaper, as a result of competition and innovation, but that the things we purchase every day have increased more in price than reflected by the headline CPI.

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Germany’s Political Crisis And The Future Of Nord Stream 2, by J. Hawk

Posted on April 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

So far the Biden administration is neither winning friends nor influence people in Europe. Trying to diplomatically bludgeon Germany into abandoning the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is generating fierce blowback. From J. Hawk at southfront.org:

Germany’s Political Crisis and the Future of Nord Stream 2

In a Blinken of an Eye

The Biden Administration entered the White House accompanied by hopes that it would return to some kind of normal in its relations with the European Union. While Biden, unlike Obama, would not score a Nobel Peace Prize solely for his existence, his victory was warmly welcomed in capitals around Europe as a sign that liberalism would vanquish populism ushering in a new era of “business as usual” in the form it was practiced during the Obama Administration.

Once in office, however, the Biden Administration has been working overtime in order to dispel any notion of a relationship of mutual respect between two more or less equal allies, US and EU. Instead, Biden officials have acted as if US and EU are a contemporary version of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, two countries with ostensibly separate political systems linked by a personal union in the form of the Emperor (Biden), held together by a common army (NATO) whose main task is preventing any separatism by “Hungary” (the EU) and whose foreign policy is made wholly in “Austria” (United States). Events like Brexit merely represent a part of the empire moving from “Hungary” to “Austria” for a variety of cultural and racial reasons. In practice it meant that, in addition to Biden replying affirmatively to a court journalist’s question whether Vladimir was a “killer” and Blinken provoking a major row with a Chinese delegation by informing them the US intended to deal with China from a “position of strength”, Blinken also issued a blunt warning to European companies working on Nord Stream 2 could be subject to US sanctions if they did not immediately withdraw from the project.

To make matters worse, at the EU summit Blinken pointed out that his threats aimed at Nord Stream 2 are a reflection of US Congress laws demanding any and all firms participating in its construction to be sanctioned, though omitting that the Executive Branch has considerable freedom of action in implementing legislation impinging on the presidential foreign policy prerogatives.

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After Two Months, President Joe Biden has Become Donald Trump Lite on Foreign Policy, by Doug Bandow

Posted on March 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

There’s little to like in Biden’s foreign policy. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

Joe Biden has been president for two months. Only 46 months to go, unless he is reelected. In fact, he teased the media at his press conference, suggesting that he likely would run for reelection, though he insisted that prospect was too far in the future for him to consider today.

The biggest change from his predecessor is the calm which has descended upon Washington, D.C. Days go by without thinking about Biden. After four years of Donald Trump, the atmosphere seems so … normal.

However, U.S. foreign policy hasn’t changed much.

A fixture in the nation’s capital for almost a half century, Biden views himself as a foreign policy maven. And he certainly knows the players. As variously Senator, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presidential candidate, and vice president, he was involved in many of the most of the important foreign policy decisions made since he arrived in Washington in January 1973.

The result has not been pretty. Of course, he isn’t responsible for all that has happened. But he has committed more than his share of whoppers. Indeed, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That may be slightly exaggerated, but not much.

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Maybe Washington Should Let Nord Stream 2 Go, by Daniel R. DePetris

Posted on March 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US can threaten all the sanctions it wants, but the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is 95 percent complete and there’s no chance the Europeans will abandon it. From Daniel R. DePetris at realclearworld.com:

Nord Stream 2, the undersea Russian pipeline designed to transport more natural gas to Germany, is the energy project nearly everyone in Washington, D.C. loves to hate. Some lawmakers are going to great lengths to drill home their point. Sen. Ted Cruz, a co-author of mandatory sanctions legislation targeting the pipeline, blocked a vote on President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the CIA, William Burns, over the issue. That hold that was lifted about two weeks later after Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated all entities associated with the project were at risk of U.S. sanctions. Blinken reiterated this position during his latest meeting with NATO foreign ministers.

The $11 billion pipeline could theoretically double the amount of Russian gas that flows to Europe, boosting Moscow’s bottom line and providing Russian President Vladimir Putin with a potent geopolitical weapon to wield against the West. The question, however, is whether the benefits to the United States of destroying Nord Stream 2 are worth the costs, which have not been properly considered.

As frustrated as some lawmakers are with the pace of sanctions by the Biden administration, there are legitimate reasons to think twice before plunging into a full-scale economic assault against the project.

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