Tag Archives: Europe

Is the US Shutting Down Power to Europe? By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on October 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

You sure couldn’t blame the Europeans for thinking the U.S. is trying to shut down their power. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

Story at-a-glance

  • September 26, 2022, massive “leaks” were detected in two Russian pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, which deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe underneath the Baltic Sea
  • It was quickly determined the leaks were the result of intentional sabotage. Germany will partner with Denmark and Sweden to investigate the explosions using navy, police and intelligence services from the three countries
  • One day after the Nord Stream sabotage, a new Polish natural gas pipeline was inaugurated. Israel has also been in negotiations with the EU to supply natural gas to Europe
  • Western officials and media blame Russia itself. The Washington Post suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin is “weaponizing the Nord Stream pipelines,” and Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, accused Russia of “using pollution as an act of war.” Putin has dismissed such allegations as “stupid,” and is placing the blame on the U.S.
  • In a September 27, 2022, show, Fox News host Tucker Carlson laid the blame at the feet of the Biden administration. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and public policy analyst, also believes the pipelines were struck by the U.S. as a means of damaging the Russian economy, something that sanctions have failed to accomplish

September 26, 2022, massive “leaks” were detected in two Russian pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, which deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe underneath the Baltic Sea.

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Fanaticism Of The Apocalypse, by Michael Shellenberger

Posted on October 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

As people freeze, humanitarian Greens fight fossil fuels in favor of intermittent energy. From Michael Shellenberger at michaelshellenberger.substack.com:

As Europeans burn garbage to stay warm, climate activists step up the war on natural gas

Members of Extinction Rebellion called on African leaders to end the production of natural gas in Cape Town, South Africa on October 4, 2022. (Photo by Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty)

“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

— Alfred Pennyworth

In Europe, they’re burning garbage to stay warm. “It’s so bad this season that you can smell trash burning every day, which is completely new,”  said the 35-year-old mother of three from Jablonna, Poland, near Warsaw. “Rarely can you smell a regular fuel. It’s scary to think what happens when it really gets cold.” The Polish government suspended quality regulations on coal burning for those who can still afford it; 60% of households no longer can. Because of all the garbage burning, the government may soon hand out masks so its residents don’t inhale toxic fumes. Said one of Poland’s most powerful politicians last month, “one needs to burn almost everything, except for tires and similarly harmful things.” The government estimates that 40,000 people died annually from premature deaths from air pollution before the current crisis.

Forests are being hammered. In Estonia and Finland, forests that had been set aside to capture carbon dioxide to reduce climate change are now being so heavily logged that they are net emitters. Hungary lifted conservation regulations so old-growth forests could be logged; it then banned the export of wood pellets. “People buy wood pellets thinking they’re the sustainable choice, but in reality, they’re driving the destruction of Europe’s last wild forests,” said one conservationist. Wood pellets prices have doubled even in nuclear-heavy France which, under pressure from Germany, and in the grip of renewable energy mania, had been shutting down its nuclear plants so rapidly that it had stopped properly maintaining them. Romania has been forced to cap the price of firewood, which had skyrocketed. Burning wood releases more greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal, something most experts finally acknowledge.

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Can Europe Afford To Turn a Blind Eye to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts? By Jonathan Cook

Posted on October 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

If Europe refuses to even ask questions, it gets what it deserves. From Jonathan Cook at antiwar.com:

If Washington was involved, it would mark a dangerous new stage not only in the Ukraine war but in Europe’s acceptance of vassal status

The sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines leaves Europeans certain to be much poorer and colder this winter, and was an act of international vandalism on an almost unimaginable scale. The attacks severed Russian gas supplies to Europe and caused the release of enormous quantities of methane gas, the prime offender in global warming.

This is why no one is going to take responsibility for the crime – and most likely no one will ever be found definitively culpable.

Nonetheless, the level of difficulty and sophistication in setting off blasts at three separate locations on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines overwhelmingly suggests a state actor, or actors, was behind it.

Western coverage of the attacks has been decidedly muted, given that this hostile assault on the globe’s energy infrastructure is unprecedented – overshadowing even the 9/11 attacks.

The reason why there appears to be so little enthusiasm to explore this catastrophic event in detail – beyond pointing a finger in Russia’s direction – is not difficult to deduce.

It is hard to think of a single reason why Moscow would wish to destroy its own energy pipelines, valued at $20 billion, or allow in seawater, possibly corroding them irreversibly.

The attacks deprive Russia of its main gas supply lines to Europe – and with it, vital future revenues – while leaving the field open to competitors.

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Michael Hudson: A Roadmap to Escape the West’s Stranglehold

Posted on October 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Michael Hudson was one of the first to suggest that the U.S. proxy war against Russia was also a war on Europe, particularly Germany. From Hudson at unz.com:

It is impossible to track the geoeconomic turbulence inherent to the “birth pangs” of the multipolar world without the insights of Professor Michael Hudson at the University of Missouri, and author of the already seminal The Destiny of Civilization.

In his latest essay, Professor Hudson digs deeper into Germany’s suicidal economic/financial policies; their effect on the already falling euro – and hints at some possibilities for fast integrating Eurasia and the Global South as a whole to try to break the Hegemon’s stranglehold.

That led to a series of email exchanges, especially about the future role of the yuan, where Hudson remarked:

“The Chinese whom I’ve talked to for years and years did not expect the dollar to weaken. They’re not crying about its rise, but they are concerned about flight capital from China as I think after the Party Congress [starting on October 16] there will be a crackdown on the Shanghai free-market advocacy. Pressure for the coming changes has been long building up. The spirit of reform to rein in ‘free markets’ was spreading among students over a decade ago, and they have been rising in the Party hierarchy.”

On the key issue of Russia accepting payment for energy in rubles, Hudson touched upon a point rarely examined outside of Russia: “They don’t really want to be paid just in rubles. That’s the one thing Russia doesn’t need, because it can just print them. It only needs rubles to balance its international payments to stabilize the exchange rate – not to push it up.”

Which brings us to settlements in yuan: “Taking payment in yuan is like taking payment in gold – an international asset that every country desires as a non-fiat currency that has a value if one sells it (unlike the dollar now, which may simply be confiscated, or ultimately left abandoned). What Russia really needs are critical industrial inputs like computer chips. It could ask China to import these with the yuan Russia provides.”

Keynes is back

Following our email exchanges, Professor Hudson gracefully agreed to answer in detail a few questions about the extremely complex geoeconomic processes in play across Eurasia. Here we go.

The Cradle: The BRICS are studying the adoption of a common currency – including all of them and, we expect, the expanded BRICS+ as well. How could that be practically implemented? Hard to see the Brazilian Central Bank harmonizing with the Russians and the People’s Bank of China. Would that involve only investment – via the BRICS development bank? Would that be based on commodities + gold? How does the yuan fit in? Is the BRICS approach based on the current Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) discussions with the Chinese, led by Sergey Glazyev? Did the Samarkand summit advance, practically, the interconnection of BRICS and the SCO?

Hudson: “Any idea of a common currency has to start with a currency-swap arrangement among existing member countries. Most trade will be in their own currencies. But to settle the inevitable imbalances (balance-of-payments surpluses and deficits), an artificial currency will be created by a new Central Bank.

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Tearing Down the Pantheon of Western Founders and Heroes, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on October 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

The values that made Western Civilization Western Civilization are being replaced by tissue-thin ideologies that brook no question or dissent. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The Euro-élites were in desperate need of a Values System to fill the gap. The solution, however, was at hand.

The advocates of American primacy within the United States always move with the times, relying on prevailing trends to reimagine justification for its’ ‘exceptionalism’ through novel imagery.

The rise of the liberal-woke activist-driven, social justice-oriented identity politics has provided its soldiers with their newest justification. It is not just a new ‘policy’, but is something different: It is an ideology brooking no ‘otherness’; no disputation, but requiring simply the signalling of loyalty and compliance for a ‘progressive’ code – showing you have heard the message and seen ‘the light’.

They seek, in short, through conversion of the leadership class, to subvert and overthrow the old deities.

Biden likes to tout the exceptionalism of ‘our democracy’. It is, he said in his commemorative remarks on the 9/11 attacks,“that which makes us unique in the world … We have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, preserve, and protect ‘our democracy’ … It is under threat … The very democracy that those terrorists on 9/11 sought to bury in the burning fire and smoke and ash”.

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The U.S. Is Winning Its War On Europe’s Industries And People, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on September 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S.’s proxy war against Russia via Ukraine isn’t going too well, but it’s war against Europeans, who don’t even know they’re U.S. enemies, is going splendidly. From Moon of Alamaba at moonofalabama.org:

Disclose.tv @disclosetv – 10:03 UTC · Sep 26, 2022JUST IN – German economy deteriorated significantly in September. IFO business climate index continues to fall.

On February 7 Professor of Economics Michael Hudson explained why America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies:

What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors?These are the concerns that have prompted French President Macron to call forth the ghost of Charles de Gaulle and urge Europe to turn away from what he calls NATO’s “brain-dead” Cold War and beak with the pro-U.S. trade arrangements that are imposing rising costs on Europe while denying it potential gains from trade with Eurasia. Even Germany is balking at demands that it freeze by this coming March by going without Russian gas.

Instead of a real military threat from Russia and China, the problem for American strategists is the absence of such a threat.

What the U.S. needed was to provoke Russia, and later China, into reacting to U.S. arranged threats in a way that would oblige its ‘allies’ to follow its sanction policies.

The rather dimwitted European leadership fell for the trick.

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Europe’s Biggest Enemy Isn’t Russia Nor Islamic Terrorism, but Israel, by Martin Jay

Posted on September 26, 2022 | 2 comments

Europe shouldn’t mistake either the U.S. or Israel as a friend. From Martin Jay at strategic-culture.org:

When Joe Biden took office, many pundits said that at least relations between the U.S. and EU would be restored. But the Iran deal is the ultimate test of just how much he loves the old continent.

Just how far will Israel go to scupper the so-called Iran deal from being signed by both Iran and the West? And will it play a fair game or use underhand and covert tactics to achieve its goal of the deal never being signed? Recently, we have seen the talks in Vienna progress as even the Americans say that certain key negotiating points have been taken out of the deal from the Iranians which has made the negotiations move closer to an agreement; we have also seen though Israel pulling out all the stops, from a PR and lobbying perspective at least.

And then there is the murky subject of skullduggery to destroy the talks. If you’re one of these people who believes in fairies at the bottom of the garden or that certain toothpastes can make your teeth whiter, then you might not buy into Israel using Mossad to derail the deal. Attacks on U.S. forces for example in Iraq, supposedly carried out by Iran-backed militias would normally have most people pointing the finger at Iran, proclaiming that Tehran is not at all serious about the deal but just playing along for time so that it can roll out a nuclear bomb. Then there is the curious case of the Salman Rushdie attack, which, again, many would point out could be attributed to the Iranians who still have a very much ‘alive’ fatwa against the British writer. Indeed, even the Supreme Leader is reported to have made a comment against Rushdie when he heard of the knife attack.

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What the End of the Fed Put Actually Means, by Tom Luongo

Posted on September 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

It means there’s a chance that U.S. finances  and its economy are restored to sanity, although I wouldn’t advise holding your breath waiting for it. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

gold-dollar-trap

For more than a year I’ve been arguing that the Fed was tightening US dollar supply. When I first put the idea out there it was met with intense skepticism and, for the most part, it still is.

The Fed has long been the punching bag of hard money and alternative finance types because, frankly, it always deserved it. For nearly the past generation, until June of 2021, the Fed acted as the Central Bank of the World.

But we’re rapidly reaching the moment where a lot of people are finally beginning to realize maybe the vaunted “Fed Put,” the belief that the Fed always comes to the market’s rescue isn’t going to show up anytime soon, if at all.

Whenever there was a major crisis on the horizon the Fed was always there to provide the world with the dollars needed to keep things from collapsing completely. This was especially true in the aftermath of Lehman Bros. and the 2008 housing crisis which broke the post-Bretton Woods Dollar Reserve Standard ushered in by Paul Volcker’s extreme monetary policy of the early 1980’s.

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WHY Is Germany Committing Suicide? by David Chu

Posted on September 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is the U.S. government draining the life out of Europe to sustain, for just a short while longer, it’s own unsustainable profligacy” From David Chu at unz.com:

The Same Reasons WHY the EU/UK is Being Deindustrialized!

Well that’s the real question, isn’t it? Why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia. Keeps ’em guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents ’em from asking the most important question, why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?

~ Mr. X in JFK movie

Why is Germany committing harakiri (or seppuku)?

Because the Americans ordered them to do so!

Recently, William F. Engdahl wrote a very interesting article titled, “Europe’s Energy Armageddon From Berlin and Brussels, Not Moscow” which was re-worked in Pepe Escobar’s “Germany’s Energy Suicide: An Autopsy”.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57224.htm

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/germanys-energy-suicide-an-autopsy/

Both articles give a fascinating explanation of HOW Germany is committing suicide. Green Agenda 2030. The Great Reset. Etc.

I emailed Engdahl about the following statement that he wrote in his article and asked him, “What is the real reason for the complete deindustrialization of Germany? Besides the Green Energy or Great Reset bullshit.”:

It is not because politicians like Scholz or German Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck, nor EU Commission Green Energy Vice President Frans Timmermans are stupid or clueless. Corrupt and dishonest, maybe yes. They know exactly what they are doing. They are reading a script. It is all part of the EU plan to deindustrialize one of the most energy-efficient industrial concentrations on the planet. This is the UN Green Agenda 2030 otherwise known as Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset. [Bolded emphasis is mine.]

For whatever reasons, Engdahl didn’t reply to my email. But in my email to him, I basically answered my question when I asked the following:

Is it to emasculate Europe completely so as to make Europe completely dependent on the US for both energy and technology? The rest of the world is moving towards BRI and BRICS. The only block left to harvest aka rape and pillage for the Americans is Europe (plus Japan and South Korea).

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Existential Disquiets: Financial War Against the West Begins to Bite, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on September 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government is writing checks its overdrawn bank account can’t cash. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

Europe sinks into being a distant backward province to a falling ‘Imperial Rome’, Alastair Crooke writes.

The Club of Rome, founded in 1968 as a collective of leading thinkers pondering global issues, took as its leitmotiv the doctrine that to view the problems of humankind individually, in isolation or as “problems capable of being solved in their own terms”, was doomed to failure – “all are interrelated”. Now, fifty-years on, this has become an unquestioned ‘revealed truth’ to a key segment of western populations.

The Club of Rome subsequently attracted immediate public attention with its first report, The Limits to Growth. Published in 1972, the Club’s computer simulations suggested that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of resource depletion. The 1973 oil crisis increased public concern about this problem. The report went ‘viral’.

We know the story: A group of western thinkers were posed three questions: Can the planet sustain a European-style level of consumption spreading everywhere, across the globe? The answer from these thinkers was ‘clearly not’. Second question: Can you imagine western states voluntarily relinquishing their standard of living by de-industrialising? Answer: A definite ‘No’. Must a lower plane of consumption and use of energy and resources then be coerced upon reluctant populations? Answer: Definitely ‘Yes.

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