The Political Vocation Of Romania

Visigrad Post, 22 Feb By Thibaud Cassel.

Part 1/3 here! – Part 2/3 here! – 3/3 – Part 3: Romania on the wire – The Celebration of the centenary of modern Romania on December 1, 2019.

The “evil wind” coming from the East, denounced by the French President, could well sweep away the – already flaky – Liberal varnish of Romania, and even weaken its grip on the West of the continent. In a context of profound political recomposition, what is the place for an exceptional country, both Latin and Eastern at the same time, of 20 million inhabitants?

The “evil wind” coming from the East, denounced by the French President, could well sweep away the – already flaky – Liberal varnish of Romania, and even weaken its grip on the West of the continent. In a context of profound political recomposition, what is the place for an exceptional country, both Latin and Eastern at the same time, of 20 million inhabitants?

Cross-cultural season and zeitgeist

Romania has been cultivating an interested friendship with France since her emergence as a modern nation. This echoes today through the fact that the two countries were organizing on the occasion of the centenary of 1918 a “cross-cultural season”, made of temporary exhibitions from one end of the continent to the other. This event was inaugurated in Paris on November 27, by the Romanian and French Presidents, Klaus Johannis and Emmanuel Macron. This was a unmissable opportunity to measure the deep gap that separates the instigator of the Springtime of the Peoples in 1848 from the variegated hexagon of “La République en Marche !” (“The Republic on the move!”, Emmanuel Macron’s party, Ed.); but also an opportunity to gauge what Romania can bring to a Europe in end-of-cycle.

Romania and the West

On November 27, Klaus Johannis stuck himself to celebrate “the common history and privileged relationship between France and Romania”, while the French president gratified the assistance with his complex thinking, alternating commonplaces and absurdities. “Culture is one of the cements of our Europe,” he said in the post-cultural setting of the Georges Pompidou Museum, before adding that “the language of Europe is translation”. The event was not about cultural soft power, for which France is admirably endowed, but was a Liberal-Libertarian mantra least likely to cultivate a real Franco-Romanian fraternity. When a country stops having some esteem, regardless how peripheral it may be, one can only anticipate that it will soon cease to fear; Emmanuel Macron’s France is giving way to more determined actors.

Take advantage of the American-German tussle?

The timid reorientation at work for two years in Romanian politics is to find the sense of national interest: if “America first”, then “Romania first” too. We have recently seen the US government take up the cause for the current Romanian government, while Germany supports the opposition. These frictions between two major Western powers offer unexpected room for maneuver in Bucharest. The country is in the German economic orb, but above all in the American strategic orb: not only considering her border situation with Ukraine and Moldova but also in the Black Sea with the uncertain evolution of Turkey. But today Romania has nothing to lose, or at least not much anymore to give up. To the point that the taxation of banks and foreign multinationals, the refusal of poor quality products flooding its market, etc. are among the options (finally) seriously studied at the last National Council of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in power, last December 16.

Romania and Visegrad

The repositioning of Romania within the West can be compared to that of Poland and other central European countries: Americanophiles, though firmly anchored to the German economy. The countries of former Eastern Europe must cooperate in order to matter. The rallying of Romania to the dynamics of the Visegrad Group proves to be essential for the affirmation of a complete actor on the European scene, that is to say, able to follow a European agenda that is not that of Berlin, nor that of Washington.

Romania is presiding over the European Union in the first half of 2019, and it is in Sibiu that the post-Brexit European summit of May 9, 2019 will be held. This momentary passage in the first row could protect Bucharest from a too virulent ostracism.

An illiberalism coming from the Left?

The political vigor of the countries of Central Europe has re-rooted itself into populism in recent years – that is to say, into democracy. But populism needs vector to succeed. In this sense, it can not be born of an abolition of the right-left cleavage, although it must ultimately lead to it. In Romania, it is the PSD that captures popular aspirations and intends to defend “those from somewhere” against “those from nowhere”. Despite the political vicissitudes (split, fusion and change of name), the PSD remains the main heir to the Communist Party of Nicolae Ceausescu. The “illiberal” turning point in Romania is therefore not initiated, as in Hungary and Poland, by the right. This evolution rests largely on the shoulders of Liviu Dragnea. Deputy Prime Minister from December 2012 to December 2014 and President of the House of Representatives since December 2016, he has been holding even more power from the presidency of the PSD he has been assuming since the summer of 2015.

Romanian pragmatism at work

The Romanian PSD, an important member of the Party of European Socialists (PES), can play a significant role: to undermine Liberalism from the Left as Orban’s Hungary scuttle it from the Right. The flair of the Romanians for the opportune end of reigns could be sensitive to the ever more feverish climate in the run-up to the European elections of May 2019. The stake for the Romanian Left? Do not run with the Titanic of the Liberal Left, turn its back on a derisory and disqualified ideology and rely on the Romanian electorate, tired of the quasi-colonial exploitation of the country. To apply Nietzsche’s pitiless maxim: “That which is ready to fall, shall ye also push!”. This Byzantine versatility, Romania gets it wonderfully.

Towards an alternative Left-wing force in Europe?

The Romanian situation is not unique. This is the case in several peripheral European countries: in Portugal, in Denmark in another way and of course in the CEECs. We can also associate the movement Aufstehen, launched by the German Sarah Wagenknecht inside Die Linke. But the surest partner of this trend, and its forerunner, is no doubt the 5-Stars Movement (M5S) in Italy. Gathered outside the Socialist (PES) and Leftist (GUE) groups at European level, these political forces would play a necessary role in drying up the reserves that the Liberal center always finds on its left to free a majority. If such a platform would emerge in the context of the European elections, no doubt that it would strengthen up during the 2019-2024 term of office of members of the radical Left that current events disillusioned. The case of Djordje Kuzmanovic provides an exemplary case: this spokesman of “Unsubmissive France” has resigned to protest the Leftist and Communitarian drift of the party, unable in his eyes to get out of the Liberal net. Fortunately, European policy opens the field to new perspectives.

Translated by the Visegrad Post.

Nation Revisited # 149 March 2019, by Bill Baillie:

Cameron’s Chaos

Dave Cameron has gone off to write his memoirs, leaving our country in a state of chaos. He was one of the worst prime ministers in British history. He picked a fight with the EU to appease the right wing of the Tory Party, but he got nowhere with Brussels so he called a referendum. ‘The People’, led by the popular press and pissed-off by ten years of austerity, voted to leave the EU, but there was no plan for such a decision and after years of argument we are due to leave the EU on 31st March unless Brexit is delayed or abandoned.

Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg predict a Brexit boom but the Governor of the Bank of England is less optimistic, and to add to the confusion the our withdrawal is led by Theresa May who voted to remain in the EU.

Leaving the EU is a momentous decision but whatever happens, we will still have an unbalanced economy, a divided society, a housing crisis, a staggering national debt, cash-strapped armed forces, a National Health Service dependant on foreign labour, and an educational system that impoverishes students. None of these problems will be helped by Brexit, they all require the sort of political action that our politicians are incapable of delivering.

Impossible Dreams?

Fascism today is just a political insult but in 1922 it was a populist revolution that swept Benito Mussolini to power in Italy. At first, the regime was content to govern but by the time of the Italian Social Republic, it had developed a full range of progressive policies; a guaranteed minimum wage,, workers’ partnership, free education, and social security from the cradle to the grave. These ideals were enshrined in the constitution of the RSI. Unfortunately, by then it was too late.

The post-war Labour government introduced the National Health Service but by the time of the Korean War, it dropped some services to save money. That’s why opticians, chiropodists, and most dentists are outside of the system. The present Tory government loudly proclaims its support for the NHS but suspicions remain that they want to sell it off to the private health care providers and insurance companies. At present, the NHS is protected by legislation but the Tory desire for a trade deal with the United States could open the door to American competition.

The Welfare State costs money that the Tories would rather spend on royal weddings, aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles. But the rise in homelessness and the use of food banks is a national disgrace. The main parties have acknowledged the problem but at the moment they are preoccupied with Brexit. Perhaps the splits now tearing the old parties apart are the start of a realignment of politics. We can only hope so because social justice is not an impossible dream.

Donald Trump equates health care with Communism. He thinks that everybody should pay for their own doctors. But the sick and the unemployed can’t afford expensive medical insurance. As fair-minded Europeans, we must reject Trump’s selfishness and defend our NHS.

Oil

It is fashionable to criticise the banks but the oil companies are just as bad. In his autobiography, ‘Pantaraxia’, Nubar Gulbenkian tells how his oil billionaire father took him to lunch in New York while he was on holiday. The first day they were treated royally, and as they left the restaurant Calouste told his son, “I’ve got a million dollars in that bank.” The second day was just as good and as they left daddy told him that he had a million dollars in that bank. And so it went on with all the major American banks. On the last day, after a sumptuous lunch his father said nothing, so Nulbar asked him: “how much have you got in their bank daddy?”, he replied: “not a cent, I owe them a million dollars.”
 

Debtors without collateral are written off but those with assets are treated as valued customers. And its the same with countries. Venezuela is bankrupt and its people are starving but they are sitting on one of the world’s biggest oilfields. It’s only a matter of time before a consortium of banks and oil companies takes over the country. Venezuela tried to install a socialist system under Hugo Chavez but the experiment was ruined by the collapse of oil prices.

But Venezuela is not the first state to be taken over by the oil companies. Britain controlled Iran through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and when prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (pictured) tried to nationalise it in 1953 he was ousted in a coup mounted by the CIA. The Shah was installed as a Western puppet but when he showed signs of independence in 1979, he was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini who had been given refuge by France. Currently, Iran is being strangled by American sanctions.

President Trump has reneged on his agreement to lift sanctions against Iran in return for them scrapping nuclear weapons. Iran is no threat to the US but her armed forces are engaged in Syria and Yemen.

Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr Ten Percent because creamed-off 10% of all the oil traded in the British Empire. Today, more countries are producing oil and Britain and America no longer dominate the market. Oil will run out one day but the producers are already investing in alternative energy. People all over the world think that their fates are decided by the illiterate crosses they put on ballot papers, but the important decisions are made in the boardrooms of the big oil corporations.

Oil dominates the economies of the Western nations and influences their foreign policies. Russia is accused of being too authoritarian and aggressive but her real crime is to be a major oil producer. 

Jimmy Miller

I first met my friend Jimmy Miller in 1983 when I moved back to South London. He was living in a council flat awarded to him by Lambeth Council. But a highly organised gang of middle-class squatters was occupying all the vacant flats in the area and forcing out the working-class tenants. They only wanted their own kind to be housed. Jimmy was having none of that and he defended himself vigorously, only to be arrested and evicted for his bravery.

Jimmy was born in Liverpool in the Thirties. I don’t know exactly how old he was but he was older than me. He served in the Royal Corps of Signals and he took part in the defence of Kuwait in 1961. General Qasim of Iraq massed his forces on the Kuwaiti border ready to invade The British rushed 7,000 troops to Kuwait and broadcast bogus messages indicating a massive military build-up. Qasim fell for the deception and promptly withdrew his forces.

After the army Jimmy worked as a painter at the giant Cammell Laird shipyard. There he was elected as a shop steward representing the painters. Most of the union officials were communists who put up posters of Marx and Lenin on their office walls. Not to be outdone Jimmy put up a poster of Adolf Hitler and defied anyone to touch it.

After leaving Liverpool, he worked all over the country renovating Woolworth’s stores and eventually got a job as a maintenance man at Bon Marche in Brixton. For all his National Socialist convictions Jimmy got on well with the West Indian community. He always used to say that its the politicians who are to blame not the immigrants.

He moved back to Liverpool when he retired but he always sent me a Christmas card and a calendar. He was suffering from Parkinson’s and his handwriting grew more erratic each year, but this year his package did not arrive at all and I guess that he has passed away.

Jimmy Miller was a brave, intelligent, and generous man. He was raised as a Catholic but in later life, he was attracted to the Salvation Army. And that’s how I picture him, to the words of the anthem, “Onward Christian Soldiers marching on to war.”

Assassination

Government agents and terrorists regularly kill each other. Recent murders by the Russians and the Saudis have been roundly condemned by the West but we have a long and distinguished history of political assassination. Britain’s most famous hit happened on 4th June 1942 when two Special Operations Executive officers, Josef Cabcik and Jan Kubis, shot dead Richard Heydrich the Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi reprisals were expected but the British government did not know that the town of Lidice would be destroyed together with thousands of civilians.

The Nazi reaction was as cruel as the British treatment of dissidents in India. In April 1919, following days of rioting in which four Europeans were killed, Brig Gen Dyer (pictured) ordered his men to open fire on an unarmed crowd of protesters, 379 were killed and 1,200 wounded. The Amritsar atrocity was more mass murder than assassination but it showed the world who was in charge of India; at least, for the next thirty years.

Throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles, IRA terrorists were shot by Protestant paramilitaries on information supplied by MI5. Sometimes the government acted in the other direction. Lenny Murphy, the Protestant terrorists known as the Shankhill Butcher, was killed because he had become an embarrassment. 

Our fictitious national hero, James Bond has a licence to kill. Commander Bond 007 was an invention but his creator, Ian Fleming, was a British agent who understood how these things are done.

Our American allies shot dead Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. American Special Forces killed him and dumped his body in the sea. His death was announced by President Obama who welcomed the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda.

It seems that bumping off political opponents is not necessarily a crime. When we kill our enemies we are fulfilling the will of the people, but when authoritarian foreign governments kill their opponents they are acting like savages.The truth is that all governments conduct under-cover operations and no individual government has the right to give lectures on good behaviour.

Mosley on Race, from “Union” May 1948

When Oswald Mosley wrote this article in 1948 it would have been possible to send back recently-arrived West Indian workers. Today things are different. We can enforce our rules of entry and deport foreign criminals but a mass round up of immigrants is out of the question.

Race is the first reality of European Unity. This unique stock of men in Europe has, in fact, produced the culture, the values and the achievements of the West. This race, in their family of Europe, has produced most things that matter on this globe. This achievement has been the result of their character, which in turn was the result of their race.

Horses go further and faster than donkeys because they are horses and not donkeys. We cannot avoid the basic facts of nature, even if we would. Nor can we drown them beneath a verbiage of words. If we are to build then surely we must build on real foundations, and I know that we do.

Therefore, I affirm the fact that the first reality and rock foundation of European Union is Race! Who are our nearest kindred? The answer is the German people. The British and the Germans are the most closely related of all European peoples. The Northern French also belong to this close circle of Race or Family and were united with the Germans under Charlemagne.

Near in blood to us, and the Germans, are the whole Northern block of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. A related stock is also the great family of the Latin nations, whose culture has adorned the illuminated pages of European history.

You cannot deny nature; you cannot create in defiance of reality.

An Alternative View - Bernard Franklyn

Since the early 1950s, every aspect of our once great country has been destroyed. Only old age pensioners in their seventies, like myself, are aware of the changes that have been made. When we are gone there will be no one left to explain what we have lost to the younger generation. I feel that we need to urge OAP’s to become vocal, but that is hard work. Still, I am going to urge more of my generation to explain the situation to their children and grandchildren. My daughter and her husband both work but are unable to keep up with the bills. In the 1950s wives didn’t work, the families were able to survive and pay all the bills on the husband’s wage. In the 1950s and ‘60s, virtually everyone could afford a mortgage so long as you were a regular saver. In 1958 a terraced house in the suburbs of London would have sold for £10,000; today it would be £500,000. The house would not be worth any more, that is how our fraudulent governments have reduced the value of money by just creating it out of thin air. Parliament is run by our enemies and has been throughout my life. The time is long overdue to find our own BRITISH candidates who have the knowledge and skills to run the country. You need no qualifications to or knowledge a prime or cabinet minister. You only have to be subservient to political Mafia that really rules our country, nay the world.

The people of Europe have no control over the EU. It is an ever growing nightmare with even more power over its people than the Soviet Union had. If the public had elected the National Front in the 1960s we wouldn’t have joined the EEC which became the EU, we could have saved what was left of our manufacturing industry, we wouldn’t have allowed the standard of education to be lowered through the introduction of the comprehensive system, there would have been no mass immigration programme, anti-British Jews wouldn’t have been appointed to the senior positions of the judiciary, proper sentencing of murderers and criminals would have continued, the drug problem would not have escalated like it has, there would be no national debt as we would have created interest free banking which the EU would never allow.

Britain was extremely successful at managing its own affairs long before the EU was thought of. We will manage again, so long as we have a government that doesn’t want to keep us tied to the United States, Israel and the EU. If you are not sure, watch RT news on channel 234 and see how often these three work in instantaneous harmony whenever they want to do something diabolical.

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Nation Revisited

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New Observer, “South Africa: ANC Will Seize White Property in Cities, Not Just Farms, Says President”, 28 Feb 2019:

White-owned property in South Africa’s cities and towns will be seized along with white farms in order to provide “high-density housing” for blacks, and whites are to blame for the country’s collapsing train services, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced.

Addressing a meeting of “traditional leaders” in the Cape Town City Hall on Wednesday this week, as part of the ANC’s election campaign, Ramaphosa also blamed Apartheid [read whites] for African backwardness and the fact that blacks are always poor.

“Land in cities and towns must be identified for seizure without compensation upon which high-density housing can be developed so that ordinary South Africans can live close to their places of work,”  Ramaphosa told the meeting. “Apartheid distributed people outside of the major cities. The poor lived outside the cities, and the rich inside them,” he continued. “Just like other world cities, South Africa had to develop high-density housing in the city and town centers, and the government was going to use the seizure of land without compensation program to identity suitable land within the urban areas.

“This is going to reduce the living costs of the poor who will then not have to travel so far to their places of work,” he said.

This is the first open confirmation that it is not just farms which are going to be seized under the “no compensation” rules scheduled to be introduced in March 2019, but also white properties in urban areas.

Ramaphosa went on to blame whites for the collapsing railway infrastructure in South Africa, even though the ANC has ruled the country for the last 25 years.

He acknowledged that the public transport infrastructure was very poor and that it cost the South African economy dearly. He undertook to “pull the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) right” after a new series of criminal corruption scandals recently shook the state-owned rail transportation system.

“Some train stations in the townships [the black suburbs] are closed. People do not use them anymore because of crime and the unreliability of the train system,” Ramaphosa told the meeting, adding that this too was due to the “heritage of apartheid [read whites] which left us with poor public transport systems.”

President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, and close confidant over the course of ten years - through the Presidential Campaign - Michael Cohen, testifies publicly before House Oversight Committee.

Background -

Ex-Trump lawyer Cohen to testify publicly before Congress:

Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison for his role in making illegal hush-money payments to two women to help Trump in 2016 in violation of campaign laws, and for lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.

Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, once said he would take a bullet for Trump, who called his former close confidante a “Rat” on Twitter in mid-December.

Tribesmen abound…

From all sides…

Alain Finkielkraut being confronted by yellow-vest protesters.

“In Face of Yellow-Vest Critics, France Moves to Criminalize Anti-Zionism”—-  By GUILLAUME DUROCHER, Unz Review, 24 Feb 2019:

The French Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut was recently profusely insulted by yellow-vests on the margins of a demonstration. This attack has been widely-portrayed as anti-Semitic, even though the yellow-vests in question explicitly attacked Finkielkraut as a Zionist. As Damien Viguier, the anti-Zionist intellectual Alain Soral’s lawyer, observed:

Alain Finkielkraut was called “a dirty Zionist shit (a Zionist two times again and “shit” perhaps three times more), a “fascist,” a “racist (two times), and “hateful.” He was asked to leave the demonstration in direct times: “get out of here” (twice), “piss off,” “go back home to Israel!” I can see in all this insults, or defamatory comments, I would even grant a light violence, but I find no trace of a discriminatory motivation. This shows well that the words “anti-Semite” and “anti-Semitic” are used in an absolutely arbitrary manner.

It is true that “Zionist” is often used as a euphemism for “Jew.” But it is also true that many anti-Zionists are happy to befriend genuinely anti-Zionist Jews such as Gilad Atzmon (himself an associate of Soral’s). Finkielkraut was likely attacked for his values rather than his ethnicity.

This subtlety did not prevent the incident from triggering a veritable pro-Semitic moral panic across the entire politico-media class. The media lamented the “anti-Semitic” attack on Finkielkraut and he was comforted by politicians from across the political spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right, including the bulk of prominent nationalist and identitarian figures.

Much of the foreign press (the London Times, The Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraph Agency . . .) misrepresented things further, claiming that Finkielkraut had been called a “dirty Jew.” This is a genuine example of fake news.

Then a Jewish cemetery in the Alsatian village of Quatzenheim was desecrated, with over 90 tombstones being sprayed with with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. One tombstone was sprayed with the words: “Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe,” meaning “Alsatian Black Wolves,” an Alsatian nationalist group which has been inactive since 1981 . . . Of course, a hate hoax cannot be excluded: one thinks of the recent Jussie Smollett debacle or the Israeli-American who instigated 2000 supposed anti-Semitic bomb and shooter threats over the years.

For those whom anecdotal evidence was not sufficient, the regime also trotted out the usual “statistics” about, seemingly released every year of every decade, showing a massive increase in “anti-Semitic” acts. I will only say that such statistics are dubious in general, repetitive, and obviously ethnically and politically convenient. Grand old man Jean-Marie Le Pen commented:

There is no anti-Semitism in France which would justify a mobilization of public opinion. . . . Incidentally, we’re given a figure of a 74% increase in [anti-Semitic] attacks. Compared to what? I ask that we have the list of all these attacks committed against the Jews, in such a way that we can actually tell the difference between a graffiti, a murder, a telephone call, or a schoolyard scuffle. It is true that radical Islamism is extrapolating in a sense the Israeli-Arab conflict into France. It is much more a matter of anti-Zionism than anti-Semitism.

READ MORE...

Lega and Five Star ties to Russia invokes a specter that haunts Kaczyński

Euractive, “Trans-Europe Express – Friends won’t be friends” 22 Feb 2019:

By Gerardo Fortuna with Alexandra Brzozowski
   
First official projections of seats in the new European Parliament have shown two right-wing ruling parties, Italy’s Lega and Poland’s PiS, as the second and third-biggest single party in the next Parliament, but the highly anticipated ‘Italo-Polish axis’ doesn’t seem to pan out.

Earlier this week (18 February), the European Parliament released the first survey on what the next European chamber could look like, based on a cross-section of national polls ahead of the European elections in May.

Updated projections will be presented to the public in the coming weeks, but at the current stage, the most significant starting point for analysis is that Matteo Salvini and Jarosław Kaczyński appear to be two top dogs ahead the election night.

Lega and PiS are expected to win 27 and 22 seats, respectively, becoming the second and the third-biggest party within the hemicycle. The first, as usual, will be Germany’s conservative CDU.

A pact between the two right-wing parties is looking more and more lucrative for both and initial contact was already made by Salvini himself, who flew to Warsaw in January to meet Kaczyński, who essentially leads PiS from the background, without being its formal chairman, and test the waters for a possible Eurosceptic alliance.

During the visit, Salvini hailed a new ‘Italo-Polish axis’ to replace the dominant French-German one, sparking a “European spring”. At the time, this looked like the beginning of a political earthquake but, as it turns out, the Warsaw talks seemed more like a one-time thing.

There was no follow up in the weeks after and the settlement of an Italo-Polish axis now seems to be dead in the water, or at least postponed for after the elections.

There’s a red flag that shows that the parties have come to a standstill. In Poland, Salvini was asked if he was thinking about running for the European elections together with his current government’s ally in Italy, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He said that there was no need to run together with them and some observers noted that it was because, with Kaczyński, Salvini wouldn’t need Di Maio.

But according to the Italian press, this week Lega proposed Five Star Movement to join them, even in a political group within the European Parliament, but got nyiet as an answer.

If Lega is considering getting someone else on board, distances with the European conservatives on certain topics – above all Russia –  are turning out to be unbridgeable.

At the current stage, conservatives need Salvini to replace the Tories, rather than the other way around, as good performance is expected also for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National.

Background:

“The League, for example, has regularly protested European Union sanctions against Russia. In March 2017, League chief Matteo Salvini even signed a cooperation agreement with United Russia.”

“Evidence of the 5 Star Movement’s friendly ties with Russia is also abundant. Both former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have identified 5 Star as a conduit for Russian electoral interference, e.g. in Italy’s December 2016.”

The Hill, “Putin is the real winner of the Italian elections”, 3 March 2018:

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Occidental Dissent, “President Trump Reverses His Plan To Withdraw From Syria”, 22 Feb 2019:

As I said in December, the Israel Lobby, the Pentagon and the GOP establishment would find some way to pressure Trump into reversing his withdrawal of troops from Syria:

“WASHINGTON — First, President Trump was going to pull all 2,000 American troops out of Syria immediately. Then he was going to slow down the withdrawal. Then he was going to leave troops in neighboring Iraq.

Now, in the latest about-face, Mr. Trump has agreed to leave about 400 troops in Syria — 200 in a multinational force in the northeastern part of the country and another 200 at a small outpost in the southeast, where they will seek to counter Iran’s influence throughout the country.

His decision to commit what one senior administration official described on Friday as a “couple hundred troops” to the multinational force, operating south of the Turkish border, came after European allies refused to send troops if the United States would not.

Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, pressed the president to make the decision on Thursday, this official said, amid signs that the Pentagon’s negotiations to put together a stabilization and monitoring force were foundering on European resistance. …”

Such has been the story of the Trump administration:

– Big Ag and the Chamber of Commerce have gotten Trump to support increasing legal immigration
– Republican senators loudly condemned Trump for withdrawing from TPP and renegotiating NAFTA until he essentially replaced NAFTA with TPP
– The tax reform bill passed without closing the carried interest loophole
– The GOP Congress punted on funding the border wall half a dozen times
– Various immigration bills like Kate’s Law have died in the Senate
– Trump was persuaded to sign the 2018 Omnibus and to cave on the shutdown by Republican senators
– The GOP Congress passed heavy sanctions on Russia and Trump yielded to pressure from conservatives to arm Ukraine and expand NATO
– Trump was convinced by Ryan and McConnell to prioritize their agenda of health care, tax reform and welfare reform

At the end of the day, conservatives in Congress have prevailed on nearly every issue, and Trump has walked back his populist promises over and over again.

By Hunter Wallace. Share this.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute; author of twelve books including “Web of Debt” and “The Public Bank Solution.”

The Fed Is Finally Seeing the Light on Quantitative Easing

Truth.dig, 20 Feb 2019:

“Quantitative easing” was supposed to be an emergency measure, but the Federal Reserve is now taking a surprising new approach toward the policy. The Fed “eased” shrinkage in the money supply due to the 2008-09 credit crisis by pumping out trillions of dollars in new bank reserves. After the crisis, the presumption was the Fed would “normalize” conditions by sopping up the excess reserves through “quantitative tightening” (QT)—raising interest rates and selling the securities it had bought with new reserves back into the market.

The Fed relentlessly pushed on with quantitative tightening through 2018, despite a severe market correction in the fall. In December, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said QT would be on “autopilot,” meaning the Fed would continue to raise interest rates and sell $50 billion monthly in securities until it hit its target. But the market protested loudly to this move, with the Nasdaq composite index dropping 22 percent from its late-summer high.

Worse, defaults on consumer loans were rising. December 2018 was the first time in two years that all loan types and all major metropolitan statistical areas showed a higher default rate month over month. Consumer debt—including auto, student and credit card debt—is typically bundled and sold as asset-backed securities similar to the risky mortgage-backed securities that brought down the market in 2008 after the Fed had progressively raised interest rates.

Powell evidently got the memo. In January, he abruptly changed course and announced QT would be halted if needed. On Feb. 4, Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said it was considering going much further. “You could imagine executing policy with your interest rate as your primary tool and the balance sheet as a secondary tool, one that you would use more readily,” she said. QE and QT would no longer be emergency measures but would be routine tools for managing the money supply. In an article on Seeking Alpha titled “Quantitative Easing on Demand,” Mark Grant writes:

If the Fed does decide to pursue this strategy it will be a wholesale change in the way the financial system in the United States operates and I think that very few institutions or people appreciate what is taking place or what it will mean to the markets, all of the markets.

The Problem of Debt Deflation

The Fed is realizing that it cannot bring its balance sheet back to “normal.” It must keep pumping new money into the banking system to avoid a recession. This naturally alarms Fed watchers worried about hyperinflation. But QE need not create unwanted inflation if directed properly. The money spigots just need to be aimed at the debtors rather than the creditor banks. In fact, regular injections of new money directly into the economy may be just what the economy needs to escape the boom and bust cycle that has characterized it for two centuries. Grant concludes his article by quoting Abraham Lincoln:

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.

The quote is apparently apocryphal, but the principle still holds: new money needs to be regularly added to the money supply to avoid an overwhelming debt burden and allow the economy to reach its true productive potential. Regular injections of new money are necessary to avoid something economists fear even more than inflation—the sort of “debt deflation” that took down the economy in the 1930s.

Most money today is created by banks when they make loans. When overextended borrowers pay down old loans without taking out new ones, the money supply “deflates” or shrinks. Demand shrinks with it, and businesses lacking customers close their doors, in the sort of self-feeding death spiral seen in the Great Depression.

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