Economic terrorism
Despite the bloc’s attempts to punish Russia, imports from the country have soared, Guy Verhofstadt says
https://www.rt.com/news/569373-russia-sanctions-zero-effect/
Jan 4, 2023
Member of the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt. © Francois WALSCHAERTS / POOL / AFP
The EU’s sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict have been a complete failure, Belgian member of the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt said on Monday. He added that the EU was only “rewarding” Russia by increasing imports from the country.
Writing on Twitter, Verhofstadt, who served as Belgian prime minister from 1999 to 2008 and has been an MEP since 2009, claimed that the effect of the EU’s nine packages of sanctions on Moscow “is less than 0.”
The former PM said that in the bloc’s attempts to punish Russia, it has achieved the opposite result. “We are rewarding Russia for its war against us!”
Verhofstadt also posted a chart titled ‘Still Filling Putin’s Coffers’, showing Russia-EU trade from February to August 2022. The graphic, which cites Eurostat data, shows that most EU member states, including Germany, France, Italy, and Poland, significantly increased imports from Russia. In total, only seven EU members were buying less from the country.
US making Europeans suffer – de Gaulle’s grandson
Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the EU imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, targeting entire sectors of the economy. In December, the bloc, along with the G7 countries and Australia, introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, setting it at $60 per barrel. In response, last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning the supply of oil and petroleum products from Russia to countries which apply these restrictions.
The sanctions on Russia have exacerbated the bloc’s energy crisis, causing fuel prices and the cost of living to soar. This has prompted protests against the sanctions policy in several EU countries. In December, a demonstration organized by the right-wing Patriots party took place in Paris against the government’s stance on Russia and France’s membership in NATO.
In his New Year’s address, Putin said that the West’s “full-blown sanctions war” against Moscow has largely failed to undermine the economy.
What could happen in 2023…
- 1. Increase in oil prices to $ 150 per barrel and gas prices to $ 5,000 per 1,000 cubic meters.
- 2. The return of the UK to the European Union.
- 3. The collapse of the European Union after the return of the UK and the abolition of the euro as the currency of the former EU.
- 4. The seizure by Poland and Hungary of the western regions of the former Ukraine.
- 5. The creation of the Fourth Reich on the basis of Germany and the satellites that joined it (Poland, the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, the Kiev Republic, etc. marginals).
- 6. The war between France and the Fourth Reich. The partition of Europe, including the new partition of Poland.
- 7. Separation of Northern Ireland from the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and accession to the Republic of Ireland.
- 8. The Civil War in the USA, the separation of California and Texas into independent states. Creation of the union State of Texas and Mexico. The subsequent victory of Elon Musk during the US presidential election in some of the states assigned to the Republicans after the Civil War.
- 9. Transfer of all major stock exchanges and financial activity from the USA and Europe to Asia.
- 10. The collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system, including the collapse of the IMF and the World Bank. Abandoning the euro and the dollar as world reserve currencies. The return of the gold standard. Transition to the active use of digital fiat currencies.
The US has capitalized on the restrictions, selling LNG to Europe at lucrative prices, the Russian Finance Minister said
https://www.rt.com/russia/568898-us-benefits-russia-sanctions/
Dec 25, 2022
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov © Sputnik / Dmitry Astakhov
The sanctions the West has slapped on Russia over the Ukraine conflict are taking a heavy toll on the European economy, while the US is the only actor profiting from the restrictions, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov claimed on Saturday.
Speaking to Asharq News daily, the minister believes that Western sanctions had helped Washington achieve what its goal, saying “their supplies of oil and gas to the European market have increased.”
Energy shipments from the US, however, have proved costly for Europeans, resulting in skyrocketing inflation and decreased competitive power for European businesses, Siluanov said.
According to the minister, both Western sanctions and the blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September “were orchestrated to provide Europe with more expensive liquefied [natural] gas from America.”
Russia to divert gas away from West – official
“America benefits, Europe loses,” he explained.
Moscow has called the sabotage a terrorist attack, claiming that the US stood to benefit the most from the explosions. While Washington has denied any involvement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the incident as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe to wean itself off of Russian energy.
Siluanov went on to admit that sanctions have affected the Russian economy. “But they inflicted on the West no less and perhaps even more pain,” he added, pointing to how sanctions rhetoric has now become routine.
The minister noted that the EU price cap on Russian oil “will certainly lead to price and market distortions,” reiterating Moscow’s position that it would not provide crude through contracts under Western-mandated restrictions.
Russian oil companies are rerouting their oil shipments from the West in other directions, the minister said. “We will be looking for new markets, looking for new logistics. It is possible that this would be more expensive,” he stated.
Earlier this month, the EU, G7 countries and Australia introduced a price limit on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel. The measure also prohibits Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shipments of Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased at or below the indicated price.
Following the move, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov warned that the restrictions would wreak havoc on global oil markets, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was not planning to sell oil to nations supporting the price cap.
In an age when information has never been more easily accessible, the world is awash in lies.
Political speech was also censored through the collaborative efforts of the FBI and more than 50 intelligence community agents in violation of the First Amendment. In each case, the “narrative” proved to be either misleading propaganda or an outright lie. Yet they were created and sustained by online communication platforms that pushed the lies and excluded the truths.
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, DEC 17, 2022
Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,
The heavy perils we face today include centralized governments micromanaging society, the growing prospect of global war, the growing prospect of forced surrender, and the replacement of reasoned debate and free speech with state-sanctioned “narratives” and censorship: totalitarian governance seems not far behind. This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.
The torrents engulfing us appear to be potentially catastrophic. In a few short years, the world has endured the COVID-19 pandemic, forced government lockdowns, extreme economic volatility, commodity shortages, and the World Economic Forum’s attempts to exploit this cascade of crises as an excuse to usher in a structural “Great Reset” in which global food and energy consumption can be strictly regulated according to the “climate change” goals of an unelected cabal. Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.
While health bureaucrats and politicians claimed to be “following the science,” mandatory compliance with unilateral rule-making precluded reasoned, good-faith debate. The predictable result: the lethal consequences of the Wuhan Virus were exacerbated by the lethal consequences of misguided public policies imposed to fight the virus. Students whose schools were shuttered now suffer the lifelong effects of learning loss. Patients whose timely diagnoses and preventative care were forestalled now suffer the debilitating outcomes of untreated disease. Small businesses unable to endure prolonged closures are gone for good. Middle class savings once reserved for unexpected “rainy day” funds or children’s future educations have dried up. Credit card debt is on the rise, while more and more people struggle to survive on less. The “safety nets” of government welfare programs have ballooned to leave nation states more indebted than ever but have also proved too perforated with leaky holes (often draining needed resources straight into the bank accounts of corporate campaign donors, interest group lobbyists, and foreign hackers) to keep society’s most vulnerable afloat. Governments’ justifications for reckless fiscal, monetary, and credit policies during short-term emergencies have weakened nations’ prospects for long-term solvency and the likelihood that they will be capable of preserving stable currencies. Still, for all the harms their actions have caused, governments have issued no apologies for enforcing such life-altering policies while silencing critics. It is as if “narrative engineers” have adopted an official position that they are incapable of being wrong.
Geopolitical conflict is wrenching the post-WWII international order apart. While America’s and the European Union’s “climate change” policies have already inflated the costs of energy, food and much else, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added to ordinary Europeans’ financial pain and jeopardizes the continent’s security more broadly. China’s territorial ambitions threaten peace in Taiwan, Japan, across Southeast Asia and beyond. The United States’ efforts to enlarge NATO’s European membership, while expanding its mission objectives into the Indo-Pacific, all but ensure that the U.S., China and Russia remain on a collision course.
Policymakers cannot help seeing parallels to the quickly falling geopolitical dominoes that ushered in WWI and WWII over the course of a few fateful weeks. They cannot help looking at the unsustainable accumulation of government debt around the world and the avalanche of investment derivatives balancing unsteadily upon fragile currencies unmoored from any real value in gold or silver and fearing the risks of a severe depression. They cannot help seeing Russian revanchism and Chinese territorial expansion as signs that the Great Powers have set course down a dangerous path. The more nervous about the future policymakers are, the more committed they seem to enforcing a standard “narrative” they can control.
It was the detonation of two nuclear warheads over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course, that brought combat in the Pacific Theater to a close and ended WWII with an exclamation point.
Now we stand on a new kind of battlefield. Just as with nuclear weapons, civilians have nowhere to hide from this war’s effects. Weapons systems are spread out across the Internet, deployed on mobile phones and active on every computer chip, tracking, sharing, and pushing digital information throughout the world. Instead of explosives and bullets, we have competing “narratives” whizzing past. The breadth of the campaign to control what information we see, how we process that information, and ultimately what we think and say makes even the most effective psychological operations of the past look antiquated and rudimentary. Whereas “mutually assured destruction” has so far succeeded as a deterrent against nuclear war, the tantalizing opportunities for governments to use programs of mass digital surveillance and communication to spread lies, manipulate opinion, and affect human behavior have created a kind of mutually assured dystopia, “where people lead dehumanized, fearful lives.”
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler spoke with boisterous energy and theatrical gesticulation before tens of thousands of stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and Nazi Party faithful. Today, the dictator’s raised stage has been replaced with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and anywhere else a pop-up online audience can be found. The visual stimuli that enthralled Hitler’s crowds are now reproduced with the release of pleasure-causing endorphins rushing to the brain after every “politically correct” online statement is “rewarded” with approval from strangers providing instant fame. Online “influencers” have become the goose-stepping middlemen for campaigns of mass propaganda that touch more humans in a day than a decade of Hitler’s speeches. In an age when information has never been more easily accessible, the world is awash in lies.
Instead of encouraging public debate and rational argument, governments push the constant drumbeat of the “narrative” above all else. A citizen either obediently accepts the government’s vast and intrusive COVID-19 rules, or that person is labelled a “COVID denier.” A citizen either obediently accepts the government’s vast and intrusive “climate change” rules, or that person is labelled a “climate denier.” A citizen either accepts Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation”, or that person is labelled a “Russian sympathizer.” Daring to say otherwise could get one banned from social media, professionally sanctioned, or even fired from a job. Except none of these established “narratives” has proved true.
In hindsight, it is clear that lockdowns unleashed more health, educational and economic problems than they solved. As Europe faces an expanding energy crisis that leaves its populations vulnerable to the cold, it is clear that “climate change” policies can kill those they are purportedly meant to protect. And as Elon Musk’s recent release of internal Twitter communications proves, Hunter Biden’s laptop was not only real news censored from the public during a presidential election. Political speech was also censored through the collaborative efforts of the FBI and more than 50 intelligence community agents in violation of the First Amendment. In each case, the “narrative” proved to be either misleading propaganda or an outright lie. Yet they were created and sustained by online communication platforms that pushed the lies and excluded the truths.
As global events increasingly threaten Western stability, governments have demonstrated no inclination to entertain a diversity of viewpoints or discussions along the way. Instead, the more serious the issue, the more committed to a single, overarching “narrative” they seem to become. Dissent is despised. Reasoned argument is lampooned. A citizen is expected to blithely accept government-approved messaging disseminated online, or risk the wrath of the technocracy.
This war for eight billion minds means that citizens must be more vigilant than ever in processing and evaluating what they see and read. Whether they like it or not, they are under attack at all times from those who seek to manipulate and control them. As in the last century, we are surrounded by totalitarian propaganda routinely disguised as “the truth.” In this century, though, the reach and scale of mass indoctrination seems endlessly expanding.
Attention was placed on the Kremlin’s statement after the conversation between leaders of Russia and Germany over Kiev’s incendiary attacks against Russian civilian infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge and power installations
MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. The explosions on the Crimean Bridge and on Nord Stream pipelines are akin to one another since both are acts of terrorism, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS this Friday.
This is how Peskov explained these emergencies, saying they went side by side in the Kremlin’s statement after a conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“Both are categorized as terrorist acts,” the Kremlin Spokesman said.
Attention was placed on the Kremlin’s statement after the conversation between leaders of Russia and Germany over Kiev’s incendiary attacks against Russian civilian infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge and power installations. This included the terrorist act against the Nord Stream and the Nord Stream 2 pipelines, whose circumstances require a transparent investigation with the participation of relevant Russian authorities, the Kremlin said.
Several European countries called for an end to sending money to Ukraine and bankrolling Kyiv’s ongoing war effort against Russia.
by: Ramon Tomey
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Several European countries called for an end to sending money to Ukraine and bankrolling Kyiv’s ongoing war effort against Russia.
Hungary led the charge by blocking €18 billion ($18.6 billion) in financial aid the European Commission planned to send. This threw a wrench into the plans of Brussels, as the money cannot go to Kyiv without the full approval of all 27 European Union member countries as per budget rules.
“We will certainly not support any kind of joint EU borrowing in this field,” Hungarian Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto told a newspaper in his home country. According to the minister, it had already spent hundreds of millions of euros to support health, education and cultural institutions in Ukraine. Szijjarto added that Budapest earlier supported the EU’s joint borrowing during the pandemic.
In response, leaders of various EU nations joined Brussels in denouncing Budapest. Mainstream media outlets also pointed their fingers at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who they accused of repeatedly neglecting EU norms and attempting to woo Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past.
Hungary is not the only nation opposing further funding to Ukraine.
An estimated 100,000 Italians protested in the capital Rome, calling on the government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. Numerous Catholic associations, trade unions and peace groups reportedly organized the demonstration.
In Greece, workers in the capital Athens went on a day-long strike to denounce soaring inflation and skyrocketing energy prices as a result of sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow. The laborers in Athens were backed by unions such as the General Confederation of Greek Workers and ADEDY, which represents civil servants.
Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, around 70,000 people took to the streets to denounce Prague for its role in the energy crisis. The participants called on the government to maintain direct gas contracts with Russia to solve the ongoing energy crisis. (Related: 70,000 protesters swarm Prague in protest of energy crisis: “Europe on the brink.”)
Even the GOP is tired of sending money to Kyiv
Professor Joe Siracusa, an expert on American politics at Curtin University in Western Australia, said the Hungarians and Italians “have every right” to voice their opposition to continued funding toward Ukraine.
“There’s going to be more of it,” he remarked. “I think every nation in Europe is going to do what they think they have to do to survive the winter and to get on with life.”
But according to Siracusa, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. – set to take control of the House of Representatives in January 2023 – are also tired of allocating huge amounts of money for Kyiv. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said the GOP won’t give a “blank check” to Kyiv. The expert remarked that McCarthy, who is gunning for the House speaker position, will have a “very, very important” role.
“Republicans will win the House of Representatives. They’re in control of the purse – and they can make sure that the House, where all money bills originate, will not give Ukraine another penny,” he said.
“If you don’t control the House, and all you need is 218 votes, you don’t need a red wave. You don’t need a 30- [or] 40-seat majority. All you need is one vote, and they got 218. Winning the House is more important than winning the Senate.”
While Siracusa pointed out that the GOP was “hesitating before the [midterm] election,” he continued that there is only so much Washington can give to Kyiv before the former’s arsenal becomes empty.
The expert ultimately referenced remarks by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who said that “as far as she … and a number of Republicans are concerned, Ukraine is not an ally and Russia is not an enemy.”
WWIII.news has more stories about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Watch Stew Peters urges the GOP to fulfill their promise of ending further funding for Ukraine when they take control of the House.
https://www.brighteon.com/embed/2a684bd7-3b48-463d-bee6-729e83173c70
This video is from the Leona Wind channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
Hungary says no to EU’s Russian oil embargo sanction.
Czechs protest in Prague demanding neutrality, government action over energy crisis.
Pentagon: Ukraine has received more than ONE MILLION artillery rounds from the US.
Sources include:
Turkey lashed out at Washington, going so far as to suggest the United States was to blame for the blast. “Turkey’s interior minister accused the U.S. of being complicit in a recent bombing in the city of Istanbul on Sunday that left at least six people dead and dozens of others injured,” The Hill reports.
“I emphasize once again that we do not accept, and reject the condolences of the US Embassy,” Soylu said, according to Turkish state media publication Anadolu Agency.
BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, NOV 15, 2022
We reported earlier on Monday that Turkey has made an arrest for the terror bombing of a busy tourist hub in central Istanbul which left six people dead and dozens more injured.
But soon after the rare deadly attack which Turkey quickly blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – and despite no official initial claims of responsibility – Ankara officials used the incident to air broader geopolitical grievances.
Turkey lashed out at Washington, going so far as to suggest the United States was to blame for the blast. “Turkey’s interior minister accused the U.S. of being complicit in a recent bombing in the city of Istanbul on Sunday that left at least six people dead and dozens of others injured,” The Hill reports.
The accusation was prompted by an official condolence statement from the US Embassy in Ankara. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu in a dramatic press conference said that Turkey has rejected the condolence statement from Washington.
“I emphasize once again that we do not accept, and reject the condolences of the US Embassy,” Soylu said, according to Turkish state media publication Anadolu Agency.
Soylu slammed the US statement as being akin to “a killer being first to show up at a crime scene.” The allegation was hurled due to America’s well-known longtime support of Syrian Kurds, which form the core of the US-trained Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Ankara has long alleged that Washington is giving aid to “terrorists”.
The hugely provocative Turkish reaction to the US condolence message came despite the White House saying it stands “shoulder-to-shoulder” with its NATO ally Turkey.
Turkey will likely hold this against NATO applicants Finland and Sweden as well, given it has been blocking their membership to the Western military alliance based on accusations that they harbor Kurdish terrorists and entities linked to the outlawed PKK.
Turkey says it has a Syrian woman linked to the PKK in custody. However, both the PKK and Syrian YPG (as well as SDF) have issued official statements denying their involvement.
Intelligence services worry about American economic warfare more than terrorism or the prospect of confrontation with Russia or China
It was clearly not for nothing that veteran US grand strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once remarked, “to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
https://www.rt.com/news/566392-good-friends-better-enemies/
By Felix Livshitz
Nov 15, 2022
FILE PHOTO. French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and US President Joe Biden (L) meet at the French Embassy to the Vatican in Rome. © Ludovic MARIN / AFP
New research published by France’s Ecole de Guerre Economique has revealed some extraordinary findings about who and what the French intelligence services fear most when it comes to threats to the country’s economy.
The findings are based on extensive research and interviews with French intelligence experts, including representatives of spy agencies, and so reflect the positions and thinking of specialists in the under-researched field of economic warfare. Their collective view is very clear – 97 percent consider the US to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of Paris.
Who is your true enemy?
The research was conducted to answer the question, “what will become of France in an increasingly exacerbated context of economic war?”. This query has become increasingly urgent for the EU as Western sanctions on Moscow’s exports, in particular energy, have had a catastrophic effect on European countries, but have not had the predicted effect Russia. Nor have they hurt the US, the country pushing most aggressively for these measures.
Yet, the question is not being asked in other EU capitals. It is precisely the continent-wide failure, or unwillingness at least, to consider the “negative repercussions on the daily lives” of European citizens that inspired the Ecole de Guerre Economique report.
As the report’s lead author Christian Harbulot explains, ever since the end of World War II, France has “lived in a state of the unspoken,” as have other European countries.
At the conclusion of that conflict, “manifest fear” among French elites of the Communist Party taking power in France “strongly incited a part of the political class to place our security in the hands of the US, in particular by calling for the establishment of permanent military bases in France.”
“It goes without saying that everything has its price. The compensation for this aid from across the Atlantic was to make us enter into a state of global dependence – monetary, financial, technological – with regard to the US,” Harbulot says. And aside from 1958 – 1965 when General Charles de Gaulle attempted to increase the autonomy of Paris from Washington and NATO, French leaders have “fallen into line.”
FILE PHOTO. Meeting of US President Richard Nixon and French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France, March 1969. © REPORTERS ASSOCIES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
This acceptance means aside from rare public scandals such as the sale of French assets to US companies, or Australia cancelling its purchase of French-made submarines in favor of a controversial deal with the US and UK (AUKUS), there is little recognition – let alone discussion – in the mainstream as to how Washington exerts a significant degree of control over France’s economy, and therefore politics.
As a result, politicians and the public alike struggle to identify “who their enemy” truly is. “In spheres of power” across Europe, Harbulot says, “it is customary to keep this kind of problem silent,” and economic warfare remains an “underground confrontation which precedes, accompanies and then takes over from classic military conflicts.”
This in turn means any debate about “hostility or harmfulness” in Europe’s relations with Washington misses the underlying point that “the US seeks to ensure its supremacy over the world, without displaying itself as a traditional empire.”
The EU might have a trade surplus of 150 billion euros with the US, but the latter would never willingly allow this economic advantage to translate to “strategic autonomy” from it. And this gain is achieved against the constant backdrop of – and more than offset by – “strong geopolitical and military pressure” from the US at all times.
I spy with my Five Eyes
Harbulot believes the “state of the unspoken” to be even more pronounced in Germany, as Berlin “seeks to establish a new form of supremacy within Europe” based on its dependency on the US.
As France “is not in a phase of power building but rather in a search to preserve its power” – a “very different” state of affairs – this should mean the French can more easily recognize and admit to toxic dependency on Washington and see it as a problem that must be resolved.
It is certainly hard to imagine such an illuminating and honest report being produced by a Berlin-based academic institute, despite the country being the most badly affected by anti-Russian sanctions. Some analysts have spoken of a possible deindustrialization of Germany, as its inability to power energy-intensive economic sectors has destroyed its 30-year-long trade surplus – maybe forever.
But aside from France’s “dependency” on Washington being different to that of Germany, Paris has other reasons for cultivating a “culture of economic combat,” and keeping very close track of the “foreign interests” that are harming the country’s economy and companies.
The Elysee palace. © Eric Feferberg / AFP
A US National Security Agency spying order sent to other members of the Five Eyes global spying network – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK – released by WikiLeaks, shows that since at least 2002 Washington has issued its English-speaking allies annual “information need” requests, seeking any and all information they can dig up on the economic activities of French companies, the economic and trade policies of France’s government, and the views of Paris on the yearly G8 and G20 summits.
Whatever is unearthed is shared with key US economic decision-makers and departments, including the Federal Reserve and Treasury, as well as intelligence agencies, such as the CIA. Another classified WikiLeaks release shows that the latter – between November 2011 and July 2012 – employed spies from across the Five Eyes (OREA) to infiltrate and monitor the campaigns of parties and candidates in France’s presidential election.
Washington was particularly worried about a Socialist Party victory, and so sought information on a variety of topics, “to prepare key US policymakers for the post-election French political landscape and the potential impact on US-France relations.” Of particular interest was “the presidential candidates’ views on the French economy, what current economic policies…they see as not working, and what policies…they promote to help boost France’s economic growth prospects[.]”
The CIA was also very interested in the “views and characterization” of the US on the part of presidential candidates, and any efforts by them and the parties they represented to “reach out to leaders of other countries,” including some of the states that form the Five Eyes network itself.
Naturally, those members would be unaware that their friends in Washington, and other Five Eyes capitals, would be spying on them while they spied on France.
It was clearly not for nothing that veteran US grand strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once remarked, “to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
The Ministry for Climate and Energy, which falls under Economic Affairs, issued 25 waivers for Dutch organizations to still get energy from former Gazprom companies. The waivers help 150 companies and organizations, including municipalities, schools, and water boards, the Ministry said to the broadcaster.
via RTLNieuws
Wow! Holland has said enough is enough!
They become the first European country to withdraw sanctions against Russia, without permission from EU.
This is the first example we see of a European country acting in the best interest of their own country.
Now, who is next?
The Dutch government has issued 91 waivers from sanctions against Russia since the country invaded Ukraine late in February, RTL Nieuws reports after talking to the Ministries. The ministries shielded the names of the companies involved, the value of transactions that were exempted, and the business sectors concerned.
The information was “company-sensitive,” according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economic Affairs, Finance, Infrastructure, and Education are allowed to grant exemptions to sanctions to “allow a degree of flexibility in specific cases,” the spokesperson affirmed.
In April, the European Union banned ships sailing under the Russian flag from European ports. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management issued waivers so 34 ships could access Dutch ports, for example, because they carried important cargo like aluminum and food.
“Diplomatic relations” was stated as the reason why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs granted one exemption, the broadcaster reported. In the isolated case, transactions that involved Russian banks majority held by the State were permitted to occur.
The Ministry of Finance granted 13 additional waivers related to frozen assets or goods that fall under the sanctions regime.
The Ministry for Climate and Energy, which falls under Economic Affairs, issued 25 waivers for Dutch organizations to still get energy from former Gazprom companies. The waivers help 150 companies and organizations, including municipalities, schools, and water boards, the Ministry said to the broadcaster.
The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, which falls under Foreign Affairs, issued 18 waivers to 13 organizations on “humanitarian grounds” for cooperation between the EU and Russia on “purely civilian matters.” Foreign Affairs issued one waiver so a company could receive another payment from Russia. [RTLNieuws, NLTimes]
I put all the words of his tweets below.
It’s done
Kim Dotcom
Nov 6, 2022
Sergey Naryshkin, the Russian spy chief, revealed that he has “indirect confirmation” that the message “It’s done” from former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss to SecBlinken was sent shortly after the Nord Stream pipelines blew up. Let’s explore what “indirect” means.
The most likely scenario is that China provided the intel to Russia and others. The cyber capabilities of China today are no match for the US. All you hear about these days is the US complaining about huge data losses to Chinese cyber attacks. Just look at the US fear of Huawei.
After the leaks of the US digital spy arsenal and cyber methods with thousands of documents released by
@Snowden and @Wikikeaks Vault7 a global cyber arms race began. US intelligence competitors upgraded their capabilities significantly. The result: China now dominates the space.
An attack against UK Govt devices and linked cloud accounts is trivial for Chinese Govt hackers. They now control the largest arsenal of zero-day exploits providing backdoor access to most devices and servers connected to the Internet. More details here: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1587434317189636097?s=20&t=f2NizIor8Ooz0N8T6BQNrg
“Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?” was the biggest question in intelligence circles since the 9/11 attacks. So much so that when the answer was found a shockwave emanated from spy agencies about the stupidity of the perpetrators. They were caught by two words: “It’s done.”
We now have confirmation from the Russian spy chief that “It’s done” is real. Maybe he’s more credible than his US counterparts who have been caught lying to the public over and over again? The next big question is how will Russia respond? The smartest move is to do nothing. Why?
Because Russia is winning. The media isn’t telling you this but independent military experts agree that after the coming winter offensive with fresh Russian reinforcements Ukraine will fold no matter how many weapons the US & NATO send to what remains of the Ukrainian army.
The best Nord Stream retaliation is not to retaliate. Everybody knows who did it. Russia and China are increasingly seen as prudent, rational actors by non-western nations. The BRICS+ alliance is gaining support. A multipolar order with a new financial system seems inevitable.
The more the US escalates the conflict with Russia and China about “world domination” the more the US accelerates its own demise. Most nations like the concept of having a say in global affairs in a multipolar order with a multinational reserve currency backed by real assets.
The ultimate question is this: Will the US accept that it cannot rule the world and that it must share prosperity with all nations or will the US in a final act of arrogance destroy the world because it cannot accept that the days of living at the expense of others are over.
Tales from the Conspiratum 
