Things will be quiet long enough to get prisoners exchanged, as all sides want that. But it seems the EU is not waiting on sanctions for any reason. I had been thinking the triggering of the next round would hinge on seeing if a cease fire was agreed upon.
I had assumed that with a failure of the talks attributed to Russia somehow that would be their cover for launching another round. But the talks were successful, and what the EU dummies have done is announce that they are going ahead with the sanctions anyway on Monday. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Did the new EU Council President Donald Tusk, the great Russia hater, have a key role in this reckless decision? Are they doing this to force Putin to launch the counter-sanctions on all EU car, truck and bus imports, thinking they could spin that as Russian aggression and pour more fuel on the partisan fire for, “We have to teach those Rooskies a good lesson”?
On the contrary, the lesson that needs to be taught is one to the EU itself and especially its leadership, who seems bound and determined to mirror Ukraine’s killed and wounded with economically killed and wounded in Europe. With this totally irresponsible policy they are attacking Russia and themselves at the same time.
The vehicle manufacturers have had a rough time with the decline in the European economy and lower consumer demand. That makes the export industries a double-dip ice cream cone. Russia’s imports have maintained those good paying jobs at a level that domestic demand could not have. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, as the vehicle manufacturing sector has a huge supply chain of parts manufacturers, which multiplies the lost business and jobs by the sanctions boomerang
All of these production plants will have trade industry forums and the workers their unions, already organized and funded, to begin letting their governments know how they feel about having their incomes shot out from under them. And that suffering is even worse when it is due to some anti-Russian Jihad cooked up in the backrooms of Washington, DC, London, and other capitols of Europe, but not all. Many will find themselves along for the ride, and an unpleasant one it is turning out to be.
Germany’s attitude has been the biggest surprise. Of Europe’s $110 billion trade surplus with Russia, $33 billion of that belongs to Germany. Economic analyst Michael Mross laid it out quite bluntly in his Russia Today interview, “Those people to whom I speak, also with businessmen of big companies, they are telling me behind closed doors “We don’t need these sanctions. And if we are talking about sanctions because they are very costly, then we want to see the facts, and not only rumors and mere propaganda.”
France is dirty dancing on delivering the Mistral helicopter and landing ship, which was going to be delivered early due to its being ahead of schedule. Hollande announced today that France is not canceling the contract, but holding off until the original delivery date in late October. But he has put political conditions on its eventual transfer that require, not only the success of the cease fire agreement but, the outrageous condition of a successful political settlement between the opposing Ukrainian sides.
I had to pinch myself when I read this. Hollande may call the delay not an annulment if he wants, but how could Russia ever give France a contract like this again, when Hollande is admittedly holding up the delivery as blackmail on Ukraine? The Franco-Russian association is up in arms over how this will destroy years of work spent in building good business relations.
The US is going to earn lasting enemies in Europe over this subterfuge, as the average citizen will understand that the US has pressured their leadership into doing something against that nation’s interests. Hollande’s approval numbers are in the toilet as it is, so he may have felt that he had nothing to lose.
So now we have to ask what he was offered in return, after we just saw Poland’s Donald Tusk get the EU Council Presidency. He has been the torch bearer for NATO expansion and the premiere Russia-hater. Are the New Cold War elites able to buy European leaders, especially someone like Hollande who is looking toward a retirement in oblivion? Did they offer him a nice soft-landing position that kept him in the game?
This subversion of democratic governments in the New World Order sausage-making machine, I see this as a major national security risk to us all. The independent Intel groups have watched mega business powers and international crime, especially the drug lords, become permanently indispensable as a never-ending source of campaign cash. As a former FBI undercover agent once told us about the Mexican drug lords, they never saw their payoffs to the political power structure as bribes, but just a different way of paying their taxes… to the head guy.
NATO makes a big deal over a 4000-man ready reaction force, when most of the world was shocked to find out that they did not have it before. But here is the funny part. I could draw up a list of Western and Mideast governments, including more than a few in Europe, who have been, and are now engaged in State-sponsored terrorism.
What do you think the chances are of this NATO ready-reaction force being deployed to eliminate the terrorist threat from even one country among their group, like Turkey, who is the major supply base for ISIS; and Israel for that matter, and the Gulf States?
And then there is the secret Sandia Labs report on 9-11, submitted in 2003 that confirmed that mini-nukes had brought down the World Trade Towers. A simple, and long done residue test at all major explosions turned up the high levels of tritium and other elements only found after a nuclear blast.
All weapons-grade uranium has a distinct chemical fingerprint from its place of manufacture. The fingerprint from the 9-11 nukes matched the warheads thought to be mothballed Davy Crockett mini nukes, but which had been secretly passed over to Israel after its 1988 Dimona accident that had knocked out its weapons grade production.
What have any of the defense and security orgs anywhere on the planet who know about it done about the mini-nuke terrorism over the last few decades. How about nothing… but hiding it from the public? And they think now we are going to buy into the “Russian Bear and Red Chinese hordes storming our beaches” new scam? I don’t think so.
The public is catching onto this shabby game, and the loyal elements within the security orgs are fingering those that have served “other interests”. Like Santa, they have been checking their lists for who has been naughty and who has been nice so they will be ready for the next 9-11, where no free passes will be handed out to the perps.
In the meantime, we have to fight them tooth and nail and not get sucked into their “Jihad of the month” to keep us all distracted with some innocent party to be the focus of our anger. We need to start now by pushing the reset button on NATO and rebuilding it from scratch, so it is not insulated from public control, which it certainly is now. We need to do this before it’s our turn to be Gazans and E. Ukrainians.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for Veterans Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.