Blues for Europa

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blindpig
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Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 05, 2024 3:24 pm

(Should have started this thread long ago instead of shoehorning articles in every which way...)

All Is Permitted: A Failed Coup in Serbia?
By Kit Klarenberg - January 4, 2024 0

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Protesters in Belgrade on December 30. [Source: msn.com]

On December 17th, Serbian voters went to the polls in a snap general election. The result was President Aleksandar Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) coalition regained its parliamentary majority. Immediately, pro-Western, liberal opposition party Serbia Against Violence (SPN) declared widespread fraud in the government’s favor, and committed to convening protests around government buildings in Belgrade until authorities agreed to hold a new election.

So it was that thousands took to the streets, night after night. This culminated on December 24th with protesters, led by SPN leaders, attempting to forcibly gain access to Belgrade town hall, in scenes evocative of January 6th in Washington, D.C. What they hoped to achieve by breaching the building is unclear but, in a hugely symbolic twist, they were unable to do so and were fought back by riot police. About three dozen attendees were arrested for vandalism and violence.

The city has remained peaceful and calm ever since. Yet, these rather trivial events have been widely exploited by a variety of domestic and international actors to support conflicting narratives. For example, Russian state media have framed the disturbance as a Maidan 2.0 in the making, which Vladimir Putin personally averted by warning Vucic that Western-sponsored actors were plotting sedition.

The President himself has touted this alleged intervention, which plays into his persona as both a close confidante of the Kremlin, and defender of Serbs from foreign incursions. In reality, the protests were widely publicized in advance, overseas sponsorship of the groups and individuals involved was openly advertised, and there was zero prospect of the demonstrators achieving their stated goals, let alone unseating Vucic. As such, there was seemingly nothing to warn about.

One would not know that from Western media reporting on the events though, or the hysterical chorus of foreign “think tank” pundits, who claim a revolution is dawning in Belgrade. They grossly exaggerated the size of protest crowds and openly fantasized about the downfall of Vucic—whom they brand a Kremlin confidante, and Putin clone. In doing so, they perpetuate the false myth of eternal Serbian-Russian brotherhood, as the country is on the verge of being incorporated into the EU and NATO, despite widespread public opposition.

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Aleksandar Vucic celebrating election victory. [Source: aljazeera.com]

The truth of what happened is at once more anodyne, and more sinister, than any of these narratives suggests. In effect, Belgrade’s Western-backed opposition tried to take on the country’s Western-backed government, and failed, because their Western sponsors did not want them to succeed. The only victor was the U.S. Empire. And the ultimate victims are the Serb public.

Revolution by Marketing
While the country may be small, Serbia is of enormous geopolitical significance. Throughout its history, multiple major powers have without success attempted to subjugate the country and its population. During the 1990s, relentless media demonization, Western-supported proxy wars in the former Yugoslavia, crippling international sanctions, an illegal 78-day-long NATO bombing campaign, and a U.S.-orchestrated coup immediately following that awful decade, were all concerned with finally achieving that end, for the U.S. Empire’s benefit.

After NATO criminally bombed Belgrade starting in March 1999, Yugoslavia’s long-time leader Slobodan Milosevic was ripe for removal. Accordingly, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government regime-change agency that avowedly does overtly what the CIA once did covertly, USAID, and other U.S. government entities—including the CIA—began pumping tens of millions of dollars into ensuring his defeat in Yugoslavia’s September 2000 election.

As a Washington Post investigation documented in extraordinary detail in December that year, U.S. advertising whizzes typically accustomed to marketing chewing gum and soda pop were employed to concoct catchy slogans, PR stunts, and other innovative communications strategies to undermine Milosevic. Extensive opinion polling and countless focus groups were secretly conducted to road test and perfect campaign strategy in real time.

Concurrently, scores of parliamentary candidates and activists were covertly coached in the art of staying “on message” to field questions from journalists, and effectively rebut the arguments of Milosevic supporters. Extensive training and support were likewise provided to student activist collective Otpor (Serbian for “Resistance”). They learned how to organize strikes and protests, communicate publicly via symbols, “overcome fear,” and undermine government authority through disruptive, non-violent means.

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Otpor-led protests in Serbia in color revolution directed against Milosevic. [Source: rferl.org]

USAID provided 5,000 cans of spray paint for student activists to daub anti-Milosevic graffiti across the country. Otpor employed “a wide range of sophisticated public relations techniques, including polling, leafleting and paid advertising” on Washington’s dime. All their messaging was informed by U.S.-financed polling, which meant “at every moment, we knew what to say to the people,” one of the group’s activists boasted. An Otpor leader explained in 2005:

“Our idea was to use corporate branding in politics. The movement has to have a marketing department. We took Coca-Cola as our model.”

When the election’s official results were announced, pointing to Milosevic’s victory, mass strikes spread throughout Serbia, while riots engulfed Belgrade with Otpor at the forefront, claiming industrial-scale electoral fraud. Such was the groundswell, the President resigned in October. Six months later, he was arrested and taken to The Hague to stand trial for alleged war crimes. Washington threatened to withhold financial aid from Yugoslavia if he remained free. Milosevic died in custody in March 2006, before his trial concluded. The aid never materialized.

Milosevic’s downfall is dubbed the “Bulldozer Revolution,” due to iconic scenes during the much-publicized unrest of a wheel loader helping anti-government agitators occupy state buildings, and shield activists from police bullets. In a perversely ironic twist though, its driver quickly turned against the “Revolution.” Subsequent Western-imposed privatization decimated Yugoslavia’s economy, causing his successful independent business to fail and for him to go bankrupt. He subsisted until his dying day on meager state welfare payments.

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The bulldozer revolution bred disaster for Serbia. [Source: twistedsifter.com]

Stage-Managed Maidan
The legacy of the 1990s, and NED’s brazen actions, loom large today in Serbia. These events produced enduring national trauma, and widespread distrust of foreign meddling in Belgrade’s affairs among the overwhelming majority of the population. Serbs witnessed the same techniques of regime change used against them in 2000 that were redeployed in a series of “color revolutions” across the former Soviet sphere, which even Western foreign policy apparatchiks admit resulted in disaster for target countries.

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[Source: mltoday.com]

As such, when on December 22nd a detailed, 24-page report on alleged fraud in the election was published by the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), a Belgrade-based NGO, many Serbs worried that Western powers were cooking up a new “Bulldozer.” A cursory glance at the organization’s donors makes clear why. They are a veritable who’s who of foreign foundations, intelligence agency fronts, and Western embassies, notorious for sponsoring color revolutions. Among them, NED and USAID.

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[Source: mediachecker.wordpress.com]

Those fears were only reinforced by some protesters openly brandishing banners bearing Otpor’s original logo, and in some cases the group’s name. They queasily nestled alongside signs intended for foreign audiences written in English, pleading for the West to come to the rescue, and EU flags. Such displays were absolute anathema to much of the public, greatly diminishing already limited sympathy for the opposition and demonstrators, and eliciting widespread calls to prevent “another Maidan” happening in Serbia.

It is now abundantly clear the protests lacked anything like the popular support necessary to pressure Vucic into an election rerun, much less force him from office. Most crucially though, their efforts were not endorsed by the U.S. embassy in Belgrade. On December 25th, Ambassador Christopher Hill issued a firm warning to the opposition to respect the official results, while harshly condemning the previous night’s violence and vandalism. The true ruler of Serbia had spoken. It was time for demonstrators to go home.

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Christopher Hill [Source: cordmagazine.com]

However, the memo evidently was not universally received. Several Western news outlets, including the BBC and Politico, continued to report on the unrest as if it were not only ongoing, but intensifying, and city-spanning. Articles and video segments frequently featured images and footage of protesters attacking Belgrade’s City Hall, with little to no clarity that the scenes actually took place on December 24th. One can only speculate whether this was deliberate.

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Image from Politico on apparent radicalization of protests. [Source: politico.eu]

Meanwhile, many foreign social media users shared photographs of the vast crowds gathered outside Serbia’s parliament, actually taken during opposition protests in May, falsely suggesting they were contemporaneous, and urging the EU and U.S. to support the “revolution.” These posts have in some cases gained enormous traction. Apparently no one thought to conduct a reverse image search, or noticed leaves of trees in the photos are luscious green, amply indicating the scenes were not taken in December.

While protests continued after Hill’s intervention, they typically attracted only a few hundred people, while a handful of students set up tents in central city streets in an attempt to block traffic. Parallels with the tent occupation of Ukraine’s Freedom—now Maidan—Square during Kyiv’s NED-sponsored “revolution of dignity” are not lost on Serbs. It is abundantly clear these efforts are exclusively intended for Western media consumption.

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Students setting up tent city in attempt to replicate tent occupation of Ukraine’s Maidan Square uprising. [Source: voanews.com]

Nonetheless, the extrapolative impact of such images on foreign audiences should not be underestimated. After Maidan demonstrations erupted in November 2013, NED financed the creation of Hromadske TV, which livestreamed the protests. Its output was duly recycled by many mainstream news outlets in reporting on the rebellion in Kyiv. Foreign audiences were led to believe, based on Hromadske’s slanted coverage, the opposition was wholly energized by concerns over human rights and democracy, and overwhelmingly—if not universally—popular.

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CIA/NED-backed propagandists who have sowed disaster for Ukraine. [Source: volnypost.com]

In fact, contemporary polls showed less than 20% of Maidan protesters were motivated by “violations of democracy or the threat of dictatorship,” Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych remained “the most popular political figure in the country,” and there was never overwhelming public support for the uprising. In fact, “quite large majorities” opposed it, due to “anti-Russian rhetoric and the iconography of western Ukrainian nationalism,” rife among demonstrators, “not [playing] well among the Ukrainian majority.”

One of the Serb student protesters arrested on December 24th, dubbed a “political prisoner” by the opposition and Western media, has now been released from custody, consigned to “house arrest” in his university dormitory. In several hagiographic interviews with foreign media, the flag of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, a fascist para-military group that collaborated with the Nazis during the genocidal Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, was displayed prominently on his bedroom wall.

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[Source: twitter.com]

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... in-serbia/

(Much more at link.)

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Will 2024 Mark the End of President Ursula Von Der Leyen?
Posted on January 5, 2024 by Nick Corbishley

With court cases and EU elections looming in the first half of the year, big question marks hang over the future of the EU Commission president.

Europe’s — and according to Forbes, the world’s — most powerful woman, Ursula von der Leyen (whom I will heretofore refer to as VdL), is in a bit of a jam. As Berliner Morgenpost reported this week, the European Commission president could be instructed by the European Union’s top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), to release all of her cellphone text messages pertaining to the mega COVID-19 vaccine deal she brokered with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in early 2021 (which may already have been deleted; she has form when it comes to destroying digital evidence).

The ECJ wants to reach a swift resolution to a lawsuit brought by the New York Times demanding the release of the messages. Meanwhile, the investigations, criminal or otherwise, against VdL’s Commission are stacking up.

“A Mistake of Strategic Proportions”

The article in the Berliner Morgen Post, titled “Text Messages Could Pose a Threat to Ursula von der Leyen,” provided a neat summary of VdL’s starring role in “Pfizergate” — arguably the most important political scandal in EU history — before exploring the growing disaffection in EU capitals over VdL’s go-it-alone approach to EU foreign policy, in which she has essentially arrogated to herself powers that have traditionally belonged to EU national governments (machine translated):

Von der Leyen has recently provoked considerable resentment in European capitals with her solo foreign policy moves. She promised [Ukraine] €50 billion euros without the consent of EU states, who would have to foot the bill. In Tunisia, she signed a preparatory migration agreement without first consulting the member states. And the fact that she deviated from the official EU line during her visit to Israel caused outrage in Brussels: she gave the Israeli government full support for its defence against the Hamas terrorist attacks, without, as agreed beforehand, insisting on respect for international law and the protection of the civilian population. A “mistake of strategic proportions,” complained diplomats in Brussels.

Even at this late stage in VdL’s mandate, it is rare for an article in Europe’s mainstream press to take VdL to task for her role in Pfizergate — which, for the sake of precision, should be known as Pfizer-BioNTechgate (I know, a bit of a mouthful) given that BioNTech was the original manufacturer of the mRNA vaccine. The Mainz-based pharmaceutical’s ties to the German federal government could not be closer, having been seed-funded and subsidised by successive Merkel administrations, of which VdL was the only constant member. Without this support, the firm may never have got off the ground, and probably would not have survived as long as it did (12 years) without selling a single product.

BioNTech’s ties with both Berlin and the VdL Commission remain strong. Just two weeks ago, VdL was accompanied by Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on a state visit to Rwanda, where they opened BioNTech’s first mRNA vaccine factory in Africa. The factory was part-financed with EU funds. As Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said during the factory’s inauguration, “The European Union, and President von der Leyen personally, helped to make this a reality.” In other words, as the criminal investigations into Pfizer-BioNTech continue, VdL’s Commission continues to funnel scarce EU funds in BioNTech’s direction.

Speaking at a recent event organised by the Brussels-based strategic consultancy SEC Newgate, the EU Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, lambasted European media for failing to investigate and report on EU corruption during VdL’s mandate. In 2022, O’Reilly accused VdL’s Commission of maladministration over the Pfizergate scandal, to little avail. The EU Ombudsman has, in O’Reilly’s words, “recommendatory powers only,” and has no legal means of holding VdL accountable besides stating the facts and asking for recourse.

From European Conservative, ironically one of precious few European media outlets that actually covered O’Reilly’s speech:

That’s why O’Reilly turned to the media at a recent event held by the Brussels-based strategic consultancy SEC Newgate, wondering why journalists seem to hold back when it comes to von der Leyen and possibly the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the EU.

While acknowledging that the Commission’s strategy to “stonewall” the media makes it hard for journalists to hold von der Leyen accountable for anything, O’Reilly said she was “amazed [at how] such a prominent figure as von der Leyen isn’t questioned harder on her missing Pfizer texts.”

A Story of Two Scandals

The media silence is particularly striking given the much greater attention devoted to the Qatargate scandal involving the European Parliament, an institution that wields far less influence and power than the Commission. The resulting probe into the current and former MEPs and parliamentary assistants implicated in the bribery ring scandal now appears to have bogged down, according to the Financial Times.

Qatargate may be the EU’s biggest graft scandal in decades but its implications pale in significance to those of Pfizergate, as I noted in my December 16, 2022 post, Will the Fallout from “Qatargate” Splatter the EU Commission?:

In contrast to Qatargate, [Pfizergate] has been studiously ignored by Europe’s legacy media despite the staggering sums of money involved (tens of billions of dollars to date to buy up to 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccines), the number of people affected (anyone who pays taxes in the EU and felt compelled by the EU’s vaccine passport rules to take a medical product they didn’t want) and the seniority of those implicated, including Von der Leyen herself and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Von der Leyen herself has come under fire for concealing and/or deleting records of her conversations with Bourla prior to the Commission’s purchase of up to 1.8 billion vaccines. As for Bourla, he has twice refused to give testimony to a European Parliament special committee on the matter.

Now, the chickens could be coming home to roost for VdL, as the legal cases against her mount at the most sensitive of times in the political calendar — election year. Again, from the Berliner Morgenpost piece (machine translated):

The hearing before the ECJ will also focus attention on the investigations of other judicial authorities: The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating the Commission’s procurement of the corona vaccine for 15 months, and the result is expected in the first months of 2024. The trade expert and lobbyist Frederic Baldan has filed a criminal complaint against von der Leyen with the Belgian judiciary on allegations of corruption and destruction of documents in connection with the mega-deal and the SMS.

And a hearing in a Belgian court at the beginning of this year will also document the growing frustration of a number of mainly Eastern European countries regarding the conditions of the controversial Biontech deal. After rigourous protests, Pfizer agreed to extend the delivery period until 2027 and reduce the delivery quantity — but, according to insiders, a fee must be paid for each cancelled dose. This has hardly dampened the discontent of many EU countries. Pfizer has sued Poland and Hungary because they strictly refuse to pay for unneeded vaccine doses. At stake are billions of euros.

The legal aftermath of Corona hits von der Leyen at an inopportune time: in the year of the European elections. She will soon have to declare whether she will apply for a second term as Commission President. On March 7th, von der Leyen’s EPP party family will announce their top candidate for the European elections at a convention in Bucharest; there must be internal clarity well in advance. In Brussels , party friends, diplomats and Commission officials have so far assumed that von der Leyen would like to continue until 2029 – and would have a good chance of being re-elected if he ran.

VdL’s “Achievements”

The article then proceeds to list some of VdL’s achievements during her time in office, including the “Green Deal” she helped launch, her demonstration of the EU’s geopolitical ambitions in the Ukraine war, and the role she has played in EU crisis management. I would argue that the last two have been both resounding and hugely costly failures, as opposed to successes. The article then offers up this little gem:

“Von der Leyen is also praised by diplomats as the “most influential woman in Europe.”

Which begs the question: power for what purpose?

Creeping censorship, corruption, tech-enabled authoritarianism, rapid economic decline (much of it self inflicted), and supine support for US-backed economic, trade and military wars: these are the watchwords of VdL’s rule.

Indeed, if the Commission President was actually elected by EU citizens — as opposed to being selected for the role by national EU leaders after weeks of backroom horse-trading and then presented to the European Parliament to seal the deal — VdL wouldn’t have a hope in hell of being reelected in June. She only mustered a razor thin majority in the European Parliament first time round, despite being the only candidate on the ballot and enjoying the full support of Europe’s two most powerful national leaders, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.

While loved and feted in Washington (for obvious reasons), VdL has become a political liability in Brussels. Her political grouping in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), has made assurances that it will support her candidature, but VdL cannot count on the unanimous support of the 27 national heads of state and government for her re-election. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, having suffered numerous budgetary privations at the hands of the VdL Commission, has already threatened to veto a second term in office. As the BM article notes, alternatives are being considered in Brussels’ hallowed halls of power.

But even that, alas, is unlikely to spell the end of VdL’s political career. The only thing that could accomplish that would be an emphatic ruling or charges against her in one of the trials or investigations she faces, which is fairly unlikely. Vdl has a rare talent for failing upwards, so even if she fails to secure a second term as EU Commission president, she will probably land a new one that is at least as good, if not better — such as, say, NATO chief. She has already shown a taste for war and is so beholden to US interests that Politico called her “Europe’s American President.” Plus, Joe Biden is apparently keen for her to fill the role.

With or without VdL as Commission president, the outlook for the EU is decidedly grim. While much of the rot had already set in before VdL’s mandate, with the US-sparked Global Financial Crisis playing a key role as catalyst, her presidency has certainly helped to accelerate the decline. During her reign, the EU’s economy was thrust into a death spiral of de-industrialisation by the war in Ukraine and the EU’s self-harming sanctions on Russia, of which she is one of the most strident proponents. This, in turn, will help render the EU even more of a US vassal state, which was a key goal of project Ukraine all along.

The EU’s decline will almost certainly continue regardless of who takes over the reins. According to Berliner Morgenpost, one possible candidate is (cue drum roll…) Mario Draghi. The former Goldman Sachs banker has already proven himself to be a faithful servant of transatlantic banking and corporate interests, not only as governor of the Bank of Italy and the ECB but also as prime minister of Italy. The 76-year old technocrat already appears to enjoy the approval of Emmanuel Macron, the man who, together with Merkel, helped engineer VdL’s rise from disgraced German minister of defence to European Commission president. Draghi himself says he’s not interested in the job, but that’s exactly what you’d expect him to say.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... leyen.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 08, 2024 3:24 pm

Fears grow over protest in Germany
By Julian Shea in London | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2024-01-08 02:22

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This File photo shows a sign displayed on the front of a tractor that reads "Traffic light madness not on the backs of farmers", as German farmers take part in a protest against the cut of vehicle tax subsidies, in Berlin, Germany, Dec 18, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

Concern is growing in Germany that the far-right Alternative for Deutschland party, or AfD, will use the country's biggest agricultural sector protest in years to stir up discontent and anger toward the ruling coalition government.

Last week, police used pepper spray to break up a blockade of around 100 farmers who prevented Economy Minister Robert Habeck from getting off a ferry on his return from holidays, an incident that Habeck said made him "thoughtful, yes, even concerned, that the mood in the country is heating up to such an extent".

Despite a partial government u-turn over the key issues of cutting diesel subsidies and tax breaks on farming vehicles, an eight-day protest will start on Monday, with freight carriers also taking part, in opposition to higher road tolls for heavy goods vehicles, culminating in a gathering of lorry drivers in Berlin on Jan 18 and 19.

The Guardian newspaper reports that in some parts of the country, gallows have been seen with traffic lights on, symbolizing the colors of the parties in the governing coaltion — red for the Social Democrats, yellow for the liberal Free Democrats, and the Green Party.

On social media, the AfD has spoken of workers being "driven into ruin by an irresponsible political leadership like in the middle ages", and called on people to join a "general strike".

In December, Reuters reported that support for the AfD had reached a record high of 23 percent, following the government's difficult passing of its 2024 budget, and there is concern that more economic problems could push voters towards the AfD, ahead of key local elections in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia later this year.

The blockade of Habeck's journey has been heavily criticized, including by the head of Germany's farming union, Joachim Rukwied, who said "personal attacks, insults, threats, coercion or violence are quite simply not on".

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green Party colleague of Habeck, commented "democracy thrives on tough exchanges of views on the issues … wherever words are replaced by mobbing and arguments are replaced by violence, a democratic boundary has been overstepped".

But AfD leader Alice Weidel said the incident showed that Habeck "is no longer taken seriously by the citizens … and instead of seeking dialogue, he'd rather flee on a ferry".

The east of Germany has proven to be fertile ground for the AfD.

In June, the party won its first election for the head of a district council in the southeastern town of Sonneberg.

In July, it won its first mayoral election in Raguhn-Jessnitz in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, and in December, it won its first bigger town mayoral vote in Pirna near the Czech border.

So far, the mainstream parties have operated a so-called firewall of non-cooperation with the AfD, but with recent polls showing that it has higher levels of support than them, that approach may become increasingly politically impractical.

Germany's next federal elections are not due until 2025 but a survey published by Bild Zeitung in mid-December showed 59 percent of people want elections in 2024.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20240 ... 7af21.html

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German railway drivers resume national strike

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For Monday and Tuesday the system will operate normally. | Photo: @tagesschau
Published January 8, 2024

The machinists' union reported that the strike is planned between Wednesday and Thursday because during the Christmas truce no agreement was reached on their demands.

The union of German railway drivers announced that they will resume their strike on Wednesday and Thursday, after the break for the Christmas holidays.

These protests are carried out because Deutsche Bahn, Germany's main railway company, did not accept the union's demands regarding reductions in working hours, salary increases and compensation for inflation.

"GDL members at Deutsche Bahn (DB), Transdev and Citi Bahn Chemnitz are urged to stop working from January 10 at 02:00 (local time) until January 12 at 18:00," reads the published statement. on Sunday by the union.

The GDL announced that the state company did not take advantage of the Christmas truce to negotiate the offer, so they could extend the actions since 97 percent of the union members spoke out in favor of the indefinite strike.

German machinists demand a gradual reduction of the working day from 38 to 35 hours per week without a reduction in salary from January 1, 2025, an increase in salaries of 420 euros in two stages and a significant increase in compensation, as well as compensation for inflation.

"It is unbearable for GDL to see the extent to which the taxpayer-funded DB management has distanced itself from the living and working conditions of its own employees and now deliberately and deceptively intends to generously approach itself with a "new offer," the union added.


Deutsche Bahn response
Martín Sieler, director of human resources at Deutsche Bahn, indicated in a recent interview with the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that workers can choose to work between 38 hours or 35 or 40 if they want.

Although the union explained that the offer would only apply to some workers, Seiler explained that if the reduction in working hours affects expenses for DB, the machinists would have to forego a salary increase.

In this sense, DB is betting that employees decide whether to choose a salary increase or a reduction in working hours; in the railway company's approach, both cannot be accepted.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/maquinis ... -0007.html

Google Translator

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The EU’s Efforts to Silence Hungary Show How NATO Objectives Continue to Eclipse Any Pretense of European Democracy
Posted on January 7, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

Hungary, long a thorn in Brussels’ side with its “illiberal” ways, is now forcing the EU to show its true colors and openly declare its subservience to the US and NATO.

In the struggle to send billions more to Ukraine, the EU is refusing to allow Hungary or any pretense of rules or democracy stand it the way. Despite Hungary blocking the package, which requires unanimous support among the bloc nations, the EU plans to send it anyway “using various cumbersome alternative mechanisms that don’t require Hungary’s approval.”

Payoffs are going to Hungary in the short term while discussions to change EU voting rules are being reimagined for the long haul, showing how the treaties that have governed the bloc and at least kept up the appearance of democracy are being thrown out in order to continue the all-but-lost war against Russia.


In December, all EU states except Hungary agreed to start accession talks with Ukraine. So what did the EU do? After reportedly grilling Orban for “a few hours” over his opposition, it had him leave the room when the vote was taken. That allowed the 26 EU leaders who remained to approve the measure, which again requires unanimity. The move, which was reportedly spearheaded by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, was highly unusual, as POLITICO EU describes:

The idea that a EU leader had to leave the room to be unanimous is highly unusual. In fact, EU officials and diplomats at the summit on Thursday could not say if Scholz’s move had ever been used before.

Was it just the interrogation conducted by other member state officials and Scholz’s workaround that found a path forward or did the billions of euros the EU released to Hungary in the days before the discussions play a part?

In a move that’s proving increasingly ironic, the EU executive branch more than a year ago suspended roughly 7.5 billion euros in funding to Hungary over concerns about democratic backsliding and the mismanagement of funds. Now, as the EU backslides democratically and continues to shovel money into the Ukraine bottomless pit, it is using those funds withheld from Hungary to pressure it into Ukraine support.

EU countries agreed to lower the suspension to 6.3 billion euros of the original 7.5. They also approved Hungary’s spending plan for its pandemic recovery funds — 5.8 billion euros in grants that have similarly been withheld for more than 18 months. The move was made despite Hungary not meeting the “rule of law” requirements from Brussels. There are still judicial independence and anti-corruption strings attached, but the open secret is that it has more to do with Ukraine support than any of those stated concerns.

While the EU found a one-time workaround on Ukraine’s accession talks, any serious process of joining the bloc would take years, and Orban singalled he will have many more opportunities to block it. Hungary continued to oppose the more than 50 billion in aid to Ukraine. The issue will be revisited at an emergency summit on Feb 1. Orban wants funding for Kyiv to come from outside the EU budget. A further 17.6 billion euros to Hungary remains frozen, a portion or all of which might convince Orban to leave the room again when EU leaders reconvene in February to discuss Ukraine aid.

Watching all this approvingly is Washington.

The EU liberalization efforts – however misguided – are already taking a back seat to NATO and the EU is becoming even more undemocratic in an effort to further NATO goals. As Wolfgang Streeck foresaw back in 2022:

Plans of the EU Parliament and the Commission to cut financial assistance to countries like Poland or Hungary for deficiencies in the “rule of law” will become increasingly obsolete as cultural con­flicts between “liberal” and “illiberal” democracy will be eclipsed by the geostrategic objectives of NATO and the United States…Efforts to make financial support for post-Communist countries con­ditional on their adherence to “democratic values” will come to naught as long as the United States is satisfied with their adherence to NATO and their willingness to fight the good pro-Western fight.

Whatever one thinks about EU efforts to force its “values” on all member states by withholding funds, they are now superseded by NATO’s needs. Orban and Brussels now negotiate euros for Ukraine support – not “rule of law” policies. These “rule of law” deficiencies are increasingly becoming the norm across Europe as nothing is deemed as important as being sufficiently anti-Russian, pro-Ukraine, and increasing defense budgets.

The problem is that while Hungary ups its defense budget to meet the two percent goal for the first time, it is neither sufficiently anti-Russia nor pro-Ukraine. And as the EU continues to dig itself deeper, the number of Orbans is likely to grow, so what is the Collective West to do?

The long term goal appears to do away with EU rules that allow Hungary (or any other irritant) to block any measures against Russia. Washington’s cheering this line of thinking is best summed up by two recent pieces – one in the New York Times and the other in the Washington Post.

The Times story describes Hungary as “disruptive,” unanimity is “a design flaw,” Orban is “more unreasonable, more truculent, more self-confident and more destructive” and “playing a constant game of extortion and blackmail.”

As is common for the hit piece genre on Hungary, Orban’s arguments citing the EU’s sunk cost fallacy do not merit a mention. Also omitted are Hungary’s national interests, which officials there repeatedly point to; here is a recent summary from foreign minister Péter Szijjártó speaking at the EU-Central Asia Economic Forum. From Daily News Hungary:

He told the discussion focusing on ways to improve the regional business climate that the world had regrettably started moving towards the formation of blocs. “This is the worst possible news” for central Europe, he said, arguing that history had shown that the region always lost out on conflicts between East and West.

When Hungary argues in favour of connectivity and “civilised” cooperation between East and West, it is not because the country is anybody’s friend or spy but because “we are aware of our own national interests and we are aware of our own national experience,” he added.

The Times notes that “if Europe cannot solve its Orban problem” it risks “paralysis and fragmentation.” Paralysis and fragmentation are arguably much-needed for Europe at this time rather than marching in lockstep and digging itself into a deeper hole.

Nevertheless, the digging continues, which Washington Post columnist Lee Hockstader (not paywalled) cheers on and argues for the increasingly popular solution to simply change the rules of the game in order to ensure nothing gets in the way:

Europe is now doubling down on its delusions by convincing itself that it can carry on as usual with its defining postwar peace project, the European Union, even as its most basic values are subverted and attacked from within.The risk of that particular self-deception has metastasized largely because of one man: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has made no secret of his intent to destroy Western unity on Ukraine.

It matters little that Orban has driven Hungary’s economy into a ditch, or that its economic output and population of 10 million are tiny fractions of the E.U.’s total. What counts is that Hungary, Putin’s Trojan horse in the heart of Europe, has weaponized the E.U.’s rules on Moscow’s behalf…

But it is folly to think the E.U. can carry on tolerating a veto-wielding tyrant within its ranks. Orban has done damage already; he can and will do more. There are options for neutering him. European leaders could block Hungary’s turn in the E.U. presidency or suspend its voting rights altogether within the bloc. But top officials have balked even at threatening to take those actions…

The E.U. has no mechanism to expel a member state. So if changing the rules to contain the damage Orban can do is what it takes to marginalize him, then it’s time for the E.U. to change them. Let 2024 be the year the West removes the scales from its eyes.

And there are forces in the EU increasingly proposing to do just that. Washington’s woman in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, took the lead on such efforts at a November meeting of EU foreign policy chiefs in Berlin. At that gathering she laid out a plan to abolish the current system which assigns each of the 27 countries a commissioner and amending the “unanimity” rule which allows a single member country the ability to veto EU initiatives.

The unanimity rule was originally put in place to ensure smaller countries have a voice, but the design is receiving heavy criticism from Atlanticists now that it is blocking NATO goals.

Lost in the uproar over Orban’s opposition is that the rule is actually functioning as designed. Hungary, a small country, is opposed to the bloc’s continued belligerence towards Russia and is able to throw a small wrench in the war gears. Ideally, it would also present a moment for reflection, but that seems out of the question at the moment.

What also goes unmentioned in the countless articles railing against Orban and Hungary is that not only Hungarians, but European citizens as a whole, increasingly agree with him. According to the latest Eurobarometer survey in August total support for providing Ukraine with military funding has fallen from 67 percent at the outset of the war to 48 percent. That drop has occurred despite a near-total media blackout of criticism of the war – both on the battlefields in Ukraine and the EU’s economic warfare – against Russia.

Notably, Baerbock’s plan does not propose doing away with unanimity across the board but only in “highly sensitive” areas like foreign policy. The effort to end unanimity in foreign policy would, in the eyes of the Baerbocks, deal with this long term problem of any public opposition.

Nevermind that any move to end unanimity would require unanimity, making it a gambit. Not to be deterred, Baerbock says, “We need to take brave, courageous decisions.”

That is likely an argument that it is time to bend the rules in order to change the rules, which is always a possibility, as Brookings lays out here:

France and Germany want to widen the fields where qualified majority voting applies in the council to overcome existing deadlocks, such as on certain areas of common foreign and security policy and taxation. To this end, they advocate the use of the so-called “passerelle clauses” that permit avoiding unanimity in some fields as well as mechanisms of “constructive abstention.” They also have not ruled out “enhanced cooperation” among groups of countries, a procedure where a minimum of nine EU member states are allowed to establish advanced integration or cooperation in an area within EU structures but without the other members being involved.

What unforeseen consequences could this have? Would it not only create more friction and more Orbans over the long haul? How would pesky voters react to the tearing down of the EU democratic window dressing and an open declaration that the EU foreign policy is decided from NATO headquarters in Brussels?

***

There is also the need, from the NATO perspective, to deal with Orban in the near term, and that has the Orban government increasingly facing off against Washington. The US ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, has abandoned all diplomatic protocol and is in open opposition to the Orban government.

The US and EU have failed to remove Orban at the ballot box as his governing Fidesz party last year won its fourth general election in a row.The Orban government, having seen what that can mean in other countries, is taking steps to limit any outside efforts to force a change in government.

A bill in Hungary aims to “set up an authority to explore and monitor risks of political interference and recommend changes in regulations. It would also punish banned foreign financing for parties or groups running for election with up to three years in prison.”

The proposed law comes on the heels of the US turning up the pressure dial on the Orban government over its reluctance to toe the line against Russia. That campaign includes everything from slick social media videos and billboards to Hungary’s exclusion from a democracy summit and sanctions on the Russian-controlled International Investment Bank in Budapest. The US termination of its double tax treaty with Hungary just went into effect. In force since 1979, the US said it was ending the agreement due to Budapest’s opposition to a global minimum tax, but even when Hungary eventually got on board with that plan, Washington ended the treaty nonetheless.

US-connected NGOs are reportedly big funders of the political opposition against Orban, which helps explains why the US Department of State is not a fan of the proposed crackdown on foreign financing, releasing a statement that reads in part:

The “Sovereign Defense Authority” could be used to subject Hungarian citizens, businesses, and organizations to intrusive investigations with no judicial oversight, even if they have had no contact with or support from a foreign government or foreign entity. This new law is inconsistent with our shared values of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.

And with that, the story comes full circle back to the EU-blocked funds for Hungary over “rule of law” violations. Presumably a component of the “rules-based international order,” “rule of law” nowadays simply means to do as NATO commands.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... cracy.html

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Where in Europe are they planning to produce natural hydrogen?
January 7, 2024

Rybar

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Previously, we have already examined new trends in European energy policy, and why hydrogen energy has become a strategic direction for the development of the energy market in the EU. This will allow EU countries to comply with the “green agenda”, introduce a carbon quota mechanism, and finally reformat their industry in favor of TNCs.

And so, the forecast began to come true just a few days after our last publication - in early December, the French Ministry of Energy Transition for the first time issued a license to TBH2 Aquitaine to explore natural hydrogen deposits. While other types of hydrogen must be produced by hydrolysis from water, pyrolysis from gas, or other means , natural hydrogen is a ready and clean source of energy.

France has seen a flood of applications for exploration licenses for hydrogen and other elements. Moreover, four companies are trying to determine potential hydrogen reserves in France itself.

It is estimated that natural hydrogen reserves around the world are 4-5 times greater than global energy demand. But the actual volumes of recoverable reserves have not yet been proven.

How does natural hydrogen appear?
There are six known ways to naturally produce hydrogen:

Serpentinization
Weathering of the mineral olivine in mid-ocean ridges or ophiolites (geological formations where sections of the Earth's mantle rises above sea level) produces hydrogen-rich fluids. This was observed in the Semail ophiolite located in the Hajar Mountains of Oman.

Radiolysis of water
Radioactive elements in the Earth's crust—for example, in crystalline rocks high in uranium, thorium or potassium—disintegrate water molecules trapped in a hydrogen pocket, as happened in South Australia.

Deep degassing
In this case, “primary” hydrogen (one hydrogen atom connected to one carbon atom) comes out from the depths of the earth’s crust. This was observed in Nebraska, USA.

Iron reduction and sulfur oxidation
The iron in black smoke (an underwater hydrothermal vent formed from iron sulfide deposits) is reduced to iron and hydrogen sulfides.

Thermal decomposition of organic matter
Ammonium compounds found in deep sediments decompose under high temperatures to produce hydrogen and nitrogen, such as in the hydrogen-nitrogen gas seeps in Oman.

Biological activity
Hydrogen is produced by microbes living in the earth's crust and is found in sedimentary rocks or aquifers. This was observed in the coal seams of the Powder River Basin in Montana, USA.

Determining the actual amount of natural hydrogen in the world is a very difficult task.

Natural underground reserves of hydrogen can be formed due to various geological and biological processes. This means hydrogen is seeping out of the ground in regions ranging from the US Midwest to South Australia and particularly Mali, where natural hydrogen has been mined and used to generate electricity.

Isabelle Moretti , an expert on natural hydrogen and a researcher at the University of Pau in the Pyrenees-Atlantic region in southwestern France, believes that it is unrealistic to give figures for recoverable resources today , since systematic studies and test drilling have not yet been carried out. No one can give estimates without wells, without assessing formations. As for global resources, according to Moretti, everything is still speculative .

Hydrogen is discovered accidentally during oil and gas exploration, and also seeps to the surface through so-called “ fairy circles .” But reserves can only be proven when there is enough data to confirm them.

Hydrogen as a possible solution to the political crisis in France
In fact, France's boom in permit applications may have much more to do with politics than possible reserves. Research into finding cheap energy sources helps change the current agenda, which is dominated by problems associated with high energy prices.

Last April, as part of a series of amendments to the mining code, France added natural hydrogen to the list of substances that are classified as recoverable.

France is the only country in Europe where hydrogen has been included in legislation governing mining.

Now the cheapest hydrogen is gray, produced from methane and water. But if we can produce hydrogen using the same method as natural gas, there will be no need for pyrolysis, which will greatly reduce the cost of the process. For example, in Mali, hydrogen is produced at a price of $0.50/kg, making it the cheapest type of hydrogen in the world.

Discussions about affordable and cheap energy, based on this example, make it possible to influence public opinion, which is extremely important for the French leadership at the moment.

French companies exploring natural hydrogen
Several companies are now obtaining licenses for hydrogen exploration in France.

FDE has begun exploration at a site in Lorraine in north-eastern France.

TBH2 Aquitaine, plans to explore for hydrogen, helium and “related substances” in an area of ​​226 square meters. km in the southwestern Pyrenees-Atlantic region.

45-8 Grand Rieu and Storengy, plan to explore 266 square meters. km also in the Pyrenees-Atlantic region for hydrogen and “possible related substances.”

SUDMINE claims to develop 5.9 sq. km of land in the Puy de Dome region of central France to develop lithium and natural hydrogen deposits.

But it’s not just France that is seeing a stir around natural hydrogen exploration.

Natural hydrogen in Spain
The Monzon field in Spain, discovered during oil and gas exploration in the 1960s, is believed to contain natural hydrogen reserves. To test this hypothesis, Helios Aragon plans to drill an appraisal well to confirm hydrogen reserves next year.

The search for natural hydrogen in Australia
South Australia is also actively working in this direction. In 2021, changes were made to the legislation regulating oil and geothermal energy. It included hydrogen and related compounds or by-products.

Geological exploration is now concentrated around Kangaroo Island, the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas, close to the Adelaide geological superbasin. In their research, Australian geologists are guided by historical data on high concentrations of hydrogen discovered during oil and gas drilling.

What should Russian energy companies do in the current situation?
Hydrogen production is tied to gas production and electricity generation at nuclear power plants. Hydrogen is a clean energy carrier, which, however, is obtained using traditional energy sources. It is advisable to intensify work on the production of hydrogen, since hydrogen is becoming the center of the energy development strategy in many countries. All projects related to the development of industrial production will be destroyed by carbon quotas if they do not meet the requirements of the “green agenda”.

At the same time, it is necessary to conduct systematic research on natural hydrogen reserves. It is obvious that today the development of this direction in the EU is dictated by the political situation. But this does not mean that there are no large recoverable reserves of natural hydrogen on the territory of the Russian Federation. Technologies for exploration and production of natural hydrogen are practically the same as for the oil and gas industry. And the successful example of the production and use of natural hydrogen in Mali cannot be ignored.

https://rybar.ru/o-perspektivah-izvlech ... -v-evrope/

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 09, 2024 3:30 pm

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Wolfgang Schäuble – der Patriarch zieht sich zurück – Berliner Morgenpost

Germany’s Left Party leaders pay homage to arch-reactionary Wolfgang Schäuble
Originally published: Defend Democracy Press on January 5, 2024 by Johannes Stern (more by Defend Democracy Press) | (Posted Jan 08, 2024)

Since Wolfgang Schäuble’s death on December 26, politicians and the media have been lavishing praise on the long-serving Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party chairman and Finance and Interior Minister. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party, SPD) praised him as an “outstanding statesman” and a “stroke of luck for German history,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) as a “sharp thinker” and “pugnacious democrat” and former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) as “an outstanding personality with political and programmatic foresight.”

Leading representatives of the Left Party are also particularly prominent in the overbearing canonization of the arch-reactionary Schäuble. Dietmar Bartsch, long-standing Left Party Bundestag (parliamentary) group leader, even published a photo on X/Twitter showing him kneeling before Schäuble. In the text accompanying the picture, he celebrates him as an “outstanding democrat.”

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The founding father of the Left Party and former president of the Party of the European Left, Gregor Gysi, was even more effusive. On X, he praised Schäuble for “his straightforwardness, his discipline and his human decency,” which set “standards in federal politics to this day.” He continued:

His unbending commitment to Berlin as the all-German capital demonstrated political foresight. I felt his sense of humour several times.

The personal and political reverence of the Left Party grandees for Schäuble is not simply a personal quirk. It reflects the thoroughly pro-capitalist and right-wing character of the Left Party.

Born in Freiburg in 1942, Schäuble was one of the most reactionary politicians in German post-war history and has played a key role in the dismantling of democratic rights, social attacks and the return of German militarism since he entered the Bundestag in 1972.

If Schäuble was “outstanding” in anything, it was in his role as the mortal enemy of the working class. This was most evident over the last decade in the German-European austerity diktats that Schäuble enforced across the continent as finance minister between 2009 and 2017. In Greece in particular, he imposed one austerity package after another with almost sadistic relish, plunging millions into abject poverty and destroying the education and healthcare systems of an entire society.

The measures were accompanied by massive attacks on democratic rights, which Schäuble aggressively promoted. His anti-democratic outbursts before the 2012 elections in Greece are particularly notorious, with Schäuble ranting about “untimely elections” and demanding written assurances from all participating parties that they would fully adhere to the austerity policies even after the elections. His unreserved support for the dictatorship of finance capital culminated in the demand that Greece must adhere to the conditions of the EU: “The Greeks can vote however they want.”

Schäuble displayed the same preference for authoritarianism and a highly armed police state in his role as Interior Minister in Merkel’s first cabinet (2005 to 2009). His demands included the deployment of the Bundeswehr (armed forces) at home and allowing the military to shoot down civilian aircraft in the event of terrorism. Schäuble agitated against parliamentary control of the secret services, called for the abolition of basic rights for “terrorists” and advocated the use of statements obtained through torture in the investigative work of the security authorities.

The Greek austerity diktats also had their precursor in German domestic policy under Schäuble. Schäuble was one of the central architects of German reunification on a capitalist basis and the accompanying social counterrevolution. When he first held the office of Interior Minister under Helmut Kohl (CDU) between 1989 and 1991, he dictated the unification treaty for the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, former East Germany) and with it, a social cutback that is unprecedented in peacetime.

The Treuhandanstalt wound up a total of 14,000 state-owned enterprises. Some were sold off; most were shut down. Within three years, 71 percent of all employees changed or lost their jobs. Along with state property, the social gains that were based on it were destroyed: the right to work, medical care, education and childcare. In the state of Saxony alone, more than 1,000 schools have been closed since reunification.

The social counterrevolution in the East also served as a lever to massively attack wages and working conditions in the West. Average real wages throughout Germany today are below the level of 30 years ago. Hourly wages for low earners have even fallen by up to 20 percent in real terms since 1995. If the federal coalition government can now organize the next orgy of cuts in close cooperation with the trade unions in order to collect billions for war and rearmament from working people, it is continuing Schäuble’s work.

In the last years of his life, Schäuble was also a spokesman and rabble-rouser for the extreme right-wing and militaristic course of the ruling class. As president of the Bundestag (2017 to 2021), he repeatedly advocated the use of military force and the necessity of paying the “moral price” in keynote speeches and interviews. “The lesson of Auschwitz” could “not be an argument for not getting involved in the long term,” he declared provocatively. In other words, Schäuble’s lesson from the Holocaust and the criminal wars of German imperialism in the 20th century was: new wars and crimes.”

With the same unscrupulousness, he argued for the murderous policy of letting COVID rip through the population during the pandemic in order to secure the profits of large corporations and the fortunes of the banks and super-rich. In an interview with Tagesspiegel in April 2020, he declared that it was “not right” that “everything else should take a back seat to the protection of life.” The right to life was also not “absolutely” protected by the constitution, he argued. When asked by the newspaper whether we “have to accept that people die from coronavirus,” Schäuble barely concealed his answer with “yes.”

We commented at the time:

“With his repugnant attempt to weigh human dignity against the right to life, Schäuble is underscoring that 75 years after the downfall of the Third Reich, the ruling elite is returning to its fascist traditions. Article I of the Basic Law, “Human dignity shall be inviolable,” was adopted in the wake of the Nazis’ policies of terror and extermination explicitly to protect fundamental rights, not to undermine them. But the period in which the German ruling elite was forced to grit its teeth due to the defeats in two world wars is long gone.

Thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German unification, it is flaunting all of its ignorance, brutality and inhumanity. Schäuble, the longest-serving member of parliament and the former interior and finance minister, embodies this development more fully than perhaps any other representative of the ruling class.

Behind the posthumous love-fest for Schäuble of a Bartsch or Gysi lie these reactionary processes in the here and now. It is a fact that the Left Party and its predecessor organizations not only passively went along with Schäuble’s deeply anti-working-class policies at the time of German reunification, but actively supported and enforced them. It was the SED, the Stalinist party of state in the GDR, and its immediate successor, the PDS, under Gysi’s leadership that initiated the restoration of capitalism in the former East Germany and thus created the conditions for all the reactionary developments since then.

The Left Party also played a key role in the destruction of Greece’s welfare state. Its sister party in Greece, Syriza, which headed the government, made a direct pact with Schäuble in order to push through the austerity diktats of the “troika”—the EU Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB)—against the massive resistance of Greek workers. In February 2015, the Left Party parliamentary group—headed by Gysi and Bartsch—voted in favour of Schäuble’s brutal austerity package.

The Left Party played, and continues to play, the same active role in the other central plans of the ruling class, which were pushed by Schäuble. It supports the war offensive against Russia in Ukraine, Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and wherever it (co-)governs in the federal states it implements the policy of social austerity, stepping up police powers and attacks on refugees and immigrants. The same applies to the “herd-immunity” pandemic policy.

Against this backdrop, the Left Party leaders’ genuflection before Schäuble, who is deeply hated by workers and young people across Europe, also provides clarity. In their fight against capitalist barbarism, workers are not only confronted with the openly right-wing representatives of the ruling class like Schäuble, but also with those nominal “lefts” who are magically attracted to the grimace of reaction, even in death.

https://mronline.org/2024/01/08/germany ... -schauble/

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Smoke and Mirrors in Serbia?
Posted on January 8, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

Following December 17 elections in Serbia, the main opposition alliance, Serbia Against Violence (SAV), said the vote was stolen, particularly in the vote for the Belgrade city authorities. They want the results annulled, as well as an international probe of the vote.

The governing Serbian Progressive Party, led by President Aleksandar Vucic, remains in control after garnering 46.72 percent of the vote and withstanding the mild protests that followed. Vucic has been the most powerful figure in Serbian politics since 2012 – as first deputy prime minister (2012-14), prime minister (2014-2017), and now president.

SAV, which came second in the election with 23.56 percent of the vote, called for daily protests, and an opposition MP went on a hunger strike.


The resulting protests culminated with a Christmas Eve attempt to break into Belgrade town hall, but they were fought back by riot police, and dozens were arrested. The protests have since died down, but there are still reports that a revolution is at hand:


The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said the following about the elections:

The joint observation mission from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and the European Parliament (EP) found that the legal framework is adequate to carry out democratic elections. However, there are still numerous issues to address, and in these elections, observers noted the misuse of public resources, the lack of separation between the official functions and campaign activities, and intimidation and pressure on voters, including cases of vote buying.

The Belgrade-based Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, which is backed by money from the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and other Western governments, went further in its report alleging outright fraud. CRTA’s involvement, as well as the fact that Serbia maintains friendly ties with Moscow, as well as China, and has thus far refused to join sanctions against Russia, led to speculation that this was another color revolution orchestrated by the West.

Serbian officials said as much, as have many commentators with the following video evoking memories of the 2014 Western-backed color revolution in Kiev making the rounds:


Since the elections, Serbian media have frequently accused Germany of being particularly responsible for the unrest. But a closer look reveals that this narrative misses the mark while also being beneficial to elites in the West and in Serbia.

The West’s Tepid Response

It’s important to note that the Western capitols have largely shrugged about the elections and ensuing protests. Germany put out a tepid statement, but that was about it. There have been no cookies from now-under secretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland, and no full-on onslaught from officials and media that is common during such color revolution operations.

The response has largely been muted aside from some gung-ho German Greens.


Take for example, EU commissioners Josep Borrell and Oliver Varhely, in a joint statement simply urged Serbia to improve its electoral process in the future:

We conclude with concern that the electoral process requires tangible improvement and further reform, as the proper functioning of Serbia’s democratic institutions is at the core of Serbia’s EU accession process. The EU looks forward to the final OSCE/ODIHR report and recommendations for future elections, which should be implemented as soon as possible and well in advance of the next elections.

We also expect that credible reports of irregularities are followed up in a transparent manner by the competent national authorities. This includes also allegations related to the local elections in Belgrade and other municipalities.

These are not the typical words of color revolution supporters. The US response to the vote has been almost non-existent. The US ambassador to Serbia seemed to side more with the government than the protestors:

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The biggest reason a Western-orchestrated color revolution attempt is unlikely is that Serbia’s ruling class, including the Vucic government, already largely serves the West. Before showing that’s the case, it’s probably best to first acknowledge that it wouldn’t be out of character for the US-led West to be dissatisfied with getting 90 percent of what it wants and get greedy, but again the muted response to the protests makes that appear unlikely.

That being said, Vucic and his ruling party are on good terms with the West. Some would even say it’s more of a colonial relationship ever since the conclusion of the NATO bombing of Serbia in the Balkans Wars and overthrow of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Vucic, an ultranationalist during the wars in the Balkans and Milosevic’s information minister in 1999, has fostered stronger economic and military integration with the West for years despite publicly playing the role of a thorn in the US/EU side.

On the military front, Belgrade maintains a close working relationship with NATO:

By the end of 2006, NATO opened a Military Liaison Office in Belgrade in order to support defense sector reforms and facilitate Serbia’s participation in the Partnership for Peace activities, whereas, in the following year, Serbia joined the Partnership for Peace Planning and Review Process (PARP), which aimed to direct and measure progress in the transformation of the defense and military sectors.

Since 2007, Serbia has been an active participant in the NATO program for Peace and Security (SPS), which enables cooperation on issues of common interest aimed at enhancing the security of NATO members and partners.

A number of donations stemming from NATO and the United States, as well as the number of joint military exercises, are by far higher in comparison to those of Russia, but for reasons of military neutrality or the desire of political elites…

Just this past year Serbia hosted two international military exercises in the Balkans involving NATO members were completed: Platinum Wolf 23 and Defender 23.

Economically, two-thirds of Serbia’s trade is done with the EU. Russia and China rank a distant second and third, respectively. EU countries (especially Germany) are increasingly relocating industry to Serbia, especially for steel and metal fabrication, as well as industrial and automotive equipment.

The EU is the largest provider of financial assistance to Serbia with 571 million euros delivered from the 2021-23 Instrument for Pre- accession Assistance. Much of that money is going to support the EU-backed wider plan to build 3.5 billion euros worth of gas-fired power plants, pipelines, and liquefied natural gas terminals in the Western Balkans. According to a March report from Global Energy Monitor and Bankwatch:

Plans for €3.5 billion worth of new gas-fired power plants, gas pipelines, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the Western Balkans, promoted by European Union (EU) and U.S. institutions, would force countries to import far more gas than they have in the past and delay the region’s shift toward clean, domestic energy production.

In 2021, the six countries of the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia – consumed a mere 3.7 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas or 4% of what Germany used that same year.

This would help accommodate the shifting of industry and energy from inside the EU garden to outside the walls in Serbia. There are numerous plans or projects already completed linking the power grids of the Western Balkans with the EU. For example, there are power interconnectors under the Adriatic Sea that will send energy from the Balkans to Italy (which is being expanded), and there are other interconnector projects linking to the EU nations like Hungary and Croatia. Importantly, this will in effect help “green” Europe as the natural gas will be burned outside the EU’s borders. Serbia plays a central role in all these plans.

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Serbia has likewise signaled its interest in getting off Russian gas supplies once its current three-year deal with Gazprom expires. Vucic attended the inauguration of works for a floating LNG terminal off the Greek coast back in 2022 and the launch of the Greece–Bulgaria interconnector pipeline that would send that gas onwards to Serbia. Belgrade is also negotiating imports with Azerbaijan and LNG producers. All of this is what the West desires.

Serbia doesn’t have great options even if it was determined to move closer to Russia, as it is landlocked and surrounded by NATO members. For example, it was forced to abandon Russian oil after the EU imposed a full embargo on seaborne Russian crude oil, starting in December. That move cut supplies to Serbia, which depends on the Adria pipeline, linked to terminals on Croatia’s Adriatic coast.

Maybe the biggest prize in Serbia that both the Vucic government and the West are after is a mega lithium mine, which could supply 90 percent of Europe’s current lithium needs.

The $2.4 billion Rio Tinto project faces overwhelming public opposition, but opponents of the mine believe the Vucic government plans to move forward nonetheless, and there are plentiful reasons to believe that to be true. Rio Tinto has continued to buy up land in the area, and is also offering financial aid to local businesses in an apparent effort to curry good will.

Berlin is one the strongest proponents of the project, which also has strong backing from the UK, Australia, the US, and EU. The latter is currently reliant on China for roughly 97 percent of its lithium but aspires to quickly secure an entire supply chain of battery minerals and materials. According to Handelsblatt, the German government listed the Serbian lithium mine as one of the most important projects in order to secure the raw material and reduce dependence on China.

The issue of the lithium mine is representative of the wider dynamic between the Serbian public on one side and the governments of Serbia and the West on the other.

The appearance of being at odds with the West is beneficial to the ruling elite in Serbia where the public is overwhelmingly against the West:

A July 2022 survey by New Third Way, a research organization, found that 66 percent of Serbs felt closer to Moscow than to the West and that 40 percent favored an end to membership talks with the EU. only 20% of those surveyed viewed the EU positively. As data from numerous polls suggest, a great majority of Serbs look at Russia as an ally and a desired partner, well ahead of the EU—not to mention the United States, which is faulted for taking Kosovo away from Serbia. Additionally 80 percent were against the introduction of sanctions against Russia and the majority of Serbs see Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as wholly justified due to NATO agression.

Despite the ever increasing ties between the West and Serbia, Belgrade’s relationship with Moscow is given much more attention – both abroad and in Serbia. The likely reason is that such window dressing increases public support for the government.

Russia would like nothing more than for Serbia to be what is often portrayed as: a Russian satellite in Eastern Europe. But that is not the case. The fact is Russia’s only leverage is appealing to Serbian people and keeping them onside and guaranteeing that it would be political suicide for Serbian leaders to openly move to the West.

The problem for the West and Serbia’s ruling class is that they cannot move whole heartedly into open coordination due to public opposition.

Therefore any move to recognize Kosovo (which paints Serbia as a Russian puppet state because it is in Pristina’s interests to do so) and move into the EU and NATO would cause widespread backlash in Serbia, likely making the recent protests look tame by comparison. Such overreach could potentially usher in political leaders who would really respond to public opinion and move Serbia closer to Russia. Therefore, the current arrangement of the country’s ruling elite moving quietly closer to the West while at the same time maintaining the public illusion of an independent state playing the middle ground between West and East is likely to continue with Vucic likely using the alleged Western color revolution attempt as an excuse to further tighten control and using the increased authority to more easily please his masters in the West.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... erbia.html

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Polish-American small reactor program is under threat
January 8, 2024
Rybar

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In December, Poland's Internal Security Agency ( ABW ) issued a negative opinion on a planned investment in small modular reactors ( SMRs ) by state-owned Orlen in partnership with a group of US and Canadian corporations.

Members of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party warned that the nuclear program being implemented in Poland with large American participation is under threat . It was the PiS government, with which the management of Orlen is closely associated , that entered into agreements with foreign sponsors.

ABW's opinion is not binding, but the negative rating makes it unlikely that the climate ministry will approve the SMR plans.

How it all started
The Polish government’s plans to build the SMR officially became known back in 2022, when Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin visited Washington with the heads of KGHM and NuScale Power to sign the contract. The interest of the Poles is understandable: nuclear energy, along with renewable energy, is one of the few reliable and rational options in the current realities. SMRs are manufactured on a modular basis, taking into account passive nuclear safety, providing a number of advantages over traditional reactors.

The American private company NuScale Power, which develops and sells them, is also encouraging countries around the world to use them. The same company finances the construction of so-called reactors. Ukraine with a total cost of 30 billion dollars. By the way, Ukrainians received US grants for preparing permits and searching for sites for the construction of reactor units last year.

NuScale Power projects are supported by the well-known United States Agency for International Development ( USAID ). However, all the activities of this “couple” are still quite questionable.

NuScale Power's SMR technology is the first of its kind to receive U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval in August 2020.

However, they have not yet built a single nuclear power plant there.
For example, in Romania, the authorities have been fulfilling all NuScale Power requests for three years in order to get closer to the topic of building the first nuclear power plant in the country and in Europe using small modular reactors. Last May, the US firm and Romania's Nuclearelectrica and E-INFRA signed a memorandum of understanding. At the same time, the Romanians have already received a non-refundable grant from the Americans in the amount of $1.2 million to search for a construction site; they chose Deutcesti, 90 km from Bucharest. However, so far there has been no progress, and Romania’s plans to become “the center of a new nuclear renaissance in Europe” are still far away.

Negative conclusion of the Poles
The Polish Climate Ministry is required to obtain a negative opinion from the ABW as part of the assessment of the nuclear project. There are no other excerpts or details from the document: It is classified.

In Poland, NuScale Power is to set up its project with Poland's Orlen Synthos Green Energy ( OSGE ), a joint venture between state energy giant Orlen and Sythos , a chemical company owned by one of the republic's richest men, Mikhail Solov.

OSGE strongly opposed ABW's assessment, accusing the agency of "incompetence and irresponsibility" in the context of Poland's growing need for an energy transition away from coal. However, the firm pointed out that during the more than 230-day proceedings, ABW never met with the applicant, OSGE or the technology supplier or reviewed the proposed locations. Therefore, it is unclear on what basis the agency made its conclusion.

To further complicate matters, the outgoing government's old environment ministry published so-called "basic decisions" approving six potential sites for OSGE's small modular reactors.

In addition to plans to create SMR - a new technology that has not yet been used commercially anywhere in the world - the outgoing Polish government also continued to invest in more traditional nuclear power plants with American and Korean partners.

And although Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “nuclear power plants are necessary” in the republic, his new administration will review all plans implemented by its predecessors.

However, the contract is under threat not only because of the agility of the opposition, which, having gained power, immediately decided to revise the projects of the previous government, but also because of questions about the competence of the American company.

What's wrong with NuScale Power?
In November of this year, NuScale Power announced it was shutting down its SMR project in Utah due to "insufficient market interest in the project." And this may well be a wake-up call for Poland.

The parties said in a statement that “despite significant efforts,” it is unlikely that the project will have a sufficient audience to proceed. Therefore, stopping it is the most reasonable solution. The statement by the head of the company shows that other projects, including international ones, will continue to be implemented, but a serious jump in costs must be taken into account.

Moreover, work on it lasted 10 years, and the US Department of Energy also took part in it . This was to be NuScale Power's first commercial project and is scheduled for completion in 2030. And it was simply impossible for neither the government department nor the specialist company to be unaware of the “uselessness” of such technologies locally.

This means that the real reasons are clearly different. And it is likely that the main one is the inability of NuScale Power to implement such an important project in real conditions. Most likely, the government rushed to approve the company’s project simply in order to “outpace” Russia and China. Indeed, as of 2023, more than eighty modular reactor projects are being developed in 19 countries, and only Moscow and Beijing have the first SMR units in operation.

However, NuScale's slip should not be misleading.

The race for a monopoly in the peaceful nuclear market, of course, is not limited to modular stations - the same Westinghouse Electric, with the support of the largest financial TNCs, is gradually seizing control over the supply of nuclear fuel and reactors not only in Anglo-Saxon countries and Europe, but also in developing countries. Therefore, reformatting the American approach to the implementation of SMR projects is just a matter of time, and NuScale, if it fails, will simply be replaced by another contractor.

https://rybar.ru/polsko-amerikanskaya-p ... d-ugrozoj/

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 10, 2024 4:02 pm

Germany’s ‘Krisenmodus’ Has No End in Sight
Posted on January 10, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

The Association for the German Language chose the term Krisenmodus as the ‘Word of the Year’ for 2023. I’m not sure they’ve ever awarded a back-to-back winner, but krisenmodus (crisis mode) looks to have a chance to repeat in 2024.

The current government coalition has lost almost all trust from the public, yet they soldier on determined to make things worse for the vast majority of Germans. The Greens push for more war, the Free Democrats want more social spending cuts, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) are in the middle adopting the worst from both sides and leading Germany to ruin.

The chancellor’s decision making likely won’t get any better after a Christmastime bout with Covid-19 – if he sticks around much longer (more on that below).


On the international front, Deutsche Welle declares that this year “Berlin must find ways to deal with two wars, an increasingly aggressive China, and a world order in transition.”

Led by the ill-equipped and overconfident Green, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign policy has been disastrous and has spilled over into the domestic arena. Severing itself from Russian energy drained government coffers; at the same time, in addition to the money and weapons already sent to Ukraine, Berlin wants to increase military spending and become more interventionist. After running up the tab in these areas, there are now calls for a renewed fiscal responsibility, which means social spending cuts at home.

A botched energy transition led by the Greens, which has industry collapsing and higher prices for consumers, militarization, and austerity – has proved to be an awful combination for the average citizen. And the data is grim.

Inflation continues to be problematic, the economy is contracting as industry shrinks, exports to China are declining and there is constant pressure from Atlanticists to self-impose a further reduction, living standards are declining, political paralysis reigns on most matters except social cuts and more military spending, wealth inequality grows, and industry continues to leave the country:


Farmer protests are also now taking place across the country in response to the government’s decision to phase out a tax break on agricultural diesel.

Scholz paid homage to the krisenmodus in his New Year’s address (including erroneously blaming blaming Putin for “turn[ing] off the tap on our gas supplies”), centered around the fairytale that Germany’s crises are just a string of bad luck as opposed to the result of government policy. He concluded with the following:

“If we realize this, if we treat each other with this respect, then we don’t need to be afraid of the future, then the year 2024 can be a good year for our country, even if some things turn out differently than we expected today, on the eve of this New Year.”

Such vacuous rhetoric is a sign that Scholz knows the path the country is currently on is doomed and yet plans nothing to change it. If anyone was watching, it was another reminder why Scholz’s approval rating has sunk to a miserable 26 percent and he and/or his government could soon be headed for an early exit.

Will the Government Collapse?

While German law makes the current zombie coalition difficult to kill, it’s not impossible. From POLITICO EU:

In order to avoid a repeat of the helter-skelter politics of the Weimar era, which contributed to the rise of the Nazis, the framers of Germany’s postwar Basic Law sought to ensure stability by creating a political system that required conflicts to be resolved quickly with as little disruption as possible.

As such, they set a high bar for snap elections. Only the chancellor has the power to call a confidence vote in parliament, for example, and only the president can call a new election. That’s why confidence votes in Germany are rare (there have only ever been five) and are usually tactical moves by chancellors seeking to bolster their political standing.

The only case where a chancellor was removed unwillingly was in 1982, when the FDP abandoned its alliance with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), forcing him to call a confidence vote that he lost.


The government led by Scholz just barely cleared a recent hurdle that could have led to its downfall. Members of the supposedly fiscally-conservative FDP recently voted to remain a member of the coalition in an internal party vote on the question. Only 52 percent were in favor of remaining, however. The time in government has been disastrous for the FDP, as its national support has crumbled from 11.5 percent in the 2021 election to around five percent today; if it comes in below five percent in the next vote, that would mean being left out of the Bundestag altogether. The FDP is now determined to rediscover its opposition to government spending.

That will mean even more friction with the other two parties in the traffic light coalition. While the coalition looks destined to limp along, Scholz might be prepared to abandon ship/his handlers are ready to toss him overboard.

Upheaval Across the Board – Scholz to Resign?

All bets are off on what comes next. New election laws are currently being challenged, it’s looking more likely that threats of banning a certain party will be carried out, and who knows how much worse (or better if you’re an optimist) the situation is going to look when elections are eventually held.

The latest surprise was the German tabloid Bild reporting that Scholz will soon resign due to his embroilment in scandals that predate his time as chancellor.


This move would be to give voters the illusion of change while doubling down on current policies. The most popular politician in Germany, defense minister Boris Pistorius who is also from the SPD would reportedly be nabbed to replace Scholz. He has support from 55 percent of SPD voters, 58 percent of Greens voters, and 48 percent of FDP voters, but also 56 percent from the conservative opposition CDU/CSU coalition.

The public backing of Pistorius comes despite military problems everywhere. Pistorius hailed the decision to base a brigade of soldiers in Lithuania as a “historic moment.” It was quickly evident, however, that Germany isn’t just low on manpower but also facing shortfalls in everything ranging from artillery shells to tents – a problem that would be worsened by sending an equipped brigade abroad. That could be written off as the military trying to boost its budget numbers, and no wonder:


Pistorius regularly amps up the threat of the Russians and Chinese and says Germany must not just spend more to rearm, but also consider reintroducing conscription. In December he told Die Welt the following:

“I’m looking at models, such as the Swedish model, where all young men and women are conscripted and only a select few end up doing their basic military service. Whether something like this would also be conceivable here is part of these considerations.”

All the money and manpower are necessary for missions in “countries that do not necessarily share our values.” This is the only option, Pistorius says, because “the alternative would be to not have any more contacts with these countries and to simply hand them over to the Russians and Chinese, and that would be a lot more dangerous.”

Germany’s second most popular politician shares the same line of thinking as Pistorius – with a twist. Foreign minister Annelena Baerbock has long argued for a more interventionist approach using her definition of feminism to inform Berlin’s foreign policy. Out of all Baerbock’s frightening statements, her Hillary Cinton-esque efforts to dress up the horrors of war in feminist empowerment might top the list. She devoted an entire speech to it last year, doubling down on that selling point for Ukraine:

Because “if women are not safe, then no one is safe”. That is what a Ukrainian woman said to me as we stood near the contact line in the east of Ukraine – before 24 February 2022.

No doubt the women and all Ukrainians feel much safer now, as do the women of Gaza:


Pistorius and Baerbock’s popularity is confounding because the public opposes their positions. From Deutsche Welle:

According to a survey conducted by the nonprofit Körber Foundation in September, in which 54% of respondents said that Germany should be more restrained when it comes to international crises. Only 38% wanted to see greater involvement — the lowest figure since the surveys began in 2017, when it stood at 52%.

In addition, a whopping 71% of respondents were against Germany taking a leading military role in Europe. It seems Germans want one thing above all else: Respite from the turbulence of world politics.


Pistorius and Baerbock promise the opposite, as does the third most popular politician, opposition leader Friedrich Merz, chairman of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which maintains its lead in polls:

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Roughly one in three voters would cast their ballot for any of the three parties currently running the government. A CDU-led government, while not much more than a different side of the same coin, could be even worse than the current coalition. They also want to continue to arm Ukrainians to be sent into the meat grinder, and Merz, a former corporate lawyer who has sat on numerous company boards including BlackRock Germany, would likely opt for even faster financialization of the country.

There are caveats to CDU polling, as well as its potential direction once in government, however. As NC reader Voislav points out:

A couple of things to keep in mind. Germany just passed new electoral law, which is facing a constitutional challenge from CDU. The law is aimed at allocating constituency seats based on the popular vote, which will hurt CSU/CDU as in the past their share of constituency seats exceeded what they would have gotten based on the popular vote. Also, in the last election CSU/CDU was polling in the 30’s as well, but only got 24% of the vote. So it is possible that German polling models overestimate their vote share.

Both these factors may make it difficult for CSU/CDU to form the government, forcing them into a coalition with SDP and Greens (so called traffic light coalition). Last time the grand coalition was formed it hurt CSU/CDU in the next election, so I suspect that there would be a lot of resistance internally to doing this. A coalition with AfD would be more palatable to their base. It could also provide cover to reverse energy policies on Russian gas which are unpopular with their main supporters, West German industrialists and business interests.


Merz has ruled out cooperation of any kind with the Alternative for Germany (AfD), but that position might be softening. In September, the Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats needed votes to defeat a regional government in a crucial budget bill. They turned to the AfD.

Together they were able to push a tax cut through Thuringia’s parliament against the wishes of the left-wing coalition. CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann says that his party remains opposed to forming a coalition with the AfD.

The AfD is an ethno-nationalist party with a neo-Nazi presence that says it wants to pursue a Germany first policy – although their idea of Germany might not involve the millions of immigrants in the country.

I’ve written previous posts on the AfD, but just to summarize: there is a fascist element to the party, but its recent growth is largely due to disenchantment with mainstream parties unresponsive to voter concerns as summarized:

Amongst who count as AfD supporters, people with neo-Nazi attitudes make up roughly 13 percent. Those with far-right authoritarian attitudes account for another 43, which means that 44 percent of those expressing support for the party do so without a general identification with far-right politics.

For about half the AfD’s potential electorate, their vote is a matter of conviction. But on top of that for a large part of the AfD’s electorate their preference is a way of signaling – presumably to what they take to be the mainstream – that they are dissatisfied with the status quo and do not believe that their voices will otherwise be heard. When asked why they might consider voting for the AfD at the next election – as 22 percent of those in survey said they would do – 78 percent said that it would be a sign that they were unhappy with “current policies” with 71 mentioning migration policy, in particular…

Overall, the conclusion of the surveys seems quite clear. There has not been a general shift to the right. In addition to a base of far-right wing support, which makes up 15 percent of the population, the AfD is attracting a protest vote that takes it to slightly more than 20 percent support. This is driven by dissatisfaction with migration policy and a general fear of societal crisis.


This polling supports the conclusions of Manès Weisskircher who researches social movements, political parties, democracy, and the far right at the Institute of Political Science, TU Dresden. He argues that AfD’s support, which is strongest in East Germany, can be primarily traced to three factors:

[]The neoliberal ‘great transformation,’ which has massively changed the eastern German economy and continues to lead to emigration and anxiety over personal economic prospects.
An ongoing sense of marginalization among East Germans who feel they have never been fully integrated since reunification and resent liberal immigration policies in this context.
Deep dissatisfaction with the functioning of the political system and doubt in political participation.[/i]

Rather than trying to confront the rise in AfD’s support with actual policy, the party is under spook surveillance, and the state is inching closer to kicking it off the ballot. At the beginning of December, Germany’s domestic intelligence classified the Saxony state branch of the AfD party as a “threat to democracy.”

Voters refuse to get the message. In a survey conducted Dec. 18 to Jan. 1 by the opinion research institute Civey and the Saxony newspaper, Sächsische Zeitung, the AfD only increased its support, coming in at 37 percent compared to the CDU’s 33 percent.

German elites likely believe that banning the party, which would effectively disenfranchise a quarter of the population, will bring stabilization and allow a continuation of current policies, but it’s just as likely to lead to an accelerated breakdown and Weimar levels of chaos.

And yet such a move would fit entirely with the default response in Germany (as well as across the West nowadays), which is to discredit the voter as stupid, racist, fascist, and oftentimes all three.

Take the farmers’ protests happening now across Germany. Rather than respond to their real grievances, the government’s answer has largely been to smear them as racists or fascists. Economics minister from the Greens, Robert Habeck, said this about the protests: “”Calls are circulating with coup fantasies, extremist groups are forming and ethnic-nationalist symbols are being openly displayed.”

The effort to discredit the farmers is based on the fact the AfD supports the protests and the following:

According to German media outlet Spiegel, members of several right-wing extremist groups, including The Homeland and Third Way, were at a rally in Berlin, as were AfD members. In Dresden, a video on social media showed people carrying flags from the Free Saxony right-wing extremist party clashing with police.

Well, okay. I’m not sure how that invalidates their complaints summed up here: “For a farm like mine, I would lose about 10,000 euros,” said a farmer from Bavaria, Ralf Huber. “For our businesses, it’s a catastrophe.”

What’s crazy about the efforts to smear people with real economic and other policy grievances as Fascists is that there is a pile of evidence suggesting that those grievances ignored can allow fascism’s roots to grow. A 2021 study published in the Journal of Economic History showed that voting data from a thousand districts and a hundred cities for four elections between 1930 and 1933 showed that areas more affected by austerity had more support for the Nazi Party.

Another from 2022 detailed by The Political Costs of Austerity:

Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. We highlight the close relationship between detrimental economic developments and voters’ support for extreme parties by showing that austerity induces severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages. Austerity-driven recessions amplify the political costs of economic downturns considerably by increasing distrust in the political environment.

Hope on the Left?

On Monday, Sahra Wagenknecht presented her recently announced political party. The “Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — Reason and Fairness” primary focus is on working class issues, which includes repairing ties with Russia and examining whether German interests are congruous with those of Washington. A quick summary of Wagenknecht’s positions from Tagesspiegel:

Wagenknecht has positioned herself as a sharp critic of the federal government’s Ukraine policy and the energy sanctions against Russia. She is for the import of cheap natural gas and against overly strict climate protection policies . She also advocates limiting migration . She has repeatedly described the Greens as the most dangerous party. Additionally, a poll from Bild am Sonntag that shows 27 percent of people in Germany would consider voting for the Wagenknecht-led party.

Other polling shows Wagenknecht’s party already more popular than the war mongering Greens. Should BSW prove popular, Wagenknefcht can expect to pilloried in the media more than she already has. The party is already under fire because out of roughly 1.1 million euros of contributions, 75 euros came from Russia (compared to 7,086 euros from the US).

Wagenknefcht also has detractors on the Left. Oliver Nachtwey writes at New Left Review that, “By juxtaposing ‘globalist’ institutions to national ones, Wagenknecht’s counter-programme offers nothing more than an improbable return to capitalism’s Golden Age.” On the ideas of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘industrial competition’ Nachtwey writes:

Both concepts, which feature heavily in the work of sociologists like Wolfgang Streeck and Anthony Giddens, are dubious from a Marxist point of view, since they substitute internationalism with national-Keynesianism, cooperation with capitalist rivalry. Moreover, if reverting to an embedded national welfare state is difficult in a world where capital flows and productive relations have become transnational, the likelihood is that this project will simply end up producing a regressive form of politics. Wagenknecht exemplifies this danger. Her singular focus on resovereigntization has supplanted a politics of class with one of the nation.

Maybe or maybe that resovereignization is a necessary first step. As Michael Hudson writes in his The Destiny of Civilization:

There is still a tendency to think of nationalism as a retrograde step. But for foreign countries, breaking away from today’s unipolar global system of U.S.-centered financialization is the only way to create a viable alternative that can resist the New Cold War’s attempt to destroy any alternative system and to impose U.S.-client rentier dictatorships on the world.

It’d be a worthwhile experiment for Germany to find out. Of course, the one easiest way for Germany to find a reprieve from its current malaise is to do the unthinkable: make nice with Russia. It might not bring back the past and restore Germany’s economic model, but it would ease the pain. It would at least mean that social spending wouldn’t need to be cut in order to spend more on militarization and energy subsidies.

The fact that both the AfD and Wagenknefcht are still attacked as Putin apologists for suggesting this line of thinking suggests the krisenmodus is going to get worse before it gets better.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... sight.html

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Poland Is In The Throes Of Its Worst Political Crisis Since The 1980s

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ANDREW KORYBKO
JAN 10, 2024

It’ll either continue sliding further under German suzerainty as a de facto puppet state whose people would be forced to endure the full-fledged imposition of liberal-globalist policies upon them or they’ll regain their sovereignty in order to protect their historically conservative-nationalist way of life.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has plunged his country into its worst political crisis since the 1980s in less than a month since returning to power. The Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture concluded in a detailed report late December that his planned judicial and media “reforms” are anti-constitutional. In brief, he wants to subordinate Polish sovereignty to German-controlled European institutions exactly as the former ruling party’s chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski repeatedly warned about last year.

It’s not hyperbole either to describe the political crisis caused by these so-called “reforms” as a constitutional one since new Speaker of the Sejm Szymon Holownia just suspended its proceedings for a week on precisely that pretext per the exact language that he himself used. This wasn’t due to Poland’s silent compliance with the EU’s new migration pact that’ll mandate the import of illegal immigrants under pain of financial punishment, however, nor Tusk’s forceful seizure of the national media.

What brought everything to this point was the police arresting two former ministers inside the presidential palace, who’d earlier been pardoned by President Andrzej Duda for allegedly entrapping a suspect, after the Supreme Court controversially reopened their case and then convicted them. Duda hails from the former ruling party and will remain in office until the planned spring 2025 presidential elections, unless of course he’s somehow or another removed before then, which can’t be ruled out.

Tusk accused Duda of obstructing justice after inviting those two former ministers to the presidential palace for the event that they attended before being arrested by the police there later that day. This scandalous incident was condemned by Kaczynski and his fellow party members, who used it to promote their preplanned “Protest of Free Poles” on Thursday outside of the Sejm. They also compared events to the 1980s era of martial law with the innuendo that their party is the new Solidarity movement.

If the opposition replicates their predecessor’s policy of nationwide strikes, protests, and other forms of non-violent resistance to authoritarian rule, which is their right to attempt given the circumstances in which the country has now found itself, then that comparison might become a fait accompli. This isn’t to suggest that it’s not valid at present, but just to point out that the large-scale economic disruption which could follow might lead to the tightening of Tusk’s crackdown to the point of actual martial law.

The future of Poland will be decided by the outcome of this political crisis. It’ll either continue sliding further under German suzerainty as a de facto puppet state whose people would be forced to endure the full-fledged imposition of liberal-globalist policies upon them or they’ll regain their sovereignty in order to protect their historically conservative-nationalist way of life. If the new Solidarity loses, then Polish society will be fundamentally and irreversibly transformed as a result of Tusk’s ideological mission.

He envisages Poland importing countless illegal immigrants (including civilizationally dissimilar ones that refuse to assimilate and integrate into society), removing all restrictions on abortion (possibly up until birth), and rampantly proliferating LGBT propaganda (with all the associated harm on children’s psyche). The country would never recover if this happens since Tusk is also arguably amenable to the proposed “military Schengen” that could lead to a continuous German military presence all throughout Poland.

If the local police, members of the intelligence community, and/or the armed forces end up supporting the new Solidarity, then he can call in German support for purging these “politically unreliable” elements from the state and carrying out their functions until “suitable replacements” can be found. Tusk’s version of martial law might therefore be even worse than General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s, who never requested Soviet support, and could herald the Fourth Reich that Kaczynski warned about in December 2021.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/poland-i ... -its-worst

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January 9, 2024| Pablo Jofre Leal
Blog
Poland: The “Hyena of Europe” and the annexation of western UkraineComments

A few months ago, Polish journalist Marek Galas denounced that Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky promised to hand over to the Polish government the territories that Poland considers necessary to recover located in the west of current Ukraine. Such information was made known in the Niezalezny Dziennik Polityczny media by the aforementioned professional. (1)

Poland: The “Hyena of Europe” and the annexation of western Ukraine
Such a promise was made in April 2023 during Zelensky's visit to Poland where he met with President Andrzej Duda, in exchange for effective political, military and financial support from Warsaw for what Ukraine called the counteroffensive operation to recover the Donbas region – a region with strong Russian roots and which since 2014 has been experiencing a sustained attack at the hands of the Kiev government and which determined, as the main reason, the special Russian military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

The failure of the Kiev government's objective has collided with the Russian military successes and the popular militias of Donbas, which have defeated again and again the attempts of kyiv and NATO regarding the eastern Ukrainian area. This has also caused a political, financial and military earthquake regarding the weakened support for the Zelensky government, increasingly questioned for its failures that have cost the United States and the European Union at least 300 billion dollars in support. in various areas, which have ended up either in the hands and pockets of the corrupt Ukrainian military political caste or simply in tanks, planes, armored vehicles, artillery, military warehouses, converted into rusty iron by Russian fire.

The preparations for the presidential elections in the United States are intended to be catalyzed by Kiev to convince Poland to continue supporting Ukraine, after months of bickering where Warsaw has taken measures such as not providing more weapons, accusing Kiev and the Ukrainian oligarchs of wanting to control the cereal market in Poland, together with Zelensky's accusations at the UN where he pointed out Poland as a country that was supporting and helping Russia in the war in Ukraine (2) and which generated the indignation of the Duda government. Polish media recall the unfairness of Zelensky's accusations “In addition, deliveries of all types of weapons were organized from Poland, from airplanes to various types of heavy equipment, small arms, ammunition and humanitarian aid. Considering that the Armed Forces of our country do not have the most modern weapons. It was the Polish leadership that supported Ukraine to the greatest extent possible, even in case of bureaucratic delays on the part of other NATO countries. Furthermore, only in Poland was a center organized where aid to Ukraine from all over the world was concentrated. Many refugee aid centers were established in the country and the government provided social benefits to Ukrainian citizens” (3) . All of this is paralyzed today, but not the attempts to annex or recover, as they maintain in Poland, the territories of western Ukraine.

Zelensky's accusations hide his total dedication and betrayal of the interests of his own country, in order to save his skin in the face of a war in which he has no possibility of obtaining benefits, but simply surrender. Zelensky has offered Polish businessmen to buy equity securities of the main Ukrainian public companies, in order to support international foreign debt obligations. Warsaw advances slowly and steadily in the control of its Ukrainian neighbor and thus become the financial center of all Western reconstruction programs in Ukraine, calculated at least – until December 2023 – in no less than 800 billion dollars. If the Kiev's surrender accelerates, if it is NATO that negotiates the terms of that surrender, Poland rubs its hands in the process of economic absorption of Ukraine, without Donbas, which would be part of the protocols of agreement with Russia and, at the same time time with the certain possibility of the loss of the territories of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Volyin, Ternipil that would pass into the hands of Poland.

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In creating the conditions of economic dominance in Ukraine, Warsaw is carefully studying the issue of military presence in Ukraine. The Polish lobby in the United States and Europe, the contract with public relations companies is generating a narrative in which the Duda government presents itself as the only one in a position to establish humanitarian operations in Western Ukraine in the style of the operation of the called Kosovo Force - KFOR for its acronym in English - of NATO in Serbia.

It is not excluded that, in the probable collapse of the kyiv regime, visualized from the obvious failure of its counteroffensive, which has not managed to recover any village or weaken the Russian forces and the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. In this scenario, it is proposed that Poland – which usually argues aspects related to its national security – will have the obligation to deploy its troops in Western Ukraine in the event of this disaster by its neighbor. Condition conducive to annexing the aforementioned regions of western Ukraine once and for all. Zelensky will go down in history not only as corrupt, who involved his country in a war promoted by Washington and NATO, definitively losing part of eastern Ukraine, but also its western part. Jibarized, defeated and ruined. Bad prognosis for Ukraine and those who drove him to suicide.

For its part, Poland and its ambitions bring us to the present the idea that this NATO country has become a State similar to the time of Jozef Klemens Pilsudski, first head of state, first marshal and dictator of the Second Polish Republic. The same Pilsudski who signed a Polish-German non-aggression pact with Hitler. Time in which Poland was in conflict with all of its neighbors and constantly desired territorial expansion at the expense of the nations that surrounded it. This is exactly the kind of Poland that Winston Churchill called 'the hyena of Europe' (4) in relation to Warsaw's involvement in the 'robbery and destruction of Czechoslovakia'. And opportunistically, in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1921, it seized territory in western Ukraine as well as Belarus. In 1938, months before being invaded by its German partner, Poland annexed the Czechoslovak region of Teshin, which earned it the name Hyena.

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Polish foreign policy, increasingly influenced by its own internal dynamics in relation to the probable failure of Ukraine in its role as a front man for Washington and NATO, is seen as having great opportunities, expressed, for example, by a party in the current Duda government. , law and justice that shows in an increasingly evident way, interest in Western Ukraine – considered Polish – and that has been expressed even by the Polish Foreign Ministry itself regarding the fact that there is no possibility of supporting Ukraine's entry into the Union European Union “if the historical problems are not solved” in clear allusion to the regions that public opinion managed, precisely, by the media and the Polish political caste, must return to the Polish fold. The analysis that is repeated in Europe today is lapidary: “the review of Poland's borders with Ukraine is becoming more acute.”

1. https://dziennik-polityczny.com/2023/04 ... awierucha/

2. The exact words that sparked Polish outrage were “During his speech at the UN in New York, Zelensky said: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe represent solidarity in a political theater, making a thriller out of cereal.” Zelensky accused Warsaw of “playing along” with Russia after Poland and other Central European countries banned imports of Ukrainian grain to protect the interests of their farmers. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/c16k3j0g44go

3. https://dziennik--polityczny-com.transl ... &_x_tr_hl= es-419&_x_tr_pto=sc

4. https://themeformen.ru/es/moles/giena-v ... tyu-gieny/

Article published in SegundoPaso ConoSur.

https://www.telesurtv.net/bloggers/Polo ... -0002.html

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But if Poland takes Galacia where will the Nazis go? What will they do with all those Bandera statues?

They'll go where they always go the USA and Canada, their home away from home.
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 11, 2024 3:50 pm

EU Model Offered to Belarus Will Remind Many of the Good ‘Ol Days

Martin Jay

January 11, 2024

The EU’s rank hypocrisy over journalism, murky relation with big U.S. companies and its own corruption cast a shadow over its recent Belarus move

A recent article published by the Financial Times might have amused the government of Belarus. In it, a European Commission boss pleaded with giant U.S. firms who are linked to the internet in Belarus to be more supportive of opposition journalists’ articles. Presently, Google does not support the Belarusian language on its search platforms, which, the EU official claims, gives a distinct advantage to the incumbent government of Lukashenko.

“Fighting disinformation and promoting media freedom are two sides of the same coin — and we want Big Tech to do both,” European Commission vice-president Věra Jourová blurted out to the Financial Times journalist. “This means ensuring the visibility of trustworthy information online, not the propaganda of Minsk or the Kremlin,” she added, criticising platforms for disseminating propaganda from Belarus and Russia, its close ally.

Of course, hardened analysts shouldn’t be surprised by the European Commission vigour in presenting itself as a state builder in the region and offering an alternative model to Belarus, other than the umbrella of Moscow. Many Belarussians might see this tact as just a tad delusional though, given the total dog’s breakfast the EU has made in neighbouring Ukraine, where it dangled EU membership in 2014 to its citizens.

But Brussels, we shouldn’t forget is an irony-free zone. Moreover the EU is an organisation which refuses to look backwards and consider its colossal defeats in its experimentation to be a superpower. Or at least a wannabee superpower. Let’s not get carried away.

But it seems that Frau von der Leyen is getting carried away with what she believes the role of the EU is, in relation to the reality which everyone – least of all EU taxpayers – will soon have to face.

This stunt by the European Commission is of course a pot shot at Russia, make no mistake. With a failing NATO strategy now making headlines in EU member states which had the highest support for the war in Ukraine, the EU seeks solace in its endeavours to be a political player. Its top mandarins can at least be guaranteed little lost face when even this strategy goes wrong and so are drawn to this game like a moth to the flame.

We cannot ignore the supreme irony though of this last stunt in the FT. The EU it would seem, is reaching out to the major U.S. firms which it is normally fining for anti-competitive behaviour and apparently saying “look, help us promote our dissident journalists in Belarus in getting their articles read more easily and we’ll, er, kinda take it easy on you the next time you abandon anti-trust rules in the market place”. This is how corruption works. And this is how the EU functions, in how it interacts with big corporations who more or less own the European parliament, lock stock and barrel.

The further irony though is that in presenting itself as the arbiter of free speech and a stalwart supporter of journalism, the EU presents itself to countries like Belarus as both comical and delusional. Add to that rank hypocrites. In reality the EU hates free speech and feral journalism. The only journalism it likes is the version which is so tainted by political corruption that it serves the EU’s purposes to promote itself and its messages. Anyone who has spent time in Brussels will tell you that the relationship that the FT has with the European Commission is far from a normal one, which you might expect from a big hitter journal and a powerful institution. In reality, the European Commission treats the FT like its puppy dog. It determines how interviews are conducted, when they get done and on what subjects. The FT plays the role of unpaid PR consultant to the EU’s powerful European Commission in return for closer access. It couldn’t be more corrupt. And yet we are expected to take this latest work of journalism from the FT seriously, where the EU assumes the role of a higher being which presents itself as an example of independent free journalism. Just examine the article and you will see that the interview with the European Commission vice president also interviews all the key players who you would imagine have something important to say on the subject. Except anyone in the government in Minsk, of course. That would be breaking the house rules and the basis of the deal that the Commission laid out for the interview taking place. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Commission even edited the piece before publication. What an absolute disgrace and farce that the alternative model that the EU is trying to present to the people of Belarus is so rotten to the core in corruption. It probably reminds them of the Soviet days.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... d-ol-days/

While implying that the Soviet Union was corrupt is applicable to the degenerate Gorbachev era that is otherwise slander and more applicable to common practice here in the "bastion of freedom".

Russians Cry Tears of Laughter Into Their Sanctioned German Beer

Declan Hayes

January 11, 2024

It is hard to know whether one should laugh or cry at NATO’s gross ineptitude, Declan Hayes writes.

Having previously written about NATO’s stupid whiskey and wine sanctions on Russia, we now turn to NATO’s no less shambolic beer blockade.

Despite these idiotic sanctions, German beer still rules the Russian roost and accounts for some 32%, an impressive $96 million worth, of all Russia’s annual beer imports, with the Russophobic Lithuanians and Latvians each having about 15% of this vibrant market and the Belgians and Czechs each having about $26.5 million, or 9% apiece.

Although the Belgian and Czech sales might look impressive, Lithuania’s sales have doubled and Latvia’s have quadrupled, and all of that has come at the expense of the Belgians and Czechs, as well as the hapless Dutch, mockingly discussed hereunder.

Before getting on to how NATO’s beer barons are stabbing each other in the back, it is important to make some broad comments about European beer, beer’s own 13,000 year history and how discerning the Russians have so quickly become in their choice of these age-old beverages.

Not only do Germany’s famous Reinheitsgebot or beer purity laws go back an impressive 500 years but the Germans have very immutable ideas on what constitutes and what does not constitute beer. Because Dutch beer, according to the Germans at least, does not make their grade, one should never offer a Bavarian farmer a Heineken, unless it is to fatten his pigs.

Though the Germans will admit the Danes, to whom we shall shortly return, make some good beers, as do the Czechs and Belgians, the Dutch, according to the Germans at least, are too busy marketing their pig swill to the four ends of the earth to concentrate on quality.

Or at least the four ends of the earth, minus Russia, which the Dutch have now surrendered to local Russian interests for a token $1 to the more fastidious Germans and others who, interestingly, include the Russophobic pipsqueak nations of Lithuania and Latvia, who each have very long traditions and standards in beer that would no doubt impress the beer-swilling Germans.

But the problem there is that the Danish Carslberg Group, who famously claim to make the best beer in the world, have moved into those Baltic nations in a big way and it is they, rather than the local and longer established Lithuanian and Latvian beer companies, that are currently salvaging what they can of the Russian market.

Because the Lithuanian and Latvian beers are glorified craft beers, this seems to be another economic disaster by the charlatans running those two punk states. This is not to denigrate those local beers but to state they should have been marketed differently, to get, for example, the good citizens of Moscow and St Petersburg to visit in droves, to swill down their locally produced beers to their hearts’ content and to put money in Lithuanian and Latvian pockets, rather than in Danish ones.

Of course, that is being wise after the event, of bolting the door after the horse has long trotted away or, in this case, after Danish conglomerates offered jobs and inward investment at the expense of local Lithuanian and Latvian producers.

The bottom line is that, though the Lithuanians and Latvians cannot compete with the Germans, Dutch and Danes, they should have marketed themselves differently, rather than just, as it were, deciding to lie down like a Dane. Although, for example, the world and his mother have been bored to death by Germans regurgitating their beer purity laws, similar regulations not only stretch all the way back to Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi, which included The Hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer, but Lithuania has its own impressive regulatory and quasi-religious histories.

Although Ninkasi was never a big hit in Lithuania, the demi-god Rūgutis was, for it was he who breathed life into grain, turning it into sourdough bread and beer, and paying homage to him was an excuse for an annual booze up on 21st of September, in a feast known as Alutinis, Koštuvės or Ragautuvės, all of which have local Lithuanian beers called after them.

But, as with politics, so also with beer. The Lithuanians have decided to surrender their sovereignty and their long farmhouse beer tradition to the deaf and dumb Danes and others further up NATO’s totem pole and so must live with the consequences of making less money at home and in Russia than might have otherwise been the case.

This is particularly stupid on their part because, though Ninkasi gave Lithuania a miss, both he and Rūgutis skipped Russia altogether. Russia has gone from having no beer tradition to speak of to being one of the world’s biggest beer markets, all within the space of 20 years. Although Russian brands like Baltika No 3, Nevskoe Imperial and Zhigulevskoye now dominate the market, more local Russian craft beers like Vasileostrovskaya, Victory Art and AF Brew have also blossomed in the metropoles of Moscow and St Petersburg.

And Lithuania, instead of building a Russian market for themselves, have thrown all that away to help NATO’s shot callers.

Although the great Napoleon is often cited as saying that “On victory, you deserve beer, in defeat, you need it,” there is no question but that NATO’s beer barons have suffered a major strategic defeat in Russia. For Russia’s up and coming beer entrepreneurs, the future looks rosier. Despite still being a major player, Carlsberg has seen its position considerably weakened, America’s Woke Bud Lite beer has taken a battering, as have ciders like Strongbow and Orchard Thieves, a sad state of affairs when, given higher oil and commodity prices, the Russian beer and cider market will most likely far exceed its 7% expected growth rate over the next five years.

Given that Heineken’s Russian interests were sold for $1 and Carlsberg’s were simply nationalised, it is hard to know whether one should laugh or cry at NATO’s gross ineptitude. Although the Russians can feel justified to laugh themselves silly at this further evidence of NATO’s rank stupidity, this fiasco of NATO needlessly destroying yet another Russian market for well-established European brands is another reason why NATO and all it stands for must be destroyed before it destroys what little remains of Europe’s once vaunted industrial base.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... rman-beer/

Heineken is swill and can only be considered superior to degenerate US brands like Old German, Budweiser, Horlachers, Miller and Natural Light, to name a few. And yes, I drank enough crap beer in my youth to float a battleship so I know what I'm talking about.
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 13, 2024 3:47 pm

The Slovak Prime Minister Has A Pragmatic Approach Towards The Ukrainian Conflict

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ANDREW KORYBKO
JAN 12, 2024

The importance of Robert Fico’s piece is that it represents yet another clearly articulated and impressively pragmatic view of the Ukrainian Conflict from a European leader after Orban’s similar such displays over nearly the past two years.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who returned to office after a hiatus following his victory in last fall’s elections despite American meddling against him, published an impressively pragmatic op-ed about the Ukrainian Conflict. He began by condemning “today's liberal demagoguery in defense of the West's utterly failed strategy against Russia in Ukraine” that he described as perpetuating this crisis, whose roots he blamed on Kiev’s mistreatment of its Russian minority and US control over that country.

While condemning Russia’s special operation and reaffirming that he doesn’t want that it as his neighbor, he also equally condemned the West for failing to promote a ceasefire shortly after the latest phase of this now-decade-long conflict began in an allusion to its sabotage of spring 2022’s peace talks. According to Fico, they “incorrectly evaluated the use of Russian military force as an opportunity to bring Russia to its knees” through economic and military means, having not learned anything from history.

As a result, “Russia completely controls the occupied territories militarily, and attempts to convince the international community with demagoguery about the demoralization of the Russian soldiers and the huge human losses are increasingly showing themselves as empty demagogic wishful thinking. Ukraine is not capable of any meaningful military counter-offensive, it has become completely dependent on financial aid from the West with unforeseeable consequences for Ukrainians in the years to come.”

Fico added that “The position of the Ukrainian president is shaken, while the Russian president increases and strengthens his political support. Neither the Russian economy nor the Russian currency collapsed, anti-Russian sanctions increase the internal self-sufficiency of this huge country, Russian energy giants report record deliveries to China and India.” At the same time, he drew attention to how reputable Ukrainian insiders have admitted to worsening corruption, which further discredits Kiev’s cause.

Given the sequence of events and consequent state of affairs that he detailed thus far, Fico predicts that the West will stay the course by continuing to pour weapons and money into Ukraine, albeit in vain but nevertheless because its leaders can’t “openly admit the incorrectness of the adopted strategy.” This arrogance will actually make matters even worse for Ukraine because it’ll lead to an even worse negotiating position by the time that the West finally decides to freeze this conflict.

He ended his op-ed by hoping that Slavs will stop fighting another, which echoes what his ideological ally Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said last fall when describing the conflict as a “Slavic Fraternal War”, and appealing to his EU counterparts to promote peace and improve ties with Russia. The Slovak premier promised to do his part and pledged that “I will no longer be subject to stupid liberal and progressive demagoguery that offends basic human justice and will ultimately cause enormous harm.”

The importance of Fico’s piece is that it represents yet another clearly articulated and impressively pragmatic view of the Ukrainian Conflict from a European leader after Orban’s similar such displays over nearly the past two years. With Poland’s former conservative-nationalist government being persecuted through a vicious lawfare campaign by its liberal-globalist opponents who replaced it after last fall’s elections, Hungary and Slovakia are now the last bastions of this sovereign paradigm in the bloc.

It's therefore crucial that they work in tandem to maximally amplify their shared views in a well-intentioned attempt to attract grassroots support for the resumption of peace talks as soon as possible. The American-controlled EU elite remain recalcitrant to this for the time being, but Italy’s newfound linking of Ukraine aid to “negotiated settlement efforts” could herald a sea change if other major countries follow its lead under public pressure from folks inspired by those two leaders’ efforts.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-slov ... -pragmatic

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Protests in Germany: who else joined the strike
January 12, 2024

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Protests in Germany: who else joined the strike
A mass strike by farmers, truck drivers and train drivers continues in Germany . Protesters express dissatisfaction with the traffic light coalition's budget plans and demand that diesel subsidies and vehicle tax exemptions be maintained.

On Wednesday , passenger train drivers from the GDL union joined the protests : they demand higher wages, a reduction in working hours from 38 to 35 hours a week and the preservation of the railway development program in full. At the moment, railway transport is operating on a reduced schedule, 80% of intercity trains have been cancelled .

While Western media write about the “ collapse of the German economy ,” the German authorities are making no attempts to resolve the situation. But they do not miss the opportunity to shift responsibility for the escalation of protests to their political opponent in the person of the Alternative for Germany party and intimidate citizens that “for the first time since 1945, a right-wing extremist may come to power.”

By the way, in parallel with the protests, there is also a strike of cultural figures : they demand an end to repression against those who do not support Israel’s side in the current conflict. Supposedly, more than 650 people joined the movement . And since there are still 3 days before the end of the protests, it is possible that dissatisfied people will become more active on some other issue - the largest rallies are expected on January 15 in Berlin .

https://rybar.ru/protesty-v-germanii-kt ... abastovke/

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Since when are the Christian Democrats not right wing?
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 15, 2024 3:39 pm

“If Europe Is Under Attack We Will Never Come to Help You” – EU Top Official Quotes Trump
Posted on January 15, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Note that concerns that Trump would reduce US support for Europe are long-standing, given his earlier demand that NATO members pay their full share of their 2% of GDP commitment to the security organization. The last time I looked, no NATO member aside from the UK did, and some of its contributions were funny-money-ish. But to try to thwart Trump, the US included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, enacted on December 22, 2023, a provision barring the President from withdrawing from NATO absent a 2/3 vote of the Senate or a bill passed by both houses. Of course, a future President and a majority of one house of Congress could conspire to budget-starve NATO.

Admittedly, EU members have been making a lot of noise about increasing military spending in the light of the evil Russian bear mauling Ukraine and fear-mongering that Putin will soon be riding into Paris. But there are several problems. One is that higher energy costs due to the loss of cheap Russian gas have increased inflation and are deindustrializing Germany and (less often discussed) Italy, the two manufacturing powerhouses of Europe. That means lower growth and budget pressure when Eurozone members are committed to hairshirt spending limits. It specifically means sacrificing social spending in favor of arms. Deteriorating economic conditions for average citizens are typically accompanied by shifts in political sentiment to the right…which in the EU also means nationalist, as in NATO-skeptic.

Second and even more important, although still not sufficiently well recognized, is the US military is running on brand fumes. Russia is beating not just the US but also Europe….when the classic view of war is that the combatant with the bigger economy wins. Here, Russia is showing that it is the force with more manufacturing heft, given sufficient raw materials and manpower. But on top of that, Russia has demonstrated superiority in many important weapons categories, such as air defense, signal jamming, and hypersonic missiles. It has also very impressively been using Ukraine as a testing/learning ground, both for tactics and for armaments, and has been making improvements as the war is underway (for instance, upgrading some of its drones to be quieter and adding night vision capabilities). And of course, we now have the US demonstration of impotence in the Red Sea with its shelling of Houthis, which independent experts see as not even remotely able to inflict enough damage to get the Houthis to back down. And as many commentators have pointed out, an invasion would produce a worse version of Afghanistan (the Houthis would surely take out a lot of naval assets before any landing were to succeed).


As Alexander Mercouris pointed out in his Saturday talk, a more mature Administration would have chosen Plan C: call the Houthis’ bluff. Tell shippers to avoid the Red Sea. It would increase costs and transit time. This would not be the first time commercial carriers have had to go around the Horn of Africa. The Suez Canal was closed for five months, in 1956, due to the Suez Canal crisis, and then for 8 years after the 1967 Six Day War.

But even worse, as Andrei Martyanov explains in an important new post, the US is so mired in old-think as to be constitutionally incapable of recognizing that its current way of war is a guaranteed loser, and only a top-to-bottom restructuring around new doctrines (and then new strategies and tactics) could turn things around. As a small symptom, recall how during the great oversold Ukraine counteroffensive that the various leaks and sometimes even official statements talked about the apparent US one-trick pony, combined arms warfare (as if that was even being done then, given the lack of air support).

From Martyanov, reacting to a John Meaeshimer talk on US military capacity:

It is not just about manufacturing capacity–in theory the US may build, in the next 10+ years, some facilities to increase production of 155-mm shells or drones. But it will not be able to match industrial capacity of Russia in this respect….The issue here is not just quantity–the target impossible to reach due to utter destruction of US manufacturing base and an extremely complex supply chains for military production. This all is just the tip of the iceberg. The main body of the iceberg is a complete catastrophe that the US military doctrinal and, as a result, procurement development is.

I spoke about it for years–some gaps, such as in air defense or missilery the US will not be able to close, because as I type this, this gap continues to grow. It is measured not in years but in generations. This is, as an example, the result of misguided and illiterate approach to air defense based on… air power. You have to literally undo the whole thing, and this requires not just building some facilities, but a complete rethinking of America’s defense or, rather, “offense” philosophy which doesn’t work….The US has no courage, intellect and will to do so because it leads to a destruction of America’s mythology….

After the US strategically and operationally “planned” VSU’s “counteroffensive”, the question of the competence of the US military establishment arose and was answered–it is incompetent! …Russia will not allow the US to unleash the war in Europe while thinking that the US can sit this one out again behind the ocean. Doesn’t work like this anymore, especially with the construction tempo of Russia Navy’s subs such as 3M22 Zircon carriers Yasen-class subs and frigates which already have Zircons deployed. These are technologies the US simply doesn’t have and are nowhere near of getting them. China can rely on them, and much more from Russia in case of the US deciding to commit suicide, the US cannot.


Now to the main event:

By Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. Originally published at InfoBRICS

According to a recent POLITICO news report, during the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, then US President Donald Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a private meeting, the following: “you need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you, and by the way NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.” Trump said so according to Europe’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was also there, with von der Leyen and former European Commissioner for Trade Phil Hogan. Breton is quoted as adding: “it was the president of the United States of America — he may come back. That was a big wake up call … So now more than ever, we know that we are on our own, of course.” The context of such a story is Thierry Breton pitching vast investments for the European defense industry – after all, he reasons, the clock is ticking and, referring to Trump, “the potential candidates remind us that we must take care of EU’s defense by ourselves.”

Breton, who is also responsible for the European Union’s defense industry, wants to increase the European Defence Investment Programme (EDIP) to €3 billion – €1,5 billion have already been earmarked. Such is expected to be proposed alongside the European Defence Industry Strategy (EDIS). In the long-term, however, Breton aims for a huge €100B defense fund.

Breton favors such vast investments to increase the EU’s defense industry production capacity in order to de-risk their investments, in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The “bad news” (to some) is that the current confrontation might end sooner than expected, with top figures in the Western Establishment calling for a “land-for-peace deal”, while Russian and Ukrainian generals are reportedly negotiating peace, “with or without Zelensky.”

Europe’s continental defense, in any case, needs more than just billions of euros, though: the block lacks a common legal and bureaucratic framework. Moreover, there simply is no common EU defense market. Of course, with the political will, all of that can arguably be arranged, in terms of policy framework, legislation, and agreements – albeit not quickly (it would require intense European coordination). However, there is a baser problem, of a more material nature, namely deindustrialization. That too could be solved, right? Or could it?

As I wrote before, for Western Europe, “re-arming” itself would require re-industrializing itself, something which, ironically, the US has opposed time and again. In fact, whenever Europeans try to articulate an industrial policy, Washington steps in. As Sophia Besch (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow) and Max Bergmann (former member of the US Policy Planning Staff) wrote March last year, when the EU made its plans for new weapons systems and for a European Defense Fund public, then US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis (under Trump), strongly objected and heavily lobbied for American companies “to have access to the paltry EU funds”. This has by no means changed with the current Joe Biden’s administration, which has worked hard to maintain American access to the continent’s defense market.

The whole European (huge) subsidy initiative being discussed since November 2022, in fact, emerged in the context of a subsidy war, to counter Joe Biden’s subsidies package which was basically aimed at wiping out the rival European industry. So much for trans-Atlantic friendship and partnership! The North American-European “disconnect” extends to energy interests, as I have written – and to Ukraine’s conflict itself, which greatly harms post-Nord Stream Europe while benefiting American weapons manufacturers.

It is no wonder then that Emmanuel Todd (French anthropologist, political scientist and historian at the National Institute of Demographic Studies in Paris), one of France’s main intellectuals, has just declaredthat “the disappearance of the United States would be the best thing that could happen to Europe.”. He adds: “once the United States agrees to withdraw from their empire, from Eurasia and all those regions where they maintain conflicts… Contrary to what people think – people say ‘what will become of us when the US no longer protects us?’ – we will [actually] be at peace!”

One should keep in mind that France itself (under general Charles de Gaulle) did withdraw from NATO’s so-called integrated military structure in 1966 and even expelled all of its headquarters and units on French territory. And it in fact took 43 years for Paris to change its course: it was President Nicolas Sarkozy who ended his country’s “estrangement” from the organization in 2009.

Today, as the idea of “strategic autonomy”, promoted by French President Emmanuel Macron, gains momentum in Western Europe, some wonder whether Paris and Berlin could lead the continent towards such autonomy – and away from its Atlantic “ally”. It is still a far shot.

Since the aftermath of WWII, Europe has relied on Washington for security, while relying, at least up until 2022, on Moscow for gas. Such has been the latent geostrategic-geoeconomic contradiction within the European bloc and such is the European tragedy, so to speak

To recap, Europe needs reindustrialization. To accomplish that, it needs Russian energy sources. Trading links pertaining to oil and gas are, after all, largely dictated by geography and not mere political will. The hard truth is that Russian-European energy cooperation was always a mutually beneficial strategic matter for these two parties. The US agenda in turn has been to disrupt any such Eurasian cooperation, and, as an example of how far Washington is willing to go to pursue that, the shady circumstances of Nord Stream’s explosion speak volumes. This, mind you, is no “conspiracy theory”: according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, there is good reason to believe the Americans did it, as Joe Biden himself had promised last year, on on February 7: “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

While Western media focus on Russia being a “threat” with an “imperial” appetite that could pose dangers to Western Europe itself, American political scientist John Mearsheimer writes that “Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022 … everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern… if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks.” The main issue, of course, has always been NATO expansion.

All things considered, as Arnaud Bertrand, a French entrepreneur and commentator on economics and geopolitics, argues, it would be tempting to assume the former US President handed the EU its strategic autonomy “on a silver platter” – that is, if Thierry Breton’s story about Trump in Davos is to be believed. In this scenario then, it would seem, as Bertand puts it, that the Europeans leaders in turn begged Trump to just remain “vassalized”.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... trump.html

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Bild: Germany is preparing for war with Russia after the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces

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Moscow, January 15 - AiF-Moscow.
Germany is preparing for a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, which, according to the Bundeswehr scenario, could begin in the summer of 2025, Bild reports , citing an allegedly secret document from the German Ministry of Defense.

According to the German publication, the escalation between the alliance and the Russian Federation may intensify as early as February of this year with the start of an active offensive by Russian troops on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. By June, according to Berlin's expectations, the operation will end with the retreat of the Ukrainian army.

At the same time, the document describes the actions of Russia and the West with accuracy down to the place and month. Their culmination could supposedly be “the start of war in the summer of 2025.” The most likely location of the collision is the Suwalki corridor between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region.

As noted in the article, on “Day X” NATO countries will transfer about 300 thousand troops to the eastern flank, including 30 thousand Bundeswehr soldiers. The authors of the publication leave open the question of how such a hypothetical escalation could end.

Earlier, political scientist John Mearsheimer said that the armed forces of Germany and Great Britain are in a “pathetic state” and even together they would not be able to cope with the Russian army in the event of a direct conflict.

https://aif.ru/politics/world/bild_germ ... ium=mobile

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Poppycock and bluster. Germany is in no shape to go toe to toe with Russia, neither is the rest of Europe. They weren't to start with and after reducing their arms inventory down to the skinny in the Black Hole of Ukraine they're even less so now. As for the US, stretched to the max and facing similar ordinance issues, how long will it take to ship a couple armor/mechanized divisions along with the 101 Air Mobile to Europe? Not to mention getting them ready for really serious combat? And that's an absolute minimum. Propaganda for continued support for the Zelensky regime, 'lest the dominoes fall...', nothing more.
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 16, 2024 3:50 pm

Tusk’s Return To Power In Poland Might Be Good News For Russia If He Does Germany’s Bidding

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ANDREW KORYBKO
JAN 16, 2024

For the time being, the Kremlin is likely pleased with Tusk returning to power since it fondly remembers the era of Polish-Russian friendship from his first premiership, which sharply contrasted with the nadir in their relations that followed under PiS.

Popular discussion about the return of Donald Tusk as Polish Prime Minister has thus far mostly focused on his planned rapprochements with Berlin and Brussels alongside his liberal-globalist power play against the country’s conservative-nationalist opposition, but few have asked what this means for Russia. Although Tusk’s policies towards abortion, illegal immigrants, and LGBT are the opposite of President Putin’s, his suspected fealty to Germany could bode well for Russia’s long-term geopolitical interests.

The prior government run by former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and closely advised by “Law & Justice” (PiS) leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski supported similar socio-cultural policies as Russia but became its mortal enemy as a result of its foreign policy even prior to the events of February 2022. Russia believes that Poland is trying to topple the Belarusian government to which it has mutual defense obligations while Poland accused those two of waging hybrid war against it via weaponized illegal immigration.

These allegations served to toxify their ties, but everything spiraled completely out of control almost two years ago. Morawiecki provoked the Kremlin’s wrath in March 2022 by praising Russophobia, which he boasted had become mainstream in the world largely due to his government’s efforts. Two months later, he described the “Russian World” as a “cancer” that he swore to “root out”. His government also “de-Russified” the energy sector and took the leading role in facilitating NATO’s military support for Ukraine.

On top of that, Poland dispatched a lot of its own equipment to that country too, and some of its citizens have even reportedly volunteered to fight alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces and allied militias. The depletion of its stockpile directly led to the decision to undertake an unprecedented military buildup, which Politico described as heralding “Europe’s coming military superpower”. Additionally, Poland committed to spending 4% of its GDP on defense, which is double NATO’s recommendation.

To make matters even more troubling for the Kremlin, PiS expanded the number of US bases in Poland, which combined with the previously described moves to pose a very serious challenge to Russia’s military-strategic interests in Europe. Under the leadership of former Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland also exposed the former Tusk government’s secret plans to retreat as far west as the Vistula in the event that Russia invaded, which shocked many Poles once they found out about this.

That wasn’t all that PiS revealed about its predecessor’s close ties with Russia, however, since the commission that was created to investigate alleged Russian influence in the country also discovered what they described as suspicious interactions between these two’s domestic security services. Commission member and former head of the Military Intelligence Service Andrzej Kowalski even claimed that one of the agreements obligated Poland to inform the FSB of NATO operations against Russia.

The commission ultimately recommended that Tusk and several other officials including former Interior Minister and newly appointed Minister of Culture & National Heritage Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz not be entrusted “with tasks, positions and public functions related to responsibility for state security.” Its advice went unheeded since Tusk had already been poised to return to the premiership by then and his government accordingly dismissed the commission’s findings as a politically driven witch hunt.

If his second time in office is anything like the first, then precedent suggests that Polish-Russian relations might improve upon the improvement of Polish-German ones first. Kaczynski previously accused Tusk of being a “German agent” due to his partial German roots, closeness with that country during his first time in office, and him serving as President of the European Council in between his premierships. If Polish-German ties soon improve, then Polish-Russian ones might follow just like before.

To explain, Germany is Europe’s indisputable leader and exercises its hegemony across the continent in multifold ways, including through the cultivation of foreign leaders (whether by corruption, appealing to their egos, etc.) like Tusk. He shares that country’s liberal-globalist worldview and is therefore naturally inclined to align Poland’s policies with Germany’s, not to mention the ethnic affinity that he feels towards its leaders, so he might work to improve ties with Russia following Germany’s lead.

Although his recent claim that “As long as Ukraine is at war with Russia, we are relatively safe” implies that he’ll continue to support that country just like PiS did for most of the past two years, Germany’s growing fatigue with this conflict and Russia’s consistent interest in peace talks could change that. The German economy is in trouble and could greatly benefit from the resumption of Russian energy imports if the conflict ends with an armistice and Berlin then orders the EU to lift some sanctions as a reward.

PiS wouldn’t ever support that due to its openly Russophobic foreign policy, but Tusk could be convinced by Germany that this would be for the greater good of their shared liberal-globalist worldview, or perhaps as a quid pro quo for its alleged support of his campaign last year. However it ends up happening, observers can’t discount the possibility that he’d go along with this, even if only out of simple solidarity with his partial co-ethnics whose interests he’s been criticized of placing above fellow Poles’.

No prospective Russian-German rapprochement is possible without reining in Poland, however, since its geostrategic location and growing military potential enable it to perpetually disrupt their ties unless that country’s leadership is also on board with their continental plans. German could therefore exert its influence over Tusk to convince him of the need to abandon PiS’ anti-Russian foreign policy, including its plans to build Europe’s largest land army, which he might be amenable to due to precedent.

Polish-Russian ties under his first premiership were better than at any time since the end of the Old Cold War, and this was arguably attributable in part to him following his de facto mentor former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s lead in prioritizing economic ties above all else. It might have even been with the intent of building trust that his security services agreed to inform the FSB of NATO operations against Russia and the military promulgated its secret plan to withdraw to the Vistula in the event of an invasion.

These close ties shouldn’t be spun as proof that Tusk and the other officials named by PiS’ commission are Russian agents, but just that his prioritization of German interests over Polish ones and previous economically driven ties with Russia might have inadvertently had security implications for Poland. The mutual trust that they built stabilized Europe, however, so some might argue that these trade-offs were worth it while others like PiS’ supporters will always remain opposed to them out of principle.

If Tusk once again does Germany’s bidding, whether for personal reasons or to advance their shared worldview, then Sienkiewicz’s seizure of state media might lead to the removal of Russophobic content to precondition the public for a rapprochement. Any anti-Russian riots that could explode in response to him reversing PiS’ policies like backtracking on its military buildup could be put down by those German troops who his Deputy Foreign Minister just invited into Poland per the “military Schengen” proposal.

To be clear, the Russian-German rapprochement that would precede any Polish-Russian one under Tusk is still a long way off and might ultimately never materialize, particularly if Germany decides to exploit its newly restored hegemony over Poland to become a global power at Russia’s expense. In that event, Germany might advise Tusk to retain PiS’ military buildup plans in order to use that country as its eastern bulwark against Russia and for needling it in Belarus, Kaliningrad, and/or Ukraine via hybrid war means.

That would be an overall worse scenario for Poland than if PiS was still in office since Tusk’s track record proves that he’ll endanger Polish interests in order to advance German ones, which could lead to a hot war by miscalculation. PiS places Polish interests as the party understands them to be above all else, however, and would thus be unlikely to risk a hot war just to please Germany. A “cold peace” between Russia and PiS-led Poland is therefore better for Poland than a hybrid war waged by Tusk’s Poland.

For the time being, the Kremlin is likely pleased with Tusk returning to power since it fondly remembers the era of Polish-Russian friendship from his first premiership, which sharply contrasted with the nadir in their relations that followed under PiS. With this in mind, it’s expected that Russia will pursue a policy of “regime reinforcement” in the face of the Russophobic opposition’s challenge to his rule in order to relieve pressure upon him in the hopes that he’ll lead a German-backed rapprochement like last time.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/tusks-re ... land-might

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Leftists in Slovenia hit the streets for Gaza

The Slovenian left has demanded that the government join South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Palestinians

January 16, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch

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Palestine solidarity demonstration in Ljubljana. (Photo: Nataša Sukič)

Leftists in Slovenia are demanding that the government join South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Palestinians.

On January 11, Levica (The Left) insisted that being a signatory state to the Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Republic of Slovenia must do everything to prevent the execution of genocide, because otherwise they bear co-responsibility for violating international law.

Levica, along with the Social Democrats, is a part of the center-left coalition government led by the Freedom Movement, headed by prime minister Robert Golob.

In its statement, Levica endorsed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comparison of Israel’s policy in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to the past apartheid racial segregation regime imposed over Black citizens by the ruling white minority in South Africa, which ended in 1994.

“Slovenia became a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the second time this year, which is an important achievement and above all a great responsibility for our country and government,” added Levica.

Meanwhile, several media houses in the country have been trying to portray leftist politicians who are leading Palestinian solidarity events as anti-Semitic. On January 12, Levica leader Nataša Sukič stated that criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism.

“I have always fought and will fight all forms of racism without exception. Also against anti-Semitism. The basis of the fight to stop the crimes in Palestine is also the fight for the right to free speech and expression of political views here at our end of the world,” she stated.

“The state of Israel cannot and should not be immune to criticism for its crimes and violations of international conventions. These critiques represent a completely legitimate [and correct] political position and have the right to public existence without being silenced or even punished with accusations of anti-Semitism.”

As Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza surpassed 100 days, on January 11, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began hearings on charges of genocide brought against Israel by South Africa.

Several countries including Malaysia, Colombia, Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Namibia, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and others expressed their support for South Africa’s case against Israel ahead of the proceedings.

As of January 14, the US-backed Zionist war on Palestinians has killed nearly 24,000 people including 9,600 children, and wounded more than 60,500 others, with more than 1.9 million people displaced in Gaza.

Despite appeals from all major international organizations, including the United Nations, human rights groups, and the majority of the world nations, Israel relentlessly carries on its pursuit for the destruction of Gaza, with the backing of the US and its allies in Europe. Currently, calls to prosecute Israel for war crimes are growing louder across the world.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/16/ ... -for-gaza/

Thousands march in Berlin for annual Luxmeburg-Liebknecht demo

Security forces arrested dozens of pro-Palestine activists who marched in the Luxmeburg-Liebknecht demonstration in Berlin on January 14. The annual demonstration commemorates the martyrdom of communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

January 15, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch

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Photo: AntiSiko Action Alliance

On Sunday, January 14, Sunday, thousands of people marched in Berlin as part of the annual Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration to mark the 105th anniversary of the martyrdom of the German communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Activists from various communist and anti-imperialist groups including the German Communist Party (DKP), Die Linke, Socialist German Workers Youth (SDAJ), Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), Communist Aufbau, trade unions, student and youth groups, anti-fascist groups, and community organizations, along with pro-Palestine and pro-Kurdish groups, took part in the demo.

Delegations of progressive parties from other parts of Europe also participated. The demonstrators paid tribute to Luxemburg and Liebknecht and expressed solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Meanwhile, the security forces attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators, injuring many, and arrested 16 demonstrators including musicians of the Turkish band Grup Yorum, who are currently on a hunger strike in solidarity with their comrades imprisoned in Germany. Progressive sections within and outside the country condemned the police attack on the demonstrators.

The “Traffic Light” coalition German government headed by chancellor Olaf Scholz has effectively criminalized solidarity with Palestine while extending “unconditional support for Israel.” The government has given a free hand to the police to curb pro-Palestine demonstrations in the country.

The German state’s support of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine and its complicity in escalating the war in Ukraine has been vociferously criticized by leftists and working-class sections within and outside the country. While Germany continues to fund imperialist wars, farmers and workers from many sectors are currently protesting cuts in subsidies and a fall in their real wages.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the founders of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), were murdered on January 15, 1919 by paramilitary forces called the Freikorps at the instigation of the Social Democratic Party (SPD)-led government which was trying to curb the Spartacist Uprising.

The Spartacist Uprising of January 1919 was a communist uprising against the post-WWI transition government and sought to set up a workers’ republic. The uprising started as a general strike on January 5 and quickly became an armed conflict between the workers led by the KPD and far-right paramilitary groups working on the orders of the SPD-led government.

Earlier on January 13, Saturday, the socialist newspaper Junge Welt organized the 29th International Rosa Luxemburg Conference at Berlin’s Tempodrom, which was attended by more than 3,500 people. Solidarity with Palestine and resistance to the rise of the far-right were the major topics discussed at the conference.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/15/ ... echt-demo/
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 21, 2024 8:34 pm

Massive Protests Against German Far-Right's Anti-Migrant Stance

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People protesting against right-wing extremism in Germany, Jan. 18, 2024. | Photo: X/ @dwnews

"From Cologne to Dresden, from Tübingen to Kiel, thousands are taking to the streets to stand up for our democracy and against the far-right," Scholtz said.

Over the last week, thousands of people have taken to the streets of Germany to protest against the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and its plan to mass expulsion of immigrants.

On Friday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that the far-right is attacking democracy and aims to destroy the cohesion of German society. He also expressed support for the massive protests that have been taking place across the country against AfD.

"From Cologne to Dresden, from Tübingen to Kiel, hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets... to stand up for our democracy and against the far-right," said the Social Democratic politician in a video.

Last Sunday, Scholz himself attended a demonstration in Potsdam, where AfD held a secret meeting in November to discuss plans to expel millions of immigrants, including those with German passports.


"Some of them wonder if they will still have a future here in Germany. This is terrible. And that's why I want to tell everyone: you are part of us. Our country needs you," the German chancellor emphasized.

He reminded that a new law stipulates that immigrants who choose Germany to live and share its values can obtain German citizenship after five years, instead of the current eight.

"Racism, antisemitism, and other anti-human attitudes are not compatible with naturalization," Scholz stated, reiterating that "intolerance is not tolerated" in the central European country and that the right to asylum is also part of Germany's constitutional order.


Nevertheless, the chancellor admitted that not everyone who comes to or tries to come to Germany has the right to stay in the country. He recalled that Germany has significantly strengthened controls at its borders in recent months.

Furthermore, with another law passed this week, Germany ensures that deportations will be easier and faster, Scholz said and emphasized that Germany must "manage migration better than before, in a very pragmatic way" but, "above all, without hatred or prejudice."

"If there's something that can never have a place in Germany again, it's the national socialist racial ideology," he declared regarding the plans discussed by far-right members in Potsdam.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mas ... -0011.html

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Orbán Outfoxes the EU in Nationalism vs. Technocracy Fight
Posted on January 21, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

Members of the EU Parliament are now calling on the unelected members of the European Commission to punish Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán by stripping his country’s voting rights. His crime? Opposing Project Ukraine

At least 120 of the parliament’s 705 members recently signed a letter calling for the drastic measure.

“Hungary has been repeatedly criticised for its erosion of the Rule of Law, and especially after Hungary’s actions to disrupt the decision-making of the Member-States in the December EUCO, we believe that the time has come for the European Parliament to take action,” the letter read. The “decision-making” Hungary disrupted was the quest to send 50 billion euros to Kiev. Here’s the whole letter:

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In the end, the EU Parliament voted (345 in favor, 104 against and 29 abstained) to ask the unelected EU Council to explore the possibility of stripping Hungary of its EU voting. Orbán already got the EU to unfreeze 10 billion-plus euros for Hungary in return for leaving the room during a vote to start accession talks with Ukraine, although 17.6 billion euros remains blocked.

While it’s almost comical at this point the way the EU continues to blow itself up for the failed Project Ukraine, the threats against Hungary are also useful in that they show how the EU’s “Rule of Law” mantra has always been nothing more than a political sanctions tool.

The disagreements between Budapest and the European Commission have existed for years, and it’s worth examining the whole “rule of law” saga for two reasons:

Orbán’s alleged violations are what allow Budapest to resist EU pressure in the first place.
It clearly delineates the showdown between a version of nationalism and the EU’s governance by unelected neoliberal elites.
What Are Hungary’s “Rule of Law” Violations?

The European Commission and parliament make a lot of noise about Hungary’s refusal to adhere to EU diktats on asylum, as well as the 2021 Hungarian child protection law, which contains a provision that prohibits or heavily restricts depictions of homosexuality and gender reassignment in media content and educational material addressed to audiences under 18 years of age.

But my guess is that the EU’s main target in forcing Hungary to adhere to the “rule of law” is really Orbán’s ability to resist EU pressure and keep Hungary semi-autonomous. The ongoing disputes between the Commission and Hungary are really about who controls Hungary – elected officials and wealthy elites in Hungary or unelected commissioners and wealthy Western elites.

This is an existential issue for the European Commission as it needs its “tools,” as Ursula describes them, or it loses control.


Those tools are chiefly used to pry open every EU state to be raided and run by transnational capital in a neoliberal EU. But by solidifying control over national capitalism, Orbán has rendered Ursula’s tools mostly useless. Nowhere has that been made more clear than his intransigence on Project Ukraine. In order for the commission to take charge, they must wrest control of Hungarian courts and finance and institute their vision of “rule of law.”

Orbán’s Long Nationalist Capitalism Project

When the European Commission complains about “rule of law” and corruption in Hungary, it is targeting a multi-year project by Orbán to take control away from international finance and place it in the hands of Hungarian finance and his government.

One of the more illuminating accounts I’ve read of Orbán’s multi-year project is from Miklos Sebak and Jasper Simons in the Socio-Economic Review. Sebak, the director of the Institute for Political Science at the Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest, and Simons, an assistant professor of European governance at the Utrecht University School of Governance, detail how Orbán outplayed the EU. Over many years, the Orbán government selected economic sectors to target and then used a network of private actors in its quest to re-nationalize and then re-privatize major banks and other assets to ‘national capitalists’ who are typically connected to and loyal to the government.

To the European Commission this is corruption. To the government in Budapest it is a strategy of financial nationalism to reconstruct Hungarian capitalism in order to regain autonomy. Orbán, who has been in politics since the Revolutions of 1989, saw early on that he could not really control Hungarian politics playing within the confines of neoliberal EU foundations. He believed his political survival required the reconstruction of domestic capitalism, which he could play a large role in controlling as opposed to leaving his fortunes in the hands of global finance. His goal was for a new ‘Hungarian’ capitalism and he took advantage of the Global Financial Crisis to do so. A quick review from Sebak and Simons:

The financial crisis resulted in a severe depreciation of the Hungarian forint vis-á-vis major loan currencies (notably the Swiss franc), and, along with surging unemployment, this led to a housing loan bust (Bohle, 2018b, p. 208). The issue of NPLs became highly politicized and turned into a symbol of the ineffectiveness and unfairness of the policies pursued by the socialist–liberal coalition. By 2010, the political landscape was set for a major policy switch.

The rhetoric and policy proposals of Fidesz fit the bill: as far back as 2004 it had denounced the MSZP–SZDSZ coalition as a ‘banker’s government’. Despite these omens, conventional wisdom never foresaw the magnitude of the policy changes that ensued with Viktor Orbán’s electoral sweep in 2010. Indeed, the financial elite and most commentators considered such a U-turn from a policy paradigm that had been dominant for well over a decade unfeasible. They saw it as something the international financial elites would frown upon,2 which would make it impossible to implement.

In the event, the reforms of the new government surpassed event the wildest of imaginations. In the midst of fiscal turmoil, the second government implemented a banking levy and financial transaction tax to retrieve revenue from financial institutions and over Hungarian forint (HUF) 2000 billion forint in mandatory private pension savings were ‘reclaimed’ by the state (Naczyk and Domonkos, 2016).3 Mortgage loan holders—especially those with higher than average income/wealth—received multiple rounds of bailouts (Bohle, 2018b, p. 209, Csizmady and Hegedus, 2016). The thrust of these interventions was aimed at the predominantly foreign-owned banking sector, which eventually footed the bill in almost every case when it was called upon to do so. One hugely important side effect of these manoeuvres was that they created a fertile ground for taking over the local subsidiaries of multinational financial conglomerates, which were buckling under the massive burden they carried as a result of the government’s policies. Thus, a period of financial nationalism begun.

The Orbán government did the same with other industries, typically seeking out those that produce above average profits and where the state is a significant procurer, as well as those that could influence voters’ financial situation and therefore, their vote.

For Orbán, the plan has been a wild success. He has been prime minister since 2010 despite opposition from the EU and US, and by 2020, he could declare, “We have put the majority of the media, energy and banking sectors into Hungarian hands.” For the European Commission, his brand of nationalism is a threat. As Sebak and Simons write:

The Hungarian case of financial nationalism was a project manufactured by emerging political and economic elites, based on a self-interested strategy aimed at capital accumulation which was understood to be a pivotal condition of state autonomy. Nationalist preferentialism was not primarily a tool for turning public money into private fortunes but a means to ensure the long-term survival of a political system which held values antithetical to the liberal mainstream of the European Union.

While Orbán clashed with foreign investors in the banking, media, and energy sectors, his government also paved the way for transnational manufacturing corporations – especially German ones.

As recently as August 2019, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised how EU funds were spent in Hungary: ‘If we look at Hungarian economic growth rates, we can see that this money has been well invested by the country, that it benefits the people, and Germany is happy to be able to participate in this growth by creating jobs in Hungary.’

Merkel was key to holding the “rule of law” disputes at bay and keeping Orbán and German manufacturers happy. She brokered a deal in 2020 that kicked the can down the road and temporarily unblocked EU pandemic funds to Hungary. As political economist and Orbán foe Gabor Scheiring notes, a few days later, the Hungarian government announced it would cover 30 percent of the cost of a new Mercedes car plant in Hungary. The very same week, the Orbán government said it would build a factory manufacturing German Lynx tanks, continuing Budapest’s enthusiastic purchases of German military exports under Orbán. Scheiring adds:

Besides showering them with money, Orbán’s government also invests heavily into maintaining excellent connections with influential German business circles. Klaus Mangold, a former top manager of Daimler, is a crucial ally of Orbán. Guenther Oettinger — a CDU member — also plays a crucial role in German-Hungarian business diplomacy. Nominated by the government, he recently became the co-chair of Hungary’s new National Science Policy Council.

Members of European People’s Party (EPP) — the chief political instrument of European economic elites and the party of Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Tusk — has long helped shield Orbán from more forceful measures, likely because of his friendliness towards just enough transnational corporations.

The EPP’s accommodating attitude began to change ever so slightly in 2022, however. Merkel was gone as the crisis manager, the war in Ukraine took precedence over all else, and the Commission began withholding billions in euros from Hungary – money it is now using to bribe Orbán into backing the failed Project Ukraine.

Thirty-two of the 120 signatories in the European Parliament calling to strip Hungary’s voting rights were from the EPP. But that’s still just 32 out of 176 EPP members in the current EU Parliament signing onto a symbolic move since only the Commission can strip Hungary of voting rights. And EPP opposition killed an effort by the liberal Renew Europe group to withdraw confidence in the Commission if it was to unfreeze more funds for Hungary.

Despite Orbán’s critics, for most Hungarians the situation is much improved from the dark neoliberal days of the 1990s and 2000s. Scheiring writes at Progress in Political Economy:

In the 1990s, a massive deaths of despair epidemic hit the country, similar to the one plaguing America’s working-class communities in the last two decades. Deindustrialization and privatization were major economic determinants of premature deaths in the 1990s and inequalities in life expectancy in the 2000s.

However, the economic transformation also hurt many financially. In 2009, two-thirds of Hungarians were in such financial precarity that they could not face unexpected expenses. In the same year, the average real wage was only a little more than 10 percent higher than in the early 1980s: three lost decades of real wage growth. Furthermore, the average hides increasing income inequalities.

It was the Hungarian Socialist Party that implemented the most avant-garde neoliberal reforms. By the end of the 2000s, masses of workers and members of the indebted and weak middle class grew disillusioned. In the lack of a progressive left-wing alternative, they drifted rightward. There was no progressive, left-wing language available to organize people’s disillusionment with the neoliberal transition.

Into that void stepped Orbán who helped steady the economy. Hungary has consistently been a top European performer in GDP growth. That’s a low bar to clear, but the inflation-adjusted average was above 4 percent per year in 2015-2019.

And yet, in tandem with Orbán’s national capitalism project has come a sustained crackdown on workers rights, including limits on the right to strike and collective bargaining (although it’s worth noting that economic inequality is worse across most of Western Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain than it is in Hungary). The Orbán government has also enacted a forced overtime law, a flat personal income tax of 15 percent, and slashed unemployment benefits among other measures. At the same time, Hungary has the lowest corporate tax rate (nine percent) in the OECD, helping it become a tax haven that fully exempts dividends and capital gains.

For some reason the European Commission never complains about these moves, although maybe I missed it.

“Juristocracy” or Democracy?

The European Commission is concerned about the courts, however, and wants Budapest to boost the powers of the National Judicial Council, a body of judges elected by judges.

Orbán’s nationalism brings back bad memories of Europe’s 20th century, and it undermines the EU project of transferring power away from the people to the more enlightened courts. As Le Figaro columnist Max-Erwann Gastineau writes:

A precautionary principle is now invoked against any party or regime claiming to correspond to the aspirations of the majority. Thus, as the philosopher Marcel Gauchet summarizes it, we have moved from democracy based on the French Revolution’s prevalent idea of ‘sovereignty of the people’—and its corollary: the law as an expression of the ‘national will’—to a ‘legal idea of democracy’, which centres on the safeguarding and extension of the rights and individual freedoms that were formerly curtailed, and are now protected by the ‘rule of law’, i.e. the development of independent courts…

As a result of this slow but constant change, the rule of law has changed in nature. It is no longer simply responsible for ensuring the safeguarding of fundamental rights, but aims to extend them, to ‘open up the greatest possible space to individual freedoms’ as a report published by the French Parliament in 2018recalls. It no longer simply gives judges the task of setting the legitimate scope of policy intervention, it extends the legitimate scope of the judge’s intervention to the point of giving the latter a decisive role in the process of collective standard-setting. Ran Hirschl, a Yale University graduate and professor of Law and Political science at the University of Toronto, affirms that by transferring an ‘unprecedented amount of power from representative institutions to judiciaries’, Western regimes have established ‘juristocratical’ regimes. These regimes, Hirschl continues, are dominated by a ‘coalition of legal innovators’ determining ‘the timing, extent, and nature of constitutional reforms’ and who, ‘while they profess support for democracy (…), attempt to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics’.

Hungary under Orbán argues that the people through their representatives should hold more power than judges. That may simply be window dressing because Orbán doesn’t want judges to interfere in any cronyism nor does he want the EU to use the courts as a backdoor into Hungary.

While some on the left may cheer the attempted crowning of the courts on because the opponent is the illiberal Orbán, it’s worth considering that if a true party on the left ever tries to emulate Orbán’s successful sidelining of the EU’s “tools,” it will face the same opposition. And that stranglehold from above continues to strengthen.

As just one example, during Mario Draghi’s 2021-22 stint as unelected prime minister of Italy, the former vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and president of the European Central Bank passed laws that will push for privatizing local public services, change the role of Italian municipalities, and transfer power from elected officials to judges at the Italian Competition Authority (ICA).

On the surface the ICA and other national competition authorities across Europe, which are of course overseen by Brussels under its European Competition Network, are about antitrust. But they’re also moving power in other areas away from elected officials to an unaccountable elite.

The Draghi law, for example, empowered the ICA to oversee secretive settlement procedures which can be used in cases concerning restrictive agreements and abuse of dominant position. The law entrusts the ICA with the task of defining through its own internal processes the procedural rules and amount of fine reductions in the event of a successful settlement procedure. Any information about the proceedings does not need to be disclosed to third parties.

The ICA will also be granted oversight of privatization efforts. Municipalities will be required to submit reports to the ICA justifying why certain services are better served by remaining run by the state, and there will be periodic reviews of these reasons, as well as increased cost-monitoring, i.e., pressure to reduce wages and benefits.

The stated goal is to eliminate red tape “affecting the freedom of economic initiative,” but in effect cash-strapped municipalities will continue to have a hard time providing adequate services, which will then be privatized.

While national governments are already beholden to EU tools like the dreaded Excessive Deficit Procedure and European Stability Mechanism, laws like these from Draghi make it so even regions and municipalities are straitjacketed by Brussels.

Maybe there’s a reason for the plummeting voter participation in Italy, Germany, France, and elsewhere across the EU?

It’s also worth pondering the commonly-cited argument that the transfer of power from the uneducated masses to the elite courts and commission safeguards against the tyranny of the majority, which will also help prevent the continent from relapsing into 20th century warfare. Leaving aside whether that’s historically accurate, today it is the EU elites who signed the bloc up for its ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, destroying the lives of millions of Ukrainians. It is the elite behind the ongoing economic war against Russia that has caused more harm to the economies of Europe with the heaviest burden falling on the working class. And it is the wise elite, safeguarding peace from the dangers of nationalism, that back the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... ngary.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 25, 2024 3:05 pm

Can a Real Left Party Save Germany From Itself?
Posted on January 24, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

Behold the Zeitenwende in action.

The government in Berlin has declared its unconditional support for Israel through increased arms sales and backing at the ICJ. Meanwhile, it aggressively suppresses criticism of such moves, labeling it as antisemitism.

On the Ukraine front, the government continues to rob from the country’s youth in order to support not-so-young-anymore Ukrainians’ march into the meat grinder. The escalation of commitment continues despite the austerity it’s set to bring on the homefront, and the latest German program on the chopping block to free up more money for Ukraine is theFederal Education and Training Assistance Act – a program provides grants so that low income students can get a higher education. The traffic light coalition of the Greens, Social Democrats and the Free Democrats promised an increase of funding upon entering office in 2021. Now, that long-awaited boost will instead be smaller relief for less recipients.


It’s difficult to take seriously the German Defense Ministry’s planning for war against Russia recently leaked to the tabloid Bild. This is the same country that is deindustrializing and can’t even send a brigade of soldiers to Lithuania without it setting off alarm bells that the country is low on manpower and also facing shortfalls in everything ranging from artillery shells to tents.

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As Germany doubles down not only on Ukraine, but also on its mission to join itself more tightly at the hip to the American empire and become more interventionist and more belligerent towards Russia and China, critical voices are hard to find in Germany. The media instead spends its time vilifying anyone who questions the logic of all these self-defeating measures.

This is a bit of a long-winded introduction to the topic of this post, but hopefully provides an idea of the lay of the land on which a new political party in Germany arrives with the aims of restoring some reason to the discourse. The temporarily named Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht – For Reason and Justice

is a breakaway faction from Die Linke (The Left) and launched on January 8.

Along with the ethno-nationalist Alternative for Germany, the Wagenknecht-led party is the only one playing out of tune to the drumbeats of war, and for that they are relentlessly attacked.

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Born in 1969 in East Germany to German and Iranian parents, Wagenknecht was a longtime member of the Party of Democratic Socialism, which later became Die Linke. She represented the party in the Bundestag from 2009 until last year when, after years of disagreeing with the party’s abandonment of working class politics, she left to form her own party.

Front and center in Wagenknecht’s new party is her acknowledgment that Germany’s current foreign policy has cast a shadow over domestic policy and is decimating the working class. It’s worth quoting Wagenknecht in full on her views of what German foreign policy should be:

Our foreign policy sits in the tradition of the German Chancellor Willy Brandt and the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who opposed thinking and acting in the logic of the Cold War with a policy of détente, reconciliation of interests and international cooperation. We fundamentally reject the resolution of conflicts by military means. We oppose the fact that more and more resources flow into weapons and war equipment instead of into the education of our children, research into environmentally friendly technologies or our health and care facilities. Nuclear armament and escalating conflicts between nuclear powers put the survival of humanity at risk and must be stopped. We seek a new era of détente and new treaties on disarmament and common security. The Bundeswehr has the mission to defend our country. It must be adequately equipped for this task. We reject the deployment of German soldiers in international wars as well as their stationing on the Russian border or in the South China Sea.

A military alliance (NATO) whose leading power has invaded five countries in the past years in violation of international law and killed more than 1 million people in these wars threatens others and leads to defensive reactions and thus contributes to global instability. Instead of an instrument of power for geopolitical goals, we need a defensive defence alliance that respects the principles of the UN Charter, strives for disarmament instead of committing to rearmament, and in which members meet as equals. Europe needs a stable security architecture, which in the longer term should also include Russia.

Our country deserves a self-confident policy that puts the well-being of its citizens at the centre and is driven by the realisation that US interests are sometimes very different from our interests. Our goal is an independent Europe of sovereign democracies in a multipolar world and not a new bloc confrontation in which Europe is ground down between the USA and the increasingly self-confident new power bloc around China and Russia.


These arguments are already resonating with German voters who are enormously dissatisfied with the current government and the state of the country as austerity is being implemented in order to increase military spending.The war against Russia has been an unmitigated disaster for most Germans. By severing itself from Russian energy, its industry has become uncompetitive and the effort to subsidize energy has drained government coffers; at the same time, after emptying its military stockpile for Ukraine, money is needed to replenish it, and Berlin wants to increase military spending overall in order to become more interventionist.

Although Wagenknecht’s party is still in its infant stages, it could take 14 percent of the vote in national elections according to an Insa poll published in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Jan. 13.

According to most national polls, that would mean Wagenknecht’s party is already fighting for third place despite only officially forming a few weeks ago. She’s ahead of the fake left parties like the war mongering Greens, a largely bourgeoisie cult that celebrates Germany’s deindustrialization and economic contraction because that means emissions reductions.

And she’s way ahead of the party she left, Die Linke, which has completely collapsed after abandoning nearly all of its former working class platform in favor of identity politics in an attempt to appear “ready to govern.” Much like the Greens, The Left increasingly stands for neoliberal, pro-war and anti-Russia policies. Former Left voters have increasingly switched to the AfD in response.

Wagenknecht might be clawing some of those voters back.

According to the Insa poll, her party could take 4 percentage points from the AfD and three percentage points from the conservative Christian Democratic Union. And one point each from the SDP and FDP.

In addition to Wagenknecht’s foreign policy positions, her platform consists of the following (oversimplified here, but it’s the usual for a class-based party on the left [hat tip MD in Berlin]):

A fairer tax system that benefits the working class.
Secure and well-paid jobs, with an emphasis on restoring Russian energy and thereby German manufacturing.
More education funding.
Continue to take climate action but do so in a way that doesn’t make the working class shoulder the majority of the burden.
Strengthen the social safety net.
Encourage robust public debate with an end to cancel culture and strengthen public broadcasting.
From the outside, Wagenknecht’s positions seem relatively boilerplate for a party on the left, but at the moment in Germany with the current atmosphere of uniformity in politics and the press, they are almost revolutionary.

She draws a clear line between Berlin’s belligerence towards Russia and how the weight of that stance falls most heavily on the German working class through deindustrialization and austerity in almost all areas of the budget except military.

Germans and European members of the working class as a whole agree.

The EU-wide division along class lines remains clear. 71 percent of the working class feel the war hurts them financially. Only 40 percent of the upper class feels the same way. 71 percent of those struggling financially say their situation has deteriorated in the past year while only 26 percent of the well-off feel similarly. Even the European Commission admits the following:

Respondents who have difficulties paying bills at least some of the time, and those who consider they belong to a lower social class are less satisfied with the EU and national responses to the war and are more likely to report serious personal financial consequences as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. They are also less supportive of proposed defence co-operation and spending measures, and less supportive of the energy policy directions presented in the survey.

And yet few parties across Europe make the connection between the war against Russia and the worsening economic fortunes of most citizens. Wagenknecht does. For that reason and the fact she ignores identity politics in favor of positions built firmly on class, she is being attacked just as much from supposed leftists as from the right.

It’s one thing to have Viktor Orban in Hungary or the new Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico speak the truth about Ukraine, but a voice on the left in the heart of Europe would be quite another.

Success from Wagenknecht could help alter the direction of the European left, reorienting it back to class-based politics, which could also mean a political voice for working class opposition to not only the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, but also whichever future wars the US-NATO cheerleaders want to sign up for without considering the repercussions for European workers.

Liberal Lines of Attack

Maybe more interesting than Wagenknecht’s platform is the response to it.

The fear it causes are evident in the intensifying attacks on Wagenknecht and are best summed up by a few recent pieces by liberal Oliver Nachtwey and a supposed expert in ideological polarization, Torben Lütjen.

Nachtwey, a voice of liberalism and an associate professor of social structure analysis at the University of Basel, has penned recent pieces in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Jacobin, and New Left Review lampooning Wafenknecht. He ridicules her neat clothes and hairstyle. He’s fond of reciting former German Party of Democratic Socialism chair Lothar Bisky’s comparison of Wagenknecht with Rosa Luxemburg: “Soon she’ll be limping too.”

It’s an odd line of attack for someone claiming the leftist ground to make – mocking someone for wanting to emulate Luxemburg, a dedicated antiwar activist and Marxist – but also one that provides insight to Nachtwey’s allegiances.

Beneath such character assassination attempts lies a real fear of Wagenknecht and the politics she represents. In FAZ Nachtwey writes the following:

Wagenknecht has set her sights on the anti-vanguard, or conservative workers who have managed some upward mobility and now fear backsliding. Politically speaking, this strategy is far from baseless. Although other German parties are also trying to win over this group, no one offers them the same cultural validation as Wagenknecht. No one is better at giving voice to their dark emotions — the emotions of those who consider themselves mainstream but feel like outsiders.

The horror. How is she doing this? By appealing to voters who don’t fit neatly into a liberal box. Nachtwey explains that she is “attempting to link milieus that are alienated from democracy for different reasons” and “is a populist in the classical sense, posing as a champion of the people against a corrupt and incompetent establishment.”

She goes against the establishment line that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a madman prepared to conquer all of Europe:

In Wagenknecht’s geopolitical coordinate system, Russia’s war of aggression is a defensive reaction to NATO expansion, and Putin is a rational power player simply trying to keep the West in check. This line has its roots in the West German peace movement and the SED/PDS, and Wagenknecht has been able to garner support with it in the former East, where it still enjoys considerable purchase. At the same time, it has also made her a star among internet conspiracy theorists.

At New Left Review he writes that, “By juxtaposing ‘globalist’ institutions to national ones, Wagenknecht’s counter-programme offers nothing more than an improbable return to capitalism’s Golden Age.” On the ideas of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘industrial competition’ Nachtwey writes:

Both concepts, which feature heavily in the work of sociologists like Wolfgang Streeck and Anthony Giddens, are dubious from a Marxist point of view, since they substitute internationalism with national-Keynesianism, cooperation with capitalist rivalry. Moreover, if reverting to an embedded national welfare state is difficult in a world where capital flows and productive relations have become transnational, the likelihood is that this project will simply end up producing a regressive form of politics. Wagenknecht exemplifies this danger. Her singular focus on resovereigntization has supplanted a politics of class with one of the nation.

If Nachtwey doesn’t have you convinced, there is the serious argument put forward by serious people that Wagenknecht is a 21st century version of Benito Mussolini.

Torben Lütjen, a German author and political scientist who from 2009-15 headed a Volkswagen-Foundation-funded research group at the University of Düsseldorf that explored ideological polarization in Western democracies, makes this case in a November piece published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. It is titled “The Great Metamorphosis. From the Early German Romantics to Benito Mussolini to Sahra Wagenknecht and Back: A Sociologically Informed History of Political Conversions.”

In it Lütjen compares Wagenknecht to Mussolini who was a socialist before he went on to his more infamous role. One of the problems with analyses like these that compare a present day figure to an historical one is that it’s fairly easy to come up with parallels. For example, you could note how Mussolini fancied himself an intellectual and later favored war with the USSR, therefore any highbrow European supporting today’s Russophobia is similar to the fascist dictator who ruled Italy for two decades a century ago.

Anyways, according to Lütjen, Wagenknecht is “join[ing] a long line of political defectors from left to right.” More:

From the statements surrounding her founding of the party, however, it becomes clear that Wagenknecht has long since taken a step further: she is already in the stage of the renegade, the convert.

The renegade is already clearly and publicly breaking with his old beliefs, claiming to have freed himself from a corset of outdated and ossified beliefs. Because he is finally free, he can now speak the truth without regard to the old dogmas.

This argument that Wagenknecht is not of the left rests upon the belief that she has changed rather than the political parties around her, which is demonstrably false. After all, Die Linke, the party Wagenknecht bolted from, once held her same positions. It was only in recent years with neoliberalism’s takeover in Germany that it began to abandon most of what it previously stood for.

It seems to me what Nachtwey and Lütjen are saying is that favoring working class policies is regressive and dangerous, and these arguments are representative of the fear that the return of a class-based left would crash the cushy party of a finance-centered political economy that is welded to the politics of recognition.

In this sense, Wagenknecht is “anti-vanguard” as Nachtwey claims, as her progressive populism aims to return to a worker-centered counterhegemony against that of finance capital.

I wonder if Nachtwey and Lutjen’s writings reach or are even intended to reach many of the working class voters Wagenknecht is trying to appeal to; instead their arguments are more likely for upper class liberals in order to reassure them that neoliberalism is on the side of the angels, that Putin and the Russians are evil, and that this Wagenknecht character who questions these certitudes is a member of the riff raff.

These efforts to depict Wagenknecht as right-wing (also recently featured in The Guardian), are similar to what was coming from Wagenknecht’s former party and unintentionally show the bankruptcy and increasing irrelevance of neoliberalism and its parties’ attempts to pretend to be on the left while ignoring class-based politics. Die Linke, which was already in a tailspin, has collapsed since Wagenknecht’s departure.

Wagenknecht had become a pariah in Die Linke for her arguments against joining the political groupthink on Russia, as well as a refusal to focus on identity politics instead of class.

Back in 2016 at a Die Linke party conference, a member of the “antifascist” group, “Cake for Misanthropists,” shoved a pie in her face apparently in retaliation for Wagenknecht suggesting there were limits to the amount of refugees and immigrants Germany could take in.

Based on her early strong polling, Wagenknecht may yet have the last laugh.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01 ... tself.html

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France Is Reeling From The Powerful Blow That Russia Just Dealt To Its Prestige In Ukraine

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ANDREW KORYBKO
JAN 23, 2024

Turning a blind eye to its citizens’ mercenary activity in Ukraine backfired by leading to a major loss of prestige instead of the expected gains.

Russia carried out a successful strike against dozens of mercenaries in Kharkov last week that ended up killing at least five dozen of them, the majority of whom were reported to be French. Moscow blamed Paris for their deaths by turning a blind eye to them traveling to Ukraine, which Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu claimed that his country is powerless to prevent because “we are still a democracy”. That sheepish response lent credence to the Kremlin’s claims and left the Elysse with egg on its face.

What just took place was a powerful blow to French prestige since it represents the largest single loss of its mercenaries in recent memory. It remains unclear exactly how qualified each of the deceased were, such as if they were naïve self-styled “volunteers” or had prior experience with their armed forces, but Russia’s strike nevertheless taught France a lesson that it won’t soon forget. Turning a blind eye to its citizens’ mercenary activity in Ukraine backfired by leading to a major loss of prestige instead of the expected gains.

Paris thought that the dispatch of its citizens to that country would imbue their own with “glory” after they came back from their “safari” with a bunch of stories to tell about how many Russians they killed. Fighting against Russia isn’t the same as fighting against non-state actors in Africa, however, since the first has the technological prowess to kill these mercenaries before they even know what happened. That’s exactly what occurred after they took Russia’s media-reported “weakness” for granted.

The Mainstream Media spent the first 18 months of the special operation from February 2022 till the undeniable failure of Kiev’s counteroffensive in August 2023 peddling fantasies about how quickly the West was about to crush Russia via their Ukrainian proxies. The idea that Russia would repel that unprecedented assault and then put Ukraine back on the defensive was deemed impossible, which is why many traveled there to participate in this supposedly historic operation to get some of the “glory”.

Even though Mainstream Media radically recalibrated their official narrative about this conflict from fall onward, many mercenaries still didn’t believe that Ukraine had already lost and that all the fighting since then is basically aimed at perpetuating the conflict for the military-industrial complex’s sake. They remained naively delusional about its dynamics and couldn’t imagine that Russia is anywhere near as formidable as it actually is, which explains why they still continued traveling to Ukraine to fight it.

It's therefore not just the French government that’s to blame for the deaths of its mercenaries like the Kremlin claimed, but also the Mainstream Media for imbuing them with completely false perceptions about this conflict that led to them wanting to travel there for “glory” in the first place. Instead of receiving what they came for, they’ll now be sent back in body bags (if any identifiable pieces of them remain that is), with all the ignominy that they and their country just brought upon themselves.

French prestige will struggle to recover from Russia’s powerful blow since its mercenary community and permanent bureaucracy alike are still in a state of shock. All that it took to give them both an unforgettable reality check from the Mainstream Media’s lies was one attack in Kharkov last week. The most misguided among them might still travel to Ukraine regardless and continue warmongering against Russia respectively but society as a whole should reflect on whether staying the course is really worth it.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/france-i ... e-powerful
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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